Persistent IRC Considered Harmful - <AUTHOR> http://anticdent.org/persistent-irc-considered-harmful.html <comment><USER2> Personally, I believe this misses the point partially.

The point of IRC with a bouncer is to have a way of combining synchronous (live chatting) with asynchronous communication (highlights and reading up logs).

> What to do instead? Use IRC when you're actually there, leave when you're > not. If you join IRC and you have a question for someone who is not there, > send email to the project list (with a good subject!). Consider sending to > the list even if the person who you think will be able to answer your > question is present in IRC.

Many small projects don't actually have a mailing list; the closest thing to it is some kind of issue tracker, which comes with its own set of problems. Additionally, e-mail incurs a seemingly heavy time penalty to send -- some kind of greeting and valediction always must be present.

On IRC, doing so is amounts to almost wasting everyone's time if you have an issue to bring up. Of course, these kinds of cultural things vary between IRC channels, and these are just my two cents on this.

</comment><comment><USER3> Author doesn't grok IRC. By /definition/ IRC is 'mostly idling' on most open source channel. It can be bursty, but most of the time you come to the channel once a day to read the log, or send a couple of question that you might get an answer to when someone wakes up.

If there is more traffic than this, it's unmanageable for development purpose; but it would also apply to many other chat systems anyway.

It's still a LOT better than skype chat and all the other 'answer me NOW' systems

<comment><USER4> a) I (the author) am making reference to the impact of bouncers with IRC in OpenStack projects. The error, if there is one, is perhaps that both my posting and the one I reference in the first paragraph are trying to generalize from experience in OpenStack that is not normal. In OpenStack the channels are _not_ 'mostly idling' and that is entirely the problem.

b) It's true that when I started using IRC about 15 years or so ago, I was coming to the game a bit late, at least relative to other internet services I'd used and the age of IRC. I hope since then that I've managed to catch on, but maybe not.

<comment><USER3> Well then perhaps the point you might have clarified is that a noisy IRC channel is the problem all along -- perhaps it'd be better to split it into 2, perhaps for 'core' dev and one for 'user' or something.

I hope you didn't take offence to my comment, if you read it with my 'idling' point of view, you can see why I was shaking my head when reading -- getting /anything/ done on a noisy channel is completely useless -on any chat system- unless you explicitly give Voice on request...

I my experience, quietish IRC channels are fantastic, I'm on about 20 of them, 24/7 (or so it appears to everyone ;-))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> These "Considered Harmful" articles are so unsubstantial at this point that one could make the argument they are harmful.

<comment><USER6> Modest proposals considered harmful? :-)

<comment><USER5> That Eric Meyer article says it better than I could.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been using IRC for over 20 years, on and off, these days mostly for work. I also use Slack and Telegram daily (and both of these have persistence).

I think built in persistence is hugely valuable, and together with that and IRC clients with up to date UI/UX are the key things IRC has been missing. Sure, you could use irccloud.com or something similar, but it still feels old school. IRC has pretty much been dying a slow death for mainstream users as other messaging apps took over.

Considering Slack is now valued at $3b, yet is fundamentally IRC with persistence, nice UX and lots of integrations - I'm surprised the guy who originally wrote IRC - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarkko_Oikarinen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarkko_Oikarinen) \- didn't take it further or see the potential to raise funding for a commercial product more recently.

I would also be interested in seeing some kind of completely decentralised persistent IM architecture, maybe using blockchain. This looks interesting [https://matrix.org/](https://matrix.org/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Strongly disagree. Persistent IRC is hugely valuable. Issues with notifications in particular, speak more to your discipline than the technology - no different to getting email notifications.

<comment><USER9> It's one thing inside a company. It's another in the open-source world where it's a great way to foster an in-crowd and exclude everyone else.

<comment><USER10> To me Slack and the likes are just glorified pretty IRC.

<comment><USER9> Slack at least keeps an history so you can go back and read the transcript of a conversation you missed that was important. With IRC, you're completely cut out unless it's in your client's buffer.

<comment><USER11> I'm on a IRC channel that has been running constantly for over 15 years now.

We wrote ourselves a logging bot. It was nice for a while, until people started reading scrollback and picking up conversations about themselves that weren't always pretty. Sometimes you need to vent, other times you just want to talk candidly.

The consensus was that IRC should be approached like a conference room. If you're there, you can listen. If you're not, you don't get to bug the room. Wasn't the optimal solution (the scrollback and link capture _was_ extremely useful at times), but that's the way it went.

<comment><USER12> If all your project design happens in conference rooms that can be pretty bad. In five years' time people will have no idea why or how a particular decision was taken.

<comment><USER13> Serious question: Is anyone actually able to point to a five years old conversation when trying to understand why a decision was made in most any projects out there today?

<comment><USER12> I can't check how far back they go right now (site blocked where I am), but yes, I've found IRC logs from a number of years ago useful when trying to understand parts of a couple of OSS projects I contribute to.

<comment><USER13> Huh. This is a resource I'd never considered, then. I've always thought IRC conversations to be mostly ephemeral.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hi, original author. Reading the comments thus far (about 30 minutes in) it's like many haven't even read what I wrote.

Sure, the title is cliched, that's on purpose.

Sure, notification can be an issue, but I think I made it clear that that is a secondary issue. The primary issue is that the use of bouncers results in habits which result in the information being inaccessible to other people, other people who may not yet be able to decode the logs.

In other words, to people who are saying "using a bouncer make my life easier": It's not about you. It's about making a conscious effort to make other people lives easier and make projects more accessible.

<comment><USER14> Can you elaborate on your point about jargon? Your advice to avoid bouncers seems to be for the people who are in charge of the project - but those are the people who would be the most able to understand the jargon, and to skim the channel and understand what's happening in the middle of any given chunk of 100 lines.

<comment><USER4> The issue with jargon is only an issue if the the IRC logs are the primary place where information sharing is happening. It goes like this:

If leaders™ are using bouncers and that use is reinforcing the habit of having all info exchange in IRC then, because IRC itself encourages the use of jargon (because it is conversational and personal), the logged information for the project will be very jargony.

Mailing list postings, which are a bit more considered and more broadcast oriented, are less subject to the shortcutting that leads to jargon. Thus a mailing list posting ought to be easier to digest, at any time, by someone who is not as familiar with the jargon.

So the issue here is not that the jargon makes this difficult for those leaders. Certainly they will be able to scan the logs for the hallmarks of the stuff that matters to them. That's exactly why jargon is useful...to them.

It's not, however, useful to other people. This about keeping the open source projects, you know, open.

<comment><USER15> The very reason mailing list posts are easier to read is because they are harder to write. That's why IRC explanations get written but mailing list posts (or wiki pages, or documents) do not get written.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Considered harmful by who? Why do my habits harm you?

As someone who is persistently connected to about a dozen irc channels you don't come close to persuading me of why that is a bad idea _for me_ to do so. I have no issues ignoring pings when I am busy, for example.

</comment><comment><USER17> I have to disagree. I used to use irc in the way this article recommends. I then tried hipchat and slack, which really changed how I communicated because of their persistent nature. Now I use irccloud to get the same UX for irc. It's simply way more useful.

Mailing list emails are a pain, and it is a delusion to think that they are somehow a more permanent record or something than irc logs. A project should be generating documentation if there needs to be a permanent record. Mailing list emails are a very poor substitute for persistent chat, and they are a very poor substitute for documentation.

Also, the title is considered cliche.

</comment><comment><USER18> It's awkward that the author describes openstack, which is one of the few projects I am aware of that actually schedules meetings on IRC for discussions and debates ([https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Meetings](https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Meetings)), quite literally to resolve issues where IRC doesn't work for them. Compare this to other projects/channel communities like #mysql, #postgres and #clojure where this doesn't happen, and all communications are ad-hoc.

I agree with some of the other people that the author doesn't grok IRC. It doesn't force you to be instantly available, just available _eventually_. The amount of effort it takes me to respond to a question I know in IRC is an order of magnitude less than an email, and email lists with a lot of mindless chatter can just be as insular or more insular than IRC groups.

If the author has issue with individuals getting constant highlights then they should redress them to communicate with the community as a whole. The appropriate interaction on IRC starts off with asking the channel/community as a whole a question (much like the mailing list described). It feels like openstack has a lot of newer people that don't really understand the expected etiquette/workflow on IRC.

</comment><comment><USER19> Working on a project such Open [1] as OpenStack [2], IRC is the way to go for meetings & quick discussions ore following-up a bug or an urgent thing, that need to be synchronized. For everything else (async), Mailing-List allows anyone to be part of any discussion in this Open project. It brings sanity and consistency in the way a community can communicate across different timezones & work schedule. If you like and respect Open-Source, you'll mix IRC & Mailing-list carefuly.

Thanks Chris for this blog, I totally agree with you on this one.

[1] [https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Open](https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Open) [2] [https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Main_Page](https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Main_Page)

</comment><comment><USER20> Chat systems are meant to be ephemeral. The conversation goes away after a time. Logging makes history discoverable, but nothing yet has been able to provide an actionable summary of the transcript.

Slack is getting toward it with its reactions feature, which could be employed consciously by users to mark lines for inclusion in some kind of daily/weekly summary log sent via email. IRC lacks this facility since it lacks a unique identifier for each line. It might be possible to repeat the line to a bot, though, but that seems messy and allows for significant duplication or alteration of what was said.

I personally use irccloud.com for persistent IRC, but mostly for push notifications to my phone.

