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Show HN: Hacker Smacker – Spot great (and terrible) HN commenters at a glance
Hacker Smacker adds friend/foe functionality to Hacker News. Three little orbs appear next to every commenter's name. Click to friend or foe a commenter and you'll more easily spot them on future threads. Makes it easy to scroll and spot the commenters you love to read (and hate to read).
Main website: https://hackersmacker.org https://hackersmacker.org
Chrome/Edge extension: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/hacker-smacker/lmcglejmapenkiabndkcnahfkmbohmhd https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/hacker-smacker/lmcg...
Safari extension: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hacker-smacker/id1480749725 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hacker-smacker/id1480749725
Firefox extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hacker-smacker/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hacker-smacke...
The interesting part is friend-of-a-friend: if you friend someone who also uses Hacker Smacker, you'll see their friends and foes highlighted too. This lets you quickly scan long comment threads and find the good stuff based on people you trust.
I built this to learn how FoaF relationships work with Redis sets, then brought the same technique to NewsBlur's social layer. The backend is CoffeeScript/Node.js/Redis, and the extension works on Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari.
Technically I wrote this back in 2011, but never built a proper auth system until now. So I've been using it for 15 years and it's been great. PG once saw it on my laptop (back when he was still moderating HN, in 2012) and remarked that it was neat.
Thanks to Mihai Parparita for help with the Chrome extension sandboxing and Greg Brockman for helping design the authentication system.
Source is on GitHub: https://github.com/samuelclay/hackersmacker https://github.com/samuelclay/hackersmacker
Directly inspired by Slashdot's friend/foe system, which I always wished HN had. Happy to answer questions!
- ImPostingOnHN 7mo agothis seems like it would increase tribalism and polarization
- eleventen 7mo agoIndeed. Why engage with ideas on the merits when you can color (literally) your own opinion of them before even reading. I guess if you just prefer wearing horse blinders?
- conesus 7mo agoThere's nothing about this that's horse blinders. It's literally a way to highlight riders that you both agree and disagree with. It actually makes it more likely that you're going to engage with the ones you disagree with, because now they have a red orb.
- card_zero 7mo agoMight as well just have one ambiguous orb, then. For a further improvement, let the extension set some orbs automatically at random, to encourage discoveries. Then upgrade this to all the orbs.
- titaniumtown 7mo agoInstalled! Lets see how this goes. I'm going through previous interactions I've had with people.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- ineedasername 7mo agoI’d encourage a change of labels away from “friend/foe”. It may seem minor but the subtle loaded nature of those paired terms encourages an adversarial stance rather than one of productive discourse. It’s not catchy so there’s probably better than this but, just as an example— “engage/ignore” could better signal to the user a neutral “do I want to bother with this person?”
- jacquesm 7mo agoThat's just Slashdot's influence. They did the same thing at some point.
- ineedasername 7mo agoAh, okay-- though that doesn't mean the author can't do better, if I'm not just being too nitpicky.
- jacquesm 7mo agoThe last thing HN needs is to become more like Slashdot.
- avadodin 7mo agoIn Soviet Russia, Slashdot becomes HN!
- grepfru_it 7mo agoCan you imagine a beowulf cluster of HNs?
- Lerc 7mo agoDot product of opinions? Using a fancier term for the same thing might be a significant axis though.
- 7mo ago
- scrumper 7mo agoI wonder what the second order effects of this on the HN karma system will be. It'll create a graph of karmic supernodes perhaps. Say I green-blob someone with a big reputation here, say jacquesm; no doubt lots of other people will do the same. The friends-of-friends icon is going to appear widely but it'll all be a single edge away from Jacques' node. Is that much of a signal? I dunno. That's 30 seconds of thought about it. It's a fun idea though so I'll try it. Version two: hide foes? Come to think of it, maybe the 'foe' aspect is the fun part... EDIT: it's like I summoned him.
- drcongo 7mo agoeverybody loves jacquesm
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- cousinbryce 7mo agoPagerank
- cpeterso 7mo ago> Version two: hide foes? That's a good idea. Here's my bad idea: the extension auto downvotes foes and auto upvotes friends. :)
- verdverm 7mo agoautomations get your account in trouble, it's against the rules
- grepfru_it 7mo agoIt already happens today
- bigbadfeline 7mo ago> I wonder what the second order effects of this on the HN karma system will be My first thought was this replacement of the HN karma system would make it a lot like FB and Xitter - a collection of disjoint echo chambers. My second thought was the same, then I stopped thinking about it.
