
Lamer News - gbrindisi
http://lamernews.com/news/1
======
gbrindisi
Just to give some context about the genesis of LN, here are some tweets by
Salvatore:

    
    
        dudes the time for YC to be replaced by something 
        open and not privately owned has come, and I want 
        to help in some way
        http://twitter.com/#!/antirez/status/124256931970949120
    
        I mean not YC the company, but the news site: news.ycombinator.com
        http://twitter.com/#!/antirez/status/124257007988510721
    
        First step, I want to code some Redis based fast
        replacement of the code base. Guess what? 
        Not written in Arc ;)
        http://twitter.com/#!/antirez/status/124257497946140673
    
        Second, let's make the code base open source. 
        Finally I'll get a linode instance for the first year,
        and put it into some domain.
        http://twitter.com/#!/antirez/status/124257713659191296
    
        p.s. I know that Reddit is open source, but I want to
        write a Redis clone so that it can make a good 
        use case at least ;)
        http://www.tweetdeck.com/
    
        Note: site will not be mine, once I put it 
        online + github I want to create a "core team" 
        from different companies / countries.
        http://twitter.com/#!/antirez/status/124259611896315905
    
        if you wonder about why "lamer" news, one of the 
        things I like less of HN is how they turned the
        "hacker" term into almost a joke...
        http://twitter.com/#!/antirez/status/124264048555606016
    
        @rbucker: @antirez that makes much more sense. 
        And I agree with that. News dot yc is a conflict 
        of interest. Sort of.
        http://twitter.com/#!/rbucker/status/124263894058414080
    
        @rbucker exactly what I think... for instance YC 
        funded companies job postings are special news that 
        are "sticky" or alike.
        http://twitter.com/#!/antirez/status/124263563782144000
    
        @dvirsky lamernews has a meaning actually, it is 
        like Cusano philosophy "I know that I don't know".
        Makes sense IMHO in the hacker culture.
        http://twitter.com/#!/antirez/status/124265164546650114

~~~
tptacek
It's a cool piece of code, and an extremely valuable example application for
Redis, and a useful package. But instead, let's definitely talk about the
drama that's attached to it.

It's obvious that for a lot of HN participants, the site isn't fun unless we
can divide everyone into heroes and villains, or at least shirts and skins.

~~~
adbge

        > It's obvious that for a lot of HN participants, the
        > site isn't fun unless we can divide everyone into
        > heroes and villains
    

Do you think this is specific to HN?

Most news stations, for example, seem to me to be all about dividing the world
into heroes and villains.

Also, do you think this is something that can be changed? My initial reaction
is that this kind of black-and-white thinking is part of human nature,
stemming from our need to apply our own morality to the events that occur
around us.

------
DanBC
Thanks for this. I've joined.

What I'd really like to see is "$NAME, like Hacker/Lamer news, but for book
reviews". The submission has a title which is $BOOKNAME - $AUTHORNAME; then
the post contains maybe a link to some online store selling it. (affiliate
links are allowed). After that the first post is a review of the book. That
allows people to upvote the book, but downvote the review (or vice versa.)

Really, I should just buy some hosting and get my head round hackernews /
lamernews.

~~~
gbrindisi
This is a lovely idea I can see myself using it!

~~~
DanBC
I would definitely use it! I just know that I'm never going to get around to
setting it up.

So, if anyone else wants to they should.

~~~
recoiledsnake
There's this <http://www.reddit.com/r/redditbooks>

Also see links on the right of <http://www.reddit.com/r/books> for more books
related sub reddits.

------
ashamedlion
Certainly not trying to be rude, but what is the value of the site? What does
it provide beyond HN?

Love that it's open source, though. I'll definitely be taking a look at it.

~~~
baby
A website like HN is really simple to make in PHP. I don't see the point in
making it open source. I don't see the point copying HN either.

HN is not a great website because of it's design (which is really poor in my
opinion). It's a great website because of the community.

~~~
bhousel
Personally, I think Hacker News has a great design and a poor community. I
guess these things are just a matter of taste.

~~~
inconditus
Honest question, why have you stayed at HN for almost three years if it's a
poor community?

~~~
bhousel
Well, the community isn't "poor" -- it's just not for me.

I don't participate nearly as much as I used to. It's not like the only
choices are "stay" and "leave".

------
Swizec
Looks like an interesting concept to hack on. But somehow I get the nagging
feeling it's suffering from the whole "everyone needs to code their own CMS at
some point in their career".

Maybe the new saying will be "Every competent web dev has coded a news site at
some point"?

PS: I joined, my internet OCD demands it.

~~~
gabriele
antirez is not new to this. he created one of the first Digg/Reddit inspired
news site in Italy back in 2005 or 2006. I beleive that was originally built
in PHP/MySql and recently ported to Redis as the main database. The entire
project was aquired by one of the largest italian internet companies around
2006 or 2007 and it's now hosted at <http://oknotizie.virgilio.com>

As far as I know, that project was never made open source. You can find other
early projects from antirez here <http://merzia.com/>

~~~
inconditus
Link should be <http://oknotizie.virgilio.it/>, not .com.

------
titel
I really don't feel this is the right approach to come up with a HN
alternative.

Maybe Hacker News has it's issues but, even if it Lamer News were a better
option I do not think that somebody mocking 'competitors' (even though to be
fair that is not even close - as this new site is only days old - as compared
to HN) is a 'leader' worth following in forming a new community.

------
kijin
Minor bug: Both lamernews.com and www.lamernews.com lead to the same site,
with no redirection either way. Logging into lamernews.com does not log me
into www.lamernews.com, and vice versa. This would get confusing once people
start linking to various parts of the site. Nothing that can't be fixed with a
quick rewrite rule, though.

------
strmpnk
First easy test I posted was a link to a domain that gets blocked here (legit
content). While it's just a tech demo site, I hope it will turn into an
experiment for new ideas, particularly with the right balance between
Y-combinator startups and their competitors (blocked submissions on HN).

