YHK - yet another hacker news clone

Neal Stephenson responds with wit and humor (2004)

33 points jdkee 2 hours ago 12 comments

acheron 1 hour ago | parent

Ah, a classic. This was Slashdot’s high point.

Note: (2004)

jdkee 1 hour ago | parent

Noted!

jjs 20 minutes ago | parent

I love this site, but I miss classic Slashdot

hungryhobbit 3 minutes ago | parent

Slashdot is still there.

It's kind of tiny compared to here (<1/5th the articles maybe?) but it still has an older/Slashdot-y crowd.

yipinwong 54 minutes ago | parent

given how Neal never goes online, i wonder how long he sat on this to reply

nickmonad 45 minutes ago | parent

My first exposure to Neal was through Reamde and it's definitely the fastest I've managed to get through a novel relative to length. I really enjoy his style.

hungryhobbit 8 minutes ago | parent

I recommend his older stuff to anyone else looking to check him out: Snow Crash is an undeniable classic, Diamond Age was absolutely incredible, and even Zodiac and In the Beginning Was the Command Line are both very good (although the last one is obviously more for computer people).

His newer stuff is very ... verbose. It started with Cryptonomicon (not sci-fi and WAY longer than it should have been) and by the time he got to Anathema he was so full of himself he not only wrote a giant text ... he wrote it in a made-up sub-language he created (and expected you to learn) just to enjoy the story.

He's one of my absolute favorite authors ... or at least he was for the first half of his career.

buildbot 42 minutes ago | parent

Ah, I always wondered how Vancouver Island came to be - a fight between Stephenson and Gibson makes perfect sense.

dfxm12 27 minutes ago | parent

Perhaps the biggest loss of cryptocurrency being branded as "crypto" is losing the Matt Blaze's thoughts on cryptography (and in turn, how this informed Stephenson's thoughts on these topics).

Anyway, in case you were curious:

Hobbs: https://web.archive.org/web/20041204055248/http://www.crypto...

Master Key: https://web.archive.org/web/20041022021127/http://www.crypto...

EvanAnderson 19 minutes ago | parent

Matt Blaze is still around. I get the feeling he doesn't post often:

https://www.mattblaze.org/blog/

NickDouglas 24 minutes ago | parent

That was the best explanation of litfic vs. commercial/genre fiction I've ever read.

__rito__ 5 minutes ago | parent

Neal is one of two living authors whose all books I buy. Happy to have found him during Covid, thanks to HN comments. I found Greg Egan during that time, and I am grateful to HN threads and comments on books.