- SV_BubbleTime 7mo agoI would suggest categorizing the quality of comments by its content and not its creator. Oh, nevermind, that’s a silly thought. Challenge my core belief? Well… I could rationally evaluate that, or, I could just use a tool to block it from my vision! Bubble thickener.
- netsharc 7mo agoThere are some trolls in here that seemingly evade getting banned despite their moronic comments... Also, many comments just take a wrong premise and attack you (e.g. that not wanting the slaughter of innocent people equals supporting terrorists who want to slaughter innocent people). They don't offer anything more than that, so that IMO taking the time to consider their mostly one-note opinion is just wasting said time.
- tomhow 7mo ago> There are some trolls in here that seemingly evade getting banned despite their moronic comments... As moderators we can only judge comments according to the guidelines, and can only ban accounts if they repeatedly breach them. You're always welcome to email us (hn@ycombinator.com) about an account that has been continually breaching the guidelines.
- XorNot 7mo agoI think that's the point though? Plenty of things not worth engaging with also aren't technically violating any rules: but wasting the brainpower on them also isn't worth it in a reliable way. That's where an ignore system is useful.
- tomhow 7mo agoSure, I was just addressing the apparent dissatisfaction that some accounts remain active despite posting “moronic” comments, and pointing out that we can't moderate HN according to our judgement of someone's comments being “moronic”, we can only apply the guidelines that everyone on HN implicitly agrees to follow. (To expand on that: “moronic” will mean different things to different people depending on their worldview; whereas the guidelines and our application of them need to be defensible, regardless of the position.) We hope that people will take the opportunity that HN offers, to be exposed to different points of view, if only because it helps you to become more knowledgeable and confident about your own positions. We understand not everyone is here for that!
- omoikane 7mo agoRelated, there is already an extension that allows selected users to be highlighted, but without the shared server data for computing friend-of-a-friend relationships: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17717598 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17717598
- slopinthebag 7mo ago[flagged]
- ZpJuUuNaQ5 7mo agoInteresting. I'd love to have a browser extension that automatically blocks all comment sections on every site I visit, so I wouldn't feel the need to interact with anyone online.
- efilife 7mo ago14 days ago exactly this was submitted to HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46991435 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46991435 https://rickyromero.com/shutup/ https://rickyromero.com/shutup/
- alt187 7mo agoAs opposed to OP's extension, I would heartily recommend this one.
- nickthegreek 7mo ago14 days ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46991435 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46991435
- arjie 7mo agoLol, I had a self-extension for a short while like that https://github.com/roshan/hnncnn/blob/master/hnncnn.js https://github.com/roshan/hnncnn/blob/master/hnncnn.js But now I prefer blocking and favouriting people https://overmod.org/ https://overmod.org/ There are good commenters here. Just overshadowed by lots of garbage.
- logicprog 7mo agoHmm, I installed this in Waterfox for Android, and I don't appear to be able to tap on the bubbles next to people's usernames
- conesus 7mo agoI made some changes and the extension now recognizes if you can't hover and will allow you to tap to show the orbs before selecting one. It now works on mobile browsers with extensions.
- elcapitan 7mo agoFinally someone brings this place the explicit toxicity it had been missing all those years. /s
- croisillon 7mo agoIf you're on HN and you look in the comments and can't tell who the toxic one is, it's you.
- Aeglaecia 7mo agoI believe the argument is that introducing personal aspects like this friend foe business inherently serves to increase argumentative bias and reduce quality of discussion. personally this seems like a slop project either way , so regardless as to how beneficial it could be, I'm still going to behave toxically towards it - if you really love or hate someone so much , you would have memorized their name already !
- croisillon 7mo agoyeah it's another game entirely, first there are 2 camps and then more and more... but that has nothing to do with a discussion anymore
- Retr0id 7mo agoIt'd be interesting to run pagerank over the trust graph
- jonathanstrange 7mo agoThat's weird, I'm reading HN every day and never felt a need for something like that. In my experience, the quality of comments is very high and really bad ones tend to be downvoted or flagged fast. Could this be a time zone issue such that people in certain time zones are less fortunate than others?
- alt187 7mo ago"Less fortunate" is a generous wording and framing.