</comment><comment><USER21> I wonder if anyone has experience using mailing lists/listserv for regular business software development (ISV, in house, startup, consulting, etc.)?

I know they're common, and work relatively well, for open source projects with decentralized teams. But I never really considered that it might be awesome for other types of software development.

In particular, as I currently work for a consulting company. If all emails related to a project flowed through a mailing list then it could provide a nice and centralized spot for everyone, including people brought onto the project after the start, to reference and search past communication.

<comment><USER22> I kind of just assumed this is how most places worked.

Not to the level of LKML or anything, but my team's mailing lists are sort of similar to python-dev (if not slightly more tactical).

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm mostly in smaller channels, max 120 nicks. If someone joins a channel this size or smaller, it can take a while before someone comes around to answer a question. But when they do you will probably get your answer, and you are able to quickly ask some follow up questions if needed. And in the end I believe this often is a quicker way to solve a problem than asking on some forum or mailing list. And there is the room to be social with like minded people in every time zone.

I think it works great this way. And if people leave the smaller channels when they are not around I'm afraid many of them would just die.

</comment><comment><USER24> Anecdotal: most of those in the open source, gamer, and hacker worlds have been using persistent IRC for decades without being harmed by it. It keeps people from having a social life, but other than that...

</comment><comment><USER25> Pretty much disagree entirely. I've found being in these open source channels 24/7 extremely valuable as have many others. Seems like the author is railing against the fact that dealing with notifications may be difficult, but luckily most IRC clients give you a ton of options on how/what/when you should receive them. I think even if you turn notifications off entirely, you will find some value to being in the same places as the developers of the software you use.

</comment><comment><USER26> IRC Chan logs bots and IRC Bouncers are helpful - totally disagree wth this article. Its the user experience that varies depending on the solution used but as someone who has been using both for 10+ years I find the ability to be always in the loop really really helpful :)

</comment><comment><USER27> You can see how long someone has been away from their irc session with: /whois username

</comment><comment><USER10> Personally I use Weechat and glowing-bear.org for my IRC and it works amazingly well.

</comment><comment><USER28> One size does not fit all. This applies equally to IRC lovers and haters.

</comment><comment><USER14> If you're using a bouncer, it's trivial to set it up to change your nickname when you're not there. That clearly communicates that you're not present, but that you will respond in time.

All the other points are kind of silly. You can say the exact same thing about email, or Slack/Hipchat, or SMS.

> _There are many reasons why one might consider this unfortunate—no > opportunity to be truly away, frequent interruptions, an inflated sense of > urgency, and a powerful sense of "oh noes, I'm missing what's happening on > IRC!!!!"_

<comment><USER29> >If you're using a bouncer, it's trivial to set it up to change your nickname when you're not there.

This is a terrible way to communicate your absence. It's spammy, potentially confusing and, worst of all, imitates a built in functionality of IRC. The _only_ correct way to set an away status is IRCs builtin `away` message.

<comment><USER14> Where's that quote from? fwiw, I 100% disagree with it. Setting an away status is fine, but if I join a channel, it's not at all trivial for me to see who is away and who isn't (although, this may just be the way I have my client set up.)

<comment><USER29> What quote? And yes, in my opinion some IRC clients have suboptimal defaults or missing support for this. It's a shame, but changing your nick to emulate a built in IRC command is in no way a solution. Away is standard, and every client should support it. In the end it's a question of the channels rules, but spamming nick-changes is annoying-- especially because people use different formats and simple filtering won't catch all cases. In addition it also breaks queries and might change your identity from a trusted nick to one that could be... everyone.

You're advocating using a hacky workaround that stems from client-side UI issues, instead of using a well-defined built in message. This just seems wrong to me, in every way.

<comment><USER14> Oh, i'm sorry, I thought your response also started with a >; I thought you were quoting something. My mistake.

And I agree that nickchanges can be annoying; I guess I've never been in a channel big enough where it was a significant issue.

And yeah, it's hacky - but given that IRC is fairly bare-bones, I think it's a good human-readable compromise. You can register your afk nickname as well, and notifications work just as well if you configure your client/bouncer to highlight them both (which I think most do by default anyway.)

<comment><USER30> I'm really not sure whether you're pulling some kind of a passive-aggressive "I'm being misquoted so badly that I refuse to even acknowledge it's a quote" routine, someone has edited their message, or you're genuinely not seeing it. At least currently the text after the ">" is a direct quote from the message it was a reply to (i.e. your initial message). It also seems pretty representative. If you disagree with that text 100%, it seems that you perhaps intended to write something else originally.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Node v0.2.4 - nodejs released - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs/browse_thread/thread/73cb91655214b83a <comment><USER2> Not to mention Node v0.3.0:

[http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs/browse_thread/thread/2...](http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs/browse_thread/thread/2d5eb964acba01c)

</comment><comment><USER3> Node 0.2.3 I hardly knew ya. So far, my few days programming with node have been great. I've delved into Express (a micro Ruby Sintra like framework), and socket.io for real-time goodness. Everything is clean and works like a charm. I have a lot more ahead of me, so bring it on!

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a very important update. Everyone running 0.2+ should update immediately. When previous versions of node.js ran out of file descriptors, it holds them open and hangs, effectively killing it's ability receive any more connections until the process is restarted.</comment>


The five biases pushing women out of STEM - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2015/03/the-5-biases-pushing-women-out-of-stem

<comment><USER2> "A Latina geographer had a different take on social isolation, saying that white people are "afraid of people of color in a way, like just worried they're going to say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing. So they avoid that entirely."

Honestly, you can't really use this as an excuse. People get fired ALL THE TIME for saying the wrong thing, even if it was a complete accident and outside of the work place.

You can't have a society that is harsh on people they deem "racists" and the turn around and wonder why it creates a culture of fear and isolation.</comment>


Scientists create computing building blocks from bacteria and DNA - <AUTHOR> http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-10/icl-scc101711.php

<comment><AUTHOR> A link to the study: [https://fileexchange.imperial.ac.uk/files/e18b422069/ncomms1...](https://fileexchange.imperial.ac.uk/files/e18b422069/ncomms1516.pdf)</comment>


Two HN Announcements - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ycombinator.com/two-hn-announcements <comment><USER2> _> If we notice abusive vouches, we'll take away vouching rights_

That might scare some people away from vouching. Could you clarify whether it'll be more like, "If you wrongly vouch for even one single thing, we'll silently and permanently remove your vouching ability forever with no possible recourse" or more like, "If you show a repeated pattern of bad vouching, we'll reach out to you and explain what you're doing wrong, and only if it continues, take away your vouching privileges as a last resort, perhaps only temporarily" (or somewhere in between those extremes)?

P.S. I couldn't be happier to hear about Dan's promotion. He has an expert touch for community management, and (I learned after an opportunity to join him for beers one night) some deep wisdom on the subject, too.

<comment><USER3> Please don't worry about this. It really is just like flagging. We only take away flagging rights if someone repeatedly misuses them—never for one random thing.

I wouldn't have even included the bit about taking away vouching rights except I know that the question "What if people just vouch for all the bad comments" was going to come up otherwise.

(Also, I don't think I've been promoted? But thanks—that's particularly meaningful coming from a seasoned veteran of the early Reddit...)

<comment><USER4> > We only take away flagging rights if someone repeatedly misuses them—never > for one random thing.

My flag link disappeared one day without notice or explanation, and stayed disappeared for a year or so. I continue to fear using the flag link, even when I think something should be flagged. There's no chance I'm going to vouch for something other people have flagged: I'd never have enough certainty that I'm more right than they are in your eyes. I value my ability to participate in this community too much to help moderate it under threat of punishment for doing so poorly.

Re: the replies below, the worst that can happen is not losing the vouch button, it's being silently shadowbanned for something else, when that wouldn't have happened if you hadn't put yourself on the admin's vouch review list for extra scrutiny. I already fear that happening any time I participate in one of those "what are you working on / what are your side projects" threads and include a link to my site.

<comment><USER5> > There's no chance I'm going to vouch for something other people have > flagged: I'd never have enough certainty that I'm more right than they are, > not enough to risk your retribution. I value my ability to participate in > this community too much to help moderate it under threat of punishment for > doing so poorly.

This is confusing to me. Unless there's something nobody told me (always possible!) the only "punishment" they'd institute would be removing your vouching privileges. Not making use of the vouch feature out of fear you won't be able to use that feature seems entirely paradoxical. It's similarly paradoxical to say "I value my ability to participate too much to actually participate" unless I've simply missed some part where they say "we'll take away your submitting/commenting ability."

<comment><USER6> Welcome to human psychology! Yes, people are far more affected by losing something than gaining it or even using it. If you give someone $50 and then take it away, they will generally be very angry even though it's not like they really lost anything. I read a study on it once, but I can't find it now.

<comment><USER7> > I read a study on it once, but I can't find it now.

You mean you had it once, but now you lost it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If the purpose of flagging is to change user behavior (rather than simply removing unwanted material from the site) it would seem important that users are notified when their posts are flagged, but before they are banned.

Perhaps it would be good to show the "flag" count to the owner of a post, if that owner is not already banned? This might be provide warning to a perceptive user that their comments are considered inappropriate, while not making it obvious to intentional spammers that they need to create a new account.

For the same reasons, it might also be helpful to show the split between up- and down-votes, rather than just the total. Since this is visible only to the original poster, it wouldn't have much impact on the overall interface.

