Hacker News Reader

Comment by Thorentis | Hacker News Reader

I really hope this doesn't mean Hacker News will start getting inspiration from Reddit, or that Alexis Ohanian doesn't get dillusions of grandeur and wants to turn this into what Reddit is (a profiteering social media company fuelled by ads and astroturfing). We really don't want that. What we have here is something quite special, and as far as I can see, unique on modern internet. It is a tiny slice of what the "old internet" used to be: serious discussion, wonderful anecdotes, thought provoking articles. We don't want Reddit drama, we don't want reddit moderation, we don't want reddit anything. We want the status quo.

View on HN

I mean, HN isn’t really relevant as an asset to ycombinator besides a advertising asset, right? It has a couple million monthly users, maybe 1 new feature a year, and runs on a single core. It’s more of a demonstration of Arc than anything, right?

HN is an asset to YC because the partners are degenerate HN junkies like the rest of us on here, many are worse.

More seriously it helps a lot with YC recruitment and is actually how they run a lot of YC. It also allows for YC company job listings as others have mentioned.

I don't think it's been written in Arc for a while.

Arc in the past, Arc in the present, Arc forever.

Nice, I thought I heard someone say at one point that it had been rewritten in rails. I'm much happier knowing this comment is going through Arc.

You had half the story, just the wrong half. HN and YC used to be a single program in Arc (a single thread, even: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21231810). When pg left, the YC side was split off and redone in Rails. In the narrative in my head, this is known as "the great lobotomy". I still wish they hadn't, but oh well.

If you know anyone who would love to program in Arc and wouldn't mind being publicly impaled (<-- the moderation part of the job), please send them my way. It isn't necessary to know Arc, since anyone good can learn it quickly, but it is necessary to like the idea.

Thanks for the clarification! I'll keep eyes out for an Arc dev. I do run across the occasional Arc enthusiast in interviews.

As a YC partner who read this comment buried deep in the comment tree, I think ... I would have to plead guilty to your charge.

My understanding is that the main benefit is that YC firms are able to make “...is hiring” posts and have them appear on the front page, but I could be wrong.

Did you read this backwards? He was added to reddits board. Why would this influence hn?

Hacker News has a weird, almost pathological aversion to Reddit and the cultural mainstream it represents - even a vague hint at some tangential influence glanced at will lead some here to fear the barbarians storming the gates.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anxiety_of_Influence

http://www.sulloway.org/BirthOrder-Sulloway-1999a.pdf

What are you talking about? Alexis Ohanian left Reddit, and Michael Seibel took his place on Reddit's board. How would this lead to Alexis Ohanian having an influence on HN?

Why do you think he has any say in what happens to HN?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com