Hacker News Reader

The frontpage changes constantly and quickly. It doesn't give a accurate view of what the community at large cares about, as 1 day old stories gets buried relatively quickly (the ones who would upvote a story mostly already upvoted it by then, and the time factor moves stories down quickly).

The "bestpage" gives a much better overview, as it changes less often: https://news.ycombinator.com/best

From that list of 30 "best" stories, ~10 of them are about or related to the SVB drama. That's an usually high ratio of "best" stories for one theme. That doesn't happen very often, so by HNs eyes, the SVB failure was a huge story, spanning multiple HN threads.

As another note, the SVB drama is very US/US-tech related, while the audience of HN is much bigger than that. Not just internationally, but lots of non-tech related areas as well, although it's definitely a bit oriented to US and US-tech. Some people on HN simply won't care about SVB, as it doesn't impact them in the slightest. While maybe they are a developer, so a tiny C compiler is something they want to see discussed.

> Edit: and no more than 3 mins later after I posted the above and this this reaching the top of HN it was immediately dropped down to ranking #88. In the span of 3 mins. You want to know what group think there is. That right there is the group think you should be worried about. People aren't even comfortable with being criticized about what happened this weekend.

You might want abstain from commentating on systems you don't seem to yet understand. Any story on HN that receives more comments than upvotes quickly, gets ranked lower as the system will believe that the comments are getting too heated or there is something else going on.

> Really a "tiny c compiler" is whats most pressing right now?

1. HN has an opaque ranking algorithm that isn't just upvotes. You have no idea what HN readers are prioritizing.

2. HN arguably isn't and shouldn't be the "front page" of news for anyone. It's an overgrown hobbyist site. "Tiny C compiler" is perfect HN fodder and should be #1 for a site called Hacker News.

3. Nothing is ever "the most pressing" right now. Should no one read anything else until SVB blows over? Should every site be talking about it, or can some sites get a break?

I'm with you, love the C compiler post and would never want the more diverse interests quelled for a news cycle.

It was probably the #1 topic over the last 3 days. What else is there really to do but shake our heads and figure out how things work now?

There are multiple threads with 2k+ comments. What more do we expect than that? Not everyone here is a founder or a vc-brain guy. Your workers are nerds who like compilers, we also come here to talk about stuff. The rest tries to come and make money, even as it always crashes and burns eventually.

but compilers are eternal.

I'm almost completely unaffected by this bank's collapse. I live on the other side of the world and I don't work for any American company. At least, if I am affected there's another million things affecting me just as much from climate change to the pandemic to the weather over the last week.

I come to HN for interesting discussion about tech and I have very little interest in the economic system that drives silicon valley.

There's been non stop posts about this bank on HN for several days. Half of the home page has been about it, it feels like this has turned into a tech economics site. I get that it's important to a lot of people here, but to me that post about a tiny c compiler is much closer to what the HN is about - or at least, what I come here for.

A few weeks back, there was some article about the layoffs, I don't exactly remember what it was but it was like "tech executives do not care about you", basically it was just very critical of the executives for doing layoffs for such poor reasons. It was doing huge numbers, and then suddenly it disappeared from the front page; I looked at the first few pages and didn't see it anywhere. This was the first time I had noticed what I am personally sure was censoring of criticism that was aimed towards SV leadership.

Sometimes the title is changed to match the title of the linked post, per HN rules. This can make it look like the post gone. It's still there, just named differently.

Ah yeah, that wasn't the situation in this case, I could still view the original comments thread and it had the same name, but no longer listed anywhere.

I was also surprised to see the dramatic drop in this post's HN ranking. I can't believe it's organic, but maybe it is. I agree a 2001 article on a Tiny C compiler probably has as lot less impact to the general HN readership than this post here. My comment below on "diversify your sources of information" as one of the bullets is highly relevant.

Many here seem to purely be blaming the VCs for what happened. I would think the bank has the primary blame for making unwise investments with their depositor’s money. And I get the VCs caused the bank run by wanting to protect the startups they support. I don’t blame them for reacting to the news of the failing bank. Do you blame the general population for the Great Depression in the 1920s when the bank run happened then? I don’t think so? It was a consequence of a greater issue. Just like VCs actions were a consequence of the greater issue of how the bank managed the funds.

There have been multiple top page posts with discussion's about SVB over the last few days. How much more do you expect?

It has been the top item for the past 24hrs and other parts of the story have hit the front page simultaneously. It certainly was the most important issue by far in the past 7 days.

Judging that something with > 1700 comments (where everything has been said that anyone wanted to say) eventually fades from the top spot feels weird.

back to work.