</comment><comment><USER9> 'Vouching' will not improve the quality of HN discussions. It seems like the result of an excessive focus on fairness, something I see in many online communities. It affects only a few comments which are unlikely to be particularly valuable anyway.

The quality of discussions is what brings me to HN, and IMHO the quality is poor; it's just better than the alternatives. The vast majority of comments aren't worth my time (or anyone else's, but they can speak for themselves). In other words, there is much room for improvement and I hope that is Dan's focus. I happily would accept unfairness, and suffer its slings and arrows myself, for a higher signal-to-noise ratio. I'd happily lose a few good comments in return for of better quality overall (i.e., false-positives are not really a big deal - so what if my good comment occasionally gets voted down or otherwise buried).

By prioritizing quality over fairness HN can best distinguish itself from a million noise-filled alternatives where 'rights' are the priority. Everyone has a right to their opinions, but not to my time.

EDIT: Several edits to explain myself better.

<comment><USER10> Something that Arstechnica does that I really like is that it shows you the up/down count on an individual comment. It allows you to see the struggle and you can make a decision based on that to help it out.

<comment><USER11> As a frequent commenter on both reddit and HN, the hidden vote counts on HN are _far_ better. Coupled with fresh comments showing up at the top sometimes, they remove most parts of the mob mentality that goes on on reddit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Very promising announcements, Sam and Dan, although I have a few questions:

1) How does spinning out YC as its own service affect a) the job posting system and b) the YC class qualifiers in submission titles? / What does "editorial independence" mean in the context of his announcement? YC submissions had a lot of points, true, but I had thought that was attributed to the high YC user base.

2) Will users be able to vouch for [flagged] submissions in addition to [dead] submissions?

3) Due to the vouch system, will the use of banning in general be readdressed, since there is now a way to address false positives/negatives? Shadowbanning was implemented at Reddit as a last resort (that the new CEO wants to remove), and it isn't respectful to the user to not know if they are banned.

EDIT: Reordered to match dang's responses.

<comment><USER3> Doesn't affect (1) at all. As Sam mentioned, this is formalizing the de facto structure that's been in place a long time, so that announcement doesn't come with any changes to how HN works.

(2) Absolutely. Users can vouch for anything that's dead, including [flagged] and [dupe]. I see the notational confusion there; will ask Sam to update the post.

(3) Probably, but I'm not sure I agree with the line you're drawing from vouching to banning. Today's release massively lowers the cost an account of being banned. Instead of having your comments always stay [dead], they're now up for review by your fellow HNers; the community can decide what's good and bad. I'm not sure 'banned' is even the right word for it now— 'under moderation' would be closer.

The reason I say 'probably' above and not simply 'yes' is that there are a ton of issues to consider about it.

<comment> erik-n >Users can vouch for anything that's dead, including [flagged] and [duped]. I see the notational confusion there; will ask Sam to update the post.

If you were to rename the "duped" label, may I suggest "nuked"?

<comment><USER3> Whoops, I meant of course [dupe], not [duped] (fixed now). The traditional pg shorthand for duplicate. Not likely to change!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think more important than resurrecting posts from people who have squandered their privileges are we need to allow for better and more convenient browsing of comments, so that we can let the best ones shine.

1) native folding of comments, like reddit. I don't understand why this doesn't exist yet, and is the single more important thing to going through the comment list effectively.

2) better algos for upvoting and downvoting comments and threads entirely. This is something that reddit is absolutely great at, the top comments on reddit are generally the best or funniest, depending on the context. The top comments here are generally the first ones posted, or the ones from people already with high karma, and thus either the fast or the already-karma- advantaged get more karma.

<comment><USER14> > 1) native folding of comments

This one seems like such an obvious improvement that I've been assuming there's some really principled reason I'm not aware of for why it isn't done.

<comment><USER8> I doubt there is any principled reason for the lack. Rather, I think it's just that the people in a position to make the improvement don't place the importance on it that you do. Personally, it's not a feature I've ever wanted. I'm using the [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hckr- news/mnlaodle...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hckr- news/mnlaodleonmmfkdhfofamacceeikgecp?hl=en) extension, which offers this, and never once have I intentionally folded a comment.

Accidentally, I've folded comments many times. My main improvement to the extension (if I were to write my own) would be to _remove_ the folding feature and just have new comment highlighting (which I find much more important than folding). Separately, if this is an important feature, why not use an extension that offers it? Is there a reason it needs to be built in?

<comment><USER15> It's useful when a parent comment spawns hundreds of replies and you're not interested in the direction the parent comment has taken the discussion, but want to discuss other parts of the article.

It doesn't happen that often, but when it does it's annoying scrolling trying to find the next top level comment.

<comment><USER8> In theory, I wouldn't disagree. But in practice, I've been using an extension that offers this capability for years now, and have never intentionally collapsed a comment thread. The utility depends on your usage pattern, and my point was only that it's not a universal desire. This doesn't mean it shouldn't be added, but for me, it simply adds clutter to a clean interface, with small buttons that I occasionally accidentally click and unclick. Do I take it that you are using an extension that allows this, and find it useful?

<comment><USER16> On the other hand, I use [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker- news-enhanc...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news- enhancement-s/bappiabcodbpphnojdiaddhnilfnjmpm) and collapse comment threads daily. I find it to be very helpful to track of what I've read.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There used to be the occasional outburst of suspicion of mean moderators with double agendas hellbanning great commenters. Dang's been very active presence here recently to explain decisions that might've seemed fishy, and that has already done a lot to remove that kind of thinking.

Nevertheless, the conspiracy theories and rebellious "<name in other thread>, looks like you've been hellbanned by the evil mods!" comments are still around, and I suspect that the 'vouch' feature will help kill the last of it. I really hope that it'll work as intended!

(assuming it's all unfounded of course, which I believe it is)

<comment><USER18> Although "<name in other thread>, looks like you've been hellbanned by the evil mods!" comments are bad, I'm not sure I've seen them. I have seen comments like "<name in other thread, you appear to have been hellbanned", but I think they were sometimes warranted. The moderators do sometimes make mistakes, and IIUC the normal way to resolve them is: user realizes they are hellbanned, mails the mods asking about it, and the mods, if they feel the user should not be hellbanned, unbans them. Alerting commenters that one thinks may have been banned by mistake of their ban can either speeds this process along or wastes comment space and moderator attention, depending on whether one is correct.

I agree that hopefully vouching will kill the "<name>, you appear to have been hellbanned" comments, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The biggest lost opportunity I find here on HN are not with the comments moderated poorly or that were banned, but with the comments never posted and the discussions that never happened because of harsh anonymous downvoting.

Donwvotes on HN are anonymous and silent. This equates to being slapped in the face by someone with a mask on while you're in the middle of a conversation, without knowing why, and not being able to do anything about it. In a real conversation, disagreeing with someone involves actually opening your mouth and talking to that person, and even then is not rewarded with an immediate punishment to the person you're disagreeing with. This is what leads to a discussion, or better yet, a debate. Instead, the only recourse on HN is to change how you talk or to keep quiet.

But at this point I must assume this is an intentional design decision, and I adjust my tone and substance accordingly. But I wouldn't be writing this if I weren't okay with HN's rules.

\--

(edit/addendum: this isn't to say there are no discussions or debates on HN... but I hope other's agree there is something uniquely HN about most of them)

<comment><USER20> I'd say that this has gotten worse over time. I haven't seen as many interesting back and forth discussions on HN for a long time. There are probably a lot of different factors behind that but the rise of downvoting as a means of disagreeing with a comment hasn't helped.

<comment><USER21> It would be nice to know who downvotes how often in relation to others (publicly or at the very least for the person herself)

People could then compare their behavior against the others and one could define a "too often" in terms of std-dev from the mean or a quantile, both within a specific time window (say last 365 days).

In this way one has at least a candidate set of abusers (for the "HN Mods") and everyone could compare his downvoting behavior and adjust.

Additionally, since it's a simple statistic, it should be easy to implement.

<comment><USER22> The anonymity of votes is something that acts against the worst aspects of groupthink and knee-jerk opinions in the HN crowd. I don't trying to literally penalize disagreement with the median voter here would help at all.

<comment><USER21> The idea would be not to penalize local quantity (votes or downvotes on a topic) but aggregated quantities. Chances are that if I downvote 10 times per day (with say an avg number of down votes of 2 per day) that I am doing something wrong or I five times as much as the average user. In both cases it's food for thought.

Ratios of vote/downvote per user would probably also mean something.

Finally, I'd prefer to have these statistics private for each user, so there is no way groupthink could get a hold.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> As part of the organizational change, I'd love to see a plan to making the Hacker News site work great on mobile.

<comment><USER24> Anecdote - I love the current HN experience on mobile. Fastest loading site I use.

<comment><USER25> I love the site on mobile.

I'd prefer a bit more separation between up / downvote buttons.

I'd prefer the text to be a bit larger, although I accept that some people would hate larger text. Is this the kind of thing that HN could have a setting for? optional style sheets? (Because users can't set their own styles on mobile).

<comment><USER26> > Because users can't set their own styles on mobile

Stylish works great with Firefox on my phone. Doesn't help you if you're using another browser or stuck with a phone which doesn't let you choose your own browser (do those exist?), of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Phew... Every time I see announcements like this I get scared. The other day I literally had a _nightmare_ that HN had been "re-designed" _à la_ Slashdot (in my dream, it turned out to be an April Fools' joke).

