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Lobsters Interview
- 8cvor6j844qw_d6 11mo agoBased on this interview, it seems Lobsters community there is pretty interesting for the tech crowd? Perhaps one should take a look there. Unfortunately, Lobsters (previously?) blocked Brave browser and I don't feel like switching browsers just to visit a site.
- IncreasePosts 11mo agoMy main gripe with lobsters vs hn is that lobsters has a lot of specific in the weeds tech articles, like about some functionality of a specific python library. It's way too specific, I find the mix of articles on hn much better from a generalist perspective
- internetter 11mo agoConversely, hn gets a lot of content which simply isn't intellectually stimulating. Like on the front page atm is pocketbase—a git repo which currently has 53k stars which I've known of for many years, and a surface level article on RAG titled 'So you wanna build a local RAG?' ~~which seems to mostly just exist so the author can plug their company in the first line.~~ which doesn't really contribute much niche knowledge you can't obtain anywhere else. As a blogger myself I can't claim superiority—I've done this plenty, but this content just doesn't seem to do as well on lobste.rs as compared to really niche content which is directly relevant to very few people, but as a result required a great deal of research and time and very possibly is of great utility to a rare few. Edit: though to be clear this is a spectrum with heavy overlap. Just general biases I've observed. Like on Lobste.rs there is an article titled 'Electron vs. Tauri' atm.
- Karrot_Kream 11mo agoPersonally I enjoy that content a lot. My guess is that HN is read by tech interested people these days not just programmers. The risk of being more generalist is losing your distinguishing lens. If I wanted generic news with a techie take there's sites like Ars and The Verge that already do this. If HN becomes those sites it's only a losing game.
- rgreekguy 11mo ago[flagged]
- chao- 11mo agoThe differences are well summarized on their /about page. I find both HN and Lobsters valuable for different reasons, but and the differences that stand out to me are: - Tries to be more purely technical. Generic political or business links are flagged or removed. - Aggressive marketing/self-promotion is moderated: If you join, post three links to your own blog, and nothing else, expect someone to call out if you post a fourth. I know HN does this to some extent, but it is very explicit on Lobsters. - Not "news", not necessarily about recent things. Project/language releases even have a "release" tag so you can hide them systematically. A ten-year-old article explaining some library internals is just as likely to come up. - Instead of "downvotes" there are "flags", which requires choosing a reason. Ideally encourages people to pause and think, instead of scrolling and clicking a down arrow 20 times in a thread. - Weekly community threads of "What are you working on this week?" and "What are you doing this weekend?" which is nice for a smaller community.
- wahnfrieden 11mo agoThey are also aggressively anti-AI edit: If you are downvoting because you are also anti-AI, my comment is not about whether supporting AI is good. I'm only remarking that they are aggressively negative about the topic. The aggression is obnoxious and less tolerated with other topics.
- kaycebasques 11mo agoThe proposal to rename the vibecoding tag to something else provides a pretty good sense of the overall sentiment among the site's members: https://lobste.rs/s/gkzmfy/let_s_rename_vibecoding_tag_llms https://lobste.rs/s/gkzmfy/let_s_rename_vibecoding_tag_llms
- Aurornis 11mo agoHN comment sections are full of anti-AI remarks, but there’s enough volume of contents that you can still find some quality info here. On Lobsters it feels like the angry anti-LLM mindset is woven into the site’s culture, like you’re breaking some unspoken rule if you accidentally say something non-derogatory about AI.
- schmuckonwheels 11mo agoI've heard it's like HN, but with Reddit-style drama and psychotic moderation. Sounds lovely.
- _se 11mo agoCan you really not see the irony in posting this comment? Have you no self-awareness whatsoever? Peak HN, absolutely hilarious!
- fishmicrowaver 11mo agoThe hottest discussion on the first page is how big of a meanie Andrew Kelley is. Yeah the sites a vibe for sure.
- JuniperMesos 11mo agoA lot of good contributors to Lobsters have been banned for poltical reasons. Lobsters (laudably) has a moderation log that shows the reasons for user bans among other moderator decisions, but typically when when a good contributor is banned for poltical reasons (as opposed to e.g. a spammer), the actual posts that made the moderators decide to ban have been removed and replaced with a moderator message pithily asserting that the post was offensive; so it's hard for someone to see exactly what the last straw posts were and decide how reasonable the moderator was being. And the moderators and most of the remaining userbase of Lobsters are American political left-progressives, and this dramatically informs how they choose to moderate.
