5 ms·

This is a great example of if at first you don't succeed, try and try and try and try again. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37344146 https://news.ycombin

This is a great example of if at first you don't succeed, try and try and try and try again. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37344146 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37344146 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37318295 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37318295 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37317859 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37317859 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37312700 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37312700

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
davikr 3y ago
It kept getting flagged for no reason too.
- dang 3y ago
  No, it was getting killed by software, not flagged. If it has been flagged (enough to get killed), you would have seen [flagged][dead] rather than just [dead].
tylervigen 3y ago
Ha! Author here. I actually posted it here right after I published it earlier this week. I thought it was more Hacker News material than Reddit material. But no one saw it at the time. Guess it didn't get the good numbers from the algorithm. For the record: none of the other repostings of it were from me.
dang 3y ago
I know it looked like that, but it was weirder—a failure mode I ran into last night, and the process of correcting it was a rabbit hole that maybe would be interesting to share. The article was posted 27 (!) times (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37364657 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37364657 - in addition to any that may have been deleted) but they were killed because the domain was banned. Yikes! how could such a great site be banned? Well, before this article existed, there was only the author's page of Spurious Correlations, which is fun and clever but not quite suitable for HN, and it was posted so often (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37364947 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37364947) that a mod must have banned it back when nothing else was coming in from that domain. Alas, when a ban like that fails, it can fail catastrophically, because the next thing to come in from that domain, after 85 Spurious Correlations, was this immediate classic. I ran across all those [dead] submissions last night, realized this was an awesome article for HN and (duh) unbanned the domain. That left the problem of what to do with 27 past submissions - which should 'win'? Which user should get credit? (Eventually we want to build a karma-sharing system to solve this, but that's not done yet.) When a good article has been submitted multiple times but not had attention yet, we often comb through the submission feeds of the accounts involved, looking for any other good-but-overlooked submissions that we might invite them to repost instead. (Edit: partly as consolation prizes, but mostly to feed more good stuff to HN readers.) That usually means looking at 2 or maybe 5 submission feeds (not 27)! but I spent about an hour last night looking through most of them and finding other articles to invite. For fun, here are the ones I found: The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37317859 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37317859 (obviously) Recursive Racks [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37360186 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37360186 (now reposted) Early performance results from the prototype CHERI ARM Morello microarchitecture - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37082504 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37082504 Show HN: Shaq, a CLI for Shazam - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37364124 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37364124 (now reposted) A GPT-4 capability forecasting challenge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37360251 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37360251 (now reposted) A plot to steal the secret Coke can-liner formula - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37376559 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37376559 (edit: now reposted) Lego 3-axis styrofoam cutter [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37375254 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37375254 (edit: now reposted) Webb Mirror (2022) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33608752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33608752 Contexto: Guess a word based on its AI-sorted context - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33412895 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33412895 The Craft of Experimental Physics (2015) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37358468 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37358468 (now reposted) Some of those were quickly reposted (thanks all!). Invited reposts get put in the second-chance pool (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308), meaning they get a random placement somewhat low on HN's front page. Most soon fall off, but the ones that spark readers' interest can go on to do well. You can see the list of invited reposts here: https://news.ycombinator.com/invited https://news.ycombinator.com/invited. When deciding who to invite to repost the original thing (in this case, the bridge article), we go by a few heuristics. Earlier submitters are preferred to later ones. Submitters who have never had a story hit the frontpage are preferred to those who have; and those who haven't had a 'hit' for a long time (years, in some cases) are preferred to those who've have had one recently. Submitters who've posted less, or not for a long time, are preferred to HN titans (ColinWright, we love you but that's why https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37312700 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37312700 'lost', despite being early). Accounts for which we have no email address necessarily 'lose', though I sometimes try to work around that: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20repost%20invite%20offtopic&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... Oh, and when one of the previous submitters is clearly the article's author, we usually don't invite them to do the repost. That way two people can have some dopamine instead of just one. Sometimes I do this search recursively*: