Guidelines | Hackphilia

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Guidelines

Hackphilia is a Hacker News clone. Submit a link or ask a question. Vote up what you want to see. Reply in threads.

Stories are ranked like Hacker News: (votes − 1)0.8 / (hours + 2)1.8. Score is computed when the list is drawn. There is no cron job.

Everything is stored as JSON flat files. There is no database.

Search is live. On the front page, filter headlines as you type. On a topic, filter threads by keyword — matching comments stay, and so do their ancestors so you keep context. Global search shows topics whose titles or threads contain the keywords, and lists those matching threads under each topic.

Your first story or comment asks a simple math question. After that, post freely. Posts are not rate limited.

Be kind. Do not paste garbage. Titles should be the original title, or a clear question.

Follow the site with RSS. Each topic has its own feed of new comments (rss on the topic line).

Dedication

These feeds are dedicated to Aaron Swartz (1986–2013). At fourteen he joined the working group that wrote RSS 1.0, the format that still carries headlines from one site to another. He later helped build Creative Commons, Markdown, Reddit, and tools for open access and civic action. He believed knowledge should move freely.

In 2011 he was arrested after downloading a large number of scholarly articles from JSTOR over MIT’s network. JSTOR settled. Federal prosecutors did not. Under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act he faced a stack of felony counts, a possible sentence measured in decades, and a million dollars in fines — for taking copies of research that universities and the public had already paid to produce. On 11 January 2013, while that case was still hanging over him, he died by suicide. He was twenty-six.

The law that was used against him was written for break-ins, then stretched over a young man who wanted journals unlocked. That was an injustice. We remember him when we subscribe, when we syndicate, and when we refuse to treat a feed as a crime.

Each topic shows unique human readers, unique robot readers, and the percent that is human. The robot count links to an IP log (newest first) with reverse-DNS domain and a free geo lookup. We do not log human hits — only robots. Human IPs, cookies, and user-agents are not written to those logs.

You can change your username on your profile. Moderators (like dang) can hide or delete posts, ban accounts, rename users, and appoint other mods from the mod page.

The layout is tight by default and scales with the screen. Use − / + to shrink or enlarge type (70%–180%). Use Phosphor for P1 green (old terminal screens). When that theme is on, the control reads Sulfur — click it to return to amber. Display choices (type size, phosphor, overscan) are stored in a cookie for guests and on your account when you log in. Turn on overscan in the header or footer to add 8% padding on every side (for TVs that crop the edges).

This site is a fork by Page Telegram Volunteer Services at pagetelegram.com of amfile.org, after the PHP Hacker News clone by Kandepet.