skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I used to sit in with a folk band comprised of some guys who'd been in the music business since the sixties. I once told my mentor that it seemed to me that general talent and musicianship seemed to be higher in artists in the 1960s and 1970s. Surely this was just because time had passed and I'm only listening to the good stuff. Right?

He said, no, the music community is, in fact, less talented, as a whole, than it was in older days. He blamed MADD (mothers against drunk driving).

Here was his reasoning. In the older days, almost every bar, tavern, hotel, and other night spots would have a house band. This was the environment where you learned to play different musical styles for different types of crowds. It's also how you apprenticed with older musicians, learned the standard repertoire, etc.

With the rise in criminal consequences for impaired driving, people stopped going out as much. This had a ripple effect causing the end of the house band. Today, musicians don't get nearly the amount of stage time and access to mentors as they used to.

It was a compelling theory and I wonder if something similar could be at work here given the coincidence of the drop in popularity in the early 1980s.
No, it just means if you comment low down on a page, you'll probably have to delete that comment before participating in a second discussion.
As a fun aside, the other day a coworker and I noticed that HNsearch actually shows comment scores when you view per author: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=sillysaurus3#!/comment/forever/pre...

(I'm not sure if this is intentional or not, but interesting none the less.)
No, it's just you getting middle aged. When they're young they are beautiful, and if you see a beautiful woman, it means she's too young for you..
I guess my point is that it will be much harder to reach 1,000 karma by commenting. Since it seems like this is board wide and not story based then you really need to think which of two or more interesting stories you are going to comment on.
I'd venture to guess that the difference between a requirement of just 1 endorsement from users with karma >= 1 and the current HN is fairly significant (a downvote differs conceptually from a nonexistent endorsement), so you may not be able to approach it too closely. I suppose only time will tell though.
Only about 200m people are over the age of 18 and 20k per person seems high. 200M at 10k per year is around 2 trillion. Seems doable if we are willing to scrap things like social security.
I read HN everyday and I value the commentary as much as the articles. This change has the potential to censor my contribution to that commentary.

So while I think there is a lot going for the idea, I think there will be a lot of good comments that won't ever be displayed so on balance I think HN will lose more than it gains.
Why on earth would you ignore the "wait-and-sees"?
That 404's
For sure - it totally dwarves it. I'm not so worried about the time value itself, just which method is "faster".
For those who doesn't spend his whole life hanging on HN for increasing karma. That's pretty unfair.
Some issues are worth getting upset over, whether doing so helps or not. People get passionate about things. We're not robots.

Calling someone's opinion "dribble" in the context of this moderation system is completely hypocritical. Is this forum not about informed opinions and logic thought processes? Where does "dribble" fit in?

He's apparently correct in assuming that people like you are going to be selectively crafting the comments of the site to your personal liking, as opposed to now where everyone gets a voice, even if unpopular.

I think, if anything, you just proved his point.
I disagreed, and am pretty happy with the openness of current HN system. I'd rather see some negative comments than missing out a few inspiring ones.

What I do find annoying is (as some have mentioned days/weeks ago)- the OP can delete his own post, even though there are many replies below. So now the other hackers have no idea what the rest of people are replying to.
I think in you're conflating length extension and collision resistance in b) and they are not the same thing.
Wireless networking is/has always had potential for infiltration. It is inherent since the signal is broadcast out without any regard to who is listening. This security flaw, using brute force, is a good, if slow, way to exploit the open nature of WiFi. They do not specify any timing for breaking a psk so I assume this isn't very fast. And the article doesn't state if the brute force can only be attempted while the back door is temporarily open. Security threat yes. How long to break, who knows.

A great reason to use wired when you can!
I can very easily see this going either way. It's so hard to tell what the effect is going to be before it is tried out.
>I don't know how many users there are with >1000 karma

There are about 5500 such users. There have been around 245,000 users to ever post on Hacker News and around 85,000 users have posted over the last year.

Source: I'm working on a fork of the Hacker News Karma tracker (not ready to be live yet) that uses Algolia's new HN Search API; I also downloaded every comment ever made similar to how minimaxir downloaded all of the submissions.
You raise an interesting and valid point. As technology increases the amount of time it takes to produce a certain effect goes down though. This means people need to work less. It's not that visible to most though because the definition of surviving has gone from not being eaten by a tiger and not knowing when your next meal will be to having a large screen TV with 5000 channels, air conditioning, and free food. If we have the same expectations in the future in terms of standard of living then we will do fine and people won't need to work as much. But people don't really compare themselves in terms of absolutes, they compare themselves to their neighbors. So yes, they will not be satisfied, but I believe they will still be better off than before in absolute terms.
I have only ever heard basic income proposed as the former implementation, never the latter.
> the entire hash space can be stored in memory on commodity hardware

Where can I buy commodity hardware with 2^128 bytes of RAM?
So what? You've never heard of taxes before? It's how a society functions.
Prove that it was a positive change. If anything it's made parsing the comments harder IMO as the comment count provides extra context about how the community feels about the comment.
I'm not a big fan of the change. In theory there is nothing wrong with the new system, but I generally think HN has one of the best online communities around. Overall the average comment is polite, intelligent, and generally worth reading. So maybe I'm just not seeing the problem that it is trying to fix.
Call me cynical, but this sure seems like an effort to enforce groupthink on the company news outlet.

