[Toadsoup]

Edit: I can accept that kite plans can be on topic for HN. I also don't mean to stifle anyone's curiosity about kites or kite building.

I suppose I expected something more akin to "Kite Plans, Experiments, Observations, and Results that SoAndSo ran" or "Specific Kite Plan and Notes" to be linked on HN.

If you're new to kites, good news, it's a lot more fun than it should be.

--- Original Post: I am confused, why this link is on HN?

I enjoy kites and have used this site before, but what makes it worth the front page of HN? It's nothing new, their site hasn't really changed in years, and it is somewhat off topic.

Was the poster just fired up about kites? Am I missing something?

[omegaham]

Stuff that is old-hat to members of a subculture tends to be really interesting to people who didn't even know that the subculture existed.

The last time I flew a kite was in elementary school. I guess I knew in the abstract that people actually put thought and engineering into kites, but I never actually thought about it. Posts like this remind me of the enormous breadth of human hobbies, and they're really interesting.

As always, there's a relevant xkcd[1], and today, I'm one of the lucky 10,000.

[1]https://xkcd.com/1053/

[tonyarkles]

It definitely meets the “satisfies intellectual curiosity” criteria for me! I think we’re giving it the HN hug of death right now (or my phone internet sucks here), but I’ll definitely be checking back later and maybe building one this weekend.

Kites are pretty cool and, as this site points out pretty dramatically, can go from super simple to technically very complex and interesting.

[erdosjr]

Apart from being fun, there is a good amount of engineering in designing kites.

For example, NASA has been experimenting with designing simple parachutes [1] and it turned out that the parawings (or Rogallo wings) are pretty good traction kites, too. The NPW kites are still popular kites as they are cheap to make and long-wearing in use.

[1] http://2e5.com/kite/nasa/reports/

[jfoutz]

It's neat!

> Am I missing something?

Yeah. you've been around here for a while, so i suspect you know the answer. But hey, maybe this will help. The first part is the boring answer

> 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. [1]

So anyhow, given you'd actively used the kite site it the past, you should be able to see how it satisfied your own intellectual curiosity in the past. Clearly, it's not relevant to you today, but perhaps you can see how it's relevant to others. Also, your experience can help drive some conversation with new kite makers.

the second part is some gentle advice - please don't take this as a criticism, just an observation. Try to take joy in other people being one of the 10,000 [2].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html [2] https://xkcd.com/1053/

[Toadsoup]

Thanks, This was a super useful reply.

[RobotCaleb]

I'm curious what you consider on-topic.

[moftz]

"Bitcoin Miner Docker Image Written in Rust Running on a Model 3"

[xutopia]

I had never heard of the site. It's something of interest to me.