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Has HN Changed? I assume it's just me

39 points by travisgriggs 3y ago

I've been reading HN for a while. I made my first comment May 31, 2018. And have gone through cycles of engagement during that time. But for the last few weeks, even months, I still scan the top articles daily, but something has changed for me. Historically, there's almost always been at least one thing in the top 30 I would be interested in. Sometimes many. But of late, none of it interests me near as much anymore. My guess is that this is just pretty much burnout/age me changing. But I was curious if maybe it was a wider spread effect that others are experiencing. Perhaps the downturn in the tech industry has just led to less of a "this is the place to be and things to know!" experience in general.

nathants 3y ago
change is the only constant. then and now.
deleted 3y ago
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ftxbro 3y ago
they went to discords or mastodons
rubicon33 3y ago
It’s definitely been less interesting overt the last few years. Tech in general is just a little underwhelming as an industry
- copperx 3y ago
  Tech is pop culture. As such, one often gets tired of it. Do you imagine never getting tired of reading TMZ?
retrocryptid 3y ago
Meh. All the kids are chasing the AI money, so there's a lot of AI idiocy crowding out the good stuff. You kids get off my lawn. Just keep in mind hacker news is hosted by ycombinator, which helps match Stanford and UCB CS grads with slightly older Stanford and UCB grads (with a smattering of MIT and UIUC grads) who will give them money in exchange for shares in relatively poorly managed organizations pumping highly speculative "products." The objective isn't to make anything interesting, it's to make money so the Stanford and UCB grads can continue the cycle. That being said, some of these companies do interesting things by accident. And not all of them are hell-scape "sincerity begins at 90 hours per week" code-monkey zoos. The "interesting" stuff seems to come out of open source projects (See Dick Gabriel's "Innovation Happens Elsewhere.") But sometimes you get overlap. But the venue is (largely, but not exclusively) for kids whose interest in their startup extends 18 months to the moment they can sell whatever ISOs they collected and move on to the next cash vehicle before eventually "retiring" as a Facebook or Verizon VP and write think pieces about how <foo> is a game-changer and will change the way we think about media for decades to come. (Where <foo> is: cryptography, corba, J2EE, SOAP, AJAX, P2P, Bitcoin, Mobile, Python, VR, AR, OpenGL, Swift, Go, RISC-V, Rust, THE CLOUD, <bar>-sharing, ML, AI, LLMs, CNNs, TensorFlow, ChatGPT, etc. and <bar> is ride, home, spouse, etc.) But no, I'm not bitter. (Seriously though... fads come and go. HN is sort of like the Soap Opera Digest for Sili Valley's amnesiac creatives. Dig deep enough and I'm sure you'll find SOMETHING, even if it's a rant. And the half-life of memory in our community appears to be a couple of years. So just wait a bit and you'll get another wave of recent grads who just discovered LtU or the Jargon file and we'll get more interesting posts. But the kids are all right and eventually they figure out why us olds did the stupid stuff we used to do but will re-create some pretty interesting stuff after realizing the constraints we thought were unchangeable are just illusions. Sturgeon's Law applies here, but there's definitely some good stuff if you dig. Also, it's possible your interests have gotten more specific and what you're seeing is things that are either very general or... as you mentioned... outside your interest list.)
- zh3 3y ago
  There's definitely a trend (and to my eyes a lowering of quality) on this site over the past couple of years. That's easily attributed to the downturn (possibly allied to the increasing social influence of the site) - so I'd suggest it's the "90%" in Sturgeon's Law waxing and waning over time (albeit it seems more waxing than waning when viewed over longer timescales). Never forget, a lot of people on here weren't even born when "Accidental Empires" came out.
  - chomp 3y ago
    I've been here for over a decade, it's more or less the same. Instead of AI, we had #nosql, and instead of Substack hot takes, we had Medium hot takes. The only thing that's really changed is the velocity of posts, and volume of comments. Also, there used to be significantly more tech articles than there are now.
    - retrocryptid 3y ago
      As Jonathan Swift didn't say: "Everything new is old again."
    - retrocryptid 3y ago
      I now wonder if I made a mistake moving away from CICS and 370 Assembly as the focus of my career.
- jawerty 3y ago
  The younger to older Stanford matching service part got me laughing, good one. Lots of truth there.
  - retrocryptid 3y ago
    I do it for the lulz. I do it for my audience. Thank you for taking my comments in the spirit they were offered!
- nomemory 3y ago
_virtu 3y ago
I think that hacker news has become too popular. It used to be a little niche on the internet that few people were aware of. Like indie hackers, the site has been infiltrated by business lizards and marketers along with more of the masses leading to a lower signal to noise ratio.
- the_only_law 3y ago
  > Like indie hackers, the site has been infiltrated by business lizards and marketers along with more of the masses leading to a lower signal to noise ratio. Infiltrated? Have you seen the company that owns it?
ESTheComposer 3y ago
It's turned into an ironic site where everyone always wants to lambast the newest tech, whether it's crypto or AI or even still web technologies like React. The irony comes from the fact that Y-Combinator funds all of these sectors and the original intent of this site was to discuss interesting new tech...
- rchaud 3y ago
