Ask HN:  Good resources for learning+getting into Finance / Trading? - <AUTHOR> I'm starting to be intrigued by Finance/Trading/Stock Market, but sadly know nothing about it from a professional perspective.  I don't even know what to ask for, the same way a complete luddite wouldn't know how to ask for more than "What are some good resources to learn to start building computer programs?"  So with that said, where would one start? <comment><USER2> For the love of all that is holy go to Amazon _right now_ and buy a copy of _Trading and Exchanges: Market Microstructure for Practioners_ by Larry Harris.

I'm not a trader, or an exchange, but I've been forced to get _very, very_ intimate with the technological plumbing of both, and I've interviewed many of their developers, and you'll find the architects of match engines, order routing systems, and clearing backends recommending this book just as much as I do.

It is _exceedingly_ well written, too.

Investing strategy? Stick with Malkiel, like everyone here is (and is going to) recommend.

Another suggestion: you can download the recordings of Schiller's Yale Financial Markets class from iTunes (and from Yale); I listened to it on the way to/from a client in the suburbs for a couple weeks and enjoyed it, particularly the guest speakers.

<comment><USER3> My roommate and I are both algorithmic traders. He LOVES that book with deep sophisticated passion. I haven't read it yet, but he described it to me as a high level discussion of why and how people trade. It's not necessarily going to help you be an awesome trader, but it will help you interpret the markets in a way you've never imagined before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For some reason, this stuff seems to interest a lot of people here. Me too, I'll admit. But when I think about it, I come away with a deep suspicion that "the only way to win is not to play the game". How are you, as an individual, supposed to come out ahead playing in the same field as people with more knowledge and skills than you? The only way I can see is to have a 'sure thing' of some kind. Some sort of knowledge that is not widespread, perhaps to the point of insider knowledge, which is actually illegal. Perhaps you can gain that knowledge through lots of research, but even there... how much time is that going to take and how can you be sure you'll get there faster than bigger, well connected people and companies? For instance, any sort of quantifiable data is going to be picked through by someone with a bigger, faster, more extensive set of algorithms than you can dream up on your own.

Edit: one more thing: with a startup, the opportunity cost is likely your biggest expense. With trading, you risk losing the money you put in, which, combined with the time, could really amount to something.

I guess the question is: where is the parallel to startups, where a small group _can_ do well? Also: is it possible to do well without basically making a job out of it? Otherwise, perhaps it's best to avoid the whole thing: a few ETF's and forget about them, and concentrate on doing something you have an edge at.

<comment><USER5> I think that many HNers could have an edge in the tech sector. Most of us could probably not beat the Wall Street guys with analytical trading or whatever it's called (analyzing charts or detecting some patterns), but we could certainly predict which tech companies are likely to succeed in the foreseeable future and which are likely to fail. Does it make sense? I am totally ignorant about finance/trading, perhaps someone can correct me if I'm wrong.

<comment><USER5> It would be much more helpful to tell me why I'm wrong instead of down voting me...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you were allowed only the proverbial one book on the island, I'd recommend Kuznetsov's "The Complete Guide to Capital Markets for Quantitative Professionals".

It is one of the rare books where the marketing blurb is actually a valid description: "...a comprehensive resource for readers with a background in science and technology who want to transfer their skills to the financial industry."

Instead of further praising it myself, I'll copy a reader review from amazon that describes how I feel about it: "Rarely a book with a title as ambitious as "Complete Guide" fulfills its promise. This book does. Big time. It is written for quantitative professionals (current and prospective) and gives a bird-view account of all types of activities available to them in a typical Wall Street firm. The author cleverly avoids pitfalls of the books of this genre. The book is general enough to cover various settings, but not too general to become useless. It is detailed enough to provide relevant information, but not too detailed to become a software manual or a textbook. The text educates without being annoying and entertains without being lightweight. Hopefully, readers will appreciate consistency and appropriateness of the book's style. The author avoids over-fragmentation and "bulletization": the book consists of 20 chapters without any further subdivisions. It makes for much smoother reading undistracted by unnecessary subheadings. After finishing the book one can only marvel at the author's efficiency, wondering how he could cram so much useful and interesting information in just 600 pages. "

Kuznetsov also includes a great commented bibliography for further reading. I know many of the books therein, as well as their competitors, and I can say his are good recommendations (at least, I would have picked the same in most cases and found a lot of good reads there too).

</comment><comment><USER7> The Hacker News + Slashdot of finance/trading is <http://wilmott.com/>. Check out the articles, peruse the forums. <http://tickerforum.org> is also superb, no-bs.

I'd also recommend reading Nassim Taleb's books _Fooled By Randomness_ and _The Black Swan_ (info at his website <http://fooledbyrandomness.com/>) along with one he recommends:

 _What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars_

<http://infraredpress.com/>

Those will all teach you what _not_ to do, which is just as, if not more important in investing and trading than what to do.

<comment><USER8> SkyMarshall said _Those will all teach you what not to do, which is just as, if not more important in investing and trading than what to do._

Anyone can notice the successful investment decisions after the fact: buying Apple Inc on March 6, 2009 at $83.50 or selling BP on January 19, 2010 at $62.30. No stock or mutual fund can beat the market, each year, over twenty years. Neither can you.

What you can do is not beat yourself. Within the nuts and bolts of a portfolio, some trades may cost you dearly in terms of capital gains tax. Lopsided distribution of your investments in too few asset classes will also wreck havoc. Avoid these mistakes and you can greatly improve your rate of return.

<another_shameless_plug> I run the investment website <http://blog.realized- app.com> and companion web app for getting these decisions right. </another_shameless_plug>

<comment><USER7> Yup. And one more consideration to add to that, the math of losing money is brutal.

For example, say you start trading with $100, have a bad day and take a 50% loss, and are down to $50. What % gain do you need to get back $100?

Not 50%, as many new investors answer without thinking. To get from $50 back to $100 requires a 100% gain.

If you only a 25% loss down to $75, you need a 33% gain to get from $75 back to $100.

If you took a 75% loss to $25, you need a 300% gain to get back to $100.

Given the loss, the odds of getting the gains required to break even are not good.

Avoiding losses is a huge part of making money trading, which is why I particularly like both _What I Learned_ and Taleb's stuff.

<comment><USER9> That highlights a fundamental error many people make - you can't average percentages. A graph of an index fund on a percentage basis for the last 20 years tells you nothing useful (at least not directly).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Another good book I've read recently is Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis. I thought it was a good look into Wall Street and it's culture and how 'the system' is still susceptible to human judgment and misjudgment.

[http://www.amazon.com/Liars-Poker-Rising-Through- Wreckage/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Liars-Poker-Rising-Through- Wreckage/dp/0140143459)

</comment><comment><USER11> It seems to be implied, but I'm not taking anything for granted so my suggestion is thus: Maths. What do you know about math? Start there. You will be quickly asea if you are innumerate. Don't even think about reading any of the suggested literature (some very good suggestions, too...) without a good grounding in mathematics all the way through the Calculus. Don't make the mistake of thinking that the maths that may have helped inform any knowledge of computers and/or computation, will translate cleanly. Understand the maths first. You will then be able to understand where the authors, such as Michael Lewis and others, gloss over the mathematics to make the story more palatable to the 'average reader'. It's not that they do this deliberately, as much as their editors force them to do so. (Possibly apocryphal story: when Stephen Hawking submitted a first draft of "A Brief History of Time" it was rejected on the theory that each equation included in the manuscript would halve the sales... and he had so many equations that, it was quipped, "people would need to be paid to read it..." )

As for "what questions to ask for", start with the clear and explicit: "who's expecting to make money...? And how do they expect to make it?" This will lead you to interest rates and bond coupons, dividends, etc... But make certain you understand the math.

<comment><USER12> This is true once you get into the mechanics of algorithmic trading, but maths aren't needed to understand the basics of how markets and trading function. In fact, one recommendation of _Trading and Exchanges_ starts "Although this book doesn't contain a single equation...".

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you know programming, the thing probably is to get intrigued about the various different areas.

      The Predictors (Thomas Bass)
      Market Wizards (there's a series)
      When Genius Failed
      Pit Bull (Marty Schwartz)
      Rigged (Mezrich)
      Liar's Poker
      Reminiscences of a Stock Operator

These are all basically novels. All basically dated, misguided and incorrect. But then slowly you might learn to ask the questions that will interest you.

In terms of learning finance or trading, you have to learn that thing in a spiral (like with programming). Unless you're superhuman. In which case, by all means, pick up: Fabozzi for bonds, Ross for equities (Corporate Finance is the name of his book, but he's known for inventing APT, a key model in equity portfolios -- so unlike a lot of people, he does have a pretty clear sense of authority) and Hull for options/derivatives, etc.

But remember -- that one thing that is very much alive in the markets is the invisible hand and specialization. There are even fewer generalists than there are among professional programmers, etc. Most highly successful people can summarize their trade by highlighting 1/2 of a sentence in some textbook. (If they have experience, they might also be able to tell you how 40% in that textbook relates to or is in some ways similar to that 1/2 of a sentence.)

