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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 fro

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.
- hakaneskici 2y ago
  Oh how I miss the golden days of RSS blogs :) On reading; I feel like I don't have the time or the attention span anymore. I strongly believe this is due to the "short info-pill" overload in the last decade or so. I can easily get trapped into this type of behavior from time to time, unless I am actively fighting against it. I feel like it's bypassing the "reasoning" part of my brain by directly targeting the inner lizard brain via my optical and auditory nervous system, eventually triggering powerful hormones that drive behavior. I cannot override my hormones by "thinking". I always try to interpret the "attention is all you need" paper a bit differently to apply it to myself in the age of "generative" AI and other noise.

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.

hakaneskici 2y ago
Oh how I miss the golden days of RSS blogs :) On reading; I feel like I don't have the time or the attention span anymore. I strongly believe this is due to the "short info-pill" overload in the last decade or so. I can easily get trapped into this type of behavior from time to time, unless I am actively fighting against it. I feel like it's bypassing the "reasoning" part of my brain by directly targeting the inner lizard brain via my optical and auditory nervous system, eventually triggering powerful hormones that drive behavior. I cannot override my hormones by "thinking". I always try to interpret the "attention is all you need" paper a bit differently to apply it to myself in the age of "generative" AI and other noise.