Happy birthday to us! I joined 9 years ago but I definitely would have joined earlier if I knew HN exists.
It's a never ending pleasure to discover new things, old things I didn't knew and learn interesting viewpoints and valuable bits of information trough comments.
It's great that HN isn't restricting articles on one topic and everybody has the chance to find something interesting. I am mainly interested in software but I've read interesting stuff about economy, psychology, history, art, literature, science.
I've got into the habit of appending news.ycombinator.com to Google search terms if I research something. Because if something is mentioned here is usually relevant for my interests.
Can't believe I've been with HN for about a quarter of its lifetime already! And it's certainly been the most enriching corner of the Internet in this time for me personally. Grateful for that— Shoutout to dang for keeping this place tidy!
I keeep forgetting there's a front page to this site... it's my Slashdot replacement. Imagine if Commander Taco had been funding Myspace, what a world that would have been :)
I was reading Reddit and saw a link to hardware.slashdot.org. I learnt that slashdot still existed. And with the relaunch of Digg, I thought I was having a flashback to 1999.
The only feature that would make Hacker News complete for me would be the ability to embed images or screenshots in posts. Otherwise I love it and it's the best place on the internet today.
No, please no. Hyperlinks exist, and they work just fine. HN is one of the last few sites that doesn't glamorize the UX (nothing wrong with that). I'd rather read a thousand words than a picture.
I used to think this way about Reddit, but they added embedded images to posts and it works great. There are many times on this website where people talk about seeing something cool but cannot attach or embed images describing what they are talking about.
I just upload an image to my CDN or a video to YouTube (I know, I could do better) and add a link to it. I don’t mind that. Adding image support makes me worry people would use it to meme too much.
I've only been on HN for a little over a year now and I feel like I've already tremendously benefited from it, much in the same ways that you have. HN is a really inspiring place and it definitely makes me feel less alone in my work knowing that there are others out there like me.
> Ironically, the biggest multiples it’s generated for the industry have been from a low-dazzle text forum written in Arc Lisp.
Wholeheartedly concur. I'm yet another datapoint for this statement. I picked up programming, picked up a tech stack, found jobs, and launched profitable sideprojects, all with the help of this site.
It's amazing how you can still register to this place without Javascript, *even though* it uses Recaptcha. Because Recaptcha still has a fallback mode to a (ostensibly) less secure captcha that just requires ticking 3 boxes and is much more usable than the version I get if I enabled Javascript. It would sure be a shame if someone Abused (TM) that. Github too was one of the last websites to support human beings until Microsoft got all nazi (read: schizo) mode with their "it's all for your security" shit locking you out of your account because your mom didn't walk her dog that day which triggered a Microsoft (R) Entra (TM) Advanced Risk Model Analysis (read: regex) [patent pending] alert from reading her GPS data from an advertising provider (Microsoft records your mouse movements like Cloudflare so I wouldn't put it past them).
tl;dr Congratulations for being one of the last real websites alive!!!
Comments by newly registered users show the user name in green. It goes away after the account has been registered for a few days. For example, here's the thread where I made my first comment on the site in 2016. You can see that my name is green there:
I remember HN back when it was called “Startup News”. I wrote about it 18 years ago: https://paulstamatiou.com/why-i-enjoy-startup-news
Stammy! In an odd coincidence, you came to mind the other day as I was putting on deodorant.
Many years ago you wrote a post where you called a deodorant company to ask how many "shoups" to use (where a shoup is one swipe of deodorant).
I don't seem to be finding the post now.
Was that you, or do I have you mixed up with someone else?
Haha, unfortunately I don't think that was me. At least I don't recall anything about deodorant.
I’m now weirdly keen to hear the answer to this. Telenovella level tension on HN.
Stammy! What are you doing here?!?!? Get your deodorant back on the 405 to Ventura!
Hey Paul, thanks for your writings. I enjoy reading your blog. You were one first blogs I started following with an RSS reader (after Vicki :)).