~~~
pg
We don't ban sites of competitors of companies we fund. Even if we wanted to
do something like that, how could we ever get away with it? I'm guessing
you're referring to Nodejitsu.com. They're banned because they created an army
of sockpuppets to vote up their posts.

~~~
indexzero
Your claim that Nodejitsu "created an army of sockpuppets to vote up their
posts" is outrageous. Let me enumerate the issue here:

1\. Your moderators are simply unable (or unwilling) to distinguish
"sockpuppets" from a legitimate community of developers (that is the node.js
community). Yes, when we post something to HN we send out the link via Twitter
and IM to colleagues in the node.js community who may potentially upvote it.
This is natural "word of mouth". We have never used bots, or any kind of
malicious automation to ensure posts reach the front-page.

2\. There is no transparency for bans, nor is the ban every communicated to
the owner of the HN account. If you think an account is unfairly trying to
manipulate the voting system; you have to contact them. Anything less is
blatantly ambiguous and unacceptable.

3\. Given the silent nature of bans on HN, we have no choice but to move onto
a new HN account and continue to submit legitimate posts using legitimate word
of mouth dissemination. Perhaps you view this as "sockpuppets," but what other
choice do we have?

4\. In the particular case of Nodejitsu, this behavior is even more
unacceptable. We are a platform-as-a-service where any user can create a
publicly available application on a subdomain of nodejitsu.com. How can you
ban the entire *.nodejitsu.com domain when we are not responsible for
malicious actions (real or perceived) taken by a given user? This is not an
admission that any such behavior has taken place; I'm sure that your claim is
addressed in [1]-[3].

In the copyright world, site owners are protected by malicious actions of
users through DMCA safe-harbor. In such senarios, the owner of the site will
be contacted and the malicious behavior (real or perceived) can be addressed
and/or removed. By silently banning posts and not communicating with members
of the HN community about what you perceive as malicious behavior you are
doing yourself a serious detriment. This has (and continues to) raise
questions about the legitimacy of the content on HN as just a shill for
YCombinator.

If you'd like to speak with me personally you can email charlie@nodejitsu.com

Charlie Robbins Founder and CEO Nodejitsu Inc.

~~~
FreakLegion
As to your 1.: Let's assume you're being honest and it isn't sock puppetry.
It's still basically astroturfing, and I, at least, don't want to see that
here.

If entire communities are allowed to flock to Hacker News to upvote the latest
post about their pet platform, the site will become nothing more than a cheap
marketing tool.

So, PSA: Please don't strip-mine this community's goodwill for your own or
your company's benefit.

As to your 2.: You're entirely correct.

~~~
jarek
"If entire communities are allowed to flock to Hacker News to upvote the
latest post about their pet platform, the site will become nothing more than a
cheap marketing tool."

Because there's been none of that happening for the past year...

------
ericmoritz
Code: <https://github.com/antirez/lamernews>

------
jabo
I would really love to have an API for lamernews, given that the system is
trying to be more open than HN: <http://lamernews.com/news/58>

------
cookiecaper
I'm currently developing a similar open-source news aggregation codebase in
Python/Pyramid. NoSQL support is something I'd like to add at some point but
right now all database operations depend on SQLAlchemy. I would really, really
like to see some NoSQL-ish modifications to a library like that, I hope
antirez or other big names in k-v stores work on that soon -- it would
certainly expand redis et al much faster.

I plan on making a big formal post about this when it has a bit more polish,
but there are already a couple of sites that are using it. Here's the link if
anyone's interested: <https://github.com/sjuxax/raggregate>

------
aristus
Larger arrows. My #1 feature wish. Why do I have 10 points just for signing
up?

~~~
cmelbye
On the to do list, he says that he intends to transfer karma to the poster
when you upvote something. So if you upvoted a link, you would be deducted one
karma point and it would be given to the person who submitted the link. So,
eventually it seems as if you'll need those 10 karma points to allow you to
start voting.

~~~
kijin
This looks like a good idea to encourage contributing instead of simply
lurking around and voting things down. But LN will have to be careful with the
economics of karma, because otherwise people might become reluctant to vote
for fear of losing karma.

~~~
yxhuvud
Don't worry, that is what throwaway accounts will be for. Karma will
accumulate in the system.

Maybe there have to be some mechanism in place that redistribute it from
people that doesn't use their karma, though.

------
llambda
Somebody left the debug switch on: <http://cl.ly/BBFy>

------
rauljara
Considering joining just because it is a much smaller community, and I will
have a disproportionately larger impact than I do at hacker news. I am more
likely to be able to influence it to be more like the site I want it to be
than I am able to influence hacker news. I imagine most hn folk who join lamer
news at first will do it for that reason.

I don't think many will actually be giving up hacker news in joining lamer
news, tho.

------
luser001
Cool. I've joined. Hopefully LN will be a more democratic forum than HN.

------
skrebbel
Am I the only one who occasionally gets a page full of Go Daddy ads on
<http://lamernews.com/news/1> ?

------
fedd
i started to make a reddit clone too to demo our mety db -
<http://vsetec.com/uncensor/> (dont click the spammy links, the site is sorta
unattended now).

------
Andi
I support the idea! Buz please change the name. Being proud of what you do and
giving an appropriate name is underrated.

------
dustingetz
please, please, please, do not re-invent the wheel. HN software is fine.
<http://arclanguage.org/item?id=4718>

~~~
chc
It isn't as though there weren't Slashdot, Digg, Reddit and a million similar
sites before Hacker News. If he wants his own codebase, that's his
prerogative.

