The Background Noise Was Louder than I Realized
prog21.dadgum.com
prog21.dadgum.com
The same about comparisons, I know it's 10% better than last year's because last year I actually read an article, and it was 10%-15% better than 2010, which was 10% better than 2009.
Two things helped: I stopped doing the engineering dance, dueling trivia with others. I don't care if the new iPhone does 5 times less network requests on maps when not on wi-fi but gets less POIs because the map provider is pulverized, on China is X while on Iceland is Y, but on San Francisco bla bla bla. Frankly, talking to a Wikipedia is boring.
The other thing that helped is that I gave up trying to live on the bleeding edge of anything. I don't sleep on the line to buy an iPad mini, I wait three days if and when I have the free time. I don't know what's the current best SSD, I google it when I am actually about to buy it. Slowing down is one of the best things I ever did. I have lots of friends that complain about being too "anxious" (all properly self-diagnosed). Just don't do something if you know you'll be complaining about it later.
Up until a few years ago, for instance, you could count on this year's CPUs being much better than last year's CPUs. After Intel came out with Nehalehm, the pace has slowed down. The really interesting developments are in details like virtualization support, SIMD instruction, and things like AMD's Fusion. And it took me plenty of talking with people to really understand that Fusion is nowhere near as exciting as I thought it was at first, since you can't get high-end (or even medium) GPU performance out of RAM designed for CPU's.
The things I build today could be at their market peak three years in the future so understanding the hardware on the market and where its going can be the difference between making somethign that's commercially viable and something that isnt.
I do similar work with my Ruby Weekly, JavaScript Weekly, HTML5 Weekly and StatusCode newsletters and frequently get e-mails from people who say they like being subscribed so they can turn down the 'noise' they get on Twitter, etc.
There are thousands of such regular, curated digests in almost any medium you could think of. Not just e-mails or magazines, but podcasts, link blogs, YouTube channels, and Twitter accounts too. Have a good look around on the topics that interest you, subscribe to the digests, and then skip the noise.
The downside though, is that it gets close to impossible to join in on, or even read, the discussions. When I see articles usually ~24h after they were posted, the discussion page is so full of nested questions that it's really hard to find anything more than the highest voted comment. How can curation be combined with possibility to discuss, in a better working way?
How can curation be combined with possibility to discuss, in a better working way?
I think the issue isn't curation, since Slashdot is technically an editor curated news service, but the timing. That is, how do you have a good discussion when the timescales are so large rather than over the course of a few hours?
Sites like MetaFilter - http://www.metafilter.com/, Edward Tufte's forum - http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a?topic_id=1, QBN - http://www.qbn.com/ - and numerous blogs have solved this problem to a great extent, IMHO, and intriguingly are all single threaded (or in the case of blogs, most, but not all).
No, not really. There is usually ~1 article each day where I get interested in reading the discussion. When that happens, it is often disappointing to find the discussion high-jacked by a top-voted comment that goes in a direction that doesn't interest me. I'm sure there are interesting comments further down the page, but on this site it's hard to find them. I think Slashdot handles this a little better by letting you set a point threshold.
In the even fewer cases when I want to join the discussion, it is pretty meaningless to add a comment to the bottom of a page which is more than a day old.
> I think the issue isn't curation, since Slashdot is technically an editor curated news service, but the timing. That is, how do you have a good discussion when the timescales are so large rather than over the course of a few hours?
Yes! That frames the question much better.
> Sites like MetaFilter - http://www.metafilter.com/, Edward Tufte's forum - http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a?topic_id=1, QBN - http://www.qbn.com/ - and numerous blogs have solved this problem to a great extent, IMHO, and intriguingly are all single threaded (or in the case of blogs, most, but not all).
Haven't used those sites, and it was hard to get a grip by taking a quick look. How do they solve it? I think single threaded is great, but in my experience it breaks down when the number of comments get too large.
Manually or semi-automatically curated discussions would probable be very valuable.
Do you use Twitter? If so, something like https://twitter.com/newsyc50 or https://twitter.com/newsyc20 might work for you. There's a threshold but it keeps you within an hour or two of most significant posts. (I'm not a fan as a lot of the posts I enjoy /don't/ reach these thresholds.)
How do they solve it? I think single threaded is great, but in my experience it breaks down when the number of comments get too large.
MetaFilter has been around since 1999 with the same format and surprisingly it continues to work well. Single threading has a big effect on how discussions go. It's hard to put into words.. I hope someone will write an academic paper on single vs multi threaded discussions ;-)
My personal experience is it increases the signal to noise ratio and discourages irrelevant contributions, with the frequent con of seemingly endless discussions and polarization into two opposing factions of commenters.
