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Hacker News: 2016 Top Stories

42 points by saycheese 10y ago

jessriedel 10y ago
Not that it's surprising, but it is unfortunate the highest slots are dominated by politics and other emotionally charged topics, with intellectually challenging topics much further down.
- nerdponx 10y ago
  Are intellectually-challenging and emotionally-challenging mutually exclusive? In my experience they tend to coincide.
  - jessriedel 10y ago
    Anticorrelated, especially regarding the actual intellectual engagement.
- new299 10y ago
  It's great, because we should be more aware of the political and societal implications of technology. The top story, Apple's refusal to bend to the governments request to assist in compromising security on the iPhone, was hugely important. It's also interesting that Google/Facebook/Amazon have not made anything like the same commitment to user rights and privacy.
  - jessriedel 10y ago
    > It's great, because we should be more aware of the political and societal implications of technology. As one can see in the guidelines, awareness-raising is not the purpose of HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - new299 10y ago
      All stories are about raising awareness... even if it's about awareness of a particular algorithm. As for if politics is on-topic or not? The mods didn't delete the threads, so I assume they were considered important enough, and on-topic enough not to be deleted. Personally I couldn't care less, creating and disseminating technology is already a political act.
- user5994461 10y ago
  Politics and emotions have the largest audience. They'll always be able to get more votes than everything else.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
danso 10y ago
It's an eventful year when Alan Kay's AMA isn't even in the top 30 of submissions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11939851 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11939851 With the meme that 2016 was a particularly deadly year for celebrities, it'd be interesting to do a count of death posts that made it above a threshold of up votes -- maybe 30? Like other similar metrics, it's limited by a selection bias -- i.e. It consists of folks considered celebrities to the HN Crowd, which apparently doesn't include Debbie Reynolds, but does include lesser known pioneers in tech -- but it'd still be interesting to count. David Bowie was the most popular death post in 2016. His death might be the most prominent for folks who don't think Castro's death was bigger news.
spacehacker 10y ago
I like to search Algolia for PDFs from time to time: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=pdf&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=pastYear&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=pdf&sort=byPopularity&prefix=f...
saycheese 10y ago
This is a better link since it's only for 2016, instead of the past year: https://hn.algolia.com/?%20%7B%20%7B%20%20settings.style%20=%3D%3D%20%22experimental%22%20%3F%20%22experimental%22%20:%20%22%22%20%7D%7D&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=custom&type=story&query= https://hn.algolia.com/?%20%7B%20%7B%20%20settings.style%20=...

42 points by saycheese 10y ago

Not that it's surprising, but it is unfortunate the highest slots are dominated by politics and other emotionally charged topics, with intellectually challenging topics much further down.

nerdponx 10y ago
Are intellectually-challenging and emotionally-challenging mutually exclusive? In my experience they tend to coincide.
- jessriedel 10y ago
  Anticorrelated, especially regarding the actual intellectual engagement.
new299 10y ago
It's great, because we should be more aware of the political and societal implications of technology. The top story, Apple's refusal to bend to the governments request to assist in compromising security on the iPhone, was hugely important. It's also interesting that Google/Facebook/Amazon have not made anything like the same commitment to user rights and privacy.
- jessriedel 10y ago
  > It's great, because we should be more aware of the political and societal implications of technology. As one can see in the guidelines, awareness-raising is not the purpose of HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - new299 10y ago
    All stories are about raising awareness... even if it's about awareness of a particular algorithm. As for if politics is on-topic or not? The mods didn't delete the threads, so I assume they were considered important enough, and on-topic enough not to be deleted. Personally I couldn't care less, creating and disseminating technology is already a political act.
user5994461 10y ago
Politics and emotions have the largest audience. They'll always be able to get more votes than everything else.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

danso 10y ago

It's an eventful year when Alan Kay's AMA isn't even in the top 30 of submissions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11939851 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11939851 With the meme that 2016 was a particularly deadly year for celebrities, it'd be interesting to do a count of death posts that made it above a threshold of up votes -- maybe 30? Like other similar metrics, it's limited by a selection bias -- i.e. It consists of folks considered celebrities to the HN Crowd, which apparently doesn't include Debbie Reynolds, but does include lesser known pioneers in tech -- but it'd still be interesting to count. David Bowie was the most popular death post in 2016. His death might be the most prominent for folks who don't think Castro's death was bigger news.

spacehacker 10y ago

I like to search Algolia for PDFs from time to time: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=pdf&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=pastYear&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=pdf&sort=byPopularity&prefix=f...

saycheese 10y ago

This is a better link since it's only for 2016, instead of the past year: https://hn.algolia.com/?%20%7B%20%7B%20%20settings.style%20=%3D%3D%20%22experimental%22%20%3F%20%22experimental%22%20:%20%22%22%20%7D%7D&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=custom&type=story&query= https://hn.algolia.com/?%20%7B%20%7B%20%20settings.style%20=...