Tell HN: Launch HN Test
111 comments
Ok, since this is getting attention, I'll explain.
Launch HN posts for YC startups are one of three formal things that HN does for YC (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). The others are job ads for YC startups, and orange usernames for YC alumni—but only when displayed to other YC alumni, which always generates "why is my username not orange" emails. But I digress.
Launch HNs are like job ads in that they get an initial front-page placement, usually somewhere between #8 and #10. (I think job ads start a little higher). Then they fall down the page. Unlike job ads, though, launch posts can be upvoted and commented on. Once they've gotten their initial placement they function like regular stories. Occasionally the community finds one particularly interesting and it gets upvoted higher. This recent one spent quite a while at #1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22616857 (http://hnrankings.info/22616857/).
We started doing the Launch HNs three years ago. I was worried that the community would hate them because we were taking additional front page space for YC. (Our intention was to make it so that a launch post and a job ad wouldn't appear at the same time, but I never ended up writing that code, so sometimes they do.) But that hasn't ever come up. I think it's because launch threads are intrinsically more interesting than job ads (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22767319 downthread for more on that).
All this time, the initial front-page placement of launch posts, unlike job ads, has been done manually. That is, founders have had to email us and we've manually jigged the post onto the front page. The problem with that is that you have to be awake to do it. I don't want to be awake to do it, especially because startup founders tend to be businessy, bustling types who are all bright-and-early, while my schedule drifts ever deeper into the darkness as the few moorings I had remaining to the rest of society dissolve in this time of social distancing and self-isolation, which were basically my bread and butter to begin with (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUlBWNDW72E).
Until now, I've told founders to post at Pacific 10am and email us, because that's roughly when I get going in the morning. Tomorrow, though, there are two. One is a fintech startup in Latin America who want to post at 9am. And the other is Peter Roberts, who's going to do another immigration AMA (https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=proberts). Peter is on the east coast, and wants to get going at 8am Pacific, which is late for him and (ungodly) early for me.
So tonight I got frustrated enough to write some code to deal with it. Frustration reaching a tipping point and boiling over is my gateway into the code these days. My goal is for startups to be able to post their launches, and occasionally for pre-scheduled submissions like Peter's (which are rare), to end up on the front page independently of whenever I went to sleep the night before.
This code turned out to be a lot more complicated than I anticipated. The patch ended up adding a hundred lines of Arc. A hundred lines of Arc! Do you have any idea how many lines of Arc that is? I just looked through the history and the last commit that added that many lines of code was over two years ago when we got Arc to compile to JS. Obviously this change needs to be thoroughly tested, so after testing it on my laptop I deployed it to production and decided to do a couple of sanity checks live. One was to post a test Launch HN using my old account gruseom, which is the founder account for Skysheet, the spreadsheet startup that Scott and I had 10 years ago (and which I still think about every day, but I should avoid digressing again). The code I wrote has some logic in it for cofounder accounts. One thing it's supposed to do is email all the cofounders when a Launch HN post has made it to HN's front page, so they will be ready to engage with commenters. Anyhow, this test post was the OP. The good news: it got placed on the front page in the way that I intended. The bad news: none of the emails were received. God fucking shit fucking goddamnit I knew those emails wouldn't work...I mean, dang.
(Edit: actually that's not what happened. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22772667)
My intention was for this thread to remain obscure, then get placed briefly on the front page by the new code, at which point I'd get the emails and immediately delete it. I didn't think it was very likely to get noticed in the middle of the night here, especially when posted by what ought by now to be an obscure account, but oh well.
I think that covers everything. Hopefully you all will see those two auto-placed posts on the front page tomorrow morning because I do not intend to be awake 5 hours from now. (Edit: it worked!)
Launch HN posts for YC startups are one of three formal things that HN does for YC (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). The others are job ads for YC startups, and orange usernames for YC alumni—but only when displayed to other YC alumni, which always generates "why is my username not orange" emails. But I digress.
Launch HNs are like job ads in that they get an initial front-page placement, usually somewhere between #8 and #10. (I think job ads start a little higher). Then they fall down the page. Unlike job ads, though, launch posts can be upvoted and commented on. Once they've gotten their initial placement they function like regular stories. Occasionally the community finds one particularly interesting and it gets upvoted higher. This recent one spent quite a while at #1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22616857 (http://hnrankings.info/22616857/).
We started doing the Launch HNs three years ago. I was worried that the community would hate them because we were taking additional front page space for YC. (Our intention was to make it so that a launch post and a job ad wouldn't appear at the same time, but I never ended up writing that code, so sometimes they do.) But that hasn't ever come up. I think it's because launch threads are intrinsically more interesting than job ads (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22767319 downthread for more on that).
All this time, the initial front-page placement of launch posts, unlike job ads, has been done manually. That is, founders have had to email us and we've manually jigged the post onto the front page. The problem with that is that you have to be awake to do it. I don't want to be awake to do it, especially because startup founders tend to be businessy, bustling types who are all bright-and-early, while my schedule drifts ever deeper into the darkness as the few moorings I had remaining to the rest of society dissolve in this time of social distancing and self-isolation, which were basically my bread and butter to begin with (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUlBWNDW72E).
