Ask HN: What are some of the best HN comments that you've read?
Have you read a comment here that influenced you significantly, had some great ideas in it, was memorable for some reason, or was just fun to read? Share the link here.
A parody of being a startup founder: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4166183
> Yes, only once. But I actually consider my first score on the Putnam (53, ranked 53.5th in North America) to be my most impressive performance on the Putnam, considering that I was only 14 years old at the time.
I'll say here what I posted there a moment ago: Seven years after making a fool of myself on Hacker News, I wonder if my epitaph will be "Yes, I won the Putnam".
I think Ravi Vakil was just given as an example of somebody with a lot of academic accomplishment.
Remember that success comes from improving OTHER people's lives. All your achievements, while probably very gratifying to your mother, have not improved my life at all. - dbosson
Do you use OS X or Mozilla? Have you ever used their software update mechanisms? If yes, I've improved your life -- they use my delta compression work (bsdiff, originally written as part of FreeBSD Update) to reduce the size of updates which have to be downloaded. As of about a year ago, my work had saved users around the world well over a hundred years of waiting for updates to download. -cpervicapatio11 and the Fair Credit Reporting Act: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7135833
spolsky on detecting toxic customers: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1987223
tptacek on naming your company: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4684845
The journey of Flappy Bird: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7207943
Programming is terrible: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6469360
On being a consultant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6443135
Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6263458
Are designers crazy? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5002262
Why learning to code is so hard: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4933178
"I don't understand": http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4930262
death and regrets: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4540459
Sometimes you can find also great comments [2] from less visible HN'ers. E.g. I suggest a "niche" comment on the best way to negociate a claimed domain name [3].
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders
"How I crashed HN" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=639976
Sometimes it's not just the comment, but the context in which the comment is made.
As much as we all say we're governed by reason, there's still some timidity and doubt and he has this great ability to call people on it in a constructive way.