markkat

I think you can change interface, but you can't fundamentally change our sensory organs or how we process information (at least not with an app). We have a biological bias to certain interfaces.

Personally, I prefer to discuss content on another site. Not because their commenting systems are better, but because I have a wide range of interests, and it is more convenient for me to discuss information where any content can come in.

Also, on a site dedicated to discussion, I don't have to worry about moderation or permission of the content creator.

Don't stop working on things.

That's it.

It's habit-forming, actually. Just get over the hump.

Maybe. I haven’t seen any evidence as of yet, but it is early. Also, the effect of followers/clout upon karma is pretty conservative. Another way around that is that eventually, I expect that people will be as interested or more interested in their hubfeed, rather than the front page. If it gets busy enough, I might exchange the two as the logged in home page.

Do you have any ideas why it might get gamed in particular?

(BTW, did this story get frozen at 5 votes? It got there quick and then died. :/) EDIT: I guess not. 6! :)

That's quite a bit. I guess even a google account would be a big boost. Thanks for the info.

Thanks for the suggestion. You are probably right. I see tagmask uses them. Have you noticed an effect? Community sites are always plagued by the chicken/egg problem, so removing any friction is probably worth the effort.

In the case of Hubski, a lot of the functionality comes as a result of using the site, and I think I can do better translating that to non-users. I see tagmask has a video. That's probably a good idea too.

Thanks dagski. It's appreciated.

It's beautiful. I don't know if Craigslist is the optimal medium, but I like looking at it. Nice work!

Dealing with 3 tons of flagstone my wife ordered and one of a list of things for hubski.com.

Winking at a shill account is pretty meta. Your shill calling you on it is even more meta.

Whoa.

Well that decides that then. :)

I do it for the submitter on my site. I understand why some might think it is controversial, however. Actually, it might be best to keep it to comments only. -That's user created content. I'm going to consider that for my site. Thanks.

HN could allow us to put a flattr link in our submissions. I've done it for my site, crickets so far...

There is a similar service for Bitcoin that I am thinking about adding. That might be more interesting.

Down-to-earth cool guy. Reddit owes a lot of what it is to him. I can't see how the community won't benefit from this. Congrats Alexis.

>I think this is definitely the edge of a huge new market.

I agree. I also feel that we are going to see uses of this information that we haven't considered yet.

Urban planning seems a very low-hanging fruit. I'd bet you can predict crime to some extent too.

As I read this, I kept thinking about Roller Coaster Tycoon. Watching all those little people mill about.

PG might consider doing something similar to what I am doing on Hubski (http://hubski.com). -Scores have ranged values, only the user sees their absolute score.

Maybe I can give something in return for the great source code. :) Thanks PG.

And yet, almost no one knows of them. What will be interesting, is if/when the average person is aware of them. As it is a border-less currency, that's a lot of average people.

IMO, the great thing is, we will get to find out what happens. This is an interesting experiment.

>How does that make sense? If the supply is decreasing and competition for it simultaneously increasing, how does that make it less valuable (even in the cynical view of the PhD as a commodity)?

A degree is a commodity. The education behind it might be less so. I don't see it as cynical. The funding system requires a PhD, which confers a type of value on the degree. As you describe, yes, funding is currently very valuable, the degree has become less so.

>As I mentioned in my earlier comment, unless the PhD in question scammed the system (it happens), it at least proves that they have the focus to go deep. It's not a double implication though, which is what people seem to forget and then go on hyperbolic rants.

It doesn't necessarily require a scam. For example, sometimes the candidate of an advisor that is not very involved, but brings a lot of money and/or reputation, can slip through without proper scrutiny. Sometimes the committee is dysfunctional. There are many reasons why it happens.

I do believe that word is spreading amongst possible students about the actual value of a graduate education. I feel that my PhD is valuable, but not execptionally so. I could be earning much more now had I just gone into the job market. However, it is very difficult to get funded as a researcher without a PhD. That's probably the most valuable component of my degree. It's a certificate in that sense.

That said, funding is decreasing and the number of people fighting for it is increasing, which makes it less valuable.

All this aside, a PhD is worth next to nothing in my eyes. I know brilliant, capable people without them, and dull incompetent people that have earned them.

I don't mean a phone call to stop ff, just tracking the positions of the phones to prevent it.

I think a large part of the motivation is to limit friendly fire. My father served in Vietnam. He said he was shot at by the US much more often than by the VC. Once he and a pal were sent to guard the perimeter. Just after they got into position, their base opened up on them.

>I'm not convinced that even developers are.. and I'm picking my words with trepidation here.. sophisticated enough to put together queries, filters or even collections of topics in the main.

Absolutely. Human curation feels right, because that's what we've been doing for so many thousands of years. We are multi-faceted, and so are our decisions on what information is useful and when.

>Yes, but as any cognitive psychology banks his career on... we are also information-seeking creatures: basing survival strategies on our ability to predict, control, and assess the degree of our control, etc.

That is actually to my point. I think feeds satisfy the information gathering aspect of our needs quite well. However, I think in large part, these services fail to provide our need to meaningfully share and to build valuable connections based on that sharing.

Interesting thoughts. Personally, I think that we need to look more at the nature of ourselves, and less at the nature of the information. We are social creatures that have evolved to interact in a certain way.

Part of the information overload IMO, stems from the fact that it is satisfying only one aspect of our need to socialize. I think what is lacking, is the ability to go socially deeper with the information presented. If we find like minded folk, we should be able to form transient groups about this commonality, and then dissolve it or ignore it when we are concerned about something else.

The problem I have with much of the information I am fed, is that it treats me like a flat list of interests. It doesn't react to my mood, and it generally doesn't allow me to make meaningful connections.

One thing I appreciate about HN, is that the people here work to inject an intellectual social human element to the interaction. The platform might not be optimized for it, but it is more or less successful.

Here's how I am doing it: Grab an open-source program (in a space that interests you), figure out how to get it running, then mess with it. Keep changing it and messing with it.

After time, you will begin to understand more, and gain confidence. Just keep at it. Don't stop pursuing your business interests, etc, but just code code code. Best of luck!

I think a flattr like service that uses Bitcoins would be great. It might be a good way to increase circulation too.

Thanks for pointing these out mikhailfranco and arethuza. I'm the author of the linked post. I'll be giving them a read.

Just scanning them now, I think they will be very helpful.

Hubski, a thoughtful content forum built on the HN code. Much more to do, but you can follow people and topics, and a bunch of other things. http://hubski.com

Alexa shows something similar, but it's pretty noisy: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/techcrunch.com#

I don't think the content has changed much, and TC is still my preferred "big tech blog". But FB comments decreased my visiting quite a bit. I used to comment with Disqus quite frequently. Trolling is down, but the comments are less interesting.

Think about what would happen to HN if we used FB profiles.

Comments are valuable content. They aren't just a widget. FB comments are bland.

Awesome. Testing spam filter. :)