4 ms·

Ask HN: Do you feel like HN still embodies the hacker culture? If yes/no, why?

10 points by amarcheschi 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
PaulHoule 2y ago
Yes. It's one of few places where people are interested in technology and business.
JohnFen 2y ago
I don't think it ever did, honestly. That's not a insult to HN, but to me "hacker culture" has always been something very, very different from the culture HN represents.
- amarcheschi 2y ago
  I partially agree, although I'm very on the younger side and definitely didn't browse this website till the last few years
duxup 2y ago
I'm not sure "hacker culture" is all that wide ranging a view of things. HN has always had a wide range of interest / topics.
modeless 2y ago
Absolutely not. The shift in tone has accelerated in recent years. I don't really like what HN has become.
- fragmede 2y ago
  Given the reception of the factory worker post yesterday, in your mind, what would the reception of it have been a couple of years ago that it wasn't yesterday? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43166249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43166249 which got downranked, resulting in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43170850 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43170850
- 3vidence 2y ago
  I've been a pretty heavy HN user since highschool and it just felt like such a cool place to be. There were always so many deep interesting topics from people with all sorts of interesting backgrounds. Theres been a shift for a while but it I hate to say that it now feels like an AI, trump, Musk yap fest. I don't hate AI, use it every day and work in the space. The life has just been squeezed out of this place. It makes me sad that honestly I can find more interesting discussion on Reddit at this point which is truely disappointing considering that's not great quality either. I've been using lobste.rs more recently and they do actually have pretty good active tech discussion there. I don't know how / when it happened but it feels like HN is somehow becoming a tool for disinformation.... :(
DanAtC 2y ago
It never did. See http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/index.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/index.html
billy99k 2y ago
No. Most people here work at large corporations like FB and Google and represent the exact opposite of hacker culture.
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  Some of them, not most of them. If there were more of them working at FB somebody would have fixed the problem that prevents me from registering an Instagram account by now.
  - RGamma 2y ago
    The lone hacker preventing you from doing this is trying to do you a favor.
hakaneskici 2y ago
I've been a "daily" follower of HN as anon since its inception by pg, so here's my opinion on this: Over the years, software development itself has changed from having to know the low level details of the computer (hacking), to "AI writes my code for me" today. This is reflected in the HN audience over many years with the influx of new developer generations, where what "hacker culture" meant also changed. I still feel the same hacker culture vibe, with many passionate engineers experimenting with tons of ideas. The culture is still here, but there's also a LOT of corporate noise too as HN grows. If anyone remembers the cathedral and the bazaar analogy, here's a 25 yr article of mine on what "hacker" & "open source" meant back then :) https://web.archive.org/web/20020806100014/http://www.2enetworx.com/dev/articles/opensource.asp https://web.archive.org/web/20020806100014/http://www.2enetw...
- amarcheschi 2y ago
  Interesting, when I can I'll read the link
- fragmede 2y ago
  What got you to finally create an account? (not doubting you, am curious on the reader/commenter dynamic)
  - hakaneskici 2y ago
    I used to participate in discussions long time ago, but I've mostly been a read-only guest. I lost access to my original account many many years ago. Maybe one day I can talk to admins to see if it can be mined from the archives :) Why read-only? I never posted anything online anywhere other than my own websites or blogs, and actively avoided social media mostly due to personal privacy and freedom concerns. Worth it? No :)
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  I think the culture of reading has degraded just about everywhere in the past few years, even I have to keep my Nintendo 3DS turned off on the bus otherwise I'd never get any reading done on fox mediumship. I think two years ago if I posted a scientific paper link to Mastodon somebody would reply with something like "this is way over my head" which makes me a lot more inclined to post links to phys.org there where there is a good summary image (important on social) and where people complain less about the ads. [1] I think back then there were probably a lot of people on HN who would think "this is way over my head" but wouldn't say it because they didn't want to look stupid in front of a group of presumably smart people. Recently I see HNers who see a reasonably well written abstract that uses technical language say something like "this is incomprehensible gobbledygook" or "an LLM could do a good job of summarizing this abstract", etc. No talk about how "I can't understand it", but rather how science is broken, the world is broken, anything but the reader is broken. Maybe it is ableist thinking but personally I am really annoyed with the startups that want to use summarization to turn all content into A.I. slop because reading is just too hard... It's like they think 75% of people have dyslexia as opposed to 25% and they don't feel like they have to mask anymore. [1] My RSS reader subscribes to phys.org, but because of complaints about ads, I'm inclined to post a link to the original paper on HN, especially if the paper is Open Access.

