The best Hacker News stories from Show from the past day
Latest posts:
Show HN: Learn Python with Minecraft
Looking for feedback on my project to teach python by writing code that interacts with a Minecraft World.
Show HN: Learn Python with Minecraft
Looking for feedback on my project to teach python by writing code that interacts with a Minecraft World.
Show HN: Learn Python with Minecraft
Looking for feedback on my project to teach python by writing code that interacts with a Minecraft World.
Show HN: Learn Python with Minecraft
Looking for feedback on my project to teach python by writing code that interacts with a Minecraft World.
Show HN: Quality News – Towards a fairer ranking algorithm for Hacker News
Hello HN!<p>TLDR;<p>- Quality News is a Hacker News client that provides additional data and insights on submissions, notably, the upvoteRate metric.<p>- We propose that this metric could be used to improve the Hacker News ranking score.<p>- In-depth explanation: <a href="https://github.com/social-protocols/news#readme">https://github.com/social-protocols/news#readme</a><p>The Hacker News ranking score is directly proportional to upvotes, which is a problem because it creates a feedback loop: higher rank leads to more upvotes leads to higher rank, and so on...<p><pre><code> →
↗ ↘
Higher Rank More Upvotes
↖ ↙
←
</code></pre>
As a consequence, success on HN depends almost entirely on getting enough upvotes in the first hour or so to make the front page and get caught in this feedback loop. And getting these early upvotes is largely a matter of timing, luck, and moderator decisions. And so the best stories don't always make the front page, and the stories on the front page are not always the best.<p>Our proposed solution is to use upvoteRate instead of upvotes in the ranking formula. upvoteRate is an estimate of how much more or less likely users are to upvote a story compared to the average story, taking account how much attention the story as received, based on a history of the ranks and times at which it has been shown. You can read about how we calculate this metric in more detail here: <a href="https://github.com/social-protocols/news#readme">https://github.com/social-protocols/news#readme</a><p>About 1.5 years ago, we published an article with this basic idea of counteracting the rank-upvotes feedback loop by using attention as negative feedback. We received very valuable input from the HN community (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28391659" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28391659</a>). Quality News has been created based largely on this feedback.<p>Currently, Quality News shows the upvoteRate metric for live Hacker News data, as well as charts of the rank and upvote history of each story. We have not yet implemented an alternative ranking algorithm, because we don't have access to data on flags and moderator actions, which are a major component of the HN ranking score.<p>We'd love to see the Hacker News team experiment with the new formula, perhaps on an alternative front page. This will allow the community to evaluate whether the new ranking formula is an improvement over the current one.<p>We look forward discussing our approach with you!<p>Links:<p>Site: <a href="https://news.social-protocols.org/" rel="nofollow">https://news.social-protocols.org/</a><p>Readme: <a href="https://github.com/social-protocols/news#readme">https://github.com/social-protocols/news#readme</a><p>Previous Blog Post: <a href="https://felx.me/2021/08/29/improving-the-hacker-news-ranking-algorithm.html" rel="nofollow">https://felx.me/2021/08/29/improving-the-hacker-news-ranking...</a><p>Previous Discussion: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28391659" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28391659</a>
Show HN: Quality News – Towards a fairer ranking algorithm for Hacker News
Hello HN!<p>TLDR;<p>- Quality News is a Hacker News client that provides additional data and insights on submissions, notably, the upvoteRate metric.<p>- We propose that this metric could be used to improve the Hacker News ranking score.<p>- In-depth explanation: <a href="https://github.com/social-protocols/news#readme">https://github.com/social-protocols/news#readme</a><p>The Hacker News ranking score is directly proportional to upvotes, which is a problem because it creates a feedback loop: higher rank leads to more upvotes leads to higher rank, and so on...<p><pre><code> →
↗ ↘
Higher Rank More Upvotes
↖ ↙
←
</code></pre>
As a consequence, success on HN depends almost entirely on getting enough upvotes in the first hour or so to make the front page and get caught in this feedback loop. And getting these early upvotes is largely a matter of timing, luck, and moderator decisions. And so the best stories don't always make the front page, and the stories on the front page are not always the best.<p>Our proposed solution is to use upvoteRate instead of upvotes in the ranking formula. upvoteRate is an estimate of how much more or less likely users are to upvote a story compared to the average story, taking account how much attention the story as received, based on a history of the ranks and times at which it has been shown. You can read about how we calculate this metric in more detail here: <a href="https://github.com/social-protocols/news#readme">https://github.com/social-protocols/news#readme</a><p>About 1.5 years ago, we published an article with this basic idea of counteracting the rank-upvotes feedback loop by using attention as negative feedback. We received very valuable input from the HN community (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28391659" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28391659</a>). Quality News has been created based largely on this feedback.