Until now, I've told founders to post at Pacific 10am and email us, because that's roughly when I get going in the morning. Tomorrow, though, there are two. One is a fintech startup in Latin America who want to post at 9am. And the other is Peter Roberts, who's going to do another immigration AMA (https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=proberts). Peter is on the east coast, and wants to get going at 8am Pacific, which is late for him and (ungodly) early for me.
So tonight I got frustrated enough to write some code to deal with it. Frustration reaching a tipping point and boiling over is my gateway into the code these days. My goal is for startups to be able to post their launches, and occasionally for pre-scheduled submissions like Peter's (which are rare), to end up on the front page independently of whenever I went to sleep the night before.
This code turned out to be a lot more complicated than I anticipated. The patch ended up adding a hundred lines of Arc. A hundred lines of Arc! Do you have any idea how many lines of Arc that is? I just looked through the history and the last commit that added that many lines of code was over two years ago when we got Arc to compile to JS. Obviously this change needs to be thoroughly tested, so after testing it on my laptop I deployed it to production and decided to do a couple of sanity checks live. One was to post a test Launch HN using my old account gruseom, which is the founder account for Skysheet, the spreadsheet startup that Scott and I had 10 years ago (and which I still think about every day, but I should avoid digressing again). The code I wrote has some logic in it for cofounder accounts. One thing it's supposed to do is email all the cofounders when a Launch HN post has made it to HN's front page, so they will be ready to engage with commenters. Anyhow, this test post was the OP. The good news: it got placed on the front page in the way that I intended. The bad news: none of the emails were received. God fucking shit fucking goddamnit I knew those emails wouldn't work...I mean, dang.
(Edit: actually that's not what happened. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22772667)
My intention was for this thread to remain obscure, then get placed briefly on the front page by the new code, at which point I'd get the emails and immediately delete it. I didn't think it was very likely to get noticed in the middle of the night here, especially when posted by what ought by now to be an obscure account, but oh well.
I think that covers everything. Hopefully you all will see those two auto-placed posts on the front page tomorrow morning because I do not intend to be awake 5 hours from now. (Edit: it worked!)
Possibly the most interesting test post I've seen in a long time, thank you. I suspect the "current circumstances" worked against you here - you have no idea how bored Europe was by 10am.
One thing I always wanted to ask if why do job ads not allow comments? I'm guessing its to prevent negative comments/trolling (we get plenty of 'this will never work' on Launch/Show posts), but at the same time I feel like comments on job ads could be a good way for the founders and existing employees (tell us why you as a meager developer are excited to work there!) to interact with the HN community.
What _-___________-_ said. The short version: job ads are boring. The long version:
If job ads were threads, each thread would be a generic referendum on the company. Worse, it would be the same referendum over and over.
Job ads are boring, so there would be nothing to discuss other than how one feels about the company. That's boring except to the people with strong feelings, and those tend to be negative on the internet, so the threads would fill up with negative generic comments.
I believe that the hivemind resents boring things, such as submissions where the only new information is "X is hiring", so it gets cranky and fills the vacuum with indignation, basically as the only way to amuse itself in the absence of anything interesting to discuss. It doesn't want to, it just doesn't know any better way to have fun in a vacuum.
In practice, what this would look like in a job thread is "I applied in 2015 and never heard back", plus—if there has ever been a negative story X about the company—every variation of X, X, X, repeated increasingly snarkily.
Building a business is a long slog. One needs to hire more often than one has scintillating new information for the community to have fun discussing. Therefore, each successive job ad would be even more boring than the previous one, leading to monotonically increasing resentment. Repetition is the enemy of curiosity.
Launch posts don't suffer from this dynamic because by definition, the startup is new, so there's something new to discuss.
If job ads were threads, each thread would be a generic referendum on the company. Worse, it would be the same referendum over and over.
Job ads are boring, so there would be nothing to discuss other than how one feels about the company. That's boring except to the people with strong feelings, and those tend to be negative on the internet, so the threads would fill up with negative generic comments.
I believe that the hivemind resents boring things, such as submissions where the only new information is "X is hiring", so it gets cranky and fills the vacuum with indignation, basically as the only way to amuse itself in the absence of anything interesting to discuss. It doesn't want to, it just doesn't know any better way to have fun in a vacuum.
In practice, what this would look like in a job thread is "I applied in 2015 and never heard back", plus—if there has ever been a negative story X about the company—every variation of X, X, X, repeated increasingly snarkily.
Building a business is a long slog. One needs to hire more often than one has scintillating new information for the community to have fun discussing. Therefore, each successive job ad would be even more boring than the previous one, leading to monotonically increasing resentment. Repetition is the enemy of curiosity.
Launch posts don't suffer from this dynamic because by definition, the startup is new, so there's something new to discuss.
Job ads in the "who is hiring" threads generally only attract comments of one of a few types:
"I applied to this place and they never got back to me"
"Thanks, I applied"
"Please add salary/remoteness/interview process to your job ad"
"You have a typo in your text/email address/website URL"
"I applied to this place and they never got back to me"
"Thanks, I applied"
"Please add salary/remoteness/interview process to your job ad"
"You have a typo in your text/email address/website URL"
The latter two comments seem pretty useful feedback though
number 1 is pretty useful feedback for me, if they don't respond to people who apply I don't intend to take time to make a good cover letter and adapt my CV to highlight how I would be a good fit for the job.
