10 ms·

Tell HN: Launch HN Test

385 points by gruseom 6y ago

This is dang testing something. Please carry on. Edit: bah! you guys upvoted it and ruined my test. I think I can cancel that out. Edit 2: I've changed the title from "Launch HN: Test" so that this thread doesn't appear on https://news.ycombinator.com/show https://news.ycombinator.com/show, where it didn't belong.

neokya 6y ago
It works ;)
pmiller2 6y ago
https://i.imgur.com/ofCsS2O.png https://i.imgur.com/ofCsS2O.png
- dang 6y ago
  I tested it plenty in a dev version, but you never know.
  - pmiller2 6y ago
    I figured. Just taking advantage of this somewhat unique opportunity for a little harmless trolling. :)
dang 6y ago
Ok, since this is getting attention, I'll explain. Launch HN posts for YC startups are one of three formal things that HN does for YC (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20launch&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). The others are job ads for YC startups, and orange usernames for YC alumni—but only when displayed to other YC alumni, which always generates "why is my username not orange" emails. But I digress. Launch HNs are like job ads in that they get an initial front-page placement, usually somewhere between #8 and #10. (I think job ads start a little higher). Then they fall down the page. Unlike job ads, though, launch posts can be upvoted and commented on. Once they've gotten their initial placement they function like regular stories. Occasionally the community finds one particularly interesting and it gets upvoted higher. This recent one spent quite a while at #1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22616857 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22616857 (http://hnrankings.info/22616857/ http://hnrankings.info/22616857/). We started doing the Launch HNs three years ago. I was worried that the community would hate them because we were taking additional front page space for YC. (Our intention was to make it so that a launch post and a job ad wouldn't appear at the same time, but I never ended up writing that code, so sometimes they do.) But that hasn't ever come up. I think it's because launch threads are intrinsically more interesting than job ads (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22767319 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22767319 downthread for more on that). All this time, the initial front-page placement of launch posts, unlike job ads, has been done manually. That is, founders have had to email us and we've manually jigged the post onto the front page. The problem with that is that you have to be awake to do it. I don't want to be awake to do it, especially because startup founders tend to be businessy, bustling types who are all bright-and-early, while my schedule drifts ever deeper into the darkness as the few moorings I had remaining to the rest of society dissolve in this time of social distancing and self-isolation, which were basically my bread and butter to begin with (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUlBWNDW72E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUlBWNDW72E). Until now, I've told founders to post at Pacific 10am and email us, because that's roughly when I get going in the morning. Tomorrow, though, there are two. One is a fintech startup in Latin America who want to post at 9am. And the other is Peter Roberts, who's going to do another immigration AMA (https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=proberts https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=proberts). Peter is on the east coast, and wants to get going at 8am Pacific, which is late for him and (ungodly) early for me. So tonight I got frustrated enough to write some code to deal with it. Frustration reaching a tipping point and boiling over is my gateway into the code these days. My goal is for startups to be able to post their launches, and occasionally for pre-scheduled submissions like Peter's (which are rare), to end up on the front page independently of whenever I went to sleep the night before. This code turned out to be a lot more complicated than I anticipated. The patch ended up adding a hundred lines of Arc. A hundred lines of Arc! Do you have any idea how many lines of Arc that is? I just looked through the history and the last commit that added that many lines of code was over two years ago when we got Arc to compile to JS. Obviously this change needs to be thoroughly tested, so after testing it on my laptop I deployed it to production and decided to do a couple of sanity checks live. One was to post a test Launch HN using my old account gruseom, which is the founder account for Skysheet, the spreadsheet startup that Scott and I had 10 years ago (and which I still think about every day, but I should avoid digressing again). The code I wrote has some logic in it for cofounder accounts. One thing it's supposed to do is email all the cofounders when a Launch HN post has made it to HN's front page, so they will be ready to engage with commenters. Anyhow, this test post was the OP. The good news: it got placed on the front page in the way that I intended. The bad news: none of the emails were received. God fucking shit fucking goddamnit I knew those emails wouldn't work...I mean, dang. (Edit: actually that's not what happened. