Honestly, I would pay for a site that was only hard-core tech articles. Hacker News' guidelines are decent, but are incredibly open. Citing sentence 3 of the guidelines:
If you had to reduce [what's on topic] to a sentence,
the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's
intellectual curiosity.
I agree. I think that PG hoped this would be like the Erlang days but didn't realize that this wasn't a fad, but an entire group of people with an obsession.
I've come to accept that HN is the place I go to satisfy my "intellectual curiosity" and more focused lists are where I go to get my learn on. For example, for JavaScript stuff:
They tend to be more subject-specific communities. Lambda the Ultimate (http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/) is good if you care about programming languages, for example.
Of course, this used to be called "Startup News" but then PG picked the more general "Hacker News" instead.
While not everyone reading and posting on HN is a hacker, the website was founded by one of the world's greatest. So, I think that justifies the title.
Still, no matter what you publish, those outside your intended demographic will always read it. If you made a website called "Gangsta News", I'm sure white suburban kids from middle class families would read it.
I'm no experienced software or hardware hacker but I would have to guess that the best way to hear about "interesting hacks" (whatever those are) is to start doing some. Whether it be NERF guns or C, I can only imagine that one would get in tune with the community fastest if you actually have interest in learning the subject rather than just in the novelty of a Neat Trick.
Agreed. I thought that immediately when Logdown was being shown off.
I feel like 'hacker' is being turned into a market, and that very concept brings about a certain amount of sleaze(marketing).
I thought a hacker was someone that made the tools available work for them; not someone that used something tailored to them perfectly..not that a hacker would be against such a thing -- but rarely does the capability of a tool also meet the flexibility requirements of a hacker without further modification.
it's funny you say that, considering HN is a breeding ground for shady marketing techniques. The most common kind here seem to be these generic "how to" articles that briefly mention some obscure product as an essential part of one's workflow (but maybe only by name so as to seem like it's an established product). That's usually followed up by someone in the comments asking about the product and -- wouldn't you know it -- the product owner showing up to give an elevator pitch along with a few satisfied customers.
I mean, consider where you are: a forum that's owned by a tech incubator. I'm not suggesting a mass exodus or anything, but I'm just saying that tech-savvy people have been marketed to for a while now, and it's up to you to recognize when you're getting played.
I used to have those kinds of ideas about marketing, but I realized they are close-minded and not very productive. I've met some very good, and very smart marketers. Maybe the field attracts a wider range of bozos, because it's less 'concrete' than other things, but that doesn't mean it's all bunk.
Here's a great book about marketing and how to do it wrong:
The question is not whether you can do good marketing (you surely can) but what counts as good marketing: identifying and exploiting dispositions to behave irrationally in your target. A very good and very smart marketer will do this very well. It will still be sleaze.
I see what you did there. It took me a while to get over the popular idea that marketing is evil. Turns out you can do some good things once you realize marketing is just a tool.
I don't think you understand what my argument is. You're talking about individuals and I'm talking about trends. Marketing is one of the purer forms of trying to convince people of things for gain. That makes it a ripe opportunity for confidence men and other trickery. It doesn't make marketing inherently evil, but it makes the landscape inherently risky. It doesn't just attract 'bozos', it attracts a disproportionate amount of sleaze.
patio11 is great and I'm not sure why you brought him up.
> patio11 is great and I'm not sure why you brought him up.
Because he's really good at marketing, and I was curious if all the people equating marketing with sleaze would be as quick to call him sleazy as well.
'Hacker' has been a market since personal computing became a thing. How do you think people got parts back in the day? By being marketed to through magazines and user groups.
A computer parts company offers (what was was) an exclusive service; computer parts.
A blogging platform that heavily reinforces markdown is still a blogging platform.
The example given by the guy who replied to you was a good one. ThinkGeek. It's Sharper Image, but with a science spin. They often overcharge, but they do so because of who they market towards,and how they do so (with their form of propaganda)
I understand why these markets spring up, it's profitable. People WANT to self-identify as a hacker and thus gravitate to services that say they are spun for that 'kind' of person. I just happen to think that it's sleazy to take advantage of the trend lately to self identify as a hacker.
To clarify, I think it's sleazy to sell people products and then make ambiguous claims that a person of lesser intelligence may follow as fact.
Example : "See guys!? Major League Gamer Fatal1ty uses such and such hardware. Buy now!"