I know it is increasingly unfashionable to keep resisting "modern" trends and leave the HN look as it is --maybe see it as a mark of prestige somehow? In any case, _please_ never, ever the change the look. Please.

<comment><USER3> You, Sam, and I are all on the same (information-dense, text-centric) page. Besides, we need to keep the HN redesign side projects in business.

I must say your nightmares sound rather benign. Mine don't usually end with "haha j/k".

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> If improvements are in the pipeline, can you make the "vote up" link _not_ look like a disclosure triangle?

I've hit that thing by accident several times trying to expand open comments because it's the exact same icon most applications use for disclosure triangles, and it's at the exact same part of the post most sites put it-- and there's no way to undo an accidental click of it (as far as I am aware.)

Just a suggestion.

<comment><USER29> Using the "Stylish" plugin or similar custom CSS injection, you can substantially change how vote links look, along with adding space between their placement.

My vote links read '▲sig' for up-vote (signal), and empty line of separation, and then '▼din' for down-vote (noise).

      /* remove arrow background images */
      /* XXX Bug in chrome/webkit requires padding or margin */
      div[title="upvote"],
      div[title="downvote"] {
        margin:  0px !important;
        padding: 0px !important;
        padding-right: 1ex !important;
        text-align: center !important;
        display: inline !important;
        white-space: pre;
        background: none !important;
        background-image:  none !important;
        -moz-transform:    none !important;
        -webkit-transform: none !important;
        -o-transform:      none !important;
        -ms-transform:     none !important;
        transform:         none !important;
        /* width: 6ex !important; */
        /* width: 1ex !important; */
        /* margin-right: 10px !important; */
      }
      /* use unicode text arrows */
      div[title="upvote"]:after {
        content: '▲sig' !important;
      }
      div[title="downvote"]:after {
        content: '\A\A▼din' !important;
      }
      /* color unicode arrow text green-up, red-down */
      a[id^="up"] {
        color: #009900 !important;
      }
      a[id^="down"] {
        color: #990000 !important;
      }
      /* highlight arrows on hover */
      a[id^="up"]:hover {
        color: #00ff00 !important;
      }
      a[id^="down"]:hover {
        color: #ff0000 !important;
      }

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> It's probably a good time to reread Clay Shirky's "A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy."

[http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/group_enem...](http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/group_enemy.html)

And I'm not making a wry comment on HN moderation, just that this piece never gets old.

</comment><comment><USER31> I am clearly in the minority here, but I really don't mind (and somewhat enjoy) the mobile experience because I can glance at ~25 stories without scrolling instead of the 3-5 stories that the HN redesigns typically show without scrolling.

<comment><USER32> I agree that information density can be lacking with some of the redesigns... but I want to point out that if you're able to read HN on a mobile screen it is because you are blessed with youth and/or good vision.

A lot of us can't make out the text when it is so small, so a ton of pinch- zooming is necessary, which is a rough user experience.

(That being said, at least pinch-zooming is an option... nothing bothers me more than when a site actively disabled zooming on mobile with the god- forsaken "user-scalable=no" meta viewport attribute!)

<comment><USER33> For me the ideal solution would be if you could pinch zoom and have the text wrap to the viewport. Best of both worlds. A handful of sites seem to support this (at least on the browser I use), but it's unfortunately not very common.

<comment><USER34> Try using Opera (just for HN), which lets you set text reflow when you pinch to zoom.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Congratulations Dan, and thank you for the work on this feature. Rescuing comments that fall through the cracks is an important instrument in improving the quality of HN. I'm currently very busy with other stuff so I'm just reading HN on my breaks right now and not participating much but I've been looking forward to this going live for everybody. Thanks for all the hard work!

</comment><comment><USER36> Do we really need these "vouch" link? It seems like complicated for no reasons. People with showdead could just be able to upvote [dead] comments just like other comments (is it not the case already?) and a [dead] comment with enough upvote should be unkilled. And then a banned account with enough unkilled comments should be unbanned. Seems like a simple solution with no changes in the UX.

<comment><USER3> This reads like a transcript from our early design conversations! What swayed us in the end is that the upvoting and flagging mechanisms are qualitatively different. (In fact it's crazy how different they are.) Whatever's going on there is an important psychological distinction, and collapsing upvoting and flagging for technical reasons—an obvious simplicity win—loses out to that. It's also worth noting that flags are treated differently by the software than downvotes are (or would be if we had them, in the case of stories).

Once we recognized the distinction between voting and flagging it seemed more natural to have this new feature be on the flagging side, hence vouches. The jury's still out on whether it's a good idea or not, though; if it turns out bad, we might consider reverting to the voting idea.

<comment><USER36> Ah, fair enough. Thanks for taking the time to explain :).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Great! I do see legitimate [dead] comments occasionally.

How will this affect shadowbanned users, though? Can a shadowbanned user's comment ever be vouched from the grave?

<comment><USER3> If I understand your question correctly, then yes, that's why we did it. The vast majority of banned users' comments belong under community review.

I should add that moderators are still going to intervene sometimes—just hopefully not very often. For one thing, some decisions only we have the data to make. For another, some decisions are based on the values of the site and those are not open to change. But the long-term vision for HN is to make it as self-regulating as possible, and it's been obvious for a long time that the bulk of HN moderation should be done by the community. The only question is what the right mechanisms are to get us there, and vouching is a big experiment in that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I believe along side of the changes mentioned for Vouching (which I think is an incredible idea), I'd like to see changes to the way that submission titles are changed. I'm actually very much for changing titles that are clickbait-y or misleading, but I feel like sometimes the original intention of the article is lost when the titles are changed. I think it would help a tremendous amount if a changed headline is noted as changed (for example, with an asterisk like the on on this post) so that users know that they aren't the original submission. I think it would be even more helpful if hovering over that asterisk to show, or including a link to show, the original title would help. That way it's hidden from being easily influenceable on voting but still allows the initial context of the submission to be present

Otherwise, I think both of these announcements are great news and would like to offer congratulations to Y Combinator, Dan and the whole community for keeping this such a useful site and community through all these years, even despite growth and changes to members.

</comment><comment><USER39> (possibly insane) Idea : Open-source the Hacker News code. You have a self- selecting community of hackers. I'd bet some of them would work for free on the site. It is easier to review patches than create them!

<comment><USER40> It's already available: [https://github.com/wting/hackernews](https://github.com/wting/hackernews)

Though they probably will not share the code for rankbanning mechanisms and such, since the code will help out people who might want to go around it.

<comment><USER41> That's not the code that currently runs hn - AFAIK it's the code that ran hn at some distant point in the past. I'm not quite sure what's the best current path for those that want to run their own hn, on (something similar to) arc probably anarki?:

[https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki](https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki)

Possibly arc-nu?:

[https://github.com/arclanguage/arc-nu](https://github.com/arclanguage/arc-nu)

At least it appears arc3.1 runs under racket (not sure how long that's been the case, but presumably for a while):

      $ racket -v
      Welcome to Racket v6.1.
      $ wget http://ycombinator.com/arc/arc3.1.tar
      $ tar xf arc3.1.tar
      $ cd arc3.1/
      $ echo admin > arc/admins
      # WARNING: running random code from the Internet
      # downloaded over an insecure link is not a good idea!
      # But a checkout from https://github.com/wting/hackernews.git
      # *failed* to run under racket...
      $ racket -f as.scm
      Use (quit) to quit, (tl) to return here after an interrupt.
      arc> (load "news.arc")
      nil
      arc> (nsv)
      rm: cannot remove 'arc/news/story/*.tmp': No such file or directory
      load items:
      ranking stories.
      ready to serve port 8080

I don't know if [https://github.com/wting/hackernews.git](https://github.com/wting/hackernews.git) is a reflection of the updated hn source - I don't think it is. For one thing, if we look at:

[http://arclanguage.org/item?id=19174](http://arclanguage.org/item?id=19174)

"Ask Arc: How to add a toplabels in news.arc?"

> On Hacker News, the ask and show pages are implemented just like the > front > page, but they filter the item list based on title or whether or > not > there's a link. > > And yes, that means they won't show items not already > loaded into RAM ;)

      (defop ask ((p page))
        (pagepage ranked-stories* p
                  [and (askpage-filter _) _]
                  "ask" "Ask"))

> The magic is in askpage-filter:

      (def askpage-filter (s)
        (and (astory s)
             (blank s!url)
            (~begins (downcase s!title) "show hn")))

There's no -filter, in the github repo:

[https://github.com/wting/hackernews/search?utf8=&q=-filter&t...](https://github.com/wting/hackernews/search?utf8=&q=-filter&type=Code)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> This is exciting! I look forward to seeing the vouch feature in action. I notice a certain classes of stories regularly being flagged off the homepage, mainly those that deal with racism or sexism in the tech community. Being able to rescue quality stories on those topics should provide some interesting fodder for discussion.

<comment><USER43> I'd like to be optimistic. Yet the issue I experience with stories on those topics is that the discussions tend to attract trolling behavior and the exact sort of expressions of outrage that behavior seeks to evoke. To me, the quality issue isn't the story. It's the counterproductive comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Thanks for the "vouch" button. I think it should be also enabled for the posts which are flagged but still visible.

</comment><comment> mck- > Currently, when an account is banned, a software filter trips

Is there a way to check if an account is banned?

