7 ms·

I think the comments here are a great example of why this idea always sounds better in nostalgic reminiscence than in practice: As I write this, nearly half of

by Aurornis 11mo ago

I think the comments here are a great example of why this idea always sounds better in nostalgic reminiscence than in practice: As I write this, nearly half of the comments here are complaining about this website. There are complaints about requiring JavaScript, the font size, the design, the color choices, the animations. Complaints about everything the designer did to make this site unique and personal, which was the entire point of the exercise. This is coming from a site that supposedly attracts the target audience for this type of page.

lazzlazzlazz 11mo ago
[flagged]
- onion2k 11mo ago
  Hacker News, probably noticeably since 2016 or so, has been a negative, curmudgeonly place. No it hasn't.
  - tux3 11mo ago
    >No it hasn't. I'm sorry, is it a 5 minute argument, or the full half-hour?
- Y_Y 11mo ago
  Is it "negative" to identify shitty things as being shitty? I wouldn't necessarily blame the commenters for that.
  - krapp 11mo ago
    Constantly? As if it were a psychological compulsion? So often that dang had to make a guideline about it, which no one even attempts to follow? Two actually - the guideline against being "curmudgeonly" is separate from the guideline against going on a tilt because you get triggered by any website that doesn't look and act as much like plaintext as possible. And yet if someone so much as cracks a joke they get rapped across the knuckles and lectured about a rule that doesn't actually exist (no humor allowed)? Yes, that's negative. That's a culture of performative misanthropy.
    - gmd63 11mo ago
      You've convinced me, I'm going to stop complaining about corporate slop and the connection between big tech / VCs and the awful political situation in the most advanced country in the world. I will try to glaze Liquid Glass from here on out, say some nice things about the richest man on earth who kept quiet about the fact that he pays people to grind video games for him, and make sure to give David Sacks and Jason Calacanis the benefit of the doubt next time they are whining like babies online for a Silicon Valley Bank bailout. I think the OP website is pretty cool by the way.
      - rightbyte 11mo ago
        > he pays people to grind video games for him The POE shilling might be what pisses me most off about him.
        rescripting 11mo ago
        I know you’re being glib, but for me it’s probably working to shutter USAID at lightning speed leading to tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths. Though he also sucks at video games.
        rightbyte 10mo ago
        Yeah well of course there are actual bad things that weight heavier on the scale. But the good thing about this is that it is so lame.
      - krapp 11mo ago
        The compulsion to interpret people's comments in bad faith then retort with condescending snark is a problem too. But hey, at least it isn't memes, right?
        gmd63 11mo ago
        I don't think I misinterpreted the condescension you dished out by blanket labeling a trend of mostly valid critique as psychological compulsion and performative misanthropy.
  - jimbokun 11mo ago
    It's useless without describing concrete, practical solutions to those problems. What do the voters want? Zero taxes, no crime, world peace and infinite benefits. It's easy to identify things as shitty because the above doesn't describe the world yet and thus it's a banal observation. Implementing real, practical improvements is really hard and requires much more thought and consideration and introduces the possibility of failure. Which is why that part isn't discussed as much.
    - shimman 11mo ago
      Why don't people that perpetuate the current system defend its existence? Why is the onus on us to develop a new realm of government when the current system never had to do this? Your comment is "but you live in society too!" Society acknowledging the shitty things is the first action in rectifying them.
      - AnimalMuppet 11mo ago
        God did not create the current system of government on the seventh day of creation. The current system had to defend its existence (or rather, creation) at the time of its origin. The thing about criticism is, we're a long way from "the worst possible outcome". That is, there is a lot that the current system gets right. That's why the burden of proof gets put on the one proposing changes. The wrong change could make things worse rather than better, and we really don't want that. So it's not enough to note that society is broken in some ways. Yes, it is. Yes, we notice too. Now, what are you proposing? Let's take a hard look at your concrete proposal, and see whether it's an improvement or not. Oh, you don't have one? Yes, it's still valid to point out that there are problems. It's valid to demand that we not become complacent with the current problems. That's not wrong.
        shimman 11mo ago
        No, neoliberalism is only 50ish years old and all it did was usher in nascent fascism and income inequality.
