HN website is/was down. I'm curious why?
hn.hund.io
hn.hund.io
Networking issues at our hosting provider. Sorry! Hoping to be back up soon
(That is, names are globally unique. They may not always be findable, but for a sufficiently federated profile, searching from a sufficiently federated instance, that shouldn't be a hurdle. And I strongly suspect third-party directories will emerge.)
With Farcaster, user names are both decentralized and global.
Having migrated a few times (both before and after official support for this existed), I'm aware of the Fediverse's non-portable namespace issues, and some way of resolving that would be useful.
Is there some way to create an account on desktop or web? Or at least view content without an account? It seems to only push some smartphone app, which is a big step down from Mastodon if that's the only option.
If there's something I'm missing and there is somewhere to create an account, would you be able to link me in the right direction?
I don't remember now, but it wasn't AT ALL the big issue that I initially anticipated. I just mention it, because your comment made me realize that I also don't understand WHY it wasn't an issue!
An editor that cannot match parentheses, brackets and braces, or auto-indent in at least a rudimentary way is not very usable for working in anything.
LMK if you figure out why! Because whenever I'm refactoring in a bracket-heavy language, it's almost guaranteed that, every so often, the parser starts throwing syntax errors, and I need to stare at something like `)]})})` for a while.
What tooling am I missing that can prevent this from happening? I use auto-formatters and rainbow bracket colorizers whenever possible, and they're great! But in no way prevent this from happening.
Every parenthesis in Lisp world is unique like a snowflake, and they come in pairs.
I think you just discovered parenthesis entanglement theory :)
Unless their foundation air-dropped them a couple of Starlink units alongside their seasonal food and goods supply run.
So yes, I also thought my Internet was broken :-)
For a very simple site, https://captive.apple.com works too
For some reason, knowing the IP number of playboy.com by heart was not a skill I bragged about a lot :P
These days it's 1.1. Easier both to remember and type than anything else.
May I suggest https://lite.cnn.com/
Amazing what they squeeze out of a single process architecture.
I think they could move it to a more powerful machine and the remaining issues would be fixed. It wouldn't be as big of a flex as running on an ancient Intel CPU though.
Edit: I got "We're having some trouble serving your request. Sorry!" while trying to send this comment :)
The front page is ~7 kilobytes on reload, and ~20 on first load - such a good example of "less is more".
:)
> Why?
Just wanted to mention that.
Do you come from a background of Lisps? I just learned my first lisp (Clojure) this past year.
My original background in programming wasn't in Lisp, but when I read pg's essays about Lisp, I decided to learn it, and since then I...switched over.
Unfortunately it wasn't the best circumstances to learn Clojure - I was taking ownership of a codebase that had lost all its developers, and was fairly complicated. I wonder whether I should try to learn Arc for fun sometime.
If I were you I'd probably take up Racket or Common Lisp, depending on your tastes. If you prefer PLT style hacking, I'd go with Racket and if you prefer more systems style hacking, I'd go with SBCL.
Also, if you like Emacs, I'd definitely go with Slime + SBCL. There is also a lot of newer-generation Emacs/SBCL tooling that I haven't gotten around to yet.
Arc is closer semantically to Common Lisp than it is to Racket - for example the way Arc uses T and NIL is very CL, not Scheme. Personally I find Arc more usable than CL for a bunch of reasons, such as (1) hashtables are far easier, and (2) it's a Lisp-1 rather than a Lisp-2.
Which I suppose is a reference to another website that is down. Bash.org still hasn't resurfaced :(
Though, for pure power, I prefer https://jsdelivr.com/globalping to do an HTTP ping, easily check from like 100 different locations worldwide live. It also does a great job at helping you know if it's just slow in your area or worldwide or whatever.
https://twitter.com/danieldibswe/status/1169485819993841664
Kubernetes. We've come so far since the 90's.
HN, StackOverflow, Hey.com/Basecamp, Lichess and probably many others that I'm not remembering or aren't famous run mostly or exclusively on real iron.
We don't need buzzword bingo to build reliable, internet-scalable systems, especially when a hiccup occurs so rarely that it's news when it does happen.