EDIT: FYI, my karma counter has stopped accumulating points, and popular posts don't get on the front-page (e.g. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10301364](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10301364) – which has 4 points in 23 minutes – clearly higher than frontpage story 28 ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10300732](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10300732) – 4 points in 2 hours)

<comment><USER45> I think the algorithm for story ranking is a bit more complicated than that...

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Do you have any thoughts on the metrics you might use to evaluate the success or failure of the "vouch" feature?

<comment><USER3> Yes. We're going to look at all the vouched comments and the feature succeeds or fails to the degree that those follow or break the HN guidelines by our usual moderation standards. Not sure if that's a "metric" but that's the idea. Beyond that, the only thing that would make us retract the feature is some bad consequence we didn't foresee.

During testing we did notice an unforeseen consequence, but it was a good one. Reviewing vouched comments naturally leads to looking at the history of a banned account, and in a few cases we just unbanned it. Some had been banned for an obvious reason in the past, but recent comments were fine. Others had been banned by mistake, such as by a rogue spam filter. So although this feature applies on a per-comment level, it can have per-account side-effects.

This also raises the question of whether we can take this feature all the way to letting the community manage which accounts are banned (presumably with occasional moderator overrides). That's on our list, though it's too soon to tell if it will work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I can't help but like the spirit of the vouch system, and I'm sure quite a bit of thought went into it. But at the same time I'm wondering if the site _really_ needs two different versions of up-vote/down-vote with different different semantics.

Still, I get it, it's a kind of super-vote, reserved for people with a little karma (i.e. some "skin in the game"). Out of curiosity, how'd you guys arrive at 30 for cutoff?

<comment><USER3> 30 is the flag threshold and has been for years. I don't know how pg picked it. It works well, though, and we like that it isn't a high bar.

You'd be surprised at how different votes and flags are in effect. The upvoting system is a lot more broken than the flagging system is. People tend to upvote as a reflexive "me like" instead of a reflective "this is interesting". (That's not a criticism—it's simply the chemical reaction of the voting mechanism and human nature.) Flagging is much more reflective in practice. You can think of vouches as an experiment in seeing whether up- flagging can contribute as much value to HN as down-flagging has.

<comment><USER48> It's a bit startling to read an acknowledgement that up/down voting conflates disagreement with lack of value, and that this effect is undesirable. Debate over this point continues to bubble up every once in a while on HN, with some commenters pointing to pg's casual statement from some time ago that he was okay with a downvote meaning "I disagree."

Is it important to the design of HN that the community engage with (i.e., not shun into oblivion) worthy points of view with which it disagrees?

If that is valuable to the design of HN, may we simply accept that voting registers agreement and let another mechanism such as the flagging system be the place to register a comment's value? Perhaps we can display the measure of agreement in a more subtle way than is presently the case and refrain from pushing those comments completely out of the conversation.

<comment><USER3> Oh dear. Nothing that I said was meant to express any policy about downvoting and certainly not any change in policy about downvoting. It's just a separate topic.

<comment><USER48> I didn't interpret it that way, and I apologize if it seemed that I did.

I was actually hoping for some read on the two questions I gave because I believe these are important issues, and your comment prompted an opportunity to raise them.

<comment><USER3> Please, no need to apologize. People have really strong opinions about this, as I'm sure you know, and I'm not sure yet how to comment on it in a helpful way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Awesomeness.

I think this is a great idea for the community. I applaud this decision because there are quite a few accelerators, but the special part about YC is HN. Being open enough to give it it's own editorial steering wheel is a great indication of goodwill to the community :)

Now that HN is it's own thing, maybe we'll see access(api?) for vote attribution?

Is that even remotely possible? Or, are the implicit privacy issues too much of a burden?

<comment><USER3> If you mean publishing people's votes, I can't imagine that we'd ever do that. Vote data is intimate and we have a duty to keep it secret.

<comment><USER49> Yeah, you are right.

I was thinking it would put rest to the voting rings theory if anyone had access to everyone else's vote history. But, the cost probably isn't worth the benefit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Would you mind curating the experiments you do. For example, and it may just be me, but suddenly there is a "past" and a "web" link. I would be interested in reading a short but about them and of course the explanation for why it did not work and got removed. (I think the Google search link is gonna be a mistake but I will enjoy reading about it anyway)

<comment><USER3> Did you see the thread on that?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10223645](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10223645)

<comment><USER50> No I am afraid I missed it. It's probably me, but Perhaps these threads might be more widely read if there was say a link to a curated list on the FAQ page.

I think HN has gone from "we can expect everyone to pick it up" to needing a few more signposts. That's an interesting post but it passed by on my timezone / holiday / daily lack of caffeine hour.

Eventually we get the knowledge spread around, so it's no biggie. Just an idea.

Edit: of course you could improve the number of reads by changing the headline: "How Megan Fox taught herself Clojure in three weeks, launched a bitcoin healthcare startup that raised $4 million - all from her Apple Air"

Now, hell I would have read that. It's amazing what cat, pipe and the HN headline generator can do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> In light of this, what about the submissions that don't allow comments?

I've never really understood what those are in the first place, and am curious what they'll be following this statement of editorial independence. Are those advertisements dang does and will continue to pick and choose? Not that I really care, but they've always seemed a bit out of place.

<comment><USER3> Are you talking about the job ads that YC startups are allowed to post to the front page? Those are described in the FAQ.

Other than that, I think all live posts are open to comments.

<comment><USER51> In that case, you just might want Sam to tone down that "full editorial independence" statement. It's fine that you give special treatment to YC, but please don't claim a virtue you don't have.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure I agree with you there. Doesn't the term "editorial independence" come from newspapers? Those always had ads.

Indeed the nice thing about the current arrangement is that the YC startup job ads are completely up-front, always work the same way, and have a fixed effect on the front page. So it doesn't affect editorial judgment at all. (Except that we try to take linkbait out of the titles and I'm surprised that no YC startup has asked us about that yet.)

<comment><USER51> I'm not talking about ads _in general_. I'm saying that when the only "ads" run are for the editorial outlet's parent company's investment interests, well, isn't that a bit... I dunno... incongruous with the nature of advertisement in a paper?

<comment><USER3> I understand editorial independence to mean that we make decisions based on what's best for HN and its community, not YC's immediate business interests.

I qualified that with "immediate" because an independent HN focused on intellectual curiosity _is_ what's best for YC's business. That's the global optimum. It would be foolish to trade it away for any local one (e.g. handling a particular YC-related story differently). What makes HN valuable to YC is optimizing its value to the community. Everyone at YC knows that.

The main benefit of today's announcement is if it helps us make that clearer to others. Understandably, people sometimes take it for granted that since HN is owned by an investment business, it must directly serve that business. Those concerns won't go away, but it will be nice to be able to point to the org structure and say that's why it's set up that way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Cool update, I am happy to see Sam's vision for HN is the for it to be independent and a robust institution for the tech community. I think the vouch feature might be cool, but we'll see how it plays out since honestly I don't experience many incorrectly killed comments.

</comment><comment><USER53> Cool. Any word on a responsive template for the site?

<comment><USER3> We're working on it and it's coming. No one will be happier than I am when it's out, though I'm worried that it will be impossible to please everyone, because the specific requests we get are disparate and even contradictory. We'll have a considerable period of testing and feedback though.

<comment><USER54> > because the specific requests we get are disparate and even contradictory.

The typical solution to that is to give the users a setting page where they can pick between the two contradictory options.

<comment><USER3> The typical solution leads to a combinatorial explosion of complexity, which is no less worrying.

<comment><USER54> It can I know, but it doesn't have to.

With some careful design, and not overdoing it on options you can please most (but not all) people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> _" Everyone at YC knows that it's vital for HN to have full editorial independence, and we have absolute trust in Dan's decision-making in product, engineering, and moderation."_

Go @dan, thanks for listening, then doin' something about it.

</comment><comment><USER56> Traditionally the karma points were supposed to indicate what you felt contributed to the discussion, then I think it was pg who said that using them to indicate agreement was also okay. So now there's essentially a second point system, for indicating what does and doesn't belong in the conversation, but they are much more serious.

I guess I can see people flagging posts that are relatively unconstructive more liberally now, things that would maybe just be ignored before. Maybe that's a good thing, I don't know.

</comment><comment><USER57> Good stuff. I'd like to express my admiration for dang and the other moderators, as well as the larger team at YC and of course pg himself for building such a valable community resource.

</comment><comment><USER58> Wow, you think you're going to read some comments about a community update, and you end up reading a mass of comments delving into the human psyche. Damnit I love HN.

</comment><comment><USER59> Non-HN but YC-related question: Is there not going to be a Startup School this year? I have gone to 2 of them, and it's always an inspiring, memorable experience.

<comment><USER3> Me too! [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10235123](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10235123) answers your question. It will be back next year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Will flagging be undoable or at least require confirmation? I can see the link already but I don't want to run any tests in case it's not undoable.

I can think of many times where I've unintentionally clicked the downvote button while meaning to upvote, and had no way to "unbury" the good comment I mean to hoist. I'd hate to accidentally flag and not be able to rectify the situation.

<comment><USER3> Yes. Both flagging and vouching are undoable.

<comment><USER60> Awesome, good to hear. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Unlinking HN from YC is a fantastic move. It removes any lingering doubt about bias or censorship in regarding to the YC funded companies.

