The quest for Shadow of the Colossus' last big secret (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-05-02-the-quest-for-shadow-of-the-colossuss-last-big-secret <comment><USER3> TL;DR: Any "last big secret" has not been found, and all signs point to there not being any.

<comment><USER4> There might be. The Citadel map in Goldeneye was found ten years after the game was released. Every same person had given up looking considering it obviously wasn't in the game and it's existence was denied by devs who has no reason to lie about it (other than getting fans to stop asking, I guess). But it was there.

<comment><USER5> Just for anyone else who was curious, here's some more information on the Citadel:

[http://goldeneye.wikia.com/wiki/Citadel](http://goldeneye.wikia.com/wiki/Citadel)

It wasn't really an intended secret. It sounds like to make it accessible, a player had to hack it in, and to make it playable, another player had to contribute clipping information.

<comment><USER6> The whole thing sort of sounds like the beginning of StarGate: Universe - <USER2> the reward for beating an unbeatable test in an MMO game was getting enrolled in an extraplanteray research program.

<comment><USER7> Kerbal Space Program, here I come.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This reminds me a lot of Goldeneye 007 for the Nintendo 64; maps with areas that have no reason to be there other than conspiracy theories (some that turned out to be true!), traces of things that were meant to be in the game but were cut at the very last minute, emulators unearthing more mysteries than they solve... it's maddening, but an interesting look at how we think.

<comment><USER8> Ultimately there are very simple explanations for most things. You'll have developer/mapper playgrounds where they model new stuff and try things out before cutting them or implementing them. Sometimes these things happen in production maps, and are simply overlooked when they are no longer interesting. It's cruft, but for explorers they are so much more.

Other times they are really nicely fleshed out, but locked away behind flimsy "gates", and really were intended to go into the full game, but had to be abandoned at the very last minute.

And then there's the cinematic areas that are made for show, implemented as they were intended, which never included being accessible to players.

What's really the most rewarding thing about this is that you, as a player, as an explorer, get to puzzle things out; you almost get to write the narrative yourself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> And Nomad is still posting: [http://nomads-sotc- blog.blogspot.com.au/](http://nomads-sotc-blog.blogspot.com.au/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Why isn't it possible to decompile this inside of an emulator and know for sure if there are assets that haven't been seen in-game and where they reside?

</comment><comment><USER11> I remember finding the beach that seems to harken back to Ico. The ambiguity is a thrill: there's enough to remind you, but never quite enough to prove it. And so you have an odd win-win scenario, where you can enjoy just finding something interesting, but maybe there's more to it. When you walk away from the game, there's a little part of you that thinks there's still more to be had, that the game hasn't ended yet. It helps stave off that bittersweetness of winning mentioned near the start.

It also helps that there really were some great hidden bits. The game is riddled with wonderfully hidden special spots. (If I remember correctly, it's a bad idea to eat the fruit in the garden at the top of the temple.)

When Myst Online: Uru Live got its second wind, a similar air followed the gameplay. Everything could be a puzzle or a plot with each new update. I always felt the Cyan developers knew they had to make puzzles that not only stumped a player, but a whole community of fans. I had enormous amounts of fun searching for and - in the end inventing - puzzles there. To this day I like to think Jalak was totally a puzzle, and not just a surprisingly involved gizmo.

</comment><comment><USER12> I really, really wish I had enough time to sit around and explore stuff like this for weeks at a time. I haven't even played any games in over a year.

<comment><USER13> I know what you mean, I spent a lot of time exploring Shadow of the Colossus when I was younger, but now it's really hard to find the time to spend quality time with a game.</comment></comment>


PSD Viewing and Diffing - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/1845-psd-viewing-diffing

<comment><USER2> I wonder if GitHub tries to make a stab at LayerVault [1] and compete with them? This could be a good first step. I wouldn't mind seeing LayerVault have some more competition in this space. I hope this is the first of many updates GitHub does trying to integrate more into version control for designers.

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

<comment><USER3> The irony is they are likely using LayerVault's PSD.rb [http://layervault.tumblr.com/post/56891876898/psd- rb](http://layervault.tumblr.com/post/56891876898/psd-rb)

<comment><USER4> We're not

<comment><USER5> PSD.rb is also not intended for production use. Among other inadequacies, it's painfully slow.

That's what PSD Native is for: [http://layervault.tumblr.com/post/82315160104/psd-rb-and- psd...](http://layervault.tumblr.com/post/82315160104/psd-rb-and-psd-native)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if PSD became their favorite file format [https://code.google.com/p/xee/source/browse/XeePhotoshopLoad...](https://code.google.com/p/xee/source/browse/XeePhotoshopLoader.m#102)

</comment><comment><USER7> I just wish companies would do this when they released new TOS policies.

<comment><USER8> Meetup does something along these lines. Check out the revision history and first paragraph:

[http://www.meetup.com/terms/](http://www.meetup.com/terms/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think that this is one of the first early results of the work that Github is doing after here 100$M series-A Github is transforming into a "document collaboration" platform, they will extend git usage to every single critical file format. Great move guys :)

</comment><comment><USER10> I suppose this is for small images... cos .psd's can grow to __really __heavy files. For instance a product presentation mockup, a single page design ready to be sliced (i.e. home.psd), or anything with "Photoshop 3D" can be easily over 100Mb...