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22772667 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22772667) My intention was for this thread to remain obscure, then get placed briefly on the front page by the new code, at which point I'd get the emails and immediately delete it. I didn't think it was very likely to get noticed in the middle of the night here, especially when posted by what ought by now to be an obscure account, but oh well. I think that covers everything. Hopefully you all will see those two auto-placed posts on the front page tomorrow morning because I do not intend to be awake 5 hours from now. (Edit: it worked!)
- fyfy18 6y ago
  One thing I always wanted to ask if why do job ads not allow comments? I'm guessing its to prevent negative comments/trolling (we get plenty of 'this will never work' on Launch/Show posts), but at the same time I feel like comments on job ads could be a good way for the founders and existing employees (tell us why you as a meager developer are excited to work there!) to interact with the HN community.
  - _-___________-_ 6y ago
    Job ads in the "who is hiring" threads generally only attract comments of one of a few types: "I applied to this place and they never got back to me" "Thanks, I applied" "Please add salary/remoteness/interview process to your job ad" "You have a typo in your text/email address/website URL"
    - h0h0h0h0111 6y ago
      The latter two comments seem pretty useful feedback though
      - dang 6y ago
        But not interesting.
        laumars 6y ago
        [edit: before you read on bare please in mind I'm not advocating comments be enabled (like many others have assumed).] I think it's a little redundant making a distinction between "useful" and "interesting" because either way the comment has value. However I do agree with the points you made in your other comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22767319 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22767319) and that the examples given of useful/interesting comments by the GP doesn't offer a high enough value to justify the inevitable negative and other low value comments. Which I think is the real crux of the matter. Much like why political discussions are generally banned on here, the signal to noise ratio just isn't worth the few valuable comments a submission might receive.
dt3ft 6y ago
Never let a good crisis go to waste: I'm launching https://20-things.com/ https://20-things.com/ :) Could use a good load test ;)
- dang 6y ago
  HN always likes new communities. But don't do this: New account registrations are currently either closed or very limited If you do that, the psychology goes like this: "I wonder what this is?" (click) "Ooh, a new social community! I like those!" (reads further) "What do you mean, new accounts are closed or very limited? What if I want to join? Why are you gatekeeping me? Damn you!"... except with words stronger than 'damn'. Once you're ready to let anyone sign up, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll help you out.
  - dt3ft 6y ago
    Thank you, the registrations are now open but each signup incurs a cost (for the SMS) and the budget is currently limited hence the notice. I'll get in touch asap.
    - _-___________-_ 6y ago
      Sending even tens of thousands of SMS is very cheap, just how limited is that budget? :)
      - dt3ft 6y ago
        A few hundred people with US numbers should be able to sign up, but sending SMS overseas is much more expensive. For example, sending to Switzerland: $0.069 per SMS.
        jmiserez 6y ago
        That's insane, but in line with what other (local) sms gateways charge here. But do you really need my phone number?
mothsonasloth 6y ago
Hi dang This was a good test but it failed some key characteristics to make it an excellent test message. You didn't put foo or bar anywhere in the test message. There was no Cthulhu phrases. Plus there was no pi or the numerical answer to the universe and everything. I trust you will take this onboard for the next test.
- battery_cowboy 6y ago
  Also, how does he know that number-containing strings will work if the title isn't "Test123"??
  - _-___________-_ 6y ago
