6 ms·

Hacker News Classics (2018)

165 points by katzeilla 5y ago

Waterluvian 5y ago
I enjoy this idea. Always nice to look at the "classics." I wonder if maybe the Y logo top left should be removed as it might mislead users into thinking it's a legitimate extension of HN?
Tomte 5y ago
It would be cool to have a version sorted by (parenthesized) date. Oh, and "(1900..2010).each do |year|" is not good: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16444460 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16444460
tantalor 5y ago
Unfortunately HN locks the comments after a while. Mods: we need a way to fix deadlinks Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1140283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1140283 redirects to wrong place. Correct new link is https://lockhaven.edu/~dsimanek/hollow/tamarack.htm https://lockhaven.edu/~dsimanek/hollow/tamarack.htm
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  Dang has said this is done as a way to preserve history. I think that’s more important than some of the links being outdated.
  - dang 5y ago
    That's generally true, but if it's a historical source that's still available elsewhere, then the particular link doesn't have so much historical value. Occasionally I'll post archive.org links or similar alternatives as pinned top comments, so readers looking at the old thread can have access to the article. In the past we've changed the top link to archive.org also, but I'd rather not encourage that.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 5y ago
  We updated that one — thanks!
the_arun 5y ago
It is not on https
- vaylian 5y ago
  The submission link needs HTTPS. But the website itself supports HTTPS.
lt 5y ago
I've long had this notion that there are two kinds of content on a site like HN: - temporal, like news, announcements, analysis and discussion on current events. It's usually irrelevant after a while, it gets stale fast. - atemporal, like essays, history, theory, articles, knowledge in general that while it may get superseded, expanded or invalidated over time, it's interesting content that you learn from, from a current or historical perspective. While the first kind tends to get more attention due to the clickbaity nature, I much prefer the second kind and wonder if a site focused solely on that would be more interesting.
- scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago
  MetaFilter might be for you then
- Chris2048 5y ago
  Agree, and while the former might best be represented on a dated "timeline", esp as an ongoing thing of related events; The latter is maybe best as a "slow journalist"/"community wiki" style of aggregating useful comments.
- hyperpallium2 5y ago
  Yes. I think this also aligns with the origins of HN as "startup news" (news is temporal), which was expanded to "gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" (timeless) https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Suggest: two sites
- davnicwil 5y ago
  I know where you're coming from, but I think the shallower current events type discussions bring a lot of value in holding a mirror up to the deeper, more theoretical and timeless pieces. It's about keeping them honest. You know the latter have value if you see their themes and lessons play out frequently in the former. A decent test of the most useful theory is how often it's relevant and referenced in shallow quick fire current events discussions.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  You can generalise this to much document-style information (in the Paul Otlet sense). Nothing has the lack of persistence that news does. (Though a surprising amount of "news", for reasons closely related to this rapid-staling and unpredictable nature of it, is actually repackaged evergreen or procedural content.) At the same time, there's little that's as timeless as highly-insightful observations or commentary. These can live on for years, decades, centuries, or millennia. (I suspect that copyright attacks both ends of this equation, by creating moats around current material to keep it in flow, and by denying markets to older material, which would otherwise compete with the new. This has limits imposed by works which were in fact subject to copyright in the first place, which is most works published since January 1, 1926, in the US.) I'm finding classic works, philosophy, and much academic publishing to be far more interesting than news, of late.
calpaterson 5y ago
> the web is the greatest library in the history of the world I think this is web-boosterism. Consider another candidate for greatest library in history of the world: the British Library. 200 million items, most of them available to read at 45 minutes notice, centrally located in one of the worlds most important cities. I'm bet that 99% of what is on this page is in the BL. Is 99% of what is in the BL on the web? EDIT: For context, here is some of the stuff in the BL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Library#Highlights_of_the_collections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Library#Highlights_of_...
- movedx 5y ago
  How do I access the British Library from India? Or perhaps from Australia? New Zealand? What about Canada? The Internet offers a unique value proposition the British Library does not: it's globally available, for free, and in the case of Wikipedia might even come in your native tongue. It also offers video content, live or otherwise, on any Internet connected device you happen to own. The British Library doesn't compare, but it sure is an exceptional resource. a lot of the time
  - calpaterson 5y ago
    > How do I access the British Library from India? You clearly can't (though India no special shortage of excellent libraries). But how important is access? Is the chip shop down the road from you the Worlds Greatest Restaurant just because it's the easiest to get to? Or is that place in Paris with 3 Michelin stars better? The web-as-a-library relies on people creating good stuff and paying for it to be on the web for free. It just doesn't happen that often and Wikipedia is, I'm afraid, not the last word on human knowledge.
- tutfbhuf 5y ago
  > centrally located That's not necessarily a good thing. Think of a fire.
- rvieira 5y ago
  Well, the web has some obvious advantages over mostly-paper libraries. I'm sure a certain library in Alexandria would have appreciated off-site backups :)
dgellow 5y ago