- OGEnthusiast 11mo ago
  That's true of the US population in general too. Their quality of life has been decreasing due to accelerated globalization (sans the top ~10% of asset holders).
- tkiolp4 11mo ago
  HN is so depressing, but at the same time so Im addicted to it. It’s like tiktok but for people who enjoy plain text and hacking related stuff. When I first visited HN more than 10 years ago (without account) like, 90% of the content was exciting and you got to learn something. Nowadays it’s about 40-50%, and the rest is crap (including comments). I have been trying to leave HN, let’s see if I can do it in 2026.
  - zenlot 11mo ago
    Whereabout you plan to move?
  - LPisGood 11mo ago
    Haven’t people been saying that since the late 2000’s?
    - steveklabnik 11mo ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills. The actual quote has links, the first of which is to a comment from 2009.
      - dingnuts 11mo ago
        particularly ironic comment from an HN/lobsters celebrity account lol this website isn't turning into Reddit, this website has been a pretentious orange subreddit for well over a decade if not right from the get go and a link to this site's Reddiquette page (just as ignored as on any subreddit!) is evidence TO that effect, and not against it! the fact that the link petuously denies reality notwithstanding!
        steveklabnik 11mo ago
        I mean, I'm not saying I think it's some sort of bastion of intellectual superiority, just that "have people been saying this place has been going downhill for a long time" is true.
- FergusArgyll 11mo ago
  Once you understand this, you realize maybe it's not that something is wrong with LLMs, crypto, Google, Apple, Windows, Amazon, the US, Rust, not-rust, JavaScript, Israel, copyright & VCs. It's just a negative place.
- fouc 11mo ago
  I disagree it's "toward the left" but I would also disagree if you said "toward the right". By that I mean I've observed BOTH extremes happening.
  - jimbokun 11mo ago
    We've seen the same kinds of discourse arrive here as is common on other social media sites, where too much political discourse is just signaling what tribe you belong to and vilifying anyone outside it.
- lisbbb 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  - Imustaskforhelp 11mo ago
    I am not sure, I would say I just joined hackernews for a year so I don't know the whole situation. but the way I see it, If I assume you are correct, hackernews is in a bit of rough spot because there was this one comment which did some analysis and it feels like hackernews is definitely saturating a bit/(peaked?) From my personal experience, I feel like we all just use reddit (as the article says) and so we just deal with the annoyances with it and not look for anything else. Or perhaps we join some discord communities. If people who are within Hackernews are resonating this statement, its in a tough spot because people say such things. Perhaps, its that Hackernews grew too big for some people and its too small for others. Perhaps one side's currently on reddit not even knowing about it and the other's complaining it on hackernews And perhaps there's also a middle sweet spot where people aren't complaining but nobody hears them either because they got nothing to complain. But from the outside what people see are other people complaining about hackernews on hackernews. Same goes for redditors too I guess. I checked your comment and it says 5 months, I had been assuming you were here for years from the tone but perhaps I was wrong. I don't know but to me hackernews felt like an information arbitrage of sorts which had these tid-bits of info which made me feel better if I ever were to do somethings like this or gave me confidence in myself in finding the right tool for the right job If you are tired of hackernews, I would suggest you to open up a fediverse lemmy instance about anything related to hackernews because of the masses perhaps, then you would have less people but more signal since clearly someone would be interested if you create a lemmy instance about similar topics to hackernews but the problem then becomes is if that thing stays idle. I see your concerns but do you have any suggestions, I see dang and others around here, I am sure if they could do something about it, they probably would?
- evantbyrne 11mo ago
  > Hacker News, probably noticeably since 2016 or so, has been a negative, curmudgeonly place. It has become political (toward the left), sclerotic, and bitterly nostalgic. It's bad and no longer represents the future. I notice it every time I visit. It's sad. An easy way to help with the negativity is to stop leaving bait comments
  - bbor 11mo ago
    Reminds me of on interaction a few months ago where I mentioned the left-right spectrum in passing and someone accused me of making HN a worse place, only to call me a "snowflake" in their very next response! As usual, "things shouldn't be so political" is often uttered from a highly-political sense of discomfort. The quintessential example for me was its usage in US anti-desegregation rhetoric in the 1960s, alongside its resurgence in the anti-DEI movement today -- demanding that no one discuss our shared institutions is too often an endorsement of them, rather than an honest effort to focus on something else. "toward the left" aside, it's always a little frustrating to read the ubiquitous "this place sucks" comments on here and Reddit. I have tons of problems with HN--both petty (markdown when??) and fundamental (SV/PE has metastasized in a discomforting way...)--but I'm still here because I love it, and think it's one of the best communities the internet has to offer. Specific critiques of specific people or ideas are always welcome, but comments like "everyone here is curmudgeonly" just makes me wonder why they bother to log on in the first place...