    "0123Test" is a better number-containing string for testing, to catch out things that try to interpret the string as a number first and then as a string if that fails. For example, JS's insane parseInt function will give you 123 for "0123Test".
    - battery_cowboy 6y ago
      Wow, I learned something in here and I was just "trolling" in the test thread! Thanks!
    - yread 6y ago
      > parseInt("0123Test") 123 > 0123 83 parseInt is actually the adult in the room
      - TeMPOraL 6y ago
        In a way. The convention is that 0123 is "123" in octal.
        yread 6y ago
        Yes, I know that's why I even tried it in console as I was a bit surprised that parseInt doesn't do octal. Why does js even support octal? I never found octal particularly useful. Speak hexadecimal or die
moneytide1 6y ago
Is dang an acronym or does it represent the word we say when disappointed with a certain outcome?
- dang 6y ago
  I picked it because (1) it's my first name plus surname initial; (2) it was my email address at my first job; and (3) it's what you say when you make a mistake—so yup, you guessed it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7494093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7494093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18513120 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18513120
  - DonHopkins 6y ago
    I always imagined you looked like the weirdo in the window seat with different sized eyeballs, who he was addressing as "Dang". https://i.pinimg.com/564x/f8/74/40/f8744035e15d69eb8fd4c70dea17c2e0.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/564x/f8/74/40/f8744035e15d69eb8fd4c70de...
  - gargs 6y ago
    Whoa! I love the second link! Is there an orchestrated horizontally-scaled secure decentralized web service I could use to bookmark all the dang cartoons?!
    - DonHopkins 6y ago
      The best one I remembered from being taped to my mom's fridge, but I just couldn't dig up, was of a big dejected bird standing in front of the open refrigerator, saying: "Dang! Somebody ate the middle out of the daddy longlegs."
Hitton 6y ago
I'll use this as an opportunity to ask something. Are there any stats how many active users does HN have, on how many servers it runs, on which database etc.? Because I have recently wanted to look at my older saved/upvoted posts/comments on reddit and found out that you can look only at last 1000 posts and it does various other things to save resources. HN doesn't seem to do things like that and still feels much snappier than reddit (yes reddit has much more users, but still impressive imho).
- dang 6y ago
  Reddit is 100x bigger. It's not just that we aren't in their league...our league is not in their league. So the comparison is a little embarrassing. It's hard to count active users because you have to define them in order to count them, and we make a point of not tracking people that much. We can count accounts and unique IPs, and that's about it. But it's basically about 5M readers a month, give or take, as far as we can tell. It grows linearly, with large swings. If you step back 10 feet from the graphs and squint, it's basically a straight line for the last 10 years. We like it that way; we wouldn't want to go full Haskell and avoid success at all costs, but we don't want hockey-stick growth either. HN is not a startup! It runs on one server. Actually the app server (written in Arc) runs on one core. But we have some caching in front of that for logged-out users.
  - thatguyagain 6y ago
    Sounds like the size of a large sub reddit.
    - dang 6y ago
      We could also compare them this way: these days, HN averages 1500 submissions and 10000 comments (or so) per day. Does anyone with Reddit datamining fu know what percentile that would be for a subreddit? How many such subreddits are there? What are some examples? Of course there are assumptions involved in mapping that to userbase size or whatever, but it would still be interesting.
astatine 6y ago
Is this a Launch? No, this is a Test. Did it work? It should. Dang! What? The one thing that can ruin the test - it happened. Upvotes. Quite gruseom. Sorry - time hangs heavy some days.
ghego1 6y ago
Good times
bryanrasmussen 6y ago
maybe the test should have been flagged. Did we fail by upvoting?
oliv__ 6y ago
I'd been waiting for this!
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boosthelp 6y ago
Ok, before the party is over, checkout another test launch [0]. We really hope to grow a truly helpful community and will appreciate any feedback about the messaging on our website too! [1] [0] https://www.patreon.com/boosthelp https://www.patreon.com/boosthelp [1] https://boost.help https://boost.help
- dang 6y ago