</comment><comment><USER62> Will the ycombinator.com banner ad finally be replaced with an HN symbol that links directly to the index? :-p

Also, a while back I made a little Hacker News logo concept. ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4731140](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4731140)) If you're thinking responsive redesign work, just hollar. ;-)

</comment><comment><USER63> Will HN move to its own domain now that it's going to become its own thing, or will it stay a subdomain of YC?

<comment><USER3> I don't think we need to move it. It's comfortable where it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Editorial independence; Does this mean that we will be able to comment on the YC job postings that flurry through?

<comment><USER3> No. Those aren't intellectually interesting stories. They're job ads. If there's an interesting story about a startup, post that and we can all discuss the startup there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Isn't an upvote something you feel should be on the front page? What's the different between the way upvotes count and the way vouches will count? Does one weigh heavier? Was it not in the cards to make upvotes "vouch" for a post?

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure I understand all those questions, but years of experience have shown that votes and flags are radically different things, and vouches are very much on the flag side of that distinction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> I'm fairly certain a lot of wrongful flagging is a direct consequence of fat- fingering the flag button. I've been there, and my fingers aren't that fat.

<comment><USER25> flags can be undone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> If you could make it so when ever company X is hiring one or more staff you could share the location of these hires in the link. I would appreciate it thanks.

</comment><comment><USER68> Wonder if this means Terry Davis gets to live on HN? It will be interesting to see how this system handles "controversial" user accounts.

<comment><USER3> "Gets to live"? That wording gives me the willies. But if you see substantive (e.g. on-topic technical) comments that are [dead], you should definitely vouch for them.

<comment><USER22> Is it really any creepier than using "dead" for comments not being visible by default?

<comment><USER3> I'd say very much so. One refers to a comment, another to a person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> It's official, HN is doing more in community development than Reddit managed in ... 5 years?

<comment><USER70> Hacker news is analogous to a single subreddit. Many subreddits do have this level of interaction with the "mods" of the subreddit. While I am no longer a reddit user, I recognize that while supporting the long tail by having subreddits and promoting diversity, they have a massively difficult time communicating and pleasing their users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Can we please get this site to be mobile friendly?

</comment><comment><USER72> who is Dan. always mention full name at least once

<comment><USER25> Mod dang [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dang](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dang)

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> > [...] art and science of HN [...]

I like it.

<comment><USER73> Sorry for having hurt you, you downvoter cold scientist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> Dan, speaking of experiments, can I pitch an idea?

        Mix a random story from the New page into the front page on each page load.

This should get more eyeballs on new submissions, with more even exposure across HN populus and ultimately increase the overall appeal of the front page material. Should make the FP a bit more dynamic too.

<comment><USER3> We alpha-tested that and it didn't work. The median item on /newest is far too low-quality (by HN's definition) for randomness to do much good there. In practice, it just mixes junk onto the front page—the worst thing that can happen to the front page.

(I've posted about this a few times; let me see if I can find the links.)

Edit: I found some of them, in addition to the ones scott_s mentioned downthread.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix=false&page=0&date...](https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment&query=by:dang%20%22median%20story%22)

<comment><USER75> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9866140](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9866140) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8790134](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8790134)

<comment><USER3> Those links are about an experiment we tried that did work, and which we've expanded. If you get an invitation asking you to repost a story, that's the latest incarnation of this. Where we're stuck is on figuring out a way to let the community manage it that wouldn't just reduce to how upvoting works now. We're working on it though.

<comment><USER75> The latter also mentions the old thing that did not work, where you just pulled a random post for /newest, and put it at the bottom of the front page. I see the current, successful, technique as an iteration of the failed one.

<comment><USER3> Ah thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> Serious question, not rhetorical:

I have noticed there appear to be artificially-bumped posts from time-to-time that relate to YC companies. Is HN providing extra clout to YC companies' PR above and beyond organic community moderation, and if so, will HN's extra autonomy in any way change that?

<comment><USER3> We definitely don't give special treatment to YC companies' stories and I'd be happy to look at links if you have any you're wondering about. But make sure you're not looking at the job ads as described in the FAQ. Those are indeed reserved for YC companies. (That is the main thing that HN gives back to YC in return for funding it.)

<comment><USER77> Does HN really need that much money? Sorry for the indiscreet question.

<comment><USER3> The costs are all low except for paying people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> >I don't plan to be very involved--other than as an enthusiastic user (who would, however, prefer that it be easier to read on a phone)

I always assumed not having a mobile style sheet was intentional to slow down eternal September, but if sama is asking for it then that can't be the case, right?

<comment><USER79> But most of the complaints about that are coming from existing Hacker News users, for whom the experience on mobile is terrible.

If Hacker News was as adamant about stopping the Eternal September effect as some people believe, they would demand references and a CV before letting anyone join, or else be invite-only like lobste.rs. Not having a mobile stylesheet doesn't really seem like it would help in that regard.

Cynicism and incivility are far more corrosive to this community than the Eternal September effect could be, anyway.

<comment><USER80> > But most of the complaints about that are coming from existing Hacker News > users, for whom the experience on mobile is terrible.

I'm not sure what your argument is here. Who else would complain? The people who have been driven away?

<comment><USER79> My argument is that not having a mobile stylesheet isn't keeping low quality users from showing up, it's mostly annoying the ones who are already here. As a way of holding back the Eternal September effect, bad mobile UX seems like a specious idea at best - which is why I doubt that has anything to do with the state of the mobile experience here.

<comment><USER80> "Looking at who complains" isn't evidence of that, though. One could argue that the low quality users are so turned off by the mobile experience that they can't even complain about it.

That said, I wouldn't mind a better mobile site. If we want to be elitist about it, just make it available for users with > 10 karma. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> How will I know if my comments have successfully been vouched for?

<comment><USER3> For now, you still have to view the page logged-out. We're probably going to change this eventually. It's clear that better feedback mechanisms to let people know when they've violated the site guidelines—and when they haven't—could add a lot of value to HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> Shouldn't editorial independence mean that Michael O. Church is unbanned? Or is Hacker News still committed to Y Combinator's feud with him?

<comment><USER83> That guy was a terrible poster, and I thought it was particularly pathetic how he tried to argue his way out of his final straw.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> The first thing I would is change the rules to ban all discussions not having to do with technology. I've been more than guilty of stretching a number of non-tech discussions. Every time I do so I feel horrible for wasting my time (and other HN'ers time) on non-tech threads.

Second --and this could be quite complex-- let me, the reader, decide who and what I want to read. In other words, let automatic moderation have a light touch and let me, as a reasonably intelligent adult, decide what I want to see.

For example, an obligatory "tech"/"non-tech" tag could allow readers to choose not to see anything that isn't tech related.

I know, tag hell could be horrible. Yet, there probably exists a reasonable set of tags that could allow users to moderate their own feeds rather than having to worry about central moderation.

I could see new posts being tagged "non-tech" by default unless the poster chooses another tag. Tags could include "art", "politics", "religion", "economics", etc.

I'd keep them to a very short set, perhaps five or ten. No more. Too many tags and HN becomes something it isn't.

Within the concept of allowing the reader to shape their own feed there's the idea of "private hell banning" if you will. In other words, if I don't want to see posts from specific people that should be my prerogative, perhaps others are OK with the posts while I am not. Let me mute someone personally rather than centrally muting them as if the entire community thought exactly alike.

I know running communities is extremely hard work. I have in the past and have zero interest in doing it again. HN has really high S/N and that's why I like to read it every day. I've been guilty of adding to the noise here and there. I'm only human. I have tried to self correct when that's happened, mostly by tying to stay away from non-tech threads.

<comment><USER25> HN is not tech only. HN has never been tech only.

Perhaps you mean that people should stop posting political articles l? (I agree, these are usually hopeless).

<comment><USER84> Yeah, I can agree with that. Every time I get sucked into a political discussion on HN I hate myself so I am as guilty as anyone else. At least I recognize HN would be better without these threads.</comment></comment></comment>


Visual CSS regression testing with a free QA automation tool - <AUTHOR> http://screenster.io/visual-css-regression-testing/ <comment><USER2> This a great solution for newbies.</comment>


How to report cybercrime in a more efficient way - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Call 911!

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice post! Keep up!

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting</comment>


FanPulse (YC S10) Launches Web App In Time For The World Cup - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/11/yc-funded-fanpulse-launches-web-app-in-time-for-the-world-cup-scores-deal-with-the-nhl/

<comment><USER2> It looks like they took a little too much influence from the Twitter home page...

EDIT: Why am I getting downvoted?

<http://twitter.com> <http://fanpul.se>

EDIT #2: I don't mean to call them out on their integrity or anything. I'm mostly surprised that someone at YC didn't advise them to take more time to 'own' their look.

<comment><USER3> upboat.. good catch..

<comment><AUTHOR> hah, good catch!

we went with copying what works rather than spending too much time trying to re-invent a good homepage. we launched pretty quick, so we tried to focus as much on the core features first as possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN: We just launched FanPulse this morning! It's been an awesome ride so far in the Summer 2010 batch with YC! Please give us any feedback you may have, we hope to build this out so you guys will love it.

<comment><USER4> My Facebook feed is filled with people rooting for soccer teams. When you pick the winner of a game, does this post to your Facebook wall with the flag/logo of the team? That would probably be pretty viral right now.

The "find friends on Facebook" page isn't working.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you check-in or pick a team, you are given the option to connect to Facebook. It will then give you a preview of the cross post once you're all connected.

Let me know if that seems confusing (it definitely might be). Great feedback!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You could improve a bit the Join Form. I hate when all the field are erased when I make a mistake.. and also, there's no cancel button on this form (which might be arguably good or bad).