- jmye 7mo agoI think it frequently depends on the thread you're reading and your expertise in that area? There are a few things I'm intermediate to expert in - frequently the quality of comments in those threads is quite poor, but the noise & upvote-y memes look like signal in those areas, so it may not look as bad from the outside. On the other hand, there are a number of things I'm not very informed about, and I do frequently find a few posters in those threads who seem to have very insightful things to say, but I'm not sure if they actually are (sometimes you can tell from replies) or if it's just because I'm a neophyte. Which all goes to say I don't know if this system would really help, or would just turn into bad opinions getting even more support because the crowd-sourcing is coming from others who don't have the necessary expertise to evaluate what's worth listening to.
- jonathanstrange 7mo agoI don't see how it could work, for the reason you lay out. It's one of those tools that wouldn't be needed if it worked and can't work if it's needed.
- Noumenon72 7mo agoThe Most Intolerant Wins[1]: different groups in society are more likely to shun and organize against others (usually those who live in Modia, not Mundia[2]). So if you don't need this feature, then others want it to use against you. 1. https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15 https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict... 2. https://brianoflondon.me/mundia-and-modia/index.html https://brianoflondon.me/mundia-and-modia/index.html
- goodpoint 7mo agowhat about privacy?
- ddtaylor 7mo agoI created and shared Ethos which is a sentiment and discourse analysis thing for HN and it's been plugging away. You're welcome to use its API if you want. Submit a PR for the CORS to be changed as needed. Original post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46993774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46993774
- waltbosz 7mo agohttps://github.com/samuelclay/hackersmacker/blob/main/web/images/icon-peppers.png https://github.com/samuelclay/hackersmacker/blob/main/web/im... How old is that icon set? I swear I used that same peppers icon for a Windows app that I published around 2002.
- istillcantcode 7mo agoI have a text file of commentors I normally disagree with and check in on them from time to time (about weekly). Its good fun and often I find there will be topics I do agree with them on. Reading the same opinions all the time is no fun.
- Reubachi 7mo agoA question, per your final comment on being available to answer questions: What do you feel is the benefit to the community for this that isn't offered by native blocking/existing extensions? I ask not out of malice, I ask because 2 reasons: 1. I imagine spending time on this/it's working well required you to see the value/benefit to it. 2. We must assume all hacker news commenting follows the rules, IE; good faith comment with relevant experience when required. This seems like a way to promote getting around that.
- chatmasta 7mo ago> that isn't offered by native blocking/existing extensions There is no “native blocking” on HN. You cannot block a user or hide their comments and submissions in perpetuity. You can only hide on a per-story basis.
- conesus 7mo agoThe reason I have this extension is because I don't want to hide those comments. I want to be able to read them when I quickly scroll a thread. Oftentimes, I'm reading so many Hacker News threads that I want to be able to pull out the commenters that I like. I even like reading the comments from commenters that I dislike in the hopes that I see if I still disagree with them. I'm not hiding anybody. I'm just making it more apparent when they're commenting
- cousinbryce 7mo agoWay down on my list of projects to vibe code is tags for HN users. I.e `Elon Stan` , `smart about aeronautics` , `grumpy` , `reasonable` etc etc. I like reading different opinion but if I formed an opinion about a user id like to record that without using my brain
- Noumenon72 7mo agoI wish Twitter had this. It's always frustrating to read someone I've been following for a long time saying some bit of lore or unusual position that would change the whole way I think about them, except I know I won't be able to remember to associate it with their username next time I see them.
- insin 7mo agoMy HN extension [1] does this. So many "but humans!" user notes and an unfortunate number for LLM psychosis / mania. [1] https://soitis.dev/comments-owl-for-hacker-news https://soitis.dev/comments-owl-for-hacker-news
- brodouevencode 7mo ago502 Bad Gateway
- sentrysapper 7mo agoSame here. Thought it was my firewall at first. Thanks for confirming.
- TheJuli 7mo agoHN's hug of death
- varjag 7mo agoHN smacked
- duncangh 7mo agohacker smacker smacked down
- conesus 7mo agoOh man, I had no idea this got reposted and I just discovered now, 8 hours later. Anyway, I kicked the server and its back up.
- brodouevencode 7mo agoIs there an HN version of slash-dotted?
- conesus 7mo agoIt wasn't actually down from overuse, the node.js server hit an unhandled error and fell over. And because this is the first time I was seeing real usage, I didn't have a supervisor in place to restart it automatically. That's handled now, of course.
- zzo38computer 7mo agoI would prefer to do the opposite, where everything is displayed in chronological order (with an option to display by threads or not; even if not you can still find what each one is a reply to) regardless of voting and regardless of who wrote them.
