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HN used to be a more balanced place, but the broader "techlash" of the last ~5 years has fully engulfed it. HN is a negative and cynical place today. Discussion

HN used to be a more balanced place, but the broader "techlash" of the last ~5 years has fully engulfed it. HN is a negative and cynical place today. Discussions about future developments are dominated by the bad things that are happening, will happen etc. In fact in many instances you will not even see positive articles about a particular topic. Someone working on an exciting new electric aircraft? Discussion is about how they're a fraud. Tesla ships a million EVs a year? Discussion is about how terrible they are. Big tech releases new product? Complain about privacy. New kubernetes feature? Kubernetes is complicated crap. If this is the dominant disposition of people here, is it any wonder it bleeds into their broader views? I've started spending more time in more balanced places like Twitter and Reddit. I still read HN, but with the understanding that I'll only see one side of the story here.

fundad 5y ago
[flagged]
- tanseydavid 5y ago
  What does "boomer-minded" mean?
  - fundad 5y ago
    Complaining about wokeness and preferring more profit driven public policy. It spans ages and political identities.
morpheos137 5y ago
Well discussing future technology would be interesting if it was realistic. Electric aircraft are not and probably never will be. Tesla does not have a special advantage over other car makers. California has trouble even keeping its electric grid powered all the time. Big tech is building a surveillance infrastructure that would make Orwell blush and at the same time stiffing innovation. Historically innovation has almost always come from small companies.
- zepto 5y ago
  I’m picking out two statements that seem questionable. The rest of what you say, I am in agreement with. > Tesla does not have a special advantage over other car makers. This seems like the least accurate of your statements. Tesla has a very different engineering culture to other car makers and a very different outlook on what it is trying to achieve. Culture is impossible to replicate. This is very similar to the advantage Apple had in early 2000s, and is very real. > Historically innovation has almost always come from small companies. Does it? What makes you say this? It’s hard to think of examples.
  - smackeyacky 5y ago
    Apple is a great example of innovation coming from a small company at the start. Although to be more precise, it was the application of somebody elses innovation they got right (and more importantly, got the timing right). It took Apple and the other personal computer companies a couple of tries to get their product fit and pricing right but when it happened they created an entirely new market segment. The only really big player in that segment for a long time was Tandy. Big companies all start small, they innovate their way to big and then start crushing innovation in every way they can in their market segment, which makes them stagnant and leaves room for new innovations from small companies to take over. It happens over 10, 20 and even 50 year time frames depending on how good the big companies are at crushing innovation (buying them out, pricing them out etc). As a small company, your best bet is start in some niche they don't notice until you get big enough that you can't go away any more. Which brings us back to the Apple 2.
    - zepto 5y ago
      Yes, it’s almost the only example anyone can think of, and yes, I agree that the Apple 2 was good product innovation and identified a new segment. However that segment was transient. The business use case in the medium term was far better served by the IBM PC, which all but eliminated the use of the Apple 2 as anything more than a home computer. The Mac, of course, was largely based on innovations made by Xerox, then a giant corporation, who licensed them to Apple on ludicrously favorable terms. This was an example of Jobs as a great dealmaker. Of course Apple built on top of the innovation they bought, but without Xerox there would have been no Mac.
it_does_follow 5y ago
> HN is a negative and cynical place today. Discussions about future developments are dominated by the bad things that are happening Funny you feel this way because I've seen the opposite. Any real discussion of the severity of the issues facing us getting quickly flagged and down voted. A bit of cynicism is okay, but saying "look we're in big trouble here, and tech might not be the answer" is met with pretty strong aggression. For example any article about serious problems related to climate change is immediately flooded with "this is fine" comments, and anyone proposing that we may be facing severe problems in the near future is down voted or flagged immediately. HN cannot handle the possibility that our future is not as bright as we though when we got into this industry. A bit of mourning is completely understandable, but the rapid denialism on this site make visiting here an exercise in cognitive dissonance.

fundad 5y ago

[flagged]

tanseydavid 5y ago
What does "boomer-minded" mean?
- fundad 5y ago
  Complaining about wokeness and preferring more profit driven public policy. It spans ages and political identities.

morpheos137 5y ago

Well discussing future technology would be interesting if it was realistic. Electric aircraft are not and probably never will be. Tesla does not have a special advantage over other car makers. California has trouble even keeping its electric grid powered all the time. Big tech is building a surveillance infrastructure that would make Orwell blush and at the same time stiffing innovation. Historically innovation has almost always come from small companies.

zepto 5y ago
I’m picking out two statements that seem questionable. The rest of what you say, I am in agreement with. > Tesla does not have a special advantage over other car makers. This seems like the least accurate of your statements. Tesla has a very different engineering culture to other car makers and a very different outlook on what it is trying to achieve. Culture is impossible to replicate. This is very similar to the advantage Apple had in early 2000s, and is very real. > Historically innovation has almost always come from small companies. Does it? What makes you say this? It’s hard to think of examples.
- smackeyacky 5y ago
  Apple is a great example of innovation coming from a small company at the start. Although to be more precise, it was the application of somebody elses innovation they got right (and more importantly, got the timing right). It took Apple and the other personal computer companies a couple of tries to get their product fit and pricing right but when it happened they created an entirely new market segment. The only really big player in that segment for a long time was Tandy. Big companies all start small, they innovate their way to big and then start crushing innovation in every way they can in their market segment, which makes them stagnant and leaves room for new innovations from small companies to take over. It happens over 10, 20 and even 50 year time frames depending on how good the big companies are at crushing innovation (buying them out, pricing them out etc). As a small company, your best bet is start in some niche they don't notice until you get big enough that you can't go away any more. Which brings us back to the Apple 2.
  - zepto 5y ago
    Yes, it’s almost the only example anyone can think of, and yes, I agree that the Apple 2 was good product innovation and identified a new segment. However that segment was transient. The business use case in the medium term was far better served by the IBM PC, which all but eliminated the use of the Apple 2 as anything more than a home computer. The Mac, of course, was largely based on innovations made by Xerox, then a giant corporation, who licensed them to Apple on ludicrously favorable terms. This was an example of Jobs as a great dealmaker. Of course Apple built on top of the innovation they bought, but without Xerox there would have been no Mac.

it_does_follow 5y ago

> HN is a negative and cynical place today. Discussions about future developments are dominated by the bad things that are happening Funny you feel this way because I've seen the opposite. Any real discussion of the severity of the issues facing us getting quickly flagged and down voted. A bit of cynicism is okay, but saying "look we're in big trouble here, and tech might not be the answer" is met with pretty strong aggression. For example any article about serious problems related to climate change is immediately flooded with "this is fine" comments, and anyone proposing that we may be facing severe problems in the near future is down voted or flagged immediately. HN cannot handle the possibility that our future is not as bright as we though when we got into this industry. A bit of mourning is completely understandable, but the rapid denialism on this site make visiting here an exercise in cognitive dissonance.