14 ms·
Hacker News Parody Thread
- kyro 14y agoI wish Stripe would come to Denmark.
- mturmon 14y agoHey, nice to see another Dane on HN. Care to meet up for a beer sometime? I'm based in Malmo. The scene here isn't as big as in the Valley, but I look at that as an advantage, because it's easier to get traction locally and then expand.
- nirvanatikku 14y agoA good laugh -- it's all in the details; and surprisingly plausible
- darxius 14y agoThe point of the article was to focus on the predictability of the HN user base as a whole, not that it would be a plausible outcome. You obviously misinterpreted the author's intentions and you missed: * The fact that it wasn't made to make you laugh * Why do we laugh, what makes things funny? * What is laughter, really? (tongue in cheek, of course)
- amalakar 14y agoIf you want to know more about laughter here is the wikipedia article[1]. Also HowStuffWorks explains how laughter works[2]. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laughter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laughter [2]: http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/laughter.htm http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/laughter.htm
- mnicole 14y agoUgh, disgusting; take your laugh privilege back to Reddit.
- joshaidan 14y agoI'm tempting to make a version of this that will take a URL and automatically generate comments that follow this model.
- leeoniya 14y ago"Rats, top comments will be impossible to beat. I can probably piggy-back off a top comment, though, those comment threads aren't long yet..." actually, this text in the reply box highlights a huge problem with threaded (and voted) discussions in general: there is little incentive to reply to any already-huge thread, even with valuable content. i've been thinking of how to solve this issue for the past week and have some ideas, working on a prototype.
- DannyBee 14y agoI'm curious what you came up with. I used to work on Google Moderator, which was a project created to solve this problem for non-threaded discussion (which is even worse), and we had some neat solutions. We displayed comments to users to be voted on, and ended up using a variant of wilson confidence intervals not just to rank, but to figure out which comments we should display to users to be voted on.
- leeoniya 14y agowhere i ended up was, it cannot be solved within a single view. there needs to be some form of split side-by-side view for the discussion, each prioritizing replies differently - by freshness, votes, weight or other metrics. another idea was to create a heat-map based on reply velocity to give a third dimension to the whole thing. replies need "simmer" time at the top to aggregate enough votes. if there is one huge reply thread that dominates, few will scroll through pages looking for new content. just the ability to fold comments on HN would help a lot already.
- IgorPartola 14y agoWhy not push really long threads to the bottom? People will find the long discussions by scrolling to them. Indeed, they will know that they are there, just like now we know that the long discussions are at the top. The effect though is that now readers have to get past other discussions first. Basically, the order should be short-good, long-good, all-crap. Also, while this may be a problem here, HN still has the best comment sorting system I've seen (but not measured). Comments have time to stay at the top and simmer down and if they are good they gain enough momentum. The only time this seems to be come a problem is when you get to a really popular thread after hours/days of discussion. Then you cannot get a word in edgewise. An alternative solution could be that for every comment you make, you give up a bit of karma and you gain it back through comment upvotes (but not article postings). That way people will watch what they say. This may give some positive feedback to posters that harvest huge amounts of karma, but it will also prevent bad comments. On top of that, you could make your post stick up top longer by paying a blood price: for every 50 points of karma you get another minute guaranteed at the top of your discussion thread, or some such. Or just free market FTW: the person that bids the highest amount wins the top spot for that many minutes.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- hkmurakami 14y agoI'm always saddened when the "guru3" type post is found in the middle of the pack.
- chimeracoder 14y agoWhat do you mean? tokenadult is ALWAYS at the top! ;)
- Xcelerate 14y agoI disagree with the author. This isn't exactly a parody thread. A parody is "an imitative work created to mock, comment on or trivialise an original work" [1]. For one thing, I would hardly call Hacker News comments "original work", and a simple creation like this hardly captures the full scope and breadth of comments on here. Furthermore, I'm not really sure why this belongs on HN, because it's not very technical, and frankly, not very intellectually stimulating. People on here don't appreciate humor, so those who upvoted this should have known better. I've flagged the article. Also, I've never even heard of Brad Conte. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parody http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parody
- EGreg 14y agoI would like to piggyback off the original comment, and disagree. >People on here don't appreciate humor How could you possibly come to such a conclusion? I appreciate humor, and I am sure others do as well.
