reddit News Archive

Crowbar, headcrab, and Half-Life strategy guide shipped to CERN

reddit — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:11:55 GMT

While you've been busy trying to win $7500 in prizes , we here at reddit hq have been saving the world. Well, that's not very fair; the idea to send CERN this crowbar wrecking bar came from you in the reddit community who voted up Mad_Gouki suggestion . We just understood the great importance of this mission. And we weren't alone, along with support from all over the Internet , the good folks at Fark not only supported our cause,

rss gets an update

reddit — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:46:53 GMT

For each link in the RSS feed, you'll now you'll find the number of comments, submitter, reddit it was submitted to, and a thumbnail (if one exists, but there's also a preference to turn that off.). We've also given in to all the redditors asking for the headlines to link to the reddit comments page. Hard as it may be to believe, this was a relic from a time before comments existed; when we added comments, it just seemed reasonable to keep the status quo.

now you can restyle and host your reddits wherever you'd like (with contest!)

reddit — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 16:13:36 GMT

redditors have created lots of new reddits in the last few months (and subscribers and subscriptions are up 300% since the redesign ) but allowing user-created reddits was just the first step. Now we want you to be able to fully customize your communities right down to the pixel. Today is the day reddit fully becomes a platform for building link sharing sites.

investigating qgyh2

reddit — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 19:03:03 GMT

If you've been using reddit for any period of time, you've likely come across these five innocuous characters: "Q G Y H 2." He's our most prolific redditor to date, with a total of 182,510 karma points (at the time of writing). But there's been some recent speculation surrounding this particular redditor. Dr. Chris Slowe has dug a bit deeper and found some startling facts.

your week full (updated) pilot now online for you to watch and rate

reddit — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 18:26:52 GMT

If you've got some time this weekend, please click here, watch the full, updated pilot for YourWeek ( reddit-powered television news ) and fill out a survey. They need this information to make decisions about the show and like everything else on the show, we're looking for viewer input . We wouldn't ask you to do anything we wouldn't do, so I filled it out yesterday. This may prove to be little comfort, but I thought I'd mention it.

the reddit-powered pilot is online

reddit — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 14:21:14 GMT

I'm pleased to report that the long-awaited Internet release for the pilot of YourWeek is now up. Watch it now (more segments will be uploaded throughout the day) . Now, we were a bit handicapped in putting this together, because we couldn't properly notify the community of a television news show that didn't exist yet, but producers were able to find popular stories from the reddit corpus to report on. If YourWeek gets picked up,

in san francisco this wednesday night? reddit has an announcement to make (with free booze!)

reddit — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 07:14:42 GMT

Come join us this Wednesday, June 18th, from 6:30 to 8:30pm at Swig (561 Geary St) in downtown San Francisco . There'll be plenty of beer, miniature hamburgers, and something else even more intoxicating and delicious... Please remember to RSVP by emailing redditRSVP@wired.com .

reddit design changes

reddit — Wed, 07 May 2008 22:51:42 GMT

As many of you have noticed, we opened up beta.reddit this morning to test out interface changes we have been working on. Keep in mind our goal is to improve the site, and the whole point of using the beta is to get your feedback. First, thank you for the positive feedback. Despite some issues, I think this is a net-improvement. Some of the feature enhancements we've made are: Non-logged-in users can set a language preference by clicking on the language in the upper right.

Search reddit directly from Firefox

reddit — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 04:11:38 GMT

Firefox users: thanks to the efforts of the relatively anonymous "Phil", you can search reddit right from the Firefox search bar. Just install the reddit search plugin (go to that page, and click on "reddit" in the search results).

"2A5< ?@825B!" and "god dag!"

reddit — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 16:42:39 GMT

In our continuing campaign to counter American chauvinism on reddit, we'd like to announce a Russian and Swedish translation of the UI, with huge thanks to freedomcry and livedog .