So it's kinda like that, imho. Good luck. And as I think you mention in one of your recent posts about being a millionaire, leverage your strengths, etc. If it becomes a very large interest, probably the most efficient thing is to go to a prop shop or a large firm and learn from the source.

<comment><USER13> Also, curiously enough tonight I just learned about reddit's growing way of organizing free books online. E.g., for econ (some finance):

<http://www.reddit.com/r/econbooks>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> <shameless plug> I run <http://Newsley.com>. We're pivoting away from social news we're rebuilding the back end to turn it into a real time search engine for financial and economic news. The front page is populated with financial news and macro economic articles of interest </shameless plug>

<comment><USER15> uh oh. Also, you have DEBUG = TRUE in your Django settings.

<comment><USER14> That's awkward.

I made some changes late last night, and messed up when I pushed them to the server.

It's fixed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Check out this video:

[http://python.mirocommunity.org/video/1531/pycon-2010-python...](http://python.mirocommunity.org/video/1531/pycon-2010-python- in-quantitat)

Doing a search for "Panel data" yields some interesting courses.

MIT's OCW and Apple U should also have lots of material.

As far as books go, I've been recommended "Lords of Finance" "Too Big to Fail" and "My Life as a Quant".

</comment><comment><USER17> 1\. Caveat: the market can teach _expensive_ unforgiving lessons. After you've read, learned and developed your own theories/strategies _test_ them with practice and see if you're any good - consistently. Use a free service like vse.marketwatch.com or wallstreetsurvivor.com, or just pen and pad for several weeks/months before actually trading. This becomes more important depending on your level of aggression/risk.

2\. Always define how much you're comfortable losing _before_ trading. (time frames for entering/exiting trades helps too) The more you adhere to this the better you can control emotion-based trade decisions, and that equals money in this game.

</comment><comment><USER18> for technical analysis: 1)World famous Dan Zanger (turned ~30k into 42 million in 2 years) <http://chartpattern.com/>

for options 1) cboe.com has the best online education around (free too).. including video cast and other media

2) option training: dan sheridan: <http://www.sheridanmentoring.com/> , mark: <http://www.option911.com/> both Dan and mark used to work w/ the najarien brother's in their huge market making firm on the CBOE.. both know their stuff backwords and forwards

<comment><USER19> Wait, did you seriously recommend technical analysis?

<comment><USER18> Yup, all my hedge fund friends that actually make money use it :p

<comment><USER20> Isn't technical analysis basically a kind of stripped-down version of quantitative analysis focusing on relatively easy to compute and/or eyeball trend statistics?

<comment><USER7> It's more like using statistical regression methods and Microsoft Paint to find patterns in tea leaves, but as long as you use disciplined money management and avoid major losses you can still make money at it.

The only thing I know about Dan Zanger was when he was featured in one of the trading magazines many years ago, in an article discussing his feat. He accomplished it during the 90s tech boom, when you couldn't lose money even if you tried. No idea what he did after that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I really liked following two books on the subject of investing 1\. A Random walk across wall street 2\. Intelligent Investor

</comment><comment><USER22> Since "Finance/Trading/Stock Market" is a bit of a wide net to cast, I will offer my opinion on a small chunk. To understanding modern automated US equity trading, it pays off to understand the basic mechanics underpinning the market, and get a feel for the opportunities this structure presents.

I would suggest reading up on the national market structure, and reading "Inside the Black Box" by Narang for a good overview of how automated trading is structured.

</comment><comment><USER23> You're going to have to figure out what style of trading fits your personality. Value, growth, income; long term, swing, daytrading; futures, stock, options, forex; quant or discretionary; and so on. There are some quintessential resources for each "bucket" which are fairly well known-- Graham, Livermore, O'Neil-- I'd start with the classics and go deeper into what your interested.

I do this for a living, if you want to talk more just google my name

</comment><comment><USER24> I'd advise you to read Fortune's Formula, by William Poundstone first. It's entertaining, an easy read, and you'll pick up loads of information that will be useful going forward.

After that:

If you want to invest on fundamentals go for both of Graham&Dodd (aka the bible) and Seth Klarman's margin of safety (<http://www.my10000dollars.com/MS.pdf>).

For technical/quant trading both Trading+Exchanges and Volatility Trading are good books to read. Then look up some of the articles on wilmott.com and papers about things like Universal Portfolios or Neural Networks for trading on places like CiteSeer. Poking around Interactive Brokers' documentation isn't a bad idea either.

Hope this helps!

</comment><comment><USER25> Collapsed investment bank Bear Stearns' required reading list for interns: [http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2007/09/09/bears_stearns_r...](http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2007/09/09/bears_stearns_r.html)

</comment><comment><USER26> I'd start even simpler than a lot of these other comments. I've worked in the investment space for years and there are many, many great books to read. In fact, there are just too many of them.

Start of with a book by Peter Lynch - Probably "One up Wall Street". He's a legendary investor. After that, go a bit more broad - "A Random Walk Down Wall Street". After you're done with that, try learning about fundamental and technical analysis. They are 2 very different things, but are the basis for valuation/pricing.

When you're done with that, you'll know more than most.

</comment><comment><USER27> Simple yet effective:

Turn on CNBC while you're working at your computer. Make note of any unfamiliar words or phrases and Google them throughout the day.

Do this for several months and you'll be surprised at what you're learning.

<comment><USER7> Replace CNBC with Bloomberg and I'd agree. I was forced to work in a small trading floor with CNBC on all day every for almost a year, and those people are absolute morons, spin doctors, and cheerleaders.

Basically they take John Madden/Dick Vitale announcing style (but not the substance) and apply it to market news. You might learn a few terms from them, but I'm convinced CNBC exists for no other reason than to lure the next marks and suckers into the market, intentionally misinform them, hype them up, and then get kickbacks from the sharks and traders who take their money.

Bloomberg is much higher quality.

<comment><USER27> Thanks for the tip! I'll check out Bloomberg this week.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm late to the thread - but along with all the good advice here, my advice would be "don't actually trade any REAL money for the next 5 or 6 years, just sock your cash away in safe banks and currencies". Practice, study, try out your algorithms and systems, and watch what unfolds for the next half decade before you start trying to game the market - because it's very possible that those with liquidity a few years from now will be the ones in the best position to reap huge rewards.

</comment><comment><USER28> There is no one like the fly <http://ibankcoin.com/flyblog/>

</comment><comment><USER15> I am also getting into trading, and I've been frequenting fool.com — they have great beginner/novice resources.

</comment><comment><USER29> Check out the comments on this thread:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1241165>

I would start by reading The Intelligent Investor by Ben Graham. If you like it, then move on to Margin of Safety by Seth Klarman. (I have a value investing bias.)

</comment><comment><USER30> Check out <http://www.investimonials.com> It's like Yelp for finance related stuff. It's a great place to find reviews of brokers, books, newsletters, blogs, etc.

</comment><comment><USER31> Arbitrage Theory in Continuous Time (Oxford Finance Series) <http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0199271267/ref=oss_product>

</comment><comment><USER32> <http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5352106773770802849></comment>


Build collaborative apps with Google Drive Realtime API - <AUTHOR> http://googledevelopers.blogspot.com/2013/03/build-collaborative-apps-with-google.html <comment><USER2> Wow this is awesome. My long-planned side project for the summer was to build Operational Transform as an API, but it seems Google has beat me to the punch. I'm glad to see it's them doing it though, as they know OT better than anyone else in the world and I won't have to entertain the idea that I could have done it better.

</comment><comment><USER3> So basically, they realised how handy google waves collaborative features were and now their bringing them back!

<comment><USER4> This is very likely derived from Google Docs, not Wave. The spreadsheet app has been based on this approach (immediate synchronization via operation transforms) since way back, and the document and presentation apps were rewritten to the same approach a few years ago. It sounds like they're now simply opening up that backend for third parties... which is pretty cool, actually.

(Background: I worked on Writely, the original Docs word processor. I wasn't involved in the work described here, but saw some of it happening. It's nice stuff.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For anyone looking for an open source alternative to this: <http://sharejs.org/>

Similar to the Realtime API but without Google or the social integrations.

</comment><comment><USER6> Wait, they host their examples on GitHub? I thought Googlers were supposed to dogfood Google Code?

<comment><USER7> well , maybe they are going to drop google code soon , you know it is not "money making" enough...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is this basically what firebase.com does?

</comment><comment><USER9> I trust Google like I trust a viper in bed.

</comment><comment><USER10> Google for realtime? How long before they cancel it? No way I'd rely on Google for realtime when there's meteor/node/faye/etc/etc.

<comment><USER11> I'm under the impression that Google Drive is a money-making enterprise. Reader was not. In light of that, my question wouldn't be whether this will be canceled, but would be how much you will pay for depending on access to this API when they decide to rationalize the rates.

<comment><USER12> Given how little effort Google puts into updating, bugfixing or providing any kind of support to those _paying_ for Drive, I seriously doubt this is a money-making enterprise.

Drive hasn't really evolved since it was launched almost a year ago when everyone suspected it may be Google's long awaited DropBox-killer.

