
Hacker News: Unknown or Expired Link - fotoflo
Why do i get a single line &#60;body&#62;" "Unknown or expired link" when I curl some YC pages? http://news.ycombinator.com/x for example.<p>If YC is full of such great product people and hackers, why wouldn't they use (searchable) permalinks? I'm assuming there's a reason for this, as its not the easiest way to do things.
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irahul
This has been discussed to death. Apparently you have to deal with it and it's
not going to be fixed.

However, if anyone is curious about why it's happening, this is what the arc
code is doing <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3098863>

If you don't follow arc, here is a python and ruby approximation of the arc
challenge <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3098863>

[https://github.com/rahulkmr/musings/blob/master/ruby/sinatra...](https://github.com/rahulkmr/musings/blob/master/ruby/sinatra/closures.rb)

[https://github.com/rahulkmr/musings/blob/master/python/closu...](https://github.com/rahulkmr/musings/blob/master/python/closures2.py)

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jgrahamc
I've wondered at times if PG isn't deliberately leaving this problem in place
so that people who get annoyed by it are filtered out as users of the web
site.

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irahul
> I've wondered at times if PG isn't deliberately leaving this problem

Since you know about the implementation(I haven't looked closely), won't it
need a complete overhaul to take closures out of equation? Or implement some
sort of closure serialization(on-disk maybe)? Is there a third option where pg
just bangs at the keyboard for a couple of hours, and done?

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ZeroGravitas
Just a home link or a page with the banner would be nice, so you don't have to
faff about with your browser to get back to the homepage.

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rythie
It's funny, if Hacker News was the product of a startup it would have been
redesigned, A/B tested and tons of features/tweaks added. Any growth would be
seen as the result of those actions, however HN has grown anyway despite being
stagnent for 5+ years.

Makes you wonder what all the software development really achieves, or if HN
would be bigger still if they had done that - or if PG wants HN to be bigger
at all.

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pasbesoin
pg puts his time and effort into managing the community, rather than the page
controls.

He's repeatedly, periodically made comments on efforts to improve moderation,
filtering, ranking, etc. And those efforts are evident in their effect upon
content.

"Stagnant" is not an accurate description.

Finally, HN is a tool -- a tool for communication. In that respect, it works
pretty well, and is actually somewhat UNIX-y, I'd argue. (E.g. leaving
notifications to external add-ons, private communication to email et al., etc.
HN focuses on its core purpose of posts, comments, and ranking (public
discussion).)

P.S. This is, obviously, just my observation and opinion, FWIW.

P.P.S. Sorry -- rereading the parent comment, I think we are more like-minded
than I first thought.

One might say pg has focused on the _message_ , rather than the presentation.
Which has worked rather well. Although I think I and some others are also just
fine with the presentation -- readability over eye candy, and with the effort
put into other aspects of the site.

And... as some have observed, sometimes it is suspected or outright apparent
that supposed "limitations" are actually a feature. For example, limiting
disruptive, low S/N back-and-forth commenting.

I guess I've written all this in part for the benefit (if any) of some newer
members who happen to read this. Experiencing HN over a longer period of time,
I've found perhaps (presumptively) somewhat deeper insight into pg's and the
moderators' approach and management.

~~~
rythie
I wasn't implying he had done the wrong thing particularly, graphic redesigns
can be expensive and it's not clear how much value they add, he has clearly
avoided them.

In my own experience I've found if you don't make at least small changes that
people can see, early adopters think no one is working on the product and go
away - because they perceive nothing will ever improve. This effect doesn't
really apply to community or social networks though for the reasons you said.

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irahul
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3098756>

> why wouldn't they use (searchable) permalinks? I'm assuming there's a reason
> for this, as its not the easiest way to do things.

It's straight forward, but not when you are using closures and continuations.

~~~
fotoflo
So... hacker news chose to let their product be limited by an engineering
issue?

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irahul
Must we discuss the same thing that was discussed in the thread I posted the
link to? Nothing new has happened since the last thread.

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JimWestergren
Those kind of links are a great irritation for me when browsing and reading
HN.

Instead of <http://news.ycombinator.com/x?fnid=KnmhPyrF1t> Why not for
example: <http://news.ycombinator.com/news?page=2> ?

~~~
Teckla
_Those kind of links are a great irritation for me when browsing and reading
HN._

My work around for the "unknown or expired link" bug is to open page 1 of HN,
then immediately open pages 2, 3, and 4, but in separate tabs.

That way, I never run afoul of that bug, and opening tabs is really easy in
every modern browser.

I'd be interested to know how other people work around the bug.

~~~
brianshaler
Whenever I see it, I just leave. If you drop by every day or so, the 2nd and
3rd pages tend to be pretty redundant anyway.

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diminoten
I'm fairly certain HN itself isn't actively developed.

If I remember correctly, there was quite a bit of teeth-gnashing over the
state of password storage on HN awhile back, and it took the moving of
mountains before things were changed (were they ever changed?).

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calinet6
Why would it be? It works well enough and it's not worth anything to add
features. It's PG's experiment.

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pbhjpbhj
So the community here is PG's toy?

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runjake
He said "experiment", not "toy". Spin it however you want, but nobody's
forcing you to be here.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
He did say experiment but that implies that PG wishes to manipulate the site
in order to observe outcomes - when you manipulate something without due
regard to the possible detriments it is known as "toying with" that thing.
Ergo I asked the question as to whether PG's goal was merely to observe the
community and manipulate it with no regard for the community itself or if it
was perhaps something more lofty.

From what I've seen I think the community has grown organically out of the
noble work of Ycombinator and that largely the tool of HN has been a
relatively passive element in that growth. PG appears indifferent to HN as a
tool - neither wanting to experiment with it, develop it, improve it, nor
disregard it.

> _nobody's forcing you to be here_ //

Nice.

Do you feel passive-aggressiveness is the way to build a valuable community?

It was not spin it was enquiry with an attempt to dig in to the nature of
calinet6's statement: calinet6's response makes it apparent that the important
feature of the statement was not the choice of the word "experiment" but
instead the apostrophe-s, ie that HN _belongs_ to PG. I feel that by asking
the question in the way I did that I shortcut to this result.

[Aside: in general, would you say my presence as part of this community is to
it's detriment?]

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brudgers
<non_authoritative_opinion>

HN is a minimum viable product.

What gets addressed are behaviors which damage the community.

These are not usually related to visible features of the site.

Community issues created by the "Unknown or expired link" were addressed by
the addition of the "No Procrastination" feature.

</non_authoritative_opinion>

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mkelley
I totally agree, come on pg .... Unknown or expired link when I hit More after
waiting too long... you can do better. I bet that is #1 on peoples wishlist
for HN. That's actually perhaps the only problem I have with HN's design.
Clean, simple, functional (except for that frequently annoying error
message!!!) EDIT: spelling

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flyinRyan
I wouldn't get my hopes up for any kind of feature at all for this site. I
think PG kind of regrets making it at all since sites like this are about
<random small percent> valuable information about startups and <random much
larger percent> waste of time (e.g. pretty much any political discussion at
all). I doubt he wants to make it even easier to waste time here.

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tucson
How about some keyboard navigation shortcuts? (left-right arrows). It works on
<http://www.HnEasy.com>.

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francesca
emacs style editing in the text box

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daxelrod
Shouldn't that be a browser feature, rather than every website creating their
own different implementation?

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brianobush
The solution is to logout, then it works as intended.

