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HN is like a realtime electronic marketplace -- or information exchange -- for young tech companies in that an issue can arise and be resolved, for better or wo
by denniskane 11y ago
HN is like a realtime electronic marketplace -- or information exchange -- for young tech companies in that an issue can arise and be resolved, for better or worse, all in the space of 24 hours. I think the recent case of LiveCoding.tv is a perfect example of this, because a user was having problems getting her account deleted and posted a thread about it here.
A whirlwind of activity started up, within which a cofounder responded, as well as the president of YC. They both were actively looking for the CEO so that he could resolve the issue, and when he eventually popped up into the thread, a clusterfuck of absolutely biblical proportions ensued.
What people saw was the obvious mudslinging between parties, but what they didn't necessarily see was all of the cold, numeric computation going on behind the scenes whenever posts were being up- and down-voted, and karma points were being won and lost.
Say whatever you want about the validity of these kinds of emotionally/psychologically derived numbers, but the point is that they are realtime data points concerning large numbers of highly speculative investments, and they could not reasonably be ascertained in any other way.
When I was watching that whole thing play out just like a live sporting event, I was refreshing the profile page of the CEO in question, and his karma points seemed to be dropping like some kind of flash crash in the NASDAQ.
Some may say that it isn't in the best interest of YC to have so much publicity when these kinds of things happen, but I think the point is that it is always ultimately in everyone's best interest for the truth, no matter what it is, to be uncovered as quickly as possible, and framed within a language that is as objective as possible.
I can only imagine what kind of machine learning might be going on behind the scenes at YC, involving all of these data points that are so intimately connected to known human beings, many of whom are so intimately involved with the insanely dynamic economic activity that is starting up a tech company in Silicon Valley.
- Zephyr314 11y agoFor those who missed it the first time around this is the post referenced: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10486476 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10486476
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- brianchu 11y agoI would be very surprised if YC was doing any sophisticated machine learning on HN or even their portfolio. I'm sure they have nice Excel spreadsheets on their finances and portfolio metrics, maybe a linear regression or two. This should be a law: we tend to overestimate the amount of sophisticated machine learning used in anything.
- denniskane 11y agoAt this moment, you are probably right... but in 5 years, who the hell knows? In 10 years, I would be surprised if it weren't starting to happen like crazy. I was mainly just projecting a little into the future.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago> When I was watching that whole thing play out just like a live sporting event, I was refreshing the profile page of the CEO in question, and his karma points seemed to be dropping like some kind of flash crash in the NASDAQ. Now you gave me an idea for a HN extension - tracking of karma points of selected users (via HN API) and displaying a sparkline next to their name in comments. Also a split-screen mode like this: +---------------------------------+------------------------+ | ^ Tell HN: Something important | Score: flamebait | | 256 points by flamebait ... | | | | -- | | | -- /- \--- /--o| | | / \--/ \/ | | ^ SomeHNer 5 minutes ago |--/ | | Something something something +------------------------+ | | Score: SomeOtherHNer | | ^ SomeOtherHNer 1 minute ago | /--- | | HN turns into Reddit. |-/ \ --- | | | --- | | | \------\ | | ^ LoremIpsum 1 hour ago | -o| | Lorem ipsum dolor sic amet +------------------------+ | start-up cloud computing | Ticker | | Docker Google IoT big data | | | Uber for Kitten Litter | - comment nuked 5s ago | | | - comment nuked 2m ago | | .... | - new comment 5m ago | +---------------------------------+------------------------+ Now you can read enjoy HN discussions like sports events!
- denniskane 11y agoIf you really just took the time and effort to make that graphic in reply to my post... I just feel... honored... thank you :)
- TeMPOraL 11y agoEmacs and Artist Mode. It definitely took less time for me to make the graphic than for you to write your post - so it's me who want to thank you for sharing some insights and sneaking in a cute idea I could draw ;).
- gadders 11y agoThanks for the reminder to go back and see all the comments I missed. Unreal.