HN frontpage 3 years ago | Hacker News Reader

HN frontpage 3 years ago

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152 pointswhyleyc53 comments

Thought it would be amusing to take a trip down memory lane. I'd forgotten that we used to be "Startup News". Standout items for me:

- DropBox soliciting early feedback - PG's business plan for ViaWeb - Even then people were complaining about YC News addiction :)

Other frontpage editions here: http://web.archive.org/web/*/news.ycombinator.com

Open articleView on HN

The change in content is by design: http://ycombinator.com/hackernews.html http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=78166

PG: "As of today we've expanded the focus of news.ycombinator.com from news about startups to news interesting to hackers generally. To reflect that we've changed the name to Hacker News."

"The goal is not to have just articles about hacking, but articles of interest to hackers. We're not trying to make something like programming.reddit.com, but something like www.reddit.com was in 2006."

Pretty cool to see Dropbox's Tell HN post on there.

Exactly what I was thinking. -- Update 4/4/07: We haven't launched yet, but we are admitting people into the beta. We'd be happy to keep you posted about the beta program and launch (your email won't be used for anything else.)

Made me chuckle - I'd forgotten that we were "Startup News" back then too. Posts of interest for me include:

- The original DropBox post

- Paul Graham's business plan for ViaWeb

- People back then complaining of addiction to YC News :)

Other frontpage versions at http://web.archive.org/web/*/news.ycombinator.com

  People back then complaining of addiction to YC News :)

It's interesting, that link isn't in either the archive or the contemporary HN. I wonder what happened to it...

Also interesting to note that there are 50 stories on the front page instead of 30. Was loading 20 more stories really that inefficient that this had to be dropped?

Probably. See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1283312

Does anyone conclusively know what happened to nickb?

The last Miles & I heard from his friend, Nick B was/is alive. After that we didn't pursue it.

Interesting to see the points inflation: where would you now find a 3 hours old story with 14 points? Certainly not at the top of front page!

There's currently a 3 hours old story with 13 points in position 27; ie near the bottom of the front page.

I'm interested in almost every item on the hn front page from 3 years ago. Now I'm usually interested in only about 25% of them. I wonder what's changed, me or hn?

It's sad that HN had lost so much of its former quality. Makes me yearn for the good old days.

If you're comparing your current interest in two iterations of hn, presumably it's hn that's changed.

For myself, if anything I'm more interested in today's front page, but there's not much in it. And I'm more into the hacking aspect than startups specifically, which might be relevant.

Probably half and half. I read less than half of the stuff on HN now.

Part of it is a lot of it is not new now. I've read a lot about the lean startups, or joel's ben and jerry vs amazon, or mel the programmer, or the 500 mile email. I've been here long enough to have seen repeats of the same themes. As you grow, the less things surprise you, and hence perhaps less interesting.

And the other part is that I don't really care for the apple gossip, or a picture of woz, or the lighter stuff, but then again, I've only sporatically submitted stuff too.

I've noticed you've submitted less stuff and don't participate as much. The edw519 era has gone, where you submitted stuff and commented. Nowadays, it's the patio11 era, where he submits his own stuff and comments.

Then again, glancing at the front page, there are still interesting things. Perhaps I just have less time to read it all and this is a compromise.

The edw519 era has gone

Oh I sure hope not. I love building things. I love hacker news. And I love talking about building things on hacker news.

It just seems that lately, I've been doing a whole lot more building than talking. Whenever I take my hn breaks, not much on the front page jumps out at me, so I just get right back to work. (This is a good thing).

It's probably just another phase. For the edw519 era to be truly gone, they'd have to pry my keyboard from my OCD hands.

[Ditto on patio11. Great stuff.]

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9357 :)

Haha, great! I just notice that you've been posting less.

And where the heck is nickb? He also disappeared off the leader board, so I have my suspicions. :) hrm.

A lot of people whose karma otherwise rate leaderboard status have been manually removed (especially pg).

In nickb's case, it's likely because his account has been dormant for almost a year. He may have passed away (http://markenomics.com/item?id=395) but it's also likely he just decided to take his leave of Hacker News and a number of other online communities.