</comment><comment><USER11> It would be great if they could cast some insight into how they're parsing and rendering the PSDs, and if they wrote any code to do so, they posted it on GitHub.

</comment><comment><USER12> Heh, they added PSD just in time for a large number of people to jump to Sketch. All joking aside, kudos for adding this. It's great, if you can get people to store these large files in github.

</comment><comment><USER13> I saw that our artists recently (or might've been longer ago that I knew) started using PSB files rather than PSD - Haven't checked on the actual differences.

<comment><USER14> PSB stands for Photoshop Big: it's for Photoshop files larger than the arbitrary size of 30000x30000 pixels or 3 GB, whichever is smaller. PSB files can be up to 300,000 pixels wide.

More information than you ever wanted about Adobe file formats: [http://www.adobe.com/devnet- apps/photoshop/fileformatashtml/](http://www.adobe.com/devnet- apps/photoshop/fileformatashtml/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I really dig this feature and would love to see it extended to AI files as well!

</comment><comment><USER16> _sigh_

I just wish PSD files weren't so horrendously, horrendously, horrendously, terrible with space.

Our design people routinely have to deal with 300MB+ _files_ for client work. I'm not convinced yet it's worth the benefits if the only way they can work w/git(hub) is with git-bigfiles or git-annex, or some convoluted custom workflow =(

<comment><USER17> Image data is big by nature. If you are working with print-resolution files you can multiply that figure by ten. Each PS layer can contain a large amount of image data. It has nothing to do with the file format, if that is what you are implying.</comment></comment>


What an artificial intelligence researcher fears about AI - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/what-an-artificial-intelligence-researcher-fears-about-ai-78655 <comment><USER2> "As a scientist, I must follow my obligation to the truth, reporting what I find in my experiments, whether I like the results or not. My focus is not on determining whether I like or approve of something; it matters only that I can unveil it."

I get the scientist part, the dispassionate reporter of what happened, regardless of what I want to have happened. That last phrase though - "it matters only that I can unveil it" \- bothers me. I think this is a fundamental error of science. The pendulum has swung too far, to say that it is not only ok, but indeed required to ignore morality. To not ask even "should I be attempting to unveil" this. The opposite side of the spectrum is dangerous as well (not venturing into questions ever, because of overly strict moral codes or dogmas).

Interesting to see that an AI researcher holds much the same set of fears I'd expect many computer science type workers to hold. I was expecting a set of counter-culture fears instead of what I consider the "typical" positions.</comment>


How Product Hunt really works - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@benjiwheeler/how-product-hunt-really-works-d8fdcda1da74 <comment><USER2> Nothing can hurt a well-meaning first-time founder of some useful side-project business then to learn that a non-entity like Product Hunt is a rigged game where the inner circle are simply gaming the system for their friends and people whom they benefit from and will benefit.

From "top 3% of coders" to "your product will get 1st spot if you scratch our back with a small slice of the pie or counter-promote our product with yours" to "we will only invest in you if you get referred through an acquittance of ours", the game surely does feel more rigged each day.

The upper echelons of tech sure does share more similarities with high-finance then they would like to admit...

<comment><USER3> Does it feel more rigged because it is becoming more rigged or because the level of rigging that already exists in the ecosystem is becoming more visible?

<comment><USER4> It's pure deception. PH presents as egalitarian and meritocratic, but that's clearly horseshit. We need the right person to build a more transparent and credible alternative. They've straight-up lost me as a daily visitor.

<comment><USER5> > PH presents as egalitarian and meritocratic, but that's clearly horseshit.

From my experiences, Product Hunt is largely a byproduct of a greater scene in which this is very often the case. It is one of the things I dislike most about Silicon Valley, and is something I have tried hard to make sure I can avoid in some way or another. I have been better or worse at it at different times.

There appears to be a strong component of success-by-networking in the tech industry that I have tried to opt out of, largely because I am afraid that if I get too deep into the networking games, I will begin to lose an objective sense of what I can accomplish technically, and no longer be able to personally calibrate for myself whether or not my work can stand successfully on its own. I bought into a lot of the rhetoric of the endless meritocracy early on, and found the wizard behind the curtain is still often based upon the ol' boys club. Deciding to take this approach has probably hurt my career as a developer in many ways.

This type of stuff is why I have been afraid for years to contribute to sites like Hacker News, even though I have been lurking on this site for five or six years. It's a weird situation for an introvert, to want to be able to contribute to a community I have extracted so much value from, in hopes of adding some back to it in whatever way I can, but also being somewhat terrified of getting absorbed into the echo chamber.