That's fantastic. "Linux is obsolete (1992)": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8942175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8942175
- 0-_-0 5y ago
  Linus says: "If the GNU kernel had been ready last spring, I'd not have bothered to even start my project: the fact is that it wasn't and still isn't. Linux wins heavily on points of being available now." Is he referring to GNU Hurd that is still unfinished?
  - bombcar 5y ago
    Correct - the general assumption at the time is that GNU Hurd was about to bust out and become the main free software kernel. Remember that computers that COULD run practical Unix for home use had just become relatively available - and Linus wanted to play with his new 386 and the fun instructions provided therein.
- aidenn0 5y ago
  > Linus "my first, and hopefully last flamefest" Torvalds
k__ 5y ago
Half-OT: HN could optimize the layout for mobile a bit. I'm mostly reading on my smartphone and the links are all sooo small, I can barely hit them with my thumb.
- Kelamir 5y ago
  You could use Materialistic or any other apps that make it easier to view HN.
- Zircom 5y ago
  I use http://hn.premii.com/ http://hn.premii.com/ on mobile. No support for commenting but for just browsing is very nice IMO.
mensetmanusman 5y ago
Unfortunately some dead links, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6512288 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6512288 Would be cool if HN had its own web archive after 100 comments or so.
- niea_11 5y ago
  Or a bot that browses discussions and if any recent ones have > 100 comments automatically sends the link to archive.org to be archived and then add a comment with the link of the archived copy
  - ashtonbaker 5y ago
    Are bots allowed here? I've never seen the kind of utility bot that is common on Reddit.
    - gus_massa 5y ago
      Bots are heavily discouraged here. (Almost totally forbidden.) Perhaps if the bot sends the page to the archive immediately but instead of posting the comment immediately waits a few days (until the last day comments are allowed), it will not so controversial because it will add no noise to the conversation. It's better to send an email to the mods with the idea before implementing it, because the bot may get banned.
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  Found a replacement for the (broken) video link in "WATCH THE VERY FIRST FILM VERSION OF ‘ALICE IN WONDERLAND’ FROM 1903": https://youtu.be/zeIXfdogJbA https://youtu.be/zeIXfdogJbA
ChrisArchitect 5y ago
Some more discussion from a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22004066 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22004066
- dang 5y ago
  Yup - plus an earlier: Hacker News Classics (2018) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22004066 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22004066 - Jan 2020 (42 comments) Show HN: Hacker News Classics - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16442888 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16442888 - Feb 2018 (107 comments)
ChrisArchitect 5y ago
collecting stories that have (year) on them once may have been a nice way to surface archive essays and interesting pieces. These kinds of posts are submitted daily now and it's getting annoying/ridiculous when things are submitted less than a year apart, sometimes even monthly! Old articles that have been discussed heavily, improved upon, circumstances changed, technology evolution especially, are mostly lame to revisit on a site that still should weigh heavily towards current events/news developments. I'm just getting tired of sifting thru resurfaced old posts from 2016 or whatever
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
divbzero 5y ago
I know everyone is wondering when Hacker News Classics (2018) will appear on Hacker News Classics (2018). From the underlying code it looks like this depends on: (a) fetch.rb to be run again to regenerate stories.json; (b) the definition of “classic” to be expanded beyond 1900–2010; (c) the Algolia HN API to update which it hasn’t yet. [1] [2] [1]: https://github.com/jsomers/hacker-classics https://github.com/jsomers/hacker-classics [2]: https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search?tags=story&query='2018'&page=#{page} https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search?tags=story&query='2018'...
swyx 5y ago
This is very inline with the Lindy Effect - things that have been around for a while can be expected to be relevant longer than things that were just created yesterday. Our information diet is only as useful as is relevant in future, and tends toward too fleeting. So I think people should make Lindy Libraries - reading resources that have stood the test of time. Here are a few I have been collecting: https://codingcareer.circle.so/c/lindy-library https://codingcareer.circle.so/c/lindy-library
- xavierlint 5y ago
  > Our information diet is only as useful as is relevant in future I think there are situations where ephemerous knowledge is useful. For example, knowing about a security vulnerability: its profitability is much higher before the issue gets fixed, which can happen anytime (be it two hours or two years). Another example: imagine you know insert-influential-billonaire is going to tweet about insert-trendy-currency, this information is completely irrelevant for the future, but you can certainly use it to make money. It's worth mentioning these two examples, however, can provide longer-lasting knowledge as a by-product too.
thamer 5y ago
Not to be confused with Hacker News' /classic: https://news.ycombinator.com/classic https://news.ycombinator.com/classic /classic uses the same ranking system as the regular front page but only counts votes from early users, defined as accounts that were created before Feb 13, 2008. I'm guessing this is an attempt at getting around the Eternal September phenomenon, or at least an experiment around this idea. Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24401292 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24401292
- Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
  And I was thinking "Hacker News Classics" would refer to well-known posts/comments on HN, like the comment of the guy completely dismissing Dropbox.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
freetonik 5y ago
A somewhat related shameless plug: Timeless Hacker News https://thn.rakhim.org/ https://thn.rakhim.org/

