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 [flagged] Sorry, What's Going on Here?
84 points by crab_swarm on Jan 19, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 59 comments
I don't mean to disrupt the flow you guys seem to have hera, and I'm not certain if I'm doing this correctly. Please let me know if there's a better place to do this.

What is this site? I came across a discussion about a programming question I had from 2013, which isn't uncommon, but to my surprise this place appears to still be thriving a decade later. It calls itself a news site but appears not to be an actual journalist organization, but rather some kind of... archival feed? Is it a social media platform? I've see it compared to Reddit in a couple of the community guidelines and FAQs. What is the purpose and the history of this site, how has it managed to stay up and running for nearly 15 years without me ever hearing about it? For those of you who are still here, why?

I must say I'm a bit exited. I find myself mourning the deaths of so many independent forums and smaller social media platforms which thrived tn the 2000s-early 2010's but have now mostly gone offline or faded into complete disuse. I'm not sure exactly what you guys have going on here, but it's seems... Good.



HN (Hacker News) is just a web forum. There's a big overlap between HN and some subreddits like reddit.com/r/programming, reddit.com/r/technology and reddit.com/r/science, but HN also features some trivia that's hard to categorize (to replicate that on reddit you would need to subscribe to dozens niche subreddits). Nowadays, the audience mostly browse both reddit and HN, so it's like HN were a secret subreddit that doesn't appear in reddit.com/r/all.

HN is very startup-focused. For example, it contains job listings for startups funded by YCombinator (reddit itself was one of them, many years ago), and a monthly thread with jobs from other companies. It caters to this crowd.

Famously, if you have a problem with Google, it's often easier to post here about it than contact Google's support. That's because Googlers (Google employees) also browse this site. (also Google has no support). In this sense, posting on HN is the nerdier equivalent to @calling companies on Twitter.

Like every social platform, it is the way it is due to network effects: it was first to fill a niche and other platforms didn't capture this mindshare. And unlike most forums, this one is thriving. Why is that, I'm not sure; maybe the style of moderation is part of the reason. But maybe some day reddit will finally eat HN, and, after some years or decades, it will make sense to ask why people are still here!


> Famously, if you have a problem with Google, it's often easier to post here about it than contact Google's support. That's because Googlers (Google employees) also browse this site. (also Google has no support). In this sense, posting on HN is the nerdier equivalent to @calling companies on Twitter.

I'm always nervous when people share these kinds of quirks about HN. It feels like its one viral YouTube or TikTok "pro tip" video away before it starts flooding with "can't log in to my google account".

Maybe it's an irrational thought, though.


We're already at that point for stripe.

Seems every week a shady enterprise that got its stripe account locked down is on the front page complaining about stripe while being vague / evasive about what it is they actually sell.


One person once a week is still shouldn't be hard to deal with, and whenever it turns out that that person was shady, it's actually great PR for Stripe.


But stripe never talks about individual customers publicly so every one of these is a hit to stripe's reputation.

Also, the worry was that if word got out that HN gets you secret access to support at companies then it would get overused and that access would dry up.

I'm already at the point where even if someone legitimately innocent gets swept up in a stripe ban I just assume they are another scoundrel trying one last Hail Mary attempt here to get their account back.


Welcome! We find you equally anomalous. Any tips on avoiding HackerNews for 10 years?


  noprocrast = 525600
is the simplest thing that might work.


Ycombinator and the internet archive have produced this site. It's an experiment or digital art platform commentating about silicon valley, social media and the attention economy. The site only pretends to have been existing since 2013 as all posts were made in the last week. Every submission and comment is generated using AI. Even this comment will only exist for a week and be replaced by one identical to it.

It's also an amazing internet art experiment on how to establish reputation and legitimacy automatically.

It's only in the last couple of days that real humans have stumbled onto the site. Welcome to you and all the early adopters!


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omphalos_hypothesis

According to the Omphalos hypothesis, God created the redshift in light received from other galaxies to fool humans (beginning in the 20th century, but not before that time) into thinking that the universe is billions of years old. Among the many problems with this hypothesis (including lack of any evidence and lack of reference to the phenomenon in the Bible) is that it would require that God adjusted the shift in exquisitely precise ways for each of the billions of individual galaxies, and did so to deceive humans about the age of the universe in a way that was not detectable by humans until the 20th century.[6]


What does the Internet Archive have to do with HN?


