Hacker News Highlights: January 2017

Agreed - time and time again I'm surprised by the people that read HN. It seems to comprise of people who did some cool stuff 10,000 years ago, people who are doing cool stuff today, and everyone in between. Alas, all good communities are doomed to become shit as time goes on...

In particular, many thanks to the moderators. With popular discussion forums, a high signal-to-noise ratio doesn't just happen by itself.

That's not really my read at all. As someone in a similar boat, it's really inspiring to see that this place is both a great watercooler and a great equalizer. While some might lack the behind-the-scenes scoop or the battle-hardened wisdom of years of subject matter expertise, their words and ideas stand on their merits and share the company of greats. And in turn, one day, they might become the provider of unexpected insight.

And all the while, there are parallel discussions going on where the same people converse and debate about more mundane topics. I find this really refreshing, because it's a reminder that we're more than the sum of our professional accomplishments. We're people from all walks of life -- from students to executives, amateurs to experts, laypeople to decision-makers -- congregating around a shared interest, in ways it rarely happens face-to-face today, and this is what makes HN thrive.

That depends a bit on whether you're more characteristically interested in rhetorical dominance and being "in it to win it", or are just asking questions and intent on knowing what you don't know. For the former group HN is a very challenging environment, for the latter it can be helpful.

(As it is, I rarely pay any attention to my reply inbox on here because I do get emotionally charged by seeing those, even if they're positive. If I'm interested in a reply I go back to the thread later in the day instead. Reddit stops me from behaving in the same way because of that darn red envelope.)

A couple of years ago I went to a party at a neighbour's house. We ate pancakes and drank beer. Unlike me, most of the other people there were physicists or similar academics, so there was a lot of interesting talk going on. I'm not a particularly gregarious person - certainly not in a large group of people - so I mainly listened.

One of the people there was a Nobel Laureate. A cool, very down-to-earth guy - but there's not really much I can say thats going to be useful in the conversations he was having. But just being in the same room probably made me (temporarily) smarter. And I found some people who I could talk with about things like 3D printing, which I kind of get.

And thats kind of how I think of HN. Most people here may be cleverer than me, some enormously so, but I can still listen and learn and occasionally contribute something useful.

Looking back over the arc of my PhD I notice a similar parallel to how you feel so let me elaborate. In the first year I thought I was the shit and went around feeling like I knew it all. By the end of the second year, tempered by the almost complete lack of scientific success, I felt like a loser and out of place. Then, even after a some really good results over the next couple of years, I never recovered to feeling the way I felt like in my first year: over-confident, smug and arrogant. Now, a little over four years into graduate school, and about to defend my thesis late this month, I see that I'm not a complete fool, and despite all the self-doubt and negativity I had harboured over the years, I feel a small but potent bump in my self esteem.

I think that much of what I went through during graduate school was boringly human- it is, I feel, normal to be intimidated by intelligent, productive folks around you when you're not sure of your abilities and then realize over a period of time, reassured by little successes here and there, that you needn't be so harsh on yourself or think in overly negative ways. I know, boring pop psych, but like I said it is perfectly normal human to want to be better and also to blame yourself for not being as good as people around you.

To be honest the rare and in-between in depth and/or insightful comments are the main reason I come to HN.

I'm doing something similar on Twitter: https://twitter.com/vmorgulys

We should try something in common. What do you think of a formatted markdown file?

Like:

  #title

  - excerpt/remark/subtitle
  - tags
  - hn link
  - reddit link

Nice! I made a simple site a while ago that performs a similar function. [1]

The difference is that it goes by the number of upvotes rather than being curated by a person.

[1] https://hotonhn.com/

is that true? I'd like to see one of your awesome infograms to prove/disprove.

I agree