HN has been an amazing resource for my own personal development, and remains a reliable source for high quality content and discussion in certain topics. I thin

HN has been an amazing resource for my own personal development, and remains a reliable source for high quality content and discussion in certain topics. I think that has a lot to do with its smart design decisions and approach to moderation, and for that I'm very thankful. One curiosity for a social site is that despite being pretty active here, and having some good exchanges, I've never actually connected with someone here. It's a forum rooted in ideas, not people, and that's reinforced by its product restraints: no avatars, no following, no DMs, no blackbox algorithms. I really appreciate that, vis-a-vis other parts of the internet, though I do occasionally wish I could connect with the people behind the ideas. One funny quirk of being such an eng-oriented forum is a long time ago they let you sign up without an email, which meant when I lost my password I had to start a new account. I'd love to restore my original username.