In my opinion hn is still here because it is still only text. I was a very happy Reddit user way back when most of the content was links to other sites and/or pure text posts. Today the most visible parts are just images or videos - highly stimulating content that does not encourage calm, thoughtful and nuanced discussions. HN is still only text based _and_ it is mostly about technical issues. Nothing could be improved here, it's already perfect.


If you remember Slashdot (they're still a thing, by the way), Hacker News is a more modern spin on that. An aggregation site around which thrives geeks, nerds, and neckbeards.


Which is a bit ironic considering that Slashdot arguably had a lot more features. But I appreciate HN's simplicity. I feel like we've come full circle.


- Anyone can post any link.

- Post then appears under "new" (a chronological list of all posts), where anyone can upvote or downvote it - and/or discuss it in the comments section.

- If the post gains any traction (by quickly accruing votes, comments, etc.), it will then show up on the main page (list of "currently trending" posts) as well.

- Increasing age of a post will cause it to go lower and lower and eventually drop out of the main page again, typically within hours.

-------

Typically any more or less big tech news will make it to the main page pretty quickly. Often much faster than you'd hear about it anywhere else.

That being said, you'll definitely find a lot of stuff that isn't news as well.


It's a forum that properly belongs in the late 90s that's been kept alive by extremely diligent moderation and a fucking shitton of venture capital.


> that's been kept alive by extremely diligent moderation

The unreasonable effectiveness of dang.

> and a fucking shitton of venture capital.

Certainly something that Y Combinator doesn't lack is money, but I can't imagine running HN being that expensive. Its traffic is way less than most mainstream sources and there's little to no development.

I'd rather say it managed to become a cultural icon in its niche, hence its continued success.


Totally - I don't want to be misunderstood, I wasn't saying that VC pays the bills for the site... that wasn't what I meant at all. I was using poetic license to mean that VC still has a need for some places like this, and its phantom presence keeps the pot boiling here.


Dang is one of the most efficient mods on the internet. Not to place him on a pedestal too much but he's a pretty incredible individual when it comes to running and maintaining a site.


having run BBSs and personally moderated chat for years on a poker site, I can tell you I would run out of patience much, much faster than he does with any of the multifarious horseshit that springs up on something this size on a daily basis. Dude's basically a saint. I'm not helping here, either. I know. Let me tell a side story instead.

When I was a kid in LA, there was this coffee house that had 6 tables inside, shotgun sized place, started by a guy and his sister who moved from Oklahoma City with the eventual intention of starting tiki bars. When they got successful in the bar business, they were about to shut down the coffee place. But it was an all night joint - I was working there a few nights a week, and mostly I would play chess or cards with the regulars when I didn't have to get up and serve coffee. People were really distraught that it was being shut down. One of the regulars, a guy named Jeremy, bought it. Didn't make a dime. Just wanted his place to come have coffee and cigarettes all night. And he knew how to keep people in check, which is what you need to run any good establishment. This is a bit like that.


It is my understanding that the fixed operating costs (hosting/bandwidth) for this site are quite low. Not sure how much staff they have, but they are doing a really good job.


I don't think there is any "staff", according to this newyorker article[1] its just 2 people. Personally I have only seen dang.

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/th...


The capital has withdrawn and no longer directly subsidizes the running cost of the site, but don't let that fool you... the primary virtue of this site for the majority (those who don't just enjoy yammering at each other, like me and other crusty bastards) is definitely its proximity and legibility to said capital


> The capital has withdrawn and no longer directly subsidizes the running cost of the site

Which entity are you claiming is the owner and funder of HN? The FAQ says:

  What's the relationship between YC and HN?
  Y Combinator owns and funds HN. The HN team is editorially independent.


Do YC no longer pay the mods’ salaries? That’s odd, I was under the impression that HN exists to serve the interests of YC. If you look carefully at the behavior of the largely negative _oinbas_ thread given its #upvotes and recency it shouldnt be so quickly off the front page compared to others now on it. Not to mention the regular job postings. EDIT— this post too, perhaps its an automated system?