  The common thread between all your examples is that they are not the latest technologies, just the latest variants promoted by large, monied interests, that have highly prescriptive visions for how said technology can be used.
  - ESTheComposer 3y ago
    You could say that about almost any advancement in any field. I think your definition of "latest technology" is severely limited if something has to be completely brand new like a horse vs a car
- Syonyk 3y ago
  > ...where everyone always wants to lambast the newest tech... Yeah. Because there are a lot of people who've lived through 3 or 4 decades now of the hype cycle and want to see "less tech" in everyone's lives, having seen the result of "all the tech we can imagine" in everyone's lives. It's not been good unless you're at the upper end of the attention accumulation pyramid.
  - ESTheComposer 3y ago
    > It's not been good unless you're at the upper end of the attention accumulation pyramid. Very subjective and ignores all the great strides these technologies have made. React has made it infinitely easier for everyone to build scalable websites and web apps so I don't think I agree with your upper end statement.
    - Syonyk 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
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withinboredom 3y ago
I've noticed its a bit of an annual cycle for me. It seems in the summer and winter, the best articles get shared, or at least the most interesting for me. In the fall/spring it seems like it's whatever is the latest hype, whether that is AI, crypto, whatever. My theory is that a lot of smart people tend to have large chunks of free time in the summer/winter, thus write a lot of interesting things. In the fall/spring, people are busy and thus only low-effort or trending articles make it here.
Jtsummers 3y ago
It's always been cyclical. There have been many days, even weeks and months it seems, when I have seen little of interest (to me) on HN. Hide (option under posts) ones you aren't interested in, check out the second chance pool, post something you're interested in, or just go for a walk. In a month or two it'll shift to either a broader set of topics or maybe something of more interest to you again.
7ero 3y ago
I'm feeling the same way, I'm thinking it has to do with the amount of people wanting to have a career in tech (including the non-technical folks, business-types and such), the ease of sharing information online, and the notoriety of ycombinator in the startup space.
vt85 3y ago
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magic_hamster 3y ago
It sounds like more of an internal process you're experiencing. Personally I noticed more meta content is surfacing but I still see a lot of interesting links on here. Also, if you're burnt out or if you've been in the tech space for a while, some things may not seem as exciting as they used to be. I'd say take a break, and also try some alternative communities. There are some places with a focused discussion on tech, like Lobsters.
soared 3y ago
Obligatory when these threads come up - if OPs post rings true to you it’s worth spending a few minutes looking inward and identifying if depression might be affecting you. It might not, but loss of interest in hobbies/etc is an early symptom that Ive personally experienced. Also possible your interests have changed, and what’s on HN now doesn’t align!
cloudking 3y ago
What's annoying are the haters that add useless comments bashing Google on any post that is Google related.
jacquesm 3y ago
By the time you arrived the first time it had already changed quite a bit from when I joined so this is more or less expected. The big inflection points to me were 2009 (before Dec 2008 when I joined I was just lurking) and 2016.
- deleted 3y ago
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- agumonkey 3y ago
  I wonder if my memory is correct but I joined HN after a long time on c2 and lambda-the-ultimate.. HN had a similar deep/esoteric feel. Some startup content too. Today it seems a lot more like a normal tech portal. More technical than the average but a lot less surprising.
- thih9 3y ago
  > By the time you arrived Do we know when grandparent has arrived? The description (i.e.: “I've been reading HN for a while. I made my first comment May 31, 2018.”) only mentions when they added their first comment and not when they started reading hn.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    Yes.
    - thih9 3y ago
      Not sure what you mean, can you elaborate?
      - jacquesm 3y ago
        No.
oldstrangers 3y ago
I can't believe I've been here since 2010.
ergonaught 3y ago
No idea, but I have almost entirely disengaged from the site recently, myself, despite many years of it being probably my #1 website destination. I assumed "it's just me" rather than anything to do with HN per se, but who knows?
rcfox 3y ago
I think once you've watched an online community for long enough, you start to see the Eternal September. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
- samtho 3y ago
  The tragedy here is usually that you don’t recognize you’re in one until it’s long sense past and you find yourself nostalgically remembering how it was and wondering why it changed so drastically and for the worst.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
  Yes. I joined the site and I'm sure I was part of some else's Eternal September yet now I feel like the site is changing. My personal crackpot theory is that the site isn't helped by all of the manipulation, agitators, and other inauthentic users. Example: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=snake%20malware&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... It's also not a great time to be in the startup game, economically speaking.
lkbm 3y ago
