philipkd

That's a pretty good candidate for the right apex question(s).

I like to remind people, "the index CAN be over-priced," and most just shrug their shoulders at me.

And just to clarify, if enough people flag submissions, but not enough people, then it can get buried but not get the "flagged" tag? Because very few of the DF posts actually seem to get that tag.

But maybe even some light flagging, plus high engagement-to-view ratio (esp. if engagements go many levels deep fast), may cause some "unwanted" content to be buried.

Yeah, I can only speculate on that one. It was a well-written, high-level epiphany, that, as you mentioned on the podcast, was purely editorial. It was one of my favorite DF posts, but I don't think everybody got it.

I'm a fan of both HN and DF. If I assume my worldview is accurate, that both are above-board, then the only explanation I have left is flamewar detection. Your links get too many comments—plus some flags sprinkled in there—too fast relative to upvotes. So, your posts get too much engagement.

There is a twisted logic to that algo, esp. for a "News For Nerds. Stuff That Matters"-flavored attitude, and esp. for a site that's trying to be as efficiently managed as possible.

Plus, Scott Alexander noted recently a decline in Substack due to deboosting on X, but also that just too many people are now Substacking, many of whom are good, and a lot who are just clones. And on the Dithering about "Rotten", you and Ben both concur that it feels like a while since either of you went viral. So as soon as a solo blogger blows up, the system quickly co-opts that blend of content into other media channels. i.e., Indie generally doesn't last.

I did a YoY look at your rankings:

2007: #50

2008: #20

2009: #3

2010: #1

2011: #2

2012: #7

2013: #34

2014: #17

2015: #568

2016: #184

2017: #8

2018: #69

2019: #86

2020: #8

2021: #20

2022: #406

2023: #98

2024: #133

2025: #53

(10/9/20XX – 10/09/20XX)

https://refactoringenglish.com/tools/hn-popularity/?start=20...

Something weird definitely happened in 2015/2016, for sure (maybe the start of the anti-engagement algo). But your blog was also crazy popular between the iPhone's release and Steve Jobs' death. That was probably the most dynamic time in Apple's history (post-Sculley), with plenty of controversy worthy of exacting critique (Antennagate, etc.)

Maybe a dumb question, but how can you brigade against on Hacker News if there is no downvote of submissions?

I agree, it's a weird argument! However, if the points you paraphrased are supposed to be the premises, I'm not sure why they're inherently false. Maybe I don't provide ample research behind them. But are they obviously false?

1. Did an explosion of literacy due to the printing press lead to an interest in free speech? Makes sense.

2. Does endless debate / political gridlock lead to an inability to build in San Francisco? Every attempt to provide housing becomes a vicious argument between NIMBYs and YIMBYs. I also have personal experience working both sides of local development issues in Austin, and the challenges are similar to the ones in SF. As you're trying to go about your business in city council, someone will stop the conversation with some objection to an act or policy that would make everybody's lives better except for that one person (so they think), and then nothing gets done, or it requires expensive lobbyists to push through.

3. I don't have an objective backing of my city ranking, but I've socialized this high-density / high-functioning metric for some time now, and anybody who has traveled has agreed with my assessment with Asian cities. Note, two cities I mentioned are not in China: Tokyo and Singapore. I also forgot to mention Taipei, but that belongs on the list too.

4. I don't think free speech will doom the West. And that is not a premise anyways.

However, if there is a takeaway, my hope is that the West takes a deep look at itself as to what works and what doesn't work with its culture, and try to evolve without losing its soul. Barring that, then accept that as Asian cities evolve and support greater populations, the U.S. will be relegated to a minor player role, similar to the U.K. today. I just hope I don't grow old and discover that my beloved America is having its own petulant version of Brexit.

If you double the number of adult words a child is exposed to growing up, it may have some positive impact on them.

I find that the coworking crowd is less religious than everyone else, and I think that religious people have a default community they can turn to

I feel the same way about karaoke. Do a little bit of practice so you don't look like a fool. But, if you over-practice you'll take the fun out of having your best performance live.

This is revised and updated from my original post 2 years ago on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4629317 I've now compiled this into a book of 82 letters showing every self-help method I tried.

