That list would be even less interesting than the flagged off topic politics posts that people are so desperate to contend are on topic because everything is political.
Or would it show group A complains about some political posts, while that same group doesn't complain about other political posts?
There's already a predictable trend in political posts that do and do not get flagged, clear even without this feature addition.
Such a feature would either make the trend even more obvious, and/or perhaps encourage self reflection so as to not commit the sin of making contradictions in public.
The only thing desperate is people plugging their ears and lalala-ing “HN is not for politics.”
The tech talk here is embarrassingly shallow. Depth is now the rare exception. If I want deep dives, I’ll go see about some crabs. This place now exists to launder the tech worldview, and that’s an inherently political act. Pretending it isn’t doing that is political too.
Like most folks here nowadays, I primarily come for the politics. The difference is I’m not lying to myself about my posture.
I still primarily come for the tech/hacker vibe, but also understand and accept that continually hitting snooze on important political items will threaten my future ability to enjoy the former.
I also respect the fact that this is run by an SV incubator and everything that entails. Out of all the discussion platforms, this one is still the most sane, for now. Moderation is a thankless job, and they do a pretty good job with that around here compared to all of the alternatives.
I consider myself extremely confrontational on here (especially compared to myself in meatworld), but in my 13 years on HN I have had only one direct disagreement with dang, and it was about the definition of the hazelnut spread Nutella.
I am sure he and I disagree on most things, but I don't fault the primary moderator. In general, dang seems pretty laissez-faire. I am venting at the flag brigade: what news gets flagged, and more importantly what doesn't.
I come here to stick my thumb in the wind and see what the prevailing tech view is. As for the tech itself, I am more "if I learn something cool along the way, neat," so I guess I am here for the vibe as well. I just wish folks were more honest about what HN is (like you are being here). Things change; it's okay for them to change.
> The only thing desperate is people plugging their ears and lalala-ing “HN is not for politics.”
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
Do you honestly think I have not read that before?
I don't even know where that is posted, I just see folks quote it all the time. I obviously don't abide, those were written at a different time on a different internet with a different HN.
NOTE: I slightly restructured this without noticing the reply. The poster below is not misquoting me in anyway.
It's intentionally stochastic, outlining a preferred shape of topics and allowing exceptions that engage and promote novel and curious discussion.
These are novel and interesting times, no doubt, and yet there's still an exuberance of drum banging and closed minded repetition on various topics leading to many but not all of the current event threads being organically weighted down.
The person you're replying to doesn't abide by their own stated principles. It's a mistake to think that they're merely reminding you of the rules. No, it's an order.
Just look at how many political comments they made. Especially the downvoted and/or flagged ones. They are horrendous. So many words spent justifying ICE murders and lying about how the victims were violent terrorists. They spend all day thinking about how best to downplay the egregious actions of the current regime, at one point writing how ICE agent's masks are just merely "face/neck warmers."
This isn't a person who should be taken seriously.
They also recently complained about their own experience being downvoted and flagged for ostensibly political reasons, which also cuts against the guidelines. It’s selective adherence at best.
> Do you honestly think I have not read that before? Like seriously?
It immediately and completely refutes your position, so if you have read it then you have no excuse.
> I don't even know where that is posted, I just see folks quote it all the time.
It is in one of the links in the page footer.
> I obviously don't abide, those were written at a different time with a different HN.
Two wrongs don't make a right. The policy is there for a reason, and I'm confident that any of the moderators will happily tell you that it's meant exactly as seriously now as it was at the beginning. But you don't have to take my word for it; you can also email hn@ycombinator.com.
I am so confused wrt what you are attempting to do.
I literally do not care what the policy says. Must I say it that way? The policy
(1) is logically incoherent
(2) is not policed in an equitable way
(3) is used to launder a worldview to young tech workers just coming to hn
(4) ... do I need to keep going? because I can keep saying stuff
(5) is just random bits on a server
I don't like it, many people don't like it, it has a negative chilling effect on the hn community. I am regularly voicing my concern in an effort to create my desired outcome. FWIW, the folks that want the rules changed are generally the most aware of them.
Not really. If the solution has less complexity than is inherent in the problem, it can't possibly work. If the solution has complexity equal to or greater than the complexity inherent in the problem, it may work. So if you see complex code handling many different edge cases, you can take that as an indicator the author understood the problem. That doesn't mean they do understand or that the solution does work; only that you have more confidence than you did initially.
Not really. A different place to look for this is in chemical reactions and things biological life does.
You may have some simple chemical life needs, and life may have some other simple chemical it can use to get the needed simple chemical, but the processing steps are complex and limited by physics themselves. Evolution almost always finds a path of using the minimum activation energy to let these reactions occur. Trying to make the process simpler just doesn't get you what you need.
its all fake coverage, for fake tests, for fake OKRs
what are people actually getting done? I've sat next to our top evangelist for 30 minutes pair programming and he just fought the tool saying something was wrong with the db while showing off some UI I dont care about.
like that seems to be the real issue to me. i never bother wasting time with UI and just write a tool to get something done. but people seem impressed that AI did some shitty data binding to a data model that cant do anything, but its pretty.
it feels weird being an avowed singularitarian but adamant that these tools suck now.
Yes. If I have more money than I can spend I take a risk and invest that money in a company that has a productive use for that money. They hire people, do research, produce products and return the profits to me, the person who took a risk.
You might substitute "sorted by height" but its certainly not a correction. While "ordered into lines" would be an error.