<comment><USER13> What are some evolutions you'd like to see? It seems basically feature compatible with dropbox, plus the added benefit of being able to edit documents in-place on the web. The only think that I want and it does not have is a fuse client for linux.

<comment><USER14> > being able to edit documents in-place on the web

Last time I checked only a handful of file types were editable in Drive. I can edit source files in Dropbox but Drive simply downloads them.

Drive's file manager is also very limiting while Dropbox's feels much more like a desktop experience. I can archive, unarchive, copy, paste etc. with ease.

<comment><USER13> Source files are now editable using the app from the blog post mentioned in the story we are discussing.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Compute Engine Is Gonna Change The Public Cloud Game - <AUTHOR> http://www.cloudave.com/22927/google-compute-engine-is-gonna-change-the-public-cloud-game/

<comment><USER2> This article doesn't mention what Google will do better than Amazon other than: "The instances boot fast". I don't understand why Google is releasing this cloud offering with the same paradigm as EC2 but as a subset of features. I would think they would have attacked the pain points of EC2 much better. Their Google app engine was a different paradigm which people liked but didn't take off. Why would anyone bother with Google's offering? The costs are roughly the same and the featureset is less. I would think they could differentiate with hosted machine learning or more in the BigTable querying.</comment>


Content writer at AI startup in London - <AUTHOR> https://rainbird.ai/careers/content-writer/ <comment><USER2> HN is not a job board. please see the FAQ for details and to learn the one day this is allowed as a comment</comment>


Show HN: It's My Second – Mark your moments uniquely and forever - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/its-my-second-get-your-unique/id1013441692 <comment><AUTHOR> We've made an iOS application which allows people to buy themselves a second. That's right. You can buy yourself your birthsecond, the second you are marrying, a moment you don't want to forget while travelling etc. and mark it with a photo.

Nobody else can buy your unique second and everyone will know it is yours. Every year your photo will be shown on the website and on the application.

I'd love to hear some comments/suggestions :)

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.itsmysecond.com](http://www.itsmysecond.com)</comment></comment>


A Proposal To Improve Hacker News - <AUTHOR> http://sridattalabs.com/2012/08/17/a-modest-proposal/ <comment><USER4> This, and many of the suggestions in the original thread, and pg's default response, are all falling into the same trap: they are attempting to fix a people problem using technical solutions.

Technology can make community management easier. Better algorithms and visual design and so on can improve the way that a community polices itself. But, I think eventually you'll run into vanishing returns from that kind of stuff. (I don't have any good science for this, but I've been spending too much time online since the dial-up BBS days, and community development is one of my interests.)

Eventually every community needs one or more managers, or gardeners (<http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/>) -- people who have been around a long time, who embody the "spirit" of the site, and who have, not absolute, but special influence on the community. (RiderOfGiraffes immediately comes to mind; I really wish he was still around.)

This is absolutely analogous to Google attempting to avoid customer service completely by piling on more and more automated systems. While those systems help, they can't yet replace an actual customer service department -- and I think the frequent complaints from people who've been impacted by Google's lack of customer service bears this out.

I like some of the suggestions in this post, but I don't think that they can resolve the main issue with HN at the moment: it has grown to a size which needs one or more community managers.

There are some architectural issues too. I think the current trend in online forums, where new things are always better than good things, is ultimately a step backwards in terms of encouraging thoughtful discussion (<http://www.robsheldon.com/conversations-online/>). If a really interesting item comes up on HN that requires, say, a solid hour to compose a thoughtful response -- something very technical that would benefit from some number crunching -- there is very little motivation to commit the time to write that response. By the time it's written and posted, the site has moved on to the next new thing. However, the first person to respond to an item with a quick, witty, or snarky response gets rewarded with lots of attention.

And that is a problem that can not be resolved by any of the suggestions so far.

<comment><USER5> > By the time it's written and posted, the site has moved on to the next new > thing.

I noticed this within the context of submissions and /new when I posted two blog posts of mine. Both posts were x000 words so minimum reading was over 3-5 minutes (average time on site was 1.5 minutes so not everyone read to the end).

Both times neither posts got any upvotes until half way down the first page. They were surrounded by topical submissions, news or etc. Stuff that either had a simple message in the title or was only a few paragraphs long.

Except a strange phenomenon occured when the posts fell to the second page, readership doubled. Whereas on the first page Google analytics real time reported 10-14 active readers this jumped to the low 20s. By this time the posts had received 5 upvotes. On page 1 they were maybe the 4-5th most upvoted submission but once they reached the 2nd page they stole 1st or 2nd place among their non-frontpaged peers.

The lesson I took away from this is that short or topical submissions have a strong advantage. It is easier and quicker for someone to decide to upvote. In same cases they may upvote without reading at all if the title is descriptive enough. Meanwhile people do _like_ longer posts but reading a full essay is barrier to upvoting.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps votes should be weighted by the length of the submitted post. So, e.g., votes on short submissions are worth less than votes on full essays. Length of the post can be gamed, but I guess when that happens some form of information theoretic measure can be used as part of the weighting.

I don't suppose this is already being done, is it?

<comment><USER7> It is going to be hard to make an algorithm which can't be beaten (e.g.) by just applying more adjectives and synonyms. Which can easily be automated.

<comment><USER8> Actually, I strongly doubt it can be easily automated in a way that doesn't reduce readability, which I expect to lead to a sharp drop off in number of up-votes. If the number of up-votes drops off faster than the advantage gained from the longer post, the system can't be gamed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _Reward users for browsing "New"_

This is an interesting suggestion.

I think of looking at new submissions as a kind of "service to the community"-- more specifically, to the community I want HN to be. If the front page is filled with links I don't value, then it's partly my fault if I've failed to upvote submissions I would rather see on the front page (this, of course, means browsing "new" is a reward unto itself, but it's a somewhat abstract reward nonetheless).

Sometimes I wish HN wouldn't track average karma. That discourages me from commenting on new submissions that I believe won't get many eyeballs. Intellectually, I know my average karma shouldn't mean anything to me, but the fact that it's there for all the world to see exerts a gravity of its own. "You get what you measure."

<comment><USER10> I'm someone else who refrains from commenting in order to protect my average karma.

The thing is, that it isn't as irrational as you are making it out to be. Posts from users with higher average karma are sorted higher. Presumably you are posting because you want your post to be read. Either you want it to influence people or you want your question answered, or whatever. If you didn't want it to be read, you wouldn't have posted it.

I'm pretty sure this has a 'rich get richer' effect. On a page full of a lot of comments, most people will only read the first few. Being at the top leads to more up-votes, leading to more posts at the top, and so on recursively.

I am totally guilty of gaming this system. I normally only post in threads where I think that I'll get up-votes, and I only post things that I think are worth posting. The latter effect is good. There are too many people on HN and it's a good thing to encourage us to maintain a high signal to noise ratio. But the former, the fear of posting in unpopular threads, or on comments near the bottom of the page, is awful.

<comment><USER11> Wow, I had no idea average karma sorted people higher/lower.

But you actively try to protect your karma? After my karma hit 1000 I basically stopped caring anymore. What incentive do you have to protect your karma (serious question, I'm not sure I understand why it matters)?

<comment><USER12> I didn't know this, either. This idea will only work if karma measures what we want it to measure. If karma isn't associated with quality but with site- gaming, or snarky commenting, or other bad stuff, this system creates a positive feedback loop for sending the site in the _wrong_ direction. Yikes!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think this lays the real issue out but buries it:

> The only way to guarantee any visibility is to time very carefully using > HNPickup, be a celebrity like John Gruber or Dustin Curtis, organize an up > vote cabal, or write sensationalist content.

HN has become mainstream and it's subject to all the spam, pandering, submission strategies, power users and all the other bullshit that comes with that territory.

I'd start by getting rid of every user who's submission to comments ratio is ridiculous and every website that would be better suited to digg or reddit.

<comment><USER14> > spam, pandering, submission strategies, power users and all the other > bullshit that comes with that territory.

that's actually what bothers me more about current HN state than the 'harsh comments' everybody complains about.

and one another thing: I remember when the frontpage was full of business and tech advice from experienced people who shared valuable knowledge hard to obtain on my own. now I wonder how many more git and fabric tutorials do we need, or why should I care what every blogger on the planet thinks of twitter.

<comment><USER15> And that _every_ blog post must be followed by 'Why blog post A is wrong' and then 'why blog post A and B are _both_ wrong'.

<comment><USER16> I'm surprised there isn't 3 "Can't design? Learn programming." posts on the first page right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Possibly off topic, but when you title a post "A Modest Proposal" it signals satiric content to a lot of viewers (as the original Modest Proposal was to defeat famine with cannibalism")

<comment><AUTHOR> You are the second person to comment about this. I merely intended to humbly propose things, not allude to this historical work. I've changed it to avoid controversy (as that is not my aim).

<comment><USER18> Don't worry, it wasn't controversial or offensive, just a trope that signals satire - which is not what you intended.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> _While not all of us can spend the time to become an HN celebrity, there are many of us who have worked to get a high karma over time. HN should highlight the names of such users in purple, similar to the way it highlights newbies with green._

PG tried that (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=467181>), except with orange instead of purple.