    - jimbokun 11mo ago
      [flagged]
      - 100721 11mo ago
        Genuinely curious: would you mind please explaining to me how your contributions are more productive than the person you are responding to (read: attacking)? It reads like you are upset at the poster using "DEI" and projecting your own behaviors onto them ("tedious and unproductive political discourse", "immune from critique or any burden of evidence").
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- Hammershaft 11mo ago
  The bitter politics can also be right wing and you can spot it when migration topics pop up. What distinguishes so much of the right wing and left wing politics is that so much of it is angry and zero sum. I've also been looking for greener pastures. Lobsters has better technical signal/noise but is much more bitter, zero sum, and political.
- wsatb 11mo ago
  > It has become political (toward the left) I don’t feel this way at all. Maybe it’s one of the only places you’re actually consuming mixed opinions.
  - yunnpp 11mo ago
    I will even go as far as stating that it is one of the only few places left on the Internet where you can see differing opinions interleave in a not-completely destructive manner. Really no idea what OP is talking about because it has not been at all my experience.
- madeofpalk 11mo ago
  I promise you Hacker News was exactly like this back in 2011. > It has become political (toward the left) I wonder what you're talking about - your definition of 'political' or 'left'. Tech and politics are so deeply intrenched. More than just "is DEI evil and there's no such thing as algorithmic bias". Should Apple be restricted from collecting its Apple Tax and locking down its devices?? Should the EU be able to regulate American companies? Should governments demand encryption back doors in devices? Should Australia ban teens from social network? Should there be a Right to Repair for our devices? Honestly one of my biggest gripes with HN is that it does seem to be a place where pretty regressive social viewpoints seem to flourish.
  - ryandrake 11mo ago
    It would be informative if, when someone complains that XYZ is "to the left" they define exactly what they mean. Is the person they are complaining about really advocating for the proletariat to seize the means of production?
    - cauefcr 11mo ago
      Most times i read political things on HN it looks like visiting a comment straight from ayn rand's delusions, but that's to be expected of the country with two right wing parties pretending to compete.
    - Uehreka 11mo ago
      It is not in the interest of “people who complain about things being too far left” to get specific. To do so can only increase the number of people who realize they disagree with them. The vagueness is purposeful.
- skeeter2020 11mo ago
  comment from account created ~4 years before the supposed noticeable decline: Here's a content-free opinion post designed to trigger more of the negative comments I really hate, but I'll keep coming back.
- ErroneousBosh 11mo ago
  > It has become political (toward the left) Clever people tend to be on the political left. Computery people tend to be on the left because they have a higher level of literacy. That's also why there are no particularly successful right-wing comedians.
- D-Coder 11mo ago
  You should definitely demand your money back.
- venturecruelty 11mo ago
  Lmao sure. Every comment I make about unions gets downvoted, and every comment about "maybe it's okay to destroy the planet for one more solid quarter" shoots into the stratosphere. More projection here than a drive-in movie theatre... This website sucks, but not because of any (incorrectly) perceived leftwing bias.
- scrollop 11mo ago
  There's a social media platform that seems right up your alley. It's something to do with "Truth"...
nine_k 11mo ago
The site indeed is trying to be an artistic treatise, as opposed to being a clear, easy-to-read manifesto. It touches many themes I have read about many times, so I skimmed most of the content. It came to the expected indie-web conclusions and recommendations. Indie Web, while nice and fascinating, lacks the large audience. You write things down, and nobody cares. Well, maybe a few friends who keep an eye, and a hiring manager when your candidacy is considered for another job. Some people are fine with that, and just enjoy the process of producing content, and seeing it published. They are a minority. Most people come to consume more than to produce, and to get quick feedback. The most efficient way for an indie website to gain an audience is to be briefly featured on one of these bad, terrifying behemoths of the current Web, like Reddit, or Xitter, or, well, HN. A few dozen people will bookmark it, or subscribe to the RSS feed. Sites that are true works of art and craft, like https://ciechanow.ski/ https://ciechanow.ski/, will get remembered more widely, but true works of art are rare. It is, definitely, very possible to build a rhizome of small indie sites, along the lines of Web 1.0. But they would also benefit from a thoughtful symbiosis with the "big bad" giants of the modern Web.