  I don't begrudge people trying to take advantage of this thread, which was an ill-defined mess to begin with, but you've done a couple things here which I should comment on. First, please don't delete and repost the same comment. It gives the impression of trying to pump it up in the rankings, which would not be a nice community behavior. Second, something I tell people all the time by email: on HN it's an antipattern to have your username be that of your company or project. It creates a feeling of using the site for promotion rather than participating as a person. The community reacts better when your username represents you as a human. You don't have to use your real name, just something to communicate that you're there as a person, not a brand. If you'd like to change your username, we can do that for you via hn@ycombinator.com.
  - boosthelp 6y ago
    Thanks for the kind note. The comment was removed and re-posted here as this thread seemed more appropriate for such comment (i.e. in a mood similar to this[0] comment). EDIT: And thanks for taking time to repeat yourself. Just few hours ago I've been thinking that most of us (unfortunately) will have to actually make some well-known mistakes to learn from them, even if we've been warned about such misdeeds beforehand repeatedly ;-) [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22767218 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22767218
etherio 6y ago
Since apparently someone else posted their launch here, I guess I will too lol. This thread is really interesting :). I'm launching www.devol.io -> a social community for coders. The user base is quite small but I hope we can build it and grow it into something cool!
exikyut 6y ago
Unsure why this has not been clarified yet: HN now has its own https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/92dd8/test_post_please_ignore/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/92dd8/test_post_pleas... ! Yay. Really. :D
ilaksh 6y ago
Were the emails normally being sent manually through some provider, but now going from a mail program on the server? If so, you might consider using SendGrid or something like that with their API. https://sendgrid.com/docs/API_Reference/Web_API_v3/Mail/index.html https://sendgrid.com/docs/API_Reference/Web_API_v3/Mail/inde... If not using a service, would be interested to hear what configuration (DKIM or whatever) was necessary to add to your existing mail setup to get it to work. Although I am just totally speculating on what you were talking about.
- dang 6y ago
  I realized sheepishly this morning why the emails didn't go through: because the placement code never actually executed. Or rather, it did, but it turned into a no-op because the post was already ranking higher, due to user upvotes, than the rank (#10) where the code would have placed it. I forgot that I'd added that check. So my complaint turned out to be nonsense, partly because it was 3am or whatever, and partly because "wtf? swear, profanity, curse...oh wait" is my normal debugging process. Just not usually in public.
davidajackson 6y ago
Very cool, how is this product different than https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/02/20/samsung-galaxy-find-my-mobile-1-notification/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/02/20/samsung-galaxy-find...
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moneytide1 6y ago
Is there a way to delete my profile and all its content?
- moneytide1 6y ago
  Permanent Record
  - moneytide1 6y ago
    Replies are locked after one fortnight? I'm keeping this one alive because it is directly above the "Space Engineers" comment.
    - moneytide1 6y ago
      I have this dilemma, where I am reluctant to pursue creating this "virtual" experience on SE. Years ago I spent a few months familiarizing myself with the engine and the programmable block limitations. It took me dozens of hours just to create the simplest of scripts. Learning curve, I know, but eventually I just did not think that I was adding that much value to society by spending hours of my own time and money trying to make a video game more engaging. I still think about it often, the possibilities of the game engine, and perhaps it is because now it is spring time in my hemisphere and I feel guilty grinding away on a computer with some artificial goal, while the sun is beaming down all around me at a higher angle in the sky - constantly improving conditions for planting and growing lifeforms. Either space engineers is such a long term endeavor and I am being impatient, or I am wavering in ability focus and commit. Now this update every two weeks will be permanent and carry more weight, forcing me to dedicate more consideration to its position amidst my comment history "story".
      - moneytide1 6y ago
        Haven't touched the game in weeks. But today at my factory I finally had a conversation I've been waiting to have for years ("Lagrangian point 1 will be where we build the space port")

