What are some of your favorite comments on HN?
* highlights: Particularly interesting comments (manually curated via request) https://news.ycombinator.com/highlights
* bestcomments: Highest-voted recent comments https://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments
> I'll be sure to have the cartels sign my EULA before proceeding with anything
(Note the OP is flagged so you need to be logged in with showdead to view it.)
Thanks for the historical color.
> When BrandonM wrote "I have a few qualms with this app", he didn't mean the software. He meant their YC application.
Of course. Criticism #3 (arguably the funniest one) was about monetization: "It does not seem very 'viral' or income-generating."
-my sides-
> The criticisms he was raising turned out not to be problems in hindsight, but were on point in 2007
They weren't really on point then, were they?
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This comment isn't an example of "ha ha, low IQ" it's an example of "ha ha, humans can be hilariously bad at recognizing opportunities."
This is the part where he loses any sympathy.
If it’s so trivial why was nobody doing it? It’s classic tech bro know-it-all-ism.
Plus yeah wow, without the 3% of people who run desktop Linux whatever will a business do?
Point number one is
> I have a few qualms with this app: 1. For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself
Thus objecting to this Dropbox idea on the basis that it was redundant to 2% of desktop users.
Ask HN: What Hacker News comments have you bookmarked?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19716401
Ask HN: What are the most uplifting comments you've read on HN?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9393213
Ask HN: Favorite HN comment(s)
Here we are, 12 years later, and people still buy and sell cryptocurrency almost exclusively as an investment/bet, and very rarely is it used to facilitate any real transactions.
The tech at its core is really interesting though, sadly the most innovation seems to be in marketing at the moment.
Sometimes, a startup is not the path to solve for a problem statement (but you can still be wildly financially successful as is the case with Brian).
It took him about 18 months to hit his goal, while still paying all his bills and rent. The one thing he said was it took a huge toll on his health/mental wellbeing and said he spent another year getting back into shape and getting healthy again.
The other interesting thing was he said he got a lot of perspective about why people chase money and how it can be really unhealthy.
I still need to make an "I feel lucky"-style random sample version of that page.
You can quibble about which parts of the world are "real" or not, but the adoption of Bitcoin ($1.3T) dwarfs 99% of company market caps.
SR-71 speed check
One time we were going fast
a small plane got on the radio and said "how fast am i going"
the tower said "you are going fast"
and then a bigger plane got on the radio and said "haha i think i am going faster how fast am i going"
and the tower said "you are going a little faster"
and then a jet fighter was going really fast and talked like a really cool guy and said "hey there, I sound like a cool guy, tell me how fast I'm going"
and the tower said "you are going very fast" but he sounded totally normal
And then I wanted to say something but that was against the rules, and then the other guy in my plane said "hey tower, are we going fast"
and the tower said "yes you are going like a million fast" and then the guy in my plane said "I think it's a million and one fast" and then the tower said "lol yeah ur plane is good"
and then I said "did we just become best friends"
and the other guy said "yes"
Rich kids can afford many throws. If they want to, they can try over and over and over again until they hit something and feel good about themselves. Some keep going until they hit the center bullseye, then they give speeches or write blog posts about "meritocracy" and the salutary effects of hard work.
Poor kids aren't visiting the carnival. They're the ones working it."
"[..]Here’s the recipe for success, as far as I can tell: 1. You’re not going to make any money from your side projects. Internalize that, and believe it. 2. Do everything in your power to try to make money from your side projects.[...]"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25884541
Goofy (but not r*ddit-tier) comments like the above are iconic in their own special way on this intellectually serious site.
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> People often complain about how complex it is, but it's really just a matter of passing endofunctions through transplainer pipelines so that you can asynchronously hydrate the islands.
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> I sent it to my wife but she spelled her own name wrong and now she thinks I have a crush on someone else
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> Is zero greater than or equal to zero? Yes! reply
> > What an obviously unreasonable position reply.
2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31610005
Yes. Un-wise super intelligent programmers are the worst. They come up with the most amazing roundabout way to achieve even the most mundane tasks, and consider complex code a mark of honour, rather than a pathology to be purged.
At some point people mature and realize that their job when writing code for work is not to concoct brilliant puzzles for next maintainer, but to do exactly the opposite. And then they reach the meta-level of realizing that simplifying things is actually just as hard and pleasing as puzzle-making, and they've reached a maturity in the quality their program design.
The worst kinds of programmers are those that plateau at the "Riddler" stage. They potentially are able carve themselves a nice safe niche, but the value they could have delivered could have been so much more if they'd ever matured. "Oh, that code... yeah, better call Edward ... it's his baby, supercomplex. Nobody seems to be smart enough to work in it except Mr. Nygma".
There are pieces of code that are potentially super-complex due to the intrinsic complexity of the problem space. But since for an outsider it's impossible to distinguish between the two, utmost empathy should be always used to introduce new people to such a thing.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11945722
I'm on my phone, hopefully that's the correct link.
toaster fucker problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25667362
