top | item 33845946

Show HN: This Hacker News Does Not Exist

252 points| gravitate | 3 years ago |coxomb.github.io

125 comments

order
[+] DoubleDerper|3 years ago|reply
I disagree with the author. I know he's incredibly successful and right about pretty much everything he's ever said, but I've had some experience in this area and just finished reading through some of the archives and I think his focus is wrong. I'm going to ignore the technical issue and talk about the bigger picture and higher level things than what was said in the blog post. If the OP thinks that the process is most important, it's really about end results. But if he thinks it should be about the end results then he's an idiot for not thinking about the process. I'll weasel in a reference the startup I co-founded even though it's not directly relevant.
[+] poulpy123|3 years ago|reply
No, OP is correct.

* You omitted hist point X.

* You misunderstand point Y.

* Here's point Z you didn't account for.

[+] mv9|3 years ago|reply
> tangential statement

I'm honestly really curious about this. Could you elaborate?

[+] briandear|3 years ago|reply
But considering climate change, having people sized sidewalks and taxing the externalities of the process is really the point you failed to consider. Nuclear might work but there is a lot more to it that doesn’t get addressed in the article. Estonia really gets this correct and proves the point that the American city isn’t going to be well designed if we don’t consider the impact of the rail system and electrification.
[+] coxomb|3 years ago|reply
Hi Hackernews! This is a little project I made in my free time. It's a fun and whimsical parody of Hacker News. I wanted to experiment with Faker.js and other JS libraries.

It randomly generates Hackernews headlines. You get new results each time you refresh the page. I spent about 4 days making this, and learned a lot in the process, and it was my first open source side project in a long time.

It was inspired by This Person Does Not Exist and other 'Does Not Exist' projects which you can find here: https://thisxdoesnotexist.com/

If you spot any bugs or have any ideas on maybe how to improve it, post your thoughts here.

The source code can be found on GitHub, where it's hosted:

https://github.com/coxomb/This-Hacker-News-Does-Not-Exist/tr...

I hope you enjoy the project :)

[+] jandrese|3 years ago|reply
On the first page I loaded I could tell it was fake immediately, there were no mentions of Rust at all.
[+] josephcsible|3 years ago|reply
One thing I noticed that could be improved: The headlines in isolation are reasonable, and so are the websites, but the pairings between them are not. For example, "Snapchat Has Been Removed From iOS App Store (mitpress.mit.edu)" and "Hstr: Bash And Zsh Shell History Suggest Box (reuters.com)".
[+] blondin|3 years ago|reply
this is super cool :)

this one got me laughing: "Chicken version 5.0 Alpha Released"

[+] A4ET8a8uTh0|3 years ago|reply
Ask HN: Whats's the Purpose of Action-Items?

I chuckled. Thank you:D

[+] merb|3 years ago|reply
Here's a long detailed, objective explanation of everything related to this issue. It's probably more useful than the actual link and it may serve as one of the best efforts to consolidate information on this subject on the entire Internet. If it contains original research only a couple of readers will be qualified to tell. Half the people who upvote this won't understand more than the first two paragraphs.

Edit: I anticipated the potential questions and added more information. Add some graphs and this could be a master's thesis.

[+] burtekd|3 years ago|reply
> high-level statement about a relevant side point

Here's how it really works. I'll write a couple paragraphs on all the exceptions I can think of, explaining how you should have said "often" instead of "almost always".

[+] idrios|3 years ago|reply
"Why Your Pacemaker Might Be Spying On You" is one of the most stressful headlines I've seen in a long time
[+] manmal|3 years ago|reply
Fun fact, most of the type 1 diabetes looper scene (open source artificial pancreas) relies on an improperly secured insulin pump that allows third party software access via an exploit. The firmware has long been patched of course, but the pumps with the old firmware are still being sold among community members, for 4-5k.
[+] sph|3 years ago|reply
That's the headline immediately following "Ad-supported pacemakers are now available for people on lower incomes"
[+] pfdietz|3 years ago|reply
I don't have the heart to disagree with you.
[+] harryVic|3 years ago|reply
I'm incredibly mad my pacemaker is completely unusable if I disable JavaScript.
[+] kace91|3 years ago|reply
Coming from a Spaniard, “Spain considered dangerous” is also up there.
[+] redbell|3 years ago|reply
Really cool submissions with catchy titles..

I'd like to join the party with some fantasy..

1- Twitter files for bankruptcy (twitter.com/elonmusk)

2- Apple's new M3 chip outperforms Nvidia H100 (geekbench.com)

3- India to surpass China's GDP by 2025 (scmp.com)

4- Tell HN: I am quitting Hacker News

5- Google to revive Stadia (theverge.com)

6- Japan wins the 2022 FIFA World Cup (espn.com)

7- Hacker News to be acquired by Reddit (twitter.com/paulg)

8- Tesla Roadster hits 1.1 sec acceleration in early tests (electrek.co)

9- Microsoft outbid Adobe and offers $43.6B to acquire Figma

10- Facebook had died at 19 :)

Just imagine if one (or some) of the above comes true.. who knows? The world is changing fast ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[+] pleb_nz|3 years ago|reply
Raspberry pi 5 out Performs m3

Now there's a dream and headline

[+] churchill|3 years ago|reply
A big block of text with no paragraph breaks. It seems like the author is trying his hardest to provide something insightful and well-written, and while it seems on-topic it is hard to relate to the original article. None of it looks wrong, but it doesn't seem very informative either. Most people will just skip right over it. There will be a semi-obscure Wikipedia link somewhere in here.[1]

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random

[+] coletonodonnell|3 years ago|reply
"Ask HN: What's the purpose of North Dakota"

I ask this everyday.