"Salutare lume!" "Ciao gente!" "Pozdrav svima!" and "Hallo, alle sammen!"

reddit — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 04:23:00 GMT

This weekend we rolled out some updates to the preference page that not only make the layout easier on the eyes, but also allow content language to be specified independently of the interface language. Today we'd also like to announce interface support for four more languages: Romanian brought to you by rozacruce , Italian by killerapp , Croatian by zaretina , and Norwegian by judofyr .

reddit & xkcd fundraiser pulls in 3K for EFF

reddit — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 03:31:00 GMT

I definitely learned a few things about fundraising strategies that I'll be sure to employ for next year, but we're still quite pleased with the attention and funding you all were able to give EFF . Within a little over a week (and well after you no doubt emptied your coffers for Ron Paul and Kucinich) you donated $3045.51 to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. This was admittedly a very last minute project , coming right on the heels of one redditor's self post .

let the donations begin

reddit — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 06:49:00 GMT

Voting has ended and the EFF won - now the donating has begun. Click here to donate. We've already gotten a great response; don't stop impressing us, reddit :-) Donations will run until December 31st. I've gotten in touch with someone at EFF and they're quite excited about this. More to come.

final hours before a non-profit is determined for the reddit & xkcd fundraiser

reddit — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:26:00 GMT

If you haven't voted yet, now is the time . The poll will end at 10pm Eastern (GMT-5) today; top scoring non-profit will be the recipient of 100% of your donations (and maybe even a bit of the "Splashy Pants effect"). At the time of this writing, the #1 non-profit is the EFF , but the Esperantic Studies Foundation , ACLU , and the Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science aren't far behind. Update: Voting has ended. The EFF has won.

a collaboration of geeks, stick figure comics, and an alien - for charity?

reddit — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 05:50:00 GMT

Click to donate Two weeks ago, a headline made it up to the front page that gave me an idea: "Ok Reddit, we've proven our power with Mister Splashey [sic] Pants and that lady who wanted to go to Alaska. At what point, though, do we take this to a more meaningful level?" Typo aside (I don't think Mr. Splashy Pants would mind anyway), powerhead brought up a good point, and a lot of you agreed. So the 4 of us here at reddit wanted to do something to help you all make it happen.

striking Hollywood writer? (or just in L.A.) reddit would like to buy you a drink

reddit — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 02:29:00 GMT

Sure, we know what the effect of these drankkit meetups has been on traffic, but it's also been a great chance to meet redditors (and give them free beer!) Now that we're going to be in L.A., we know there are a bunch of striking Hollywood writers wandering around in need of a drink. Our alien would be picketing with you, but its contract bars it from any union-related activity. That said, we'd like to give you some beer. So if you're a striking writer, or a redditor in L.A.

giuliani's google ads

reddit — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 03:35:00 GMT

Already a #1 story and falling off the hot page, the damage has already been done - so this did seem rather moot - but Google demanded that we remove the link to the Giuliani search results as it was encouraging people to engage in clickfraud (pointing out the violation of both our User Agreement and their ToS). You can still find the permalink , we've just "cooled it off." It was a clever submission, but unethical nonetheless. Granted, since it already was off the top 25,

help me, redditors; you're my only hope

reddit — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 17:44:00 GMT

That's probably what our alien mascot would be telling you right now, if it had stored a message inside a droid onboard Tantive IV . We had a fantastic time out in New York for our NY reddit meetup, but something was terribly wrong by the end of the night. For the last few days, we'd been taking around a reddit alien bobblehead and photographing it "traveling garden gnome" style. Only this alien could obviously thrash any gnome - even a gnomish wizard. Anyway,

reddit would like to buy you a drink, new york

reddit — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 05:21:00 GMT

San Francisco was a success . We hope our homecoming in Boston tomorrow will go smoothly (Steve doesn't have a costume yet - so messages him with suggestions or he'll end up as " man in a hat "). I really ought to announce our upcoming visit to New York. It's happening this Saturday, November 3rd from 7pm to... umm... well... last call. The place is Hanger Bar and it's on East 3rd between Ave B and C. RSVP if you want via MyPunchbowl , facebook , or yelp . Bonus!