- kenhwang 11mo agoLobsters feels a lot like the HN of a decade ago, when the community was more technical than business, and the topics were technical instead of tech business culture.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- hitekker 11mo agoHN was originally called "Startup News". It was founded by tech business people and originally its userbase was largely startup tech people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_News https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_News I've been here 12 years and I don't remember HN focusing solely on technical topics, unless the word "technical" has widened to mean "anything one engineer finds intellectually stimulating".
- keiferski 11mo agoI have the same impression. If anything, it’s become more “generic technical” topics and less “insider founder” ones. There seems to be a lot more institutional representation here than circa 2010-2015, probably because many of the new founders then are now running establishment companies.
- phantasmish 11mo agoThere used to be a lot more “hustle culture” and “growth hacking” stuff on here (10+ years ago) most of which I find disgusting, so I’m glad for that shift.
- kenhwang 11mo agoHN was never only technical, but at least it felt like the discussion was from people who build, which naturally segued into technical discussion. It felt like the majority back then were tinkerers and builders. Nowadays it feels more like sales, marketing, management, and investor interests, and topics they find interesting which has far more popularity than anything at the implementation level. Granted, HN probably better matches what matters these days to launch a successful company. But we're all older now and working for companies that became what we once tried to disrupt, and it shows.
- kaycebasques 11mo agoIt's a strong, active community. Much more focused on computing. I'm happy to invite anyone who wants to join. You can find a way to contact me on https://technicalwriting.dev https://technicalwriting.dev. Please also link me to your website, LinkedIn, etc.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- veqq 11mo agoSimilarly, I give out invites on IRC "like candy"
- photios 11mo ago> Lobsters (previously?) blocked Brave browser Yah, I deleted my 10+ yo account there over that. I won't have a site tell me what browser I should or should not use.
- rglullis 11mo agoThe funny thing is that make a big deal about blocking Brave on "ethical" grounds, but don't e tend the logic to Chrome, Edge or Safari. Talk about punching down/virtue signaling.
- anonymous908213 11mo agoWhere did they make a big deal of blocking Brave on "ethical" grounds? https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters-ansible/issues/45 https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters-ansible/issues/45 They outline a very specific behaviour that Brave engaged in but Chrome, Edge, and Safari do not. Brave was engaging in fraudulent behaviour, wherein it posed a fake donations scheme to users of the browser under the guise of supporting website owners with their implicit but nonexistent consent, and in actuality took the money for itself. Brave then also specifically and publicly singled out Lobsters in an issue. Lobsters devs do not want to spend dev time engaging with scammers operating in bad faith. Seems fair to me. See also an HN thread about the fraud scheme: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999
- rglullis 11mo ago> Brave was engaging in fraudulent behaviour. Allegedly. This, the "Brave was putting ads of their own on other pages" and "adding the referrer code for Binance" stories get thrown around like they were (a) are all huge sources of profit (b) carried on with malicious intent and (c) on par with the BILLIONS of dollars in ad fraud that goes around and Google so conveniently turns a blind eye.
- anonymous908213 11mo agoI don't particularly care how much money Brave made off the scheme. If Brave put my name and picture on an advertisement shown to Brave users, said that I was soliciting donations and would receive the money, and then took the money, that is immediately far more personally offensive than virtually anything Google does. I was not myself actually affected by this, but it's incredibly easy for me to understand why someone would want nothing to do with Brave. Also, it's basically a given that Brave is not in a position to generate billions through such a scheme. It simply doesn't have the market share for that. If Chrome did the same thing that Brave did, they probably would generate billions. It is equally unethical either way. Moreover, Google has an effective monopoly. Even if you wanted to protest Chrome, you can't do so without effectively shutting down your website. Chrome coerces consent into whatever they do. Brave does not have that power. You describe that as punching down, but just because Chrome has the capability to coerce consent does not mean we should be surrendering our consent to anyone and everyone.
- veqq 11mo agoThank you for sharing this! I currently have 4 more interviews which need a little editing before "publishing"; I condense phrasing, rearrange questions or explanations etc. to try to improve the reading flow.
- Will-Reppeto 11mo ago[dead]
- macintux 11mo agoI definitely like the discussion around the importance of defining a vocabulary for your solution. I can almost hear my co-workers' eyes rolling when I try to tackle that. > Thinking about the vocabulary also ensures that we are thinking about the data, concepts and notions we are working with in a deliberate manner and that kind of thinking also helps when we design the architecture of software.
- andrewstuart 11mo agoLobste.rs would be far more interesting to me if by default it did not have the same posts as HN. As it stands, when I want more tech news I go to lobsters and there is the same stuff.
- homebrewer 11mo agoAt least two bots automatically repost everything from there to here to farm karma, so it isn't really possible.
- jm4 11mo agoI would like to try Lobsters, but they don’t have open registration and I don’t know anyone already there.