HN comments are underrated - <AUTHOR> http://danluu.com/hn-comments/ <comment><USER3> I second Dan's advice of blogging more.

I'm a very average HN commenter. I do put in effort in writing here, trying to be civil above all and sharing my experience where it could be of interest. But I'm not Alan Kay, I've never rewritten a distributed deep learning system in Haskell using a genetically optimized Paxos consensus protocol, and my entrepreneurial experience is a loose string of "don't do this" case studies at best... So my comments certainly won't make anyone's "Best of HN" list.

Last week, after the news broke that Salesforce walked away from buying Twitter, I was about to write a HN comment about what Twitter could do. The text got long enough that I decided to expand it into a Medium post instead: [https://medium.com/swlh/twitter-could-be-the-next- mozilla-e7...](https://medium.com/swlh/twitter-could-be-the-next- mozilla-e788e3bfd841#.x0gbzodo4)

To my surprise, the post has 28,000 views and 755 recommends so far. If I had written it as a HN comment, it would have got maybe 5-10 upvotes and perhaps spawned a short discussion thread about how unrealistic my idea was. (Please don't bother to criticize the content of the blog post in replies here -- I'm just using it as an example of blog vs. comment.)

I love reading HN discussions... But maybe there could be a site that slots between the HN and Medium formats, and lets you expand your comment into a blog post with minimal friction? Call it "HN Long-Form" or whatever. Ideally it would interface with the HN comment system so that you could mark your comment with something like "Promote to long-form" after you've written it. That would create an editable post on the long-form site. You could then later expand your comment there, and publish it on the long-form comment aggregator site. (Maybe I should just build this myself and see if it feels right.)

<comment><USER4> > I'm a very average HN commenter.

An 11k karma is not _average_ IMHO. You're way above average HN commentator.

I think that you just used the _best tool for the job_. That doesn't really mean anything about comments. You read what I consider _low level_ comments and _high level_ comments on technical and social subjects from the SAME nickname all the time at HN.

<comment><USER3> I've been on the site since 2008 IIRC, so I've had plenty of time to accumulate karma.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> On second read, I'm not sure I agree with the first paragraphs of Dan's post at all. He seems to be saying that HN is terrible, but a handful of comments from star posters rise above the muck. I just don't think that's fair.

Yes, the cliché is that HN is a place full of mean, entitled semi-autists who will criticize your site's CSS whitespace formatting when you ask for business feedback... And of course there's a grain of truth to that (persistent stereotypes usually don't come out of thin air), but it misses the mark on two dimensions.

The first is that the criticism you get on HN is no worse than what other aspiring creative professionals suffer. I went to an art and design college, and the critique you'd get from students and even teachers was 99% of the time harsher than the HN style, yet no more guaranteed to be useful.

Consider a first-time novelist who spent years on a book. One day it gets critiqued in a newspaper. The professional critic might find that the author has a clumsy style, poor research, paper-thin characters, and seems to lack the life experience to even write about the topic. What do you do after that kind of criticism? You suck it up and go back to work on the next novel.

Making use of feedback is all about filtering and reducing multiple sources into something actionable. Nobody is right all the time. Your parents were wrong. Your teachers were wrong. Your peers were wrong. Your professors were wrong. Your boss was wrong. Your cofounders were wrong. Your investors were wrong. HN commenters were wrong. Still it's worth taking in all these inputs as much as you can.

The other dimension of HN comments is that they can be surprisingly deep. When an arts or culture topic makes it to the front page, it seems like someone comes out of the woods with the perfect personal anecdote. Whether it's Mondrian, Messiaen or Modiano, there's always someone on HN who happens to have a passion for it.

HN comments are underrated, but it's not just because of star power: it's everyone's contributions that make it consistently worthwhile for me.

<comment><USER5> Comment moved, per request.

<comment><USER6> Is there any reason why you replied to a comment instead of responding to the article? Because as a sub it has little added value to the parent, but as a top level comment I would have liked to see it as the #1 comment.

Edit: for the record, it moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12775905](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12775905)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When I worked with the HN post data, I noticed that some years ago HN users had correctly predicted the "Show HN" projects that later got funding. Those projects had more upvotes.

The more recent data has no such connection. It seems that the influx of users reduced the quality of judgement.

So one way to improve HN submissions and comments is to weight points by the user's tenure on HN.

I also suspect that early comments dominate late comments by the time factor alone. The sorting algo gives a brief advantage to new comments, but old comments are more visible. A post on the front page gets 30+ comments in the first hour, and latecomers can only post into the void. To address that, long branches could be collapsed by default, leaving only 2-4 visible messages per branch.

<comment><USER8> Interesting, but when I upvote Shown HN posts, it's because it contributed to my enjoyment of reading HN. That's largely orthogonal to whether it would be a good product, and often times is directly contradictory towards it (fun tech demos -> upvotes, products -> meh). I don't think that's a decline in the quality of HN, it's just a different focus. I use HN as entertainment rather than as a prediction market. But I can see that others would not like the shift.

<comment><USER9> Yes. And the analysis could be improved by coding each submission according to its intended status as a cool toy or a side project. I bet that as HN has grown we're seeing more toys and less startup projects on Show HN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> HN comments are full of naive political opinion, groupthink, and a tendency to blind optimism on all things technology or new. Often older ways have merit too.

It's also probably the only place left on the net where, from comments, I'll find out rapidly, and bluntly with citations, when I'm wrong (and, yes I'm often wrong on the Internet!), usually learn something new on the topic, and sometimes talk with the guy who invented it. My ADHD brain loves the depth that side topics can get explored and being surrounded by people far cleverer than me.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

<comment><USER11> >I'll find out rapidly, and bluntly with citations, when I'm wrong (and, yes I'm often wrong on the Internet!), usually learn something new on the topic

If you stay off the default subreddits and only go on the intellectual/debate subreddits, then I honestly think reddit is better for this. The amount of expertise on reddit is astounding. It's very easy to find someone to rigorously challenge any view I have. I'd go so far as to say that it's the smartest place on the internet (except for maybe places like MathOverflow and some other specialty blogs/forums). They do have a natural advantage because of their huge userbase.

<comment><USER12> Business startup ideas are essentially experiments in economic theory.

Yet HN comments are vastly inferior to Reddit's when regarding anything to do with economics.

It didn't used to be this way, and I kind of miss the HN of old... where logic and fearlessness were valued more than affiliation or keeping up of brand appearances. I've been finding it increasingly disconcerting that the incentive here lately has been to discredit or silence (bury) comments from anybody whose opinion points out something like: yeah -- Airbnb's "business model" might be creating way more more problems than it's claiming to solve. Or that collusion in and among YC-funded companies might (or maybe should) yield some Antitrust issues. The tech commentary can be pretty good, and there are plenty of active HNers whose opinions I respect. However, it is leaning heavy on becoming selection-biased and just plain mean to anybody with an original idea.

<comment><USER13> Reddit is a swamp of filth wrt economics comments.

Basically all the subreddits except /r/academiceconomics, /r/badeconomics, /r/econpapers are awful. I'm friends with the mods of /r/economics and they have a really hard time reigning in the masses of ideologues (on all sides) ruining what should remain pure economics discussions.

<comment><USER14> Reddit and HN make an interesting comparison. Reddit's highs are _really_ high, far higher than HN's, often skirting the level of "so good as to be newsworthy". But Reddit's lows --- and I don't mean trolling and harassment, I mean the lower bounds of normal conversation there --- are much lower. I think the median HN comment is better, by a lot, than the median Reddit comment.

I think you can extend the same judgement out to entire threads --- the best Reddit threads being so much better than HN's that it's hard to even imagine what HN could do differently to compete, and the median HN thread being better than the median Reddit thread.

Another interesting thing is that the comparison would probably fall apart completely if not for the heavily-moderated subreddits that produce the best comments. If the Reddit comment cohorts included only the lightly moderated subreddits, HN would probably win on all metrics other than volume and diversity of topics.

<comment><USER15> While I still think HN probably has the better median, the quality of what you're exposed to on reddit is mostly up to you. Ditch the defaults and Reddit's median skyrockets. Ditch some of the more popular non-defaults, it skyrockets some more. Start building a list of well-moderated subreddits with a strong sense of community, and it jumps some more.

Not that you're doing this with your comment, but it has always struck me as odd to treat reddit like it's a single website with a single experience for all users. Yes, there's a base, universal experience, but it's truly up to the user to tailor that experience into what they want. You want memes and fart jokes? There are subs for that. You want to look at breathtaking photos? There are (poorly named) subs for that. You want to discuss why obscure Warcraft character A is behaving so oddly toward Warcraft character B? There's a sub for that. To me, that will always be Reddit's strength.

No matter what reputation it gets, no matter how much shit goes on in the defaults, there's always my little specialty subreddits filled with meaningful content to consume.

<comment><USER14> So that's the obvious response, and I agree, I think --- the comparison does get trickier if you take just, say, AskHistorians versus HN (there are casual Redditisms condoned even on well-moderated subreddits that are annoying enough to keep the comparison tricky).

But if you compare the basket of subreddits relevant to HN --- programming, crypto, etc --- right now, I feel like HN is winning handily. Reddit only starts crushing HN when you broaden out into topics that aren't really in HN's bailiwick.

<comment> Ar-Curunir I find /r/crypto much better than HN for crypto discussions; you have more than one crypto person there ( as opposed to essentially just you).

<comment><USER16> AFAIK HN has more than one qualified crypto persons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think HN needs a way to easily find the top comments. There are absolute gems deep in discussion threads, but you'll need to spend a lot of time reading to find them. Hence, it's very nice of Dan Luu to list some of his favorites.