<comment><USER20> Considering that the post is 3.5 years old, it makes me wonder if this problem has always been around. I wonder if this problem is cyclic and peaks at different times during the year or during certain events, such as summer or demo days.

<comment><USER21> > Considering that the post is 3.5 years old, it makes me wonder if this > problem has always been around.

It hasn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> One thing I'd like to see: Merged discussions.

Maybe instead of adding a comment, you could also have a button to add another link covering the same topic. Good for when someone links a BGR story that's just a linkbait headline summary of a BI article that's just a rewrite of a NYT interview. So let's say all articles for a common topic become linked. Allow upvotes on articles and the highest one becomes titular for the meta- thread.

This would (1) condense topics so the front page isn't deluged with say 5 twitter api threads, (2) unify discussions and avoid repetition, (3) help enforce good net practices i.e. linking to the best source.

<comment><USER23> This would graduate HN away from the list of links model that is so prevalent. Certainly an interesting idea, but a big change as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I do think the "New" page is a significant part of the problem, but I'm not sure I would focus primarily on how to reward users for browsing /newest. I think I would lean towards trying to figure out how to improve its mix of content first. The often-low-quality content is why many people (including myself) have dropped off from reading it as much, so the two are closely related. The content needs to get to the level where someone reading /newest can rationally believe that giving each link a fair shake, by clicking and _actually reading_ it (not spending 10 seconds skimming it), is worth their time. If people did that, more quality content would be unearthed, as opposed to just stuff that's appealing from the title and a 10-second skim.

One part is just spam-filtering, which is a never-ending arms race. But it seems low-quality even past that. Something to lower the total volume of the firehose might help; some people who don't even really participate in the community submit 5+ articles daily, or more. And there is a lot of reblogged content as well.

<comment><USER25> Could you incentivize people that upvote new items that ultimately cross some threshhold (front page/votes) such that their upvotes translate into some kind of karma or reward points of some sort? The earlier you are as an upvoter the bigger the reward? Of course that may just incentivize people upvoting everything in sight :) Perhaps historical upvoting patterns on the New Page could be incorporated to penalize that kind of behavior. Just throwing it out there. I do agree, I occasionally browse the new page but there is just so much cruft there that looking for the gems is time consuming so I generally just (lazily) wait for them to hit the front page.

Edit: Once again bitten by reading HN comments before the article as he proposes something along these lines in the post, doh! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15>
        >Distinguish veteran users

I would much rather go the other way. It should be a meritocracy, not celebrity worship.

For example give unique IDs for each user on each post. They could still link to profiles, and could optionally be kept for submissions.

</comment><comment><USER26> No. I disagree that we need some sort of way to protect / alternatively value the old folks with valuable contributions. This is a bad idea.

At first glance it seems good, since the old & upvoted are known entities - <USER2> average, they are valuable to the community. Thus, give them something that others can aspire to, even if it's just a purple link.

I would caution that this _will_ introduce strange, unforeseeable side- effects, not least would be that you would necessarily have to classify new users as dodgy, until such time that they have added enough data to be re- classified.

Doing that to new users might even be beneficial in the short term. But in the long run I fear that adding any frictions and subtle "you-aren't-as-valued- yet" around new users might introduce subtle behaviours and keep certain types of people away - something not easily quantifiable until it becomes too late.

I have a pet, untestable, and probably worthless theory that the tone of HN has slowly drifted toward the bitterness we see now because (a) you can't downvote links, so you have to express disagreement through the comments, thereby adding negativity to the comment thread that might have otherwise just been 'n downvote, and (b) the fact that comment scores are invisible doesn't give new adopters an idea of how strongly people agree or disagree with tone or topic in people's posts. So they don't learn by osmosis.

Both these ideas gave short-term benefit but I believe (totally unscientifically) that they slowly, invisibly, led to the tone of the site as a whole.

Be careful when changing the system, as the human part of it is difficult to manage via proxies like scoring and similar. And if we introduce a way that subtly penalises new people (or values old contributors, alternative view of the same idea) we might just change the way we attract new people - and a community needs all sorts of new people to stay alive.

</comment><comment><USER27> The hide button will not work for long.

It is an attempt to treat the symptom and not the cause.

I run large communities, and I've implemented "hide" and "ignore" functions for pretty much everything in my time.

People rub each other up the wrong way, so they want to ignore anything the other person says.

People get rubbed up by all threads on a certain topic, so they want to ignore the topic.

When a topic hits the news in a big splash and half the front page is the same thing, they get annoyed and want to ignore the whole of that topic for a short while.

Failing to hide/ignore all of that stuff results in them lashing out to the detriment of all.

But, if you indulge it by providing the hide/ignore all you've done is hide the symptom. Now people think it's cured and it is not.

The problem here isn't the content, it's the reaction to the content.

The problem here is with the reader and contributor, not pg and the code base.

The problem is that there needs to be a shift in attitude and etiquette from a lot of users.

It's a people problem, and people need to be shown what isn't an acceptable way to behave.

</comment><comment><USER28> I shudder at the ramifications of some of these suggestions. Users do what you pay them to do. For example, paying people to up vote/down vote from New would result in just that -- not in people clicking the links and thoughtfully evaluating the content. And denoting high karma users more visibly would result in more karma boost activities. The end result of that is National Enquirer style headlines.

There is a change that would probably help: allowing a difference in signaling between agree/disagree and signal/noise. The definition of up/down voting is closer to ham/spam than agree/disagree, but people tend to use the arrows for agreement instead. It's hard to behave otherwise, by up voting a well argued comment you think is wrong, for example. It would be easier to highlight quality if multiple axes were available.

<comment><USER23> I agree that multi-directional voting is worth exploring and that promoting karma points leads to more sensationalism. Possibly even some form of democratic tagging?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> "It would be incredibly shocking to see a vitriolic HN comment coming from community leaders like tptacek"

wat

<comment><USER30> While I agree that tptacek can be blunt to the point of cruelty, his arguments are well reasoned. I've also never seen him belittle the efforts of anybody (though I have seen him torch week reasoning). Even if I've disagreed and silently wished he would walk away from a thread, his contributions to HN are worse the bluntness.

<comment><USER29> I agree 100% (which is why I went with a silly "wat" instead of challenging the statement directly).

Every forum has a small group of people who tend to lack social graces (or what passes for them online) but aren't just random assholes and are correct most of the time. As long as these people don't stray too personal too often, their contributions remain a net positive, IMO.

tptacek certainly fits into that, he just seemed like a funny choice to lead off with in that statement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm not sure whether this is a good or bad thing, but most sites (including HN) with partially-automated moderation systems make the same assumption:

      *You only need one "karma" variable, for both posting and moderation*.

That is, users who post popular content (i.e. comments that get a lot of upvotes) and those who moderate well (i.e. votes strongly-correlated with those of the admins) are rewarded in exactly the same way, that is by increasing the value that unified "karma" variable.

IMHO this is not the best approach. For every prolific poster (who probably has decent karma already) you probably have 10 "lurkers" who have read most stories posted in the last month, know what they do (and don't) want to read, and are just as well-qualified to vote on stories and comments as those who regularly post comments (and earn karma from them.)

So what would happen if you made "posting karma" and "moderation karma" independent of each other?

(sort of a trick question, since it has been done.)

</comment><comment><USER32> The title of your piece suggests a satirical tone and I was ready for a delicious morsel. Alas, I could not detect the slightest hint of sarcasm or of a darker, ulterior aim. It could still be there, mind you, but on subtler wavelength than my resonant cavity can detect. It might as well have been titled "HN Considered Harmful", I suppose.

</comment><comment> throwaway54-762 I was a little disappointed that this wasn't sarcastic (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal>).

</comment><comment><USER33> "there are many of us who have worked to get a high karma over time."

I'm of the opinion that arguments must be judged by itself, and not by the "Aristotle said" conformity method that so many problems brought to society in the past and in the present.

I'm probably one of the older people here and had like 7 different accounts or so(I keep forgetting passwords and accounts when my machines change-update).

I had a big karma on some of those accounts, but honestly I don't care the least. I have more important things in my life to do-care, and so most of the interesting people in HN. A great PhD with great things to say is going to have work to do better than collecting "karma" on Internet all day long.

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm relatively new to the Hacker News community, so forgive me if this is totally off-base, but in my opinion the issue is that the community feels relatively anonymous. Perhaps this is by design, the point being that the comment should be more important than the commenter, but it has its downsides.

It's easy to act viciously when you're only identified by a username, and this lack of identification, I think, breeds contempt. Though it's possible to dig deeper and find out more about each commenter, while skimming comments on an article, I don't "see" a collection of accomplished human beings having a conversation. At a glance, I don't know whether I'm talking to a bunch of snarky twelve year-old know-it-alls or founders with a wealth of real-world experience. To me, this matters.

I wonder whether there are simple ways to shift the tone of the HN community - for example, by assigning a short byline to each username that gives an indication as to who the user actually is, and why I should care about what they have to say (the "about" field already exists, but maybe it needs to be brought front-and-centre somehow).

