However, after seeing this:
> ... because they are entrenched, and they literally own quite a large portion of their userbase.
> Unfortunately no matter how many people invent software that does the same thing as Hacker News but works much better and offer it up for free, nothing will be done.
... I have to say, if you are disappointed, have you thought about testing this theory? This website has not been around forever. It isn't the first of its kind either. I'm probably not the only one here who came to this site after having frequented a bunch of others that were essentially the same thing. So I don't expect it to be the last one, either. If someone has the interest and the skill set, I say, please do make this. Worst case you waste a few weekends or something.
ie assholes
To that end I often feel it's refreshing when people say something that is not a majority opinion on this site, and don't hold back.
they simply do not care
If it's negligence that you're implying, consider a more valuable alternative. The expiration link bug is starting to look like the HN test of one's ability to tell what's important to care for. Any hacker would want to develop this ability.
Not at all. It's pretty trivial to replace code that uses dynamically generated links with code that doesn't.
Can they change the 'lasts' parameter so that things don't expire as quickly?
Another idea.
To be more sophisticated, instead of killing fnids, could first
; replace them with fns that tell the server it's harvesting too
; aggressively if they start to get called. But the right thing to
; do is estimate what the max no of fnids can be and set the harvest
; limit there-- beyond that the only solution is to buy more memory.
(def harvest-fnids ((o n 50000)) ; was 20000
Another idea. Could you change it so that when they are harvested the functions are serialized to disk (maybe temporarily), and make fns a function or something so if it had been removed from memory it could be deserialized? It wouldn't need to be a serialization solution that would work for arbitrary closures, just something that would work for those cases, like timed-aform or whatever.
I have barely ever tried to use Lisp and I don't know much about this system so this may not make any sense.
Another idea. Use one of the Hacker News clones that people have built over the years that doesn't have this problem.
Not literally.
"Why editors are 'literally' changing the dictionary" - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23729570
Someone who was actually a slave would strongly disagree.
It makes it look a little slicker too, but I truly couldn't care less about that.
[1]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hackernew/lgoghlnd...
(Also, they let people scrape them and create improved versions!)
We should name this - how about "The Craigslist Problem"?
They don't have to fix it or make any improvements. They can run a very poorly performing site with no features and a horrible appearance, because they are entrenched, and they literally own quite a large portion of their userbase.
Unfortunately no matter how many people invent software that does the same thing as Hacker News but works much better and offer it up for free, nothing will be done.
The owner of the site has too much invested in its technology stack (Lisp) and its particular implementation and appearance. The improvements necessary probably require going back on some of those fundamentals, which is never going to happen, because they are too proud.