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(i) definitely applies. I often see younger hackers talking about “the orange website”, never in positive tones. HN is seen as older, richer, and with various n

(i) definitely applies. I often see younger hackers talking about “the orange website”, never in positive tones. HN is seen as older, richer, and with various negative tendencies.

zokier 3y ago
Its not just the people who are missing ("young hacksters" as you put it), but also the people who are here; the HN populace is gradually approaching general populace, there are lots of people commenting here who have no connection to the cutting edge tech scene that HN originates from (even if HN never was particularly exclusive club). And to clarify, I'm one of those people, so I'm not saying this to be elitist or anything.
aikinai 3y ago
Where do you see that? Just curious.
- NeutralForest 3y ago
  I see it on Twitter
tormeh 3y ago
HN is quite money-oriented and economically liberal, although nothing beats Blind in this regard. Many FOSS developers don't like this. I think it has less to do with age.
- nologic01 3y ago
  I find various economic views are represented, but the economic discussions are quite a bit less sophisticated than the technical ones. That's a general pattern of techie discourse: see also, e.g., the absurd simplifications around human intelligence and AI.
  - red-iron-pine 3y ago
    HN is a message board on a startup incubator -- no one gets into startups for fun, they do it to get rich. this comes with plenty of other biases. that said, technical or no, the overall level of discourse is still better than mainstream reddit, and light years better than things like the local facebook page. I may disagree with a lot posted here, but I'm willing to consider the posters here to be on the "peer-level" far more than other sites.
  - CM30 3y ago
    That feels less like a techie discourse thing and more of an enthusiast/expert discourse one. Put a bunch of experts together and ask them to discuss their field, and you'll get some great discussions. Put the same people together and have them discuss something they're not that knowledgeable about, and well, the results won't differ much from the general population's attempts, except maybe with slightly more sophisticated language. I suspect if you got a bunch of doctors, lawyers, architects, etc to discuss economics you'd get the same results as here for the most part.
hammyhavoc 3y ago
"the orange website" negative sentiment is there from a lot of demographics, not just young-skewing, and sometimes it's easy to see why when discussions not infrequently devolve into ad hominems and ass-pull anecdata as a lot of people aren't equipped to deal with the idea of multiple points of view being valid, or x not being so binary as good or bad.
JohnFen 3y ago
> HN is seen as older, richer, and with various negative tendencies. HN users are mostly (but certainly not entirely) from a very specific and narrow demographic. It's true that the tech world is much broader and more varied than is reflected here. This isn't a criticism of HN. Most fora have users from very specific and narrow demographics. Just different ones.
amadeuspagel 3y ago
I associate sneering at "the orange website" with a very specific type — someone who's more curious than his ideology allows him, someone who is supposed to stay in his twitter bubble, regularly rooting out problematic follows, but who's nonetheless addicted to checking HN, which is the only place where he sees any different views, sort of the equivalent of a muslim alcoholic.

(i) definitely applies. I often see younger hackers talking about “the orange website”, never in positive tones. HN is seen as older, richer, and with various negative tendencies.

zokier 3y ago

Its not just the people who are missing ("young hacksters" as you put it), but also the people who are here; the HN populace is gradually approaching general populace, there are lots of people commenting here who have no connection to the cutting edge tech scene that HN originates from (even if HN never was particularly exclusive club). And to clarify, I'm one of those people, so I'm not saying this to be elitist or anything.

aikinai 3y ago

Where do you see that? Just curious.

NeutralForest 3y ago
I see it on Twitter

tormeh 3y ago

HN is quite money-oriented and economically liberal, although nothing beats Blind in this regard. Many FOSS developers don't like this. I think it has less to do with age.

nologic01 3y ago
I find various economic views are represented, but the economic discussions are quite a bit less sophisticated than the technical ones. That's a general pattern of techie discourse: see also, e.g., the absurd simplifications around human intelligence and AI.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  HN is a message board on a startup incubator -- no one gets into startups for fun, they do it to get rich. this comes with plenty of other biases. that said, technical or no, the overall level of discourse is still better than mainstream reddit, and light years better than things like the local facebook page. I may disagree with a lot posted here, but I'm willing to consider the posters here to be on the "peer-level" far more than other sites.
- CM30 3y ago
  That feels less like a techie discourse thing and more of an enthusiast/expert discourse one. Put a bunch of experts together and ask them to discuss their field, and you'll get some great discussions. Put the same people together and have them discuss something they're not that knowledgeable about, and well, the results won't differ much from the general population's attempts, except maybe with slightly more sophisticated language. I suspect if you got a bunch of doctors, lawyers, architects, etc to discuss economics you'd get the same results as here for the most part.

hammyhavoc 3y ago

"the orange website" negative sentiment is there from a lot of demographics, not just young-skewing, and sometimes it's easy to see why when discussions not infrequently devolve into ad hominems and ass-pull anecdata as a lot of people aren't equipped to deal with the idea of multiple points of view being valid, or x not being so binary as good or bad.

JohnFen 3y ago

> HN is seen as older, richer, and with various negative tendencies. HN users are mostly (but certainly not entirely) from a very specific and narrow demographic. It's true that the tech world is much broader and more varied than is reflected here. This isn't a criticism of HN. Most fora have users from very specific and narrow demographics. Just different ones.

amadeuspagel 3y ago

I associate sneering at "the orange website" with a very specific type — someone who's more curious than his ideology allows him, someone who is supposed to stay in his twitter bubble, regularly rooting out problematic follows, but who's nonetheless addicted to checking HN, which is the only place where he sees any different views, sort of the equivalent of a muslim alcoholic.