computer science

Hacker News

Hacker News is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Hacker News rather than just read about it. In short: Hacker News (HN) is an American social news website focusing on computer science and entrepreneurship. It is run by the investment fund and startup incubator Y Combinator.

Key takeaways

Hacker News belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Hacker News to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Hacker News from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Hacker News (HN) is an American social news website focusing on computer science and entrepreneurship. It is run by the investment fund and startup incubator Y Combinator. In general, content that can be submitted is defined as "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." The word hacker in "Hacker News" is used in its original meaning and refers to the hacker culture which consists of people who enjoy tinkering with technology.

History The site was created by Paul Graham in February 2007. Initially called Startup News or occasionally News.YC., it became known by its current name on August 14, 2007. It developed as a project of Graham's company Y Combinator, functioning as a real-world application of the Arc programming language which Graham co-developed. At the end of March 2014, Graham stepped away from his leadership role at Y Combinator, leaving Hacker News administration in the hands of other staff members. The site is currently moderated by Daniel Gackle who posts under the username dang and Tom Howard who posts under the username tomhow. Gackle co-moderated Hacker News with Scott Bell (username sctb) until 2019 when Bell stopped working on the site.

Vision and practices The intention was to recreate a community similar to the early days of Reddit. However, unlike Reddit where new users can immediately both upvote and downvote content, Hacker News does not allow users to downvote content until they have accumulated 501 "karma" points. Karma points are calculated as the number of upvotes a given user's content has received minus the number of downvotes. "Flagging" comments, likewise, is not permitted until a user has 30 karma points. Graham stated he hopes to avoid the Eternal September that results in the general decline of intelligent discourse within a community. The site has a proactive attitude in moderating content, including automated flame and spam detectors and active human moderation. It also practices stealth banning in which user posts stop appearing for others to see, unbeknownst to the user. Additional software is used to detect "voting rings to purposefully vote up stories". According to a 2013 TechCrunch article: "Graham says that Hacker News gets a lot of complaints that it has a bias toward featuring stories about Y Combinator startups, but he says there is no such bias. [...] Graham adds that he gets a lot of vitriol from users personally with accusations of bias or censoring."

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Hacker News

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Hacker News claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Hacker News before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Hacker News ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Hacker News

In research: Hacker News appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Hacker News in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Hacker News is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics American news websites, Computing websites, Internet properties established in 2007, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Hacker News outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Hacker News in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Hacker News means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Hacker News out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Hacker News in simple terms?

Hacker News (HN) is an American social news website focusing on computer science and entrepreneurship. It is run by the investment fund and startup incubator Y Combinator.

Why does Hacker News matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Hacker News?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Hacker News.