Welcome stranger, to the world of HackerNews! Here you will find a collection of the brightest minds in the world, ready to share their ideas and knowledge. Step into the realm of infinite possibilities and explore the vastness of the internet. Hold onto your curiosity and discover the depths of your own ingenuity!


> Here you will find a collection of the brightest minds in the world

… Fighting fang, tooth, and claw, over critically important concepts, such as whether or not we should all be forced to use type-safe languages.


we should! We have laws against oil spills, we should have laws that prohibit languages with the singular purpose of making me point a gun to my foot and pull the trigger repeatedly.

/s


You can have my footgun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.


I think Stroustrup was quoted as saying something like "With C, you can shoot yourself in the foot, but with C++, you can blow your whole leg off."


It does increment the number of barrels by one.


$15 says you work in sales (very fun comment to read)


I was just thinking last night about how the average HN comment is at about written intelligence the level of a very bright college freshman. And how, that being the average, it means that for every 50 comments by people below that grade, there are 50 above.

But the one thing that's amazing here is that the smartest people in the room inevitably turn out to be either 14 year olds who invented a new category of social app, or 74 year olds who worked for NASA... everyone in between being sort of ephemeral.


I never really thought about it, but a succinct way of putting it would be: its a discussion board for nerds (some start up entrepreneurs). Ycombinator is a start-up incubator, too. Don't know that much about the history of the place.

As to why I return (not been 15 years in my case probably?) is that I usually get to find out about interest new tech, what people are building and read interesting opinions from intelligent people. Not to stroke HNs ego or anything, but I think the community here probably has a higher degree of critical thinking than what you find on other platforms (especially social media).

Edit: Also, welcome back! Edit 2: some wordsmithing


Not really messaging, as there are no DMs. Discussion though.


You're right, that's more fittings; I'll edit the post


This is a computation farm. There are small arrows besides each post. The goal is to convince other users of the space to engage with these arrows such that their aggragate responses constitutes a computation that is beneficial to the collective.


It's tech community, but also a "best of the web" aggregator for nerds - the beauty of this site is that is both tech and hackish, but you can also find interesting and surprising stories about politics, science and humanities. It is paid by big venture capital money (ycombinator); they use this site to create buzz about their own startups. They pay full time moderators (or at least 1) to keep the environment clean from spam and flames.

edit: another reason behind its success I think it's due to its functional interface (html and just a bit of styling: how the web should be), that make it pleasant to use.


HN was created in 2007 by Paul Graham originally as a "news aggregator" with a comment facility, as part of his YCombinator venture capital startup incubator thing. I think the idea was to source links to news of interest to the tech/startup world.

Somehow it still thrives under his benevolent though remote stewardship (he rarely post himself, realising you can't be a "player character" in the forum that you are in charge of). I think mainly it works because it has remained consistently usable and well moderated and nobody has messed around with it.


I'm on HN since ~2008. Here's why I think HN Works:

+ Pure text based interface. + No flashy colors. + Blazing fast. + No notifications + Great moderation by @Dang + People just value the quality of the comments regardless who wrote them. + Most people focus on quality discussions, downvoting irrelevant fluff. + HN has it's own ethos around startups, nerdy things, programming etc.


Hahahaha nice when people rediscover forums :D

Welcome! this is basically a news-ish site with a lot of very competent and capable engineers used for exchange of information and experience. A little corner of the internet with a tight focus if you will =)

My personal take: this site is full of amazing people of various background and some of the discussions here are worth their weight in gold.

This is what ChatGPT "thinks":

Hacker News is a social news website focusing on computer science and entrepreneurship, run by Paul Graham's investment fund and startup incubator, Y Combinator.

In general, content that can be submitted is defined as "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity". Users can submit articles and the site has a voting system to rank the most popular submissions.

The site is known for its coverage of technology and startup companies, but it also covers science, design, business, and other topics. It is also a popular place for software developers and entrepreneurs to discuss technology-related topics and share information.