I suppose we'd do well to remember what business YC is in, and how critical public messaging and perception is to that business, not just in terms of their existing investments, but also ongoing recruitment.
Is there a follow-up poll showing that it's "decidedly a positive change"? :-)
Inane dribble? I thought I was the angry one?
I don't have any numbers, but lets try to reason about this anyway.

Today, if you post a comment, someone sees it, and thinks is interesting, they'll upvote it. It seems reasonable that a comment on a fresh story (eg: on the home page) is more likely to be seen, and it might be more likely that a comment will be upvoted while it is still "young".

With the new system, you will get no karma until after some 1k karma curator notices your comment. Being approved (as I understand it) grants you no karma in and off itself, while (as someone else mentioned) normally that approval would've been equal to an upvote before. So if that's the case (easy fix: make upvote=approve) new comments on average earn one less point (so I might end up at .61 average, not 1.61 -- possibly fair indication that I talk too much).

At any rate -- anyone below 1k won't be able to upvote the comment until after approval, I don't know what kind of impact that'll have -- but it certainly means new users come to a substantially different playing field than old ones.
It'd be more useful if the graph was in terms of comments per story per month, I think. As it is, the data could just mean that stories hit the front page, get discussed, and disappear increasingly quickly.
Check out the Sea Steading Institute. They are pushing towards colonizing the ocean and allow groups to form their own nations. If we can form tons of new nations to test out new ideas of government we will quickly learn what works and what doesn't.
Sorry, but I (and many others) have actually lives to live and jobs to do. 1000+ karma users are not moderators, and many simply will be too lazy / too occupied to click "endorse" all the time.

Well any site with community based content is going to fail if users don't interact with it. "Endorse" will just be the equivalent of upvoting something if it hasn't already been endorsed. It's not an onerous burden.
Ask Google Search on Android to 'play some music' and it will help you
I don't like it. I don't mind waiting to see what happens - I'm actually kind of curious to see how it changes the community - but my guess is it will decimate the number of comments per thread because it filters the signal as well as the noise. 1000+ karma users aren't going to endorse even 10 comments per thread on average (unless they are exceptionally enthusiastic), so only the most popular threads will have any possible discussion. In my experience the most popular threads are often the least interesting so I probably won't be able to read or participate in worthwhile discussions while this system is in place, though this depends on the balance of comments vs. upvotes which pg et. al have at their disposal to tinker with.

I think this solution approaches the problem backwards. Instead of blocking all comments until they pass some endorsement threshold, why not make 1000+ karma users' downvotes count as 'denouncements' and hide the post if they get three or four denouncements? This should have essentially the same effect on noise levels without filtering out massive amounts of quality posts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Commercial_Code

Enjoy.
This may be difficult for some people to understand such as famous users, but quite a few of my best comments were never upvoted. So I believe that this will also filter out many valid comments.
You still can't seem to think outside your box it seems.
What makes hyperbole so terrible? You recognized it was hyperbole, so you must also recognize the point he was making. It's funny to me that the GP is basically saying this change is unfavorable and will greatly diminish the value of HN to a great number of users, and your first "use" of this system is to say you would stifle that comment because it wouldn't affect you negatively. It's almost too perfect.
I think it'd be better not to hide anything at all. Just move comments without "endorsement" to the bottom (isn't this basically how it works already?).
For quite long time I thought the green was used to indicate a special person, someone related to Y combinator or one of the startups (I think back then it was not so common to see comments from "green" users).
A few questions:

> Someone who has a pending comment will have to wait till it goes live to post another.

Does this mean that if you write 1 bad comment which no one wants to endorse, you can effectively never comment on any thread again?

> Since I'm going to check out of HN at the end of this YC cycle

What do you mean by "check out"? Are you going to stop commenting?
Why would you think you absolutely know how this will turn out before seeing it in action? Wait and see.
I like conversational places. I guess a lot of this has to do with what type of place the creator wants to create and how they want to try to mold it into that.

My ideal place would clearly define types of behavior that were to be discouraged. For instance, I like to err on the side of suppressing vitriol too much, rather than letting it run too much. I like environments where everyone feels like they can try to contribute, or participate, without wondering if it'll come back at them. I have pretty strong feelings about how far that should go, though, and it's usually further than a lot of folks would, or at least, further than a lot of vocal folks would go.