See how they never said that Fatal1ty is a good gamer BECAUSE he uses x & y hardware? They simply stated he uses it.
It's up to the victim to infer a correlation between game skill and hardware, but the marketer sets them up in a biased manner so as to manipulate what they infer.
THAT is what I have a problem with, and "a tool for [insert sect of people here]" exploits that the same way. "Hey guys, want to be a 'hacker'? Did you know 'hackers' use x & y? Buy now!"
They don't know what services or products they want, they simply read labels. I do, in fact, think it's wrong to exploit the mechanisms behind 'a fool and their money are soon parted.'.
I think you're misunderstanding what was meant by a "market"; the OP is saying that a consumerist market may be emerging to provide "stuff that a REAL hacker would own", like how ThinkGeek.com et al is the market for geeks.
Sure, maybe, but that's tangential from my point. My point was if you're making something that can't be tinkered with it's probably not for hackers.
The entire subculture stems from people who tinkered with things, specifically guys making model trains do cool things, like adjust based on what someone sends in from a telephone. I would expect that the minimum that everyone calling themselves a hacker has is an urge to tinker.
I'll keep it short: I'm all for ranting. I love ranting. But give the guy(s) a break. Just ignore it if it doesn't meet your definition of a tool crafted for hackers.
I don't know the specifics, but perhaps the company's target market isn't hackers in the true sense of the word. Example: many people are "techies" but when you push their knowledge a bit further most of what they know comes down to trivial knowledge about product specs between two or three devices.
The larger issue was that I thought my generator had some flags set that weren't set. But, thanks, I didn't even notice that it wasn't superscripting things in ^().
The combination of Octopress being built on top of Jekyll and the fact that Octopress is much faster/easier to jump into and do things with makes Octopress more hacker friendly in the "get things done" hacking way.
Have you looked at vanilla Jekyll recently? There have been a whole lot of changes. Sure, when you type `jekyll new x` you don't get as much, but it still gives you a very acceptable starting point.
I realize that my first sentence may come across as harsh, but I mean it in a 'look, this is cool' way, and not an incredulous way.
As I understand it, HN is a news forum associated with ycombinator, which I understand is all about startups, VCs, and business building. "Hacking" has little to do with that at all, except the programmers who make the bones of these internet businesses may well consider themselves "Hackers". But what about the rest of the team? Sales, marketing, accounts, admin etc. None of them are considered hackers. But even then I don't quite get it. Such programmers "create" primarily. They are not hacking, unless they want to admit to using other's work and hacking it to re-purpose it (which I have no problem with). But they aren't really hacking as such at all. They are building and creating.
Having read the definition of a "hacker", Im even more confused. To me, hacking is not about intimate knowledge, depth, deep interest, or even computer systems. Hacking to me is about knowing enough about something to fix or re-tasking it, even create something new from it. In the case of a media or Hollywood hacker, such a person is not a deep in-depth knowledge person, they are some one who knows the part of the system well enough to attack. That does not mean they know the whole system. Tech wise, I think of something like installing Linux on a PSP, or non IT, the way people in the third world use everything and anything to keep cars going. You don't need in depth knowledge at all. You just need enough knowledge to get the part fixed, or shoe horned in. The modification and re-tasking of open source software is also hacking. Or even something like scrapheap challenge is hacking. Surely all this comes from writing, where a poor journalist or writer is known as a "hack". Not suggesting my definition is universal, its just how I personally see it.
Then, as per the article's 3 bullet points, I dont see how providing flexibility is servicing hackers. All that is doing providing more flexibility as a part of the service or website. So, using such functions is just using the site as designed and intended. Not hacking. Hacking would be getting round problems with such a site, or using the site for something it wasn't originally intended. Although, such tool provided would allow fixing or re-tasking. I accept a fine line there, but I hope one sees the point.
So, to me sites like hackaday and instructables are actual hacking sites, where as this site is a great niche news aggregation site, with a great user base for decent, intelligent discussion, about anything of interest to it's users. HN is certainly not my first point of call for "hacking" at all. Its my first port of call for interesting news and discussion.
Cant help thinking that half the problem here is that this YC news site is called "Hacker News". I think that confuses people.
The best definition of hacker uses the word 'ingenuity'. It's true that you can do clever things with limited knowledge, but the best and most impressive hacks require deep knowledge. It follows from that that a site for hackers will encourage system knowledge and clever, unexpected adjustments. And if you're following complete instructions you're not hacking.