385 points by gruseom 6y ago

neokya 6y ago

It works ;)

pmiller2 6y ago

https://i.imgur.com/ofCsS2O.png https://i.imgur.com/ofCsS2O.png

dang 6y ago
I tested it plenty in a dev version, but you never know.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  I figured. Just taking advantage of this somewhat unique opportunity for a little harmless trolling. :)

dang 6y ago

Ok, since this is getting attention, I'll explain. Launch HN posts for YC startups are one of three formal things that HN does for YC (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20launch&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). The others are job ads for YC startups, and orange usernames for YC alumni—but only when displayed to other YC alumni, which always generates "why is my username not orange" emails. But I digress. Launch HNs are like job ads in that they get an initial front-page placement, usually somewhere between #8 and #10. (I think job ads start a little higher). Then they fall down the page. Unlike job ads, though, launch posts can be upvoted and commented on. Once they've gotten their initial placement they function like regular stories. Occasionally the community finds one particularly interesting and it gets upvoted higher. This recent one spent quite a while at #1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22616857 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22616857 (http://hnrankings.info/22616857/ http://hnrankings.info/22616857/). We started doing the Launch HNs three years ago. I was worried that the community would hate them because we were taking additional front page space for YC. (Our intention was to make it so that a launch post and a job ad wouldn't appear at the same time, but I never ended up writing that code, so sometimes they do.) But that hasn't ever come up. I think it's because launch threads are intrinsically more interesting than job ads (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22767319 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22767319 downthread for more on that). All this time, the initial front-page placement of launch posts, unlike job ads, has been done manually. That is, founders have had to email us and we've manually jigged the post onto the front page. The problem with that is that you have to be awake to do it. I don't want to be awake to do it, especially because startup founders tend to be businessy, bustling types who are all bright-and-early, while my schedule drifts ever deeper into the darkness as the few moorings I had remaining to the rest of society dissolve in this time of social distancing and self-isolation, which were basically my bread and butter to begin with (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUlBWNDW72E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUlBWNDW72E). Until now, I've told founders to post at Pacific 10am and email us, because that's roughly when I get going in the morning. Tomorrow, though, there are two. One is a fintech startup in Latin America who want to post at 9am. And the other is Peter Roberts, who's going to do another immigration AMA (https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=proberts https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=proberts). Peter is on the east coast, and wants to get going at 8am Pacific, which is late for him and (ungodly) early for me. So tonight I got frustrated enough to write some code to deal with it. Frustration reaching a tipping point and boiling over is my gateway into the code these days. My goal is for startups to be able to post their launches, and occasionally for pre-scheduled submissions like Peter's (which are rare), to end up on the front page independently of whenever I went to sleep the night before. This code turned out to be a lot more complicated than I anticipated. The patch ended up adding a hundred lines of Arc. A hundred lines of Arc! Do you have any idea how many lines of Arc that is? I just looked through the history and the last commit that added that many lines of code was over two years ago when we got Arc to compile to JS. Obviously this change needs to be thoroughly tested, so after testing it on my laptop I deployed it to production and decided to do a couple of sanity checks live. One was to post a test Launch HN using my old account gruseom, which is the founder account for Skysheet, the spreadsheet startup that Scott and I had 10 years ago (and which I still think about every day, but I should avoid digressing again). The code I wrote has some logic in it for cofounder accounts. One thing it's supposed to do is email all the cofounders when a Launch HN post has made it to HN's front page, so they will be ready to engage with commenters. Anyhow, this test post was the OP. The good news: it got placed on the front page in the way that I intended. The bad news: none of the emails were received. God fucking shit fucking goddamnit I knew those emails wouldn't work...I mean, dang. (Edit: actually that's not what happened. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22772667 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22772667) My intention was for this thread to remain obscure, then get placed briefly on the front page by the new code, at which point I'd get the emails and immediately delete it. I didn't think it was very likely to get noticed in the middle of the night here, especially when posted by what ought by now to be an obscure account, but oh well. I think that covers everything. Hopefully you all will see those two auto-placed posts on the front page tomorrow morning because I do not intend to be awake 5 hours from now. (Edit: it worked!)

fyfy18 6y ago
One thing I always wanted to ask if why do job ads not allow comments? I'm guessing its to prevent negative comments/trolling (we get plenty of 'this will never work' on Launch/Show posts), but at the same time I feel like comments on job ads could be a good way for the founders and existing employees (tell us why you as a meager developer are excited to work there!) to interact with the HN community.
- _-___________-_ 6y ago
  Job ads in the "who is hiring" threads generally only attract comments of one of a few types: "I applied to this place and they never got back to me" "Thanks, I applied" "Please add salary/remoteness/interview process to your job ad" "You have a typo in your text/email address/website URL"
  - h0h0h0h0111 6y ago
    The latter two comments seem pretty useful feedback though
    - dang 6y ago
      But not interesting.
      - laumars 6y ago
        [edit: before you read on bare please in mind I'm not advocating comments be enabled (like many others have assumed).] I think it's a little redundant making a distinction between "useful" and "interesting" because either way the comment has value. However I do agree with the points you made in your other comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22767319 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22767319) and that the examples given of useful/interesting comments by the GP doesn't offer a high enough value to justify the inevitable negative and other low value comments. Which I think is the real crux of the matter. Much like why political discussions are generally banned on here, the signal to noise ratio just isn't worth the few valuable comments a submission might receive.

dt3ft 6y ago

Never let a good crisis go to waste: I'm launching https://20-things.com/ https://20-things.com/ :) Could use a good load test ;)

dang 6y ago
HN always likes new communities. But don't do this: New account registrations are currently either closed or very limited If you do that, the psychology goes like this: "I wonder what this is?" (click) "Ooh, a new social community! I like those!" (reads further) "What do you mean, new accounts are closed or very limited? What if I want to join? Why are you gatekeeping me? Damn you!"... except with words stronger than 'damn'. Once you're ready to let anyone sign up, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll help you out.
- dt3ft 6y ago
  Thank you, the registrations are now open but each signup incurs a cost (for the SMS) and the budget is currently limited hence the notice. I'll get in touch asap.
  - _-___________-_ 6y ago
    Sending even tens of thousands of SMS is very cheap, just how limited is that budget? :)
    - dt3ft 6y ago
      A few hundred people with US numbers should be able to sign up, but sending SMS overseas is much more expensive. For example, sending to Switzerland: $0.069 per SMS.
      - jmiserez 6y ago
        That's insane, but in line with what other (local) sms gateways charge here. But do you really need my phone number?