But I guess that's just it. I think generic karma/votes tend to promote a more general idea of what's popular, or fun, but don't necessarily promote a specific well-defined ideal.
> Don't give them money. Stopped.

How would you go about doing this? Who gets money and who doesn't? Is a single mother raising 3 kids lazy? Is an artist who works night and day and gets pennies in return lazy? There's a lot of overhead in deciding this. A lot.

> That fact that other people won't buy their work is not a problem of other people. It's their problem.

So, my point that art is only worth it's value to the general population stands. That makes it more entertainment than art. Please note the distinction.

> Just because someone can't support themselves doing whatever they find the most interesting or the easiest path doesn't mean others should be forced to provide them that opportunity.

Valid point. However, I do think there's something to be said for giving people more of an opportunity to do what they like. After all, we all tend to do better work when we're doing something we want to be doing =].
Like you said, this change may lead to the case that "high quality comments on any threads that aren't on the front-page" will not be shown. The lack of those comments and subsequently the lack of a vibrant discussion might discourage other users from participating, leading to the article never making it to the front page.

I foresee this causing an even worse problem than low quality comments: The front page will be flooded with stories that make it their not because of the quality of the accompanied discussion, but because of the "clickability" of the article title.

However, it seems like there is a relatively simple solution. The number of "endorsements" required to activate a comment could be inversely proportional to the articles points. Or as some other users have suggest, it could be inversely proportional to the quantity of other comments on the same article.
Python to Scheme to Assembly
Sam Altman made an interesting change to his Twitter bio
Lego. I spoke to my parents about 6 months ago whilst they were having a clear out of family toys from yesteryear - their main question: "What do you want us to keep for your (potential) children?"

My answer was quite simple: "My Lego and my Brio - that's about it"

Lego is made to last a lifetime and more, specified to an extreme degree and made with tolerances far and beyond most consumer electronics; it is something that can be inherited. The important part here is that I wouldn't want my children to inherit a set - I would want them to inherit the bricks - that is the fun of Lego. I want to give them 2 30 gallon boxes of bricks and boards and men and all sorts because creativity is not born of following instructions - it comes from deciding to create an aeroplane from the odd bits and pieces that you have at hand.

There is a very good reason that these[1] adverts aren't for sets - Lego is amazing because you can create whatever you can imagine with it and for that reason this doesn't sit very well with me. But then I have 60 gallons of lego waiting for me when I eventually procreate so what do I care...

[1] http://speckyboy.com/2009/03/16/39-creative-lego-advertiseme...
The great thing about ignoring the site is it will just increase the groupthink.
I was wondering how the new "optional parallel mode" affects the long history of professional scrutiny. Is adding an optional parallel mode something that a professional cryptographer can do without significantly changing the security model?[^1] Are there certain families of hash designs amenable slight tweaks that sacrifice a little security for a relatively large speed improvement or is this something that could happen with the majority of hash schemes?

As always, thanks for playing "HN asks tptacek about security."

[^1]: This is a genuine question. I do not have any reason to doubt zooko et al's judgement. I guess another way of saying this is "For someone smarter than me is it easy to know when this is a good/bad idea?"

Strange segway: I was browsing Plos and saw this article about egg washing and shell characteristics. After reading the title for some reason I remembered reading a somewhat lengthy comment you wrote about the safety of eggs and different egg washing regimes in the us and the uk. I did not check too see if my recollection was accurate but in case it is and the comment was indicative of your interest in the subject you might get a kick out of:

Effect of Egg Washing and Correlation between Eggshell Characteristics and Egg Penetration by Various Salmonella Typhimurium Strains. PLoS ONE 9(3): e90987. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0090987

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...
Turkey government website defaced
Let us not delude ourselves into thinking any healthcare system is self-contained and self-sustaining, equipped to deal with all the needs of its citizenry.

Most European nations ( and Canada, Australia & New Zealand ) are great at dispensing - what can be termed as - "subsistence medicine." Most ailments, procedures and surgeries are handled quite well, although - it has to be said - a tad frugally. ( It is not uncommon for the doctor to under-prescribe medications or opt for a less cost-prohibitive option over another even when the situation could be better dealt with, with a more exhaustive course of prophylaxis)

Plenty of Canadians including the Premier of New Foundland have opted and continue to opt for minimally invasive procedures ( as well as convoluted surgeries ) to be done in the United States, simply because the U.S. is better equipped with the resources and the doctors to deal with such cases.