- magicalhippo 7mo agoI've been wishing for a News (NNTP) portal for HN. Would solve that as well as making it easier to follow larger threads by allowing you to track read/unread. Mostly because I really miss newsgroups though.
- zzo38computer 7mo agoI also thought of that too. It would allow what I mentioned and what you mentioned. If you want to hide messages from specific users (or other criteria), then that would also be possible.
- sickofparadox 7mo agoAnother step towards the Redditification of hackernews. This is the exact opposite kind of functionality pages like HN need, we need ways to get people to engage with others' ideas more substantively rather than literally put someone on the "bad guy I won't talk to list".
- aendruk 7mo agoI just keep a custom stylesheet that annotates usernames with various emoji. Most of the time I update it as I read, but occasionally I’ll peruse the hidden comments to note e.g. uncharitable participation and revealed bigotry.
- thinkingemote 7mo agoI used https://github.com/ToneyAlexander/HackerTagger https://github.com/ToneyAlexander/HackerTagger for a bit almost a decade ago. Data locally stored, good but didn't transfer across machines, not so great. It had a little text label next to names so you could manually add whatever you want. Recently I've thought about this extension and using it to tag the LLM users, or the humans who tend to pop up to fan the flames or who regularly post thought terminating comments - little tags to remind me to ignore the bots and trolls.
- pavel_lishin 7mo agoFunny; I wrote a greasemonkey script to be able to highlight certain commenters here, but didn't even once consider adding a "networked" element to it.
- sebmellen 7mo agoOh no… hugged to death!
- sadeshmukh 7mo agoHow would two neutral labels sound? There's something somewhat confrontational about "friend/foe" and those dynamics seem to worsen discussion. At the least, it should auto hide "foes", since predisposing people to be against a comment before reading it isn't ideal. Neutral labels, like "apple/orange", with slight connotations could be interesting. Of course, this kills networks, but I'd question if that's even a good idea in the first place.
- nadis 7mo agoGetting a 502 bad gateway error when I try to access the main website as an FYI.
- rfrey 7mo agoA lot of discussion on the labels. I agree friend/foe is counter to what most of us would like HN to be about. How about align/diverge or similar, suggesting whether a commenters position usually reinforces or challenges your viewpoint?
- jamiepond 7mo agoGetting a 502!
- enmerk4r 7mo agoIt sounds great, except I am getting 502 Bad Gateway when following the URL. I think the site went down.
- tamimio 7mo agoWhat’s the purpose? More echo chambers and circle jerking parties?! Why some people are so inclined to label others? I might dislike someone’s comment on something or disagree with their opinion about it, but absolutely love their comments on another topic. And if that is an “overall” score for a person’s comments, then who are you to hijack my personality and tell me this person is good or not to engage with? Unless it’s just a joke, the concept is stupid.
- conesus 7mo agoI have not found that to be the case. I have over 150 commenters on my Hacker Smacker foe list and I have only found once or twice that somebody who goes into the red bucket deserves to go into the green bucket. Now the way I use the friend/foe system of labeling may be different than others, and it's a personal decision for how you choose to label commenters. But the way I do it, if somebody has an opinion that puts them on my red list, that's great to know, because when I see them comment elsewhere I now have the context for why I feel the way I do about them.
- yowayb 7mo agoI wish there was a way for HN to sponsor scale up so that sites have more availability for the HN hug of death
- conesus 7mo agoThanks to the HN moderators for re-posting this after I posted this a few days ago. I only notice now that it's on the front page. Happy to answer any questions. Let me tell you, I've really enjoyed having those writers that I like highlighted on this comment thread because it makes it very easy to scan it. I think it's important to remember that this is not about hiding writers you disagree with. It's simply about making it so that you can read more Hacker News threads and quickly scanning the comments, teasing out those writers that you agree with. It's also fun to read the writers you disagree with, if anything, to reinforce your opinion of them.
- card_zero 7mo agoIs that what it's about? > identify quality authors and filter out obnoxious commenters > not about hiding writers you disagree with > It's also fun to read the writers you disagree with [But] > to reinforce your opinion of them. [Did you misspeak here?] > this reduces the time I spent on Hacker News > find the good stuff based on people you trust This is very confused. * Do we want to avoid ideas that we disagree with? * Do we want to avoid authors we've labelled as annoying? (This is about meta-level bad ideas, about how to interact.) * Do we want to avoid meta-level ideas that we disagree with? * What if your friends disagree about who their friends and enemies are? * What it they don't disagree, isn't that creepy? Echo chamber much? * Is it right to pre-empt your own interest by labelling material before reading it? I don't know! Seems to me that rational pre-filtering should be along subtle, personal, ever-changing lines, and you should constantly be deciding on the spot based on complex information including your current mood and dyspepsia. How should interest work? You may start reading a thing and decide "this is not for me" (or "this is a troll or a bot"). Or with a tool like this one you may carry out the same process faster, and more crudely, using less information and less serendipity. So you're encouraging people to be in a rush and make more superficial choices instead of mining for the gold. On the other hand, maybe they are in a rush and need to be like that.