<comment><USER6> Isn't PH just another example of the typical business cycle? Found a startup, get big, get bought out/go public, turn into crap, then another startup is founded to attempt to dethrone you, repeat ad infinitum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Speaking of "PH is rigged by insiders," it's worth noting that a "top user" is _selling a book_ on how to best pander to the PH userbase: [http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00TP3MFHE/ref=mp_s_a_1_5?qid=...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00TP3MFHE/ref=mp_s_a_1_5?qid=1450208665&sr=8-5&pi=AC_SX220_SY330_QL65&keywords=product+hunt+book&dpPl=1&dpID=416S3qelIKL&ref=plSrch)

This is an odd racket, to say the least.

Re/code wrote a relevant article a few months back ([http://recode.net/2015/06/18/product-hunt-the-startup- kingma...](http://recode.net/2015/06/18/product-hunt-the-startup-kingmaker- faces-charges-of-elitism/)) about Product Hunt elitism, which I was interviewed for and the response from the PH team to the article was essentially "haters gonna hate." It's disappointing that nothing has changed since then, and arguably, things have gotten worse.

<comment><USER8> What is a shame about it is that they had a rare opportunity in that they actually had traction and buzz around PH.

If they had taken a different attitude and truly tried to make it THE launch platform, they could have done amazing things. They could have democratized a big chunk of it, and still had promoted positions that could generate revenue for them.

<comment><USER9> PH can feel a lot like a popularity contest and a SV insider's club, not like a democratization of launch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hacker News is a long-running, open, inclusive startup community that is subsidized by a related business, doesn't sell anything, and has proven time and again to do things good for the entire startup community.

Product Hunt is a new, closed, exclusive startup community run by a for-profit company that will eventually have to start selling you something.

Not sure why people complain about PH so much... just don't use it. There already is a perfectly good community of startup people out there that has much more incentive to stay "pure" than a for-profit one. Sure, HN isn't perfect, but fundamentally it is always going to be better than any for-profit communities.

(And also this obligatory comment: If you want to build a successful company, stop wasting your time browsing startup communities and spend your time talking with users and building your product)

<comment><USER11> Stripe insiders have been leaking sales numbers and fraud numbers of stripe merchants to the press lately. (Without permission from the merchants).

None of those articles have been successful on Hacker News, despite the fact that they are materially important to many of our businesses. (When and why are businesses metrics and Stripe support emails leaked to the press? Was that against company policy? Has the issue that caused it been addressed?)

[http://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/steal-a-credit- card-...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/steal-a-credit-card-buy-a- hoverboard)

<comment><USER12> (Stripe's CEO here.) It is  _emphatically_  against our policy. The employee involved was identified before the article was published and they no longer work at Stripe.

<comment><USER13> Why do we not know who he is? Is it not a crime in the US to leak/steal data and leak it to third parties?

You've released this scumbag back into the pool to continue his shenanigans elsewhere.

You've covered your ass, and now he's someone else's problem, right?

<comment><USER14> My guess would be they are covering their bases legally.

I have heard several stories from small business owners who fire an employee who was stealing or committing some other crime, but they don't actively tell anyone who calls for a reference because they don't want to open themselves up to legal issues.

Even if Stripe can prove that the person did this, potential lawsuits could be incredibly distracting and expensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Below is a mail I sent in response to a Recode article in June about Product Hunt. Summary : horribly elitist and what the Valley should avoid becoming.

I'm almost never harsh to a fellow founder but I thank God Ryan Hoover doesn't weild much influence. Wrong hands to expect equity or fairness.

\--

Hi Carmel,

I'm following up with you about your post on PH.

Summary,

There is insane bias towards outsiders of the club. Here is my case in point.

I submitted my startup [https://callbase.co](https://callbase.co) up to FIVE times and it was never approved. However aircall.io a competitor has made the front page TWICE in that period.

Of course having a handle @OoTheNigerian does not help :D

As at the time my second submission was being rejected, Mattermark's Newsletter was making the front-page as a product (1 of 5 [http://www.producthunt.com/tech/mattermark-4#!/s/posts/matte...](http://www.producthunt.com/tech/mattermark-4#!/s/posts/mattermark)). Yup, ridiculous. (i have absolutely nothing against the great work Danielle is doing).

This is one of several.

I sent Ryan (copied) a stongly worded email after several ignored ones and he "offered" to allow mine through on a weekend. Lol.

This is just a case in point how hard outsiders (I live in Lagos, Nigeria) find it in the quest for success. Silicon Valley is a meritocracy but you have to be seen first to be considered. No?

Of course, it is his platform and can do whatever he wants with it. However, it should be clear to him what he is doing. Perpetuating the cycle of the powerful being more powerful.

It would be nice to see the demographic representation of his all powerful voting clique.

After reading this Ryan may (or not after seeing this) now go posting about us when we may be asleep or not ready.

Great write up BTW!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Interested in your thoughts, HN. I tried to write from a place of compassion and not be all haterating.

<comment><USER16> Matter-of-fact writing and great images. Very well done.

And I think you've just made Product Hunt insiders a lot more popular...

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Surely if your app's sole source of success is a spending a short amount of time on some website's front page, you have bigger issues with your business strategy?

Go back a few years and everyone used to talk about their struggles getting featured on TechCrunch; I didn't believe it was make-or-break back then either.