The top root-level comment for each comment page is obviously easy to see, but good comments deeper in the comment tree are easily lost. Would be great if e.g. the top 5% voted comments on a page were highlighted in some way.

Perhaps a workable solution would be to just follow the comments listing of smart people. Guess I'll at least try that.

<comment><USER18> I swear there was a way to show top voted comments but I can't find it now.

<comment><USER19> [https://news.ycombinator.com/lists](https://news.ycombinator.com/lists)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments](https://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments)

<comment><USER14> The problem with /bestcomments is that it's based on votes, and thus does not in fact track the best comments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Removing the vote count was a step back.

You end up with highly positioned comments that are factually wrong and no way to weigh the corrections made in replies.

If you saw that a comment had 20 votes, but a reply had 500, you'd have something to go by. If nothing else, they could show the relative score of a reply to its parent.

<comment><USER21> How about just reading and evaluating what the damn words say instead of relying on a "score"?

<comment><USER20> Because there are a lot of topics, even in my professional field, where I don't have the necessary foundation.

Because sometimes a comment reaffirms or conflicts with my evaluation and it's useful to have a weight assigned to that.

Because the world has enough people who make their own evaluation and refuse to change their opinion regardless of overwhelming evidence.

<comment><USER22> > _Because there are a lot of topics, even in my professional field, that I > simply don 't have the necessary foundation._

And what makes you think that the "majority vote" on them will be correct?

Most often, it's the majority that doesn't have the necessary foundation.

<comment><USER20> It's not an all-or-nothing. It's an extra piece of information.

There might be valid reasons to remove it (it hurts the community, it leads to negative behavior, .... I forget why they took it off).

But when it comes to trying to assess the quality of the comment, more data is better than less. Then you have the option to weigh it as you see fit, including ignoring it.

<comment><USER23> >It's not an all-or-nothing. It's an extra piece of information...But when it comes to trying to assess the quality of the comment, more data is better than less.

It could be an extra piece of _disinformation_ , which can make it more difficult to evaluate.

I suppose I'd like it if there was no way to sort. What happens on Reddit is that such comments easily bubble to the top, and they're often wrong, or just making a silly joke rather than being informative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I really think the author is onto something here.

Recently I've been thinking about doing a couple blog posts that summarize the HN thread for a given article* in perhaps ~1500 words. I think of it like the approach that r/tabled uses for AMAs on Reddit (example: [1]).

Would others find this interesting, or would you rather just read the comments yourself?

A second idea is — a daily / weekly update of comments from all of the people you're interested in "following" on HN. You can do this very manually right now. I think it could be an interesting proof of concept.

*When I say one article, I really mean the aggregate of recent links around that topic as discussions are often merged or commenters bring information from other sources into the commentary for whichever link takes off on that topic. Often that is the most original source, but not always.

[1]: [https://www.reddit.com/r/tabled/comments/4lh4t1/table_iama_i...](https://www.reddit.com/r/tabled/comments/4lh4t1/table_iama_i_am_david_belk_im_a_doctor_who_has/)

<comment><USER25> I did this once:

[http://jacquesmattheij.com/how-to-sell-your- company](http://jacquesmattheij.com/how-to-sell-your-company)

It's still one of the most visited pages.

<comment><USER24> This looks excellent, and _very_ thorough. Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I absolutely love comments on HN and they are probably the main reason I read this site a lot. Some times, the posts themselves are quite self-explanatory from the title and I just go straight to the discussions.

I created a little site called HackerNews Club

[http://hackernews.club](http://hackernews.club)

Where you can easily search for user's submissions and comments. FYI, here's Dan's comments :)

[http://hackernews.club/luu#search/52e35e01f172df6d183c59633c...](http://hackernews.club/luu#search/52e35e01f172df6d183c59633ce86089ad66cece)

And HN users ordered by the number of comments they have made.

[http://hackernews.club/#search/39a2159841122c713bf4324d6f9de...](http://hackernews.club/#search/39a2159841122c713bf4324d6f9de7fbb98cfcd1)

<comment><USER27> Seconded. I too love HN comments. Overall, my perception is that HN has reasonably non-clickbaity articles with a good blend of tech and non-tech. The comments I find largely pertinent, overwhelmingly constructively critical, with FAR fewer trolls, flames and biased voting than any other public forum on the internet I've ever come across since the original Usenet days. In fact, it reminds me very much of good ol' Compuserve (there's nothing like having to pay REAL money for a subscription to curb bad behaviour).

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> You post a list of the best comments on HN without putting The Wisdom of Bane on the list?

Seriously, how did The Wisdom of Bane not make it one here? That is one of the best comments on all of HN.

For the uninitiated: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8902739](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8902739)

<comment><USER29> Aww shucks. Thanks for the shout out.

I realize reading this again that I owe a more significant writeup -- I started one not long after this and wasn't happy with how it was shaping up. Maybe I'll have another go at it.

Since writing that comment two years ago I've added a couple more examples consistent with the ones in the original post.

One thing I keep seeing is how teams seem to think that the planning stage of this kind of work involves figuring out how to shove the problem into the big- data platform du jour instead of figuring out how to solve the problem that has the business need. When they're working with the platform, and hitting the inevitable and unplanned for performance issues (because, you know, just shove the node to the hadoop cluster and it'll magically take care of that), the solutions never tackle the algorithmic bottlenecks but instead seem to focus on messing with the platform or changing platforms, or changing run-time languages or throwing more hardware at it.

If you are having trouble taking the nuts off your wheel to change a tire, using a bigger hammer or a blow torth isn't going to help. Take the time to find the wrench, of the right size, and then things will work much better.

<comment><USER28> I mean, you get shoutouts every day. Thanks for responding to this one.

>One thing I keep seeing is how teams seem to think that the planning stage of this kind of work involves figuring out how to shove the problem into the big- data platform du jour instead of figuring out how to solve the problem that has the business need.

Ahhh yes. The "when X is your hammer" problem.

In this context, I think the appropriate incarnation is, "When Hadoop is your hammer, everything looks like 1000 nails to be hit very quickly, using brute force."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> These criticisms, when phrased in the manner of the post ("HN is full of mean and rude people"), suggest by omission that there's some kind of internet forum Nirvana out there where everyone's nice all the time and nobody every says mean things or is rude. ("HN is full of mean and rude people [... unlike place X, which is always great all the time]")

But the thing is, once a community reaches a mid-to-large size, certain kinds of people will always going to think it's full of jerks and trolls, and that its golden age has long passed--regardless of the community's age or actual composition.

I run one of the largest online writing communities online, Scribophile. We've been around going on 9 years and I personally pride myself on the reputation we've earned as being a friendly and supportive community. By and large people seem to agree. And yet every now and then we still get people complaining that Scrib members are out to get them, that everyone is mean, that Scrib's golden age has passed. (I started hearing that same golden age comment about 6 months in, by the way).

I think the truth is more like the faceless, voiceless, anonymous internet makes it really easy for people to both a) be jerks, and b) misinterpret harmless posts as people being jerks. I think this phenomenon happens in every mid-to-large sized community, ever. And I don't think it's really helpful to criticize any community of that size as having nothing but mean people, or trending towards meanness.

<comment><USER31> Uh, did you read his second paragraph?

> And yet, I haven't found a public internet forum with better technical > commentary.

<comment><USER32> I don't think they're mutually exclusive opinions. HN could be seen as mean or rude just as it can be technically correct -- and sometimes at the same time. The original post also acknowledges that there's been an effort to reduce negative comments in the past few years.

<comment><USER31> I read danluu's first two paragraphs as making the argument that "comments on HN are bad, but better than comments on any other online community", instead of as trying to distinguish between meanness and technical correctness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I often find my self searching through old HN comments for all kinds of things. Just off the top of my head I've searched for comments on: Redis, ZFS, Raft, SQS, ZMQ, message queue, RDS, connection pools, ECS in the last few days. I've learned quite a lot of things from reading comments by people with way more experience in these matters than I have. And that's probably less than half of my searches. A google search might give me some good stuff, and Stack Exchange too, but HN comments are indeed underrated.

<comment><USER34> Indeed. Searching on [https://hn.algolia.com](https://hn.algolia.com) is an integral part of my workflow. When I read an article I often want to see:

a) What did people say about it on HN? Because the comments there are often superior to the comments on the site itself. If there are multiple threads on it separated by years, it's often interesting to read them all and reflect on how opinions of reasonable people have drifted over time.

b) Did I upvote any of the threads? (i.e. Have I read this before?) Did I, perchance, _leave a comment_?

Often this process adds a few more favorites to my list ([https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=akkartik&comments=...](https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=akkartik&comments=t)), which is also growing to be an integral part of my workflow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I think the culture of rejecting joke-only comments is significant. I love a good joke, but so does everybody else. Rewarding jokes would have a major effect on the signal/noise ratio.

<comment><USER36> Maybe have a [jokular] tag and let readers flag a comment as such, then allow [jokular] comments to be hidden for the people who find them noisy.

Edit: this comment deservers the [overengineering] tag...

<comment><USER37> Slashdot has something similar. Moderators' points have to be tagged with "Funny", "Interesting", etc, and users can choose how to weigh each type of point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I prefer cynicism over unthoughtful, inconsequential comments that floods several discussion forums that I have come across. "Nice article", "Great write-up" and the next thing you know, you have created a place where people are only interested in submitting their articles and getting it upvoted rather than make meaningful contributions.

People want to make good contributions here and that's something that differentiates HN from other news aggregators.