As a hiring manager I can assure you that is not always practical. If someone makes it to an interview, even if it's just a first stage telephone interview, then I'll readily give feedback. If some sends a CV and then asks for feedback then I will also happily provide feedback if time permits). But recruitment is a heavily time consuming process already and some positions can receive dozens or more CVs so I don't have the time to reply to every single candidate and explain to them "Thank you for applying but unfortunately we've had better CVs through." Likewise I've never expected that when applying for other jobs either.
ok, but I would think like this:
looking for a job is a heavily time consuming process, and going to a new job is a risky process. I'm too well-situated to take that time or risk on any thing that seems off. I would have to be desperate to change that calculation.
If a company does not reply I assume there are potential reasons:
1. company is disorganized, just as a company would penalize me for seeming disorganized I will certainly do the same with a potential employer. The point of a company is in some ways to be more organized than individual humans; it is, after all, an organization. If it can't or won't be organized I won't have anything to do with them.
2. Company is rude. Treating someone badly when you have no power over them is a warning sign never to let the company have power over you.
3. Company does not have good tools setup to automate responses to people whose applications it has decided not to go further with - which is a subset of company is disorganized.
So I guess there is a mismatch between our goals and needs in the requirement process.
looking for a job is a heavily time consuming process, and going to a new job is a risky process. I'm too well-situated to take that time or risk on any thing that seems off. I would have to be desperate to change that calculation.
If a company does not reply I assume there are potential reasons:
1. company is disorganized, just as a company would penalize me for seeming disorganized I will certainly do the same with a potential employer. The point of a company is in some ways to be more organized than individual humans; it is, after all, an organization. If it can't or won't be organized I won't have anything to do with them.
2. Company is rude. Treating someone badly when you have no power over them is a warning sign never to let the company have power over you.
3. Company does not have good tools setup to automate responses to people whose applications it has decided not to go further with - which is a subset of company is disorganized.
So I guess there is a mismatch between our goals and needs in the requirement process.
#3, especially: if your company has sane mail tools, it can autorespond to every single application with a variant on this:
Thanks for applying to $COMPANY.
We will get back to you by $(TODAY + 7) if we want to start a conversation.
Sincerely,
A. Robot
Thanks for applying to $COMPANY.
We will get back to you by $(TODAY + 7) if we want to start a conversation.
Sincerely,
A. Robot
I generally give companies a week or two to reply. If they don’t ever reply, I never apply there again. Or I’ll apply and ghost them years later. Several times.
This thread is a great generic example of why job posts don't enable comments.
But not interesting.
[edit: before you read on bare please in mind I'm not advocating comments be enabled (like many others have assumed).]
I think it's a little redundant making a distinction between "useful" and "interesting" because either way the comment has value. However I do agree with the points you made in your other comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22767319) and that the examples given of useful/interesting comments by the GP doesn't offer a high enough value to justify the inevitable negative and other low value comments. Which I think is the real crux of the matter. Much like why political discussions are generally banned on here, the signal to noise ratio just isn't worth the few valuable comments a submission might receive.
I think it's a little redundant making a distinction between "useful" and "interesting" because either way the comment has value. However I do agree with the points you made in your other comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22767319) and that the examples given of useful/interesting comments by the GP doesn't offer a high enough value to justify the inevitable negative and other low value comments. Which I think is the real crux of the matter. Much like why political discussions are generally banned on here, the signal to noise ratio just isn't worth the few valuable comments a submission might receive.
Nobody is stopping anyone from providing that feedback through mail, so still no need for comments.
I don't understand why you're downvoting me when you're ostensibly making the same point I was. Did you actually read my comment to the end or just made the assumption I'm wrong because I replied to dang? Because I was actually agreeing with him for the most part.
> I don't understand why you're downvoting me when you're ostensibly making the same point I was.
I didn't. I couldn't even if I wanted to, as I always create a new account once downvotes are unlocked as I don't like the temptation of destroying discussions for topics I don't agree with.
I didn't. I couldn't even if I wanted to, as I always create a new account once downvotes are unlocked as I don't like the temptation of destroying discussions for topics I don't agree with.
The distinction between "has value for the submitter of the job ad" and "has value for the entire community" is an important one. Comments that only meet the former test can just be sent directly to the submitter by email or whatever.
Preface: before you read on bare please in mind I'm not advocating comments be enabled (like many others have assumed)
> The distinction between "has value for the submitter of the job ad" and "has value for the entire community" is an important one.
I disagree. For example if there is a typo in a URL could take a while for the poster to update it and they might not even be able to edit their submission if it's not identified in time. So if a community member says "link to xyz.com should by xyz.org" that would help other community members who wouldn't know what the correct URL was meant to be. That kind of comment has real value to everyone and not just the submitter.
> Comments that only meet the former test can just be sent directly to the submitter by email or whatever.
Lets be clear (because I've already stated this twice and it still seems to be overlooked) I'm not advocating that comments should be enabled. I agree with the point that those kind of comments are better off sent out-of-band because they don't offer enough value to justify the inevitable low value comments that would also follow. The only point I was making was that the distinction between useful and interesting shouldn't be overstated because they are typically (though obviously not always) linked.
> The distinction between "has value for the submitter of the job ad" and "has value for the entire community" is an important one.