<comment><USER18> He is just pointing that game is rigged and a lot of articles promote how egalitarian everything is, how it is meritocracy. As someone also pointed out, there is somewhat similar thing here as well, just, I feel it is more clear what is happening.

Yes, it is like TechCrunch :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The only time I ever hear about Product Hunt is in the once- in- a- blue- moon posts like this I see about it on HN.

Do people take PH seriously?

<comment><USER20> It reminds me of TechCrunch some years back. A Silicon Valley echo chamber perceived as a gateway to success, with a heavy emphasis on an initial "launch" bump. Maybe helpful for getting investor attention and media coverage within that techie bubble, but not so much for building a sustainable customer base. Product Hunt is the same but with a thicker veneer of openness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I am so happy to read this article and I commend Ben Wheeler on bringing it to light. I had written a similar article in July but did not publish it as I was promoting a new version of my site. I was afraid to speak out because I believed it would hurt my chances of getting funded. I should have gone with my convictions. I have now published it. [1]

Ryan Hoover has not only outsourced VC product discovery, he has outsourced its class system too. It's incredibly disheartening to be outside the loop, trying to get your product noticed, and submitting it to what you think is a free system only to have other products by well-connected insiders block it out.

When I saw Hoover and Jason Calacanis congratulating each other on Twitter I knew immediately what was going on. Despite multiple emails, Hoover wouldn't even give me access so I could comment on competing products. I'm glad this is coming back to bite him and his investors too -- they went along with it.

I don't expect anything to change because sites are a reflection of the personality of the people who run them and Hoover has already shown he is completely corrupt. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

[1][http://newslines.org/blog/the-new- gatekeeper/](http://newslines.org/blog/the-new-gatekeeper/)

<comment><USER10> None of these people are bosses or gatekeepers!

Even if I gave you a magical power where anytime you wanted your site would simultaneously be posted on Techcrunch, #1 on HN and #1 on Product Hunt, it probably would make no difference in your success or failure. The bosses and gatekeepers are the people that try your product once, and decide if it is better than the 500 things they are already doing in their lives.

You can spend your whole life getting caught up in the perceived unfairness of it all, but that isn't going to help your company become any more successful. The tech press (and quite a few startup communities) are sirens that call you in and try to sabotage you in every way possible. Just ignore them, or at least minimize how much they are affecting your mental state.

<comment><USER22> The tech press affects primarily two things:

(1) Your ability to raise early-stage funding

(2) Your ability to hire engineering & product talent

Getting these two things won't guarantee success, nor will not getting these things preclude it. But there is a pretty strong correlation when you try to scale.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I was initially really excited to learn about Product Hunt and what it meant to the existing ecosystem: Diversity.

An independent contender in the war for eyeballs/voice in the hacking/tech/entrepreneurship community -- how exciting! I would imagine while their motivations might be similar to what YC wants with HN (distribution, influence), they could possibly open up and serve new members in the ecosystem that aren't, can't, or don't want to be a part of the HN/YC pipeline.

Building a working group of heterogenous independent sources to serve new and exciting topics is important to breaking out of the echo chamber we so often create for ourselves within tech. I was hoping Product Hunt could bootstrap the entire venture, stay clean, and true to the spirit of a meritocracy.

Then they went through YC, and now I see the same "influencers" there as I do here, with the same system in place to promote their own vested interests. It just makes me slightly sad that the pressures of succeeding create collusion among players in this market, thereby perhaps obscuring the potential for new/interesting/different emergent technologies/startups to thrive.

Among my peers, over time PH has become less of a community set out to serve the good of the people, and instead has become more of a pipeline for quick sales or testing new ideas, leaving a feeling of what can only be described previously as the "Tech Crunch of Initiation".

Product Hunt has essentially supplanted Tech Crunch in the YC/TC relationship of yesteryear, albeit to an even more perilous extent. Products are no longer vetted by working professional journalists, whose obligation should be to the consumer and not the producer, but rather by the very product's investors, advisors, and "insiders".

We therefore must ask what is the value-add here? Is it truly a wonder that it proves marginal, and perhaps even detrimental, to the long term success of the startup community as a whole?

</comment><comment><USER24> I don't visit Product Hunt much, but I do follow their founder on Twitter.

He seems like a super well-intentioned person, so I'm surprised to read all of the commentary here on HN. Am I being duped by some Product Hunt scam that I'm completely oblivious to?

<comment><USER25> No one starts out intending to build a corrupt ecosystem. But when money and it's proxies ( attention, publicity, buzz, etc. ) are flowing around the incentives shift.

The people Product Hunt tapped with editorial control were given that power because PH thought they would best serve the needs of their audience that way.

And like most such networks it starts off as a relatively egalitarian deal, but rapidly accrues winners and barriers to later entrants.

The lesson here is that if the existing networks are closed to you, then you should go ahead and build your own.

And then someday you too can be accused of being an evil mastermind ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Startup founders care way too much about getting featured on HN, PH, TechCrunch etc. If you look at the successful startups of that last few years ([http://techcrunch.com/unicorn-leaderboard/](http://techcrunch.com/unicorn- leaderboard/)) many of them were successful before they were even noticed by the technorati. Unless your product is specifically targeted to these people, you are wasting your time.

