Looks to be written and self-published by a recent grad. I think the feeling of "flatness" comes from the author's background as a less experienced writer. Nonetheless, I found their points notable and respect their choice to publish.
I agree with this. In the same way internet is synonymous with Facebook in some countries, I think any kind of niche community defaults to congregating in a subreddit. Sometimes I'd even describe HN as a subreddit focused on tech and entrepreneurship to describe it to people who don't know much about it.
Subreddits are almost different websites with different moderators and different cultures. HN is now one of the only forums I consistently visit. Otherwise subreddits dominate this method of topic-focused discussion.
They're irrelevant because they aren't, to my knowledge, considered in the algorithm of how comments and posts are ranked on Hacker News. It's not an assessment of their value by any means. I'm hoping to emphasize the contrary, that participation is important to the site.
I think politics is similar. Many people don't vote and this makes them irrelevant to politicians. They are irrelevant in terms of winning an election. In a place with low voter turnout, the interests of those who do vote is amplified.
HN is CS/Tech/Entrepreneurship focused so I don't see a problem with it being a bubble of people who are skilled and participate in these activities. All people are welcome to the site which I think is fantastic but the site has a certain culture. If you don't enjoy hacker news than go to a site whose culture you enjoy more. I frequent here because I enjoy the content more than other forum sites such as poetsandquants or bogleheads or the infinite set of subreddits.
Sure, I'll elaborate. I'm not logged in but also have a list of specific subreddits I frequent. I visit the same subreddits so frequently that on my safari mobile app they pop up as recommended. I press on that instead of logging in. I like the mixing feature of the home page for similar topics but prefer browsing a single subreddit at a time so there isn't much need to log in.
I've always found the 90-9-1 rule fascinating. Especially when considering anonymous or semi-anonymous forums such as Hacker News or Reddit. These sites have large audiences and don't require users to log in. Therefore, they have an incredible amount of "lurkers" who do not comment, post, or vote. I think voting is an important aspect of content curation. So if a type of individual is more likely to vote, then that type of content will be more prevalent even if it is not necessarily the content the 90% want to see. But they're not voting so they're irrelevant.
In turn, the users who do actively post and comment have an amplified affect on what the 90% actually see. I find this to be particularly interesting when the culture of a userbase changes. I've been a long time user of Reddit, however rarely am I ever logged in. Overtime, I've felt that the culture of Reddit has changed to be much more liberal with posting low-effort comments. Many new users post on every post they see, while a previous generation of users may have dismissed that kind of behavior as being "Facebook-like" behavior. I think it may be another factor in the age old rule that the larger a site grows, the more the quality of discussion drops.
Sorry, but what is exactly the relation to onlyFans? Is the pitch that you can sign up as a content creator and have others pay to see what you’ve been trading? If so, bold to advertise Pelosi or Dorsey as users. Or is it that you can pay to follow trades made by established figures which OnlyTrades tracks and offers the data as a service?
I thought Public was silly enough of an idea and they do this for free. I guess gone are the days of “MySpace for pets” and “Facebook for clowns” and in with “OnlyFans for XYZ” to describe a subscription service.
In regards to personal discussion: bogleheads. Otherwise same principal as HN that as a community grows large, especially in finance or other trendy topics, the quality of discussion drops.
Schooling, whether private or public, is so universal that there's endless different cases and motivations. The area I grew up in this was definitely a contributing factor. A lot of families sent their children to the same private school, belonged to the same country club, summered in the same places, and attended the same religious organizations. They were all culture aspects that fit together for this particular community. This can quickly lead to people spending their lives only ever in one extremely privileged bubble.
This description reminds me of my public school. My point is that there's enormous variation in both private schools and public schools. I think there should be more nuanced terms for public schools than lumping them all together.
In high school I described my public school as faux-public given that the school district was dependent on local property values (yes, definition of public school) while support from the state was negligible to the overall budget.
In the four years I was there we had maybe a fight (more of a tussle) about once a year, our football team won a game about every two years, and our science olympiad or other extra curriculum program placed nationally every year. If students were working on projects it wasn't surprising if the teacher left to make photocopies or do other things while we worked. In terms of outcomes, in my math/hard sciences about 75% attended ivies. There are many great private schools in the area but given that they have the same test scores (while being able to choose their student body) and same college outcomes I would not recommend discrediting a school simply because it is public
I think a better term may be those trying to “justify” their school choice. After their home one of the next largest choices, both financially and as a parent, is where to educate your children. Paying 50,000 a year and people will definitely justify it after the fact. Just because you have the disposable income doesn’t mean you should only like at private schools because that’s the expected thing to do.
Shocked at some of these parents' responses regarding their sweeping characterization of public schools vs private schools. I despise this public vs private school debate since its just too broad of a scale. Given the reliance of American public education on local property values you have plenty of astonishing public schools. Unfortunately, a handful of miles down the road in the next neighborhood you may also have decrepit underfunded schools.
When deciding where to live find a neighborhood that values education and takes pride in its school district. Unfortunately this may come at the cost of higher real estate values, but fundamentally the school your child attends will be one of the most defining aspects of their childhood. The local public schools here compensate their teachers significantly more than the private schools in the area. Furthermore, their average test scores are about a percentage less across all standardized tests while allowing of all backgrounds instead of having the ability to choose their student body like the private schools.
I attended a public school but had many close friends in some of the private schools around me. In terms of college outcomes my friends from school and friends from the private schools attended similar pretentious schools. However, I feel that had I attended a private school I would have spent all my formative years in the same bubble of snobby traditions and deciding where to summer. My high school had plenty of astonishingly wealthy students but our culture was much more actively unimpressed when peers bought an s-class for their 16th or took their race car to school.
I have a lot of sympathy for education about neurodiversity and any form of spreading acceptance of those who are different than ourselves or what’s considered normal. However, as another comment mentioned, this seems overly reflective of a Hollywood depiction of autism and the supposed hidden intellectual super powers of autistic individuals. Autism is a wide spectrum and seems to only be widening as we understand more about neurodevelopment. Some people with severe autism will never be independent, complete a basic education, or even verbally communicate. Yet others may find themselves only being diagnosed as adults and/or achieve traditional metric of success. Not that one or the other, or being neurotypical, is an assessment of an individual’s value to their colleagues, friends, or family. I think Mark Rober’s recent video in reference to his son addresses this well.
What irks me about this article is that autism could be replaced with practically any other identity. Different perspectives, hard workers, curious individuals are always valued whether neurotypical, neurodiverse, or of any other identity.
I definitely find dual monitors or more for splitting code, documentation, or other relevant project information to be similar to having multiple papers lying across my desk. I don’t want to stack the pages on top of one another but instead I prefer to lie them all on one large desk. Usually I’m only working on one page but need other references. If another paper truly is important than I can use Spectacle to quickly reorganize.
Having email, slack, discord, or HN open is an absolute no go. Nothing more distracting than focusing on a project and seeing new emails or messages stream in. I try to limit those to a separate laptop or tablet at all times.