reddit would like to buy you a drink, boston

reddit — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 22:38:00 GMT

We're coming home for Halloween (keep tabs on the tour via drankkit.com ). Steve and I started reddit in a summer sublet in Medford. Sixteen months later, we weren't living much further away, but right in the center of the incomparable Davis Square. Now we shall return (really, the bar is just a short stagger from our old apartment) and we'd like you all to join us. We still haven't gotten those ponies,

draw the alien, get 24hrs of quasi-fame

reddit — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 04:44:00 GMT

Inspired by a 4-year-old's drawing of the reddit alien, I'd like to let you draw this coming week's reddit logos . I'd initially said we'd publish the first 5 we got, but then realized it'd only encourage haste and not cool design. So keep the submissions coming, the four of us on team reddit will be choosing the logos for the 22nd to the 26th. We've already gotten some pretty wild submissions. Oh, and don't hesitate to doodle if you don't think you have the "skillz,

reddit status update, part II

reddit — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 06:53:00 GMT

With the rewrite, we were hoping to include an upgraded search, which, unlike the last version, was actually useful and helped you find what you were looking for. Unfortunately, the version we settled on didn't quite load test as nicely as we would have liked ( memory leak ), and has been down for most of the week. A new version should be ready in a few days. Also, for those of you who are "load comments" anti-fans, we promise we aren't ignoring you.

reddit status update

reddit — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 04:16:00 GMT

On Sunday we relaunched with our new code. As we had mentioned previously, there isn't a whole lot that is new to you. We want to get this new code nice and stable before we start adding new features to it. The transition took much longer than expected, causing reddit.com to be frozen all day Sunday. We apologize for the downtime. We know how to avoid it in the future should something like this ever be necessary again, but hopefully that won't ever be the case.

There are always two, a master and an apprentice.

reddit — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 08:38:00 GMT

Last week, Steve and Alexis were in Germany for their long-planned trip to Oktoberfest. That left Chris and I the keys to the castle, and the responsibility of updating the logo. We decided to use this chance to take Steve down a notch. Here is Steve enjoying some of the fine Bavarian beverages. The reason he is not holding a pint glass is because I can't draw one, and because they use the metric system in Germany: Chris and I show up to say hi: At first,

Don't Tase Me Bro: the deal with new reddit

reddit — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 03:02:00 GMT

We didn't launch the new stuff last night owing to some database issues. We'll be working on the problems today, and try to get things switched over ASAP. PS - There are a handful of people hanging out in #reddit on freenode, if you're into that sort of socializing.

reddit would like to buy you a drink, san francisco

reddit — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 23:15:00 GMT

With the one year anniversary of our acquisition approaching, the good folks at Wired wanted to buy us all ponies. But we insisted on beer - an open bar, in fact. And we also wanted all of you to come (except the spammers, Steve may not be strong, but he's pointy, and he will hurt you). So if you're free next Tuesday, October 16th , and in the SF area, you should stop by Gallery Lounge and let us (read: Wired) buy you a drink (or 10, you've got 2 hours).

and the survey says...

reddit — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 07:46:00 GMT

The results are still coming in from the survey we ran a little while back , but as promised (and as we were reminded yesterday ) here are a few more results. In case these aren't enough, you can re-read the results we published earlier . Please rate on a scale of 1-5 (1 being dead weight and 5 being the office genius), how much smarter are you than to your coworkers/bosses?

now, with rounded corners!

reddit — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 03:41:00 GMT

You may have noticed we haven't released anything substantive in a while. Well, so has Conde Nast. In light of this, we made some quick changes that are part of a bigger redesign coming soon. We rearranged the login area to accommodate a new ad size. We also added a handful of new subreddits that should both target under-represented communities on reddit, and can be sold by the lovely ad-sales team. Raldi,

Vote up if you'd like to work for reddit.

reddit — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 07:35:00 GMT

Reddit is hiring again! We are looking for a new programmer to supplement our team. Most of our work is done in Python, and Unix/Linux skills are a must. Really, we just need a fourth for our post-lunch video games. An engineering degree is preferred, and experience with databases, web development, and scaling issues are all desirable. The job is in San Francisco, CA. Please send your resume to jobs reddit com (this is what we'll be looking at).