I disagree. For example if there is a typo in a URL could take a while for the poster to update it and they might not even be able to edit their submission if it's not identified in time. So if a community member says "link to xyz.com should by xyz.org" that would help other community members who wouldn't know what the correct URL was meant to be. That kind of comment has real value to everyone and not just the submitter.
> Comments that only meet the former test can just be sent directly to the submitter by email or whatever.
Lets be clear (because I've already stated this twice and it still seems to be overlooked) I'm not advocating that comments should be enabled. I agree with the point that those kind of comments are better off sent out-of-band because they don't offer enough value to justify the inevitable low value comments that would also follow. The only point I was making was that the distinction between useful and interesting shouldn't be overstated because they are typically (though obviously not always) linked.
And posting in any of the "Who's looking for work" threads mostly just results in lots of people sending you emails:
"We saw you post, would you like to join our platform ..?"
Lots of upwork knockoffs; I've started sending them GDPR Subject Access Requests to see what the companies have scraped and held about me. Next step is obviously data-deletion requests. Fun.
"We saw you post, would you like to join our platform ..?"
Lots of upwork knockoffs; I've started sending them GDPR Subject Access Requests to see what the companies have scraped and held about me. Next step is obviously data-deletion requests. Fun.
They're not supposed to do that, as the rules at the top of the thread make clear. Perhaps we should build some kind of 'flagging' feature so people can report bad actors. Then we could add a warning that bothering HN users illegitimately will land them in the bad dog box on HN.
Dang,
Yours are the only comments I always read.
Thanks for all the stuff you do. Wouldn't have thought you coded too! That's good to know.
I've also had to do tests in production occasionally and hope nobody notices! Good that your code wasn't tied up to the number of upvotes, otherwise you would have a different problem on you hands!
Yours are the only comments I always read.
Thanks for all the stuff you do. Wouldn't have thought you coded too! That's good to know.
I've also had to do tests in production occasionally and hope nobody notices! Good that your code wasn't tied up to the number of upvotes, otherwise you would have a different problem on you hands!
I believe that it has been important to HN's evolution that the (full-time) moderators and programmers have always been the same people, and that we should preserve that invariant.
"middle of the night here" is morning for most of Europe. Quite late in the morning, when people had time to work and maybe do an HN break. I've noticed that stories posted in the morning (for Europe) can get as much traction as other in the evening (american morning); especially if they touch to subjects we are quite sensitive to.
Did you do any study on HN stats and where its audience is coming from ?
Did you do any study on HN stats and where its audience is coming from ?
Oh indeed, it's eternal morning on HN. Or rather, eternal second breakfast / coffee break. I did not mean to imply otherwise. It's just easy to forget when in dev mode and it's dark outside.
> Did you do any study on HN stats and where its audience is coming from?
I did that 2 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16633521
I keep meaning to rerun that analysis. I saved the code for it using the trick described here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22516834.
> Did you do any study on HN stats and where its audience is coming from?
I did that 2 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16633521
I keep meaning to rerun that analysis. I saved the code for it using the trick described here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22516834.
> Frustration reaching a tipping point and boiling over is my gateway into the code these days.
Couldn't have put it better myself. Thanks for the work you do!
Couldn't have put it better myself. Thanks for the work you do!
Is this a Launch?
No, this is a Test.
Did it work?
It should.
Dang!
What?
The one thing that can ruin the test - it happened. Upvotes.
Quite gruseom.
I'll use this as an opportunity to ask something.
Are there any stats how many active users does HN have, on how many servers it runs, on which database etc.?
Because I have recently wanted to look at my older saved/upvoted posts/comments on reddit and found out that you can look only at last 1000 posts and it does various other things to save resources. HN doesn't seem to do things like that and still feels much snappier than reddit (yes reddit has much more users, but still impressive imho).
Are there any stats how many active users does HN have, on how many servers it runs, on which database etc.?
Because I have recently wanted to look at my older saved/upvoted posts/comments on reddit and found out that you can look only at last 1000 posts and it does various other things to save resources. HN doesn't seem to do things like that and still feels much snappier than reddit (yes reddit has much more users, but still impressive imho).
Reddit is a hundred times bigger. It's not just that we aren't in their league...our league is not in their league. So the comparison is a little embarrassing.
It's hard to count active users because you have to define them in order to count them, and we make a point of not tracking people that much. We can count accounts and unique IPs, and that's about it. But it's basically about 5M readers a month, give or take, as far as we can tell. It grows linearly, with large swings. If you step back 10 feet from the graphs and squint, it's basically a straight line for the last 10 years. We like it that way; we wouldn't want to go full Haskell and avoid success at all costs, but we don't want hockey-stick growth either. HN is not a startup!
It runs on one server. Actually the app server (written in Arc) runs on one core. But we have some caching in front of that for logged-out users.
It's hard to count active users because you have to define them in order to count them, and we make a point of not tracking people that much. We can count accounts and unique IPs, and that's about it. But it's basically about 5M readers a month, give or take, as far as we can tell. It grows linearly, with large swings. If you step back 10 feet from the graphs and squint, it's basically a straight line for the last 10 years. We like it that way; we wouldn't want to go full Haskell and avoid success at all costs, but we don't want hockey-stick growth either. HN is not a startup!
It runs on one server. Actually the app server (written in Arc) runs on one core. But we have some caching in front of that for logged-out users.
