

The Barometer of Hacker News Knowledge Half-life - _giu
http://zedshaw.com/blog/2009-12-29.html

======
llimllib
My favorite bash aliases:

alias aack="ack --all"

alias rack="ack --ruby --follow"

alias fack="ack --actionscript --follow"

alias jack="ack --js"

alias pack="ack --python"

(mentioned because aack would have prevented his searching problem)

------
rapind
The whole snap judgement based on passed impressions brings to mind something
I've been suspecting for a while now.

I'm tired of _beta_. I can't get up the energy investment required to check
and re-check web applications other than a few I've already internally flagged
as important. Am I alone?

When I miss-label Fret War it's unintentional. I'm just being rationally lazy
to save some juice for other things.

------
shalmanese
Wow, it seems like Zed just discovered branding. A brand is established by
owning a word/concept in the consumer's minds. In Fret Wars' case, it was
randomly generated music. It doesn't matter if this is now no longer the case
in reality, it's still the established brand.

------
bugs
This article comes off as rather offensive to me, it must be the language and
constant ego bashing of _nerds_ , but one thing that doesn't make sense is
when Zed Shaw said he put his ego aside as he obviously didn't and was angry
that his about page had fed these random music comments and is obviously upset
that people took his about page seriously.

~~~
lonestar
He said he put his ego aside in regards to redesigning his webapp to appeal to
a wider audience, rather than what he wanted.

It doesn't seem terribly egotistical to want to correct people who are
spreading an inaccurate representation of his product.

~~~
bugs
It does when he is angry at people for stating information in the about page
and he expects those people to know his about page is wrong.

He may actually be sincere in his thank you but the whole article made his
tone snobbish in my mind so I didn't take it as real.

~~~
dandelany
At least to me, he doesn't come off as angry at anyone other than himself for
forgetting to fix his About page. In fact, he says several positive things
about HN readers:

"the value of a natural feedback system is greater than any promotional value
I would get out of submitting things myself."

"...an excellent positive result of the HN barometer"

"I think of HN as a barometer of what people think."

"Thank you Hacker News"

On the whole, the post is about how Hacker News enabled him to get a read on
community sentiment about Fret Wars. This is absolutely a positive thing. He's
not blaming HN for continuing to think the site is about randomly generated
music, he's blaming himself, and praising HN for helping him discover his
mistake.

Now if I was a _guitar player_ , I might be offended... :)

------
jeffreyg
this is about fret war, the randomly generated music thing, we've seen it
before

~~~
pchristensen
Somehow I knew that would be the one comment

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jbronn
> ack didn’t pick it up because that’s a text file. DAMN!

`ack -a` is your friend, Zed. No snark intended, that's all I have to say.

------
tptacek
The barometer of Hacker News knowledge half-life is how well it tracks the
state of a Zed Shaw side project.

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chrischen
If you're a public persona, and stuff like your personal posts about moving to
San Francisco get re-posted, then the reposting of your work is probably not a
very accurate barometer of your work's individual merits. Instead it's simply
a measure of your overal notability.

------
mynameishere
Zed playing/singing:

<http://fretwar.com/static/data/player/1/round/40/submission/>

------
axod
"But, that’s the price you pay for being a public persona with fans."

Srsly? Public Persona? with fans...? Who? Maybe that bit was meant tongue in
cheek. I really hope so.

~~~
jcl
From the numbers, we can conclude that Zed is _at least somewhat_ awesome:

<http://top.searchyc.com/domains_by_average_points>

~~~
axod
Within the niche of HN which is in itself a niche of 'tech'.

OK, point conceded. These people are truly 'famous' :/

~~~
olefoo
In the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes. -- A. Warhol

Clay Shirky updated that with "In the future everyone will be famous to 15
people."

It is obviously more complex than that, but Zed Shaw probably has a nationwide
Q rating higher than your local newsreader for your local broadcast television
channel.

So, for some values of 'famous', yes.

