"The Cab Ride I'll Never Forget" or The Death Of Hacker News | Hacker News Reader

"The Cab Ride I'll Never Forget" or The Death Of Hacker News

bbot.org

87 pointssbierwagen25 comments

Amen.

There's a forum for this kind of thing, and it's called Reddit. As a matter of fact, that's exactly where this article was cross-posted from.

I just personally find it galling that this kind of post is tolerated here. It has nothing to do with hacking or entrepreneurship and it only really serves to broaden the exposure of Hacker News to people who really have no business here in the first place. It wasn't so long ago that when there was an influx of outside exposure PG would proclaim "Erlang day" and encourage everyone to fill the front page with arcane technical articles about Erlang. It really did feel good to be a part of a site like that, and it also served as a sort of "reset" button that reminded everyone what this site was really supposed to be about.

That said, as others have pointed out here, "intellectual curiosity" is part of the guidelines -- and as long as it continues to be, we'll continue to see articles like this and people will continue to defend them. I gave up on railing against it myself a while ago and I just ignore those submissions for the most part. Fortunately HN continues to be a great source of information and discussion, even if it's perhaps not as spectacular as it could be.

I completely agree. I wouldn't go as far as the blogger to call it "trash", though. I think there is still value in that piece, and an appreciative sentiment to be shared. But there is no doubt that there is not the level of intellectualism for HN's supposed standard. There are routinely non-entrepreneurship articles that get attention on HN, but generally they are at least scientific/academic or relate to business.

EDIT: And now the OP got deleted. Anyone have an explanation?

I'm really just waiting for the next site - it's not that interesting to see mainstream sites being spammed over and over, and "power users" silently spewing out submissions from the same 6 sites day in, day out.

Worse than the stagnant content though is the pandering ... jesus. What will 42floors and a bunch of HN users write for us this week? How many times will people upvote TorrentFreak and TechDirt tomorrow when they publish their 17th "MegaUpload: It's Not Fair" piece? Someone quote PG, STAT!

That search engine where they got rid of the top million sites ... I'd like to see a HN where the get rid of the top hundred or so sites and the people submitting them. It's just too boring with them here.

This is it. HN does not have a narrow focus. If it had a narrow focus it would be easier, like on StackOverflow, where mods can kill any question that doesn't fit the narrow focus. But HN is supposed to be a community of things of broad interest to hackers. This is why I'm here, anyway.

So every so often someone posts a "HN is dying because it posted article X which I personally don't like" and it gets upvoted. How annoying. I think this might be the HN substitute for having a downvote article button.

If the community is dying, it's not because of a neat little story about a guy in a cab that a lot of hackers enjoyed.

I launched a new site yesterday that tries to solve this very problem. Briarpatch is a content discovery site which attempts to show higher-quality links (that aren't just 42 floors type links) by mining everyone's bookmark collections. Top-rated bookmarks rise to the top.

I'd be delighted to hear what you think. http://briarpat.ch/hot

Since people usually only bookmark things which they see as being suitable for a permanent spot in their local storage, we are hoping the quality on briarpatch will outshine some of these other content discovery sites.

This entire blog post is self-indulgent elitist drivel. The fact that it (currently) has 67 upvotes means there are 67 people in need of an immediate ban. All the blog post needed to fit right in at reddit, which he obviously despises, was some rage faces.

Last I checked, even us 'angry nerds' have emotions. It was refreshing, to me at least, to see that something could break through that wall, even if it was for only 6 hours and was immediately followed by... this.

FWIW, I didn't upvote the story. I just read it. It made me think about my grandfather's last few days in hospice, which made me a bit sad, because I had just started a brand new job (first out of college) that week and wasn't able to be there when he died. Oh, and then I got to read a bunch of 'sappy bullshit!' comments.

well you see the true hacker following the way has no need for your 'emotions' beep boop

they are a vanguard and protector of their vcs portfolio unsullied by things such as empathy

The guidelines states that anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity is worthy of Hacker News. "The Cab Ride I'll Never Forget" was a short fictional text about death that tickled my intellectual curiosity. It was a short read and I liked it and by my understanding of the HN guidelines, it's perfectly normal that it was on the front page for 6 hours.

This post, on the other hand, serves nothing but bash people for no reason.

