Libre News, political discussion powered by Arc Lang(wwww.librenews.us)
wwww.librenews.us
Libre News, political discussion powered by Arc Lang
http://wwww.librenews.us
57 comments
Yay, somewhere all the NSA/Snowden/Wikileaks/New World Order/bombing stories can go instead of HN. Huge thumbs up to this.
After ~5yrs on here, I've seen at least a hundred attempts at creating a second HN strictly for politics, but none of them have been successful.
Of course none have been! :) ... and none will be. Because 90+% of online politics discourse is dominated by trolls. People who want to have actual discussions, and listen to differing opinions, will be driven away en masse.
Leaving the trolls to troll each other. Unfortunately, dog-fooding isn't very popular in the troll world-- so the site dies et voila! Here we are.
Leaving the trolls to troll each other. Unfortunately, dog-fooding isn't very popular in the troll world-- so the site dies et voila! Here we are.
"Because 90+% of online politics discourse is dominated by trolls."
True, but I hope the mods/admins of this don't get discouraged because we do badly need a place to talk about these things. Spilling over here isn't helping and will only drag things down by souring the mood, since these topics aren't what most people who visit HN are here for.
Politics is one of those Neodymium magnets that seem to attract the worst of the worst, however, that's only due to unchecked emotions in a similar vein to religion. It's hard to tackle an idea without touching the human behind the keyboard. But I believe such a forum can exist and thrive, though it would take a super-human effort to moderate.
True, but I hope the mods/admins of this don't get discouraged because we do badly need a place to talk about these things. Spilling over here isn't helping and will only drag things down by souring the mood, since these topics aren't what most people who visit HN are here for.
Politics is one of those Neodymium magnets that seem to attract the worst of the worst, however, that's only due to unchecked emotions in a similar vein to religion. It's hard to tackle an idea without touching the human behind the keyboard. But I believe such a forum can exist and thrive, though it would take a super-human effort to moderate.
Huge downvote to this. Saying that a hacker community shouldn't be interested in the Snowden revelations is ridiculous, and listing him alongside New World Order conspiracy theories is just insulting.
First, downvotes aren't for disagreement here. Comments are. Thus...
Second, I disagree, and agree with the grandparent that that other place (or any other place, really) would make a perfect place for discussing all those things you list.
Actionable articles about the business of software and technology to help build same. That's what we're here for. If you'd like more stuff to talk about, there's lots more internet out there. You're free to hang out at more than one place.
Second, I disagree, and agree with the grandparent that that other place (or any other place, really) would make a perfect place for discussing all those things you list.
Actionable articles about the business of software and technology to help build same. That's what we're here for. If you'd like more stuff to talk about, there's lots more internet out there. You're free to hang out at more than one place.
It's beyond hilarious that blog posts about app developers doing annoying things to make money are totally welcome on HN, and typically spark comments rabble-rousing towards the goal of making a "Developer's Professional Ethics Code."
It's hilarious because in every thread about every piece of surveillance infrastructure that ratchets the United States irreversibly towards totalitarianism, there are complaints that this is political and inappropriate for Hacker News.
You want a tech startup hook on every Snowden leak? 1984-tech is probably a great field for entreperneurial minded hackers. Too many people are stuck disrupting laundry and taxicabs! Think big, and disrupt democracy. Change the way people cling to power.
All of the surveillance state's gear is software, written by developers. Just think: you could be one of those developers! Get your piece of the pie, and talk about it on HN. There's a whole world of posts there:
- Best ways to monitor mobile use patterns while minimizing app footprint?
- What database should I store the entire world's email in?
- Ask HN: I'm a founder of a spying SaaS platform -- how can I launder "black money" from intelligence agencies?
- Ask HN: What Saudi telecos are hiring hackers to help them spy on their people?
Just remember to pitch a fit every time the mobile equivalent of a popup ad gets blogged about. Because those developers are giving us all a bad name, damn it.
It's hilarious because in every thread about every piece of surveillance infrastructure that ratchets the United States irreversibly towards totalitarianism, there are complaints that this is political and inappropriate for Hacker News.
You want a tech startup hook on every Snowden leak? 1984-tech is probably a great field for entreperneurial minded hackers. Too many people are stuck disrupting laundry and taxicabs! Think big, and disrupt democracy. Change the way people cling to power.