<p>Currently, Quality News shows the upvoteRate metric for live Hacker News data, as well as charts of the rank and upvote history of each story. We have not yet implemented an alternative ranking algorithm, because we don't have access to data on flags and moderator actions, which are a major component of the HN ranking score.<p>We'd love to see the Hacker News team experiment with the new formula, perhaps on an alternative front page. This will allow the community to evaluate whether the new ranking formula is an improvement over the current one.<p>We look forward discussing our approach with you!<p>Links:<p>Site: <a href="https://news.social-protocols.org/" rel="nofollow">https://news.social-protocols.org/</a><p>Readme: <a href="https://github.com/social-protocols/news#readme">https://github.com/social-protocols/news#readme</a><p>Previous Blog Post: <a href="https://felx.me/2021/08/29/improving-the-hacker-news-ranking-algorithm.html" rel="nofollow">https://felx.me/2021/08/29/improving-the-hacker-news-ranking...</a><p>Previous Discussion: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28391659" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28391659</a>
Show HN: Quality News – Towards a fairer ranking algorithm for Hacker News
Hello HN!<p>TLDR;<p>- Quality News is a Hacker News client that provides additional data and insights on submissions, notably, the upvoteRate metric.<p>- We propose that this metric could be used to improve the Hacker News ranking score.<p>- In-depth explanation: <a href="https://github.com/social-protocols/news#readme">https://github.com/social-protocols/news#readme</a><p>The Hacker News ranking score is directly proportional to upvotes, which is a problem because it creates a feedback loop: higher rank leads to more upvotes leads to higher rank, and so on...<p><pre><code> →
↗ ↘
Higher Rank More Upvotes
↖ ↙
←
</code></pre>
As a consequence, success on HN depends almost entirely on getting enough upvotes in the first hour or so to make the front page and get caught in this feedback loop. And getting these early upvotes is largely a matter of timing, luck, and moderator decisions. And so the best stories don't always make the front page, and the stories on the front page are not always the best.<p>Our proposed solution is to use upvoteRate instead of upvotes in the ranking formula. upvoteRate is an estimate of how much more or less likely users are to upvote a story compared to the average story, taking account how much attention the story as received, based on a history of the ranks and times at which it has been shown. You can read about how we calculate this metric in more detail here: <a href="https://github.com/social-protocols/news#readme">https://github.com/social-protocols/news#readme</a><p>About 1.5 years ago, we published an article with this basic idea of counteracting the rank-upvotes feedback loop by using attention as negative feedback. We received very valuable input from the HN community (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28391659" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28391659</a>). Quality News has been created based largely on this feedback.<p>Currently, Quality News shows the upvoteRate metric for live Hacker News data, as well as charts of the rank and upvote history of each story. We have not yet implemented an alternative ranking algorithm, because we don't have access to data on flags and moderator actions, which are a major component of the HN ranking score.<p>We'd love to see the Hacker News team experiment with the new formula, perhaps on an alternative front page. This will allow the community to evaluate whether the new ranking formula is an improvement over the current one.<p>We look forward discussing our approach with you!<p>Links:<p>Site: <a href="https://news.social-protocols.org/" rel="nofollow">https://news.social-protocols.org/</a><p>Readme: <a href="https://github.com/social-protocols/news#readme">https://github.com/social-protocols/news#readme</a><p>Previous Blog Post: <a href="https://felx.me/2021/08/29/improving-the-hacker-news-ranking-algorithm.html" rel="nofollow">https://felx.me/2021/08/29/improving-the-hacker-news-ranking...</a><p>Previous Discussion: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28391659" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28391659</a>
Show HN: Can you beat my dad at Scrabble?
Show HN: Can you beat my dad at Scrabble?
Show HN: Can you beat my dad at Scrabble?
My Failure Resume
Show HN: Alpaca.cpp – Run an Instruction-Tuned Chat-Style LLM on a MacBook
Show HN: Alpaca.cpp – Run an Instruction-Tuned Chat-Style LLM on a MacBook
Show HN: Alpaca.cpp – Run an Instruction-Tuned Chat-Style LLM on a MacBook
Show HN: Alpaca.cpp – Run an Instruction-Tuned Chat-Style LLM on a MacBook
Show HN: Alpaca.cpp – Run an Instruction-Tuned Chat-Style LLM on a MacBook
Show HN: Open source UI for ChatGPT API
<a href="https://github.com/KTruong008/aichatbestie">https://github.com/KTruong008/aichatbestie</a><p>Been working on this since last week and glad to share it here and now!<p>There's already been a few other takes on this idea, but I figured none would fit me as well as if I had just built it myself.<p>All messages are sent and stored locally in the browser for privacy and speed. Accounts are optional and upgrading is a one-time deal.<p>Any questions, comments, feedback, please, I'd like to hear it all!
