I used to have friends in uni with whom i could share very nerdy/technical conversations. near graduation we no longer get together sadly. this has taken a toll on me. HN is a place that feels like home, even if I'm usually just lurking around and overhearing conversations. Thanks everyone for sharing!
Same happened to me. We drifted apart, live in different cities. But nearly 20 years later, with life settled and kids grown we're rekindling via messaging. I hope firstly, you get your group back, and second it doesn't take 20 years
The best 6 months of my life was studying abroad at a foreign university where I would stay up late with 30 other class mates in a lab solving comp sci course problems and then playing quake over lan til midnight.
Nothing will ever replace that magic time but HN comes close. Thank you guys happy new year HN!
If you’re ever in need to geek out, hit up someone who posted something interesting and ask them if they’re up for chatting. It’s not the most comfortable thing to do, but I’ve had a some great conversations with random people from HN. You’d be surprised how often it works out.
Indeed, the only third place I feel worth participating in (for me of course, ymmv) and enjoy. Appreciate y’all. Thank you dang for all of the hard work.
I had a solid email thread with friends from college going for these types of conversations for about 10 years after graduation, but with kids and moving around that all ended.
I am jealous, as people at my uni seemed to be mostly there for the cheap alcohol and parties and probably to avoid working. I imagined uni would have watercooler chats about interesting stuff. But the incentives aren’t aligned. For that you need niche programming language meetups! Or maybe PhD but I decided against that.
Parent should if they can! But there's also a big difference in intentionality between meeting someone on the quad / outside your room and starting a meetup with friends (or new friends!) scattered across town.
Would also suggest looking for social clubs. I've found the "general social hangouts + minimal focus on a shared interest" are great for people time.
Avoids the monomaniacal over-focus of a single-interest activity, while still providing a bridge with random strangers ("You like thing? I like thing!").
The Bay Area in the early 2000's and even into the early 2000-teens was NOT like this.
You could go out to lunch and have a technical chat and the people at the table next to you might chime in with a solution!
When you get enough passionate people and pack them into one location things get interesting for them (networking, friendships etc)... Much of the passion is gone (lots of people see tech as a path to a paycheck), and everyone wants to WFH.
That's because it's not a good vision for the future, it's literally either building shit that everyone knows doesn't matter or plugging away at pointless automation on overcomplicated piles of steaming crap. Or the next fad.
People have lost the vision and do not understand the soul of the machine is to improve our state of existence not enslave us further.
Fuck 'em. I'm taking the money and doing what makes me feel good (wine, floozies and travel).
I'd join - not joking either! I'm willing to bet that most technically-minded people have devices that act strangely, and yet are powerless to fix them due to, say, the difficulty of getting GDB to connect via the non-existent serial port to capture the stack trace of a once-a-week glitch. I'm in that category with a few of my devices right now, so a group where people could explain device drivers to each other would be really interesting to me.
Yes, that's the crux, for sure. Meetup or local slacks/discords are where I'd start looking. You could also email current or former coworkers, if you have that info.
I've run a few book clubs online and in NYC this last year. And a Discord for folks in the area in systems programming. And a systems programming coffee meetup in NYC. Stuff like that is what I might guess Erik means! :)
honestly that has made me double think the definition of friendship. they say you know people in hardships. well, I got to know some of my supposed friends when they went on the job market this year and were acting like jerks. after they got jobs, they turned back to normal. but I don't think of them the same as before anymore.
I think sometimes you have to realize that it's OKAY if you're always the one to keep in touch, and no one else seems to make any effort.
As long as they're happy to talk when you call, or they show up at the group event when you badger them enough: that's fine. Some people are just not initiators, and it's either you make the effort, or you lose touch with them. You can't insist on reciprocity.
Is it OK? I'm genuinely not sure. I have been considering a new year's resolution not to keep propping up relationship that aren't reciprocated. Are they "not initiators" in all relationships, or just with you? Why do you conclude that it's ok (genuinely interested)?
It's entirely natural that some people become "initiators" as a relationship develops. At the beginning of a relationship, person A will initiate X% of the time, and person B will initiate (100-X)% of the time. Unless X is exactly 50 (unlikely), this means one person will naturally initiate more than the other. And then, over time, the person who initiates less will realize that the other person tends to initiate, and will come to expect it.
Notably, that doesn't mean that the person who initiates less doesn't value your company! (Of course, it also doesn't mean that they do value you, only that the frequency of initiation is not a good proxy for the health of the relationship.)