Again, I've jumped into the HN community late, so perhaps I'm being a little naive. However, maybe a newcomer's perspective could be helpful.

<comment><USER35> I think there is a lot of identity associated with users. I'm relatively young, and often I will see one user identifying another user by their first name, which I don't know at all. People know each other here.

This might be bad. If so, I'd say all comments should be anonymous for 2 days. Give out a pseudo-random pronounceable handle to each user for posting on each thread. People making dick comments will still have to deal with their commenting history as posts are "unmasked" in 48 hours. (This well could cause more problems that it solves.)

<comment><USER34> That's interesting, and it's probably something I'll come to recognise as I spend more time here. However, from where I'm standing, it does seem as though the issue is that those ties are breaking as the community grows. I'm not totally sure adding a further layer of anonymity would strengthen discourse (though it could be an interesting experiment).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The 'more' link regularly fails to render on my IPhone 4 leading to a further long term aversion to going there. Not sure if anyone else has had the same experience? Just saying if it's affecting many devices this Is just compressing the issue further.

<comment><USER37> I have a different problem in that the 'more' link uses some crazy key instead of 'page=2'. If you press it a relatively short time after being loaded, you'll get 'unknown or expired link', meaning you need to backtrack, reload the page, scroll again, click... it's trained me out of bothering to do it anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'm an algorithm designer, so I don't know about all of these changes but I do have a mathematical solution to PG's vote value problem:

before edit: Value of vote = Log[base:TotalUserKarma](UserAvgKarmaPerComment)

after edit: Vote Value = (Log[base:TotalUserKarma](AvgUserKarma)) * (Log[base:(25)](ThreadTop50Rank))

another edit: Vote Value = (Log[base:Median(AvgUserKarma)](AvgUserKarma)) * (Log[base:(25)](ThreadTop50Rank + 1))

EDIT: added a +1 to prevent a 0 value for the #1 thread. (unless you actually want votes not to count for the number 1 thread, in that case you can just pull out that "+ 1")

This would reward contributors with higher relative average karma per comment. If you have 0 karma your vote isn't worth anything and if you do have karma but your average is only 1, once again your vote isn't worth anything. You have to consistently contribute useful material to have a say whether or not someone else's material is userful to the community.

This seems to be a decent reflection of social circles in real life.

Try it out on users you think contribute very little and see if it is effective. Naturally, I don't have that data so I can only speculate.

<comment><USER39> The problem with average karma is stat it strongly discourages people from posting replies to less popular or older messages. I've made a conscious choice to ignore my average karma. I dont think it is conducive to good conversation, as it tends to be heavily biased towards the first few posts.

I wonder if we should go the other way -- I always liked slashdot's system of a 5 point cap on any post. Is a 500 point post really enter than a 100 point post, or is it more likely it is seen more often?

<comment><USER38> Good point, I adjusted it to reward "New" threads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> "What doesn't matter" ... "Complaints of 'too much startups, not enough tech' or vice-versa"

Is there a place to go for real hacking articles and none of the startup news bullshit? I don't care if it's called Hacker News or not. I don't even care if it's /new/. I just want a place to discuss interesting articles about making software and hardware do interesting things.

<comment><USER41> The site was originally called startup news. I think that in retrospect the rename to HN was a bad idea, because it changes peoples expectations of what the site is for.

Regardless, what you are describing would be much appreciated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I find that paradoxically, the biggest problem with Hacker News right now is the hot algorithm we use. It's great for bringing good stories to the attention of the community and having a burst of short lived discussion over those stories, and then dying out. What it's not great for is long term discussions.

For example, with Quora, when someone answers a question, or posts a comment, you never care how long ago it was posted, because there are notifications, and the front page is based on what you follow, not how popular the questions are.

This is a hard problem to fix, but a couple suggestions I have are to improve the threads feature, such that it resembles a real notification bar. Secondly, I think a new page should help, a mixture between the front page, and the saved stories, which shows active discussions, and an emphasis on one's that you have upvoted.

I think those might help reduce the ephemerality of the discussions here.

</comment><comment><USER43> How about this: charge a subscription fee to perform "destructive" actions on HN. This means posting comments and voting, including upvotes. Perhaps submitting stories can remain free — the paying users will determine the quality of the submissions.

Some of us (used to) get a lot of value out of HN, so $10 or $50 a year would be a bargain.

<comment><USER30> I would not blink twice at this. Few better ways to weed out the trolls. It would be interesting to devise a way to utilize money and karma in a way that basically says, "If you are provably improving the community significantly, this costs you nothing; but if you are average or, worse, a drag, you will pay."

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Between the to bar and the content, for a week or so, place a centered link reading "A personal message about the future of HN from Paul Graham." Make it a thread maybe. Talk about the expectations of visitors. The need to build up, rather than drag down. To hold back the snarky comments, no matter how funny we find them. (And not to vote them up, no matter how funny we find them.)

Talk about the virtues of reddit's better maintained communities if you're not looking for serious conversation.

Make the post exactly what you want from the community.

Treat them like the serious business and tech minded sluts you want them to be woke under your roof. And point that out too. You're choosing to engage, like you often do. You don't want to, and shouldn't have to, seek technological answers to people problems.

Maybe you'll convince a few people to think before posting/voting.

<comment><USER44> ... "Treat them like the serious business and tech minded ADULTS".

Last time I ever make a post on my phone with a time limited edit function. Especially when sleepy, with Swype.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Surely one badly-needed feature is needed is more different views. As the community gets bigger, the single 'front page' doesn't cut it anymore.

Reddit's subreddits have become enormously successful in this vein (probably to the detriment of its main page, which nobody in their right mind would read anymore). I'm not saying this system is perfect for HN, but other systems in the same direction might be very nice eg. tags for things like 'please provide feedback on my new page/product' (I'd love to see them on one page), or different types of comment view on a per-user-basis (how do _I_ want to see comments, not one system for all HN). For my mind, an encouragement of diversity along these lines would help the site thrive whilst allowing users to keep (and define) their own community standards.

</comment><comment><USER46> > Distinguish users. Reward users.

Wrong. Instead user karma system should be deleted completely. (Yes, I know that I am a "newbie" here. Think what you want.). I have seen too many portals died or degraded by the weight of "karma". The only working example is probably Stack Overflow and I think they won't last long because of it.

Only reason why SO can survive is continuous strict moderation. I like "C++ vs Java", "Most influential book" and similar topics very much but they really don't belong to SO by their rules.

The same should be applied to HN - ban those millions Twitter and FB topics. Ban topics with complaints (however reasonable). Ban SOPA/ACTA etc. topics.

In short - filter everything that is not educational for IT specialists. Yes, it would be more boring that way (or not) but it would ensure HN quality and survival.

</comment><comment><USER47> There is a tendency to upvote comments you agree with, and downvote comments you disagree with.

This has two ill effects: 1) Witty and popular viewpoints rise to the top, creating an atmosphere of superficial groupthink 2) People with unpopular (but insightful!) viewpoints may be discouraged from posting them.

Given this, would the level of comments improve with the following change?

Replace the up/down vote buttons with a single button next to each comment that reads: 'insightful', and use that to vote up comments. Forget about downvoting stuff - the low content viewpoints and rudeness will both sink to the bottom. Or if you wish, add a 'flag' box for comments made in poor taste.

Using such specific labels would make people think twice before voting, both about the purpose of their vote and if the comment needs a vote at all.

<comment><USER48> Do you think that the label would change people's behavior in the long term, or would they end up just thinking of it as an upvote?

<comment><USER47> Not sure, but trying it out would be a good way to find out...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I think HN should be a democracy:

1\. Don't let people create multiple accounts so easily. Switch to OpenID and have the ability to associate old accounts with the new ID or have the old account deactivated within 90 days. I don't even know how many accounts I've created, but it is a lot. This is basically anonymity. This does not work.

2\. Don't filter comments and not hide topics that anyone disagrees with unless they are extremely offensive, and those could be marked as offensive and then PG and those with enough karma will check those and if they are offensive, they will hide them, but anyone could still see them, vote on them, and comment on them, if you clicked a flag to see them. You have to login to upvote, downvote, mark as offensive, post, or comment.

3\. Show who upvoted or downvoted to everyone. This will make people think twice before downvoting.

4\. Allow private communication between users so that if someone downvotes you without saying why, you can ask them why.

5\. The new page is grouped by: last 24 hours, last 3 days, last week, last month, last 3 months, last year, and then by year. Everytime something is upvoted it goes to the top of the new list for the group it is in.

I'm sorry that some people have complained that HN works fine technically as it is. It certainly does, for those it serves. However, people complain that there are negative views here. I think the changes I proposed will help with that. But a bigger problem is that people's posts and comments get whacked. If you handle things in the way I described, and stop silencing me and others, I think the community will be much happier.

</comment><comment><USER50> It's unlikely that a purely algorithmic ranking solution will be adequate. HN should better leverage the judgment of the site's veteran members across the board, rather than only for article ranking. Awhile back I posted a self- organizing way to filter comments that works in this way: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3473753>.