</comment><comment><USER27> I had a similar experience and I guess I am naive because I did let it bother me.

Someone submitted my site to PH a couple months ago, it got up-voted 20+ times in that "upcoming" area but never was moved to the front page. I believe it ended that first day with more up-votes than some of the products that were featured.

I reached out to the PH guys on twitter and they told me to get more people to vote for it or something to that effect. I noticed a few of products jumping straight to the front page without the upcoming purgatory.

I have read a number of comments writing these issues off to the fact that PH is a "for profit" company. I think that is a bit too jaded an opinion to have no expectations for this to ever be different. My understanding is that Reddit does not suffer these same issues. I think a for-profit venture could actually benefit greatly by being transparent. I think it would take founders that are looking further down the road than the PH guys appear to be and not getting caught up in the immediate gratification of glad-handing and being part of an 'inner elite.'

Full disclosure, I still look at PH pretty regularly. :-p

</comment><comment><USER28> It always surprises me when people get bent out of shape when they learn that blogs and forums are rigged to favor a certain group of people. There's A LOT of money to be had and if you think places like Product Hunt, Reddit, HN, etc. aren't all being rigged in some way, you're naive.

<comment><USER7> There are ways to optimize submissions to Reddit/Hacker News for upvotes, yes. (and I've done a _lot_ of research on both services.) However, I would say that neither is _rigged_ ; that is, moderators don't control what is seen on the front page. (Although in the case of HN, moderators have bumped up good posts which have not been upvoted, which is a positive intervention)

Product Hunt, as noticed in the article, _requires_ shennanigans to be successful. The real problem here is that PH presents itself as a meritocracy when it really isn't, and it has mislead naive entrepreneurs into thinking a given product is "good" when it truly isn't.

<comment><USER29> Correction: HN mods often flag posts down. Almost on a very regular basis. They do this for the larger good.

<comment><USER7> No, those are mostly by users. And in the case where an article is falsely flagged to death, the new vouch system corrects that.

<comment><USER20> I thought the "vouch" system only applied to dead things. Is that not correct?

<comment><USER30> You can only vouch once something has become flagged, but then it works against the flags. (and if only a few users have flagged a post, it is likely to become unflagged by that)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Apparently I'm not cynical enough, because I was surprised by this. Does Reddit's front page work the same way?

<comment><USER7> No. Reddit's front page ranking has no hidden metagaming from the mods. (The most they can do is hide it)

<comment><USER32> Which is probably why certain topics get swiftly disappeared from the front page. Although I'm sure there is/was work underway on tools to automate this.

<comment><USER7> Most large subreddits run AutoModerator to pre-filter submissions.

In terms of submissions getting to the front page and disappearing, that's a different issue entirely than insider privilege (namely, highly selective rule enforcement). The subreddit /r/undelete captures these incidents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> PH is more like a collaboratively edited magazine where the founders have selected a large group of friends to act as a top level filtration system for "products".

Mostly what they're selecting for is "is this of interest to our audience" \- of which said audience is currently mostly free tech / designery / social type things (even as they start to add more categories).

While it's nice to be featured, it's quite unlikely to bring you a large amount of traffic and/or signups. A submission to a decent sized sub-reddit will likely drive 2x the traffic that ProductHunt will, a submission to BetaList more signups and a front page HN post 10x.

If there's a reason to get featured it's to try and get some feedback from the community (if they're your audience) as they tend to be quite helpful.

<comment><USER34> While HN certainly drives a decent amount of traffic (usually), I doubt that it will drive 10x the number of sign-ups as a PH submission, particularly if it's more to the design/social bent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I think Product Hunt merely reflects the way things work in SV. SV is not a "meritocracy". Really shitty ideas get funded and acqui-hired all the time based on insider connections. You think Marissa bought Polyvore for $230 million because it was a rocket ship?

<comment><USER36> yes - Polyvore had massive fanbase north of 25m monthly users

<comment><USER35> And how much revenue were those users generating? Of what strategic importance was it to Yahoo? How are they getting a return on $230 million?

<comment><USER37> Probably way more than something like Mailbox bought by Dropbox, but no one here would say that's a bad idea because most HN users understand mail clients but not a fashion social network

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> The solution to this is easy. Don't visit Product Hunt or treat it as having so much value. It won't make or break a product.

</comment><comment><USER39> I had never heard of Product Hunt. If I had heard of it, in the absence of information to the contrary, I would have assumed it was corrupt.

It appears in this instance my general cynicism of all-things-Marketed is confirmed.

But what would an alternative world look like? Is the industry trapped in some product placement local minimum?

What if we could trust online reviews by default? Would the same industry make more money or less, or would it just go to different people?

Often, defenders of invasive advertising say "it informs people of products which are relevant to their interests". Shouldn't then advertisers promote integrity in their other Marketing venues as well?

</comment><comment><USER40> I've had three products I wanted to push on PH and since I'm not in anyone's inner-circle / e-friend I was promptly told I had to find someone who was in order to gain access.