I'm with you. What I realized is when you take the lead and throw a party or happy hour at a bar or something, your social status increases as well. Most people are followers, few are leaders. If you feel lonely because you don't get invited to parties or events, it might be that they don't think of you as a fellow-follower. It could be that you're actually the leader type and could benefit from that.
I am one of those people that could be described as "not intiators". I genuinely appreciate when people get in touch. I am sorry that I'm almost never the intiator, it's a trait I unfortunately have and I'm working on getting better.
That's me. I've been my friends' glue to some extent since we moved away from high school. I like to think they appreciate it, as I appreciate when they reach out. Happy New Year all HN!
Nope. If someone doesn’t reciprocate that’s an indication of their level of interest. This is true for friendships and romance. If the other party is always a passive recipient of attention, they aren’t interested in the relationship. It’s pointless to invest one’s time and emotions into such a relationship.
I agree. We could use a different terminology to make a much better sense out of it. Perhaps the word "give" and "take".
If I am the person giving and the other person is just the one that takes, without giving back anything, then nope, I am leaving that relationship for reasons that should be obvious. Another term to call the "takers" would be "leech" or "parasite". It does not sound good now, does it?
have you checked on the veracity of this type of contact?
last time for me it was a good time with an old one; but continuing would be just nostalgic bazinga...
anyway i'm surviving and happy new year [+2 days] nerds!!!!!!!11
Happy New Year everyone! HN will always remain in my heart and mind. 5 years ago I moved to Amsterdam to work on a super interesting R&D project that taught me a lot about GPS, coordinate systems, algorithms, and sadly the importance of having a short commute. I spent an hour and a half to get in either direction. That was demotivating and made me depressed and tired. HN was how I passed time, first on the train, then on the bus, reading curated articles and through thoughtful comments. I couldn't have managed without you all. Once again, I wish you all a Happy New Year and luck in all your endeavours!
Sorry if this is a nosy question, but - I lived in Amsterdam; and needing that long of a commute sounds weird, since public transport is pretty good, and you can bike some of the way. Even farther from the center, where it's cheaper, it should still not be _that_ long... can I ask what was your commute route?
It might also depend on mental model. Some people don't count the actual door-to-door time. They just look at the time the train takes between stations.
Our office was in Amsterdam Oost and I lived in Almere Filmwijk. An hour and a half is the average door-to-door time. Sometimes odds played in my favour and I could get home in 1h10min. The commute started by taking the bus or cycling from Filmwijk to Alemere Centrum, which took roughly the same amount of time. Then I would take IC or Sprinter to Amsterdam Muiderpoort, take another bus or walk, which, again, took relatively the same amount of time. It was impossible to rent anything in Amsterdam itself with an academia salary of 45k, a non-working wife and two children. I mostly took the bike on days when the weather allowed, but my bike was in Almere. I purchased a cheap(stolen) bike in Amsterdam for 75 euros, but it got stolen the same day I left it at the station.
TL;DR
Yes, you can live right next to the office if the funds allow it. My budget for rent was 1200 euros per month, which makes renting within the ring almost impossible.
Ah, well, yes, with a wife and two children, it's a different story. As a single person or a couple you might have found something in, oh, I guess maybe Diemen, or maybe in the Bijlmer region somewhere.
As for the bike: The trick is that you need a lock that's at least half the bike's price... that deters the thieves, who will go for easier-to-steal ones.
I got my bike stolen twice when I lived in Amsterdam, and even wrote a post about it, asking for advice:
Probably working elsewhere in the Netherlands (e.g., Rotterdam, Utrecht, Arnhem, etc.) but landing in Amsterdam because that’s the only city in the Netherlands that rings a bell to most.
Happy new year! Likewise, this is generally the only remaining site that I feel better after I leave it and more informed. No ads, excellent moderation, useful discussion and links. No gamification and chasing the modern web. Years of lurking and then years of sparse posting it still feels the same.
Here is to hoping this doesn’t change. Keep it up dang.
It's not a great idea pudding to production at this time of year! Particularly when there are no requirements, unit tests or functional tests available!?! It's /dev/urandom all around
HN is an interesting place for a non-techie to hang. . . I read about a lot of things which are not found in my world (quilting and public policy advocacy on human services/rural issues) and I am thrilled each and every time one of you shows such interest in something I'm more familiar with. And your joy!
