Comment by dredmorbius | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dredmorbius | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

there are three articles about that at the top of the frontpage that say exactly the same thing with exactly the same comments.

Worse, two were based on the same guy at G+ raving about the whole thing.[1]

I'm a little curious about how the stories hit the front page and have stayed up so long. I don't know if it's fully organic, if Google's reputation has really suffered that much, if it's specific to the HN community, or if someone at WaggEd[2] woke up Saturday morning, glanced at HN's submission queue, and decided they needed some nudging. Or Apple, or Oracle, or Facebook, or even some of the privacy rights groups (though Google's slightly late-to-the-game but strident opposition to NSA/PRISM surveillance seems commendable).

But by HN's metric of what's worthy of consideration[3], the story seems to resonate. And I have to say for myself, having worked in the tech field for a few decades and watched data, surveillance, and analytic capabilities mushroom, I think it's a damned good thing for people to be questioning.

That said: I'm partial to Reddit myself, if you find the right subs. And if you're into the whole drama thing, their personal information policy ain't bad either.

_______________________________

Notes:

1. I happen to be that guy. And I'm pretty much just as amazed as anyone.

2. Microsoft's PR firm. Or whomever they use for online reputation management.

3. That being: stuff which makes the front page.

What are some of the good subreddits that would appeal to an HN audience?

Used to be /r/programming... not anymore though. Just go to techcrunch and wired.com, that way you'll see everything that makes it to proggit - but only once, instead of every day for a week. The more specific the better, provided there's a lot of subscribers and there's regular new developments in the topic of interest. So /r/doctorwho sucks pretty hard when the show isn't in season. There's a lot of crocheted figurines, etc, it's painful.

/r/bicycling, /r/motorcycles and /r/autos are all great, but /r/justrolledintotheshop is brilliant because of how specific it is and how there's always new content - ie. picutres of idiotic things customers bring to their mechanics. /r/scooters is not great because the community is too small.

The subreddit for my phone is of interest. Programming languages that I'm trying to learn - Python, Scala. Skills I'm interested in - welding, CNC machinery.

Well, that's a good start if you're into things on wheels and programming, anyway.

It sounds like /r/doctorwho suffers from a particular thing I've observed, which is that the more specific a subreddit is to some target of fandom, the more likely it's filled with cringeworthy uncritical fanboys.

And fangirls - responsible for most of the crocheting and cupcakes.

http://www.reddit.com//r/AskHistorians/ is easily my favorite subreddit. The quality of the lengthy submissions and the fanatically rigorous moderation is amazing.

http://www.reddit.com//r/DepthHub/ is a great highlighter for introductions to quality subreddits. Its how I found /r/AskHistorians/

http://www.reddit.com//r/BestOf/ is good too.

Other than that it depends on your particular interests.

There is an outstanding problem that subreddits I would love exist but are hard to find. However that does also protect them and their mods from the slavering hordes of captioned gif posts.

If someone likes the subreddits mentioned above, you might also want to look at these:

http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview,

http://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics,

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskSocialScience/,

http://www.reddit.com/r/Foodforthought/.

It depends on what you're interested in.

I'd start by, say looking at a set of current tech sites, seeing what current articles appeal to you most, and searching for those at Reddit. Look for the subs they turn up in and check out the conversation.

I'm actually mostly following subs that don't have to do with IT issues (programming, systems admin/DevOps, or networking) as I'm finding my interests lie elsewhere. One rule of Reddit is that if you can imagine it, there's a subreddit for it.

One G+ feature I'd liked was the fact that my posts there formed their own channel, a feature somewhat lacking on Reddit. I've created my own user subreddit as a place I can post and curate my own links or discussions. Not sure if I'll keep it but it's an interesting idea.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com