It's like a boy's club where they pass around the neighborhood bike for everyone to ride, only to find another one after they're all done riding it.

Even more so, I've seen more "here's a landing page, we haven't even a git repo yet, just trying to validate the idea, so give us your email" shit on PH than I would on Reddit.

</comment><comment><USER41> In my experience, the OP is correct about one thing, it's waste of time to post on upcoming on PH. However this is nothing compared to how opaque Hacker News is. If your product is novel enough and reach out to these "insiders" beforehand (or even afterhand), I don't think you have trouble getting to the front page on PH, whereas on HN I see tons of people reaching front page by asking for upvotes from friends. The only difference is PH is--ironically-- transparent about its opaqueness, whereas HN is opaque about its transparentness. To elaborate, on hacker news everything looks transparent, and to certain degree it is (you can find the raw stream under "new" tab), but the ones that reach the front page are not always there because 100% of the community decided so, there are many hidden things going on in the background that most people don't even know. Whereas all you need to do to get featured on PH is to reach out to these "insiders", to guarantee you reach front page on HN you need to get people to upvote you. I feel that PH is much more democratic than HN since everyone gets same chance whereas on HN the people with already existing audience wins.

<comment><USER7> Asking for upvotes does not work on HN, and using shennanigans like mass voting from /newest doesn't work either. (the points register but they will not be used for ranking)

Product Hunt, in fairness, has the same do-not-ask-for-upvotes clause in their FAQ, but given the amount of people blatantly asking for upvotes on Twitter ([https://twitter.com/search?q=product%20hunt%20upvote&s=typd](https://twitter.com/search?q=product%20hunt%20upvote&s=typd)) I am doubtful that policy is actually enforced. It's free publicity, after all.

<comment><USER41> Yes theoretically it shouldn't work, but I see it work everyday, you just need to email your friends and tell them not to visit the direct link but go to the front page and find your post and upvote. But anyway my point was exactly this, most people aren't even aware of this "black magic" going on in the background, which is worse than the process being opaque. Because at least on product hunt people know how to hack their way into being featured whereas on hacker news most people don't even realize it's possible. Also my point was not just about asking for upvotes. I was trying to point out how on hackernews if you already have an audience--say your email newsletter subscribers or blog readers--it is likely that your post will go up to the front page. Therefore newbies regardless of how great content they have don't get to play on level field as already famous people. What I found great about PH was you are judged by what you build, not your existing reputation. I'm not saying HN is more corrupt or anything than PH. PH is better at this since HN is more general purpose whereas PH is just about products.

<comment><USER42> > _Yes theoretically it shouldn 't work, but I see it work everyday_

I'm pretty sure this is not true (certainly the method you mention doesn't work), but if you think you know counterexamples, please send them to firstname.lastname@example.com. We have put a ton of work into counteracting promotional voting a.k.a. voting rings, and genuine counterexamples (i.e. voting rings that defeated our software) are super valuable to us.

<comment><USER41> Can you give a transparent answer to this scenario?: Let's say I posted a "Show HN". I would email my friends who are HN users, telling them "hey guys i posted something on hacker news, please go to the front page, find a post titled __* and upvote! " I just can't think of a robust way to detect this.

<comment><USER42> I'm pretty sure that doesn't work. But obviously I can't tell you why, or people would soon start getting around it.

Again, eager for counterexamples if anyone knows of any.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> One of my products was featured on product hunt in it's early days (no idea who submitted it). I remember thinking then - "well, cool, but people looking for new products are not really my target market."

Has anyone seen any value come from PH?

<comment><USER44> The only thing that bothers me about PH is one of my products was one of the most upvoted products of all time there in the early days, but I didn't submit it. It would likely get that status again (it's quite popular among the PH type crowd) if posted now when they have 100x the audience, but it can't be posted again. I find that unfortunate, HN lets you repost links after some period of time I believe for 2.0 releases, etc.

<comment><USER41> I am pretty sure you can resubmit to PH when you have a new version, especially if you had a great run with your first version.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> What someone should do is create a ProductHunt competitor, and geo-block California. Nothing like faux-exclusivity to encourage adoption ;)

</comment><comment><USER46> One thing this article fails to mention is that YC startups automatically get featured on Product Hunt. This probably has to do with the fact that YC invested in Product Hunt.

<comment><USER47> false

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Not to mention that Product Hunt violates their own rules all the time: I see plenty of posts for big companies like Microsoft announcing products that aren't available yet (e.g. Hololens, Windows 10 before it came out, etc), even though their FAQ explicitly states that the product has to be available to the public at the time of posting.

Really what should tip people off even more is the inability to comment. If the viewers of the site can't actually interact, since commenting is only allowed for "approved" users, they should realize that the whole thing is just a scam.

See any ads on Product Hunt? See any monetization strategies? Oh wait, the whole website is an ad, and only those in the know or those who pay will get featured.