- baby 14y agoNo, OP is correct. * You omitted that HN is also a place to talk meta. * You misunderstand that a parody is not supposed to capture the full scope of something. * It was funny to read, that's all that matters.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- jacobwg 14y agoNice - thanks for sharing! There's surprising amount of hidden jokes in there too - feel free to read the OP's blog post [1] for many of the details (assuming you like spoilers)! [1] http://bradconte.com/hacker-news-parody-thread.html http://bradconte.com/hacker-news-parody-thread.html
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- baak 14y ago"Who's the OP" was pretty funny. Honestly, the hacker-hero worship on HN gets a little ridiculous sometimes.
- mdanger 14y agoCheck where the reply links point to for some extra fun.
- joshrotenberg 14y agoI read the first few responses but when I finally searched for "haskell" and nothing came up I got bored and moved on.
- 3rd3 14y agoNice article.
- benatkin 14y agoI see what you did there.
- Samuel_Michon 14y agoTIL HN has a thread where redditors are safe from downvotes.
- jezi22 14y agoi am think about posting this!
- dave1010uk 14y ago+1
- why-el 14y agoThis will probably be the only "Nice article" comment to end up vote positive.
- pettazz 14y agoI have stuff to say about JIT.
- daeken 14y agoThat statement truly sums up 99% of compiler discussions on the web.
- Apocryphon 14y agoAs a Node guy, does this really matter for 95% of the world?
- vectorpush 14y agoThe usernames made me chuckle, my favorite is "DefaultSearchIsWikipedia". Also, you forgot at least one archetype: the enthusiastic rant from an oblivious hell-banned poster.
- zalzane 14y agoI thought the concept behind hellbanned posters was that nobody else could see their posts?
- badgar 14y agoAs in every HN thread where hellbans are mentioned, someone has to be the person who has to explain that you can see hellbanned posts by enabling showdead in your preferences. I guess that's me this time.
- abstractbill 14y agoAlso, you forgot at least one archetype: the enthusiastic rant from an oblivious hell-banned poster. There should also be a subthread complaining to the moderators about the title change.
- orangethirty 14y agovectorpush - you have been banned. No one can see your comment. ;)
- Samuel_Michon 14y agoYou can't reply directly to comments of hellbanned users. Should've replied to OP.
- scoot 14y agoSamuel_Michon, I can't reply to your comment directly, but just to let you know, you're hell-banned, and no-one can read your comment.
- trotsky 14y ago
- y0ghur7_xxx 14y agoI find it a bit creepy that I got all the jokes.
- mindcrime 14y agoI wish we had more of this kind of content on HN.
- simonsarris 14y agoGood god this was funny, right down to the usernames. But now its time to be very HN about it. > Rats, top comments will be impossible to beat. Actually I think I have a solution to this, though its just guesswork. I'm not particularly well known here (or anywhere), but either people actually like the words I say, or I simply have yet to make a complete ass out of myself. (I think one of these is more plausible, but who is to say.) My average karma on HN is 20.59, which seems to be a lot. Specifically, on the Leaderboard[1] that puts me in fourth place among the HN big names for average karma (though I have nowhere near the total karma to appear there). I've noticed that when I reply to a post, even if there's already 30 comments, my post usually ends up at the top. And it stays there, even if no one replies, and even if I don't get many or any upvotes for it, for a few hours sometimes. Alas I don't know for certain, but my guess is that if you have a high average karma then your posts are automatically weighted higher, so you can inject your opinion into almost any topic at any time. This affords me the luxury of being a contradictory whine even if I come late to the party! Can anyone confirm or deny my suspicion here? [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders
- Xcelerate 14y ago> Actually I think I have a solution to this, though its just guesswork. Darn you ;)
- chimeracoder 14y ago> Alas I don't know for certain, but my guess is that if you have a high average karma then your posts are automatically weighted higher, so you can inject your opinion into almost any topic at any time. This affords me the luxury of being a contradictory whine even if I come late to the party! One thing I dislike about the 'average karma' is that it discourages engaging in an extended discussion. For example, if you reply to this post, you may get a number of upvotes, but probably not as many as your original post. This creates an incentive just to ignore replies (when possible) so as not to bring down your average comment score.
- johnernaut 14y agoIt matters in high performance Python.
- swanson 14y agoBlack text on a grey background? How can anyone expect to read this? We don't all have retina displays and use OSX. http://contrastrebellion.com/ http://contrastrebellion.com/
- ferongr 14y agoThe blog's text looks fine for me on a 95DPI monitor using Firefox on Windows 7. It looks quite bad on a recent Chromium build but that's to be expected for Webfonts rendered in Chrom* running on Windows.
- jiggy2011 14y agoI have a Macbook 15-inch 2.7GHz with Retina display, it baffles me that it is 2013 and there are still people who don't have one yet. I mainly do my programming by SSHing to it and using Vim on my ipad.