> we wouldn't want to go full Haskell and avoid success at all costs
Can you elaborate on that statement? To me, it implies that going with Haskell avoids success, but I might be missing something. If that really is the implication, can you explain?
Can you elaborate on that statement? To me, it implies that going with Haskell avoids success, but I might be missing something. If that really is the implication, can you explain?
Oh! That's the Haskell motto: https://www.google.com/search?q=haskell+%22avoid+success+at+.... I'd never troll so hard as to make something like that up, only just enough to quote it. I love it as a perfectly-cut gem of self-deprecating humor.
It has had different interpretations over the years. Simon Peyton Jones described its origins here: https://books.google.com/books?id=2kMIqdfyT8kC&pg=PA283&lpg=.... But that interview was already several years after the fact. See also https://web.archive.org/web/20150419060144/http://www.comput...:
When you become too well known, or too widely used and too successful [...] suddenly you can’t change anything anymore.
The fact that Haskell has up to now been used for just university types has been ideal [...] Now, however, they're starting to complain if their libraries don’t work, which means that we’re beginning to get caught in the trap of being too successful.
What I’m really trying to say is that the fact Haskell hasn’t become a real mainstream programming language, used by millions of developers, has allowed us to become much more nimble, and from a research point of view, that’s great. We have lots of users so we get lots of experience from them. What you want is to have a lot of users but not too many from a research point of view – hence the avoid success at all costs.
Does anyone have the original slide where he used this line? It would be interesting to see what contextual clues were there at the time.
Later it turned out to be a syntactic pun: https://twitter.com/simonmar/status/246335257677271040. The official interpretation seems to be "Don't make success your top priority, because success may compromise things you care about more", whereas the hilarious version would be "Whatever you do, make sure you don't succeed."
Haskell connoisseurs can add info. That is literally all I know about it, or more, since I just Googled half of it. I do recall reading those interviews at the time, no doubt via HN.
It has had different interpretations over the years. Simon Peyton Jones described its origins here: https://books.google.com/books?id=2kMIqdfyT8kC&pg=PA283&lpg=.... But that interview was already several years after the fact. See also https://web.archive.org/web/20150419060144/http://www.comput...:
When you become too well known, or too widely used and too successful [...] suddenly you can’t change anything anymore.
The fact that Haskell has up to now been used for just university types has been ideal [...] Now, however, they're starting to complain if their libraries don’t work, which means that we’re beginning to get caught in the trap of being too successful.
What I’m really trying to say is that the fact Haskell hasn’t become a real mainstream programming language, used by millions of developers, has allowed us to become much more nimble, and from a research point of view, that’s great. We have lots of users so we get lots of experience from them. What you want is to have a lot of users but not too many from a research point of view – hence the avoid success at all costs.
Does anyone have the original slide where he used this line? It would be interesting to see what contextual clues were there at the time.
Later it turned out to be a syntactic pun: https://twitter.com/simonmar/status/246335257677271040. The official interpretation seems to be "Don't make success your top priority, because success may compromise things you care about more", whereas the hilarious version would be "Whatever you do, make sure you don't succeed."
Haskell connoisseurs can add info. That is literally all I know about it, or more, since I just Googled half of it. I do recall reading those interviews at the time, no doubt via HN.
TIL about most of this. Thanks for the detailed explanation.
To me it means that the Haskell project is strictly an academic experiment and seems to avoid mainstream success for itself at all costs. Not that projects using it can't achieve success, just that it'll never be popular and tries very hard not to be, though not really with that intent.
I interpreted that as "allow only very technical post in Erlang or Haskell"
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5M is big. Wow! I mean that’s a large enough number that if you did a LaunchHN with a $50/year subscription and only .01% subscribed, you can have a sustainable solo SaaS business with 250k ARR.
Sounds like the size of a large sub reddit.
We could also compare them this way: these days, HN averages 1500 submissions and 10000 comments (or so) per day. Does anyone with Reddit datamining fu know what percentile that would be for a subreddit? How many such subreddits are there? What are some examples?
Of course there are assumptions involved in mapping that to userbase size or whatever, but it would still be interesting.
Of course there are assumptions involved in mapping that to userbase size or whatever, but it would still be interesting.
there are assumptions involved in mapping that to userbase size
I think these assumptions are the trickier/error-barriest ones. The other, more directly comparable stats suggest reddit is more than 100x bigger than HN. The comment and post numbers here
https://redditblog.com/2019/12/04/reddits-2019-year-in-revie...
make it look like something closer to 500x-ish, give or take.
eyeballing (the purest ancient datamining fu technique) this
https://subredditstats.com/
puts HN somewhere in the 15th-to-20th-ish top subreddit category by post and comment activity.
I think these assumptions are the trickier/error-barriest ones. The other, more directly comparable stats suggest reddit is more than 100x bigger than HN. The comment and post numbers here
https://redditblog.com/2019/12/04/reddits-2019-year-in-revie...
make it look like something closer to 500x-ish, give or take.
eyeballing (the purest ancient datamining fu technique) this
https://subredditstats.com/
puts HN somewhere in the 15th-to-20th-ish top subreddit category by post and comment activity.
Hi dang
This was a good test but it failed some key characteristics to make it an excellent test message.
You didn't put foo or bar anywhere in the test message.
There was no Cthulhu phrases.
Plus there was no pi or the numerical answer to the universe and everything.
I trust you will take this onboard for the next test.