- conesus 7mo agoYou don't avoid anything, this simply helps highlight commenters in a long thread.
- Retr0id 7mo agoI've been testing it out for a bit, unfortunately the layout shift when all the icons load in is very distracting.
- conesus 7mo agoThe layout doesn't shift down. It only moves the meta information to the right of the user name over a little bit.
- Retr0id 7mo agoRight, that's layout shift. The things to the right are clickable and I'm often in the middle of trying to click them when it shifts. It might be possible to "reserve" the space with CSS earlier in the page load?
- numbers 7mo agoI'm color blind, and those colors look very similar to me. I could not tell if it was green or red or something else. Please use something like blue and red.
- conesus 7mo agoThere's na open issue to address this exact need. I haven't figured out a good compromise yet, but an option to include symbols would be good. https://github.com/samuelclay/hackersmacker/issues/3 https://github.com/samuelclay/hackersmacker/issues/3
- MinimalAction 7mo agoPerhaps you'd like if the "green" blob for friend also included a "+" symbol and "red" one a "-"?
- indigodaddy 7mo agoHacker got the smackdown
- vivzkestrel 7mo ago- can we get an extension that blocks all of ragebait, racist remarks, hostile comments on twitter - like it is literally trained on some data set to identify posts that are trying to bait people into commenting on them and simply hide such posts. - the world would be a far better place if we had such an extension
- jimnotgym 7mo agoI'm afraid you just have to delete Twitter. The algorithm, is designed to push rage bait to the top.
- saagarjha 7mo agoI don’t think this should be implemented but I would be really curious to know who the most disliked commenter on the site is
- ffsickempire 7mo ago[dead]
- spondyl 7mo agoPutting aside questions of the second order effects this might have, I do like how it has that classic Newsblur styling.
- conesus 7mo agoHah, at least I'm consistent.
- swaminarayan 7mo agoNice, so it shows green/white/red badge above commentors. I would suggest HN team to integrate this feature. It looks really cool.
- Antibabelic 7mo agoHN was never the place to add trendy, unnecessary "features" and I doubt there would be a point in adding this one, considering how it seemingly goes against the entire ethos of the community: engaging with the substance of what the people are saying.
- jimnotgym 7mo agoI'm interested in peoples thoughts about this. There are people in here that I generally respect, but on certain subjects I have seen comments that are not helpful. If I saw one of them first I might click 'foe' and then ignore them in the future. And this seems normal. I have a friend in real life who I like talking to, we share some views, and vehemently disagree on other subjects. He likes to bring them up and I tend to divert the discussion because I don't want to lose them as a friend
- p0w3n3d 7mo agoBut marking someone as foe based on their first comment might be very misleading, not to speak of good practice of discussion despite of agreement or disagreement. I'm coming to the stage of my life that I try (sometimes hardly) to speak with people with which I disagree. It's my crusade against cancel culture. People are more than one dimensional and even if we disagree on one two dimensions we might agree on others, or just play D&D together sometime
- jimnotgym 7mo agoMy comment was not clear enough, on review. I am in full agreement with you
- TonyStr 7mo agoThis is my concern as well. IMO, one of the great aspects of HN is the semi-anonymity (no profile pics, names are just strings that you probably don't memorize unless you see the same name often, no visible upvotes, etc.). This makes us take the comments and submissions at face value, evaluating the content rather than relying on past experiences with the author, or other people's evaluation of it (upvotes). I feel that any system which injects opinions into comments/submissions before you read and process it, work against the principles of Hacker News. A system like this might be great for a community full of trolls, but another one of Hacker News' strengths is it's heavy moderation. I see maybe <5% troll/bad-taste comments, and most of those are already flagged and [dead].
- casey2 7mo ago
- p0w3n3d 7mo ago1. Create an app (possibly HN related) 2. Deploy it on cloud 3. Post it on HN 4. Sell your house to pay cloud debts (I mean the page is down already)
- erikbye 7mo agoComments from your "preferred commenter" are like songs from your favorite band, sometimes they disappoint you.