For what it's worth, you can look at the HN frontpage as it was on any given day: https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2023-05-15 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2023-05-15 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2020-05-15 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2020-05-15 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2015-05-15 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2015-05-15 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2010-05-15 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2010-05-15 I'm sure things have changed over time, but could be interesting to play around with those to get a clearer sense of what and when.
bvttf 3y ago
It's mostly the same in my experience. Less Lisp now, which is too bad.
- jmclnx 3y ago
  Same for me, seems it has not changed much. I have had an ID for like 7 to 8 years.
JoelMcCracken 3y ago
The intersection of my interests and that of hn ebbs and flows. My account here is from 2009. I wouldn’t worry about it.
bin_bash 3y ago
I've been here since launch (with different usernames), and I don't think it's meaningfully changed at all. btw this is sort of mentioned in guidelines (see the last one)
aaronbrethorst 3y ago
I've been around since September 2007 (heh), when—iirc—Michael Arrington mentioned it on TechCrunch. HN has definitely changed over the past 15.5 years, but then again so have I. That's just an inevitability, though. My perspective on technology, the world, and my own life have changed quite a bit from the age of 25 to 40.
testfrequency 3y ago
I’ve noticed over the last two years a significant decline in the quality of the comments and front page posts on HN. I blame this partially on the larger tech sites referencing and linking back to HN, so a new…demographic..of online users are now here. Some days HN is really good, and I’m enjoying the commentary and creators posting, other days I feel like I’m on Digg with reddit quality replies and attacks. I’m still here, I check almost daily, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say the quality has gone downhill
- pc86 3y ago
  No, probably not. > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1524184 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1524184 (July 2010) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=926703 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=926703 (Nov 2009) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=633099 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=633099 (May 2009) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=582513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=582513 (April 2009) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=289254 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=289254 (August 2008) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=253657 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=253657 (July 2008) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=66057 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=66057 (Oct 2007) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=60767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=60767 (Sept 2007) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13852 (Aug 2007)
  - antegamisou 3y ago
    This would be relevant if the user base and site content were the same as the ones in the dates of the links you've cited, the most recent being thirteen years old! However, it's another obsolete BS etiquette HN has came up with so its userbase feels intellectually superior to Redditors, even though they both have been found to converge as is evident from observations by others similar to the ones expressed at the OP.
    - deleted 3y ago
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mattlondon 3y ago
The LLM hype has kinda poisoned the front page for me. Pretty much any time I look about half of the stories are about LLMs. I just don't care. AI and ML is boring as fuck. Neat tricks sure but ultimately extremely dull for me. I expect this to die down again soon though so I hang around a bit.
- badpun 3y ago
  > The LLM hype has kinda poisoned the front page for me. Pretty much any time I look about half of the stories are about LLMs. Not only that, they also poisoned the podcasts I like. Now, there like 50% chance that a given episode will be on "AI". Hopefully it'll blow over in a couple of months.
nashashmi 3y ago
The numbers of up votes has gone up. A hundred votes used to be a big deal. Not so anymore. Things are inflated and the audience has grown to something that only comes up if they agree with it. Before it used to be a nerdy place. Now it is just another social justice war.
woodruffw 3y ago
There's a lot of AI chaff on the front page recently, which I don't get a lot out of. But there's always been some or another form of chaff on the front page.
thrwwyd17052023 3y ago
I still find a lot of interesting and insightful articles here but there are days where the whole main page is flooded with AI/LLM submissions of questionable value. In the past the HN crowd used to be much more critical of the currently (over-)hyped tech but this time I see most people just go with the flow. E.g. I bet almost no one would take "prompt engineering" seriously on HN just a few years ago.
besus 3y ago
I do believe the frontpage has lost some of it's magic over the years. But the 'new' pages still have plenty of interesting topics that don't get the upvotes.
itronitron 3y ago
HN isn't a good place for discussion and technical exchange regarding proven technologies. To the extent that you or I are working productively with proven technologies, then we probably won't find HN as engaging.
xwdv 3y ago
You know what’s crazy about the internet? Somewhere out there right now, is a niche community of computer geeks, discussing incredibly fascinating topics and having thoughtful discussions, exchanging powerful ideas, and you have never heard of them and don’t even know they exist, and they are just a URL away. You’re missing out.
batman-farts 3y ago
