HCN Needs You

Submitted by
kcoop on Thu, 01/12/2012 - 12:45pm (19 comments)
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For those of you who missed the excitement this weekend, I received a message from Amazon informing me that HCN had been involved in a denial of service attack on another site. This suggested that HCN had been partially compromised, at least enough to allow for an outgoing connection.

In response, I disabled a component of the site that I thought might be causing it (Varnish). I haven't heard a peep from Amazon since, and my limited forensics skills have been unable to find any intrusion attempts or indeed any outgoing connections. Still, the event forced me to decide whether to avert my eyes and hope for the best, shut down HCN completely, or rebuild the site from scratch with better security patch mechanisms.

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Sooo Weee! Last Call For Pig Shirts!

Submitted by
kcoop on Thu, 10/27/2011 - 8:09am (5 comments)
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Hi everyone!

Sorry I haven't been around much, I'm very busy banging away on a new startup project.

Couple things: first, thanks so much to those of you using the Amazon link. I know it takes some thought to do so, and I appreciate the effort you're taking.

Second, I've decided to donate the remaining pig shirts I have to OWS, so hopefully you'll see Tanta's artwork on Youtube! Smile I'll be sending them out on Monday morning, so if you want one before they go, get your order in before then.

New Venture

Submitted by
kcoop on Sun, 07/17/2011 - 12:14pm (22 comments)
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I thought I should let everyone know that I am in the process of building a startup, and as a result will have less time to manage HCN. Barring significant issues, the site will continue to run as is, but I will be unlikely to fix bugs or add features.

I have really enjoyed this process and all of your support. You guys are the best.

New HCN Feature - Predictions

Submitted by
kcoop on Thu, 04/28/2011 - 4:40pm (6 comments)
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A well used feature on HCN is polls, but they've been serving a double purpose, rather poorly. In many cases what it appears people are really wanting to do is make predictions, allow people to bet on them, and keep a running tally of people's acumen as soothsayers.

To better serve this purpose, I've created a new content type called a Prediction. As with a poll, you give a prediction a title, description, and two or more options for members to choose from. In addition, you specify a reckoning date, and closing date.

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Tagging Revisited

Submitted by
kcoop on Wed, 04/20/2011 - 5:09pm (8 comments)
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I have made some changes to tags, to see if a better user interface makes them more useful. Here's the rundown on how the new system works.

Tags are now more prominent. Any tags people make will appear to the right of a comment's time stamp, and in Hoocoobluetwo, controls for adding tags are now presented as you hover over each comment (at present, the buttons are disabled in Legacy - this will be fixed soon). If you're using the mobile theme, you need to click the little drop down arrow next to a comment for them to appear - the same place as Reply and Edit).

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Deconstructing HCN's Icons

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This page is now stale. See here for the current icon glossary.

Icons... they started out as a joke, became an institution. To the uninitiated (and often to the initiated), they can be cryptic and confusing. Hint: hover your mouse over them. If that fails, look here. The icons are presented in roughly the order they appeared on the site.

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New HCN Feature - User Filtering

Submitted by
kcoop on Sun, 11/14/2010 - 1:40am (5 comments)
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Today marks the two year anniversary of CR Companion, and this combined with MLM's efforts has prodded me to add some of that functionality to the site. (Sorry, MLM, and thanks again for getting me moving on this.)

The feature is basically an extension of Ignore User, adding positive rankings to the negative. If you have a handful of favorite authors you'd like to check on when you're in a hurry, you can rate them, and set the filter to show only comments they've contributed.

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Trolls and Banning

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As many of you know, I recently banned walter_map. And I've now banned DP Roberts.

Initially, I attributed walter's ban to personal attacks. This was a confused error on my part. He was really banned for trolling, which recent commentary has made clearer. For the uninitiated, to quote one of our best:

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New Hoocoodanode Feature: Recommendations!

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One of the things I love about this place is the incredibly eclectic range of interests you have, and the quality of the group's knowledge. One would think this is a financial forum, but I can't count how many books, films, musicians, etc. I've learned about here. To celebrate this, and enhance it, I've created a new feature: recommendations.

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Improved Profiles

Submitted by
kcoop on Wed, 04/28/2010 - 6:52pm (7 comments)
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I've made some improvements to profiles.

Profiles are now more conveniently viewed. When you click on a user's name, it will pop up a dialog with information about the user, including links to the various contributions they've made to the site.

You can now add a user picture, as well some more information about yourself. Click on Settings->Edit, and scroll down to see Picture and About Me. The images will be scaled to within 80x80 pixels, and be less than 30 kb in size.

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