- nativeit 11mo ago
  > Sites that are true works of art and craft, like https://ciechanow.ski/ https://ciechanow.ski/, will get remembered more widely, but true works of art are rare. This is a really nifty website.
  - nine_k 11mo ago
    I'd say that "nifty" is an understatement; "a masterpiece" would be more proper.
- trekz 11mo ago
  [dead]
- ceroxylon 11mo ago
  > The most efficient way for an indie website to gain an audience is to be briefly featured on one of these bad, terrifying behemoths of the current Web This is what the article / indieweb mean with POSSE https://indieweb.org/POSSE https://indieweb.org/POSSE
CGMthrowaway 11mo ago
The best design is invisible
- d-lisp 11mo ago
  You can only be blind for things you cannot notice. What you cannot notice is what shapes your "noticement" ability. The best design is the shape of your perception. The best design is already implemented in your reception of reality. The quest for "good design" is a game. On the other hand, your aesthetical culture and the shape of your perception create a system in which elements are more or less "understandable", "readable", "accessible". The game of design does not have stable rules and is inconsistent among world populations. "No design" is impossible, the nature of reality is such that entities are embodied. To be embodied is to be rendered in the game of design. Ideas are not embodied OR their apparent embodiment in the game of design (electrical information ?) does not contain their content for the observer. "No design" is perceptually inintelligible.
  - CGMthrowaway 11mo ago
    Sure, the medium is the message. But if the medium distracts from the message it means they are not aligned well (side note I put your comment into LLM to make sense of what it meant re my comment without mentioning HN, it said "this is a classic Hacker News–style metaphysical sidestep: You made a practical design aphorism, He responded with ontology and epistemology. That usually signals polite disagreement or intellectual one‑upmanship" LOL)
    - Imustaskforhelp 11mo ago
      > (side note I put your comment into LLM to make sense of what it meant re my comment without mentioning HN, it said "this is a classic Hacker News–style metaphysical sidestep: You made a practical design aphorism, He responded with ontology and epistemology. That usually signals polite disagreement or intellectual one‑upmanship" LOL) Woah homie, watch out for the model which is trained on reddit comments dataset to talk about intellectual one-upmanship xD Also another thing but holy shit, LLM's are sycophantic man, it tries uses big words itself to show how the person has intellectual one-upmanship while cozying you up by saying practical design aphorism. Like I agree with both of you guys and there's nuance but I am pretty sure that nobody's tryna sound intellectual hopefully. Sorry for turning this into a rant about LLM's being sycophantic but man I tried today watching big bang and asked it if sheldon and raj were better duo in more common about physics (theorist and astrophysicist) since I was watching a episode where they both have dark matter in common and chatgpt agreed Then I just felt the sycophancy in my heart so I opened up a new thread and I think I used the same prompt and changed it to sheldon and leonard and it ended up saying yes again. The problem felt so annoying to me that I ended up looking at a sycophancy index being frustrated of sorts and wrote a lengthy ddg prompt lol to find this https://www.glazebench.com/ https://www.glazebench.com/ We really don't need more yes man's in our lives and honestly I will take up a less intelligent model than a sycophantic one. So I am curious what your guys opinion are on it too as sometimes I use LLM's as a search engines to familiarize myself with things I don't know and I am lately feeling it will just say yes to anything even silly ideas so I would never know what's the truth matter of the reality ykwim?
reactordev 11mo ago
Welcome to the web. It’s this behavior that has led me to pursue more analog endeavors. I still need it to work but when I’m not working, I’m not online.
nativeit 11mo ago
Gimme 10 minutes, notepad, and 10,000 GIFs, and I'll give you the World [Wide Web] of my youth.