"This is my heart, it's my health, it's my choice."
With these words, Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams
defended his decision to hop the border and go under the
knife for heart surgery in Florida.
The minimally invasive mitral valve surgery he needed is not
available in Newfoundland, he told his province's NTV News channel
in the first part of an interview aired last night.[1]

For instance, some Canadian patients who are tired of waiting
for procedures in their country's national health system come
to Michigan hospitals. [2]

Even the richest of the rich pick the United States over say European destinations for their medical treatments.

The king (Abdullah of Saudi Arabia), who is 86 years old, was in town
for surgery at New York Presbyterian Hospital on Nov. 24.[3]

[1] http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/its-my-health-i...

[2] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/reverse-medical-tourism-points-u...

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/14/business/14road.html?_r=0
My first thought was also "show-dead"; my second thought was a "comment cost".

Klocs are silly because they represent cost rather than value, correct? So perhaps comments should start out with (-1) karma rather than (0). That way, people will think twice about posting snark.
Thanks for making that! I'm not shocked. :)
Report: Researchers Are Becoming Too Obsessed with Chasing Pageviews
Rank is only apparent when a comment has siblings. When two people are having a reply-to-reply back-and-forth debate, I'm usually left very curious to which side HN agrees with.
censor-by-default is such a bad approach. if people are passive (very common) then HN censors. defaults matter, like with mailing list opt-ins, etc, b/c ppl frequently don't want to bother changing the default.
FWIW, BLAKE2 does over 1 gigabyte per second on recent Intel chips. With the parallel modes it should be able to reach 3-4 gigabytes per second with multiple cores.
A feedback system for my dad's restaurant that allows customers to provide feedback through text messages. It's a fun little side project with a few challenges, and I've enjoyed it so far.

http://imgur.com/NPFQpPh
Possibly. It might depend on users registering to receive notifications via Safari, though I'm not sure about this.
ok that's a bit less bad but i still think i'll pretty much quit :/
First law of the internet: everyone hates changes.

Second law of the internet: nobody will remember in a week.
Don't tell me you're going to be starting a new startup?!
I'm commenting here because of the restrictions on reddit. It has nothing to do with this news post.

V
I've had an HN account for over two years.

I have 328 karma.

That's a whole lot of comments I'd have to post to get to 1000 karma. I don't feel that invested in HN, so it's more likely I just won't comment again.

This seems like a pretty good way to freeze the current set of commenters in stone.

edit: It also occurs to me that, while endorsing may be novel now, there's not really any incentive for people to keep doing a boring rote task into the far future. Plus you're threatening bans for people who do it badly. So why would anyone do it at all?
> it was decidedly a positive change for the site.

Was it?

When things were transparent, there were no reason to upvote interesting trollish comments.

Now they get blindly up-voted for being interesting. For example, consider this article:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7436401

About 5 facebook engineers are answering questions. They are of course buried by a meta discussion about whether facebook should use PHP at all.

Since the change, I have written a few 50+ karma comments, and all were trolls. The change makes me like my own comments less. Getting a "high score" just requires posting something popular and mildly offensive, where as before, people could weigh, "what conversation is most important".
My cheapest plan is $474 per month. That's not happening. Healthcare tourism seems to be the way to go these days.
Why not have this feature turned on only for threads in the front page instead of all threads.
Actually, nothing's stopping me from doing all of that. I'm also not asking for BI (it sounds like a bad idea long term), I'd take it if it was offered though.
> Because I'm fairly certain this will drive users away, and not just the ones he wants to keep out.

Absolutely. One of the benefits of the size and diversity of the HN community is that there are lots of subject matter experts in a myriad of niches that can provide useful commentary.

If it becomes dramatically harder to have a comment be seen, these people will simply stop commenting here. The idea might be that infrequent but insightful commenters will get endorsed, but not every comment a valuable commenter makes is necessarily going to get endorsed. That's going to be frustrating enough that many will decide not to bother, and the discourse will be poorer for it.
Bill Gates, Regular Guy
Other cloud providers have the same privacy policy, sadly.
Perhaps another feature is needed: mark redundant. So when you mark one of several similar comments as good, you can mark a others as redundant -- so that the owner can retract it.

I suppose preferably you'd link it somehow, so that the author of a "redundant" comment would get a "deemed redundant due to: <list of> comment
.

Why list: maybe 1kkarma-user #1 found commend x to be best, #2 found y to be best, and both found your comment, z, to not be best.
Really tells you something about the cost of development over time. 10 years ago this would have sounded insane.
It really serves the UK government right!
Go Is definitely something to watch. I have dabbled in it a bit and found it pretty quick and simple to learn. Not as clean to code as Node, but then again I mostly do web development anyway aka I use JS a lot.

There are a ton of projects using Go, having seen them on Github. More so, a lot of big names are implementing it. I'm sure with more use and more tech companies getting into Go, the language will only develop further. Its going to be around for a while.