</comment><comment><USER51> >HN could benefit from implementing infinite scroll, so the next page is appended asynchronously to the current one. [...] The problem is only a small minority of readers bother to click the tiny "More" button on bottom of the page.

Yes. More so, if I spend considerable time, reading the second or even third page I can't get to the third or fourth page because the "More" link becomes broken after a while.

</comment><comment><USER52> I suggested this on a previous 'improve HN thread' (instigated by pg himself):

Shutdown HN for a week or so and when reopening only let a certain quota in per day/week/month. Give priority to old and/or high karma members. I think that it will have the effect of churning the low quality membership.

Perhaps allow these elected to elect others to enter "promised land".

<comment><USER53> do you have a link to the thread?

<comment><USER52> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403696>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> The Usenet readers had kill file's. That is the only solution which will have an overall improvement with no downside.

</comment><comment><USER55> I think showing veteran users in another color would really help a lot to set the tone. If the community rewards snarky posts with many upvotes, this alone will not be enough though.

Perhaps marking up veteran users by karma and/or seniority and weighting upvotes by the same metric?

<comment><USER56> I agree with showing certain users in certain colors. I don't think karma is the right metric for it.

I'd like to see green for new users, maybe some specific color for throwaway accounts of someone with a real account, let people with special other colors reveal that color if they wish, and maybe good and bad colors for people who meet other requirements -- there are some people who probably deserve a "red flag" for 30+ days, but not hellbanning, and others who deserve the honorary purple.

The only karma related way I'd award purple is for submission points, or for being early upvoters on submissions in /new which are later upvoted by a lot of other people. Sheer accumulated comment karma is probably not a great metric, since someone who is on HN a lot, chooses to write "populist" comments, etc. is likely to accumulate a lot of karma without adding much value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I think a lot of new users are unaware of the HN guidelines [1]. Linking to it from the nav bar could help showing what is and isn't an acceptable way to behave.

[1]: <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

</comment><comment><USER58> Shirky 2003, about habitat, 1990. Nothing new here, really. Same issues, same lines of thoughts for solutions.

A Group is it's Own Worth Enemy: <http://shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html>

</comment><comment><USER59> Personally I think I'd raise the bar to moderator rights to those with several thousand karma, and encorage strongly to flag stories they think are inappropriate. That should get the site closer to what it was a few years ago.

</comment><comment><USER60> I have to disagree with most suggestions.

What criteria would make someone purple ? Popularity ? Number of karma points ? What would be the incentive to respect them more then others ? And why would they deserve more respect than others ?

I'm a long time HN reader and I don't have much karma. Its because I try to post and comment wisely. Why wouldn't I deserve respect ?

My impression is that radical comments are more prone to votes since they pull on the emotional strings.

It would be a bad idea to favor people voting in the new section because I bet people would vote blindly just for the benefit of voting.

</comment><comment><USER61> Why not show the "new" tab as the front page and put "top" as a menu option? I know it's one more click for a lot of us, but it could be a nice change! Or, at least make that the default.

</comment><comment><USER62> There are a handful of domains that host pretty shoddy content - <USER3> research, poor writing, link-baity titles, bias, etc. Banning those might be too extreme. But it'd be nice if there was an A list and a B list and then a A and B list.

the A list would be carefully curated set of URLs proven to be of interest to the community (but a domain can easily be removed if they start getting too many bad stories); the B list would be everything else' the A and B list would be both.

</comment><comment><USER63> While reading this article through HN, (<http://slifty.com/2012/08/a-tor-of- the-dark-web/>) I thought it will be a good idea if HN can be moved inside an onion network like tor. People need to go through tor in order to access the site. It should not be visible via normal http/ip addresses. This can reduce the number of users coming on HN, and hopefully HN maintains the authenticity.

</comment><comment><USER64> I think "reward for browsing New" could be a good idea yet very difficult to implement it well. What I'd like to see is a front page with various lists of submissions according to different criteria, some ideas: 1st| most votes this month - this week, 2nd| "Hot today" (this'd be similar to the current front page I believe), 3rd | "Promising" (Posts from New section that begin their momentum), 4rd | Most commented month / week. Basically a bit of filtering.

</comment><comment><USER65> Sridatta, thanks for taking time to articulate your ideas on how to improve Hacker News. I enjoyed your post and really like the idea of distinguishing veteran users.

</comment><comment><USER66> A proposal to improve Hacker News: shut it down for a month.

</comment><comment><USER67> But is there a "Hacker News Manifesto"? No there isn't. HN is what it is because of the community. Sure, there should be moderators to control the profanity level.

But overall, if content is interesting and it's up-voted, it means it's meaningful to someone and therefore should maintain its place on HN.

The content should be driven by the community - if it's too startup related or too technology related is really a subjective matter.

</comment><comment><USER68> What do people think of the idea of removing down votes and allowing only up votes? Has this been shown on other discussion boards to work?

<comment><USER69> My immediate reaction is to say that the downvotes serve a useful purpose. They can indicate social disapproval without adding noise or fanning flamewars.

The downside, of course, is that you see so many "WTF? Downvotes? Why" Comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Honestly, I think this is kind of much adieu about nothing. On the original thread, one commenter looked at the OP's original submission and found a lot of praise etc. Similarly, wheher I see ShowHN posts with projects that seem trivial or even frivolous to me, there are usually many well wishers offering a lot of praise.

</comment><comment><USER71> > only a small minority of readers bother to click the tiny "More" button

The size migh be an issue, but the greatee problem is that by the time I reach the bottom of the page, the link has usually expired. If you want your users to see the next page, that really is inexcusable.

</comment><comment><USER72> I would also remove the duplicated content/submissions which create or could create fragmentation of good comments, besides a personal frustration for having just wasted time opening again the same link only because the title seemed different.

</comment><comment><USER73> Change the front page to show 30 hottest articles plus 10 new, 10 ask, 10 show, 10 jobs and 10 startups.

Run a contest to redesign the frontpage with all these sections.

As I said earlier, adding a section with upcoming startups by batch would greatly benefit us all.

</comment><comment><USER74> What about putting front page and "new" page together into a single homepage?

</comment><comment><USER75> Add to the list: Keep HACKER NEWS FOR AND BY HACKERS..stop posting other useless content. I want this place to learn and read about new coding practices, api's, only technically relavent stuff.

<comment><USER76> There's lots of non-technical stuff that's relevant to hackers. Broaden your horizons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> What I cant wait for...."Why the new Hacker News sucks"

</comment><comment><USER78> What about paying $5 to have a HN account? SomethingAwful and Metafilter both do this and it helps keep the quality high (along with good moderation).

</comment><comment><USER79> > community leaders

That's where I stopped reading. I don't need or want a leader who can lead my thoughts.

Also: Meta discussions are never productive. They only waste time.

</comment><comment><USER80> Some things have a natural life then die.

</comment><comment><USER81> Stop the censoring for a start...

<comment><USER82> This is a good piece on why aggressive moderation is necessary to keep online communities from devolving into cesspools, even though it may attract cries of censorship:

<http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/>

<comment><USER83> I never thought about it until now, but the best IRC networks I hung out on in the 90s were ones with really good net admins who enforced the rules. Even when I was younger, I didn't belong on certain IRC networks, and I was quickly banned from them. That same rule applies to all the other communities (mostly gaming) that I was involved with.

One problem with banning users is that they're not difficult to prevent from returning. At least on IRC, you had to pay for a BNC to change your IP address because whatever your dynamic IP resolved to, the hostname was fairly easy to reliably ban.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> All comments can be made from Tweetbot only. Done.</comment>


Giving Up TV for a Month Changed My Brain - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/3060491/what-happened-to-my-brain-after-a-month-without-watching-tv <comment><USER2> _During the first few days we were at a loss for what to do. It had been our routine to watch whatever is on TV after dinner, and suddenly we were both dumbstruck for ideas. So we went to sleep at 8:30 p.m._

Two things about this confuse me.

1) Running out of "stuff" to do. Maybe it's because it's been literal years since I've watched scheduled programming and don't understand the habits involved anymore, but I can't understand this idea of not knowing what to do with free time. We watch what's likely way too much TV on some days, but all the things they "discovered" they could do with all this time are still things we do regularly, without cutting off the TV entirely.

2) How do people just "go to bed" early because they get bored? I'm actually jealous of that idea. If I just decided to "go to bed" early, it would most likely involve me staring at either the ceiling, my phone, or a book for a few hours.

<comment><USER3> > 2) How do people just "go to bed" early because they get bored? I'm actually > jealous of that idea. If I just decided to "go to bed" early, it would most > likely involve me staring at either the ceiling, my phone, or a book for a > few hours.

I did a no electronics _and no electric light_ after sundown thing for a couple weeks. Lived after-dark hours by a couple candles—found two beeswax tapers are about the smallest amount I could comfortably read by, assuming they were close, though unshaded looking at them directly by accident and being blinded/feeling eye-pain was a real problem. Beeswax because once you notice how chemical-spill-smelling the cheap parafin ones are you can't un- notice it.