It almost seems like DDoS on CDN or something like that.
This website is terribly bad: - UX/UI is terrible and not user friendly - Infrastructure and the code is like COBOL from the 80s - No notifications when someone replies to your comment - Profile section is non-existent - API is just as bad as the website
I could go on with the list, but you get the idea... for a website which receives millions of visitors, it's a shame that it's so bad.
The minimalist text-only gui IS very usable for discussion, and forces that the focus is on the discussion.
I think for instance adding images to posts or comments would make the site worse, as images serve to attract and focus attention away from discussion. But the discussion here is the point!
The minimal profile sections are also a feature. This account is not your digital homepage. It is a place people go for discussion. A bigger focus on your profile would be a step towards use of the site as brand-building which favors attention-whoring over quality discussion.
Again, the focus is on reducing frictions to people to contribute to quality discussion, and avoiding dynamics that might supplant this.
So I think a lack of notifications is a great feature. It lets us say our piece and move on, and let the community discussion fall where it will.
Keeping track of your points is a decent indicator that activity has happened though. I just remember roughly where it was when I left, and then I know whether I should check /threads or not.
There are third party services though http://www.hnreplies.com/
I'm currently using both - userstyle for DIY dark mode, userscript on mobile for font size adjustment (no Stylus available on Firefox for Android yet). Plus uBlock Origin configured to nuke the karma counter.
And though I don't have a relocated collapse control, there are modified light/dark mode HN styles linked in my HN profile, for those interested in either using those directly or as a starting point for your own restyle.
Is there a RES-style browser addon for HN with some of these little quality of life improvements?
I get the appeal of providing a minimal service like HN, but unless I'm missing something, my proposed change is an absolute no-brainer considering it's effort-reward ratio.
Linked under "API" at the bottom of the page you're reading now.
There are and were message- and discussion-oriented protocols, most notably Usenet, of which you may be aware there were some persistent issues:
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36194941>
<https://web.archive.org/web/20220321105208/https://old.reddi...>
The thought's occurred to me that among the conspicuous omissions from the HTML spec is of a threaded discussion (or more specifically, messages within a threaded context) as a first-order object, permitting arbitrary structuring of that content at the volition of the reader.
To that extent, your suggestion's somewhat growing on me.
<https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ftsa&q=alternative+hacker+news+fro...>
"Alternative hacker news front ends".
This is one of the features of HN that I appreciate most. The lack of notification means that you don't (typically) get a ton of back and forth sniping arguments like you do on sites like reddit.
I find this makes people put more effort into their first comment and keeps the arguments lower.
What else do you really need, honestly? It's like reddit, only with actually readable comment threads.
1. inline code formatting, e.g. Markdown's `place code here` with backticks)
2. direct links, or some sort of footnotes system. I prefer to thoroughly source posts, especially when it's either rare/obscure knowledge or when it's an opinion/viewpoint that goes against the "hive mind" or however else you want to call the "mass opinion" on here - it's easier and more productive to debate on sourced facts than on unsubstantiated claims.
3. an actual quote indicator, just as Reddit does with lines that begin with > - it would be a waaay better way to follow visually in lengthy posts
4. actually working ordered and unordered lists. Markdown's syntax is bad, but anything is an improvement over nothing.
And lack of notifications is a good feature. It does help in many cases where you would go into very heated or not very useful discussions.
Though not notifications, I've included code to annotate YC startup job listings, just so I could clearly distinguish them from regular posts.
I took to increasingly muting the notification such that it now reads:
/* HN startup job ads */
html[op="news"] .athing td:nth-of-type(2):not(.votelinks) {
background: #eee;
}
html[op="news"] .athing td:nth-of-type(2):not(.votelinks):before {
content: "YC";
position: relative;
left: 0.8em;
top: 0;
color: #000;
font-size: 0.6em;
}
The Hacker News UX/UI is one of the best among the websites I regularly visit!
E.g.: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...>
And yes, the community and moderation here are a literal breath of fresh air compared to most of Reddit.