Edward Tufte's forum is unusual. The discussions there are glacial. Seriously, it's typical to only have a handful of responses after a month or two but they're always spot on. It's an extreme example since Tufte's staff personally moderates every comment and only the very best get through.
QBN is basically a mess. The way they make it work long term is that responding to any thread bumps that thread back up to the top of the site, no matter how old it is. There's a thread on the front page right now with 68,675 responses. This wouldn't work so well in an academic or technical environment but actually goes well in a more chit chatty "arty" environment, which is their main audience.
I think there's so much room to study this stuff formally. If they ever did, I would be the first to order the textbook! :-)
I'm only a spectator there, but I've noticed the threads are much more personal. I think you can even see the individuals that favorited a given story or comment.
If a new user doesn't get it and causes problems the mods will usually politely PM them and talk to them about what's going on. If the user continues to cause problems (start fights and just generally be inflammatory to the community) they will have no problem banning them.
They also temp-ban users who they know are normally well behaved when they are clearly having a bad day (which usually just means that a particular thread on a particular topic hits too close to home and they just can't be civil about it).
The Feature: http://thefeature.net/ is excellent.
Hooking Up Smart is great if you're interested in sex, gender relations, relationships, and dating: http://www.hookingupsmart.com.
I Use This: http://usesthis.com/ can be surprisingly helpful at times. I discovered Pigma Micron pens through it!
I went for a couple months without checking HN and to be honest I felt like I was missing something. I like knowing what the latest things are and what cool projects people are working on. I enjoy many of the well written comments.
I find that the things I learn about on HN aren't necessarily something that is helpful immediately, but something that I can recall when I have an itch. Perhaps we're implementing analytics emails for consumers at work and using PhantomJS is an interesting option. Or... whatever.
There is a ton of noise, I simply don't click on posts about languages any longer.
There's a slight problem wrt this though, you can't really judge an article by its title.
i just triage quickly, to be honest, and i try not to rely on other people to do my curation for me (either crowd-based selection or manual selection). i can stil avoid much of the same old noise and debates but i get to see new ideas, perspectives, topics, and things.
some of the links here have been great to see, however, and i will have to utilize them. thanks for sharing them.
There is still, occasionally, a relevant technical article (that's not primarily opinion) or link to a new open source project that is relevant to my interests.
But that seems to be around %2-4 of the content.
HN is crowded out with submissions that are designed primarily to be excuses to be outraged at anyone who believes in intellectual property, or that isn't a leftist, with the occasional outrage at violations of privacy thrown in.
And you certainly can't have a good discussion on those articles-- haters going to hate, and leftists hate private property and fandroids hate apple.
This is the fourth time I've seen this happen.
The first was slashdot, which by 2002 or so, was so overrun with GPL fascists that you couldn't say anything short of the party line, less it be downvoted to oblivion. Then Digg which gave so much power to early users that it was pointless to even try. Then Reddit which has its general /r/politics subreddit-- which everyone is subscribe to by default- with a moderation policy that bans anyone who doesn't toe the leftist line well enough to goose step. And now Hacker News.
Once I did an experiment. There was an article where I didn't like the outcome, along with most of HN, but the principle involved, a greater principle, one that most on HN claim to espouse, was being violated. I posted a comment noting that I didn't like the outcome, naming the principle, noting that most of us agree with that principle, and then showing how upholding that principle (eg: not being a hypocrite) required us to temper our outrage. I got downvoted to oblivion (which on HN helpfully means your post fades into the background making it impossible to read, which I find hilarious- we're not just going to put you at the bottom of the page, we're going to make it impossible for those who are broad minded enough to scroll down to even read it.)
So, despite agreeing with the majority, clearly explaining my position, and why I hated having to reach that conclusion, what the principle was, and why we all generally agree with that principle... I was still downvoted, because I wasn't making a post agreeing with the party line.
That's the point when I accepted that moderation is broken, and Hacker News is not a place where good discussion can happen reliably.
I think human curation has failed. Ideological downvotes have killed the signal to noise ratio of all four of these sites.
Anything having to do with the 2008 fiscal crisis. Anything having to do with monetary policy in general.
Hell, just try pointing out that the IR absorption of CO2 is less than that of water vapor (eg: clouds) in a discussion of global warming. You'll get no end of "all scientists believe in global warming[1]" and downvotes, for this scientific fact.