- k12sosse 11mo ago
  I'd show you mine but it's currently.. UNDER CONSTRUCTION
- acomjean 11mo ago
  >10,000 GIFs half of dancing hampsters. De da dee dee doh! [1]https://web.archive.org/web/20000301193204/http://www.hamsterdance.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20000301193204/http://www.hamste... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampster_Dance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampster_Dance I do miss "memepool" and snarky curation from ye olde web days https://web.archive.org/web/20050225005911/http://memepool.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20050225005911/http://memepool.c...
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
snorbleck 11mo ago
unique has gone away. everything must fit into some cookie-cutter pre-formatted mold that everyone has to agree upon OR ELSE!
ChuckMcM 11mo ago
Yup. Pretty much everything seems better when you're being nostalgic. And that is singularly due to the human tendency to forget the bad parts and remember only the good ones (it's a solid self care strategy). I had fond memories of programming my CP/M machine back in the day, built a re-creation and was painfully aware of how limiting a 25 line by 80 character display could be. Nostalgia, remembering the good times, reality some things really sucked too. Then there is the paradox of freedom to deal with, specifically if everyone is free to change anything they like to be the way they like it, other people will hate it and the entire system will be "bad." But for everyone to use the same basic frame work, and the dislike for the lack of freedom will be a common cause that builds community. Back in the early days of the web and SGML, the focus was reversed, which is to say "web" sites would just publish content and the "user" could apply what ever style they liked to get a presentation that worked for them. This infuriated web site authors who had their own idea about how their web site should look and act on your display. You were the consumer and they presented and if you didn't like it go somewhere else. You can still see vestiges of that with things like "use this font to show things" Etc. So yeah, nostalgia is never a good motivation for a manifesto. :-)
- Imustaskforhelp 11mo ago
  Y'know, the thing which you did is probably the best way to make use out of nostalgia. Like of course you had your CP/M machine and it had its restrictions but you are seeing them now with the added information of the current stage There were also things that you liked too and still like and they may be better than somethings in current time So you can then take things that you like and add it to modern or remove previous restrictions by taking access to modern upgrades. > So yeah, nostalgia is never a good motivation for a manifesto. :-) I think the problem's more so spiritual. The social contract is sort of falling off in most countries. So there is a nostalgia for the previous social contracts and the things which were with them like the old internet because to be honest the current monopolistic internet does influence with things like lobbying and chrony capitalism to actively break that social contract via corrupt schemes. People want to do something about it, but speaking as a young guy, we didn't witness the old era so we ourselves are frustrated too but most don't create manifesto's due to it and try to find hobbies or similar things as we try to find the meaning of our life and role in the world But for the people who have witnessed the old internet, they have that nostalgia to end up to and that's partially why they end up creating a manifesto of sorts themselves. The reality of the situation to me feels like things are slipping up in multiple areas and others. Do you really feel that the govt. has best interests for you, the average citizen? Chances are no, So this is probably why liberterian philosophy is really spreading and the idea of freedom itself. Heck I joined linux and the journey behind it all because I played a game and it had root level kernel access and I realized that there really was no way to effectively prove that it wasn't gone (it was chinese company [riot] so I wasn't sure if I wanted it) I ended up looking at linux and then just watched enough videos until I convinced myself to use it one day and just switched. But Most people are really land-locked into the Microsoft ecosystem, even tiny nuances can be enough for some. using Linux was the reason why I switched from trying to go from finance to computer science. I already knew CS but I loved finance too but In the end I ended up picking CS because I felt like there were chances of making real impact myself which were more unique to me than say chartered accountant. So my point is, I am not sure if I would even be here if I had even the slightest of nuances. Heck, I am not even much of a gamer but my first distro was nobara linux which focused on gaming because I was worried about gaming or worried about wine or smth. So I had switched to nobara. Looking now, I say to others oh just use this or that and other things and see it as the most obvious decisions sometimes but by writing this comment, I just wanted to say that change can be scary sometimes. > Then there is the paradox of freedom to deal with, specifically if everyone is free to change anything they like to be the way they like it, other people will hate it and the entire system will be "bad." But for everyone to use the same basic frame work, and the dislike for the lack of freedom will be a common cause that builds community. I would say let the man have his freedom. I would consider having more choices to be less of a burden than few choices in most occasions. Of course one's mind feels that there is a sweet spot but in longevity I feel like its the evolution of ideas and more ideas means more the competition and we will see more innovation as such.
thorum 11mo ago
The real trend is toward personalization on the user’s side of things. Instead of interacting directly with a website, your web-browsing agent will extract the parts of the website you actually care about and present them to you in whatever format, medium and design style you prefer.