I find that the main reason I come here is for information/background chatter about various open source projects and the trends behind them. In other words, fairly granular technical news interspersed with general interest science and math stories. Slashdot used to fill this need for me, but it seems like it fell off in editorial quality and comprehensiveness after changing hands so many times. Plus the commentariat over there seems to have thinned out, as well as skewed older and more bitter, the last few times I’ve visited. I do appreciate a site where I can learn just as much from the commenters as I can from the stories, and this place definitely still provides that. But I also agree that the YCombinator/VC connection means that too much of the content here uncritically rides industry hype waves (crypto, AI… what’s next? Some kind of applied biotech? Asteroid mining?). What are some good alternatives? Phys.org is great for general science but there isn’t always a lot of CS crossover.
antegamisou 3y ago
No and I've complained many times about this. The front-page is consistently flooded with low-quality content. Lately the current pattern, with little varation, can be summed up to: - 10-minute Substack read about this new fancy bloatware, uhh.. framework/programming language/tech that you have to use otherwise you have to reconcile with not being a 10x rockstar programmer anymore and remain unemployed and die in poverty. - Look, another ChatGPT feature I came up with that, although does a tiny fraction of what you do in your job and with moderate error rate, will lead each and every one of you into extinction! - I found this paper on Nature where scientists cured this terminal illness for humans, in mice. Let me just omit this unimportant detail so I can make it to the frontpage. Also very often, the first n, and it's a large n, submissions on the front page pertain to the same subject. More niche and hacker-y in the traditional sense of what the website used to be in the past content receives little attention until it gets buried minutes later by some BS thing that can be grouped into one of the aforementioned categories. I used to say that HN is equivalent to Reddit as far as user-base intellect goes and if we go by the people participating on the large subreddits, I think both groups converge. This is evident from the current state of the front-page, namely sensationalist titled low-quality content being popular. However, if you're able to find small, in my estimation less than 30k subscribers allows for some sort of regulation/filtering out of overly-divergent content, communities about your niche subjects of interest, you're much better off there than here. HN has become a sort of entertainment type of thing for me, especially when it comes to the rhetoric the average HNer possesses when it comes to discussion, whether that concerns tech or not.
jasonlotito 3y ago
It's always changing. Fads come and go. It's not always going to be what you want to read, but at the same time, it gives you a good indication of topics that are being brought up. Sometimes the topics are repeats of things you read years ago, and so it's not as interesting. /shrug Use it as a source, not your only source.
krapp 3y ago
The two constants I've found since I've been here are that people think Hacker News is turning to shit, and the mods insist it isn't. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle, that Hacker News has always been kind of shit. But not hot shit, because that would set off the flamewar detector. Precisely lukewarm, perfectly spherical, frictionless shit in a vacuum.
gorbachev 3y ago
I don't know if it's changed...honestly don't even care all that much. This is just one of many information sources I have. What I did notice after moving out of US is that this site is 95% US centric, and that's a shame. I suppose that should've been obvious to me even prior to moving out, but seeing it from inside the bubble isn't always easy.
steveklabnik 3y ago
I’ve been here a very long time. It has changed. That’s not always a bad thing. It’s just the way of the world. The only constant is change.
deleted 3y ago
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lcordier 3y ago
I use the https://hckrnews.com/ https://hckrnews.com/ view. Reverse-chronological order of posts. (sometimes the site needs a refresh, but works most of the time...)
throwaway202303 3y ago
This post happens every year so yeah it’s just you
nanna 3y ago
Personally I feel like there's been a palpable rise in far right postings since Twitter tightened its rules during the Trump presidency. Like everyone else here I have no actual evidence for what I feel may have changed.
mindcrime 3y ago
As somebody who has been here since near the beginning, I'd say my subjective observations are: 1. Yeah, sure, there's been some change in the sentiment / zeitgeist of HN, but I haven't seen any particularly marked change in overall quality of the discussion. 2. There are good days, better days, and not-so-good days as far as how much stuff shows up that is of interest to me. It's always been that way. 3. Our interests and focus do change as we age, and to the extent that HN (or Slashdot, or Reddit, or LtU, or LWN, etc.) is more or less interesting to me now than 15 years ago is almost certainly a function of both changes in the external environment AND changes in me. I'd guess that's true for most everybody. 4. HN is still one of the best sites on the net (if not the best) for discussing interesting topics around (technology|business|science). So even if it has declined, I don't find that it's declined enough to say any other site is particularly better. Lobste.rs is interesting, but the population there is a lot smaller which is both good and bad in its own way. 5. There don't seem to be as many "celebrity hackers" posting these days. Back in the day we had pg, rtm, and quite a few other very notable figures posting, which was kinda neat. And there are still some of those. WalterBright for example (the creator of D) posts quite often from what I've seen. But it does seem like there are fewer of those guys posting now than in the past. Whether that's important or not is a subject to debate I suppose.