10 points by amarcheschi 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

PaulHoule 2y ago

Yes. It's one of few places where people are interested in technology and business.

JohnFen 2y ago

I don't think it ever did, honestly. That's not a insult to HN, but to me "hacker culture" has always been something very, very different from the culture HN represents.

amarcheschi 2y ago
I partially agree, although I'm very on the younger side and definitely didn't browse this website till the last few years

duxup 2y ago

I'm not sure "hacker culture" is all that wide ranging a view of things. HN has always had a wide range of interest / topics.

modeless 2y ago

Absolutely not. The shift in tone has accelerated in recent years. I don't really like what HN has become.

fragmede 2y ago
Given the reception of the factory worker post yesterday, in your mind, what would the reception of it have been a couple of years ago that it wasn't yesterday? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43166249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43166249 which got downranked, resulting in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43170850 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43170850
3vidence 2y ago
I've been a pretty heavy HN user since highschool and it just felt like such a cool place to be. There were always so many deep interesting topics from people with all sorts of interesting backgrounds. Theres been a shift for a while but it I hate to say that it now feels like an AI, trump, Musk yap fest. I don't hate AI, use it every day and work in the space. The life has just been squeezed out of this place. It makes me sad that honestly I can find more interesting discussion on Reddit at this point which is truely disappointing considering that's not great quality either. I've been using lobste.rs more recently and they do actually have pretty good active tech discussion there. I don't know how / when it happened but it feels like HN is somehow becoming a tool for disinformation.... :(

DanAtC 2y ago

It never did. See http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/index.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/index.html

billy99k 2y ago

No. Most people here work at large corporations like FB and Google and represent the exact opposite of hacker culture.

PaulHoule 2y ago
Some of them, not most of them. If there were more of them working at FB somebody would have fixed the problem that prevents me from registering an Instagram account by now.
- RGamma 2y ago
  The lone hacker preventing you from doing this is trying to do you a favor.

hakaneskici 2y ago

I've been a "daily" follower of HN as anon since its inception by pg, so here's my opinion on this: Over the years, software development itself has changed from having to know the low level details of the computer (hacking), to "AI writes my code for me" today. This is reflected in the HN audience over many years with the influx of new developer generations, where what "hacker culture" meant also changed. I still feel the same hacker culture vibe, with many passionate engineers experimenting with tons of ideas. The culture is still here, but there's also a LOT of corporate noise too as HN grows. If anyone remembers the cathedral and the bazaar analogy, here's a 25 yr article of mine on what "hacker" & "open source" meant back then :) https://web.archive.org/web/20020806100014/http://www.2enetworx.com/dev/articles/opensource.asp https://web.archive.org/web/20020806100014/http://www.2enetw...

amarcheschi 2y ago
Interesting, when I can I'll read the link
fragmede 2y ago
What got you to finally create an account? (not doubting you, am curious on the reader/commenter dynamic)
- hakaneskici 2y ago
  I used to participate in discussions long time ago, but I've mostly been a read-only guest. I lost access to my original account many many years ago. Maybe one day I can talk to admins to see if it can be mined from the archives :) Why read-only? I never posted anything online anywhere other than my own websites or blogs, and actively avoided social media mostly due to personal privacy and freedom concerns. Worth it? No :)
PaulHoule 2y ago
I think the culture of reading has degraded just about everywhere in the past few years, even I have to keep my Nintendo 3DS turned off on the bus otherwise I'd never get any reading done on fox mediumship. I think two years ago if I posted a scientific paper link to Mastodon somebody would reply with something like "this is way over my head" which makes me a lot more inclined to post links to phys.org there where there is a good summary image (important on social) and where people complain less about the ads. [1] I think back then there were probably a lot of people on HN who would think "this is way over my head" but wouldn't say it because they didn't want to look stupid in front of a group of presumably smart people. Recently I see HNers who see a reasonably well written abstract that uses technical language say something like "this is incomprehensible gobbledygook" or "an LLM could do a good job of summarizing this abstract", etc. No talk about how "I can't understand it", but rather how science is broken, the world is broken, anything but the reader is broken. Maybe it is ableist thinking but personally I am really annoyed with the startups that want to use summarization to turn all content into A.I. slop because reading is just too hard... It's like they think 75% of people have dyslexia as opposed to 25% and they don't feel like they have to mask anymore. [1] My RSS reader subscribes to phys.org, but because of complaints about ads, I'm inclined to post a link to the original paper on HN, especially if the paper is Open Access.