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bootload

A diff of past front pages would be interesting. Some historical front page entries:

2007AUG15 ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/1119991071/

2008FEB08 ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/2250089864/

2009JAN18 ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3205568708/

2009MAR12 ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3347109733/

2010JUN24 ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/4728476663

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Of that sampling, it hit the apex for me with Jan 2009 page. The Mar 2009 page is when there was an influx, and we started posting Erlang stories as a joke to stem the flow.

They were a joke? I thought finally people were interested in something cool. :(

What brings a tear to my eye is that, back in those days, it was hard for me to tell at first that it was a deliberate plot. It felt quite natural to have multiple discussions of Erlang on the front page.

That Erlamg screenshot is hilarious. Only one story on the front page didn't have Erlang in the title, why HN had been slow...was it due to the amount of Erlang submissions?

The slowdown and Erlangfest was because of a big new influx of users, see pg's post here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512145

And pg's appeal for sanity: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512280

http://news.ycombinator.com//item?id=512145

I don't know what you tried to do there, but it didn't work. Link is broken.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512145 He had an extra slash in his URL

I was part of that influx (I registered 5 days before pg's Erlang post). I apologize for making the page worse for the rest of you ;-). Honestly, the Erlang posts contributed to keeping my interest (though I didn't pay much attention during the following summer as I was busy coding).

Political and other front-page-news posts with little "hacker" content, blogs by irrelevant magazine columnists, posts about how X product/market/phenomenon is dooooomed, random questions about how the site works because the FAQ is a tiny link in the footer...and lots of posts by people horribly concerned that those damn noobs will stink the place up.

I really haven't noticed HN get any worse in the two years I've been around.

From August 2007: "Am I the only one who doesn't care about Facebook?"

That has been a theme on HN longer than I realized.

I don't see any difference between the 2007 page and today's.

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