[1] This is, by far, the most anti-intellectual and offensive statement. Science doesn't work by majority. Worse, it is simply factually false. There is no survey of scientists to determine their votes, and there is a sizable contingent of scientists who refute it or dispute it. Further, the references to "science" that this side makes generally come from IPCC reports, which is to say, reports prepared by politicians which in the past have often been refuted by the very scientists whose research they claim to be summarizing.
This issue is really a good one, because it is a purely scientific one, it is relatively straightforward and easy to disprove (Mars was warming at the same time, with the earth and the solar cycle, despite having no Hummers, the earth has been getting cooler for the past decade, despite CO2 going up, the "warming" period coincides with ice ages, and the "evidence", namely the Mann "hockey stick" was the result of outright fraud).... yet the people who believe it believe it for ideological reasons, and actually reject science, making scientific discussions impossible. (Global warming is the left's creationism!) all you can get is insistence that all scientists believe in it (all christians believe in creationism, right? Actually they don't all believe in it, possibly a majority don't.) Or you can get pointers to scientific sounding blog posts that at the root end up being nonsense.
The closest I've ever gotten to an actual scientific debate on global warming was with a physicist who, in the end, was reduced to insisting that man made carbon dioxide had different effects on the atmosphere than "naturally occurring" carbon dioxide. At that point I gave up- I can't argue with a belief like that.
How many people do you think on Hacker News believe in Global Warming? How many of them have ever looked up the IR absorption of CO2? Or would listen to that point?
How many people on Hacker News reject intellectual property out of hand? How many of them can derive, from first principles, an explanation for any private property ownership? I believe the former is the majority and the latter is a tiny fraction. Yet they "believe in private property" -- but only situationally. (EG: Ok to steal movies, but not cars, or money, unless you're the government, then its ok to steal money if you call it taxes. Is that not a reasonable characterization of "leftist" positions? Ok, then how can a leftist believe in the principle of private property if its sometimes ok to steal? By redefining the word "steal"?)
By the way, if you want an honest opinion of someone who has upvoted your posts in the past -to correct "disagree" downvotes-, I frankly find your posts aggressive, to the point that you lose me as an audience. It's often not about the content - I think we can agree that e.g. Russ Roberts is not a leftist, yet I enjoy what he has to say - but the form.
The IR absorption of CO2 is well-known. As is its longevity in the atmosphere, and the amount being put up there by people.
The IR absorption of H2O is also well-known. As is the fact that it tends to precipitate out of the atmosphere, and is not being released by human activities in much greater quantity than was the case historically. (However it is released as the climate changes.) Furthermore H20 has multiple effects - in the form of vapor it is a great greenhouse gas, in the form of clouds it is a great reflector of light, as it precipitates, it removes other things that can cause global warming, if it precipitates as snow, it causes cooling, etc. In any detailed modeling of climate, it is very important and difficult to get the impacts of H20 right.
However in your world global warming is false, and anyone who believes in it is an ignorant leftist. And you think that you can argue this from an IR curve that I guarantee has been thought about more deeply by scientists than you have ever thought about it.
I also suspect that your understanding and my understanding of "private property" is different than yours. You would claim my disagreement with your viewpoint to be ignorance. I, most Americans, most lawyers, and legal historians all disagree with you. At some point you should consider whether it is more likely that you're the lone genius who knows what is right, or whether you're out of touch with reality.
Until then, if you allow, I'll stick with what the IPCC and the PNAS publish on behalf of over a thousand scientists from dozens of countries.
They were probably all bribed by the Solar industry and Tesla Motors, but I'm afraid it's the best we have until you get published with your revolutionary findings about CO2.
Science doesn't work by majority.
Yes, and tobacco does not cause cancer. It's all just one big lefty conspiracy.
>Anything having to do with the 2008 fiscal crisis. Anything having to do with monetary policy in general.
These are not specifics. Could you link to some actual examples?
I don't reject IP out of hand. I do think patent law needs to be reformed, but you paint this with a really broad brush. I honestly have never gotten a full-on all-anti-IP vibe here. I do believe most people here oppose software patents, but software patents are only a small subset of IP, and a recent one at that.
Your posts get downvoted more than mine because of a difference in the way the two of us behave. I tried to explain this to you over a year ago, and someone else quoted it in this very thread: you include an "unreasonable amount of emotionally charged language in your post[s]." You seem to have trouble staying away from name-calling and cheap shots.
