
Ask HN: How do you benefit from Hacker News? - yekanchi
I have known HackerNews for  quite a year and most of the time (daily) i review the top 5, 6 links based on my favor, i recently started to think that it&#x27;s very diverse and mostly i forget about the tricks and fresh thing i read, i just want to know are others like me and they just read and forget or do you feel and act other than this!?
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zuzuleinen
HackerNews is a great community. I love the comments because they come from
people much smarter than me. I actually started to make a newsletter from
comments which contain an important lesson:
[https://lessonsofhn.com](https://lessonsofhn.com)

Sadly the newsletter has only 4 subscribers and I might discontinue it in the
future. However, I will not stop favoriting comments which contain important
lessons.

Now I'm thinking about building a tool which will send you favorite comments
of a user to your mailbox on a frequency you choose. You can add your own user
and then you will not forget the things which you favorite because you will
keep getting them in your inbox.

~~~
vertis
I love the lessons you've shared so far, but I don't enjoy getting newsletters
(I drown in emails). Maybe there is another way to share them.

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znpy
Same here: thanks but I don't need more emails in my Inbox. RSS would be fine
though.

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zuzuleinen
Here is the RSS [https://us9.campaign-
archive.com/feed?u=383e62709f4ac9e20d7d...](https://us9.campaign-
archive.com/feed?u=383e62709f4ac9e20d7d19b59&id=9415e4492e)

~~~
gletard
Thanks, please continue publishing. I have just subscribed via Feedly.

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zuzuleinen
Thank you :) Will do!

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bmpafa
I like it for curation of articles I'd otherwise not likely find (esp. ones
that aren't new, which makes it feel like a temporally separate newsfeed).

I also like the general distaste for clickbait, markety bullshit,etc. I guess
in that respect, it's like all the brains you'd expect from silicon valley
with very little of the Kool Aid.

...but mostly I just like seeing people piss & moan about Electron using >50MB
of RAM

~~~
w4tson
Don’t forget those rust vs go threads. 300 comments of people talking past
each other ;-)

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muzani
It's slightly more productive than procrastinating on other sites.

~~~
jordansmith
"Productive" procrastination is my favorite form of procrastination.

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whatyoucantsay
To me, it serves as a powerful cautionary tale. Ten years ago, it was a
vibrant community where pg, pmarca, DHH, and many other quite accomplished
individuals commented regularly.

It's not like that now. The elves have left middle earth.

HN's greatest contributors of the past, have been gone for years. Worse still,
the site's audience has broadened greatly and its content has shifted towards
the very mainstream news topics that it once avoided. Moderators have clear
political axes to grind. While the site initially shunned submissions related
to politics (and even codified this in its guidelines), it's no longer
uncommon for flags to be turned off explicitly political stories that lead to
viscous flame wars.

HN is invaluable, as a reminder in the fragility of communities and of the
impermanence of anything we create. If a project that some of the smartest
people on the planet put their heart and soul into can fall apart so
ruinously, who are we to have any ego about our creations?

~~~
zamazingo
Do you know where the new elves are?

~~~
lfxyz
Did we know those elves were elves at the time?

~~~
whatyoucantsay
pmarca had two separate $1B+ exits and the invention of the first mainstream
web browser under his belt

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jokh
I like how comment authors employ real critical thinking, unlike places like
reddit where all the top comments echo each other. So fresh perspectives helps
me learn from people with different viewpoints who aren't afraid to question
others when they're wrong/BSing.

~~~
MoBattah
Right. HN readers call out logical fallacies well. Makes me a better
analytical thinker.

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O_H_E
From the most productive ways to keep-up with news and a nice place to hear
comments from knowledgeable people about these news. I learn about new
technologies, and sometimes comments from people help me decide next language
or technology to explore next.

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meesterdude
It's been a mixed bag. I think there is a toxicity in the moderatorship and a
predisposition for downvotes - which is frustrating. There are also recurring
cirlce-jerks which distorts things as well. Nor has the HN platform improved
in the years I've used it.

But sometimes there will be a worthwhile link, or a salient comment, perhaps
once a week; and that's about ratio i've found when using HN over the years.
And those things are the things I remember.

If you like something, comment on it - it means more than a vote, and helps
you bookmark it if you ever want to track back to it.

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tptacek
We've hired a bunch of people from HN over the last 10 years.

~~~
MoBattah
Is this usually someone writes a comment related to your field, you find it
insightful, check their profile and it goes from there?

Or is it usually started by someone's "Show HN" post?

I'm sure these generalizations are too broad.

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invalid_
I get to read well documented arguments AGAINST hype and trends. I like that

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quickthrower2
It gives me an impression about what is going on in tech in other countries,
that would be hard to know about. For example I know I can double my salary if
I got to SF, although I may not act on that.

~~~
yekanchi
SF?

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JunaidBhai
Very frequently we come across prospects for our design services who are part
of the HackerNews community. It becomes a great opener to connect with them.