When I first found HN I would eat up every design and technical story. I was all "w00t new knowledge!". Now I look at half the stories and go "bah, I bet that guy just discovered closures" or whatever. Amusingly, at that time I had been looking for a new "way technical" community to learn from, and now I'm here going "man, either HN sucks or i need to level-up". Looking at the 3 years ago page, I realized I need to go level-up.

tl;dr -- anecdotal evidence of iamwill's point.

Apart from the Apple stories, the lists look pretty similar to me.

Less the Apple stories, it's certainly not "harder" news than we have today.

  2. "I'm addicted to YC News"
  23. "Worst Company Names"
  24. "How to Kung-Fu Battle with investors"

FWIW, I've seen no discernible drop in quality since I registered here about a year ago.

> FWIW, I've seen no discernible drop in quality since I registered here about a year ago.

It already changed by the time you joined. News.yc used to be primarily about subjects that interested entrepreneurial programmers. It still is to a degree but now it's mainly another variant of Slashdot.

I don't disagree that the entrepreneurship has taken a backseat. It just never bothered me, because I'm not an entrepreneur.

HN has changed, absolutely, but that doesn't make it any worse than it was.

Like I said, the changes were already in effect when you first joined so I'm not surprised that you feel that way.

I think this discussion is more relevant for users that have been here for at least 3 years.

A search on Slashdot for "lean startup" returns zero relevant results. Maybe Slashdot's search is just busted, but I suspect your comparison is a tad hyperbolic.

fine - it's more reddit 2006. better?

a search on slashdot for "startup" yields a lot of results =)

I went to Slashdot recently and there were a bunch of upvoted posts defending the Enterprise Robustness of JavaEE and sneering at those Ruby-using fools, so I'd say HN is (fortuantely) not quite Slashdot.

I even feel like upvoting some of the comments.

Edit: doesn't work btw

IMO The changes in content probably stems to new.yc's name change from "Startup News" into "Hacker News".

I should start changing the content that I post.

I found the % of interesting stories the same as is today.

I'm glad it's not called "Startup News" any more. I probably would have just glanced at the page and left. And then where would I find the kind of techy, software development article links that I regularly add to my company's wiki?

Viewing your 3-years-hence profile is fun too. http://web.archive.org/web/20080113124511/news.ycombinator.c...

Ah how times have changed. Two of those top stories were submitted by me (albeit, not very interesting ones). I haven't submitted a front page story in ages.

Wow, I was just accidentally browsing the "3 years ago" HN for about 5 minutes, not even realizing that I wasn't looking at the current view.

The more things change the more they stay the same?

MSFT: Always one step behind I am addicted to YC News Why to Not Start a Startup

Holy shit, 2007 was 3 years ago

The leaders page is interesting: http://web.archive.org/web/20070406233614/news.ycombinator.c...

I think I've gotten more karma on some posts than existed in the system at that time :)

Did anyone else open the page in a new tab and forget about it, and then later on wonder why the heck every link on the HN front page went to archive.org?

It was crazy confusing until I noticed the address bar.

I remember emailing Dharmesh after he made that post. I was still in school and had just started getting absorbed into the startup culture.

I have some occasional complaints, but I like it how it is now, and it seems to be handling growth reasonably well. I vaguely remember reading it when it was Startup News, but I feel like I've absorbed most of the "common startup knowledge" already, hence those articles are ones my eyes drift pass. There was also a lot more overt pg-fandom in the early site.

Haha awesome! One of the, very few, days that one of my posts was in the top 3. Thanks, you just made my day.

The articles were really only the gravy. The meat and potatoes back then were the discussions and comments.

While there are less "start a thread without a URL" discussions on the HN front page these days, I still value greatly the HN discussion about the links.

Quite a lot more emphasis on startups. I like the current mix of news more (I wasn't here back then), but the original crew apparently doesn't like it that much (I've seen complains about us new readers turning this into the new Slashdot/Reddit/whatever)

The page back then feels like a small village community. There aren't a crazy number of comments, just a few tacit ones. Today, HN feels like as if the small village had a gold rush of visitors and "tourists."

How come nobody appreciated the UI!!! I personally believe HN has an awesome UEx quotient and would look the same even 3 and more years later!!

Where are all the Apple and Erlang stories?

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

HN has now gone back in time and jumped itself!

I felt emotional for a quick minute.

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