This is revised and updated from my original post nearly 4 years ago on Hacker News:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2246457

I've now compiled this into a book of 82 letters showing my progression from ages 14 through 30. I started with classic self-help books like Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People (great book) and Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (not-so-great), but eventually got into what I believe is the ultimate self-improvement: meditation.

I'm always looking to create some new niche site for passive income. I've tried various site worth estimation services to see how much existing ideas are earn, but it's really hard to trust the numbers. Many of them are opaque about their methodology. But what if we aggregated their results (a la Nate Silver)? I created MetaSiteworth to do just that, and the results give you a ballpark idea about what kind of sites make what kind of money:

Here's some of examples:

// Music sites

http://metasiteworth.com/report/anydecentmusic.com

http://metasiteworth.com/report/rapgenius.com

http://metasiteworth.com/report/pitchfork.com

http://metasiteworth.com/report/mp3skull.com

// Utilities

http://metasiteworth.com/report/converticon.com

http://metasiteworth.com/report/favicon.cc

// Reference Sites

http://metasiteworth.com/report/howjsay.com

http://metasiteworth.com/report/urbandictionary.com

// Other

http://metasiteworth.com/report/milevalue.com

http://metasiteworth.com/report/mtbs3d.com

http://metasiteworth.com/report/thottbot.com

http://metasiteworth.com/report/forbiddenplanet.com

It is supposed to be an honest self-appraisal. The letters dated at later ages bear out the full arc of my development on this topic.

I'm not sure I understand your comment.

I created the site, and I'm not a DMCA lawyer or whatever.

I've learned a lot already in creating this list. Definitely going to avoid NBC and HBO shows from now on. Also, knowing how many are targeted, I didn't realize how unsafe torrenting is. Going to look for alternatives.

Can someone clarify for me, what does "no first use" mean? Does it mean you can't sue a small start-up for being the first to use a patent you already own?

End of the article refers to a book Mindfulness in Plain English, which you can also read for free: http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html

I find I go directly to subreddits I like now, like r/wikipedia or r/cogsci

I still surf the Internet, but it's more focused, and less like bodysurfing through shit.

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Hence the "Real" vs. "Fake" distinction. Although, a lot of natively shot 3D films don't have nowhere near as much stereographic thought as Cameron applied.

Not sure about this year, but last year they accounted for 11% of ticket sales:

http://www.businessinsider.com/3d-films-helped-boost-the-box...

Also, watch Avatar in 3D. It made me a believer.

This is great. I created the achievements mock-up article primarily because I was excited about tracking my National Film Registry movies. And this site has that! Thanks!

I would like to see this design-tweak, if not on Twitter, then on a 3rd-party client: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1445955

Yes, as I was designing this, I thought, okay, 300 updates becomes ~100, fine. But what happens when I'm on even on more networks, and ~1,000 updates becomes ~300? Would then I need another layer on top of that to further reduce the deluge?

Maybe a "pin" and "unpin" feature that would pin these people to the top could work.

Yeah, somehow Facebook's fuzzy "Top News" system is the best out of the ones I've seen. Unfortunately you still get the loud-friend problem, and muting people requires a lot of thought (and it's not exportable to other clients). Plus, what does "Top News" even mean? As a programmer, I want to know what sorting method is used most of the time, and so it's a slight annoyance to just trust the Facebook to prioritize everything for me.

I'm signing up to friendbinder now, though, and I'd be happy to brainstorm with you.

What gave me confidence that this could work, is that Google Buzz already does a little bit of grouping, and it seems elegant enough to me.

But, yes, I didn't explore the details too much about the "show more" feature. Would you list a count of the "unread items" from friends? Or would you need a slider that says "Show updates from the last 48 hours?" Then, would you need to couple this with some algorithm that bubbled up to the top the friends that you clicked "show more" on frequently? I'm not sure about the answers to all these questions, so I'll leave up to developers to figure it out.

For the average internet user, the number of social networks they use and the number of people they follow is monotonically increasing. It's much easier to sign-up for something new than it is to delete your account. And it's much easier to add friends than it is to remove them. It's like asking people to get rid of every item in their house that they don't really need. It just requires too much work to sit and analyze someone and think, "Hmm, do I want to never hear from this person again on this network?"