- IAmGraydon 11mo ago
  Where is that a trend? It really doesn’t work in most cases because often the information and the design are not separable. One needs the other to convey the intended meaning.
- PunchyHamster 11mo ago
  I miss RSS too
arjie 11mo ago
I think that social networks are not meant to be moderated at scale. We are meant to have what I call 'overlay networks': we occupy the same infrastructure but see content filtered to the style that befits us. Most social networks have the notion of friend symmetry, but I think that read-time filtering needn't be like that. To that end, I made a trivial Chrome extension and an equivalent CRUD backend that just helps me store lists of users I like and dislike. The former are highlighted, and the latter are simply removed from comments. As an example, the user I'm responding to is someone whose comments I like so I have had them in my highlight list for two months now and not regretted it https://overmod.org/lists/view?pk=ELpqNsanTYP9_wZXNjdF-FcEOcuu7jjeW9tgQyhCmss https://overmod.org/lists/view?pk=ELpqNsanTYP9_wZXNjdF-FcEOc... My personal tool is particularly idiosyncratic but I think information sieving is particularly important these days, so I recommend everyone build something like this for themselves. One thing I've found it particularly helpful with is the usual outrage bait. But I also killfile users who I think particularly misunderstand the comments they respond to, and I also killfile users who express what I think are low-information views.
- esseph 11mo ago
  Beware of trapping yourself in a manufactured social bubble of emotional comfortable
  - arjie 11mo ago
    If it happens it happens. I can only hope that the result is boredom rather than increased engagement.
    - rapidfl 11mo ago
      that's an interesting point. A echo chamber could lead to fatigue and boredom. Reels is able to keep me engaged because it is able to surface similar content I would like but from different users. And they have such a breadth of producers these days. The X home feed algo is not so good apart from it being text only, even for infotainment content. YT shorts also does not work as good as the Insta algo
  - 11mo ago
PunchyHamster 11mo ago
Unique is not a quality hard to achieve And they are complaining precisely because it has pompous title. If it was "badly designed but personal website" there would be much less of that
- jaapz 11mo ago
  It's just a fun title, don't read so much into it
pavlus 11mo ago
I've read your comment before visiting the site, and it got me wondering -- how bad can it be? Can it be worse than those acid green on red sites of the 90s-00s? Imagine my surprise, when I opened the site and it looked and felt just like a museum or art exhibit. This was the literal feeling I had -- being at an art gallery, but online. I guess, these comments tell more about the commenters, than TFA. We should remind ourselves to be more critical to the content we consume, regardless where it comes from.
- ch4s3 11mo ago
  Yeah, its a really beautiful site.
- 100721 11mo ago
  I think it'd be good to keep in mind that Hacker News is mostly populated by a demographic commonly referred to as "Tech Bros" who, for the most part, are here as part of their journey in creating profitable businesses.
  - LoganDark 11mo ago
    Is that the definition of tech bros? I thought tech bros were people who shilled cryptocurrencies, NFTs and other grifts.
    - Uehreka 11mo ago
      The definition of “Tech bros” is “tech people you don’t like”. There’s no agreed upon definition (just like how people disagree about what is/isn’t a “grift”) because it’s not meant to be descriptive, it’s a rhetorical device.
      - Nevermark 11mo ago
        Saying we don't like someone because we deem them to be a tech bro, is indeed a circular argument. But saying we don't like someone that calls themself a tech bro? Well they had it coming.
Kholin 11mo ago
Actually they could turn on reader view mode if they use Firefox, because this is website, all content present as the W3C standards, users could read the content as any form as they like.
raincole 11mo ago
If you name your site "A website to destroy all websites" you're basically inviting people to judge it with extremely critical standard.