<comment><USER39> ".. the measure of a healthy organization is probably the degree to which negative thoughts are allowed. In places where great work is being done, the attitude always seems to be critical and sarcastic, not "positive" and "supportive". The people I know who do great work think that they suck, but that everyone else sucks even more." -- Paul Graham

<comment><USER40> The first bit is true, but the second is pretty much the opposite of what Google found: [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google- learn...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from- its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html)

In particular, Google found that psychological safety is a key component of successful teams.

Indeed, I think in an environment where rudeness is the norm, it's much harder to get people to share negative thoughts. Sure, you'll have a few alpha-dicks who will say whatever shitty thing that comes to mind. But most other people will just keep their lips buttoned because they don't want to deal with critical, sarcastic comments.

If you want real, long-term organizational improvement, you have to create an environment were people are willing to share problems and concerns without fear that they'll get insulted or blamed.

One great example is Toyota's culture of continuous improvement, which helped them go from post-WWII decimation of Japan to the world's dominant carmaker. They're explicit that "respect for people" is foundational. A good book here is Rother's "Toyota Kata", which goes into Toyota's culture and people- management practices.

Another is airplane safety. For its ubiquity and technological complexity, flight is amazingly safe. But this requires a culture of deep, thoughtful honesty. Sidney Dekker's "Field Guide to Human Error" explains how much this depends on creating blame-free contexts, how much it requires a deep respect for people. Without that, people will a) blame others, and b) cover their own asses in an effort to avoid getting blame. That muddies the waters enough that you can never find and fix the systemic problems that caused bad outcomes.

TL;DR: If you really want people to share negative thoughts, you need positive, supportive environments.

<comment><USER41> Nope. Seen both many times. The positive enforcement causes no one to share any negative thoughts after a while and the company smiles it's way out of business.

Unfortunately people who will not speak up out of fear are toxic to company culture. The creative process is immediately destroyed when people need to second guess everything they say or do since it is impossible to know if you are about to say the wrong thing.

If someone can not tolerate cynical and sarcastic comments they need to be removed quickly. This is very different from mean spirited put downs and intentionally hurtful comments.

Stuff like "idk that button looks like it was mad in 2002" or "I swear we have the shittiest parser ever right here". Is good and fine.

"You talk to much", "why did you write it like that? It doesn't make any sense" Are bad.

Notice how the first like says "we" or talks about a specific feature and the others talk about specific people.

<comment><USER42> First your anecdotes are not persuasive compared to two incredibly successful companies and one incredibly successful industry.

Second, you missed the point. It isn't about prohibiting anyone from expressing a negative opinion or sugar-coating things. That's a false dichotomy. It's about not attacking the messenger and not looking to place blame. It also means accepting valid criticism. You can be 100% honest without being an asshole.

Why do so many people (especially in tech) try to link "being a raging asshole" with telling the truth? The two are unrelated.

<comment><USER41> The problem is that many people who are hurt easily by cynical and sarcastic behavior(which is very different than being as asshole) typically take themselves very seriously and it's a sign that they are very self focused and place their own concerns way above those of the team.

I wonder if there is a language barrier but cynical and sarcastic is very very different from putting people down.

<comment><USER43> "The problem is that many people who are hurt easily by cynical and sarcastic behavior(which is very different than being as asshole) typically take themselves very seriously and it's a sign that they are very self focused and place their own concerns way above those of the team."

Please give evidence supporting that claim. What I've seen is a lot of people are just non-confrontational by nature. They'll do a lot to avoid being in a fight. However, they may want to discuss things even with criticisms. It just becomes harmful to them after the conversational style crosses a certain line. Knowing this, groups like Toyota put a line down that allows the negative information to come in without the personal attacks or circumstances that shut many people down. Continuous innovations resulted that dwarfed the competition doing what you suggest. This is not an isolated incident as many innovative companies create similarly respectful environments where everyone tries to improve, either positively or negatively, the process or products without attacking each other.

<comment><USER44> Lots of good discussion in this whole thread. Another thing to keep in mind is that good, effective communication involves both/all parties.

That involves the speaker communicating in a way that will be effectively received by the listener, and the listener actively participating to try to hear what the speaker is trying to communicate. So it's context dependent as well.

There very well can be mismatches and miscommunication, but if the goal is effective communication, I think in a lot of cases these can be tolerated and worked around. Takes both sides.

<comment><USER43> "That involves the speaker communicating in a way that will be effectively received by the listener, and the listener actively participating to try to hear what the speaker is trying to communicate. So it's context dependent as well."

That's a good point. In my classes on it, they called it active listening. Anyone interested in following up on your point should type that phrase into Google to find all kinds of interesting resources appear. Another angle I found interesting was "dang" linking to Principle of Charity:

[http://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html](http://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html)

I think that would've stopped a lot of arguments. I was against enforcing it totally at moderation level as I'm for empirical approach where we do dismiss bad information if it clearly fits the pattern. It's good as a general principle in discussions, though, when one's instinct is to think other party is an idiot on specific topic. A combination of active listening, charitable approach, and follow-up questions can make that discussion much better for both parties. I even learn from people who are clearly wrong about an issue when I see what things matter to such people & can fine-tune my solutions or arguments to reach more people. Other times I'm wrong with similar effect of fine-tuning ideas or beliefs as long as I suck it up. :)

<comment><USER44> Thanks for the Principle of Charity link! It calls to mind Anotol's Rapoport's rules, summarized by Daniel Dennett as:

> How to compose a successful critical commentary:

> * You should attempt to re-express your target's position so clearly, > vividly, and fairly that your target says, "Thanks, I wish I'd thought of > putting it that way.

> * You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not > matters of general or widespread agreement).

> * You should mention anything you have learned from your target.

> * Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or > criticism.

[https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/03/28/daniel-dennett- rapo...](https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/03/28/daniel-dennett-rapoport- rules-criticism/)

Might be too much for every comment response, but good to keep in mind.

I think I've been particularly fascinated by this whole area recently in part because I know it's something I need to improve on. Your point _I even learn ... suck it up. :)_ is spot on.

Thanks again for your thoughtful remarks and contributions. Much appreciated. Off to dig into the Principle of Charity and its references.

<comment><USER43> Yes, Rapoport's rules seem comparable. Succinct too. Bookmarked. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I greatly miss Usenet newsgroups -- NNTP ones, not yahoo or google groups, or any of the pale http immitations. The best were usually moderated of course, but even unmoderated ones often had high signal to noise. I imagine how they might be now with rich text rendering, e.g. embedded TeX and images.

Good newsreaders (MT-Newswatcher on MacOS springs to mind, but also fast console programs like _tin_ ) really helped. There were no 'likes' or 'vote' buttons. But there was the ability to whitelist or blacklist certain authors by adding them to a user's 'killfile', leading to the wonderfully pithy permanent downvote reply:

<plonk>

<comment><USER46> "I greatly miss Usenet newsgroups... but even unmoderated ones often had high signal to noise..."

Me, too. My presence there began in 1987.

Part of what helped its signal-to-noise ratio was that participants tended to be in industry or academia, resulting in both better-informed contributors and a sense of community.

There was, of course, the odd flamewar here and troll there, but they were the exception, not the rule. Even passionate arguments were mostly civil (ah, comp.lang.c was quite a lively place as the ANSI standard was being discussed... even just the NOALIAS debate alone).

Participants also cared about readability; good netizenship meant trimming text unrelated to the context you were discussing ( _interleaved posting_ , as Wiki calls it).

As the AOL bridge and the top-posting mongrel horde of Outlook posters flooded in, there went the neighborhood... _damn neighbor kids messing up our lawn!_

<comment><USER45> And now top posting is the norm in email! It's so _anti-electronic_ to do it that way, as if we were exchanging _letters_.

> Participants also cared about readability; good netizenship meant trimming > text unrelated to the context you were discussing

I get confusion these days if I use [snip], people think I am mutilating their email through spite or something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I have often thought it's be great to do a "best comments of the week" email list the same way "Kernel Traffic" did for a number of years with Linux kernel development: [http://www.kerneltraffic.org/kernel- traffic/archives.html](http://www.kerneltraffic.org/kernel- traffic/archives.html)

Condensing comments down to the 5-10 gems would be very interesting. And, perhaps with the voting system, not that difficult.

<comment><USER48> I like that idea! The only problem I see is that great comments are often embedded within an extensive discussion - how do you give readers of such a digest the necessary context without too much bloat?

<comment><USER47> I can think of two options:

* Embed enough to give the reader context (maybe a link to the original article or quoting the parent or grandparent is enough)

* Only include those comments that are stand-alone.

It'd be quite a lot of work, but even if you highlighted 10% of the great comments, you'd provide a great service.

<comment><USER48> Absolutely! If you do it, I might just subscribe :-)

<comment><USER47> Same to you :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Another thing I've noticed about HN comments is that everything is hyped beyond what it deserves.

For example, the recent DDoS attacks were just a bunch of skids with Mirai, but it was discussed as if it was the end of the internet.

There's also the issue of self-censorship, where users will refrain from posting their opinion in case they get downvotes and negative karma.

The things people post here are fascinating, but the comments, in my honest opinion, aren't.

<comment><USER50> To be fair those two things aren't HN specific. They seem to be human nature as they've happened in ever forum I've been part of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I miss the deep expertise often on display on forums like slashdot in the past which is conspicious by its absence here.

In many ways this is more of a professional board than a personal board. A lot of folks here are in the profession and don't seem to speak their mind, lest they lose career opportunities. This also seems to promote an affection of expertise and authoritative tone even on subjects commentators may not know much about.

There is offhand dismissal of dissent as 'resistant to change' and a serious lack of scrutiny that often allows broken technologies and services to be hyped endlessly untill people come back months or years later to report deficiencies but by then the train has left the station.