I propose an experiment: for the next month or so, before you hit the "reply" button, carefully read over your post and remove anything that could be considered name-calling (that is, any label applied to a person that they wouldn't voluntarily apply to themselves -- such as "haters", or associations with "creationism".) Remove explicit comments about others lacking intellect or having inappropriate motivation. Compare the number of downvotes you get, after removing these non-insightful statements, to the number of downvotes you get now.
I find that, as trite as it sounds, you really do get out of HN what you put in. When I first posted at HN I adopted an aggressive, frankly really fucking douchey attitude that reminds me of your continual one. I'm still slowbanned because of it[1]. When I moderated the dipshit attitude out of my posting, however, it became a lot more fun and I've made a few friends through posting here.
Let's get real here. Ideological downvotes aren't your--and I mean your, in particular--problem. Being an asshole, who apparently can't get through a day of posting without attacking someone or caricaturing a position with which you disagree, is. I mean, come on. "Fandroids hate Apple." "Leftists hate private property." You're not fooling anyone: the schtick you are employing is to make statements that are tailored to offend, under the guise of "stating your opinion," and then get outraged when they do offend and people take advantage of the moderation mechanism of a downvote to say, "we don't want this here." You don't get to be surprised or offended when you do that and conflating rejection of your behavior with rejection of your beliefs is intellectually dishonest.
The problem with the reception of your posts is you. I know this, because I've been there, and I chose not to be quite as much of an ass. You, apparently, have not. Act like less of an asshole and I'll bet you that what you see as "ideological downvotes" go away.
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[1] - The slowban used to annoy me, but I find it moderates my initial, fly-off-the-handle reaction pretty well. I think I'd miss it if it went away.
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Thank you for providing a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Rather than address my arguments, you characterize me (simple personal attack) and pretend like it's my fault. This is typical blame the victim. Yeah, I'm "douchy" for not towing the party line.
In case anyone is fooled by your kind of personal attack and "smear the queer" mentality, the fact of the matter is, I have tested it.
And if you were being honest, you'd address the fact that I pointed out that I have tested it. I'll give another example.
I once made a comment that consisted of this, in its entirety: "Apple licensed the technologies that appeared in Mac OS from Xerox via a deal that gave Xerox pre-IPO Shares in Apple".
This simple, innocent, factual, and let's be honest "douchy", statement wsa in response to someone who said "Apple stole Mac OS from Xerox".
Of course, me pointing out this easily verifiable fact was downvoted to invisibility.
You attack me because you cannot be honest enough to admit that you are intolerant of people, like me, who think differently, no matter how well behaved we are. So you smear me, and in doing so, you show why Hacker News is not a place where fruitful discussion can be expected.
Right now that post has 32 points, so apparently some folks think I have a point when I say it has nothing to do with what you say and how you say it. But I realize that that means nothing to you--once you have decided that people are out to get you, an observation like that just means that the people who vote are out to get you.
I once made a comment that consisted of this, in its entirety: "Apple licensed the technologies that appeared in Mac OS from Xerox via a deal that gave Xerox pre-IPO Shares in Apple".
This simple, innocent, factual, and let's be honest "douchy", statement wsa in response to someone who said "Apple stole Mac OS from Xerox".
Can you link me to the exact thread in which this happened? I'm interested in seeing it.
You attack me because you cannot be honest enough to admit that you are intolerant of people, like me, who think differently, no matter how well behaved we are.
I disagree, politely and even rather productively, on a fairly regular basis with many people. But I've noticed a consistent history of your posts being aggressive and unpleasant to read. I have noticed that you are, to use your own phrase, not "well behaved." And, as such, I am not surprised that many of your posts get downvotes.
A pursuit of "fruitful discussion" does not mean having to abide jerks.
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Edit to add this Disclosure: His opposition to me is he's an Apple hater and I'm not.
My opposition to you is because your behavior in this social forum is disruptive and unpleasant, not because of your beliefs. I quite literally do not care what you believe so long as you are pleasant to discuss with. In person I disengage from and avoid people who speak and act as you write, and my social circles tend to do likewise. On HN, the analogue to this is a downvote swarm.
(Also, as it happens I'm posting from my retina MBP, which is a brilliant piece of technology which I love very, very much, while I watch Netflix through the Mac mini attached to my TV. A true Apple hater, here.)
Because you cannot argue to the point, and in doing so, you prove my point.
But by admitting it, you lost the debate. You are the problem. There is no excuse for this.
I know if I returned this in kind, that I would be hellbanned.
This is why abusive people like you feel free to call others "asshole" or "douche". Because the moderators have your back.