It's a forum, a bit like a subreddit, so sort of a social media site, but not an archival feed. Content is posted by users, and includes many posts of "news", but also many other posts that gratify curiosity or generate interesting discussion. Posts and comments can be voted on to collaboratively curate what is here. The focus is generally tech, software, startups, etc. Mainstream news is mostly off-topic.

It's run by the startup accelerator YCombinator, and it often has launches, job ads etc. from YC companies. YC employs a professional moderator (user name dang), and pays for hosting, so they don't sell ads on it. In "return", YC gains startups from the community here.


It's what Slashdot could have been had it been properly moderated and not sold off.

Although IMHO, this site has attracted toxicity and off-topic articles in more recent years. Now in the dawn of AI generated content, not many forums are going to survive the new era.


I wonder why people are afraid of AI content generation on social media, especially HN. Is the fear that bad actors will just generate random comments for... fun? Or that spam will become more intelligent and craft. As in it will be less like in-your-face ads and more like product placement.


There are 150,000 active users on HN.

Now image 150,000 AI bots in addition. That's actually an overkill, you don't need that many. But those bots (or whoever rules them) will rule the discourse. This is of course assuming that you can't tell the difference of a bot and a human.

Then of course we have to ask, what's bot owner's agenda. Political? Promotions? Educational?

The human voice is going to drown in there. Humans get exhausted, emotional, personal, just to name a few. The bots are always in the zone. Human are not going to last an argument with an (good) AI botnet.

We're not there yet. But there's so much money in that category, that as soon as the tech will allow we will be.


AI generated comments combined with AI driven moderation could help maintain a high standard of comment quality and civility while keeping the Eternal September effect at bay by suppressing human engagement.

Imagine a HN where AI finds and submits the articles, provides a neutral title and brief description, generates high-level discussion about it, and moderates for bad behavior. It would be a win for everyone.


I still don't see why anyone would do this. Especially on a super specialized forum as HN. Without a clear incentive, the only thing I can think of is malice.


People do this today, but use other humans instead of bots.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing


Funny thing is that hacker news was and still is pretty much a clone of the first version of reddit, before reddit had subreddits, and was created to preserve the original reddit experience, before it got popular.


At a basic level, this site lets registered users submit links that can be viewed and voted on by other users. Submissions are ranked using a combination of votes and age. There are also additional aspects to the site, such as special job posts for Y Combinator companies. It was intended to be about tech and startup news, and some of that does appear here, but if everyone votes up non-tech submissions, those are generally what will appear on the front page. This may vary over time depending on the possibly arbitrary, possibly unstated whims of moderators.


The content here is well moderated, articles and commentary. Comments are encouraged to be curious exploration of things rather than sophomoric, witty one liners that really don't add to a discussion. Posts can be flagged and typically the community will flag things that appear to be someone on a self promoting spree.

Think of it as commentary on news by hackers with hackers being the definition of people that like to build stuff and are interested in STEM, not the breaching info-security definition.


I like this post. When you frequent a site like HN, it's easy to think that everyone else in the industry drops in or at least knows about it, but I frequently encounter fellow geeks who don't. I find that almost as exciting an opportunity as crab_swarm seems to – if crab_swarm has just found HN, there are probably all sorts of online fora that I'd enjoy left for me to yet discover.


Not sure, to answer your question, and I've been here daily for years. https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/th...


It's a simple, text-only, link aggregator/forum, with very good moderation, and often, but not always, a focus on adding useful information to a conversation, rather than just making quick jokes, unlike something like Reddit.

And with a metric f**ton of nitpicking in the comments.


HN is the place where average people go to feel like geniuses.

Also there's a heap of mean comments like mine. But it's all in the spirit of intellectual curiosity. It's not like reddit, that's for sure.

Welcome and read the community guidelines. Seriously.


I'm not so sure that us average people get to feel like geniuses. I mostly lurk but I'm always impressed with the quality of the discussion compared to anywhere else that I know of. I'm more likely to feel like a slow under-achiever when I read other contributor comments.


Nobody knows, exciting isn‘t it?


Don't forget that one thing that makes Hacker News special: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f71BirH2ddo


Welcome to the hivemind.


You might like this frontend too: https://hckrnews.com/




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