Hacker News Reader

Buzzard is such a good writer. Read it all the way to the end - it gets (even) better as it goes along.

dangon Palantir CEO Alex Karp purchased 37,000 acres of forests in Sweden

Palantir founder purchases large swath of forest in Sweden - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49884169 - Sept 2026 (93 comments)

dangon Surprisingly complex waves reveal the brain's inner workings

It's such a frequently asked question that, come to think of it, it belongs in the FAQ!

The answer is (1) yes, there probably are lots of other comments breaking the guidelines much worse than yours were, and (2) no, the reason I responded to you-but-not-them is nothing personal to you (such as your having recently said something about HN). It's simply that I didn't see those other posts! and we can't moderate what we don't see.

We don't even see 10% of what gets posted to HN; there's far too much. For that reason, it's impossible for moderation to be consistent in the sense of giving every post more-or-less the same treatment. We can only do that on the subset of posts which we do see—and there we do try to be more-or-less consistent—but since readers have no idea what that subset actually is, it ends up seeming super inconsistent and even unfair.

Also, we read the site in all kinds of random-access ways, so even when other comments-that-deserve-to-be-moderated are proximate, we don't necessarily know about them. From a reader's point of view that's even worse: how can you moderate X, but pass over Y doing far worse right on the same page?

It leads to feelings of being singled out personally, or of the moderators taking sides and favoring the comments they happen to agree with. That's why your question commonly arises: it's baked into the fundamentals. Unfortunately it's not so clear what to do about them; that's one consequence of their being fundamental.

dangon Updated Google Maps shows destruction of the city of Rafah

Edit: I've unbanned the account for reasons discussed downthread, but please stop breaking the site guidelines.

---

We've banned this account because it has been using HN primarily (even exclusively?) for political/national/etc. battle for many months. That's not allowed here, regardless of what you're for or against. (https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...)

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

(and I suppose I'd better add: (1) yes, this would be the same if the person were arguing exactly the opposite; and (2) yes, I'm sure there are others doing just as badly which we haven't banned yet. If so, the reason is that we haven't seen them yet. We read HN pretty randomly, and can't come close to seeing everything.)

dangon Clef: Open-weight decision models, and new RL fine-tuning platform

Ok, we've put weights instead of source in the title, at least until someone comes along and says that's not right either!

dangon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2026)

Looks like they made it to the other thread. Thanks for watching out for a fellow user!

dangon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2026)

Please follow the rules at the top of the thread.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49925489.

dangon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2026)

Please respect the rules at the top of the thread. I realize that not every company treats applicants as well as they should, but it's also the case that not every horror story is fair, and we are in no position to adjudicate the difference.

(I am not commenting on your particular story, and have no reason to doubt what you're saying. It's just a rule that we try to stick to in general.)

We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49927073.

dangon Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (October 2026)

I've moved it now. Thanks for watching out for a fellow user!

dangon Ask HN: What are you reading?

I've fixed it now. From https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc:

If your url gets linked incorrectly, put it in <angle brackets> and it should work.

dangon Surprisingly complex waves reveal the brain's inner workings

Could you please stop posting low-quality comments, such as snark, flamebait, and provocation? Your account has unfortunately been doing a ton of this lately. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

dangon Surprisingly complex waves reveal the brain's inner workings

"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

dangon Gemini 4 Argon

Related ongoing thread:

Gemini 4 Argon (High): Intelligence, Performance and Price Analysis - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49914236

dangon Gemini 4 Argon (High): Intelligence, Performance and Price Analysis

Related ongoing thread:

Gemini 4 Argon - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49913571

dangon Show HN: Strata – an expressive semantic layer that can say no to your LLM

Ah, good catch. The submitted URL was https://strata.do/try/ but since that's linked from the text, I've replaced it with the actual landing page (https://strata.do/). Thanks!

dangon Show HN: Strata – an expressive semantic layer that can say no to your LLM

Can you please edit out swipes, especially when discussing someone's work? You broke both HN's rules (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and the Show HN rules (https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html), and your comment would be fine without that bit.

You could make an even more helpful comment by explaining what would make the landing page better, but at a minimum, please avoid pejoratives and putdowns.

dangon A brief history of the Bloomberg terminal

Thanks! Macroexpanded:

A look back: The Bloomberg Keyboard (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20742329 - Aug 2019 (55 comments)

A look back: The Bloomberg Keyboard (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17079033 - May 2018 (104 comments)

dangon Pentagon Influencer Called Liberal Women 'Pestilence' Who Will End Civilization

Please keep religious flamewar off HN. The indignation/information ratio is far too high.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

dangon Vermont replacing power plants with home batteries

I've put that link in the toptext. Thanks!

dangon Booted up in 1993, this server still runs – but not for much longer (2017)

One (little) past thread:

Booted Up in 1993, This Server Has Been in Continuous Operation Ever Since - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13507972 - Jan 2017 (3 comments)

Perhaps there have been others on the topic?

dangon Show HN: Raven – The harness of harnesses, built for RSI

Can you please not post AI-generated or AI-edited comments to HN? It's not allowed here - see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#generated and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47340079.

Of course, it's impossible to know for sure what was LLM processed or not, but this post got classified that way.

dangon Sustainable energy without the hot air (2008)

Sustainable Energy – without the hot air (2008) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33957424 - Dec 2022 (2 comments)

Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air (Revised, Community Edition) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29056343 - Oct 2021 (133 comments)

Keeping David MacKay's 'Sustainable Energy – without the hot air' up-to-date - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14009057 - March 2017 (39 comments)

"Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air" by David JC MacKay - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=845446 - Sept 2009 (31 comments)