pics or it didn't happen

reddit — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 06:59:00 GMT

As most of you know , Chris ( KeyserSosa ) Slowe got married this past weekend. A few of you remain skeptical. To prove that not only did Chris say "I mod up," but that all 4 of us were in fact there, I've been asked to provide a photo. OK, a photo can't really prove he said "I mod up" (it was a Greek Orthodox ceremony after all, so he could have said anything) but he is on a honeymoon right now with Kristen, so it's safe to say he answered in the affirmative. Anyway,

reddit downtime

reddit — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 23:18:00 GMT

Much to the dismay of my sleep schedule, reddit suffered some downtime this morning. There were some heat/power issues at the datacenter that caused a number of our machines to die. We'll continue following up with our datacenter to mitigate this type of problem in the future. Among the servers that we lost was the recommendation server, so we will be without recommendations for a couple of hours while they recompute. We apologize for the downtime,

just married

reddit — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 01:59:00 GMT

Congratulations Chris and Kristen! It seems like just yesterday that we were congratulating Chris on his PhD . Today he's getting married. (We're just sorry it's not a Star Wars themed wedding.) All of team reddit is in attendance, so please don't break the site. We wouldn't want to make a big scene ducking out to fetch our laptops.

it's slow... it's unstable... it's... beta!

reddit — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 23:47:00 GMT

We've exposed what's going to be the new version of reddit this morning for you all to play with. We converted about a week's worth of data, and all your accounts. For the most part, it should appear as though nothing has changed. Don't fret! Since this is built on an entirely new system (front-end and back-end), we wanted to test what we have and are familiar with for a little before tossing in a bunch of new things.

the things you learn...

reddit — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 05:17:00 GMT

We've gotten back some of the early results from our survey (that's right, you too can tell us about yourself! ) We thought you'd be interested in seeing these... Q3. When do you believe Reddit jumped the shark? nyeh, i dont much worry about that. not sure Some time this year. The day Digg started censoring users over the HD DVD key stupid question. Why can't reddit just be evolving into a new paradigm? Has it? Jun-07 February 14th, 2007 at 11:14am Uh, leading question?

surveying and hiring

reddit — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 00:35:00 GMT

About a year ago, we ran a survey of our users on behalf of Federated Media. They wanted demographic data and we were kinda curious to learn about our users. Our new employers need an updated look at who users are and we're still kinda curious. And we think you might be, too. We worked with them to keep the survey short and we're going to share the more interesting results with you. If you're interested, here's the survey . If not, maybe you need a new job.

politics reddit

reddit — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 14:09:00 GMT

We turned on a reddit for politics today. Since I'm the one typically arguing against a reddit for politics, I feel as though I owe an explanation. But, since I'm the one writing the blog post, you aren't going to get one. Ha. I'm just kidding. The demand for a politics reddit has been great, and the political news has been bountiful, so here you go. We hope that a politics reddit will allow our politically inclined users to focus their submissions on a more targeted audience.

new reddit on the horizon

reddit — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 05:00:00 GMT

Hello Users, We're nearing completion of the next version of reddit. We still have a short list of items to resolve, but it should be pretty much complete this week. Early next week we will begin exposing the new system. Since we basically rewrote all of reddit, we are going to go through a period of testing and allow you all to bang on the new system before we flip the switch. We're all very excited to get this code pushed out the door. Search works much better,

who "discovered" xkcd?

reddit — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 03:01:00 GMT

Riding the subway with a friend of mine, he asked what the first xkcd post on reddit was. We at reddit like to think our community helped boost those splendid stick figures into geek fame. But I had no idea who submitted the first xkcd comic to reddit. I know, it's discovery in the same way Columbus "discovered" America - just work with us, please. When these sorts of questions come up, we can always rely on Chris "Statman" Slowe to divine the answer from our logs.

popup ads

reddit — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 01:11:00 GMT

We apologize for the popup ad that has been running on reddit that has been resizing some of your browser windows. We wouldn't ever run something like that intentionally. Although we've been hearing complaints for about a week now, it wasn't until this morning that I was able to actually see the issue and confirm that it was coming from our ads. Thank you to all the users who sent me messages and helped track down the issue. Until we resolve things on our end,