And any forum that promotes downvotes to signal dissent cannot by design promote diverse discussion and will naturally coalesce around a 'socially acceptable' consensus.

</comment><comment><USER52> Reading this article and thinking back on the users on HN that I do enjoy reading comments from I think that a neat feature may be the ability for a logged in user to "favorite/mark" specific authors. Those authors only get some particular character in front of their name (or a different color) so that they stand out more. I do agree with this post about seeing certain names and knowing that the signal ratio will be higher is nice. May just need a better way to discern those when scanning a comments section.

<comment><USER53> On Firefox, you can use extension "Favorite Users - Hacker News".

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I wish there was more research in moderation systems. I think it is a fascinating topic, because it can make or break an online forum. And perhaps it even has applications in political decision making.

<comment><USER43> I agree. I don't know of any such research but this article posted on HN was one of best summaries on the subject I've seen:

[http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/13/11387934/internet- moderato...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/13/11387934/internet-moderator- history-youtube-facebook-reddit-censorship-free-speech)

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> > 1838 days ago

Trivial improvement to HN: after more than 30 days, render time in number of years and months instead of just days.

<comment><USER56> Even better: actual time and date of submission

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> HN comments need a vertical bar on the left side to indicate indent level. i find it hard to skim conversations in narrow screens.

<comment><USER58> Agree. But I am just happy that they added collapsible comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> The comments on that "Lenovo is blocking Linux on some new laptops" story a while back were truly abysmal. I think that's the only time where I was really disappointed by HN comments. Now obviously (and as many of the more thoughtful commenters pointed out) this was just a case of missing support in the Linux kernel. There was no "secret deal" between Lenovo and Microsoft that the customer service rep on that forum revealed. Intel posted some patches to fix this a few days ago: [http://marc.info/?l=linux- ide&m=147709610621480&w=2](http://marc.info/?l=linux- ide&m=147709610621480&w=2)

The thread I question, with over 1000 points and 500 comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12545878](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12545878)

<comment><USER18> There was more to it than missing support in Linux.

These SSDs have two modes of operation: AHCI (supported by any OS) and proprietary (requiring special drivers). Lenovo chose to hide the corresponding menu in UEFI setup and hacked the firmware to revert changes made through UEFI variables so that the SSD was permanently stuck in proprietary RAID mode, at that time supported only by Lenovo's modified Windows 10.

Ultimately Lenovo said they did it because RAID mode performs better, but they only published this explanation after the outbreak of Internet drama.

<comment><USER59> I didn't argue that Lenovo did everything right - but there was no conspiracy. No secret deal with Microsoft. There were lazy decisions on Lenovo's side and missing driver support in Linux.

But regardless of what the actual technical reasons where, when you look at that thread now, wouldn't you agree that many of the comments were sub-par and didn't meet the quality guidelines of HN?

<comment><USER60> If deal is secret, how you know?

<comment><USER59> Because you can now boot Linux on these machines. If there had been a deal, it would have failed its purpose. Occam's Razor leads me to conclude that almost certainly, there was no conspiracy. Let alone that some community forum support guy would never be told about a secret deal.

<comment><USER18> > Let alone that some community forum support guy would never be told about a > secret deal.

Nobody said it was secret, besides you. I think it was parent's point that you are strawmanning here.

This was also the sole reason I responded to your initial post. You misrepresent people's position and then complain that what you presented is "abysmal" and "disappointing".

<comment><USER59> That wasn't my impression reading the original submission or the comment thread. Lots of things that would adequately be explained by lack of Linux drivers and stupidity on Lenovo's side were attributed to malice and purported as fact.

Also, the source of the entire story seems to have a background of baseless accusations about vendors maliciously preventing Linux: [https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/778680150812536833](https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/778680150812536833)

<comment><USER60> But we also know that MicroSoft bribe officials for looong time. See link[1] for example. MS can just bribe someone in Lenovo directly. Or, maybe, someone in Lenovo is a huge fan of MS, so he can act against Linux just in case (I saw this in my own company).

[1]: [http://techrights.org/2016/02/15/microsoft-bribing- officials...](http://techrights.org/2016/02/15/microsoft-bribing-officials/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> This article and its comments are surprisingly negative. I've long held the opinion that HN is the best aggregator out there, and the comments are top notch as well. Far better than Reddit, subreddits like /r/programming+sysadmin+netsec etc, /g/, Slashdot, and the list goes on.

</comment><comment><USER62> My feeling is that a large enough part of Hacker News has been any time within the last 10 years actively contributing in Stack Overflow. From my own experience, I learned how to ask/answer technical questions and participate in a technical discussion there while trying not to keep it political, and I totally feel that has helped me to provide good comments in HN from time to time.

So I would challenge the sentences:

> And yet, I haven't found a public internet forum with better technical > commentary.

I have, it's StackOverflow. Even though it is not a _public internet forum_ properly, I've found there some awesome technical commentaries there and I think it might have helped HN a lot on that side.

</comment><comment><USER63> > when people make comments that aren't just reasonable sounding but are > actually correct, those comments tend to get upvoted

For a while, I found that on pages with lots of comments the most interesting ones were to be found at the top––and, buried between actual dross, at the bottom.

That _might_ have changed, I don't see it that much anymore. But that could be a side effect of something even less desirable. I think _some_ people may have started flagging whole articles when the discussion has "too many" comments they dislike. I can't prove this, of course.

<comment><USER64> I have the opposite experience. I never found the most interesting comments at the top on popular posts. They usually just reflect a public opinion or come from "famous" HNers. I even reconsider my opinions, when my comments are upvoted too much. Because it means that public shares the same opinion and it is likely to be influenced by PR/marketing/politics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Coming from a certain frame, context and worldview given to someone by his/her parents, many comments are not ill-intendend but come off as unhelpful or negative. A problem with moderation on the web is that for willing people it is hard to grasp why you have been given the mdoeration you got.

An idea I'm toying with is to allow meta-comment reactions to comments. They would extend horizontally (as opposed to vertically for non-meta comments) and allow medium-to-high experienced users to provde meta-comments (feedback).

<comment><USER66> > ...many comments are not ill-intendend but come off as unhelpful or > negative.

Unhelpful to whom? Pointing out bad examples as bad examples is helpful to the inexperienced; they may learn to avoid some pitfalls.

People who publicly push back against popular bad schools of thought provide encouragement to others in the minority who might give up the fight out of fatigue instead of conceding on the merits.

<comment><USER65> I'm trying to point out that meta-comments (feedback) can help guide the discussion in the correct direction. It's generally unwanted to mix meta and non-meta discussion. So it may be practical to do allow for meta-commenting on comments, but display it horizontally. This would allow users to focus more and better on the matter at hand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> This article and the (currently) highest rated comment with the Medium article is making me want to write more.

I've always considered a simple blog where I just write short commentary on articles I've read that I feel are incorrect or incomplete. One thing that has held me back is knowing I'm not a brilliant writer. However am going to try and keep in mind the great blog post by Paul Graham that stresses to always write in short sentences. Good luck me!

</comment><comment><USER68> > comments are often gratuitously mean, and people will often defend > gratuitously mean comments by claiming that it's either impossible or > inefficient to convey information without being mean.

> Most of the negative things you hear about HN comments are true.

I think it is interesting how the relatively anonymised nature of the internet has a similar effect on people of all stripes. HN readers, I believe, are among the more intelligent, or at least curious, in our species. The same is true of another popular internet forum, Stackoverflow. Yet there exists an air of negativity that is of much higher ubiquity than in "real" life where people are not anonymous. And this is true of most other internet forums as well where more of the general popular participates. I think it shows in a strange way that people just have a lot of negativity to vent, and the internet has made that really easy and without consequence to the rest of one's life, and that this remains true regardless of one's interests and general intelligence.

<comment><USER69> I've found my negative tendencies curbed quickly when I started using my real name, or accounts directly linked to my real name (such as this one). For me, it just forces an extra second of thought - whatever I type next affects people's perception of _me_ as a person.

At first this was just in the form of considering my reply more, but over time it shifted to occurring as a part of reaching my initial conclusions.

<comment><USER43> I use my main account as "nickpsecurity" for the same reason. I've posted as "Nick P" in security field for a long time. It's close to my real name. I do controversial posts and generate plenty of material that could be used for smears but tying it to my real identity does filter out some foolish, reckless or smearing comments I might otherwise make with zero accountability.

So, I post everything here under that name or don't post it at all. The results have overall been positive with a very low amount of bad reactions in moderation or downvotes vs an aggressive throwaway I might create to write comments of dubious value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yet another human bemoaning the fact that when myriad humans randomly get together on the internet, some folks are clueless, some folks are not nice, some folks write poorly, etc. There are things that can be done to improve online discussion. But expecting everyone to be equally knowledgeable, savvy, etc is simply not a reasonable expectation.

<comment><USER70> Well, you can't have both that and "open", at least...

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> I admit that I usually read the comments first and then go to article.

</comment><comment><USER72> > For the last couple years (ish?), the moderation regime has been really > active in trying to get a good mix of stories on the front page and in > tamping down on gratuitously mean comments. But there was a period of years > where the moderation could be described as sparse, arbitrary, and > capricious, and while there are fewer "bad" comments now, it doesn't seem > like good moderation actually generates more "good" comments.

I agree that there was a major change in moderation 1-2 years ago. But I think it's worse rather than better. The moderation is more arbitrary and capricious now (in particular it's a lot more active during the hours when the US is awake), and there are a lot of positive-but-contentless fluff comments and even humour, both of which are inimical to what made HN great.