This was a good test but it failed some key characteristics to make it an excellent test message.
You didn't put foo or bar anywhere in the test message.
There was no Cthulhu phrases.
Plus there was no pi or the numerical answer to the universe and everything.
I trust you will take this onboard for the next test.
Also, how does he know that number-containing strings will work if the title isn't "Test123"??
"0123Test" is a better number-containing string for testing, to catch out things that try to interpret the string as a number first and then as a string if that fails. For example, JS's insane parseInt function will give you 123 for "0123Test".
> parseInt("0123Test")
123
> 0123
83
In a way. The convention is that 0123 is "123" in octal.
Yes, I know that's why I even tried it in console as I was a bit surprised that parseInt doesn't do octal.
Why does js even support octal? I never found octal particularly useful. Speak hexadecimal or die
Why does js even support octal? I never found octal particularly useful. Speak hexadecimal or die
Because C does.
> parseInt('0123Test', 8)
83
That leading 0 is also useful for the things that try to interpret the string as number first and are able to understand octal.
Wow, I learned something in here and I was just "trolling" in the test thread!
Thanks!
Thanks!
Agreed on all points. Also, it's going to be very difficult for future HNers to find this test because the title is almost unsearchable. This will make it harder for it to grow organically.
Needs more salty Russian Literature references!
This is new to me, is there a list of these quotes you can get?
In the words of the great Netochka Nezvanova:
https://web.archive.org/web/20010726003346/http://membank.or...
https://web.archive.org/web/20010726003346/http://membank.or...
The beauty of a body, any body is both its singular uniqueness as
a whole and its existence as a swarming chaotic symphony of smaller
worlds; of organs and systems, muscles, bones and organs
made up of molecules, of atoms and so on down to the tinniest
particle. A world its own and within it multiple smaller
worlds; the cardiovascular world, the auricular world
moving out from the body, a larger body or world is created by
that body and so many others orbiting in a confined space and time
i.e. a city, a country, a planet, etc.
/\/ d3knztrukz!on v relevant kontrl mdulez . br3vrbt- . m
- konzp!rass!_ov-ekualz
Netochka Nezvanova
f3.MASCHIN3NKUNST
[email protected]
17.hzV.tRL.478
e
|
| +----------
| | <
\\----------------+ | n2t
| >
e
leave
- indelible traces on said troubled image\inations.
kntent !d :baz!n.ov.atrakz!on [<]Since apparently someone else posted their launch here, I guess I will too lol. This thread is really interesting :).
I'm launching www.devol.io -> a social community for coders. The user base is quite small but I hope we can build it and grow it into something cool!
I'm launching www.devol.io -> a social community for coders. The user base is quite small but I hope we can build it and grow it into something cool!
Were the emails normally being sent manually through some provider, but now going from a mail program on the server?
If so, you might consider using SendGrid or something like that with their API. https://sendgrid.com/docs/API_Reference/Web_API_v3/Mail/inde...
If not using a service, would be interested to hear what configuration (DKIM or whatever) was necessary to add to your existing mail setup to get it to work.
Although I am just totally speculating on what you were talking about.
If so, you might consider using SendGrid or something like that with their API. https://sendgrid.com/docs/API_Reference/Web_API_v3/Mail/inde...
If not using a service, would be interested to hear what configuration (DKIM or whatever) was necessary to add to your existing mail setup to get it to work.
Although I am just totally speculating on what you were talking about.
I realized sheepishly this morning why the emails didn't go through: because the placement code never actually executed. Or rather, it did, but it turned into a no-op because the post was already ranking higher, due to user upvotes, than the rank (#10) where the code would have placed it. I forgot that I'd added that check.
So my complaint turned out to be nonsense, partly because it was 3am or whatever, and partly because "wtf? swear, profanity, curse...oh wait" is my normal debugging process. Just not usually in public.
So my complaint turned out to be nonsense, partly because it was 3am or whatever, and partly because "wtf? swear, profanity, curse...oh wait" is my normal debugging process. Just not usually in public.
Unsure why this has not been clarified yet:
HN now has its own https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/92dd8/test_post_pleas... !
Yay. Really. :D
HN now has its own https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/92dd8/test_post_pleas... !
Yay. Really. :D
Is dang an acronym or does it represent the word we say when disappointed with a certain outcome?
I picked it because (1) it's my first name plus surname initial; (2) it was my email address at my first job; and (3) it's what you say when you make a mistake—so yup, you guessed it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7494093
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18513120
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7494093
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18513120
I always imagined you looked like the weirdo in the window seat with different sized eyeballs, who he was addressing as "Dang".
https://i.pinimg.com/564x/f8/74/40/f8744035e15d69eb8fd4c70de...
https://i.pinimg.com/564x/f8/74/40/f8744035e15d69eb8fd4c70de...
Whoa! I love the second link! Is there an orchestrated horizontally-scaled secure decentralized web service I could use to bookmark all the dang cartoons?!
The best one I remembered from being taped to my mom's fridge, but I just couldn't dig up, was of a big dejected bird standing in front of the open refrigerator, saying:
"Dang! Somebody ate the middle out of the daddy longlegs."
"Dang! Somebody ate the middle out of the daddy longlegs."
[deleted]
Very cool, how is this product different than
https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/02/20/samsung-galaxy-find...
I'd been waiting for this!