I went to bed way earlier than I would have otherwise, during that time, and generally much better rested than usual. I think it was a combination of the lower light _and_ the lack of hyperstimulation from having a world of audio- visual, passive and interactive, entertainment at my fingertips. I'd usually read for a while then turn in, not because there wasn't more I _could_ do (there's always more to read) but because it was just _time to sleep_ and because I didn't have a friggin' carnival going on in my house I actually _felt_ that.

I'd thought my whole life I was a night owl, but now I'm pretty sure 90%—or more—of the "I just _can 't_ sleep at night, it's how I am" stuff you read on here and other places on the Web is the same problem I (actually) had/have: our houses are friggin' amusement parks complete with incredibly bright lights, so we're constantly hyper-entertained and hyper-distracted. Of course we can't sleep! We've got more and better entertainment than a damn Emperor's celebratory feast would've in yester-year—with the relative plenty in food and drink to match, I might add, should we desire it—and it's _on tap_ , in our homes, 24/7.

<comment><USER4> Also, many device screens and light bulbs have daylight color temperature which can disrupt melatonin. It's amazing how blue LEDs are built into everything.

I wish some of the smart bulbs makers would get rid of their fancy mood lighting colors and make a light bulb that automatically adjusts its color temperature and brightness with the sun (or at least an ideal sun cycle if you don't want to go to bed at 5pm in the winter, or live in Alaska).

<comment><USER5> I already do this with hue white LED bulbs and timers in the app. I love how the blue mid day light looks like natural sunlight, and in the evening it's a nice warm glow. I have it fade to dark between 9pm and midnight, so I know it's time to go to bed when it starts getting difficult to see things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Blind person here. I actually wonder if audiobooks don't have similar effects, on some people at least. For a while, I used to read a lot of books, mostly not requiring much thinking. Lit RPG was my favorite genre). I mostly used to read ebooks with speech synthesis at ungodly speeds which I'm used to, so I could finish medium-sized books in a single day of binge reading. I remember having book marathons, which were not that dissimilar from watching a whole season of one show on Netflix in a day. I didn't have to exert much effort, I just used the continuous reading function of my screen reader and let it speak. Not going to sleep until very late at night just to know how that damn book will end is also no news for me. The fact that there are no real breaks between parts, as in show episodes, makes it even worse. Sure, there are chapters, but switching between them in audiobooks is automatic, instantaneous, and they're sometimes short enough that I don't even pay that much attention to it.

I sometimes watch TV shows with audio description, a special audio track overlaid on top of the normal one, with a narrator describing the visual aspects, and I don't enjoy them as much as books. That form of entertainment seems to require much more concentration and I'm often tempted to just stop. I think that for us blind people, the books vs shows thing may be completely reversed.

<comment><USER7> I love LitRPGs. It's like candy in book form. Almost no substance and my brain just turns off.

<comment><USER6> this is always my killer argument in any "books versus TV" discussion. Not all books are educative and have qualities one would associate with literature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've often found that towards the end of the day, when my brain is tired, I don't have the energy to read (much less code or work). Yet I can stay up for another hour or two passively watching TV.

I suspect a lot of us are the same and we'd be happier and healthier had we just gone to sleep.

<comment><USER9> Like a recovering alcoholic who avoids going into places that serve alcohol, it's much, much easier just to get rid of all TVs from your house so the temptation just doesn't exist.

<comment><USER10> I think a lot of us now consume Netflix and other services on our smartphones and laptops.

<comment><USER11> Block it, then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The phrase "watching TV" has lost all meaning.

If someone mindlessly flips channels all evening, watching hundreds of commercials and "whatever's on", I can see how that can be detrimental. For most of my life, that is what "watching TV" meant. I am amazed that anyone still does this.

But if someone watches a handful of shows they have selected that suit their particular taste, and then watch those shows at the time of their choosing and without commercials, the downside seems minimal. They are still "watching TV", I suppose, but it seems like an altogether different activity.

</comment><comment><USER13> One summer I gave up watching TV (or video of any sort) for the summer and read 36 books in 3 months. I don't have summers off, so this was just an arbitrary period. I don't know if it changed my brain, but I remember thinking much clearer and feeling much more engaged with life. But how long can you go before rewatching the Office or catching up on Game of Thrones? We're all only human.

<comment><USER14> IMO that was reading, not lack of TV. Reading for me definitely changes my thinking, most obvious in that my inner dialog changes tone to match the author I'm currently reading. This is one of my favorite parts of reading and plays an big role in my choice favorite authors and books. On the other hand watching TV or not doesn't seem to have this or any other noticeable affect on my thinking other than a bit of content (or not).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I agree with this, and believe the positive changes will continue the longer people go without tv. I've been without cable for 8 years and I'm so much happier.

When I visit my parents they always watch tv after dinner, and while sitting with them I've noticed how terrible tv shows are. It's strange, but it's like once the spell was broken I could see it for what it is: contrived and unoriginal narratives designed to keep people's attention and get them to sit through commercials.

</comment><comment><USER16> Can you imagine someone writing an article, "I gave up listening to music for a month and it changed my brain" and people having a positive reaction to it?

<comment><USER17> No, but if the title was instead "I gave up listening to [the top commercialized] music for a month and it changed my brain" I suspect it would receive a positive reaction.

<comment><USER18> I don't think it would.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> One thing that has worked really well in our lives is to not have the TV in the main living space. Our kitchen/living room are all open and there is no TV there.

To watch TV, we have a theater room. So it's an intentional act to go in and watch something, we don't just leave stuff on in the background.

Obviously being able to segregate this isn't possible for a lot of people's living spaces.. but it is really nice making it an intentional act. It's like my kids and their computers- we have a room for that. They don't have tablets. If they are going to play electronics, ok go there sit down and do it. But once you are somewhere else like the living room that is for reading/talking etc, not for sitting on a tablet.

<comment><USER20> That sounds pretty healthy. Can you share how often the living room gets used for reading and talking? In most homes I see, these spaces go unused in favor of the TV room.

I was raised in a "single tv" household and I think it helped that we all had to compromise on what we wanted to watch. This was before laptops were common, so screens are much more ubiquitous now. However, during the 90s it was common for each bedroom to have its own TV.

<comment><USER19> Living room gets used every day. It's not tucked away, it's in the center of the house with the kitchen, so that I like as well.

It really is interesting how the layout of a home can really determine how you function in your life day to day!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Much has been written about TV being a passive stimulus for the brain with hypothesis being that the lack of active stimulus causes atrophy of the brain. Reading doesn't have the same effect because the brain has to actively process the written glyphs to language and abstract concept so there's more processing happening than when you're just watching something.

<comment><USER22> I've always thought that the the difference may actually be the reverse, in the fact that reading provides less information (and requires less input processing). The reader has to fill in all the gaps using their imagination, which seems like a more active mental process then the more "automatic" input processing even if such input processing may be more mentally complex. Arguably, you're actively processing much more information watching TV. Your brain is interpreting both sounds (usually a complex mix of language, music, and other natural and natural sounds), as well as as stream of rapidly changing and complex visual information. In both cases the viewer/reader still has to interpret and process the more abstract "story" elements, but in the case of the reader they are also constructing mental images/sounds/scenes as part of that process, as opposed to just consuming them. So while the TV viewer may be processing more information, they are doing so passively and their brain is mainly focusing on that passive automatic process. The reader is "exercising" their mental capabilities more as they have to fill in more gaps using their imaginations.

<comment><USER23> Does this at all depend on the type of show? I find when watching programming with a lot of ambiguity (mysteries, procedurals, etc) my brain is very active trying to anticipate or think back to connect dots to follow what's happening. Compare that to spectacle programming like sports/drama/reality shows where everything is happening onscreen.

I wonder also about foreign shows where you are forced to read while the action is in progress.

And then combine that: I can watch reality shows with my wife and feel no real change in energy, but then we watch something like "Dark" (subtitled and very mystery-box format) and I feel exhausted by the end of the episode.

<comment><USER22> That all makes sense. There are some kinds of TV/movies where viewing is more mentally engaging. Mysteries, deep sci-fi or documentaries, anything where you are imagining and/or trying to understand aspects outside of the audio-visual experience. I was mostly just saying that in broad strokes that the most passively consumed written story still requires some 'active' imagination, where-as viewing a lot of TV/movies does not seem to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I find it strange that YouTube is only mentioned once in the whole article (about listening to an old radio programe). I am curious if YouTube was considered or not as a kind of TV during the experiment or not.

<comment><USER25> > No TV. No Netflix. No live streaming anything.

> we listened to CBS Radio Mystery Theater on YouTube, a radio program

I would assume they didn't _watch_ anything on YouTube

<comment><USER26> No _live_ streaming. I wonder if this is purposefully specific.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Honestly, what's wrong with being well rounded in your entertainment? So frequently there are articles plasters about how you must "give up" things like television.

I'm listening to an episode of How I Built This at work, will read some Game of Thrones on the way home, will watch Love Island with dinner and probably throw on a record as I get ready for bed. It's not an all or nothing game here, you can just enjoy life.

<comment><USER28> > Honestly, what's wrong with being well rounded in your entertainment?