It could be great if there was stuff you could see without being registred... or if there is, the get started button should link there, and not to that form button.

For me, "Get started" means: I will show you quickly what I can do for you and not: "Fill this form, give me all your information, and then, I will show you what I can do for you". I suggest you do the inverse.. show me what you got, and if it's interesting, I'll subscribe.

On a side note, I like the main page with the live updates. Good job on that.

<comment><AUTHOR> d0m, that's a great idea! "Get Started" definitely should show you quickly what you can get. We'll start on that ASAP. Thanks for your feedback.

<comment><USER6> To nit pick, the color in the very corners of the 'Get Started' button is not equal to the bg on which the image is placed.

Enjoying the site so far. Great work.

<comment><AUTHOR> eek, good catch =) need to do some polishing!

gotta count on the HN folk to really get down into it. you guys have awesome feedback.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really like the approach you guys have taken to get fans involved (i.e. the partnership with NHL that gives discounts to 'active' fans).

Any talk of partnering with NHL, MLB, NBA, etc. to stream live audio/video of games?

With an increasing number of smart phones packing a powerful camera what about serving as a platform for fans to share their own media content from games - like photos?

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right on track with what we're working on. People love to share and brag, and a lot love to brag that they're at the game.

Working with the leagues and teams are tough, but we're going to try to work with them more on cool stuff like audio and video.

Sharing photos and video will be a sweet feature. I'd probably post a million photos myself while I'm at the game ;)

Great ideas! keep them coming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I went to fanpulse.com, said "huh?" and was gone.

I've never understood the clever domain names for real websites. It's cool for your techie project that you hype here on HN. If it's meant to interact with your average citizen, then forget about it.

website == .com for 99% of the people out there. Just ask Yahoo who paid like $100k to finally get delicious.com

<comment><USER2> ...or just ask del.icio.us who sold for like a few million to Yahoo? :)

<comment><USER9> No disrespect to joshu (who is around), but I never had a single non-techie friend who used delicious. For whatever reason, only reddit (and to a lesser extent Digg) have been able to break out of the geek echo chamber when it comes to social news. Slashdot, which had a 6-10 year jump on all of them, never could do it either.

Maybe it's the .com. Who knows.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've seen a huge designer community using delicious. maybe the artsy guys and gals liked the "clever" name ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Congrats, guys!

</comment><comment><USER11> Welcome to the ____pulse family. A rising tide lifts all ships.

</comment><comment><USER12> Mmm, smells like crunch time. Good job getting it done.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you incorporate before monetizing your side projects? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I used to worry how incorporating is almost an inescapable need if you want to be taken seriously. Surely, you want a professional company label when a customer goes to bill his subscription. Right? Learning more, I have realised that you can either chose to build the right thing and try hard to get your first customer, or fuck around with these pointless tasks. It's possible some customer may balk at a one-person business but most find it perfectly acceptable and have zero-issues in buying from you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the answer. I guess I'm not really wondering about the "being taken seriously" aspect. More when it comes to managing taxes and liability. A LLC would protect your personal assets in case something goes wrong with your product (let's say you leak the information of your 255 million users), but when is it worth it?

<comment><USER2> When you're starting out, you're full of optimism about your success. I was too. But when you get down to actually doing things, you start to realise how hard it is to get first few paying customers, let alone hundreds or thousands. I think it's fairly easy to start a LLC in US, so I am not dissuading you from incorporating one but do realise that it is one of those things that can be done later; and personally, I feel, if you don't have sure-shot path to growing revenue, should be done later. I don't think taxes and liability are much of an issue when you're small.

I wasted ton of time in wondering about these things when I was making something just two years back, and eventually, I realised how less it would've mattered.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Yes in a way. I have a parent LLC for all of my small ventures. That way, you don't need to go through the hassle of creating separate legal entities for every project. If the side project grows at that point you could also just spin off as a more formal dedicated entity for tax purposes and write offs, but then again, at that point it may no longer be a side project.

<comment><USER4> How much would it say it costs to have the parent LLC set up? factoring for filing taxes and other administrative costs.

<comment><USER5> If you're in the US then it can vary by state. I used LegalZoom to form an LLC and it was ~$800 to start. Illinois charges me about $300 each year to keep my standing and I just use H&R Block software to do my taxes as I don't have much income coming in for the business and have my LLC tax structure to be passthrough so it makes tax season super easy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you are in California, this will cost $800 / year in franchise fees.

Since most side projects fail, consider waiting until you are actually generating revenue.

If your business incurs significant liability that you are worried about, incorporating may make sense sooner.

</comment><comment><USER7> I have a business account for all side projects that involve money. When the prototype generates money, we move it out of the prototype bank account to a proper one.

</comment><comment><USER8> What is the scope of said side projects? Apps or other ventures?

<comment><AUTHOR> Could be something very small but generating revenue. Could be a Saas service for example. I guess I'm wondering at what point either in terms of revenue, work spent on the project, etc, do people feel the need to incorporate. Either for tax purposes or to avoid liability.

<comment><USER9> how are you taking payment without incorporating? paypal? any suggesions?

<comment><USER10> Stripe allows it.

<comment><USER11> What does the charge say on your customer's statement?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to go from zero to software engineer? - <AUTHOR> I'm a recent grad from biology interested in becoming a software developer (bit late?).
I'm particularly interested in one day working with the big four. Once again, I'm not sure if this is a bit late, considering I have absolutely no experience.
The most common area of software I know of, and heard is most beginner friendly, is web development. So I guess that would be one of the areas to focus on?
How would I go about creating a roadmap from zero to software engineer? I prefer to work in a very organized manner. I understand there is the programming side, but also a theoretical computer science component (algorithms, data structures. Etc.) that many big companies like to ask in interviews. I'm guessing I'd have to venture into new math territory (discrete math?).
Overall, what would be the roadmap I'd take to become a software developer, most likely in the area of web development? As well as, what is the likely timeframe I would expect to finally land my first job?
Thanks <comment><USER2> > _The most common area of software I know of, and heard is most beginner > friendly, is web development. So I guess that would be one of the areas to > focus on?_

It's worth bearing in mind that pretty much everybody else has heard that web development is beginner friendly and flocked to it _en masse_.

> _I understand there is the programming side, but also a theoretical computer > science component (algorithms, data structures. Etc.) that many big > companies like to ask in interviews. I 'm guessing I'd have to venture into > new math territory (discrete math?)._

You have it more or less correct. The core of a CS degree is a data structures course, an algorithms course, and a discrete mathematics course and you will want to know these topics well. A bit of searching will reveal the names of the current well-regarded textbooks for each area.

You will also want to have gone through at least one textbook on software engineering as well as one guide on good coding practices, e.g. McConnell's "Code Complete".

To be competitive with other candidates for the big 4, I would suggest skimming both a computer architecture course and an operating systems course as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> Try CS50 :) It's Harvard's free online course. It'll take you from 0-1 really fast. 1 to 100 is experience from building stuff. Good luck!

<comment><USER4> Agreed, I think CS50 is an excellent intro.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Write lots of code, in different languages; find increasingly real problems to challenge your skills. Unless, of course, you're just interested in becoming another whatever; then you're better off memorizing buzzwords and JavaScript frameworks.</comment>


Ebooks for All: Building digital libraries in Ghana with Worldreader - <AUTHOR> http://craigmod.com/sputnik/worldreader/ <comment><USER2> Great idea, it's a shame Amazon ended the unlimited internet thing (although 50MB is not too shabby considering the browser's limited scope).

What worries me a little is that this is basically a way to get loads more people wrapped into the Amazon ecosystem. It's a nerdy concern, of course...</comment>


Open Source Rapid Hardware Prototyping - <AUTHOR> https://www.futurice.com/blog/prototyping-with-pela-blocks <comment><USER2> The DIYRobocars [1] that they mention is awesome. I wish they had something similar here on the East coast!

[1] [https://diyrobocars.com/](https://diyrobocars.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> 3D printed legos? There are better solutions for rapid hardware prototyping. See the following:

[https://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Build-your- Everythin...](https://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Build-your-Everything- Really-Really-Fast/)

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://driftcar.pelablocks.org/](https://driftcar.pelablocks.org/) has the specific models used to pimp a 1:10 drift car

</comment><comment><USER5> BITD we used Meccano - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meccano](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meccano)</comment>


An Impostor Cell Line Set Back Breast Cancer Research (2017) - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2017/04/the_impostor_cell_line_that_set_back_breast_cancer_research.html <comment><USER2> Since cancer is considered "many different diseases" now, this is basically saying these people are studying the entirely wrong disease.

Its like if someone told you they study measles but then you check what they are doing and see its actually heart attacks.

<comment><USER2> And read the comments. People who seem to be biomedical researchers are claiming this isn't a big deal and all cell lines are essentially the same anyway, etc. Its like they have never had a quantitative thought in their lives.

EDIT:

And then the other comments about how biomedical researchers dont get paid enough... If only they had more money they wouldnt study the wrong cells (which doesnt matter anyway somehow) for decades after it was a known issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa)

<comment><USER4> And linked under see also: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_contaminated_cell_line...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_contaminated_cell_lines)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a fascinating yet unfortunate story. Working with cell lines can be so messy that this isn't entirely surprising, but it's still not something anyone wants to hear.