- kawfey 11mo ago
  My blogpost titled “Millennials are killing ham radio” has received the most hits out of all of my other posts. It got me an interview with IEEE Spectrum and basically cemented my name as a ham radio influencer. Amateur radio is a remarkably niche hobby so that kind of attention is rare, but it took ragebait to do it. A title like “The Next Generation of Ham Radio” would have flopped. I know this because that’s what I titled it first, and after 40 views in 2 months I slightly rewrote it and reposted it under the new title and within a day it appeared on just about every ham radio forum, facebook group, numerous email reflectors, and so on.
  - youoy 11mo ago
    I finished reading this comment wondering what should I take away from it. Is it better to include alarming titles and be read? Or the other way around? Or what would be the sweet middle point?
    - ludicrousdispla 11mo ago
      I'm really curious how a blogpost titled “Millennials are killing ham sandwiches” would fare, in comparison.
      - ghssds 11mo ago
        Don't get me started on how delicious Subway was 30 years ago compared to the pale version we have now.
- Nevermark 11mo ago
  These are people who don't understand whimsy or other forms of contrast enhancing rhetoric. Designed to make reading interesting, points extra clear, etc. Not designed to fool anyone into some random extremist view. It may be that people who don't pick up on subtext humor, post more than average.
venturecruelty 11mo ago
I don't know when this retcon happened, but this was never actually a site for hackers. People here complain because they like the modern web, because it pays their salaries. They get fabulously rich because of the steady enshittification of the web.
alex1138 11mo ago
I can't take HN seriously, I just can't. It's where I get a lot of information but the naval gazing is endemic here. It's a certain type of culture, mixed in with the genuinely good posts and people who work in the industry
vulk 11mo ago
I think you are stepping in the same trap as the author. In search of uniqueness you end up doing the same thing over and over. The author starts with "we’re doom-scrolling brain-rot on the attention-farm, we’re getting slop from the feed." and continue with a web page that dooms scrolls emphasizing on big titles with pictures out of context, hard to read layout etc. There is a lot of valid criticism in the comments. Of course uniqueness and beauty is probably subjective thing but I think about this often about the web. For example if you spend some time in websites like awwwards, dribbble, framer gallery you are going to end up with same design over and over. I am not sure when exactly but probably in the early 00's graphic prints started to get into web, and sure it does seems cool, and different but I don't think the web should be a graphic print. I am really struggling to find unique web pages, websites these days they are all the same, and in search of their "uniqueness" they often fail big with the user experience. One website that is unique in my opinion very well taught is - https://usgraphics.com/ https://usgraphics.com/ everything about it makes sense, the pages, the labels, colours, buttons at every step on the website you know why are you there you know purpose of everything it is hard to get lost, and not understand the purpose of the page. It looks very simple but the design is sophisticated.
defanor 11mo ago
I thought the point is to pass along the message, though the one that is brought up quite regularly: sharing the joy of making websites, and such making as a way for anyone to contribute a little to the overall construction/improvement of the Web. Besides, it does seem to work without JS, though the layout is quite broken: header texts overflow (whatever is the window width), the text column is 45 characters wide instead of occupying the window width, all of which demonstrates the possible downsides of such diverse websites. That is not to say that they outweigh the benefits, but such downsides are not necessary to include, either.
ludicrousdispla 11mo ago
I feel they have made stylistic choices that detract from the intent of their writing.
andai 11mo ago
I thought HN's ideal website was a text file? It's beautiful to be sure, I wanted to actually read what the author had to say, and stuff kept flying around my screen, so I did not get far. Maybe if I printed it out... Edit: Half joking with the printing (although I do find it much easier to read printed materials), but it definitely seems to me it that the author was trying to make a magazine and not a website. (A magazine where everything moves while you're trying to look at it!)
Cactus_HN 11mo ago
All the criticism and thoughts regarding both the topic and website are nothing more than personal perspectives.
almosthere 11mo ago
The funny thing about comments about that - the browser is the most HACKED thing. If you were to compare a web page using HTML/JS/etc... to any app from the 80s/90s/00s/etc... it is light years beyond those technologies. So for people that complain about JS/font sizes/etc.. why haven't you all migrated to some form of browser that works for you, or plugin combination that makes things work for you - so you can just STOP. We have all the COOKIE ACCEPT/OPTIONS MADNESS because of people like you. I mean for f-sake we even have agentic tools that can summarize the thing for you so you don't even have to visit it.