Absolutely nothing. However, people are weird, and everybody is wired differently. Sometimes cutting out the thing completely is the only way someone can control themselves.

For instance, an alcoholic might not be able to moderate their drinking and abstinence may be the only way they can beat the addiction.

Similarly, someone who is addicted to television might not physically be able to moderate their television viewing, and it takes going cold turkey for a while for their brain to adjust and new habits to form.

I'd even go so far as to say that a large number of people addicted to television don't even realize that they're addicted to it. Over the last few decades it's become normalized and expected that Everyone (for varying definitions of 'everyone') has at least one television that's the center of their entertainment life, and every waking hour that they're home the television is turned on and tuned in to something. If it's not, then the person is _weird_ because television is What You Do(tm) when you're home and not working.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Dam I just watched season 3 of Jessica Jones in one sitting, guess I'm fucked

<comment><USER20> On a scale of Luke Cage Season 1 to Daredevil Season 1, how good was Jessica Jones Season 3?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> It depends on what you watch. For abstract concepts such as math and programming, I can sometimes learn faster or gain more complete knowledge by watching videos on a subject. Sometimes visuals that are in motion make it much easier to understand concepts that are very difficult to explain in human language. I believe the written word is ill suited for expressing a lot of information that is less tangible.

Videos are usually a good supplement to reading, at least for me.

I also don't regret spending time to watch a documentary or the news if my brain needs a rest after a work day. And some new knowledge is imparted on me.

</comment><comment><USER31> I didn't watch television for 2 years. (I watched a movie on _rare_ occasion, but that was the exception.) I read a _lot_ during that time. It felt fantastic. I don't think I've ever had so much thinking space.

I still don't watch a lot of television. Occasionally a movie with my wife on the weekend. I'm pretty happy with it. :) Sure, there are other things I do that are probably a waste of time, but one step at a time.

</comment><comment><USER32> After adulthood,I didn't get a tv until my late 20s. When I did get one,it really helped with "taking a break" from other things, with streaming I had to find content but with TV I just tune in without all that much care about the programming.

Although, I still haven't gotten cable,it's mostly streaming IPTV(sling.tv and pals)

YMMV

</comment><comment><USER33> I gave up cable 10 years ago and I haven't looked back. I now have more time in the day to actually get things done.

</comment><comment><USER34> I've given up TV for years. Having kids does that. The spare time I do have is in HN, Reddit, Google News etc... I'd like to reduce that, as most of the time it adds no value to life (except HN, sometimes)

</comment><comment><USER35> This is absolutely true. I thought I was crazy when I cancelled my TV license here in the UK a year ago. But after several months, I wasn't missing out on anything.

I never felt more productive in getting things done.

<comment><USER36> Getting things done is overrated. You're just spending more of your pollution quota. Watching TV is remarkably low on CO2 emissions.

(I'm only half tongue-in-cheek)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I don't think there is any inherent virtue in not watching tv. People can do what they want in their leisure time and like anything else it can be enjoyed in moderation.

<comment><USER38> Is abstaining from conspicuous consumerism virtuous? If so, there is virtue to be gained by not exposing yourself to the incessant, persuasive, and obnoxious advertisements of television.

When I quit TV I stopped wanting/caring about having the newest/nicest model car (among other things), and gained contentment and peace of mind as a result.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> TV shows, Movies, YouTube, etc. makes sense. Would you consider gaming to have the same effect?

<comment><USER40> Gaming is such a wide range of things though. There is considerable difference in how I use my brain for a party board game, versus a first person shooter, versus a DnD session, versus factorio, versus a story game like The Last of Us. Am I being social? creative? analytical? reactive? or just observing, which is what all those other things tend to be.

<comment><USER39> I think overall gaming has far better ROI than watching television. Of course if done in moderation and for entertainment purposes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Soon we'll start seeing similar results about podcasts.

By and large they're an epidemic of passive entertainment that make people dumber (with many notable exceptions just like Tv)

<comment><USER42> > _epidemic of passive entertainment that make people dumber_

I'd be interested in hearing some evidence about this.

<comment><USER20> I've been listening to podcasts for about 12+ years. I doubt their effect is much different than reading magazines. There are so many to choose from that certainly the selection makes a significant difference in the outcome.

Certainly you can select dribble that simply enables you to parrot an opinion, but you can also select engaging shows that promote critical thinking and/or expand your knowledge of the world, business, and chosen skills.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Wish I could give up youtube.</comment>


Stolen code, 9-month hacking spree lead to criminal charges - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/11/stolen-code-9-month-hacking-spree-lead-to-criminal-charges/

<comment><USER2> Wow – that's one angry gamer. I (sorda) wonder why the (accused) guy's gamer profile was deleted by the company.</comment>


Hunt: "The only error handler you need" joke - <AUTHOR> Hi HN!
I remember seeing a joke image on Twitter about the only error handler you need, which was a try catch statement which simply uploaded the error to StackOverflow. Pretty sure it was PHP, but might be mistaken.
Any ideas who did this/where I can find it? <comment><USER2> [https://twitter.com/divineomega/status/695744177557106688](https://twitter.com/divineomega/status/695744177557106688)

<comment><AUTHOR> Perfect, amazed at how quickly you dug this up!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How would you monetize the domain ismyflightdelayed.com? - <AUTHOR>

I waste a ton of my time messing around on aviation tracking websites. It's pretty crazy to monitor flight patters over the course of a day, especially for companies like FedEx.<p>I registered ismyflightdelayed.com for fun to mess around with some of the Flight Aware API's. I haven't given much thought on potential monetization (outside of ads) so I thought I would solicit feedback from HN. <comment><USER2> Here are some ideas.

1\. With a free account they get an email. If they upgrade to paid they get a text message (you can use Twilio).

2\. You can partner with area hotels and limo companies. If the flight is delayed the email suggests hotels they can stay at or cabs they can take.

3\. There are two parties involved: the person who is flying and the people who are expecting him/her. Target them separately. The person who is flying might be interested in letting his relatives or friends know that he/she will be late so that they don't have to rush to the airport to pick him up. So to auto-notify other people you could charge a small fee.

4\. Offer a subscription based service for people who fly frequently. This way their family always knows if they are running late.

5\. Gamify it. When a flight is delayed people guess how long the delay is. Sell the guesses as options that are traded on a free-market (for points not real money). Use crowdsourcing to predict when the flight will actually arrive.

6\. Calculate statistics. How often is a specific airline late? How often is a specific airline late to a specific airport on a specific flight? There might be other factors. Keep running scores on airlines. Rank them. People buying tickets could use the list to decide which flight to take.

7\. Turn the list from #6 into a press release. Newspapers might run with it. Or it could make for a good blog post. Publicize it on HN. Create marketing buzz for your website cheaply this way.

<comment><USER3> Regarding the email - most carriers offer email to SMS gateways. When I travel I always put in (phone number)@txt.att.net or whatever it is to receive "emails" about flight changes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As an airline customer, I can always go to their website and check flight status. Sometimes, they even send u msg about flight delays over SMS/Email. This is not always consistent though. May be you can do the following:

\- Create a messaging API to inform passengers with realtime msg. Obviously, you should be able to send mass emails/SMSs with proper custom msg about flight info.

\- Partner with airline companies who could pay for this

\- If someone buys an airline ticket, the airline usually gets a contact phone/email.

\- If the flight is getting delayed, automatically send this information to the customer for that airline through SMS,Email etc as real time as possible. Airline will use your infrastructure to mass email the users.

Airline could pay you for the service/API you provide. I doubt this could be something that a consumer will pay for.

</comment><comment><USER2> Several people are saying that this is already a free service from airlines and so this won't work. Not quite.

1\. Airlines tend to estimate delays optimistically. They don't want to look bad. I'd rather rely on a third-party.

2\. Airlines offer very bland services. This service could offer a better experience. For example, will airlines tweet my delay? Or send me a Facebook update? Or text me? Or call me? There might be useful options here that airlines are not providing.

3\. Airlines might not notify my friends and family. Generally, notifying me is less important than notifying them. If I get notified my flight is delayed but I am in the air and have no internet then the notification is pointless. This service could notify other people that I add to my flight's notification list.

The fact that the airlines provide this service is not a sign that this won't work—rather it's a sign that this is something valuable. You can use the airlines' service as a starting point and then build this into something a lot better.

<comment><USER2> Also not all airlines might provide it. What if I am flying on no-name carrier that doesn't provide this service?

Plus the service is a useful record of all my flights. This record might be useful for tax purposes. I know for immigration paperwork sometimes they ask you how many days you have been out of the country. This service could easily provide this data to you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> ask them to register their flight and contact info (twitter, fb email, phone). You monitor their flight for them, if anything is wrong, you tell them with Twilio/twitter/fb, and also send them an ad.

Considering it's already a free service from carriers, I don't think you'll be able to do any sign ups.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you're checking a flight to see if it's delayed and you're not already at the airport - you're already late.

<comment><USER4> Not necessarily. This other day we had a snow storm predicted for evening and a friend wanted to check the status (delayed/cancelled) BEFORE even thinking of going to the airport.</comment></comment>