39 points by travisgriggs 3y ago

nathants 3y ago

change is the only constant. then and now.

deleted 3y ago

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ftxbro 3y ago

they went to discords or mastodons

rubicon33 3y ago

It’s definitely been less interesting overt the last few years. Tech in general is just a little underwhelming as an industry

copperx 3y ago
Tech is pop culture. As such, one often gets tired of it. Do you imagine never getting tired of reading TMZ?

retrocryptid 3y ago

Meh. All the kids are chasing the AI money, so there's a lot of AI idiocy crowding out the good stuff. You kids get off my lawn. Just keep in mind hacker news is hosted by ycombinator, which helps match Stanford and UCB CS grads with slightly older Stanford and UCB grads (with a smattering of MIT and UIUC grads) who will give them money in exchange for shares in relatively poorly managed organizations pumping highly speculative "products." The objective isn't to make anything interesting, it's to make money so the Stanford and UCB grads can continue the cycle. That being said, some of these companies do interesting things by accident. And not all of them are hell-scape "sincerity begins at 90 hours per week" code-monkey zoos. The "interesting" stuff seems to come out of open source projects (See Dick Gabriel's "Innovation Happens Elsewhere.") But sometimes you get overlap. But the venue is (largely, but not exclusively) for kids whose interest in their startup extends 18 months to the moment they can sell whatever ISOs they collected and move on to the next cash vehicle before eventually "retiring" as a Facebook or Verizon VP and write think pieces about how <foo> is a game-changer and will change the way we think about media for decades to come. (Where <foo> is: cryptography, corba, J2EE, SOAP, AJAX, P2P, Bitcoin, Mobile, Python, VR, AR, OpenGL, Swift, Go, RISC-V, Rust, THE CLOUD, <bar>-sharing, ML, AI, LLMs, CNNs, TensorFlow, ChatGPT, etc. and <bar> is ride, home, spouse, etc.) But no, I'm not bitter. (Seriously though... fads come and go. HN is sort of like the Soap Opera Digest for Sili Valley's amnesiac creatives. Dig deep enough and I'm sure you'll find SOMETHING, even if it's a rant. And the half-life of memory in our community appears to be a couple of years. So just wait a bit and you'll get another wave of recent grads who just discovered LtU or the Jargon file and we'll get more interesting posts. But the kids are all right and eventually they figure out why us olds did the stupid stuff we used to do but will re-create some pretty interesting stuff after realizing the constraints we thought were unchangeable are just illusions. Sturgeon's Law applies here, but there's definitely some good stuff if you dig. Also, it's possible your interests have gotten more specific and what you're seeing is things that are either very general or... as you mentioned... outside your interest list.)

zh3 3y ago
There's definitely a trend (and to my eyes a lowering of quality) on this site over the past couple of years. That's easily attributed to the downturn (possibly allied to the increasing social influence of the site) - so I'd suggest it's the "90%" in Sturgeon's Law waxing and waning over time (albeit it seems more waxing than waning when viewed over longer timescales). Never forget, a lot of people on here weren't even born when "Accidental Empires" came out.
- chomp 3y ago
  I've been here for over a decade, it's more or less the same. Instead of AI, we had #nosql, and instead of Substack hot takes, we had Medium hot takes. The only thing that's really changed is the velocity of posts, and volume of comments. Also, there used to be significantly more tech articles than there are now.
  - retrocryptid 3y ago
    As Jonathan Swift didn't say: "Everything new is old again."
  - retrocryptid 3y ago
    I now wonder if I made a mistake moving away from CICS and 370 Assembly as the focus of my career.
jawerty 3y ago
The younger to older Stanford matching service part got me laughing, good one. Lots of truth there.
- retrocryptid 3y ago
  I do it for the lulz. I do it for my audience. Thank you for taking my comments in the spirit they were offered!
nomemory 3y ago

_virtu 3y ago

I think that hacker news has become too popular. It used to be a little niche on the internet that few people were aware of. Like indie hackers, the site has been infiltrated by business lizards and marketers along with more of the masses leading to a lower signal to noise ratio.

the_only_law 3y ago
> Like indie hackers, the site has been infiltrated by business lizards and marketers along with more of the masses leading to a lower signal to noise ratio. Infiltrated? Have you seen the company that owns it?