All of the surveillance state's gear is software, written by developers. Just think: you could be one of those developers! Get your piece of the pie, and talk about it on HN. There's a whole world of posts there:
- Best ways to monitor mobile use patterns while minimizing app footprint?
- What database should I store the entire world's email in?
- Ask HN: I'm a founder of a spying SaaS platform -- how can I launder "black money" from intelligence agencies?
- Ask HN: What Saudi telecos are hiring hackers to help them spy on their people?
Just remember to pitch a fit every time the mobile equivalent of a popup ad gets blogged about. Because those developers are giving us all a bad name, damn it.
The worst part is I think most of the privacy destroying tech stuff makes for some fascinating problems (as the comments around speculation on the NSA tapping fibre a while back demonstrated).
People just can't help looking at problems like that even when the consequences just aren't good from a civil liberties perspective. I think that's what makes it great HN material.
(Also I wish I could upvote this more for "disrupt democracy" :)
People just can't help looking at problems like that even when the consequences just aren't good from a civil liberties perspective. I think that's what makes it great HN material.
(Also I wish I could upvote this more for "disrupt democracy" :)
Actionable articles about the business of software and technology to help build same. That's what we're here for.
Really?
http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
The guidelines do also say, "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics [etc.]," but then qualify, "unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon."
It might be that HN has reached a point at which there ought to be a split with accompanying comment police to enforce it, but it seems presumptuous to assume that the decision has already been made in alignment with your particular preferences.
Really?
http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
The guidelines do also say, "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics [etc.]," but then qualify, "unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon."
It might be that HN has reached a point at which there ought to be a split with accompanying comment police to enforce it, but it seems presumptuous to assume that the decision has already been made in alignment with your particular preferences.
The main purpose of the downvote as I understand it is to punish responses (in the ranking algo sense) that don't add to the discussion.
A snark one-two liner sitting on the top of the comment page is hardly a comment that's adding anything interesting to the discussion of Libre News
A snark one-two liner sitting on the top of the comment page is hardly a comment that's adding anything interesting to the discussion of Libre News
A snark one-two liner sitting on the top of the comment page is hardly a comment that's adding anything interesting
As a wise man once said, and I paraphrase: So basically anything upvoted by this community is considered on topic since enough people deemed it worthwhile.
As a wise man once said, and I paraphrase: So basically anything upvoted by this community is considered on topic since enough people deemed it worthwhile.
> On-Topic:Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
This absolutely includes NSA/Snowden news and any other news relating the intersection between politics and technology.
This absolutely includes NSA/Snowden news and any other news relating the intersection between politics and technology.
Downvotes aren't for disagreement here. Comments are
That's not true. PG has said the opposite many times.
Commenting is for when one has something to say.
That's not true. PG has said the opposite many times.
Commenting is for when one has something to say.
From the guidelines for "off topic":
If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
And for "on topic":
anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Mainstream US-centric political news is not particularly intellectually gratifying and not what this site has ever done well. Reddit and Twitter had all the same pointless arguments.
And I say "mainstream" because perhaps the only hacker-specific part of the story was Snowden being a sys-admin. His revelations and the impact of the story were felt across all of society and were not specifically related to hackerdom (the follow up stories about DEF CON or protecting your own privacy by technical means, however, were clearly hacker oriented and well suited to HN).
If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
And for "on topic":
anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Mainstream US-centric political news is not particularly intellectually gratifying and not what this site has ever done well. Reddit and Twitter had all the same pointless arguments.
And I say "mainstream" because perhaps the only hacker-specific part of the story was Snowden being a sys-admin. His revelations and the impact of the story were felt across all of society and were not specifically related to hackerdom (the follow up stories about DEF CON or protecting your own privacy by technical means, however, were clearly hacker oriented and well suited to HN).
Chill out. He didn't try to insult you, he said it's somewhere else for those things to go. He didn't claim it's actually unimportant, and frankly, Hacker News wasn't intended for this kind of discussion - the guidelines support him.
Whether or not that means it shouldn't be here at all is up for debate, but don't act as though he's being insulting when he's just supporting something that's reasonable. He can voice his reasons just as you can voice yours. You're the one being more insulting.