</comment><comment><USER73> So true. I often jump to the comments before I read the linked article. The comments a very often of better quality and more informed than the article it self. HN is unique in today's internet it's a great community and I hope it stays that way.

</comment><comment><USER74> HN comments are moderated (not the moderators which are completely fine and, in my case, always clear of what was off-topic and in need of flagging, but the community that flags) by the hive-mind that is like any hive-mind against diversity.

Of the dozens of accounts I had, some have reached karma levels of awe, and some were met with extreme flagging and disapproval.

The most pleasant and interesting discussions are mostly in the technical, scientific themes.

When it comes to diet, lifestyle issues, comments are overflooded with bunch of anecdotal claims, unscientific babbling and extreme boasting.

I stay away from these threads after I've realized this was the case.

</comment><comment><USER75> I come here for the content. Before I started frequently coming here, I used solely reddit. I didn't "get" HN at the time. But at some point it started growing on me, I started coming here more and more often, and right now it's my primary source of random information. I still reddit, but more for leisure and time wasting than anything else.

I don't check comment much, thought.

As a side effect, it had also changed my browsing customs; before it wasn't difficult for me to go down to the 10th page on reddit.

Nowadays I'm barely past the 2nd page.

</comment><comment><USER76> From my point of view, which is biased relatively to the HN target audience because I'm not so much interested in the startup things, reddit is overall superior to HN, either concerning the posts or the comment thread. concerning the technological news feed, my best source of content is definitely [https://lobste.rs/](https://lobste.rs/)

</comment><comment><USER77> I feel the same. Most often, the comments are way more interesting than the links they're commenting. This led me to calm down on commenting all the time, coz I felt like I needed to try to make good quality comments in order to compare favorably to the rest of the discussion, and to contribute to the community. I wonder if others feel like this and decided to restrain on commenting?

</comment><comment><USER78> > HN comments are terrible.

The truth is that more articles than comments are waste of time (as comments are often a lot shorter or simpler to grasp) so I have to disagree here: I often find myself reading the comments before clicking on the article to save me time. And I'm not the only one.

</comment><comment><USER79> Of course the top comment can sometimes be positive. For example when the article is about HN itself.

On a more serious note, I guess most people in the tech crowd can make a 5-item list of why HN comments suck and that is exactly the power of HN comments.

</comment><comment><USER80> Zero criticism here - I _love_ danluu.com posts[1], but ...

Who is he? And why does all of his posts get massively up-voted?

Thanks in advance, from an ignorant chimp. :)

\--

[1] However, a little bit of CSS sprinkled on them wouldn't go amiss - <USER2> just 'max-width' would help a lot.

<comment><USER70> I upvote danluu.com because I consistently like the posts; at some point, the domain name becomes a marker of quality.

Dan Luu has an about page and a LinkedIn page, but he's not a mega-celebrity or Chief Architect of Google or some such - he's mostly a guy with an uncommon-but-useful mix of backgrounds who writes well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> One thing I dont like about HN is that I do not have time to read everything and explore each new technology. It's like throwing away good food when you're hungry.

</comment><comment><USER82> The bellwether of a bad but possibly technically interesting HN comment is one that begins with a humblebrag: "One time a Fortune 500 company hired me to re- write their entire web tier using Django" or "last year, for fun, I wrote a fully-functioning TLS implementation in node".

Such nonsense (or at best, unneeded information) is intended to provide credentials so that the reader will take what follows more seriously. But ironically it only serves to erode confidence.

<comment><USER69> More and more I'm trying to take those at face value - a statement that translates as: "I have opinions on this, but before I give them let me explain why I think I am qualified to do so.

For most, perhaps it's a bit of both. And is that a bad thing? Is there something wrong with asserting your right to wield a technical opinion while also showing off a thing that you're proud of having done?

On the other hand, if I had prefaced that opinion with the following , it would be been a bit over the top:

I've been reading comments for years. Not just on HN, but all over the Internet. In fact, once I spent 60 hours in a week, just reading comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> A way to reduce disruptive comments might be to make one downvote cost one karma point.

Down-voting should be for disruption, not ignorance. Ignorant comments are fine. Get them out there so they can be aired and corrected. Laymen get to know what they think. Experts get to know what laymen think. Occasionally there's a good idea.

Talk is cheap and we should do more of it. The alternative is people being far more ignorant than they already are. But silently, in private, with more potential for harm.

<comment><USER48> > A way to reduce disruptive comments might be to make one downvote cost one > karma point.

That is such a good idea it has actually been integral to HN for, oh, I don't know, a pretty long time... From the FAQ ([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)):

''' How is a user's karma calculated?

Roughly, the number of upvotes on their stories and comments minus the number of downvotes. The numbers don't match up exactly, because some votes aren't counted to prevent abuse. '''

<comment><USER24> This is what Stack Overflow does. Since it "hurts" their own karma, people downvote less. One implication of that is that when threads stay at zero, it can be hard to differentiate the reason why. Sometimes it's just that the question is well written but obscure.

<comment><USER84> > Since it "hurts" their own karma, people downvote less.

Yes, so they just vote to close the question instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> "Some downsides of immutability" ...

</comment><comment><USER86> The first and second paragraphs seem to contradict each other.

Comments (and previously blogs, but not so much anymore) can have more insight than news articles because they're based on first hand experience. Journalists don't have that, and the organization they work for often has problematic incentives which they push onto the writer.

HN comments are indeed very terse, to the point of being unfriendly. It bothered me at first but now I'm used to the style and sort of like it.

<comment><USER87> I'm guessing the author tried to convey a stereotype about the comments in the first paragraph. Then tried to debunk that stereotype in the rest of the post.

There definitely could of been a sentence or two to help transition between the two as it felt odd to me as well.

<comment><USER88> The post is dismissive of the value of the majority of the comments, it just thinks there are some that are worthwhile.

It also suggests moving that content off of HN (or at least replicating it elsewhere).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> I lost faith in HN crowd when hyperloop started. California can not even replicate 40 years old TGV, but somehow it will build space-like technology for fraction of price.

And than there are politics. Entire world should accept millions of refugees. But SF is different, and should not even host 400 homeless who arrive every year.

<comment><USER90> But it should build lots of housing for tech workers for whom life just isn't worth living if they have to be anywhere else on the planet.

<comment><USER91> Yes, because otherwise they'll just take all the other housing, since tech workers are paid more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> I would like to propose wikipedia edit history and comment deletion milestones for the hn comment system, and in addition, a comment redaction facility that works like redaction of classified documents.

</comment><comment><USER93> Honestly, I come here just for the comments. I rarely read the articles unless a comment is excited about something arcane.

</comment><comment><USER94> I follow many people on twitter who dislike HN. Reason for this is opinions here are alsmost entirely from white males with money.

<comment><USER95> If this were true, it would merit study. How can a forum that is open to all and used in mostly anonymous fashion, so effectively police the race of users? And how could other less open less anonymous activities hope to succeed in diversity?

<comment><USER96> With regards to the gender aspect, see any of the threads related to 'women in computing' and the horrible posts therein.

<comment><USER97> Only if you assume women cannot be successful in technology without needing a special interest group mooching off the entire enterprise.

It's a vicious cycle based on a kafkatrap. If you don't agree that women are discriminated against in tech, you're discriminating against women. Culture committees, diversity consultants and women-only groups are set up to "address" this problem, yet all they do is create more division and alienation, holding up the most stereotypical fragile princess as representative for every woman on the planet.

They keep throwing all sorts of accusations and aspersions on every single guy in the field, shriek and pearl clutch when they receive blowback, and have the gall to call this empathy, in a field where the average worker is an undersocialized and overworked code janitor. Whose preferred communication styles, hobbies and accomplishments are fair game to ignore or bulldoze over.

Pointing this out gets you labeled as "horrible". Fine, then. Yet another word to add to the pile that has lost all meaning. Misogyny used to mean "hatred of women", now it just means "something a woman hates". Which appears to include the average mid-rung nerd.

<comment><USER96> A perfect example of my point.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Wikipedia: Open-Source Ventilator - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-Source_Ventilator <comment><AUTHOR> This article started[0] as result of related discussion on _r /engineering_[1].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Open- Source_Venti...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Open- Source_Ventilator&oldid=947695612)

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/engineering/comments/fq22qu/can_som...](https://www.reddit.com/r/engineering/comments/fq22qu/can_someone_send_me_john_strupats_opensource/flozin7/)</comment>


Ubuntu Linux Community: Canonical Vows to Maintain Focus - <AUTHOR> http://thevarguy.com/ubuntu/ubuntu-linux-community-canonical-vows-maintain-focus

<comment><USER2> Please submit the original source. If a blog post reports on something they found on another site, submit the latter.

<http://design.canonical.com/2013/05/ubuntu-com-update/>

<comment><USER3> I'm struggling to find anywhere in the cited Ubuntu blog post that talks about a vow to maintain focus. The summary itself never revisits that phrase to explain it further, and while the words "maintain" and "focus" do appear in the Ubuntu post, they are completely separate and there is no theme of vowing anything or staying focused on any particular thing. If anything, it's the opposite.

        Phase one of the restructure consisted of updating
        Ubuntu.com to reflect the expanded scope of the
        project.

Weird!

<comment><USER4> The blog post from Alejandra was about how Canonical is developing the Ubuntu web presence. In general, it's about how you balance a complex set of needs from a wide range of users - probably an interesting read for some people in this Forum.

The actual article seems to be focusing on the implication that this means Canonical will continue to value and maintain the link to it's Community of users. Still in the context of the web site.

ps I work for Canonical

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >> The take-away: Even as Ubuntu forges paths across hardware where traditional Linux (pace Android fans) has never before ventured, and Canonical commercializes the operating system to an extent not yet seen, it is keen to keep peace with Ubuntu users.