</comment><comment><USER49> It's interesting to read all these comments about PH over a year after previous posts (0,1) about PH's transparency. @rrhoover's comments are especially interesting as they indicate that PH is interested in moving to a more open and democratic (and diverse) promotion platform. Over two years later, it seems its still moving in the wrong direction.

0 - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7980403](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7980403)

1 - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8047647](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8047647)

</comment><comment><USER50> This really feeds into my cynical attitude and sentiment that we are part of a rigged system. I've been trying to stay positive about technology and startups, but honestly it is everywhere. Tech news, advertising, fundraising, hiring.

Finance and the stock market is rigged the same way. A select few (the rich) get inside info, reporters and analyst write and give positive/negative spin on companies and profit, traders screw their customers, it is everywhere. Different market, same behavior.

<comment><USER51> Pay into honest systems then. Why feed something you know is rigged?

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Hoover et al can build their product however they want, just be honest and consistent.

Looking through old threads I found this cracker of a post in reply to Ryan about their "anti voter ring policy" \- which his tweet seems to counteract. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9932641](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9932641)

<comment><USER42> Ryan has asked me about voting ring detection more than once, so I know that he cares about this stuff. It's also the sort of problem that changes a great deal as a community grows, so older statements may no longer apply.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Startup advisors regularly take stakes in the full %'s? Since when? We have tons of advisors none of them have ever asked for a stake.

<comment><USER53> This was an odd assertion in the article. Advisors (excluding those who are also investors) often get some shares, but several percent is ludicrously high for just advice. The expected number is probably closer to 0.1%.

<comment><USER44> I can imagine a point for a highly active advisors pre-launch who has certain deliverables, but only then and definitely not more than a point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I've been visiting HN daily for 4 years. I've never heard of Product Hunt. Is it actually that big of a deal? I'm sure it's been on the front page here and I've missed it. But apparently not all that often?

Or maybe this is a case where now that I know the name I'll see it everywhere. Funny how that works sometimes...

</comment><comment><USER55> I feel like its a mistake to hide content behind "see all" and arrow right buttons. I feel like people look at what is shown to them and they are willing to scroll down but far fewer people are likely to go to the trouble of pressing a right arrow or "see all" button.

</comment><comment><USER56> So in other words, the same way everything in the "startup" world works: It's who you know.

</comment><comment><USER57> Hate everywhere, for a change...

I don't get why people think PH owes them in any way. Yes, it's all about curation. But yes, anyone could post there, provided they have a good product and they socialize a bit.

And this is what this is about. To me, PH is a social network for founders. They show off their project, discuss it and get feedback.

To all the people blaming how it's not egalitarian: would you create a twitter account, avoid engaging with anyone, then complain nobody is following you?

The same applies than in any social network: if you want people to get interested in what you're doing, start with being interested in what they're doing, and chat, a lot.

</comment><comment><USER58> This is how I think Shark Tank and Dragon's Den work too. The "sharks" all parade their new products on TV under the guise of entertainment, and throw in a couple silly/heartwarming ideas and people.

<comment><USER59> Incorrect, at least with Shark Tank. Can't speak to Dragon's Den. I worked for one of the Sharks on their ST accounts. Nothing is staged, it's all regular people who submit their ideas and are selected based on who the network thinks will make for good entertainment (personality, "wow factor" with the product, etc). During filming, the sharks are given an overview of who the person presenting is and what their product is/does. Everything else is organic. The Sharks have no advance knowledge of the products and the deals get made or shut down after due diligence is done after filming.

That's not to say that the sharks don't do a huge dog and pony show of promotion around their products, though.

<comment><USER28> What type of due diligence must a shark or their team do during the show? I imagine these funding offers are just term sheets pending a legit financial review?

<comment><USER59> The due diligence comes after filming. The deals you see on TV are a handshake deal and in my estimation only about 30-40% of them actually end up going through because a lot of founders lie about things like being litigated against, having tax liens on their company, etc. The sharks all have people on staff who sniff these problems out and make sure everything the founders say about their numbers are true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> The "products" that appear in the top placements of Product hunt these days are laughable. They're mostly features, not products.

</comment><comment><USER61> _> That first submission is it ... it will end up on an internal list of products ineligible for future consideration._

This can't be entirely true. I see featured posts on PH that are nothing more than "Version 2" of some previously featured "products". But the links go to the same place.

</comment><comment><USER55> The worst thing about Product Hunt is that I just don't find many of the products very interesting.

Oops having read the article - wow - Payola Hunt! [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola)

</comment><comment><USER62> Yeah, Product Hunt is a curated platform. I think it's always been pretty transparent about this?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Follow-up: Open letter by the fictional "Liam Cooper", or how @ProductHunt might respond to recent criticism.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10745098](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10745098)

</comment><comment><USER63> I've always imagined sites like these are run by a small circle of insiders, who essentially sponsor or promote specific products. I find it hard to believe the promotional buzz and hierarchy of an entry into a site like this completely natural.

</comment><comment><USER64> Does anybody know how to delete a product hunt account?

PS: Apparently you have to email email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER65> How effective is posting something to product hunt really though? I mean, you are basically sharing it to the same silicon valley tech community who live a life very divorced from the majority of people.