Thank you all, thank you HN, for being so welcoming and a genuinely fun and safe place to spend time.
What's something cool going on in the world of quilting right now? I get a gift card at a quilting store for a family member every year but not too familiar otherwise. The store near me looks like a cool space, with lots of room to work on quilts in it. Kind of like a makerspace, a little.
Is the quilting community overlapping with the knitting/sewing community at all? Last time that came across my radar it was in the context of some kind of crazy purity spiral that was killing online knitting communities. What's going on in that world lately?
HN is my goto place whenever I feel bored, sad, lonely, without purpose, lacking inspiration etc. It's amazing how a single website with such a minimalistic design can condense so much quality content and quality people in a single place for the whole world to enjoy free of charge. Thanks and Happy New Year!
With all the turmoil in reddit, twitter and other social media, me and all of us here are so grateful there exists a forum which goes beyond the usual small talk, beyond known circles, with sincere and original thoughts no where else to be found on earth. A big thank you to all the mods and a very happy new year to everyone!
Changed my life as well. Accelerated my assimilation of good software principles, management theory, business strategy, and salary negotiation. Accelerated my career by like 40%. And lots of entertainment along the way. Thanks HN!
And to the rest of the moderation team. One of the downsides of the job is that they don’t get much recognition. It’s a massive workload too, at least for most people.
Seventhed - I've written to HN's email address and received a personal response from Daniel the same day. You could have the greatest, most expensive commercial support contract and it wouldn't get you a Daniel!
I still find it a bit crazy how familiar HN still feels after so many years I've been reading posts here. Most of that time was me lurking and latter me starting to interact with the community.
It's always nice to get your world view shattered by someone more knowledgeable or getting a point of view you wouldn't get anywhere else. Stay the same HN and kudos to dang for keeping up with all the comments and posts being submitted.
Wishing us all a less-sad year from here in occupied Palestine. I'm not in Gaza, I'm in the Israeli part, where the police prevents demonstrations against the war, social media posts lead to arrests and prosecutions, and people are awash with bloodlust and pain. 2024 is not going to be a good year, but we can at least hope less people will be killed this year and we don't experience the completion of an ethnic cleansing.
Likewise. This has been a hell of a year, for better and worse (mostly worse). HN is a reliable place where I can have reasonable conversations about stuff I love doing. It's a shining example of what I wish the internet was.
This is the only social media I use, but the special thing about it is that it doesn’t really feel like social media. The content is edifying and the community is well run thanks to dang. Happy New Year everyone!
Happy new Year from Germany, we are not quite there yet, but in the other years it always worked and so I am confident we will make it this year as well.
I hope you enjoyed your dinner! I'm currently in bed, sick as hell while family and friend are having fun downstairs. I guess it's my illness quota for the year :)
dang is the Philippe Petit of moderators. This place is what it is almost solely due to the tightrope act he performs as the best moderator on the Web.
Happy New Year to all of you as well. 15 years and counting here, can't believe it's been that long already.
2023 has been a pretty wild ride, a lot of our possible futures are riding on some key decisions that will be made in 2024, I hope they will all fall in the way that will lead to a more stable and peaceful world.
One of my favourite questions to ask people is where/how they discover new interesting things to read. If I ask myself this question, HN is definitely a major part of the answer.
Thanks everyone for sharing from this lurker and happy new year!
It will take a few more years for Chromebooks to take over parts of the Windows market share. It's sad but the Steam Deck and Chromebooks are most likely the closest the Linux Desktop will ever come in the next decades.
Installed linuxmint on an old mac mini 2011 and it work quite well. When I think about the tiny desktop format, I believe you can put linux mint on it and got a great general desktop that way, more reliable than a laptop.
I started regularly browsing Hacker News around the start of corona when I graduated from university as well. It has been an amazing few years, and I look forward to the coming year.
A lot has changed these last years, but somehow Hacker News always remains a solid place to procrastinate and/or learn new things.
When I tell other developers that if they want to keep up to date with tech, I tell them about Hacker News, it always goes like this: Come for the articles stay for the community. Thanks to everyone making Hacker News both an interesting and welcoming space to hang out!
Despite a minor grievance about not making HN mobile friendly sooner, I have extreme respect for long lasting high quality things, and this is one of them.
Happy 2024 :). I've gotten so much out of this site. 2024 marks 10 years for me as an SWE officially. Starting with a soulless internship in a defense contractor, working at many early stage startups, and ending with a FAANG.