Whether or not that means it shouldn't be here at all is up for debate, but don't act as though he's being insulting when he's just supporting something that's reasonable. He can voice his reasons just as you can voice yours. You're the one being more insulting.
From the guidelines:
>On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
So basically anything upvoted by this community is considered on topic since enough people deem it gratifying intellectual curiosity.
Secondly, the insulting part is about how he snarkly listed Snowden alongside conspiracy theories. Like him or not, the risks he's taken to get this information out deserve him some level of repspect.
>On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
So basically anything upvoted by this community is considered on topic since enough people deem it gratifying intellectual curiosity.
Secondly, the insulting part is about how he snarkly listed Snowden alongside conspiracy theories. Like him or not, the risks he's taken to get this information out deserve him some level of repspect.
I've recently decided that aversion to political discussion is a very bad thing. Sorry, it's the price you have to pay to live in a country without warrant-less surveillance, prior restraint, secret laws, and wars on drugs, journalism, hackers, free speech, random oil-rich countries of brown people, etc.
NSA, Snowden and Wikileaks are real instances of entities that previously exited only in the sci-fi stories that inspired hacker culture from the beginning. Claiming these stories to be off-topic in a hackers forum is absurd.
True, but people posting them to the front page 3e200 times is also absurd.
How about an About page or FAQ so I know why the site exists? Here are a few questions to get you started:
1. Was this created by pg?
2. If not, why does everyone have an obsession with cloning Hacker News?
1. Was this created by pg?
2. If not, why does everyone have an obsession with cloning Hacker News?
3. What is the value-add of this site compared to existing subreddits on this topic and/or a potentially creatable subreddit on this topic?
I suspect the value add is "Isn't reddit". Reddit is the new myspace. There are a few (mostly musty) corners that are still decent, due to herculean moderation efforts such as /r/AskScience, but the bulk of it becomes less worthwhile every day.
The comments alone make /r/politics nearly unusable for me. And I honestly tried! /r/WorldNews Isn't much better in that regard and I'd much rather see a forum with limited or no comments than either of those. I still get access to the news and get to avoid the trite in the comments.
You need to use smaller subreddits if that's what you want. Subscribe to /r/RepublicOfNews, /r/NeutralNews, and /r/DiggRSS and you will find something completely different.
No, this wasn't created by pg. This is a clone of hacker news because that's what ships with Arc.
This is a great idea and one that will happen in the near future. To answer your questions:
1. No it wasn't created by pg and it's not associated with him or ycombinator. Of course Arc is definitely associated with pg, Libre News is not.
2. Personally, I created this site because I am interested in Arc and wanted to experiment with it. I also wanted to provide a service for others (one that I was also interested in) and a non-censored news source that encouraged discussion seemed like a good idea.
1. No it wasn't created by pg and it's not associated with him or ycombinator. Of course Arc is definitely associated with pg, Libre News is not.
2. Personally, I created this site because I am interested in Arc and wanted to experiment with it. I also wanted to provide a service for others (one that I was also interested in) and a non-censored news source that encouraged discussion seemed like a good idea.
Would you be interested in blogging about any changes you made, or particularly interesting/tricky things you found in the sources, while creating this?
I haven't looked closely at ARC, so perhaps this is a foolish question, but was this as turn-key as unpacking the distribution, changing some names and colors, and running it on some server, or did you need to make substantial changes in order to make it your own, or even to get it to run?
I haven't looked closely at ARC, so perhaps this is a foolish question, but was this as turn-key as unpacking the distribution, changing some names and colors, and running it on some server, or did you need to make substantial changes in order to make it your own, or even to get it to run?
OK. Fair enough. I wasn't trying to be negative, but was genuinely wondering why so many HN clones are made. As a learning experience, it makes sense. Anyway, definitely do the About page because otherwise it won't be obvious that it's meant to be a "non-censored news source."
It can be powered by Arc but did you have to use the same crappy table-based layout? I'd have to think these kinds of sites would save some bandwidth by simply trimming all that fat.
Can we please not start this flamewar again? It's been done to death and there's nothing new to be said.