- alttab 14y ago> I mainly do my programming by SSHing to it and using Vim on my ipad. I've both actually done this, and told people about it on HN. I'm ashamed.
- jiggy2011 14y agowant my dotfiles? I added a cool hack that lets you do hjkl by rubbing your penis on the ipad screen. You have to map it with your DNA though.
- ot 14y agoRelevant XKCD: http://xkcd.com/386/ http://xkcd.com/386/
- sea6ear 14y agoPossible meme starter? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbhrz1-4hN4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbhrz1-4hN4
- michielvoo 14y agoHands up if you felt the need to actually reply to some of the comments.
- Samuel_Michon 14y agoI've upvoted more than 10 comments on that thread, fully knowing nothing will happen.
- ComputerGuru 14y agoAt the risk of a) being wrong and b) breaking the 4th wall by not conforming to said stereotype, looks like both my username and my tendency to ramble just within the limits of OT have been parodied there.... Oh well, if that's actually the case, then I'm honored :) EDIT: btw, hate my username and emailed PG to get it changed; he said it's not currently possible in the code. Wouldn't want him poking around the DB for me! Made my username back when HN first started as an anonymous account, but kept using it thereafter... CamelCase usernames suck!
- epochwolf 14y agoYeah. My freenode account is EpochWolf and it mocks me every time I log in. :(
- jjcm 14y agoI think a parody of something is one of the best ways to draw insight, and in my opinion I'm kinda happy that this is what the parody of HN is: links to wikipedia/cited sources, debates about whether or not an article was correct, nitpicks and views from different positions/experiences, and the off hand XKCD comic. Probably much more civil than a parody of a slashdot/reddit/4chan post would be.
- pekk 14y agoLet's not be too self-congratulatory. Hacker News today is in many ways like reddit of a few years ago, and Slashdot of many years ago. And this is a somewhat bowdlerized parody anyway.
- jjcm 14y agoI think all social news networks will degrade over time, but it's still good to have these health checks every once in a while to see what the state of it currently is. It lets us know when we need to move on.
- TheShadowFog 14y ago4chan is civil.
- d0mine 14y agoYour comment would be might better without the last sentence. The good content can stand on its own. No need to look down on other sites to look good by comparision.
- minimaxir 14y agoI have a related question: what is HN's stance on parody? I've seen many parodies posted to HN that have been flagged to hell because some don't notice that it's a parody. (excellent example: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5126318 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5126318) I also have my own parodies that I've stopped posting because they've met the same fate.
- TallboyOne 14y agoI love what happens when you search. Lol.
- TallboyOne 14y agoI also like how the user "redditor" is highlighted in subtle green.
- madsushi 14y agoThe URLs for the menu links at the top were spot-on.
- Cushman 14y agoThe parody is funny. The comments here are hilarious. I fear I will never again be able to tell if an HN commenter is just jerking my chain, no matter how sincere they seem.
- B-Con 14y agoI agree. I love the response that I got. :-)
- andyjenn 14y agoDefine funny
- WA 14y agoCare to elaborate?
- Cushman 14y agoI have some interesting thoughts about the Hacker News meta.
- kmfrk 14y agoPoe's Law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poes_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poes_law /s ... or is it?
- minopret 14y agoCole's law. (is mostly shredded cabbage)
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- pixelcort 14y agoForgot an "Edit: Why am I being downvoted?" comment.
- awestley 14y agoI disagree with the author. I know he's incredibly successful and right about pretty much everything he's ever said, but I've had some experience in this area and just finished reading through some of the archives and I think his focus is wrong. I'm going to ignore the technical issue and talk about the bigger picture and higher level things than what was said in the blog post. If the OP thinks that the process is most important, it's really about end results. But if he thinks it should be about the end results then he's an idiot for not thinking about the process. I'll weasel in a reference the startup I co-founded even though it's not directly relevant.
- ognyankulev 14y agoI've finally seen how downvotability looks like in HN UI :-)
- IgorPartola 14y agoAs a Python guy, does this really matter for 95% of the world?
- raganwald 14y agoIs the a kick starter for HN parodies as hardware? I would sponsor that.
- wam 14y agoThis has nothing to do with parodies or hacker news threads. What's the point?
- munchor 14y agoIs it possible to downvote people? Why can't I do that?
- michael_michael 14y agoYou need more karma. There's a karma threshold below which you can't downvote. I haven't reached it either. Soon, though. And when I do. Oh...
- joshAg 14y agoyou need ~500 karma to downvote comments.
- lancefisher 14y agoI just learned from the post you need 500 karma. I'm only 2 away!
