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A comment on Ask HN: Does reading HN ever make you feel like shit?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: Does reading HN ever make you feel like shit? by resdirector on Thursday July 22, 2010 @03:39AM (#1537607)
I think HN has enough upvote/downvote data for all its users such that it could be feeding us articles based on our voting history and the voting history of people similar to us (non-trivial problem, of course).

I think it's possible to build a news-site that feeds, say the OP, a news feed that he is 'comfortable with'.

In a more general sense, news sites like HN that use up/down are 'dumb' in the sense that they make a crude (but reasonable) approximation to what each individual wants via a simple[1] summation of what the group wants.

[1] unless I'm mistaken

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: Does reading HN ever make you feel like shit? by pixelbath on Thursday July 22, 2010 @05:40PM (#1539617)
I wouldn't feel comfortable with this, as it would destroy the amount of discovery I do on HN.

Not all of the articles are within my technical experience, and some I only barely understand, but I find some seriously mind-blowing things out there.

To the OP...yes. I'm constantly impressed with those who have not only the knowledge and skills, but the sheer drive to build and run a successful startup. Even if I had some crazy-awesome idea that had almost no chance of failure (just as an example), the notion of just...picking up and doing my own thing is a very scary thing to do. I've been job with income stability for so long that the idea of going it on my own scares the hell out of me.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: Does reading HN ever make you feel like shit? by Zak on Thursday July 22, 2010 @04:34AM (#1537679)
I think reddit tried to do exactly that a while ago and didn't have much luck. It may have been smaller than HN at the time, but I think they kept trying for quite a while.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: Does reading HN ever make you feel like shit? by resdirector on Thursday July 22, 2010 @05:08AM (#1537724)
Interesting, do you, or anyone else know why they didn't succeed?

Maybe user-created groups (i.e., subreddits) was simpler and effective.

[ Parent | on HN ]