165 points by katzeilla 5y ago

I enjoy this idea. Always nice to look at the "classics." I wonder if maybe the Y logo top left should be removed as it might mislead users into thinking it's a legitimate extension of HN?

Tomte 5y ago

It would be cool to have a version sorted by (parenthesized) date. Oh, and "(1900..2010).each do |year|" is not good: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16444460 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16444460

tantalor 5y ago

Unfortunately HN locks the comments after a while. Mods: we need a way to fix deadlinks Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1140283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1140283 redirects to wrong place. Correct new link is https://lockhaven.edu/~dsimanek/hollow/tamarack.htm https://lockhaven.edu/~dsimanek/hollow/tamarack.htm

Wowfunhappy 5y ago
Dang has said this is done as a way to preserve history. I think that’s more important than some of the links being outdated.
- dang 5y ago
  That's generally true, but if it's a historical source that's still available elsewhere, then the particular link doesn't have so much historical value. Occasionally I'll post archive.org links or similar alternatives as pinned top comments, so readers looking at the old thread can have access to the article. In the past we've changed the top link to archive.org also, but I'd rather not encourage that.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dang 5y ago
We updated that one — thanks!

the_arun 5y ago

It is not on https

vaylian 5y ago
The submission link needs HTTPS. But the website itself supports HTTPS.

lt 5y ago

I've long had this notion that there are two kinds of content on a site like HN: - temporal, like news, announcements, analysis and discussion on current events. It's usually irrelevant after a while, it gets stale fast. - atemporal, like essays, history, theory, articles, knowledge in general that while it may get superseded, expanded or invalidated over time, it's interesting content that you learn from, from a current or historical perspective. While the first kind tends to get more attention due to the clickbaity nature, I much prefer the second kind and wonder if a site focused solely on that would be more interesting.

scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago
MetaFilter might be for you then
Chris2048 5y ago
Agree, and while the former might best be represented on a dated "timeline", esp as an ongoing thing of related events; The latter is maybe best as a "slow journalist"/"community wiki" style of aggregating useful comments.
hyperpallium2 5y ago
Yes. I think this also aligns with the origins of HN as "startup news" (news is temporal), which was expanded to "gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" (timeless) https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Suggest: two sites
davnicwil 5y ago
I know where you're coming from, but I think the shallower current events type discussions bring a lot of value in holding a mirror up to the deeper, more theoretical and timeless pieces. It's about keeping them honest. You know the latter have value if you see their themes and lessons play out frequently in the former. A decent test of the most useful theory is how often it's relevant and referenced in shallow quick fire current events discussions.
dredmorbius 5y ago
You can generalise this to much document-style information (in the Paul Otlet sense). Nothing has the lack of persistence that news does. (Though a surprising amount of "news", for reasons closely related to this rapid-staling and unpredictable nature of it, is actually repackaged evergreen or procedural content.) At the same time, there's little that's as timeless as highly-insightful observations or commentary. These can live on for years, decades, centuries, or millennia. (I suspect that copyright attacks both ends of this equation, by creating moats around current material to keep it in flow, and by denying markets to older material, which would otherwise compete with the new. This has limits imposed by works which were in fact subject to copyright in the first place, which is most works published since January 1, 1926, in the US.) I'm finding classic works, philosophy, and much academic publishing to be far more interesting than news, of late.

calpaterson 5y ago

> the web is the greatest library in the history of the world I think this is web-boosterism. Consider another candidate for greatest library in history of the world: the British Library. 200 million items, most of them available to read at 45 minutes notice, centrally located in one of the worlds most important cities. I'm bet that 99% of what is on this page is in the BL. Is 99% of what is in the BL on the web? EDIT: For context, here is some of the stuff in the BL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Library#Highlights_of_the_collections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Library#Highlights_of_...

movedx 5y ago
How do I access the British Library from India? Or perhaps from Australia? New Zealand? What about Canada? The Internet offers a unique value proposition the British Library does not: it's globally available, for free, and in the case of Wikipedia might even come in your native tongue. It also offers video content, live or otherwise, on any Internet connected device you happen to own. The British Library doesn't compare, but it sure is an exceptional resource. a lot of the time
- calpaterson 5y ago
  > How do I access the British Library from India? You clearly can't (though India no special shortage of excellent libraries). But how important is access? Is the chip shop down the road from you the Worlds Greatest Restaurant just because it's the easiest to get to? Or is that place in Paris with 3 Michelin stars better? The web-as-a-library relies on people creating good stuff and paying for it to be on the web for free. It just doesn't happen that often and Wikipedia is, I'm afraid, not the last word on human knowledge.
tutfbhuf 5y ago
> centrally located That's not necessarily a good thing. Think of a fire.
rvieira 5y ago
Well, the web has some obvious advantages over mostly-paper libraries. I'm sure a certain library in Alexandria would have appreciated off-site backups :)

dgellow 5y ago

That's fantastic. "Linux is obsolete (1992)": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8942175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8942175

0-_-0 5y ago
Linus says: "If the GNU kernel had been ready last spring, I'd not have bothered to even start my project: the fact is that it wasn't and still isn't. Linux wins heavily on points of being available now." Is he referring to GNU Hurd that is still unfinished?
- bombcar 5y ago
  Correct - the general assumption at the time is that GNU Hurd was about to bust out and become the main free software kernel. Remember that computers that COULD run practical Unix for home use had just become relatively available - and Linus wanted to play with his new 386 and the fun instructions provided therein.
aidenn0 5y ago
> Linus "my first, and hopefully last flamefest" Torvalds

k__ 5y ago

Half-OT: HN could optimize the layout for mobile a bit. I'm mostly reading on my smartphone and the links are all sooo small, I can barely hit them with my thumb.