</comment><comment><USER66> PH strikes me as a vanity metric. Does it really get you noticed that much?

<comment><USER7> PH is a tautology: in order to get noticed on PH, you need to be noticed by an insider beforehand, which therefore makes the benefit minimal.

The benefit of Reddit/HN is that there's a much higher probability of content that would otherwise not be noticed become viral.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The fact that not many readers will "Recommend" this article on Medium but has 146 upvotes on HN speaks of the circle that Ryan has and pros of the anonymity that HN provides.

</comment><comment><USER67> TL;DR: it's mostly rigged by some users with privileges.

</comment><comment><USER68> And now there's [https://www.openhunt.co/](https://www.openhunt.co/)

</comment><comment><USER49> A lot of anger here for PH, but why not the people that back it? The Angel investors are listed on their site [0].

Are some of these folks so powerful that if you tweeted at them that they're backing a corrupt bro-club you'd lose any chance of funding?

0 - [https://www.producthunt.com/about](https://www.producthunt.com/about)

</comment><comment><USER69> Product hunt is native advertising.

</comment><comment><USER70> So it's not perfect and helps to know someone. Welcome to the real world!

</comment><comment><USER71> The parallels with the whole Digg v4 debacle seem quite pronounced.

</comment><comment><USER72> How Meta is this?

</comment><comment><USER73> I got to be #2 in product hunt featured list few weeks ago. a random dude saw my post here at HN about launching a beta and published it there. no inside connections, no promotions, and unfortunately - no preparations. we got ~5000 visits in a day and didn't really used the spike for anything special. we lost most of the momentum the next few days and when we were ready to better UI/Flow it was too late.

</comment><comment><USER74> I feel the point of PH is not to create a real business in the sense of earning money by selling you a product or service, but rather to establish personal brand equity and influencing power of the management team.

This can be useful for future projects (such as finding funding), to increase their standing in the SV community, and to establish themselves as marquee valley power brokers.

In this sense, it doesn't make much sense to add more transparency and voting control to ordinary users.

This is pure speculation and assumes the worst. So take this with a grain of salt.

<comment><USER42> This crosses the line into personal attack, which breaks the HN guidelines. You couldn't possibly know such things.

Fair critique is fair game. The OP, for example, made an effort to be fair. But comments like this one, that assume the worst about someone and try to paint them in an ugly light, say more about the commenter.

We've detached it from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10740521](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10740521) and marked it off-topic.

<comment><USER74> I've edited my post so that it appears less of a personal attack.

I think my critique is fair, though the delivery could use improvement (hence my edits).

PH is a for-profit company that helps users discover new products, yet controls and hides the process for how voting, submission, etc., work. It's a fair critique to question if the point of PH is to derive value for themselves from establishing themselves as gatekeepers rather than generating value in a more "normal" sense.

Meritocracy, transparency, and fairness are values that are particularly held in high esteem in the valley and here on HN. So I think those who run contrary to this, should be exposed to the harshest of scrutiny.

We need to keep each other honest. RH might construe this as "hating" but I think it's fair game.

<comment><USER42> I appreciate the edit and your polite response, but (if I may say so personally, as opposed to qua moderator) the thrust of what you're saying still feels uncharitable.

I've met Ryan, and my impression was that he's a true enthusiast—he just loves this stuff. And there's strong objective evidence for it too: someone who was primarily interested in building a rigged system for insider gain would never have been able to get a community going in the first place. Real online communities are rare. It takes a believer to start one.

As for PH now, I don't know any details, but from other experience I can guarantee you that the challenges in getting it right are (a) harder and (b) different than one would imagine. Reading a thread like this about one's baby (which it's possible Ryan may) is a hard experience, but at least if the criticisms are substantive, you can feed them into your efforts to improve. When someone just seems to be saying mean or generically cynical things, though, that sucks.

<comment><USER74> Thanks for sharing your thoughts and view. I appreciate the feedback and your even-handed moderation.

I don't know Ryan, but I've been observing PH for some time now. My opinions and thoughts are from these observations and those of others in the community.

I'm sure Ryan is a good person, with good intentions. Those good intentions stands in stark contrast to how PH works today. There have been other PH critics and from what I've seen RH has not been super open to those criticisms, and in fact, even going so far as to dismiss any critics as "haters" (which I think is a bit of a mislabel since many of his critics are in fact fans that are just opposed to the lack of transparency).

So I think given, its fair to address these failings. Perhaps I can use nicer language, but I trust that Ryan is a mature adult and can take it.

I do see your point about people saying mean things and how that can hurt, but c'mon, life is not fair or kind or nice. And we're not delicate butterflies.

Putting ourselves out there (to be celebrated and vilified) is part of the very nature of entrepreneurship / creation. I see the problems of suicides and mental health in our community (and I've definitely experienced and am still experiencing it first hand), but being overly cautious in our words to not- offend is not a solution to this problem. Somewhat off-topic but related, South Park this season did a great job of making fun of this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> And since not I nor anybody that I know has ever heard of or used Product Hunt - why do I care?</comment>