I'm not sure what that means but if it means Ubuntu will soon not be recognizable then I don't know if that's a good thing. Unity removed functionality we had in Gnome 2 that the Gnome developers had ironed out over years. Now we have a cool looking Launcher that is barely usable compared to Gnome 2 Panels.

We have global menus like a freaking Mac, unless you remove the two offending packages to restore normal application owned menus.

We have a solid bar at the top which without global menus is useless and even with them is questionable.

Bring back Gnome 2 Panels please Canonical.

<comment><USER6> I realise you might hate unity, but I just wanted to make clear, some people (me) like it!

I've tried plain gnome 3, latest kde, xmonad and xfce, and out of all of them have decided I like unity the best. The combination of:

* Press win key + type 'th' gets thunderbird selected, win key + 'ch' gets chrome gives me quick access to all my apps.

* I like a dock with fixed icons in fixed positions, so I can open an app, or get open windows, with 'mouse memory'.

I found the other window managers I tried very poor in their default configuration. Maybe I could configure them to act better, or more like I want? But I don't want to spend the time (I did spend a couple of days trying xmonad, before giving up, I really wanted to like it but it seems purposefully designed to be painful to configure)

<comment><USER7> Linux Mint + cinnamon. Give it a shot.

<comment><USER8> I tried, it felt like the old Linux I did not like from the past.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> With Canoncial doing more and more stuff on their own instead of really contributing to the Linux community, i've recently switched back to Debian and without regrets.

Thanks, but no thanks, for Unity, Upstart, Mir and whatever else you will come up in the future.

<comment><USER10> Is there any particular reason you prefer dogmatism to pragmatism in choosing your Linux distribution?

<comment><USER9> Where is the pragmatism to build (in a rather closed manner) software like unity, upstart or mir, in an open source ecosystem that has viable alternatives? I am confident that Linux will be a better system if efforts are combined and focused and not split up. And thus, i think that Linux would be in a better state today if Canonical would have chosen Gnome Shell, systemd and Wayland (for example). Thus, my voice/vote goes to systems where i see the future.

Besides i wasn't using Unity anyway and i have learnt and used Debian far before Ubuntu, so it's not like i had trouble switching.

<comment><USER10> I really don't understand this view that seems to be shared by quite a number of people: that Canonical shouldn't attempt (and some seem to suggest aren't competent) to build their own system components, but should instead confine their efforts into supporting other's projects. To me it seems that there's more than enough development resource available across the Linux community, and for system components where the 'right' solution is not obvious having multiple projects try out different approaches seems like an advantage to me. Let the code do the talking and then we'll see which solution works best.

<comment><USER9> That's fine in itself but Canonical seems to fail to make educated decisions on technical details and is not behaving "nice" when it first says "we'll support Wayland" and then abandon it. It would even be fine to abandon Wayland but Canonical didn't show any intention to do so until they released the first Mir code already (by this time the decision must have been made for quite some time). Plus, spreading FUD about Wayland and how it is not working for Ubuntu is not helping either. Especially since all points have been debunked very fast. It's not putting the decision making at Canonical into a good light.

I also never understood why they didn't put their efforts into Gnome Shell to create their vision of a desktop. It's totally possible to customize Gnome Shell (or even fork, see Cinnamon). Instead it's running compiz (which is critized for being hacky, bugridden and understaffed for quite some time) or QML (Unity 2D), two totally different APIs.

And how would you rationally justify developing upstart when the rest of the world puts its efforts into systemd? I understand that systemd is not as mature as upstart, but how far would it be with upstart efforts put into systemd?

The problem of Canonical is not even working on seperate projects but the utter failure to work with the rest of the Linux community. Do you see other destributions offering Unity, for example? No. Will you see Mir in Fedora or Debian or Suse or Gentoo as primary displayserver? Never. Upstart? Nope. Do i think that it's Canonicals fault to not reach out to the community and combine efforts? Yes. Yes. Yes. And this is the soul of open source movement. Canonical doesn't really get it.

What they do get is to make Linux easier to use for the masses, that's for sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yeah they're going to continue to focus on trying to make a square peg fit into a round hole by creating a soccer mom friendly Linux and trying to piss off the rest of the Linux community.

I say go for it, keep focusing on removing features that took years to perfect and reinventing the wheel for the sake of reinvention while chasing a group that doesn't care about their operating system. The sooner they make themselves irrelevant the better.

<comment><USER12> Yes, I suspect that Canonical are attempting to " _creat[e] a soccer mom friendly Linux_ " but I think the motivation may be to make some money so they can _continue_ to develop the Ubuntu core.

I imagine that a workstation/high end laptop developer oriented version of GNU\Linux will be developed, and many would argue we already have such distributions available. Room for everyone. I personally _want_ my Ubuntu phone for perhaps nostalgic nationalist reasons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Haha, focus.

Just installed Raring again last night and noticed the long-standing bug (compiz and gnome-terminal where the window won't keep its size if not on the first tab) still in the newest release. How about broken window resizing, where you only get an outline like in Windows 3.1? I could go on, and on, _and on_.

Meanwhile they have people writing display servers and a new mobile interface for xsake.

I'd kill for a modern, mature workstation OS in the tradition of NextStep, or SGI 4dwm, Windows 2000, even Ubuntu 10.04, etc. I like lots of the other choices, say Cinammon, XCFE, etc, but they are unfinished or not integrated well. Gnome has destroyed many of the powerful tools these products share. KDE has nice tech but is too cluttered. OSX is nice but we use linux everywhere. I'll be trying Mint 15 soon and crossing my fingers.

I know that the linux desktop has been a boondoggle for years but perhaps there is a market for workstation-oriented distribution with deep integration and features that work. Would enough people pay for that? I would. Is it enough for a small startup to get funded? I'd be interested in starting one, though I realize it is unlikely.

<comment><USER14> What I want is something debian based with Upstart, gnome3, and replacement window manager and panel/launcher, fitting on a single CD or DVD (around a gig).

Ubuntu with GNOME3 installed and running LXDE and Launchy comes close, except LXDE defaults to using PCManFM instead of nautilus, Leafpad instead of gEdit, LXTerminal instead of Gnome Terminal, etc. Where this is most obnoxious is the replacing of gnome preferences with their own preference tool.

If I was going to start a major project, my approach would probably be to take gnome3, replace gnomeshell with openbox and try to port gnome2 panel to gnome3.</comment></comment>


Why entrepreneurs fail - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/17/why-entrepreneurs-fail/

<comment><USER2> "Do yourself a favor and drop the stealth approach."

This advice isn't necessarily correct. Look at Zynga as an example: they regularly steal ideas from other companies because they have huge resources. If you announce exactly what you are doing before you even have any customers/beta testers, it will give a much larger company (with larger resources) to beat you to the punch.</comment>


Buttercoin – US-based Bitcoin exchange - <AUTHOR> https://buttercoin.com/ <comment><USER2> I'm a bit fuzzy on the details, but this is my recollection of Buttercoin's history. Please reply with corrections, and I'll edit.

Mtgox crash about 1 year ago, when their trade engine could not keep up with the large number of transactions. Later we found out that Mtgox could not handle more than something like 50 transactions / second. Buttercoin was a developer's response to Mtgox's crash. To build a better mouse trap that could handle 100x more trade volume than Mtgox.

[https://buttercoin.hackpad.com/FAQ- QTRSMzlkLD6](https://buttercoin.hackpad.com/FAQ-QTRSMzlkLD6)

It was originally supposed to be open source, to improve the underlying machinery for all bitcoin exchanges. There were some really bright and ambitious people involved in the beginning too. Somewhere a couple months in, the core developers took VC money, and decided to launch their own exchange instead. I haven't kept up with the project enough to know if they are holding to the initial open source exchange source code promises, but I'm not surprised at all that they want to cash in on becoming a big centralized exchange.

It'd probably be hard to be VC funded, while also giving away their competitive advantage (highly scalable trade engine source code) for free.

[https://buttercoin.hackpad.com/FAQ- QTRSMzlkLD6](https://buttercoin.hackpad.com/FAQ-QTRSMzlkLD6)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/buttercoin](http://www.reddit.com/r/buttercoin)

<comment><USER3> Signs that Buttercoin is probably a scam:

1) Buttercoin does not appear to be a registered money transmitter. They've known about this requirement for months, they've had the financial capabilities to do this for months...and yet they haven't bothered so far. See [http://www.fincen.gov/financial_institutions/msb/msbstatesel...](http://www.fincen.gov/financial_institutions/msb/msbstateselector.html).

2) They started off as open source, took a bunch of free code, and then ended the open source aspects of the project.

3) They took a substantial amount of BTC donations (even more substantial now with the higher F/X rate) and never returned those donations when the project pivoted from an open source software project to a V/C funded business.

One of these red flags is bad enough, but 3 together is a big, red, flashing "STAY AWAY".

They clearly don't have the professionalism or the wherewithal to handle the basic foundational aspects of their professed industry. I recommend staying away from them before they become the next MtGox.

<comment><USER4> On the other hand, they are a YC company: [http://www.crunchbase.com/company/buttercoin](http://www.crunchbase.com/company/buttercoin)

<comment><USER5> So is AirBnb with one of the coowners listed on top 100 FBI cyberscammers list.

Im sorry but having a rubberstamp of PG is not the same as having blessing of Elon Musk, for example. PG seems to be drifting into the dark side. What worked for Airbnb (scamming people on craiglist to solicit airbnb) worked as charm on SocialCam when the idea was to scam as many of your Facebook friends as possible.