Kelamir 5y ago
You could use Materialistic or any other apps that make it easier to view HN.
Zircom 5y ago
I use http://hn.premii.com/ http://hn.premii.com/ on mobile. No support for commenting but for just browsing is very nice IMO.

mensetmanusman 5y ago

Unfortunately some dead links, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6512288 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6512288 Would be cool if HN had its own web archive after 100 comments or so.

niea_11 5y ago
Or a bot that browses discussions and if any recent ones have > 100 comments automatically sends the link to archive.org to be archived and then add a comment with the link of the archived copy
- ashtonbaker 5y ago
  Are bots allowed here? I've never seen the kind of utility bot that is common on Reddit.
  - gus_massa 5y ago
    Bots are heavily discouraged here. (Almost totally forbidden.) Perhaps if the bot sends the page to the archive immediately but instead of posting the comment immediately waits a few days (until the last day comments are allowed), it will not so controversial because it will add no noise to the conversation. It's better to send an email to the mods with the idea before implementing it, because the bot may get banned.
JKCalhoun 5y ago
Found a replacement for the (broken) video link in "WATCH THE VERY FIRST FILM VERSION OF ‘ALICE IN WONDERLAND’ FROM 1903": https://youtu.be/zeIXfdogJbA https://youtu.be/zeIXfdogJbA

ChrisArchitect 5y ago

Some more discussion from a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22004066 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22004066

dang 5y ago
Yup - plus an earlier: Hacker News Classics (2018) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22004066 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22004066 - Jan 2020 (42 comments) Show HN: Hacker News Classics - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16442888 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16442888 - Feb 2018 (107 comments)

ChrisArchitect 5y ago

collecting stories that have (year) on them once may have been a nice way to surface archive essays and interesting pieces. These kinds of posts are submitted daily now and it's getting annoying/ridiculous when things are submitted less than a year apart, sometimes even monthly! Old articles that have been discussed heavily, improved upon, circumstances changed, technology evolution especially, are mostly lame to revisit on a site that still should weigh heavily towards current events/news developments. I'm just getting tired of sifting thru resurfaced old posts from 2016 or whatever

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

divbzero 5y ago

I know everyone is wondering when Hacker News Classics (2018) will appear on Hacker News Classics (2018). From the underlying code it looks like this depends on: (a) fetch.rb to be run again to regenerate stories.json; (b) the definition of “classic” to be expanded beyond 1900–2010; (c) the Algolia HN API to update which it hasn’t yet. [1] [2] [1]: https://github.com/jsomers/hacker-classics https://github.com/jsomers/hacker-classics [2]: https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search?tags=story&query='2018'&page=#{page} https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search?tags=story&query='2018'...

swyx 5y ago

This is very inline with the Lindy Effect - things that have been around for a while can be expected to be relevant longer than things that were just created yesterday. Our information diet is only as useful as is relevant in future, and tends toward too fleeting. So I think people should make Lindy Libraries - reading resources that have stood the test of time. Here are a few I have been collecting: https://codingcareer.circle.so/c/lindy-library https://codingcareer.circle.so/c/lindy-library

xavierlint 5y ago
> Our information diet is only as useful as is relevant in future I think there are situations where ephemerous knowledge is useful. For example, knowing about a security vulnerability: its profitability is much higher before the issue gets fixed, which can happen anytime (be it two hours or two years). Another example: imagine you know insert-influential-billonaire is going to tweet about insert-trendy-currency, this information is completely irrelevant for the future, but you can certainly use it to make money. It's worth mentioning these two examples, however, can provide longer-lasting knowledge as a by-product too.

thamer 5y ago

Not to be confused with Hacker News' /classic: https://news.ycombinator.com/classic https://news.ycombinator.com/classic /classic uses the same ranking system as the regular front page but only counts votes from early users, defined as accounts that were created before Feb 13, 2008. I'm guessing this is an attempt at getting around the Eternal September phenomenon, or at least an experiment around this idea. Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24401292 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24401292

Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
And I was thinking "Hacker News Classics" would refer to well-known posts/comments on HN, like the comment of the guy completely dismissing Dropbox.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

freetonik 5y ago

A somewhat related shameless plug: Timeless Hacker News https://thn.rakhim.org/ https://thn.rakhim.org/