4 ms·

On the topic of small beginnings, does anyone know if PG still reads HN? I recall when I first joined the site which, wow, was a long time ago, it seemed like h

by colmvp 9y ago

On the topic of small beginnings, does anyone know if PG still reads HN? I recall when I first joined the site which, wow, was a long time ago, it seemed like he was a lot more active on it.

jl 9y ago
He does not. He stopped at the same time he announced his retirement from YC. (He'd at this point transitioned the running of HN to dang.)
- walterbell 9y ago
  He's on twitter, https://twitter.com/paulg https://twitter.com/paulg
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  I miss pg. He was really cool. I understand why he left, I think, but... I miss your comments too! You should write more. Both essays and comments. I think it's easy to care too much about image and whether someone might stir up controversy. But you have genuinely interesting things to say. Even if HN doesn't feel like the kind of place you can say them, it still does a lot of good. I don't know. Sometimes it just feels like you and pg stopped believing in us. Which I guess is understandable. One year it went from HN feeling like a part of the community to feeling like we're an adversary. After all, we -- the internet at large -- are small-minded reactionaries, right? Why bother? But it's a perception worth changing. The old guard is still here. HN grew up, so there are more voices now -- there's more to sift through. But the voices that pg once enjoyed talking with are still here. Setting all that aside, though: have a nice day! And thanks for everything you've built.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - aswanson 9y ago
    Yeah, they built a great thing...I think they sparked a revolution and empowered founders making vcs play fair. But, they're parents now and life is short, as the essay says....
  - ploggingdev 9y ago
    > But the voices that pg once enjoyed talking with are still here. Just to be clear there are still a lot of incredible people who post to HN, but from the signs that I see, a fairly large chunk of early HNers who are well known in hacker circles basically stopped posting. And there are also a large number of people who are very reluctant to take part in the discussions here knowing how a vocal subset of HNers react to any post or comment : talk trash. Examples of the latter : tptacek, dguido and other secuity professionals. If you read some of the security related threads where tptacek takes part, you will notice that he is literally talking to a wall, people refuse to listen to the guy or try to understand the reasoning behind his comments, though he is respected in the security community and is always right on security related topics. Especially on security related threads there is dangerous advice floating around. Eg- use Tor or some stupid suggestion on how to trick the CBP at the border. I also noticed the rise of anti-semiticism and just generally hateful comments when the topics of religion, nationality or Trump are brought up. This issue is only getting worse and god help the moderators who have to read these comments on a daily basis. Though this might be controversial, the general quality of discussion has gone down over the years. I think this is inevitable : as the community grows, quality of discussion goes down. HN is doing incredibly well on this count, the discussions are still the best on any public forum, but IMO the quality is going down. As the community grows, veterans generally tend to become inactive. (Before people point out that my account is only 159 days old, I've been part of HN for much longer under different handles.)
    - hkmurakami 9y ago
      Some forums I frequented 10 years ago have avoided the veteran retirement by having a private forum for veterans. That has its own issues but has been really nice for me to keep in touch with the old familiar faces.
    - metaphorm 9y ago
      I respect tptacek's expertise in his domain. I sometimes argue with him in other topics, where he is out of depth but assumes that because his a respected expert in one domain he is also an expert in others when he is actually not an expert at all. this applies to all sorts of things, and PG is no exception. PG is an expert on programming and on founding VC funded companies. he is certainly not an expert on most other things but would frequently comment on those things as if he was, and then act very defensive and shocked when he was criticized for things he was wrong about or tone-deaf about. really this applies to ANYONE in this community. there is lots of very intelligent, well-reasoned discussion, but nobody ought to get a pass on things because of their reputation. we ought not defer to authority. we ought to discuss the arguments as presented.
- pm90 9y ago
  I remember pg replied to my comment once, and it felt pretty strange, like something I could brag about to future engineers or my (future) kids.
ab4570 9y ago
Yeah, I recall him sending me an angry email about something I said here :D Regardless of his exit, it's nice that hacker news has somehow stayed more or less the same for so many years - just like yc
sjtgraham 9y ago
PG had anonymous alt accounts even before he split. I'd say he still dips in from time to time. You could probably find his current alts by doing stylometric analysis on the corpus of HN comments.
- omarchowdhury 9y ago
  Let's do it.
__2__ 9y ago
Maybe ask pvg? He is in this thread.