<comment><USER6> Considering the age of AirBnB, "drifting" isn't really the right word.

YC likes hustlers, it says so in the application, and has for years.

<comment><USER5> Its a matter of how much "hustling" you like. Someone that hacks a traffic lights and show you how cool they drive and remotely change their lights to green, or someone that hacked a traffic lights and show you how cool sixty cars, twenty dead drivers pileup looks like....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are a few US based now right?

Can the market support so many US exchanges? (do any have working USD ?)

       buttercoin (no selling yet? ACH? wire? CC?)
       coinbase   (technically not an exchange but USD works)
       campbx     (bank halted ACH/wire transfers on January 31, 2014)
       kraken     (located in SF, USD back soon: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7321703 )
       coinsetter (in beta, bank approved USD)
       cryptsy    (located in FL, USD soon, registered Money Services Business/BSA/FinCEN)
       coinlab    (never opened exchange)
       coinmx     (may not actually be in US, overseas CC charges, be careful)

<comment><USER8> I'll be surprised if Cryptsy ever makes it to USD.

Also, while they have a very wide range of alts to gamble with (and let's face it, the smaller alts are pure gambles), the experience of using the site does not inspire faith in their technological abilities. I would not be at all shocked to learn they have significant security holes.

<comment><USER7> They seem very serious about obeying all regulations/filings so it is just a matter of them finding a bank to play along.

<comment><USER8> They don't even make an effort at KYC compliance.

<comment><USER7> I assume that would come when fiat (USD) transfers come online.

Why set that barrier for coin to coin exchanges?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ok guys explain this: I've signed up for early access and was placed 6817, my friend sitting next to me signed up right after and was 6827, my gf signed up 30 secs later and is 6837. See a pattern? If they have to lie about their number of sign ups I wonder how trustworthy the rest of the service will be. I know it's just a detail but why would you do something like this? Fake it until you make it?

<comment><USER10> Well, the former Reddit founder is on the team. And I seem to recall reading something about how that did that with early Reddit posts too (marking the voting counts much higher to make it seem like they have more users than they did).

They just didn't quite do it good enough. Would have made it more believable if they did a random 5 to 10 addition on each signup. Probably had to rush out the landing page to capitalize on the opportune MtGox disaster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> So they say "The security of your funds is our #1 priority. Our team goes above and beyond all banking security best practices to create the world's most secure Bitcoin trading platform" but no other details are provided?

Is there any reason to believe any part of that statement without further details?

<comment><USER12> Not until I see a security audit will I believe any exchange is secure. I believed Mt. Gox had "resolved" the basic issue of password hashing back when they were compromised until I found out they were using a home-grown "run sha512 1000x" solution.

That, plus I know as a programmer I like to think I'm disciplined enough to be a secure programmer until my software is audited or pentested. Then I realize how naive I really am.

Like I said, I'm not trusting any exchanges until I start seeing rigorous security measures (more than "security is our #1 priority" bullshit) in the form of audits, pentesting, and etc...

That said I also know very few people that actually use their personal BTC wallets and encrypt it with GPG + a two factor challenge (to avoid the possibility of key loggers).

<comment><USER13> Not until I see a security audit will I believe any exchange is secure

definitely! Everyone saying "im secure" must also say "the X will prove it"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why don't these guys list their bios on the website in a prominent location? I find it difficult to trust any exchange that doesn't do this personally.

<comment><USER15> I don't think they're trying to hide anything, maybe just haven't gotten around to creating an About page. Both founders used to work for Microsoft: [https://angel.co/buttercoin](https://angel.co/buttercoin)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I saw the tagline "Safe, Easy, Fast" and what sprang to mind was "Pick Two". Maybe it's all the Bitcoin failures that make my cynical but I've never really seen these executed well. I guess time will tell.

</comment><comment><USER17> Will they take any of my GoxCoins?

<comment><USER18> I'm afraid those all got Goxed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is a US-based exchange trustworthy? I have a feeling it'll exist at the mercy of the Feds.

<comment><USER20> "The Fed" says they are outside their jurisdiction. [http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/feb/27/janet- yellen...](http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/feb/27/janet-yellen- federal-reserve-no-authority-regulate-bitcoin)

<comment><USER21> "The Fed" =/= "The Feds"

While it may be outside the Federal Reserve's jurisdiction, there are many other federal agencies.

<comment><USER22> The Federal Reserve is not part of the US government. It is a private organization.

<comment><USER23> It's partly private. To say it is not part of government is also inaccurate. It is independent of several branches in many respects, but relies in the government in others, by design. For example, the chair and vice chair are appointed and confirmed. Congress has oversight of the system but does not appropriate funds to the system.

<comment><USER22> My understanding is that legally, it's not part of the government. That makes it private, with any voluntary government relationships being just that. This doesn't make what you are saying untrue, but what you are saying isn't exactly clear either.

(Thought experiment: Obviously, if one did wield influence on a central bank after winning the rights to run it from a nation, one would try to keep public perceptions as wishy-washy as possible in order to keep pockets safely lined and one's fiscal hegemony in place.)

<comment><USER24> This isn't correct. The Federal Reserve System is composed of the various Federal Reserve Banks (FRBs) and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (BOG). The FRBs are hybrid entities considered to be federal instrumentalities for some purposes but not for others. The BOG is a federal agency. The Chairman of the BOG (Janet Yellen at present) is a presidential appointee confirmed by the Senate.

<comment><USER22> One wonders what kind of appointee the president is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is the "lovingly crafted" bisque just a joke at this point?

<comment><USER26> I'm confused by the usage of bisque here. Are you saying "lovingly crafted" as a phrase is... soup-like?

<comment><USER25> Sorry, a colloquialism I use with some friends and was kind of wondering how it works without knowing. "BS" is maybe a bit strong in this instance but you get the idea?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Finally, CSS that I can really trust!

<comment><USER20> Seriously! Why is everyone going with iOS 7 style instead of having a web page with some information on it. I am about to start writing my first CSS page, but before I do I want to know:

Is it still possible to use hyperlinks on a fancy CSS page?

As far as I can tell all they do is look cool and scroll. I miss being able to click and get more info

<comment><USER28> This. Doesn't even work on Safari on my iPad: it only shows a blank page.

I seriously think this Web 3.0 fashion has gone way out of hand, like in the early days of the web with amimated GIFs, auto-play, and other awfully unusable gimmicks. Every web designer should open this website every day, and ponder:

[http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/)

P.D.: On a bitter, petty unrelated note: this footnote strikes me as trying too hard to be cute: "Buttercoin is lovingly crafted in Palo Alto, California". I don't think a Bitcoin exchange should be equated to, I don't know, some organic high-end coffee brew, or the latest Jony Ive creation... It just leaves a weird taste in my mouth.

<comment><USER29> > [http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/)

That is a hoot!

When people ask why my site looks so plain I am definitely going to point them here :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Looks like buttercoin is going to use MongoDB 0_o

[https://github.com/buttercoin/ReactiveMongo](https://github.com/buttercoin/ReactiveMongo)

</comment><comment><USER31> ButterCoin- you can just feel it slipping from your fingers.

</comment><comment><USER32> You got a public API? I'd love to add this exchange to Cryptowatch[1] right away ;)

The landing page is pretty bare, but this looks like it's made by professionals. I'm excited to see another player enter the field and looking forward to getting access and learning more.

[1] [http://cryptowat.ch](http://cryptowat.ch)

<comment><USER33> Hi artursapek, yes, our API will be available shortly after launch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Buttercoin dropped the original JavaScript repository and rewrote the entire thing in Scala/Java. They are not releasing the new software, but planning on white-labeling their new product (very similar to bex.io).

</comment><comment><USER35> I honestly think the most trusthworthy exchange so far has been dogecoin. I haven't really heard anyone scamming anybody. Is dogecoin going to last for another 2-3 years? Anyone know?

</comment><comment><USER36> US-based. The most dangerous for bitcoin-based business.

</comment><comment><USER37> is the title real or is it some random number generator

</comment><comment><USER38> Crypto currency news : [http://cryptocurrencylive.com/newest](http://cryptocurrencylive.com/newest)

</comment><comment><USER39> "Easy, safe, fast" \- Because we say so.

</comment><comment><USER40> The form should limit the number of digits allowed in the "I want to spend" field. Right now, it says I'll receive more bitcoins than the total possible mined coins cap (21 million). [http://i.imgur.com/pCUTqOz.png](http://i.imgur.com/pCUTqOz.png)

Obviously it's a mock form, but shouldn't it at least be accurate?

</comment><comment><USER41> now that mt gox is all effed up a US exchange's name counts as a news headline?

<comment><USER7> a US exchange with actual US bank transfers for USD is actually a big thing because it is hard to get done

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> The last thing Bitcoin needs is a bunch of exchanges without liquidity!

</comment><comment><USER43> I like that you put the ticker query into the browser tab :)

<comment><USER33> Thanks jermaink, having the ticker in the browser tab came from user testing. Please let us know if you have additional ideas on how we can make things more convenient / nicer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> If you are in the EU: check www.coinnext.com

</comment><comment><USER45> Why not just buy/sell on Coinbase?

<comment><USER46> Not really an exchange, is it? More of a payment processor? Could be wrong.