[+] bonney_io|3 years ago|reply
Absolute gold. Some favorites:

- Olive Considered Dangerous (techcrunch.com)

- Profound 4th Generation Hardware -- an all-time nothing headline

- Ask HN: What Happened to Keyboard?

- FTX owes $445.61 to Coinbase -- four hundred dollars

- I'll Program The Auxiliary RAM Program, That Should Circuit The THX Circuit (washingtonpost.com)

[+] benj111|3 years ago|reply
If got $29.xx that ftx owes
[+] baxtr|3 years ago|reply
Nothing about Rust or Kubernetes. Instantly realized that this must be fake.
[+] xg15|3 years ago|reply
Missing a random rachelbythebay or ACOUP post and an in-depth analysis of some medieval book collection also. (Though "The Scary Truth about Egypt" and "What to love about Small, Frozen Sausages" come pretty close)
[+] pohl|3 years ago|reply
If you refresh a few times and search for "Rust" with your browser, the word "Rustic" will keep appearing.
[+] yborg|3 years ago|reply
At this point HN is more or less a parody of itself. The same thing happened to Slashdot. Maybe inevitable with any long running community site.
[+] thegeomaster|3 years ago|reply
I've seen this comment ever since I started reading Hacker News some 10 years ago. I've noticed myself getting warmed up to the argument over time, so I believe it's more an artifact of a user getting older than any real objective change in the site itself.
[+] enraged_camel|3 years ago|reply
I think this comment itself could be a part of the parody site, to be honest.
[+] Brendinooo|3 years ago|reply
It’s not, though it certainly does have identifiable quirks.
[+] mdp2021|3 years ago|reply
If at the top of the list I see "Your appliance may be spying on you", it is not the platform that is a parody of itself - the farce is in this dragging world.
[+] felipelalli|3 years ago|reply
It would be nice to use GPT3 to generate the headlines and even the content of the links.
[+] TobTobXX|3 years ago|reply
Using the new ChatGPT from OpenAI:

> Generate 10 typical Hacker News headlines.

  1. "New open-source project revolutionizes web development"
  2. "10 tips for optimizing your website's performance"
  3. "The future of programming languages: what to expect"
  4. "Big tech companies accused of stifling innovation"
  5. "The rise of artificial intelligence in the workplace"
  6. "Successful startups share their secrets to growth"
  7. "Why it's time to switch to a privacy-focused browser"
  8. "The top programming languages to learn in 2021"
  9. "How to build a strong cybersecurity strategy for your business"
 10. "The importance of ethics in the tech industry"
IMHO it's a bit too clichée (there are rather few "10 tips to..." or "top XXX in 2021" on HN), but other than that, quite accurate.

EDIT: It seems like ChatGPT agreees:

> Can you do the same but less clichée?

  1. "The surprising benefits of using a text-based interface"
  2. "Exploring the potential of blockchain technology beyond cryptocurrency"
  3. "Why the gig economy may not be sustainable in the long run"
  4. "The role of virtual reality in distance learning"
  5. "The future of work: how technology is changing the job market"
  6. "The ethics of using facial recognition technology"
  7. "How to protect your online identity from cyber threats"
  8. "The potential of quantum computing to solve complex problems"
  9. "The impact of automation on the job market"
 10. "The rise of low-code development platforms"
These seem like exactly what I'd expect from HN.
[+] benj111|3 years ago|reply
What if you get stuck in the gpt3 generated internet? What if we already are?

(Come to think of it, that would make more sense).

[+] xg15|3 years ago|reply
> Candy Crush Has Been Removed From Google Play (reuters.com)

The world is truly coming to an end.

[+] BulgarianIdiot|3 years ago|reply
I legit got excited for "You May Not Need React". For shame.
[+] IfOnlyINewMore|3 years ago|reply
While the headlines may not be real, many of these are totally worthy of Hacker News style conversations. Maybe we need a static version of this that we can add comments to?
[+] myself248|3 years ago|reply
This is definitely good for a laugh, on the first page-load. After that, some patterns emerge that really deflate the experience, but I definitely chuckled multiple times.
[+] forgotOldLogin|3 years ago|reply
I saw the first page and it had the classic HackerNews headline format: "<name> has died."

AI is gonna win, y'all.

[+] picture|3 years ago|reply
Well, this isn't really an AI. It just scrambles from pre-fabbed assets, afaik
[+] red_Seashell_32|3 years ago|reply
> Your Smartphone May Be Making You Lazy

This, and many more, are more than believable. This one is actually quite sad.

[+] marshmallowmad|3 years ago|reply
Yeah this one is right - the only issue is it’s an understatement