The one constant? This site. I never post, but I hope to more. Love the productive discussions that I always see on this site. It's a breath of fresh air after spending any time on X, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.
Still waiting for the Annual 2024 Prediction thread to show up. I think csomar used to does it every year [1] so i dont want to start one and steal his tradition.
@Dang. Since we already have an official monthly Who is Hiring thread why dont we have an official yearly prediction thread as well?
A yearly prediction thread might be fun, it'll be cool to look back on it and see if anyone was right about major events. Personally I'm hoping that in 2024 we'll achieve AGI and have a robust definition of what that means. Maybe I'm just a little bit too ambitious though. I was hoping that we'd get there in 2023 but progress seems to have stalled more than I had expected.
Happy new year all! I’m proud to be an understated member of this community, only commenting briefly but yet coming back here every day to see the some of the most inspiring and incredible comments. I hope 2024 is as good for you all as it can possibly be. Personally I’m looking forward to a new year that is as awesome for my family and myself as I hope for everyone else. Good luck everyone in 2024!
Happy new year, from Connecticut in USA. A fellow lurker on here, this is the only news source I've deemed worthwhile to consistently follow since I first learned about it from my college roommate. More than that, the content and community here is always amazing.
Much appreciation to dang and the people who help make this place what it is.
Emacs, and org-mode
Firefox, and the inexplicable lack of vertical tabs adoption in Chrome
zsh, fzf, ripgrep awesomeness, fd, asdf/rtx, btop, and cool shell stuff
Rust everywhere
Factorio!
Frivolous Nerdery!
Oh and some LLM/AI stuff might also be popular
Happy New Year all. HN has been there for me to read, learn, get cross with comments, and generally entertaining me for several years. I may not always agree with or understand articles that are linked, but I come back every day. So Happy New Year and thanks all. Esp dang for keeping the place civil.
Happy New Year! It is so nice to have a community with whom to share and discuss technology topics. I work in medicine, as does my wife, and my colleagues all seem to be allergic to computers and have little to contribute to my nerdy interests. Having somewhere to find new (and old) thoughtful posts and comments about programming, reverse engineering, security, and economics has been so uplifting! Many thanks to all the contributors and moderator(s? Is it just dang?) who make it possible!
And by the way, it always makes me happy to see a 'thunderbong' submission reach the front page. To me that's a reassuring sign that we haven't been gentrified yet ;)
This is one of the only places I still post. I post a little on Mastodon and occasionally lobste.rs but that's about it.
I attribute its retaining of quality to banning memes and other low-effort junk and severely limiting (both as policy and culturally) politics and culture war flame wars. Also being text only helps a lot.
Happy New Year! Just as many people here have said already, HN is really one of the few places online where one can find thoughtful discourse devoid of flame baits. Many a times, I read the comments before even following the links if at all. I've learned so much through HN. I would say that not only technical knowledge but also my English has improved massively all thanks to this forum.
Despite increasing piles of duplicate content HN remains my favourite place to stay on top of news and get into the nitty gritty of topics via discussions on new and old things, especially all our classic tech humour and insights. Cheers all
If you're reading this, I'm curious what you plan to accomplish in this coming year. Write a comment below and tell us a little bit about your main goals to accomplish by this time next year!
Away from main pc so throaway account used. Happy New Year everyone - even or maybe especially those I disagreed with this year. You guys make this place worth coming back more often than productivity dictates. Woo. Lets do this.
Admittedly, I don't understand about half of what is discussed on this site. However, I have learned and been fascinated by many topics and replies! This is a great site for the curious of mind. Happy 2024!
Happy 2024. This year was full of surprises. Hard to tell which way they will go. Be curious, be adaptive, smile, and spread the love. Everything else will fall into place.
This is the place where I consistently leave in a better mood than I arrived. Thank you everyone for showing me I don’t have to be an asshole to get my point across!
I’ll be honest, I don’t know what we’re celebrating.
The planet has been on a slow roll into oblivion. 2024 will be the hottest year in recorded human history and we’ll probably pass the irreversibility threshold for average global temperature.
There are multiple extremely unsettling ongoing global humanitarian crises: Chinese-Uyghur, Russo-Ukrainian, the latest Israeli conflict*.
What exactly are we celebrating?
*note: I’m not taking sides. There are atrocities perpetrated by both sides, and grievances experienced by both sides. It just makes me sick generally to think about.
