Ask HN: Does anyone else get strange looks from people who see you reading "Hacker News"?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=575487

by falsestprophet • 17 years ago

64 72 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Maybe I will write a greasemonkey script to change the name to Erlang Innards

ivanstojic• 17 years ago

All the time :-(

I used to think that ESR's constant reminders that hacking is not the same as cracking were silly. Now I simply wonder at just how mystical and omnious the world seems to some people.

P.S. I never explain that's it's "not that kind of hacking," it's the only kind of hacking that I know of.

pierrefar3• 17 years ago

I was once answering a question at a packed lecture and suggested to someone that they should read a site called Hacker News. There were lots of giggles and mumblings immediately as I said that.

Their loss really.

aptimpropriety• 17 years ago

Whenever I tell my friends about HN, I always call it "YCombinator news". Since that is what it was presented to me as from the outset (i.e., a url (http://news.ycombinator.com) with a 'hacker'-free endorsement), the "Hacker News" title has never really stuck. Even among people in the know, I still usually refer to it as YCombinator news.

SwellJoe• 17 years ago

I find I can't help but say, "news dot YC", and then if there are any puzzled looks, I amend that with, "The Y Combinator news site". I've never been able to think of it as Hacker News, either.

rsayers• 17 years ago

Surprisingly no. In fact it's been a while since I've had to explain the real meaning of the word hacker. In the past 10 years it seems that a lot of people finally "get it".

strider24• 17 years ago

All the time. Me using terminals make it worse. They think I'm hacking which maybe true, but, not in the way they think of it.

scott_s• 17 years ago

What contexts does that come up in?

jrockway3• 17 years ago

Sexual fantasies.

brokenrhino• 17 years ago

The name does throw people off. They think I am doing something wrong.

chanux• 17 years ago

Mmm... Not many human beings really noticed me doing that. The few who did just frowned as I can remember. Some bookmarked it.

vaksel• 17 years ago

I only read this site from home, partially to avoid this kind of situation.

vyrotek• 17 years ago

Yes, just yesterday I was in a meeting and someone noticed my HN rss feed on my google homepage. Sadly, all they noticed and talked about was the fact that a post had profanity in its title.

wlievens• 17 years ago

Yep, including the hacking thing. To a colleague programmer, to shame.

edw519• 17 years ago

No. I have perfected a lightning-like alt-tab.

For longer threads, I cut and paste into my text editor. The keyword highlighting looks kind of funky but no one who walks by can tell it's not code.

Jem• 17 years ago

There's a surprising amount of things this works for - I reply to emails, type up blog entries (and comments), etc all inside an open document in my text editor.

Of course, I could just work a little harder.

eru3• 17 years ago

With emacs you can do this natively.

ryanwaggoner• 17 years ago

Thank you for reminding me why I don't have a job anymore. I always hated that bullshit of someone looking over your shoulder.

wallflower• 17 years ago

Or you can use text to speech and headphones

NextAloud has impressive voices, including a sexy British one

http://www.acapela-group.com/text-to-speech-interactive-demo....

swombat2• 17 years ago

The only time this site's name was really a problem for me was when I made the mistake of mentioning my business in a google-meaningful way on here (e.g. "business-name is targeted at the construction industry"), and google picked up my comment here as being higher rated than our website itself!

This was back in the days when we didn't have that much google-juice, and so the result was that hapless architects would search for "business-name" and find that the first result was a site called "Hacker News" which said that "business-name is targeted at the construction industry".

Needless to say, that was not exactly the best impression to make. Fortunately, pg was extremely gracious and altered the comment to remove the name of my business when I asked him.

Evgeny• 17 years ago

Every time I go to HN from work I think to myself "is it blocked already ... is it blocked already ... phew!".

The company has a reasonably strict policy on internet usage, stuff like webmail is blocked, for example, but all development-related sites are not. However, they blocked the blogger.com 'dashboard' recently ... without blocking the site itself ... hmm ... so they might block HN one day, I won't be able to prove that it's 'work-related'.

niqolas• 17 years ago

The admins at work blocked HN simply because it had the word "hacker" in its name.

dagobart• 17 years ago

Yeah, I know what you mean. Every time I get in a "serious business" environment and fall for mentioning F/LOSS, I get the strange looks (and obviously freak out the admin). Better not even to mention the word "hacker" at all.

jrockway3• 17 years ago

Best to let the "serious businesses" kill themselves off by ignoring free software and instead spending millions of dollars on inferior-quality products and services.

andyking• 17 years ago

Be grateful that you don't want to look up the Scunthorpe United results.

agotterer• 17 years ago

Not so much over here. Half the guys in my department read it daily, or throughout the day :)

Luc• 17 years ago

Yes, I get smirks and jabs from people who think I am trying to relive my misspent youth. 'Hacker New?!!? Bwahaa! Greetings Dr. Falken, do you want to play a game?'

kirubakaran2• 17 years ago

I used to care but now I've developed a healthy fuck you attitude. It is all about balance.

I once borrowed a stranger's (UW student) laptop in a cafe to quickly check HN and he was nervous. He said "Hey man, I'll kick your ass if you hack my computer". I was laughing too hard to think of a come back.

swombat2• 17 years ago

Little did you know, pg has a secret kung-fu ninja hacker script that uses a cross-platform vulnerability in CSS rendering to run arbitrary code on the machines of all visitors. You didn't hack that stranger's machine, but pg did!