Show HN: Write Language-agnostic functions with WebAssembly you can use
Hey y’all, we’re really excited to share that we’re launching a new free, open source tool called Scale. It’s a highly-performant WebAssembly function runtime that enables composable, language-agnostic software development.<p>TL;DR - Scale allows you to write functions in any language, then use them in any other language. It’s pretty exciting.<p>We currently support Go and Rust, but TypeScript is coming soon and support for a handful of other languages is already in the works. We’d love to hear any feedback you have, so let us know what you think!
Show HN: Mr. Graph – A graph definition and execution library for Python
What:<p>Mr. Graph is a python library designed to make composing graphs of sync and async functions easy! Use google style docstrings to automagically create dataclasses and chain together function calls into graphs.<p>Why:<p>I like the design of Dagster, but not the latency. For apps and systems engineering, sometimes I want to compose a graph out of regular python functions. I don;t need all the heavy machinery that comes with a full workflow engine.<p>Current features:<p>- Use with either async or sync functions<p>- Uses google style doc strings to name return values.<p>- Creates dataclasses for each function's output.<p>- Can infer pipelines from input and output signatures<p>- All directed acyclic graph layouts supported. linear, fan-in, fan- out.<p>Future Features:<p>- Better examples for use with async calls (like LLMs)<p>- Splitting dataclasses, better error handling, logging improvements.<p>This is under active development. Any feedback, interest, or contributions are appreciated. Thanks!<p>github link: <a href="https://github.com/mcminis1/mr-graph">https://github.com/mcminis1/mr-graph</a>
Show HN: Ingest data from your customers (Prequel YC W21)
Hey HN! Charles here from Prequel (https://prequel.co). We just launched the ability for companies to import data from their customer’s data warehouse or database, and we wanted to share a little bit more about it with the community.<p>If you just want to see how it works, here’s a demo of the product that Conor recorded: https://www.loom.com/share/4724fb62583e41a9ba1a636fc8ea92f1.<p>Quick background on us: we help companies integrate with their customer’s data warehouse or database. We’ve been busy helping companies export data to their customers – we’re currently syncing over 40bn rows per month on behalf of companies. But folks kept on asking us if we could help them import data from their customers too. They wanted the ability to offer a 1st-party reverse ETL to their customers, similar to the 1st-party ETL capability we already helped them offer. So we built that product, and here we are.<p>Why would people want to import data? There are actually plenty of use-cases here. Imagine a usage-based billing company that needs to get a daily pull from its customers of all the billing events that happened, so that they can generate relevant invoices. Or a fraud detection company who needs to get the latest transaction data from its customers so it can appropriately mark fraudulent ones.<p>There’s no great way to import customer data currently. Typically, people solve this one of two ways today. One is they import data via CSV. This works well enough, but it requires ongoing work on the part of the customer: they need to put a CSV together, and upload it to the right place on a daily/weekly/monthly basis. This is painful and time-consuming, especially for data that needs to be continuously imported. Another one is companies make the customer write custom code to feed data to their API. This requires the customer to do a bunch of solutions engineering work just to get started using the product – which is a suboptimal onboarding experience.<p>So instead, we let the customer connect their database or data warehouse and we pull data directly from there, on an ongoing basis. They select which tables to import (and potentially map some columns to required fields), and that’s it. The setup only takes 5 minutes, and requires no ongoing work. We feel like that’s the kind of experience every company should provide when onboarding a new customer.<p>Importing all this data continuously is non-trivial, but thankfully we can actually reuse 95% of the infrastructure we built for data exports. It turns out our core transfer logic remains pretty much exactly the same, and all we had to do was ship new CRUD endpoints in our API layer to let users configure their source/destination. As a brief reminder about our stack, we run a GoLang backend and Typescript/React frontend on k8s.<p>In terms of technical design, the most challenging decisions we have to make are around making database’s type-systems play nicely with each other (kind of an evergreen problem really). For imports, we allow the data recipient to specify whether they want to receive this data as JSON blob, or as a nicely typed table. If they choose the latter, they specify exactly which columns they’re expecting, as well as what type guarantees those should uphold. We’re also working on the ability to feed that data directly into an API endpoint, and adding post-ingestion validation logic.<p>We’ve mentioned this before but it bears worth repeating. We know that security and privacy are paramount here. We're SOC 2 Type II certified, and we go through annual white-box pentests to make sure that all our code is up to snuff. We never store any of the data anywhere on our servers. Finally, we offer on-prem deployments, so data never even has to touch our servers if our customers don't want it to.<p>We’re really stoked to be sharing this with the community. We’ll be hanging out here for most of the day, but you can also reach us at hn (at) prequel.co if you have any questions!