So, not only are you the problem, but the moderators who censor those who think differently and let people who have nothing but name calling slide, are the problem.
>"Right now that post has 32 points"
Which proves my conclusion- a purely ad hominem post, that argues to the person, and includes calling me names, is well upvoted.
You're incapable of making a rational argument, so you egnage in name calling. Other people like to see me attacked for the "crime" of thinking differently, so they up vote you. Now this thread has you calling me names twice, at length, and derailing the possibility of productive discussion.
Frankly, I think its sad that your mind is so overrun by ideology that you're unable to think sufficiently to construct acounter argument, or your integrity is so low that you think "smearing the queer" and getting applauded for it is some sort of a victory.
And of course, blame the queer. He had it coming. For daring to be different. You are nothing more than a bigot. Unable to make an argument, so you call people names.
And you are what is ruining this site.
Once more, if it is as straightforward as you claim I will be more than happy to agree that your point has some validity, but I'd like to see proof rather than unfounded assertions (whereas I would say that my assertions have been pretty well demonstrated by your behavior in this thread).
[1] - http://goo.gl/ubWZ7
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3240050
This also seems to be related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2934973
There's an unreasonable amount of emotionally charged language in your post. This is Hacker News, not "call people uninformed barely-computer literate consumers and haters because they don't share your viewpoint news". Make your arguments in a civil manner, please.
If you write with the assumption that people who disagree with you are dishonest, liars, haters, etc., it's going to leak into your writing unless you are a particularly gifted writer--your phrasing and word choice will betray it. And people don't much like it when your entire schtick involves emotionally charged accusations against them. Which is why I'm not surprised to see either of those downvoted.
People are good at tagging, and ignoring, jerks. There's a decent amount of indirect jerkdom in both of those posts. I can't be surprised they got nuked, but I doubt it'd be because he's writing in defense of Apple.
>Xerox did not invent the GUI.
What?
I'm sorry to say, but eropple is right, you have a terrible attitude. It's obvious that you're a bright guy (or gal), and reading through your comments I'd say you definitely have something to contribute to HN. But the words often seem to come out the wrong way. You should think about that and try to do something about it, primarily for your own sake. The way the world works is that if you have a positive attitude, respect other people, take their arguments to heart and don't point fingers you'll be more successful and lead a happier life.
I'm guessing you're not as old as me, so take this as friendly advice from an old man that has seen a lot of people and learnt a few things about how they work.
I'll look forward to seeing some great comments from you in the future.
I do think there is a lot of bad downvoting and that there are certain demographics (were you expecting a flat distribution?) which results in the suppression of certain types of opinion to some extent. You are correct there. But this doesn't help:
"haters going to hate, and leftists hate private property and fandroids hate apple."
If you take an offensive position right at the top of the thread, how do you expect people to respond?
My argument that the site was overrun with this kind of stuff is only supported by you continuing to produce it.
So, please do.
My experience with HN has been, at least up to this point, that ideological ranting will largely be met with ideological upvoting. That is to say if your arguments are based on ideology, you're going to get upvotes or downvotes based on your ideological compatibility with people on the site. However unlike reddit, if you base your comments on defensible assertions and evidence, you will get upvoted even if your comment goes against the grain of the prevailing ideology.
There are actually people who seem to follow me around (like the one who attacked me in this thread) for the sole purpose of harassing me... for the "crime" of thinking differently.
If you find the right subject at the right time, you can make an argument that is good and get upvoted. I don't deny that.
I'm not saying always, I'm saying too often, and it feels to me, the majority of the time, its ideological.
Nobody's following you around. The most likely explanation is that you and they are attracted to the same articles for the same reasons, so you keep bumping into each other. After a while you'll start to recognize each other, and by that point, they'll remember all your previous interactions and take them into account when you run into them again.
Uncontrolled, collective curation has a lot of flaws, perhaps, but 'human curation' generally is more important than ever particularly from individuals or small groups. You just need to choose your gatekeepers carefully and steer clear of the herd mentality if it doesn't work for you.
2) Spend the rest of the tangent hypocritically complaining about name-calling while demanding that someone refute your purely anecdotal evidence.
3) Triumphantly explain how I've somehow proven your point by posting this.
If any website causes you to often block it in your HOSTS file, then perhaps you should make a real effort at not unblocking it?
All I'm saying is that if chewing on glass gives you discomfort, well, stop chewing.
I understand getting fed up with reading endless (often poorly argued) debates online, but that's a different issue.
Although today is a special day (in most of the US) because you get that "extra hour." Grumble grumble DST...