- rambambram 7mo agoYeah, polarizing! /s I have a better idea. Why not distinguish quality from non-quality by reading a series of characters and then deciding for yourself if you like the subject and tone of voice? People themselves can choose how many characters they use. Let's call these characters the alphabet.
- nextlevelwizard 7mo agoAs kid who grew up on anonymous boards, I never even read user names. Accounts are ephemeral and worthless. Ideas are only things that matter.
- dewey 7mo ago> Accounts are ephemeral and worthless. I'd state the exact opposite, especially in times where fake news, bot farms and AI generated content are everywhere it matters if something comes from a trusted source or not.
- nextlevelwizard 7mo agoMaybe again because I don’t care about a source I have always operated in a way that assumes other’s aren’t telling the truth. I don’t care about how many up or down votes some comment or piece of content has. I also have never blindly trusted videos or pictures. All sources can be corrupted and as such shouldn’t be trusted without verification. Which is why I still don’t value accounts nor read user names. Even with people I personally know I have always used the phrase: “trust, but verify”
- Minor49er 7mo agoI better start leaving higher quality comments on here so I can increase the social value of my account and sell it
- INTPenis 7mo agoEveryone is going to get this extension just to see how it classifies their own comments. This is like the virtual equivalent of scratching your ass and sniffing the finger.
- Tepix 7mo agoNeat project, but please increase the contrast between the text and the background on the page in the appendix.
- dewey 7mo agoThanks for actually providing a Safari extension, this is rare!
- conesus 7mo agoThat was the toughest lift of all! Firefox and Chrome extensions were easy, just had to go through a quick review. Apple rejected the safari extension 4-5 times and wanted me to make changes to the metadata and even questioned the extension itself. Took a lot of back and forth to get the safari extension approved.
- dewey 7mo agoYea, I'm not blaming anyone for not providing one (Especially as you have to pay the developer fee if you don't already have an account for other reasons) so it was a pleasant surprise! While I have our attention: Is there any plans on making the hacker smacking profile not public?
- nottorp 7mo agoHah, I was just going to do a post of thanks for providing a Firefox extension and not sticking to Chrome only! Sadly I don't think I'm going to use it. I'm the kind that prefers to read only the comments and not the names attached to them.
- sodimel 7mo agoThat's a nice project! I searched a few comments I agreed using the "Ask HN: What are some iconic comments on HN?" thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40719253 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40719253) and I'm pleased to see some green comments here and there :) I also made 2 QoL [fire|grease]monkey extensions for hn: - display favicons of sites next to links: https://gist.github.com/corentinbettiol/6d9dc3a032c17ebcd94dcbed27647b0b https://gist.github.com/corentinbettiol/6d9dc3a032c17ebcd94d... - display karma next to usernames: https://gist.github.com/corentinbettiol/289503b4033a788df91fbc2bc5a3f742 https://gist.github.com/corentinbettiol/289503b4033a788df91f...
- apwheele 7mo agoThis is cool, but for folks concerned about privacy, even if the cached layer is anonymized, in the aggregate I bet you can likely figure out who a person is. I imagine just looking at the first degree connections of the votes would be a pretty strong signal.
- nottorp 7mo agoHey, how about an extension that will hide user names completely when browsing HN comments? Edit: wait, just a custom CSS will do it. How about an option in the HN settings to hide user names then?
- benj111 7mo agoIs the friend of friend limited to one deep? What happens if friends conflict? Personally I like hn because there is karma, but it's an afterthought. Although I'll it a try. I suspect the problems of reputation and the internet are unsolvable, that doesn't mean we can't try and improve it.
- nomel 7mo agoAll the possible states are up at the top, right under the title (I missed it too!). It'll be a pill that's half friend half foe, just like on Slashdot.
- mediumsmart 7mo agoFriends come and go, foes accumulate.
- thesnide 7mo agoI'm actually loving HN because it hasn't such a system. While it looks like a very good idea at first, it will evolve in echo chambers. Which are the bane of current society, as noone listen to challenging opinions anymore. So, very much like the "ban of VPN" for minors, it is a seemingly good idea that will backfire in horrible ways.
- solaire_oa 7mo agoI'm late to the party, but this seems like the answer to the slop-pocalyspe!
- SauntSolaire 7mo agoJust wanted to say thanks for this, I was literally looking for something like this a couple weeks ago. Looking forward to more people using it to see how useful the friend-of-a-friend feature turns out to be.