Never let a good crisis go to waste: I'm launching https://20-things.com/ :) Could use a good load test ;)
HN always likes new communities. But don't do this:
New account registrations are currently either closed or very limited
If you do that, the psychology goes like this: "I wonder what this is?" (click) "Ooh, a new social community! I like those!" (reads further) "What do you mean, new accounts are closed or very limited? What if I want to join? Why are you gatekeeping me? Damn you!"... except with words stronger than 'damn'.
Once you're ready to let anyone sign up, email [email protected] and we'll help you out.
New account registrations are currently either closed or very limited
If you do that, the psychology goes like this: "I wonder what this is?" (click) "Ooh, a new social community! I like those!" (reads further) "What do you mean, new accounts are closed or very limited? What if I want to join? Why are you gatekeeping me? Damn you!"... except with words stronger than 'damn'.
Once you're ready to let anyone sign up, email [email protected] and we'll help you out.
Thank you, the registrations are now open but each signup incurs a cost (for the SMS) and the budget is currently limited hence the notice. I'll get in touch asap.
Sending even tens of thousands of SMS is very cheap, just how limited is that budget? :)
A few hundred people with US numbers should be able to sign up, but sending SMS overseas is much more expensive. For example, sending to Switzerland: $0.069 per SMS.
That's insane, but in line with what other (local) sms gateways charge here.
But do you really need my phone number?
But do you really need my phone number?
I have experience with building a very large community where registration was based on e-mail alone. Racism & general hate don't even begin to describe the things that came along with anonymity and disposable e-mail...
Why not put a soft limit on the amount of signups-through-mail a day?
After xyz signups through it, make the rest of the day's accounts require manual approval for the first few posts.
You can also mitigate the disposable mail problem pretty easily by requiring whitelisting for any domain that's got more than a few accounts tied to it.
That comes out way cheaper for you, and might improve the quality of conversation (because there are valid reasons for anonymity and pseudonymity).
EDIT:
Also, bug report: the category row at the top doesn't overflow very well; on smaller window-sizes, there are many categories out of view. Maybe make the hamburger menu come up on more than just mobile screen factors?
After xyz signups through it, make the rest of the day's accounts require manual approval for the first few posts.
You can also mitigate the disposable mail problem pretty easily by requiring whitelisting for any domain that's got more than a few accounts tied to it.
That comes out way cheaper for you, and might improve the quality of conversation (because there are valid reasons for anonymity and pseudonymity).
EDIT:
Also, bug report: the category row at the top doesn't overflow very well; on smaller window-sizes, there are many categories out of view. Maybe make the hamburger menu come up on more than just mobile screen factors?
There are plenty of services for anonymous, disposable phone numbers.
True, but far fewer than disposable e-mail.
20-Things feedback (unsolicited ;-)
- no probs registering from the UK
- the site refers to a "20-Things Mascot", but I see none
- when logged in, my user name isn't displayed to remind me of who I am; sad to say this is useful for me nowadays
- in the "about" section, it says, "...specifically designed with our users limited free time in mind." I'd have preferred "... users' limited free time ...".
- er, that's it, with thanks and encouragement :-)
- no probs registering from the UK
- the site refers to a "20-Things Mascot", but I see none
- when logged in, my user name isn't displayed to remind me of who I am; sad to say this is useful for me nowadays
- in the "about" section, it says, "...specifically designed with our users limited free time in mind." I'd have preferred "... users' limited free time ...".
- er, that's it, with thanks and encouragement :-)
Thank you, much appreciated! There is a mascot, but I did not use it anywhere on the site just yet, I will modify the wording for now. The rest makes sense as well, I will get right on it and thank you for the encouragement! :)
Just got Cloudflare Error 522, Our work is done here HN, next one please.
That can't be right though. The box is fairly strong :) I believe that CF may have a new IP range which accesses origins, and I white-listed their known ranges a few months ago. Perhaps this calls for an update to that whitelist.
> That can't be right though.
Unsolicited advice, but please don't have this mindset towards system failure. More things go wrong than you anticipate.
Unsolicited advice, but please don't have this mindset towards system failure. More things go wrong than you anticipate.
Thank you for your advice, I appreciate it. I did examine everything that came to mind and the only thing at this point that may be happening is cloudflare -> origin connectivity for some users. I am using a keyword based monitoring since day one and so far no issues with reachability have been detected. This could be related to CF Geo firewall (disabled, but perhaps caching on CF side need to expire?). The only way I can verify CF<->Origin connectivity is by paying for CF a Pro account with Origin health check feature. If you have any ideas/suggestions how to troubleshoot this, I would be happy to hear them. Thanks!
Error 1020 Ray ID: 57e1700a4e91b87b • 2020-04-03 08:32:11 UTC
Access denied
What happened?
This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks.
Looks like you got what you wanted...
Access denied
What happened?
This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks.
Looks like you got what you wanted...
Sorry about that, this was just CF Geo firewall kicking in. I disabled it as it makes no sense to use it in this day and age.
Error 522 Ray ID: 57e1b052bb7bf2c8 • 2020-04-03 09:16:36 UTC
Connection timed out
:)
Connection timed out
:)
Works on my machine :D Did you try restarting your computer? Joking aside, all requests are served in milliseconds, there are no queues.