This is all part of a vast, shadowy conspiracy to help YCombinator identify the best start-ups to fund ahead of time by looking at their code and their browsing habits.

kirubakaran2• 17 years ago

I used to think this of Google. You go about your life, coding, browsing, emailing and what not and one fine day you get an email from Google saying "You are hired". They have the means, motivation and opportunity and they don't even have to "hack into" your computer.

luckystrike• 17 years ago

Hacker News is bookmarked on my Firefox, and i did get a question (and a smirk) about it during a demo. The word 'Hacker' has been blown out badly by the media, and i don't know how long would it take before regular people start looking at it positively.

mkyc3• 17 years ago

It's good that the name deters. If the site is difficult to use, then only committed users will remain. A socially inappropriate name does this without killing usability.

vorador3• 17 years ago

This is a website, not a religion.

olefoo• 17 years ago

Some would say it is a cult:

1. charismatic leader

2, group indoctrination at a segregated living facility

3. a common goal that is very rarely questioned publicly

But as cults go it's a fairly innocuous one, on a par with the chamber of commerce or a particularly hard working fraternity. More like an Art School really.

mkyc3• 17 years ago

I don't see the relevance. Social groups enforce norms. This turns out to be yet another way that we enforce our norms, and maintain a healthy community. This leads to great articles and discussion.

I think that quips should be modded away in the same way and for the same reasons that tasteless jokes are.

zaidf• 17 years ago

Most common reaction is "are you a hacker?" from classmates as I browse HN during lectures.

derefr• 17 years ago

My response to such a person: "If a bunch of 'real hackers' wanted to get together and talk about doing illegal things, do you really think they'd call the website Hacker News?" (Not bothering to mention that they'd probably be meeting on IRC instead...)

blang• 17 years ago

I will often get shouts of "Nerd alert!"

lacker• 17 years ago

They can't see I'm reading Hacker News because I use #000000 as my top-bar color.

nostrademons• 17 years ago

I, however, know you're reading Hacker News because I can see your comments...

CGamesPlay• 17 years ago

So that setting affects the browser window title bar as well?

jrockway3• 17 years ago

You use a window manager with title bars?

amjith• 17 years ago

I get strange looks all the time and I am beginning to like it. Makes me look cool (just kidding).

But HN did get blacklisted and blocked for a little bit by our company proxy which identified it as a hacking information website (which is an accurate description, with a twisted meaning to the word hacker). I had to file a complaint with our IT desk and fortunately one of the guys in the IT department was smart enough to know the true meaning of hacker and unblocked it for us :).

quellhorst• 17 years ago

I had a girl joke about it before when seeing an icon for Hacker News on my iphone. It was actually funny.

pg• 17 years ago

Always happy to oblige.

forsaken• 17 years ago

Innocuous News is almost sketchier, but awesome!

k0n2ad• 17 years ago

Hilarious!

pasbesoin• 17 years ago

And it's been said there's no humor on HN -- err, IN.

hellweaver666• 17 years ago

Awesome... we should change it daily to stop people from finding out what we really get up to on here... mwa ha ha! ;o)

rokhayakebe• 17 years ago

That is the greatest idea I have come across today.

eru3• 17 years ago

Wow, already picked up by Google. They really seem to like Innocuous News.

http://www.google.de/search?q=innocuous+news

pierrefar3• 17 years ago

Seems like a harmless change to me!

thorax2• 17 years ago

Interesting site name change! How harmless. I wonder how long that will last.

Now the site feels much safer when I browse my Firefox tabs. ;)

http://pics.gd/INYC_screenshot.png

Edit: FYI-- See pg's comment on this thread about the change (it's temporary): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=575815

juliend22• 17 years ago

Are you using TabKit plugin for Firefox (in your screenshot)? Mine is different. Maybe cause im on a mac though.

thorax2• 17 years ago

I'm using this extension (which I love):

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5890

jcl• 17 years ago

I see we are now reading "Innocuous News", for the moment anyway. Thanks, PG, that made my day.

jasonlbaptiste• 17 years ago

Never really thought about that to be honest. I just don't really give a shit. I'm also moving to fast between reading things usually.

bitwize• 17 years ago

Just tell them it's about little spirits from Scandinavian folklore.

sketerpot• 17 years ago

Hit the down arrow on your keyboard, twice. Suddenly it just looks like a pretty generic page of text. That's what I do.

derwiki• 17 years ago

Kind of off topic, but Hacker News has changed my definition of 'hacker' -- I almost never mean it in the malicious sense. Good point though, most people probably do think of it in the Wargames or Kevin Mitnick sense (if anyone even remembers him..)

hwijaya• 17 years ago

I never get any strange look. Or...maybe because i just don't care about it. For me, it's their loss. I always feel there are so many things can be learnt from HN, especially if you want to stand in front of the tech-curve. Tried to promote to a couple of friends, but, never see them jump into it.

csomar• 17 years ago

I'm safe, the people near me don't know what the word "hacker" mean!

quizbiz• 17 years ago

I was once approached during school (I am a high school student). A quick explanation was all that was needed.

mat3• 17 years ago

Yes, my wife just gave me a strange look!

Ask HN: Does anyone else get strange looks from people who see you reading "Hacker News"?

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