ESTheComposer 3y ago

It's turned into an ironic site where everyone always wants to lambast the newest tech, whether it's crypto or AI or even still web technologies like React. The irony comes from the fact that Y-Combinator funds all of these sectors and the original intent of this site was to discuss interesting new tech...

rchaud 3y ago
The common thread between all your examples is that they are not the latest technologies, just the latest variants promoted by large, monied interests, that have highly prescriptive visions for how said technology can be used.
- ESTheComposer 3y ago
  You could say that about almost any advancement in any field. I think your definition of "latest technology" is severely limited if something has to be completely brand new like a horse vs a car
Syonyk 3y ago
> ...where everyone always wants to lambast the newest tech... Yeah. Because there are a lot of people who've lived through 3 or 4 decades now of the hype cycle and want to see "less tech" in everyone's lives, having seen the result of "all the tech we can imagine" in everyone's lives. It's not been good unless you're at the upper end of the attention accumulation pyramid.
- ESTheComposer 3y ago
  > It's not been good unless you're at the upper end of the attention accumulation pyramid. Very subjective and ignores all the great strides these technologies have made. React has made it infinitely easier for everyone to build scalable websites and web apps so I don't think I agree with your upper end statement.
  - Syonyk 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

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withinboredom 3y ago

I've noticed its a bit of an annual cycle for me. It seems in the summer and winter, the best articles get shared, or at least the most interesting for me. In the fall/spring it seems like it's whatever is the latest hype, whether that is AI, crypto, whatever. My theory is that a lot of smart people tend to have large chunks of free time in the summer/winter, thus write a lot of interesting things. In the fall/spring, people are busy and thus only low-effort or trending articles make it here.

Jtsummers 3y ago

It's always been cyclical. There have been many days, even weeks and months it seems, when I have seen little of interest (to me) on HN. Hide (option under posts) ones you aren't interested in, check out the second chance pool, post something you're interested in, or just go for a walk. In a month or two it'll shift to either a broader set of topics or maybe something of more interest to you again.

7ero 3y ago

I'm feeling the same way, I'm thinking it has to do with the amount of people wanting to have a career in tech (including the non-technical folks, business-types and such), the ease of sharing information online, and the notoriety of ycombinator in the startup space.

vt85 3y ago

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magic_hamster 3y ago

It sounds like more of an internal process you're experiencing. Personally I noticed more meta content is surfacing but I still see a lot of interesting links on here. Also, if you're burnt out or if you've been in the tech space for a while, some things may not seem as exciting as they used to be. I'd say take a break, and also try some alternative communities. There are some places with a focused discussion on tech, like Lobsters.

soared 3y ago

Obligatory when these threads come up - if OPs post rings true to you it’s worth spending a few minutes looking inward and identifying if depression might be affecting you. It might not, but loss of interest in hobbies/etc is an early symptom that Ive personally experienced. Also possible your interests have changed, and what’s on HN now doesn’t align!

cloudking 3y ago

What's annoying are the haters that add useless comments bashing Google on any post that is Google related.

jacquesm 3y ago

By the time you arrived the first time it had already changed quite a bit from when I joined so this is more or less expected. The big inflection points to me were 2009 (before Dec 2008 when I joined I was just lurking) and 2016.

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agumonkey 3y ago
I wonder if my memory is correct but I joined HN after a long time on c2 and lambda-the-ultimate.. HN had a similar deep/esoteric feel. Some startup content too. Today it seems a lot more like a normal tech portal. More technical than the average but a lot less surprising.
thih9 3y ago
> By the time you arrived Do we know when grandparent has arrived? The description (i.e.: “I've been reading HN for a while. I made my first comment May 31, 2018.”) only mentions when they added their first comment and not when they started reading hn.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  Yes.
  - thih9 3y ago
    Not sure what you mean, can you elaborate?
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      No.

oldstrangers 3y ago

I can't believe I've been here since 2010.

ergonaught 3y ago

No idea, but I have almost entirely disengaged from the site recently, myself, despite many years of it being probably my #1 website destination. I assumed "it's just me" rather than anything to do with HN per se, but who knows?

rcfox 3y ago

I think once you've watched an online community for long enough, you start to see the Eternal September. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

samtho 3y ago
The tragedy here is usually that you don’t recognize you’re in one until it’s long sense past and you find yourself nostalgically remembering how it was and wondering why it changed so drastically and for the worst.
2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
Yes. I joined the site and I'm sure I was part of some else's Eternal September yet now I feel like the site is changing. My personal crackpot theory is that the site isn't helped by all of the manipulation, agitators, and other inauthentic users. Example: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=snake%20malware&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... It's also not a great time to be in the startup game, economically speaking.

lkbm 3y ago

For what it's worth, you can look at the HN frontpage as it was on any given day: https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2023-05-15 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2023-05-15 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2020-05-15 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2020-05-15 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2015-05-15 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2015-05-15 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2010-05-15 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2010-05-15 I'm sure things have changed over time, but could be interesting to play around with those to get a clearer sense of what and when.

bvttf 3y ago

It's mostly the same in my experience. Less Lisp now, which is too bad.

jmclnx 3y ago
Same for me, seems it has not changed much. I have had an ID for like 7 to 8 years.