<comment><USER40> No you're right. Coinbase does payment processing and hosted wallets. Users can buy or sell bitcoins to Coinbase, but it's not an exchange in the sense that any two users can trade USD/BTC with each other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Dat AngularJS.</comment>


Canabalt: iPhone Game - <AUTHOR> http://www.canabalt.com/ <comment><USER2> hey hackers, matthew pointed me here and I thought I'd share some stats (more about the Flash version than the iPhone version but yea)

      Days spent making Canabalt: 5 (long ones)
      Hits on my server: ~2 million
      Hits on other major portals: ~2 million
      Estimated hits on crappy portals: ~4 million+?
      Hits on my server from twitter: 50k+
      Best Referrer: Stumbleupon
      Money from donations: ~$500
      iPhone sales: can't say but good enough!
      Top App Store Ranking: 37
      Bandwidth Bills: $1000+
      Top legit score I've ever seen: ~30km
      My top score: ~8km
      Resolution: 480px x 160px
      Initial Piracy Rate: 12%
      Current Piracy Rate: 25%

Inspirations: Half Life 2, District 9, Banlieue 13, Another World/Flashback/Prince of Persia, War of the Worlds (book, not movie)

Trivia: I never finished drawing the space ship that flies by since it is barely on-screen for more than a few minutes. Sadly, multiple screenshots have captured it in all its under-realized sloppiness.

<comment><USER3> "Best Referrer: Stumbleupon"

What's this based on? I've tried StumbleUpon ads before. The bounce rate is _insane_. Approx 99.5%. It's basically useless for anything other than real- world load testing.

BTW, Reddit's new self-serve ad system is awesome. Dirt cheap, quality traffic, commenting on the ads to talk with your customers directly, and general Internet Bonus Points™.

<comment><USER2> we didn't do any ads with anybody

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Web version: <http://www.adamatomic.com/canabalt/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone have a theory on what makes this game so successful? I went through a phase where I was addicted to it myself - and yet it's so mind- numbingly simple!

<comment> matthew-wegner I've been viewing games through the prism of how many "almosts" they have lately. Canabalt is fun because you almost fall off dozens of times before you actually do (and when it happens you usually _almost_ made it). Because you think your death was avoidable, and only barely occurred, you immediately want to try again.

Something _almost_ happening is surprisingly compelling. Slot machines are a very pure implementation of this idea; if they just showed you all three symbols immediately you would never have that sense of something almost happening...

<comment><USER5> I find this comment remarkably insightful. It's such a simple concept and yet that idea never occurred to me - but yet it just _feels_ right! The slot machine example is dead on. Awesome.

<comment> matthew-wegner Thanks! It first occurred to me when we were trying to figure out why our most popular game, Off-Road Velociraptor Safari, _was_ our most popular game. I realized that it's essentially an "almost" generator; the game is always teasing you with cool possibilities (you'll jump your vehicle off a cliff and almost hit a raptor, and then later realize you can actually _do_ this and the game will reward you for it). "Almost" is a pretty common trait in fun/addictive designs if you start looking for it...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ok, this game is great. It has fitting music, it's instantly addictive, and it raises your blood pressure.

I would have liked the difficulty level to remain low for a longer period of time. Also, it would be nice if there were other obstacles. After about 20 seconds of game play, it got pretty damn hard (read fast), and I wasn't able to memorize landmarks, which is crucial in fast pace, side scrolling, platformers.

<comment><USER7> It slows down if you run into the boxes on the rooftops. Use them to your advantage.

<comment><USER8> But if you slow down too much, I think it becomes impossible to jump some of the gaps.

<comment><USER7> Not in my experience. Since the maps are generated on-the-fly, I think the gaps between buildings are dependent upon your current velocity. I am not 100% sure, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My DropZap game has a high rating and great reviews in the US app store but it's not popular yet:

<http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dropzap/id338490375?mt=8>

How should I market it?

(Demo video: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ub6gCU03iE> )

<comment> matthew-wegner Canabalt's free Flash version has had several million plays, the majority of which have been on Adam's own site. The Flash version's success prompted the iPhone port, and also gave him an existing audience willing to buy the game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does anyone know if this was created using the Flash Pro's iPhone app generator or is it a native Obj-C app? I'm asking since there seems to be a Flash version so that would have been the simplest route for this game.

<comment><USER2> This was a homebrewed port of my flixel framework, from what I've heard from fellow flash devs the CS5 beta is having trouble getting anything better than 1 or 2 fps. Canabalt runs at 30+ even on the original iPhone :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have noticed more iphone developers making a flash based version of their games for web promotion. I think it is a great idea, play before you pay. Does anyone have stats on how well this works as a promotional technique?

Also here is a link to the game in itunes <http://appsto.re/canabalt>

<comment><USER12> The Flash version predates the iPhone version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is how we played the Super Mario Brothers Lost Levels in university: mandatory hold down of Run+Right and only tap jump with varying pressure. You can finish all the levels like that!

</comment><comment><USER14> Reminds me a lot of <http://www.kaninkul.com/games/773/copter.html> , both great games.

</comment><comment><USER15> Also: Try Rope and Fly, I found it to be fairly similar and also quite addicting.

<comment><USER16> If you like that game try Hook Champ, same mechanic but with powerups, unlockables, great graphics and a committed developer with a major update already submitted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> awesome game. If you make an android version, i'll buy it!</comment>


ShopLocket Raises $1M to Lead the Emerging Simple Selling Market - <AUTHOR> http://betakit.com/2012/08/01/shoplocket-raises-1m-wants-to-lead-the-emerging-simple-selling-market

<comment><USER2> If you'd like to know more about the ShopLocket story, they launched a timeline today, too - check it out: <http://timeline.shoplocket.com>

(I'm on slide 3)

<comment><USER3> My favorite:

<http://timeline.shoplocket.com/#19>

ShopLocket showcase, powered by ShopLocket critics. Brilliant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Awesome, best of luck to the ShopLocket team! I remember their post on HN awhile back about not getting into YC (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3668469>). It's fantastic to see them not only soldiering on, but thriving.

</comment><comment><USER5> Am I the only one deeply annoyed that the article never even once mentions what the hell it is that ShopLocket does, how they make money, or to what ends they want to grow?

</comment><comment><USER6> Interesting. Just met them at the Toronto Rails Pub Night a few weeks ago.

Good for them! Had a good conversation about how much Paypal fraud prevention sucks.

</comment><comment><USER7> Could someone provide some sort of a definition for the term "Simple Selling Market"? Is this essentially a competitor to Shopify?

<comment><USER8> I'd say a simple definition of the "simple selling market" could be "sell online without opening an online store." I'd say <https://gumroad.com/> would be their closest competitor at the moment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Right on, really excited for these guys :)

</comment><comment><USER8> Another awesome Toronto startup making noise. They're making Extreme Startups look pretty good right now.

</comment><comment><USER10> Kudos to the ShopLocket team!</comment>


Get ready for China's domination of science - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527426.900-get-ready-for-chinas-domination-of-science.html

<comment><USER2> Point of agreement with the author: China is doing very well (in urban areas) in the primary and secondary education that leads to sound knowledge of mathematics and basic physical science such that Chinese researchers can make many important observations in physical science, mathematics, and engineering. I have a lot of Chinese-language secondary level textbooks at home, and they are very good indeed.

Point of disagreement: "science" includes social science, particularly economics, and it is not at all clear that China's current political situation is congenial to further advances in precisely the "softer" sciences more connected to human behavior that are likely to be the big areas of advancement in the free world in coming years. As biology, sociology, economics, and other disciplines all harden up as they become more mathematically rigorous, China will be hobbled in advancing in those disciplines (compared to the West or to India) by scientists having to follow the party line on many issues of social policy.

<comment><USER3> > I have a lot of Chinese-language secondary level textbooks at home, and they > are very good indeed.

Can you give a name or two? From my experience Chinese versions are often less well written than some American ones. And some of the best Mathematics textbook are Soviet Russia version

<comment><USER2> The textbooks from the Hua Loo-keng School are very good indeed. I don't have a convenient Web reference at hand, alas.

I agree with you that mathematics textbooks from the Soviet Union are often excellent. I use two of those in my own supplemental math classes,

Mathematics 6 by Enn R. Nurk and Aksel E. Telgmaa

<http://www.perpendicularpress.com/math6.html>

(currently out of print, as explained on the webpage, as the second English edition is being prepared)

and

Algebra by Israel Gelfand and Alexander Shen.

<http://www.amazon.com/Algebra-Israel-M-Gelfand/dp/0817636773>

Both are full of interesting problems and expect learners to be smart. I particularly like Gelfand's views on mathematics education:

"I would like to make one comment here. Some of my American colleagues have explained to me that American students are not really accustomed to thinking and working hard, and for this reason we must make the material as attractive as possible. Permit me to not completely agree with this opinion. From my long experience with young students all over the world, I know that they are curious and inquisitive and I believe that if they have some clear material presented in a simple form, they will prefer this to all artificial means of attracting their attention--much as one buys books for their content and not for their dazzling jacket designs that engage only for the moment. The most important thing a student can get from the study of mathematics is the attainment of a higher intellectual level."

The late professor Gelfand was optimistic--based on long experience--that many learners can attain a higher intellectual level in mathematics, perhaps because of his flexibility as a teacher: "Students have no shortcomings, they have only peculiarities. The job of a teacher is to turn these peculiarities into advantages."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I just find it mindblowing that all of these ra ra China articles take for granted that an enormous growth bubble will continue indefinitely despite a huge bad debt rate and a shaky political situation.

<comment><USER5> Especially considering how many (and recent!) examples there are of that kind of thinking leading to disaster in economics. I'd say those that don't learn history are doomed to repeat it, but this barely qualifies as history.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > Get ready for China's _spam_ of science

FTFY

</comment><comment><USER6> relatedly, i like how Obama has been pressing science education and education in general

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33_nZaOUWYw></comment>