mothsonasloth 6y ago

Hi dang This was a good test but it failed some key characteristics to make it an excellent test message. You didn't put foo or bar anywhere in the test message. There was no Cthulhu phrases. Plus there was no pi or the numerical answer to the universe and everything. I trust you will take this onboard for the next test.

battery_cowboy 6y ago
Also, how does he know that number-containing strings will work if the title isn't "Test123"??
- _-___________-_ 6y ago
  "0123Test" is a better number-containing string for testing, to catch out things that try to interpret the string as a number first and then as a string if that fails. For example, JS's insane parseInt function will give you 123 for "0123Test".
  - battery_cowboy 6y ago
    Wow, I learned something in here and I was just "trolling" in the test thread! Thanks!
  - yread 6y ago
    > parseInt("0123Test") 123 > 0123 83 parseInt is actually the adult in the room
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      In a way. The convention is that 0123 is "123" in octal.
      - yread 6y ago
        Yes, I know that's why I even tried it in console as I was a bit surprised that parseInt doesn't do octal. Why does js even support octal? I never found octal particularly useful. Speak hexadecimal or die

moneytide1 6y ago

Is dang an acronym or does it represent the word we say when disappointed with a certain outcome?

dang 6y ago
I picked it because (1) it's my first name plus surname initial; (2) it was my email address at my first job; and (3) it's what you say when you make a mistake—so yup, you guessed it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7494093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7494093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18513120 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18513120
- DonHopkins 6y ago
  I always imagined you looked like the weirdo in the window seat with different sized eyeballs, who he was addressing as "Dang". https://i.pinimg.com/564x/f8/74/40/f8744035e15d69eb8fd4c70dea17c2e0.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/564x/f8/74/40/f8744035e15d69eb8fd4c70de...
- gargs 6y ago
  Whoa! I love the second link! Is there an orchestrated horizontally-scaled secure decentralized web service I could use to bookmark all the dang cartoons?!
  - DonHopkins 6y ago
    The best one I remembered from being taped to my mom's fridge, but I just couldn't dig up, was of a big dejected bird standing in front of the open refrigerator, saying: "Dang! Somebody ate the middle out of the daddy longlegs."

Hitton 6y ago

I'll use this as an opportunity to ask something. Are there any stats how many active users does HN have, on how many servers it runs, on which database etc.? Because I have recently wanted to look at my older saved/upvoted posts/comments on reddit and found out that you can look only at last 1000 posts and it does various other things to save resources. HN doesn't seem to do things like that and still feels much snappier than reddit (yes reddit has much more users, but still impressive imho).

dang 6y ago
Reddit is 100x bigger. It's not just that we aren't in their league...our league is not in their league. So the comparison is a little embarrassing. It's hard to count active users because you have to define them in order to count them, and we make a point of not tracking people that much. We can count accounts and unique IPs, and that's about it. But it's basically about 5M readers a month, give or take, as far as we can tell. It grows linearly, with large swings. If you step back 10 feet from the graphs and squint, it's basically a straight line for the last 10 years. We like it that way; we wouldn't want to go full Haskell and avoid success at all costs, but we don't want hockey-stick growth either. HN is not a startup! It runs on one server. Actually the app server (written in Arc) runs on one core. But we have some caching in front of that for logged-out users.
- thatguyagain 6y ago
  Sounds like the size of a large sub reddit.
  - dang 6y ago
    We could also compare them this way: these days, HN averages 1500 submissions and 10000 comments (or so) per day. Does anyone with Reddit datamining fu know what percentile that would be for a subreddit? How many such subreddits are there? What are some examples? Of course there are assumptions involved in mapping that to userbase size or whatever, but it would still be interesting.

astatine 6y ago

Is this a Launch? No, this is a Test. Did it work? It should. Dang! What? The one thing that can ruin the test - it happened. Upvotes. Quite gruseom. Sorry - time hangs heavy some days.

ghego1 6y ago

Good times

bryanrasmussen 6y ago

maybe the test should have been flagged. Did we fail by upvoting?

oliv__ 6y ago

I'd been waiting for this!