by colmvp 9y ago

On the topic of small beginnings, does anyone know if PG still reads HN? I recall when I first joined the site which, wow, was a long time ago, it seemed like he was a lot more active on it.

jl 9y ago

He does not. He stopped at the same time he announced his retirement from YC. (He'd at this point transitioned the running of HN to dang.)

walterbell 9y ago
He's on twitter, https://twitter.com/paulg https://twitter.com/paulg
sillysaurus3 9y ago
I miss pg. He was really cool. I understand why he left, I think, but... I miss your comments too! You should write more. Both essays and comments. I think it's easy to care too much about image and whether someone might stir up controversy. But you have genuinely interesting things to say. Even if HN doesn't feel like the kind of place you can say them, it still does a lot of good. I don't know. Sometimes it just feels like you and pg stopped believing in us. Which I guess is understandable. One year it went from HN feeling like a part of the community to feeling like we're an adversary. After all, we -- the internet at large -- are small-minded reactionaries, right? Why bother? But it's a perception worth changing. The old guard is still here. HN grew up, so there are more voices now -- there's more to sift through. But the voices that pg once enjoyed talking with are still here. Setting all that aside, though: have a nice day! And thanks for everything you've built.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- aswanson 9y ago
  Yeah, they built a great thing...I think they sparked a revolution and empowered founders making vcs play fair. But, they're parents now and life is short, as the essay says....
- ploggingdev 9y ago
  > But the voices that pg once enjoyed talking with are still here. Just to be clear there are still a lot of incredible people who post to HN, but from the signs that I see, a fairly large chunk of early HNers who are well known in hacker circles basically stopped posting. And there are also a large number of people who are very reluctant to take part in the discussions here knowing how a vocal subset of HNers react to any post or comment : talk trash. Examples of the latter : tptacek, dguido and other secuity professionals. If you read some of the security related threads where tptacek takes part, you will notice that he is literally talking to a wall, people refuse to listen to the guy or try to understand the reasoning behind his comments, though he is respected in the security community and is always right on security related topics. Especially on security related threads there is dangerous advice floating around. Eg- use Tor or some stupid suggestion on how to trick the CBP at the border. I also noticed the rise of anti-semiticism and just generally hateful comments when the topics of religion, nationality or Trump are brought up. This issue is only getting worse and god help the moderators who have to read these comments on a daily basis. Though this might be controversial, the general quality of discussion has gone down over the years. I think this is inevitable : as the community grows, quality of discussion goes down. HN is doing incredibly well on this count, the discussions are still the best on any public forum, but IMO the quality is going down. As the community grows, veterans generally tend to become inactive. (Before people point out that my account is only 159 days old, I've been part of HN for much longer under different handles.)
  - hkmurakami 9y ago
    Some forums I frequented 10 years ago have avoided the veteran retirement by having a private forum for veterans. That has its own issues but has been really nice for me to keep in touch with the old familiar faces.
  - metaphorm 9y ago
    I respect tptacek's expertise in his domain. I sometimes argue with him in other topics, where he is out of depth but assumes that because his a respected expert in one domain he is also an expert in others when he is actually not an expert at all. this applies to all sorts of things, and PG is no exception. PG is an expert on programming and on founding VC funded companies. he is certainly not an expert on most other things but would frequently comment on those things as if he was, and then act very defensive and shocked when he was criticized for things he was wrong about or tone-deaf about. really this applies to ANYONE in this community. there is lots of very intelligent, well-reasoned discussion, but nobody ought to get a pass on things because of their reputation. we ought not defer to authority. we ought to discuss the arguments as presented.
pm90 9y ago
I remember pg replied to my comment once, and it felt pretty strange, like something I could brag about to future engineers or my (future) kids.

ab4570 9y ago

Yeah, I recall him sending me an angry email about something I said here :D Regardless of his exit, it's nice that hacker news has somehow stayed more or less the same for so many years - just like yc

sjtgraham 9y ago

PG had anonymous alt accounts even before he split. I'd say he still dips in from time to time. You could probably find his current alts by doing stylometric analysis on the corpus of HN comments.

omarchowdhury 9y ago
Let's do it.

__2__ 9y ago

Maybe ask pvg? He is in this thread.