when in someone's past submission feed I run into an article so good I wonder who else has posted that, and which of them should 'win', so I look through all their histories for yet other articles that deserve reposting, hopefully without losing my place in the previous search. I can't handle a stack depth of more than 2 or 3 before my brain explodes and then I usually bail until next time. (* Depth-first or breadth-first? I've tried both ways to figure out which allows me to hold more state before capsizing, but I'm unsure. Both involve opening a lot of tabs, but in a different order, and both get unwieldy) This is a great way to meander through the archives (the catacombs?) and find obscure, interesting things. It would be worth writing software to support it one of these years. HN is in a rare sweet spot where it makes sense for YC to fund it simply to be interesting (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=yc%20business%20interests%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...), and obscure overlooked submissions are among the most interesting things on HN—so the archives should only grow in value and we can hopefully keep this going a long time. I got tired partway through last night—a recursive search with 27 inputs is too much. I can't remember why graypegg 'won'—I think I just threw an exception. That left a bunch of submitters who didn't get a repost invite, but I've added these now: Show HN: SkyFi – Command satellites on demand - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34468803 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34468803 The Curious Case of Hybrids in Watchmaking - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37368929 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37368929 (edit: now reposted) The New York Nobody Knows: Walking 6,000 miles in the city - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37119695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37119695 Home Assistant Door Chime via Sonos - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24740283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24740283 (the only other submission by that account! luckily it was good) The Hunt for the Giant Squid (2004) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37344191 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37344191 If anyone else wants to dig for worthy ones, I'd love to see the links! People frequently email us asking for second chances for their own material. That's...ok I guess, but it doesn't make my eyes light up. Random finds for no other reason than just-because* are the real treasures here. (* which is also why the current article is an instant classic)
- dang 3y ago
  I don't want to bloat the parent comment so I'm going to macroexpand parts of it here.
  - dang 3y ago
    [1] For the curious, here they are. Most won't be visible unless you have 'showdead' turned on in your profile: The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37355607 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37355607 - Sept 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37355390 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37355390 - Sept 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37354254 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37354254 - Sept 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37351991 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37351991 - Sept 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37349283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37349283 - Sept 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37347478 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37347478 - Sept 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37344146 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37344146 - Aug 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37343169 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37343169 - Aug 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37341092 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37341092 - Aug 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37339808 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37339808 - Aug 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37337460 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37337460 - Aug 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37337274 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37337274 - Aug 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37335732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37335732 - Aug 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37332795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37332795 - Aug 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37332357 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37332357 - Aug 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37330688 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37330688 - Aug 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37329762 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37329762 - Aug 2023 (1 comment) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37323370 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37323370 - Aug 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37318295 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37318295 - Aug 2023 (4 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37317859 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37317859 - Aug 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge: Why is this bridge here? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37316842 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37316842 - Aug 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37313777 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37313777 - Aug 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37312700 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37312700 - Aug 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37309738 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37309738 - Aug 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37306042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37306042 - Aug 2023 (0 comments) Solving the Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37305110 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37305110 - Aug 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37301368 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37301368 - Aug 2023 (0 comments)