Of course, I can't see inside your brain, but it tickled your intellectual curiosity? I thought it was an interesting story but it was an emotionally oriented story from my POV and I wouldn't have submitted it here. As always, different strokes for different folks :-)

We keep talking about getting rich and getting acquired for a billion dollars but a part of building something great is also about making the world a better place. Think about apps to help deaf or blind people, if you were building such a product and you had a "moment" like in the cab story where you felt you really changed someone's life, wouldn't that be worth more a lot more than cash?

It's easy to stop seeing any emotion in a startup world where we keep talking about technologies and cash and VCs and angels. But there are some people out there who work just as hard on technologies and softwares only because they want to make an impact in people's life, not just make a bazillion dollars.

In the end, it really got me thinking "Will I ever build something that has a real impact in someone's life?" and this is perfectly valid from a hacker / intellectual point of view in my opinion.

I am quite wary of people making this argument. While I think HN is a place for mostly on-topic intellectual goodies, I would dislike it if people linked to more emotionally stimulating content. (For what it's worth, I didn't think the "Cab Ride" story was very interesting).

It's the same thing with humor - sometimes HN is way too uptight. I see a lot of genuinely funny comments that get massively downvoted because people fear the "reddit" effect.

The emotional can be intelectually aproached.

It's a slippery slope, though. Small I post a picture of a cute kitten? We could intellectually examine our emotional responses to it.

And HN would implode.

I agree, but I don't think this was a case of that. It was a very short story that appealed to the emotions. Just IMHO, of course.

Yeah, I have no problem with the story. I've read it before, it was properly attributed. Did it belong on HN? Not at all. It was an emotional story.

What petercooper said, basically.

I like the story and I would share it around on social networks, but I wouldn't post it to HN. That's not where it goes.

The author responded to "contentless garbage, a work of fiction" comments the first time it went around the web:

"What was interesting to me was the comments that people made in response to the story. There seemed to be two fundamental threads: “This is a beautiful story; I’m glad there are people like this in the world,” and “What a bunch of sappy, probably fictional, crap.” Well, though strange and improbable, it is not fictional."

http://kentnerburn.com/archives/304

The post bashes people, sure. But it does have reason- trying to draw attention to Eternal September:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

The part where my opinions and those of the post differ is that I don't think HN is an entirely lost cause. The fact that this post is being upvoted (and will probably stay on the home page for 6 hours) demonstrates this. Maybe the HN guidelines need to be tightened.

So if we have one meta-"HN-is-dying-OMFG" post for every dumb post on the front page, do we not then have twice as much noise?

Well the idea is more that the back and forth would produce a result, like a change to the HN guidelines. If we just have two different sides shouting then yes, it'll be twice as bad.

I'm not so concerned about the odd piece of fiction as the near total lack of articles with code and / or equations and / or cash-flow projections in them.

"a site devoted to deep technical content of lasting importance, have all failed at their jobs. "

Yes, because Valley drama and Apple PR and nerd rage are truly deep technical content. There's a lot of noise, sure, but it's a great chance to broaden your horizons.

Get over yourself.

EDIT: And flagged. Meta kills, my friend.

While I wasn't a big fan of the "Cab Ride" story I think people are overreacting a bit.

I was much more concerned with how this story was received:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3548445

The top comment thread is nothing but useless chatter from a crowd that should obviously stop surfing and get back to work. I thought it was really distasteful that the folks who called out the OP's poor work ethic got downvoted so heavily.

One thought I've had is some sort of "elder" system on HN. I've noticed that the vast majority of the thoughtful and well-written comments come from people (a) above a certain karma threshold, for obvious reasons, and (b) they've been on HN for a good while.

I don't know how it could be implemented, but there's definitely a tone and voice associated with really good HN comments, which is why I keep coming back here. I feel like people who stay for a while and don't try to pull in the direction of reddit eventually gravitate towards this tone and style of writing. (I feel I certainly have, my first heavily-downvoted crap comment was a big wakeup call to contribute better thoughts to the discussion).

I think HN does an admirable job of pushing back against the "Eternal September" effect, but hey, let's be real for a second - even great minds might read trashy novels every once in a while. The cab story might just be an example of that.

Dear HN friends. Bestow upon me the requisite karma and articles of low quality shall feel the sting of my downvote.

This is even dumber than arguing about semicolons.

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