As a side note: the lab profiled in the story that exposed this mistake was run by Pat Brown -- the head of Impossible Foods.</comment>


Ask HN: Interesting Gift Ideas for engineers/techies/designers? - <AUTHOR> Hi All, I have never seen such a post but wanted to ask HN folks. (I understand it is not Reddit)<p>Does HN have any interesting gift ideas for engineers/techies/designers? <comment><USER2> one used motorcycle tire (smooth), 100' of 1/2 - 1" manila rope, and a hike in the woods to find the perfect tire swing tree.</comment>


Eve Online celebrates nine year anniversary by giving players a free gift - <AUTHOR> http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-05-01-eve-online-celebrates-nine-year-anniversary-by-giving-players-a-free-gift

<comment><USER3> This isn't hugely new (though the idea of giving players a choice is) - <USER2> does this every year for their "birthday", usually a unique design shuttle.

From my memory of the Eve economy, it seems like the (in game) value of some of these gifts heavily outweighs the others (though all are really only of "value" to new players, as they are purchasable by a more experienced player with an hour of NPC combat, if not less).</comment>


Newspeak and Pluggable Types with Gilad Braha - <AUTHOR> http://www.se-radio.net/podcast/2009-07/episode-140-newspeak-and-pluggable-types-gilad-braha

<comment><AUTHOR> About Javascript: "Javascript is a fairly poorly thought-out language. Considering its influences were Scheme and Smalltalk it's rather sad what came out - but it got lucky, it's in a crucial place, it simply fell into the right place in the universe."</comment>


Fat vs. carbs: What's worse for your health? [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://liliec.be/resume/Heath-Food/Fat%20vs%20carbs%20What%20is%20really%20worse%20for%20your%20health.pdf <comment><USER2> I'm almost 50, and my family has a history of heart disease. So a few years ago, I got serious about getting into better shape. Since then, I've lost almost 55lbs.

I dropped the first 30 over the course of roughly a year and a half 30 by doing vigorous cardio exercise (running) and not modifying my diet much at all. My bloodwork looked far better in terms of cholesterol.

In the last 6 months I've dropped another 25 by switching the cardio from running to rowing, adding weight training, and cutting most carbs from my diet. I'm not a fanatic.. I still have a glass or two of red wine every day. I still eat vegetables and fruit. But I avoid empty carbs as much as possible (chips, rice, bread, etc).

My experience with this, and what I've heard from friends who have done similar things, makes me think that the abundance of carbs in the modern diet is a huge problem.

<comment><USER3> how much do you typically row?

i feel i cant manage more than 20 min at consistent high effort :(

<comment><USER2> I do about one hour every other day at an average pace of ~29spm keeping my heart rate mostly in zones 4 & 5.

No question about it: It is _BORING_ as hell. Much more boring than running. I just listen to podcasts and am very glad when it is done. The nice thing compared to running is that, in addition to being a full body workout, there are no excuses. No "its too hot" or its raining, or snowing, or whatever. The machine is always in my spare room waiting for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Related anecdote. A buddy of mine was dating a type1 diabetic, and he was amazed at all the advice she'd been told all her life. Basically that she should be eating mostly (fastish) carbs, counting them, and estimating how much insulin to use to keep her blood sugar down, then measure, and maybe use more insulin, or quickly eat a fast sugar to bring it back up. With type1 diabetes blood sugar control is a fine balance between losing a limb from long term too high sugar levels, and being literally too stupid to eat from too low sugar levels, and going into a coma.

He's got a background in signal processing, and control theory, and his first thought was that it's basically the exact opposite of how he'd manage a signal. Eating then estimating insulin to bring down sugar levels, was basically less effecting than taking a known amount of insulin and eating to bring up sugar levels. The main reason being that too much insulin is really dangerous, and blood sugar is tricky to measure and it can be really hard to tell if it's going up or it's going down with pin prick tests, even with multiple tests, since you may be in the part of the signal that's ringing after a big delta. He was even more convinced after a little research that fat and protein and soluble fiber will slow down sugar production, which meant it was even easier to slow down the rate of sugar change through diet changes, which would make ringing less of a problem, making measurements easier, and making smaller doses of more frequent insulin a viable strategy.

It took my friend months to convince his girlfriend to change her diet to lower her carb intake. But when he did it made a big impact on her overall health. The biggest change was when she stopped eating sorbet and started eating full fat ice cream at night to keep her blood sugar high enough to last until morning. It really helped prevent most of the night time blood sugar issues she was having to deal with. Her doctor even begrudgingly admitted that while "she was doing everything wrong", "all her numbers were better than normal", and she should "probably keep doing what she's doing".

Also fun fact, following my friend's advice really helped me and my wife deal with her gestational diabetes with both pregnancies. We were getting a lot of bad advice, and we experimented with lots of foods, and cutting carbs really helped her keep her blood sugar down. Oddly though, potatoes for her didn't seem to have effects on her blood sugar that its glycemic index would imply, preparation didn't seem to matter, she could eat a lot more potatoes than she should have been able to. I suspect she has some kind of genetic or gut flora predisposition with regards to potatoes.

<comment><USER5> There was this guy in Poland, an MD, who figured this exact thing in 60s. He essentially took and modified the damaged liver diet (rich in MCTs mostly) and have it in a series of trials, lightly controlled, vs a plain lower calorie diet, to a bunch of people in sanatoriums. He derived the diet from basic principles and then available dietary tables - being forced into service but the military he had to learn dietetics.

Extremely sick people who could barely walk. The results were pretty resounding, so good they made whole Polish Academy of Sciences at the time recoil and denounce him. He was thought to have committed fraud. They stopped denouncing him repeatedly only in some 2000s.

This was the more correct grandfather of better known Atkins diet. It has some uses. One of them is rapid weight loss, the other is diabetes, hepatitis recovery, a few connective tissue diseases and epilepsy refractory to treatment. It is driven by explicit testing for ketosis and microelement and vitamin tables. And the difference is it's an actual process not just one flat prescription.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Many evidence-based practitioners disagree: [https://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-best-diet-for- diabetes/](https://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-best-diet-for-diabetes/) [http://plantpositive.com/blog/2012/3/26/tpns-52-54-the- best-...](http://plantpositive.com/blog/2012/3/26/tpns-52-54-the-best-low- carb-research-money-can-buy.html)

<comment><USER5> Careful, this is with picked evidence. Use metastudies - they show effects are rather low if any once corrected for lifestyle factors...

I was suckered into the Greger's vegan diet for a year with no results, not even in bloodwork. (Even supplemented.)

Most importantly, we have not really plumbed the depths of ketogenic diets.

(Which is very different from eating a lot of meat - it's a lot of fats and generally MCT and middle chain saturated are the optimal.)

<comment><USER6> Any author or paper can be subject to bias, including meta-analysis.

I understand the discussion is about fats in general, but we have extremely reliable evidence that saturated fat causes heart disease, the #1 killer of men and women, our parents and grandparents. I'll quote HackerNews user cageface because s/he said it so well ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16566968](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16566968)):

"Literally hundreds of metabolic ward studies (the gold standard in nutrition) have demonstrated a direct, causal relationship between saturated fat intake and blood cholesterol levels. And the correlation between high cholesterol levels and CVD has been known for decades. Don't be fooled by observational studies which fail to disentangle the highly variable baseline individual cholesterol levels from the effects of fat in the diet. Here is a review of 395 direct feeding experiments, which are much more appropriate for measuring the effects of diet:"

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9006469](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9006469)

[https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1161/01.cir.000010366...](https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1161/01.cir.0000103664.47406.49)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > But more recently we discovered that smaller LDL particles cause more > plaques than large LDLs. And while eating saturated fat raises large LDL > levels, small LDLs are boosted most by refined carbohydrates.

Will refined foods ever get a bad rap? I suspect they are easy to monetize because they are efficient to create, store and transport and they can then be used as off-the-shelf ingredients. They will have commercial interests behind them, which means marketing slant.

</comment><comment><USER8> Polyunsaturated oils = excessive free radicals under storage and heat of cooking

Saturated fats and the cholesterol of meats = atherosclerosis

Fried anything = acrylonitrile, carcinogenic

Monosaturated oils such as olive oil are the key, not to mention the beneficial compounds such as oleuropin unique to olive oil. Eat handfuls of raw walnuts daily. Walnuts actually have higher alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) than flax seed.

Moderate complex carbs.

Supplement with Bilberry extract, Chokeberry extract and Elderberry extract for powerful health promoting anthocyanins, teaspoons of each daily.

Just gave up most all forms of refined sugar, lost more weight, feel better. Swim 5,200 yds. minimum per week. Mildly ripped from swimming.

I am 65 yrs. male and 5'10", 164 lbs., vegetarian since 20 yrs., severe central sleep apnea (treated), but overall, never felt better in my life.

<comment><USER5> Link between saturated fats and atherosclerosis is tenuous at best.

It is now likely that not all of these days have the effect. Likewise only certain density lipids are dangerous.

Metabolism is a complex beast.

<comment><USER6> As I described above, I have to disagree: The link between saturated fat intake and blood LDL cholesterol is very well established by hundreds of controlled-feeding experiments. Here is a meta-analysis of 395 such experiments: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9006469](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9006469)

Going from LDL cholesterol to atherosclerosis, the plaque that composes the arterial blockages is largely made of cholesterol-rich lipids. On a higher level, the use of statins to lower cholesterol is the #1 thing doctors do to try to reduce a person's risk of heart disease.</comment></comment></comment>