JoelMcCracken 3y ago

The intersection of my interests and that of hn ebbs and flows. My account here is from 2009. I wouldn’t worry about it.

bin_bash 3y ago

I've been here since launch (with different usernames), and I don't think it's meaningfully changed at all. btw this is sort of mentioned in guidelines (see the last one)

aaronbrethorst 3y ago

I've been around since September 2007 (heh), when—iirc—Michael Arrington mentioned it on TechCrunch. HN has definitely changed over the past 15.5 years, but then again so have I. That's just an inevitability, though. My perspective on technology, the world, and my own life have changed quite a bit from the age of 25 to 40.

testfrequency 3y ago

I’ve noticed over the last two years a significant decline in the quality of the comments and front page posts on HN. I blame this partially on the larger tech sites referencing and linking back to HN, so a new…demographic..of online users are now here. Some days HN is really good, and I’m enjoying the commentary and creators posting, other days I feel like I’m on Digg with reddit quality replies and attacks. I’m still here, I check almost daily, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say the quality has gone downhill

pc86 3y ago
No, probably not. > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1524184 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1524184 (July 2010) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=926703 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=926703 (Nov 2009) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=633099 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=633099 (May 2009) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=582513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=582513 (April 2009) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=289254 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=289254 (August 2008) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=253657 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=253657 (July 2008) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=66057 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=66057 (Oct 2007) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=60767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=60767 (Sept 2007) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13852 (Aug 2007)
- antegamisou 3y ago
  This would be relevant if the user base and site content were the same as the ones in the dates of the links you've cited, the most recent being thirteen years old! However, it's another obsolete BS etiquette HN has came up with so its userbase feels intellectually superior to Redditors, even though they both have been found to converge as is evident from observations by others similar to the ones expressed at the OP.
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mattlondon 3y ago

The LLM hype has kinda poisoned the front page for me. Pretty much any time I look about half of the stories are about LLMs. I just don't care. AI and ML is boring as fuck. Neat tricks sure but ultimately extremely dull for me. I expect this to die down again soon though so I hang around a bit.

badpun 3y ago
> The LLM hype has kinda poisoned the front page for me. Pretty much any time I look about half of the stories are about LLMs. Not only that, they also poisoned the podcasts I like. Now, there like 50% chance that a given episode will be on "AI". Hopefully it'll blow over in a couple of months.

nashashmi 3y ago

The numbers of up votes has gone up. A hundred votes used to be a big deal. Not so anymore. Things are inflated and the audience has grown to something that only comes up if they agree with it. Before it used to be a nerdy place. Now it is just another social justice war.

woodruffw 3y ago

There's a lot of AI chaff on the front page recently, which I don't get a lot out of. But there's always been some or another form of chaff on the front page.

thrwwyd17052023 3y ago

I still find a lot of interesting and insightful articles here but there are days where the whole main page is flooded with AI/LLM submissions of questionable value. In the past the HN crowd used to be much more critical of the currently (over-)hyped tech but this time I see most people just go with the flow. E.g. I bet almost no one would take "prompt engineering" seriously on HN just a few years ago.

besus 3y ago

I do believe the frontpage has lost some of it's magic over the years. But the 'new' pages still have plenty of interesting topics that don't get the upvotes.

itronitron 3y ago

HN isn't a good place for discussion and technical exchange regarding proven technologies. To the extent that you or I are working productively with proven technologies, then we probably won't find HN as engaging.

xwdv 3y ago

You know what’s crazy about the internet? Somewhere out there right now, is a niche community of computer geeks, discussing incredibly fascinating topics and having thoughtful discussions, exchanging powerful ideas, and you have never heard of them and don’t even know they exist, and they are just a URL away. You’re missing out.