I don't think cloning HN is bad. But has PG open sourced his code, or will the voting algorithm not going to be as good?
From what I understand based on HN comments over the years, HN proper has lots of special secret sauce to prevent spam, voting fraud, etc.
It's shipped with Arc, a programming language pg made. So yes, it is open source.
Out of curiosity, what voting algorithm are you using at the moment? You'll have to tweak it if the site takes off. Especially since people get very particular about politics, even more so than money, and will try to game it in whatever way possible. It could make HN voting rings look benign.
I'm not the site creator so you'd have to ask him.
I've just posted my onw HN-inspired forum:
https://github.com/skx/gathering/
This is written in Perl, and has some interesting features. But I was inspired by HN because it works well, in its minimal fashion.
https://github.com/skx/gathering/
This is written in Perl, and has some interesting features. But I was inspired by HN because it works well, in its minimal fashion.
While there is no post limit, please be respectable and do not submit so many posts that the front page is full of your submissions.
All but 9 of the submissions on the front page are from ACN.
All but 9 of the submissions on the front page are from ACN.
Kind of off topic, but I've been thinking about building a site like HN/reddit, but instead of ranking stuff based on how many votes it has, use machine learning to predict how likely a specific individual is to upvote it.
That way everyone's front page is based off what they tend to like, and what people who like similar stuff to them liked. That way you don't have to fracture stuff into 50 different communities and try to figure out what kind of content is acceptable in each, and what ones you want to subscribe to.
That way everyone's front page is based off what they tend to like, and what people who like similar stuff to them liked. That way you don't have to fracture stuff into 50 different communities and try to figure out what kind of content is acceptable in each, and what ones you want to subscribe to.
But probably you get stuck in local maxima. E.g. if I am on Hacker News I want to find new and exciting stuff and not things I already know ...
Ya you'd have to take that into account somehow. If 50 other people that are also interested in "technology" or whatever vote for something, then it's likely you will like it as well.
There is no reason you have to select content purely based on the website it's from, or the words it contains, but it's a really good filter for getting rid of stuff you definitely don't like. I.e. if you filtered reddit this way, most images and memes would get ranked way lower for me. Someone else might have articles or news stories ranked lower.
But mostly I'm looking to automatically find people who have similar interests or voting patterns, and then selecting based on what those people voted for to see what you might like.
There is no reason you have to select content purely based on the website it's from, or the words it contains, but it's a really good filter for getting rid of stuff you definitely don't like. I.e. if you filtered reddit this way, most images and memes would get ranked way lower for me. Someone else might have articles or news stories ranked lower.
But mostly I'm looking to automatically find people who have similar interests or voting patterns, and then selecting based on what those people voted for to see what you might like.
Shameless plug for a related non-revenue project.
I built a similarly inspired hn clone here:
http://news.intelmap.com/
This was really just done for tinkering's sake, not trying to make a successful "second HN strictly for politics". I actually built it to feed a news map here:
http://www.intelmap.com/
Thanks for the share, would love to compare notes. I'll sign up for LibreNews and check in every now and then.
http://news.intelmap.com/
This was really just done for tinkering's sake, not trying to make a successful "second HN strictly for politics". I actually built it to feed a news map here:
http://www.intelmap.com/
Thanks for the share, would love to compare notes. I'll sign up for LibreNews and check in every now and then.
I cant read anything on that page without squinting hard and tilting my screen up and down.
Please, this is 2013, #000 on #ccc, not #ddd on #ccc.
Please, this is 2013, #000 on #ccc, not #ddd on #ccc.
I'll definitely make note of this and get it changed. Thanks for the feedback.
I remember read last week about someone suggesting to grab HN code and putting it on an EC2 instance. It was for a business news site if I recall correctly. It seems somebody took the idea, this is actually hosted in AWS.
It would be nice to get an SSL cert on the site as soon as you're able. For the time being, passwords and political interest (as demonstrated by clicked URLs) are being passed as plain text.
only reason I checked the site was because the submission included Powered by Arc in the title, but any how found some interesting links and bookmarked the site .
Is it down?
Too hard to read the text! :P
There's also https://www.plantdietlife.com that posted here not long ago. Both are interesting and worthy topics. It's getting users engaged with the content, that's the challenge.