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The presence of this story on the front page, I think, underscores how different HN is from the other technical venues I frequent. It's a straightforward overvi
by myself248 7y ago
The presence of this story on the front page, I think, underscores how different HN is from the other technical venues I frequent. It's a straightforward overview of RF and how it's used and what that means to amateur licensees. At any of my other haunts, this would never get an upvote.
Imagine a story called "The Command Line", a straightforward take on the core concepts thereof. I think everyone here is pretty familiar with that topic, and would regard such a story as pretty much the opposite of news or even interesting.
To my eye, this story is just as out-of-place because it's a topic I just assume everyone here is already quite familiar with it. Am I mistaken? Or is HN just that different a crowd?
- avalys 7y agoCan you share links to these other technical venues? Not being snarky - I want to check them out!
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Rerarom 7y agoSeconded
- myself248 7y agoMostly I was thinking of Reddit and Slashdot. On Reddit, even outside /r/hamradio and /r/amateurradio (why are there two? don't ask me!), I enjoy /r/electronics and /r/askelectronics, /r/rfelectronics, /r/rtlsdr, /r/carhacking, /r/arduino, /r/embedded, /r/engineering, /r/askengineers, /r/homelab, /r/datahoarder, /r/vintagecomputing, /r/askscience, /r/asksciencediscussion, and a few more. I still enjoy Slashdot because, like HN, it's a single feed and gets me stuff I might not find in my regular subreddits. I also read Arstechnica and The Register on a fairly regular basis, but not daily. But honestly, my main firehose of news and ideas is IRC. I'm on 5 networks and about 25 channels, and I try to read all the scrollback in about half of those. There's lots of good stuff on Freenode and OFTC in particular, but I feel like this is one I should leave as an exercise to the reader. ;)
- someguydave 7y agoI think HN used to regularly traffic in more technical stories and then it slowly became just another Reddit.
- jmt_ 7y agoOne aspect HN offers me is the wide variety of content. If using a website like reddit, for example, you may not see this kind of article if you're not subscribed to a relevant subreddit. This can be good as you mostly see things you want to see. But, this design doesn't always show you things you wouldn't already see and HN does that for me. I'm familiar with the general concept of RF waves but still learned a lot from this article. I wouldn't have learned this information otherwise as I haven't told my various personalized websites that I want to see this kind of content, yet I'm happy I saw this. It's my opinion that the breath of topics on HN is very good and is a major reason I use it -- to see things people like me are interested in that I may not yet know about
- ajdlinux 7y agoMost people on HN are programmers, not EEs.
- myself248 7y agoThat's been my impression as well. There are plenty of stories here with zero context that go right over my head, and I wonder what stuff I might post that would go right over someone else's...