Thanks for following along!
Giant related thread last week https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43332658
Happy birthday to us! I joined 9 years ago but I definitely would have joined earlier if I knew HN exists.
It's a never ending pleasure to discover new things, old things I didn't knew and learn interesting viewpoints and valuable bits of information trough comments.
It's great that HN isn't restricting articles on one topic and everybody has the chance to find something interesting. I am mainly interested in software but I've read interesting stuff about economy, psychology, history, art, literature, science.
I've got into the habit of appending news.ycombinator.com to Google search terms if I research something. Because if something is mentioned here is usually relevant for my interests.
Can't believe I've been with HN for about a quarter of its lifetime already! And it's certainly been the most enriching corner of the Internet in this time for me personally. Grateful for that— Shoutout to dang for keeping this place tidy!
I keeep forgetting there's a front page to this site... it's my Slashdot replacement. Imagine if Commander Taco had been funding Myspace, what a world that would have been :)
I was reading Reddit and saw a link to hardware.slashdot.org. I learnt that slashdot still existed. And with the relaunch of Digg, I thought I was having a flashback to 1999.
The only feature that would make Hacker News complete for me would be the ability to embed images or screenshots in posts. Otherwise I love it and it's the best place on the internet today.
No, please no. Hyperlinks exist, and they work just fine. HN is one of the last few sites that doesn't glamorize the UX (nothing wrong with that). I'd rather read a thousand words than a picture.
I used to think this way about Reddit, but they added embedded images to posts and it works great. There are many times on this website where people talk about seeing something cool but cannot attach or embed images describing what they are talking about.
I just upload an image to my CDN or a video to YouTube (I know, I could do better) and add a link to it. I don’t mind that. Adding image support makes me worry people would use it to meme too much.
I have been able to benchmark the quality of a subreddit inversely with the number of images that are present in its threads.
This benchmark has not failed me yet. But I use reddit for basically the same thing I use HN for, which is mostly for reading about nerdy techy stuff.
They actually glamorize UX in their own way
Thanks for sharing this post!
I've only been on HN for a little over a year now and I feel like I've already tremendously benefited from it, much in the same ways that you have. HN is a really inspiring place and it definitely makes me feel less alone in my work knowing that there are others out there like me.
Vicki's blog alone was my motivation in paying for an RSS reader.
> Ironically, the biggest multiples it’s generated for the industry have been from a low-dazzle text forum written in Arc Lisp.
Wholeheartedly concur. I'm yet another datapoint for this statement. I picked up programming, picked up a tech stack, found jobs, and launched profitable sideprojects, all with the help of this site.
The site design hardly looks a day over 19! (=
What a relief, what a sanctuary for sore eyes!
> Joined 16 years ago
Thanks for all the knowledge HN!
It's amazing how you can still register to this place without Javascript, *even though* it uses Recaptcha. Because Recaptcha still has a fallback mode to a (ostensibly) less secure captcha that just requires ticking 3 boxes and is much more usable than the version I get if I enabled Javascript. It would sure be a shame if someone Abused (TM) that. Github too was one of the last websites to support human beings until Microsoft got all nazi (read: schizo) mode with their "it's all for your security" shit locking you out of your account because your mom didn't walk her dog that day which triggered a Microsoft (R) Entra (TM) Advanced Risk Model Analysis (read: regex) [patent pending] alert from reading her GPS data from an advertising provider (Microsoft records your mouse movements like Cloudflare so I wouldn't put it past them).
tl;dr Congratulations for being one of the last real websites alive!!!
why is your username green, out of curiosity?
Comments by newly registered users show the user name in green. It goes away after the account has been registered for a few days. For example, here's the thread where I made my first comment on the site in 2016. You can see that my name is green there:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12535347
TIL the "new user" status stays with the post, even after it disappears from new posts by the user.
That’s actually a new feature.