batman-farts 3y ago

I find that the main reason I come here is for information/background chatter about various open source projects and the trends behind them. In other words, fairly granular technical news interspersed with general interest science and math stories. Slashdot used to fill this need for me, but it seems like it fell off in editorial quality and comprehensiveness after changing hands so many times. Plus the commentariat over there seems to have thinned out, as well as skewed older and more bitter, the last few times I’ve visited. I do appreciate a site where I can learn just as much from the commenters as I can from the stories, and this place definitely still provides that. But I also agree that the YCombinator/VC connection means that too much of the content here uncritically rides industry hype waves (crypto, AI… what’s next? Some kind of applied biotech? Asteroid mining?). What are some good alternatives? Phys.org is great for general science but there isn’t always a lot of CS crossover.

antegamisou 3y ago

No and I've complained many times about this. The front-page is consistently flooded with low-quality content. Lately the current pattern, with little varation, can be summed up to: - 10-minute Substack read about this new fancy bloatware, uhh.. framework/programming language/tech that you have to use otherwise you have to reconcile with not being a 10x rockstar programmer anymore and remain unemployed and die in poverty. - Look, another ChatGPT feature I came up with that, although does a tiny fraction of what you do in your job and with moderate error rate, will lead each and every one of you into extinction! - I found this paper on Nature where scientists cured this terminal illness for humans, in mice. Let me just omit this unimportant detail so I can make it to the frontpage. Also very often, the first n, and it's a large n, submissions on the front page pertain to the same subject. More niche and hacker-y in the traditional sense of what the website used to be in the past content receives little attention until it gets buried minutes later by some BS thing that can be grouped into one of the aforementioned categories. I used to say that HN is equivalent to Reddit as far as user-base intellect goes and if we go by the people participating on the large subreddits, I think both groups converge. This is evident from the current state of the front-page, namely sensationalist titled low-quality content being popular. However, if you're able to find small, in my estimation less than 30k subscribers allows for some sort of regulation/filtering out of overly-divergent content, communities about your niche subjects of interest, you're much better off there than here. HN has become a sort of entertainment type of thing for me, especially when it comes to the rhetoric the average HNer possesses when it comes to discussion, whether that concerns tech or not.

jasonlotito 3y ago

It's always changing. Fads come and go. It's not always going to be what you want to read, but at the same time, it gives you a good indication of topics that are being brought up. Sometimes the topics are repeats of things you read years ago, and so it's not as interesting. /shrug Use it as a source, not your only source.

krapp 3y ago

The two constants I've found since I've been here are that people think Hacker News is turning to shit, and the mods insist it isn't. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle, that Hacker News has always been kind of shit. But not hot shit, because that would set off the flamewar detector. Precisely lukewarm, perfectly spherical, frictionless shit in a vacuum.

gorbachev 3y ago

I don't know if it's changed...honestly don't even care all that much. This is just one of many information sources I have. What I did notice after moving out of US is that this site is 95% US centric, and that's a shame. I suppose that should've been obvious to me even prior to moving out, but seeing it from inside the bubble isn't always easy.

steveklabnik 3y ago

I’ve been here a very long time. It has changed. That’s not always a bad thing. It’s just the way of the world. The only constant is change.

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lcordier 3y ago

I use the https://hckrnews.com/ https://hckrnews.com/ view. Reverse-chronological order of posts. (sometimes the site needs a refresh, but works most of the time...)

throwaway202303 3y ago

This post happens every year so yeah it’s just you

nanna 3y ago

Personally I feel like there's been a palpable rise in far right postings since Twitter tightened its rules during the Trump presidency. Like everyone else here I have no actual evidence for what I feel may have changed.

mindcrime 3y ago

As somebody who has been here since near the beginning, I'd say my subjective observations are: 1. Yeah, sure, there's been some change in the sentiment / zeitgeist of HN, but I haven't seen any particularly marked change in overall quality of the discussion. 2. There are good days, better days, and not-so-good days as far as how much stuff shows up that is of interest to me. It's always been that way. 3. Our interests and focus do change as we age, and to the extent that HN (or Slashdot, or Reddit, or LtU, or LWN, etc.) is more or less interesting to me now than 15 years ago is almost certainly a function of both changes in the external environment AND changes in me. I'd guess that's true for most everybody. 4. HN is still one of the best sites on the net (if not the best) for discussing interesting topics around (technology|business|science). So even if it has declined, I don't find that it's declined enough to say any other site is particularly better. Lobste.rs is interesting, but the population there is a lot smaller which is both good and bad in its own way. 5. There don't seem to be as many "celebrity hackers" posting these days. Back in the day we had pg, rtm, and quite a few other very notable figures posting, which was kinda neat. And there are still some of those. WalterBright for example (the creator of D) posts quite often from what I've seen. But it does seem like there are fewer of those guys posting now than in the past. Whether that's important or not is a subject to debate I suppose.