I am not kidding. The website is unreachable for me from Poland.
https://i.imgur.com/aQddPrf.png
https://i.imgur.com/aQddPrf.png
Odd. The GEO FW rule was disabled, but I don't know how long it may take for CF to react. Are you able to connect through a proxy/vpn from another country? I'm fairly sure you've lost interest at this point, but if you got time to kill, I'd love to "debug" this and see what's up.
If you're really curious, maybe ask in #cloudflare on freenode. IRC feels more relaxed than email, but in turn I've no idea how long you'd be waiting for a reply. The worst outcome is discovering the issue is due to a site misconfiguration or glitch, but considering that the screenshot is showing "Cloudflare: working" it just might be an issue on CF's end.
The alternate possibility is that the "cloudflare" keyword watcher I'm pretty sure CF runs might cause this whole issue to mysteriously go away :)
(jgrahamc, I'm curious: are you reading this? :D)
The alternate possibility is that the "cloudflare" keyword watcher I'm pretty sure CF runs might cause this whole issue to mysteriously go away :)
(jgrahamc, I'm curious: are you reading this? :D)
https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/20-things.com
20-things.com Status - Is 20-things.com down right now?
It's not just you! 20-things.com is down.
20-things.com Status - Is 20-things.com down right now?
It's not just you! 20-things.com is down.
Worked for me - you can try this too, it will show screenshots too: https://geopeeker.com/
Strange. It only works for some parts of the world, then.
How's it going back there?
[deleted]
Ok, before the party is over, checkout another test launch [0].
We really hope to grow a truly helpful community and will appreciate any feedback about the messaging on our website too! [1]
[0] https://www.patreon.com/boosthelp [1] https://boost.help
[0] https://www.patreon.com/boosthelp [1] https://boost.help
I don't begrudge people trying to take advantage of this thread, which was an ill-defined mess to begin with, but you've done a couple things here which I should comment on.
First, please don't delete and repost the same comment. It gives the impression of trying to pump it up in the rankings, which would not be a nice community behavior.
Second, something I tell people all the time by email: on HN it's an antipattern to have your username be that of your company or project. It creates a feeling of using the site for promotion rather than participating as a person. The community reacts better when your username represents you as a human. You don't have to use your real name, just something to communicate that you're there as a person, not a brand. If you'd like to change your username, we can do that for you via [email protected].
First, please don't delete and repost the same comment. It gives the impression of trying to pump it up in the rankings, which would not be a nice community behavior.
Second, something I tell people all the time by email: on HN it's an antipattern to have your username be that of your company or project. It creates a feeling of using the site for promotion rather than participating as a person. The community reacts better when your username represents you as a human. You don't have to use your real name, just something to communicate that you're there as a person, not a brand. If you'd like to change your username, we can do that for you via [email protected].
Thanks for the kind note. The comment was removed and re-posted here as this thread seemed more appropriate for such comment (i.e. in a mood similar to this[0] comment).
EDIT: And thanks for taking time to repeat yourself. Just few hours ago I've been thinking that most of us (unfortunately) will have to actually make some well-known mistakes to learn from them, even if we've been warned about such misdeeds beforehand repeatedly ;-)
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22767218
EDIT: And thanks for taking time to repeat yourself. Just few hours ago I've been thinking that most of us (unfortunately) will have to actually make some well-known mistakes to learn from them, even if we've been warned about such misdeeds beforehand repeatedly ;-)
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22767218
Good times
maybe the test should have been flagged. Did we fail by upvoting?
Is there a way to delete my profile and all its content?
Permanent Record
Replies are locked after one fortnight? I'm keeping this one alive because it is directly above the "Space Engineers" comment.
I have this dilemma, where I am reluctant to pursue creating this "virtual" experience on SE. Years ago I spent a few months familiarizing myself with the engine and the programmable block limitations. It took me dozens of hours just to create the simplest of scripts. Learning curve, I know, but eventually I just did not think that I was adding that much value to society by spending hours of my own time and money trying to make a video game more engaging.
I still think about it often, the possibilities of the game engine, and perhaps it is because now it is spring time in my hemisphere and I feel guilty grinding away on a computer with some artificial goal, while the sun is beaming down all around me at a higher angle in the sky - constantly improving conditions for planting and growing lifeforms.
Either space engineers is such a long term endeavor and I am being impatient, or I am wavering in ability focus and commit.
Now this update every two weeks will be permanent and carry more weight, forcing me to dedicate more consideration to its position amidst my comment history "story".
I still think about it often, the possibilities of the game engine, and perhaps it is because now it is spring time in my hemisphere and I feel guilty grinding away on a computer with some artificial goal, while the sun is beaming down all around me at a higher angle in the sky - constantly improving conditions for planting and growing lifeforms.
Either space engineers is such a long term endeavor and I am being impatient, or I am wavering in ability focus and commit.
Now this update every two weeks will be permanent and carry more weight, forcing me to dedicate more consideration to its position amidst my comment history "story".
Haven't touched the game in weeks. But today at my factory I finally had a conversation I've been waiting to have for years ("Lagrangian point 1 will be where we build the space port")
[deleted]
It works ;)
[deleted]
Edit: bah! you guys upvoted it and ruined my test. I think I can cancel that out.
Edit 2: I've changed the title from "Launch HN: Test" so that this thread doesn't appear on https://news.ycombinator.com/show, where it didn't belong.