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boosthelp 6y ago

Ok, before the party is over, checkout another test launch [0]. We really hope to grow a truly helpful community and will appreciate any feedback about the messaging on our website too! [1] [0] https://www.patreon.com/boosthelp https://www.patreon.com/boosthelp [1] https://boost.help https://boost.help

dang 6y ago
I don't begrudge people trying to take advantage of this thread, which was an ill-defined mess to begin with, but you've done a couple things here which I should comment on. First, please don't delete and repost the same comment. It gives the impression of trying to pump it up in the rankings, which would not be a nice community behavior. Second, something I tell people all the time by email: on HN it's an antipattern to have your username be that of your company or project. It creates a feeling of using the site for promotion rather than participating as a person. The community reacts better when your username represents you as a human. You don't have to use your real name, just something to communicate that you're there as a person, not a brand. If you'd like to change your username, we can do that for you via hn@ycombinator.com.
- boosthelp 6y ago
  Thanks for the kind note. The comment was removed and re-posted here as this thread seemed more appropriate for such comment (i.e. in a mood similar to this[0] comment). EDIT: And thanks for taking time to repeat yourself. Just few hours ago I've been thinking that most of us (unfortunately) will have to actually make some well-known mistakes to learn from them, even if we've been warned about such misdeeds beforehand repeatedly ;-) [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22767218 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22767218

etherio 6y ago

Since apparently someone else posted their launch here, I guess I will too lol. This thread is really interesting :). I'm launching www.devol.io -> a social community for coders. The user base is quite small but I hope we can build it and grow it into something cool!

exikyut 6y ago

Unsure why this has not been clarified yet: HN now has its own https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/92dd8/test_post_please_ignore/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/92dd8/test_post_pleas... ! Yay. Really. :D

ilaksh 6y ago

Were the emails normally being sent manually through some provider, but now going from a mail program on the server? If so, you might consider using SendGrid or something like that with their API. https://sendgrid.com/docs/API_Reference/Web_API_v3/Mail/index.html https://sendgrid.com/docs/API_Reference/Web_API_v3/Mail/inde... If not using a service, would be interested to hear what configuration (DKIM or whatever) was necessary to add to your existing mail setup to get it to work. Although I am just totally speculating on what you were talking about.

dang 6y ago
I realized sheepishly this morning why the emails didn't go through: because the placement code never actually executed. Or rather, it did, but it turned into a no-op because the post was already ranking higher, due to user upvotes, than the rank (#10) where the code would have placed it. I forgot that I'd added that check. So my complaint turned out to be nonsense, partly because it was 3am or whatever, and partly because "wtf? swear, profanity, curse...oh wait" is my normal debugging process. Just not usually in public.

davidajackson 6y ago

Very cool, how is this product different than https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/02/20/samsung-galaxy-find-my-mobile-1-notification/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/02/20/samsung-galaxy-find...

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moneytide1 6y ago

Is there a way to delete my profile and all its content?

moneytide1 6y ago
Permanent Record
- moneytide1 6y ago
  Replies are locked after one fortnight? I'm keeping this one alive because it is directly above the "Space Engineers" comment.
  - moneytide1 6y ago
    I have this dilemma, where I am reluctant to pursue creating this "virtual" experience on SE. Years ago I spent a few months familiarizing myself with the engine and the programmable block limitations. It took me dozens of hours just to create the simplest of scripts. Learning curve, I know, but eventually I just did not think that I was adding that much value to society by spending hours of my own time and money trying to make a video game more engaging. I still think about it often, the possibilities of the game engine, and perhaps it is because now it is spring time in my hemisphere and I feel guilty grinding away on a computer with some artificial goal, while the sun is beaming down all around me at a higher angle in the sky - constantly improving conditions for planting and growing lifeforms. Either space engineers is such a long term endeavor and I am being impatient, or I am wavering in ability focus and commit. Now this update every two weeks will be permanent and carry more weight, forcing me to dedicate more consideration to its position amidst my comment history "story".
    - moneytide1 6y ago
      Haven't touched the game in weeks. But today at my factory I finally had a conversation I've been waiting to have for years ("Lagrangian point 1 will be where we build the space port")