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

davikr 3y ago

It kept getting flagged for no reason too.

dang 3y ago
No, it was getting killed by software, not flagged. If it has been flagged (enough to get killed), you would have seen [flagged][dead] rather than just [dead].

tylervigen 3y ago

Ha! Author here. I actually posted it here right after I published it earlier this week. I thought it was more Hacker News material than Reddit material. But no one saw it at the time. Guess it didn't get the good numbers from the algorithm. For the record: none of the other repostings of it were from me.

dang 3y ago

I know it looked like that, but it was weirder—a failure mode I ran into last night, and the process of correcting it was a rabbit hole that maybe would be interesting to share. The article was posted 27 (!) times (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37364657 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37364657 - in addition to any that may have been deleted) but they were killed because the domain was banned. Yikes! how could such a great site be banned? Well, before this article existed, there was only the author's page of Spurious Correlations, which is fun and clever but not quite suitable for HN, and it was posted so often (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37364947 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37364947) that a mod must have banned it back when nothing else was coming in from that domain. Alas, when a ban like that fails, it can fail catastrophically, because the next thing to come in from that domain, after 85 Spurious Correlations, was this immediate classic. I ran across all those [dead] submissions last night, realized this was an awesome article for HN and (duh) unbanned the domain. That left the problem of what to do with 27 past submissions - which should 'win'? Which user should get credit? (Eventually we want to build a karma-sharing system to solve this, but that's not done yet.) When a good article has been submitted multiple times but not had attention yet, we often comb through the submission feeds of the accounts involved, looking for any other good-but-overlooked submissions that we might invite them to repost instead. (Edit: partly as consolation prizes, but mostly to feed more good stuff to HN readers.) That usually means looking at 2 or maybe 5 submission feeds (not 27)! but I spent about an hour last night looking through most of them and finding other articles to invite. For fun, here are the ones I found: The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37317859 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37317859 (obviously) Recursive Racks [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37360186 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37360186 (now reposted) Early performance results from the prototype CHERI ARM Morello microarchitecture - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37082504 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37082504 Show HN: Shaq, a CLI for Shazam - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37364124 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37364124 (now reposted) A GPT-4 capability forecasting challenge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37360251 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37360251 (now reposted) A plot to steal the secret Coke can-liner formula - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37376559 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37376559 (edit: now reposted) Lego 3-axis styrofoam cutter [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37375254 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37375254 (edit: now reposted) Webb Mirror (2022) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33608752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33608752 Contexto: Guess a word based on its AI-sorted context - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33412895 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33412895 The Craft of Experimental Physics (2015) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37358468 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37358468 (now reposted) Some of those were quickly reposted (thanks all!). Invited reposts get put in the second-chance pool (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308), meaning they get a random placement somewhat low on HN's front page. Most soon fall off, but the ones that spark readers' interest can go on to do well. You can see the list of invited reposts here: https://news.ycombinator.com/invited https://news.ycombinator.com/invited. When deciding who to invite to repost the original thing (in this case, the bridge article), we go by a few heuristics. Earlier submitters are preferred to later ones. Submitters who have never had a story hit the frontpage are preferred to those who have; and those who haven't had a 'hit' for a long time (years, in some cases) are preferred to those who've have had one recently. Submitters who've posted less, or not for a long time, are preferred to HN titans (ColinWright, we love you but that's why https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37312700 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37312700 'lost', despite being early). Accounts for which we have no email address necessarily 'lose', though I sometimes try to work around that: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20repost%20invite%20offtopic&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... Oh, and when one of the previous submitters is clearly the article's author, we usually don't invite them to do the repost. That way two people can have some dopamine instead of just one. Sometimes I do this search recursively*: when in someone's past submission feed I run into an article so good I wonder who else has posted that, and which of them should 'win', so I look through all their histories for yet other articles that deserve reposting, hopefully without losing my place in the previous search. I can't handle a stack depth of more than 2 or 3 before my brain explodes and then I usually bail until next time. (* Depth-first or breadth-first? I've tried both ways to figure out which allows me to hold more state before capsizing, but I'm unsure. Both involve opening a lot of tabs, but in a different order, and both get unwieldy) This is a great way to meander through the archives (the catacombs?) and find obscure, interesting things. It would be worth writing software to support it one of these years. HN is in a rare sweet spot where it makes sense for YC to fund it simply to be interesting (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=yc%20business%20interests%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...), and obscure overlooked submissions are among the most interesting things on HN—so the archives should only grow in value and we can hopefully keep this going a long time. I got tired partway through last night—a recursive search with 27 inputs is too much. I can't remember why graypegg 'won'—I think I just threw an exception. That left a bunch of submitters who didn't get a repost invite, but I've added these now: Show HN: SkyFi – Command satellites on demand - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34468803 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34468803 The Curious Case of Hybrids in Watchmaking - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37368929 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37368929 (edit: now reposted) The New York Nobody Knows: Walking 6,000 miles in the city - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37119695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37119695 Home Assistant Door Chime via Sonos - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24740283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24740283 (the only other submission by that account! luckily it was good) The Hunt for the Giant Squid (2004) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37344191 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37344191 If anyone else wants to dig for worthy ones, I'd love to see the links! People frequently email us asking for second chances for their own material. That's...ok I guess, but it doesn't make my eyes light up. Random finds for no other reason than just-because* are the real treasures here. (* which is also why the current article is an instant classic)

dang 3y ago
I don't want to bloat the parent comment so I'm going to macroexpand parts of it here.
- dang 3y ago
  [1] For the curious, here they are. Most won't be visible unless you have 'showdead' turned on in your profile: The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37355607 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37355607 - Sept 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37355390 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37355390 - Sept 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37354254 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37354254 - Sept 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37351991 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37351991 - Sept 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37349283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37349283 - Sept 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37347478 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37347478 - Sept 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37344146 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37344146 - Aug 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37343169 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37343169 - Aug 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37341092 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37341092 - Aug 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37339808 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37339808 - Aug 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37337460 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37337460 - Aug 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37337274 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37337274 - Aug 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37335732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37335732 - Aug 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37332795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37332795 - Aug 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37332357 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37332357 - Aug 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37330688 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37330688 - Aug 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37329762 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37329762 - Aug 2023 (1 comment) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37323370 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37323370 - Aug 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37318295 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37318295 - Aug 2023 (4 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37317859 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37317859 - Aug 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge: Why is this bridge here? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37316842 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37316842 - Aug 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37313777 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37313777 - Aug 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37312700 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37312700 - Aug 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37309738 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37309738 - Aug 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37306042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37306042 - Aug 2023 (0 comments) Solving the Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37305110 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37305110 - Aug 2023 (0 comments) The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37301368 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37301368 - Aug 2023 (0 comments)