- B-Con 14y agoCouldn't resist. Happy 500. :-)
- lancefisher 14y agoHa ha! Thanks! I have exactly 500 now. Maybe I should change my handle to icandownvote. Edit: Maybe it takes more than 500, or some time. I don't have down arrows yet.
- B-Con 14y agoIt got mine relatively recently. I remember it took about 15 minutes after I reached 500. Either the system takes a little while to recognize the change, or I reached 501 in that time. Note that you can't vote on comments over 24 hours old or replies to yourself, so don't use those to check your ability.
- lancefisher 14y ago
- sampsonjs 14y agoThis also needs "our slashdot clone of super geniuses is being ruined by comments such as this" pearl clutching from the admin.
- RivieraKid 14y agoHonestly, I find the culture of "top comment contradicts the OP" a bit weird and unauthentic in a sense.
- mikeevans 14y agoEven nailed the search, if you didn't catch that.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- DeepAndDark 14y ago"I hate to be the person to point out": The brain-washers offer to help explaining that only when you realize where you have gone wrong can you end the self-loathing you are now experiencing.
- d0mine 14y agoAs Russian poet said to describe his portrait: Себя как в зеркале я вижу, Но это зеркало мне льстит. A. Pushkin Translation: I see myself as in a mirror But this mirror flatters me.
- B-Con 14y agoOP here: Thanks for the positive response, HN. The comments here are hilarious. Way to embrace the spirit. :-) Just in case it wasn't noticed by many, note that all the links on the page are mini-jokes as well. Replies, navigation, everything.
- kickingvegas 14y agoMissing a comment on how much the commenter hates Unity.
- hackinghabits 14y agoSomeone just get me off from a -1 karma!
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- azinman2 14y agoI don't get it and therefore it's bad.
- MaysonL 14y agoThe funniest thing about this parody (to me, at least) was that so many of the made up names were actual HN usernames...
- JoshTriplett 14y agoI love the snarky comments in the reply URLs, too; I missed them on the first pass.
- donohoe 14y agoLinks are broken. Can't reply on any threads. DAY RUINED
- rapind 14y agoI know this is off-topic, but does anyone know how he put this together?
- saraid216 14y agoProbably vim.
- B-Con 14y agoJust in case you're serious: I wrote the replies out in a simple indentation format. Then when I had convinced myself I had some legitimate humor material I saved an HN page, looked at the internal layout structure (and lost a few IQ points in the process), and found an easy way to copy blocks of markup to create comments. Then I did a ton of link replacing and modifying for each comment, to give them unique IDs for voting, make username URLs match up, etc. (Note the ID numbers are all prime.) If you view the source, it's obvious how it's cobbled together. Interestingly, writing the first 90% of the comment content only took about 10% of the total time. Refining it and adding the rest took the other 90%.
- rapind 14y agoSeems like a typical idea v.s. execution case. I found it funny. Thanks for taking the time.
- bobwise 14y agoGot distracted halfway through the thread, came back 10 minutes later, and read another 3 comments before I remembered it was a parody.
- logn 14y agoI have no idea whether to take any comments here as serious or continuing the parody :)
- skeletonjelly 14y agopg is not top comment.
- ndesaulniers 14y agoDid you actually read the article?
- hcarvalhoalves 14y agoGolden that this thread reflects the OP exactly.
- lignuist 14y agoWhy is this on HN?
- ChuckMcM 14y agoI like how this article has 460 upvotes, is only 5 hrs old, and isn't in the top spot :-) That said it reminds me of the 'every oscar winning movie' video on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbhrz1-4hN4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbhrz1-4hN4
- rayiner 14y agoThe only funny part was the Randell Munroe cameo.
- deeqkah 14y agoThe first thing i did when i opened your link knowing it was a parody was to check how many responses to the article there were. And there were too many. Way too many. Comments on Hacker News more often than not go into the meta almost immediately, and constantly, so there's usually one comment with well over half of the op's responses nested under it. I use a userscript for HN for this exact reason. It's upsetting, to be honest.
- duck 14y agoThe one thing this is missing is someone using or accusing someone of a straw man: http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=straw&start=0 http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=straw&s...
- shokwave 14y agoThe search function joke got me good.
- spoiler 14y agoWhere am I? Someone point me in the direction of Google.
- spoiler 14y agoWhere am I? Someone point me in the direction of Google.
- andersnolsen 14y agoThe author couldn't be more wrong. Eating animals is always wrong. Would you eat your own dog? Or little brother? They are made of meat as well. I wouldn't eat my own dog and my little brother, well, if he was a gingerbread boy maybe.