EasyMark 11mo ago
Yeah, not everyone wants to just write .md files and push to github webpage :) . I know that's what I personally like doing, but others have a more artistic flair and I try to just let things "be" the way they are. I think the message of the webpage was sincere and that's good enough for me.
crusty 11mo ago
Just saying... you actually don't need JavaScript. I run NoScript, and unlike a lot of sites my HN client opens in-app without the ability to interact with the extension, I could read the site just fine. The only thing 'missing' were the fade-ins, which I found after your comment tempted me to open the site in the full browser and allow scripts from the site I want actually missing. Lovely design, just slightly lovelier without the js.

lazzlazzlazz 11mo ago

[flagged]

onion2k 11mo ago
Hacker News, probably noticeably since 2016 or so, has been a negative, curmudgeonly place. No it hasn't.
- tux3 11mo ago
  >No it hasn't. I'm sorry, is it a 5 minute argument, or the full half-hour?
Y_Y 11mo ago
Is it "negative" to identify shitty things as being shitty? I wouldn't necessarily blame the commenters for that.
- krapp 11mo ago
  Constantly? As if it were a psychological compulsion? So often that dang had to make a guideline about it, which no one even attempts to follow? Two actually - the guideline against being "curmudgeonly" is separate from the guideline against going on a tilt because you get triggered by any website that doesn't look and act as much like plaintext as possible. And yet if someone so much as cracks a joke they get rapped across the knuckles and lectured about a rule that doesn't actually exist (no humor allowed)? Yes, that's negative. That's a culture of performative misanthropy.
  - gmd63 11mo ago
    You've convinced me, I'm going to stop complaining about corporate slop and the connection between big tech / VCs and the awful political situation in the most advanced country in the world. I will try to glaze Liquid Glass from here on out, say some nice things about the richest man on earth who kept quiet about the fact that he pays people to grind video games for him, and make sure to give David Sacks and Jason Calacanis the benefit of the doubt next time they are whining like babies online for a Silicon Valley Bank bailout. I think the OP website is pretty cool by the way.
    - rightbyte 11mo ago
      > he pays people to grind video games for him The POE shilling might be what pisses me most off about him.
      - rescripting 11mo ago
        I know you’re being glib, but for me it’s probably working to shutter USAID at lightning speed leading to tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths. Though he also sucks at video games.
        rightbyte 10mo ago
        Yeah well of course there are actual bad things that weight heavier on the scale. But the good thing about this is that it is so lame.
    - krapp 11mo ago
      The compulsion to interpret people's comments in bad faith then retort with condescending snark is a problem too. But hey, at least it isn't memes, right?
      - gmd63 11mo ago
        I don't think I misinterpreted the condescension you dished out by blanket labeling a trend of mostly valid critique as psychological compulsion and performative misanthropy.
- jimbokun 11mo ago
  It's useless without describing concrete, practical solutions to those problems. What do the voters want? Zero taxes, no crime, world peace and infinite benefits. It's easy to identify things as shitty because the above doesn't describe the world yet and thus it's a banal observation. Implementing real, practical improvements is really hard and requires much more thought and consideration and introduces the possibility of failure. Which is why that part isn't discussed as much.
  - shimman 11mo ago
    Why don't people that perpetuate the current system defend its existence? Why is the onus on us to develop a new realm of government when the current system never had to do this? Your comment is "but you live in society too!" Society acknowledging the shitty things is the first action in rectifying them.
    - AnimalMuppet 11mo ago
      God did not create the current system of government on the seventh day of creation. The current system had to defend its existence (or rather, creation) at the time of its origin. The thing about criticism is, we're a long way from "the worst possible outcome". That is, there is a lot that the current system gets right. That's why the burden of proof gets put on the one proposing changes. The wrong change could make things worse rather than better, and we really don't want that. So it's not enough to note that society is broken in some ways. Yes, it is. Yes, we notice too. Now, what are you proposing? Let's take a hard look at your concrete proposal, and see whether it's an improvement or not. Oh, you don't have one? Yes, it's still valid to point out that there are problems. It's valid to demand that we not become complacent with the current problems. That's not wrong.
      - shimman 11mo ago
        No, neoliberalism is only 50ish years old and all it did was usher in nascent fascism and income inequality.
OGEnthusiast 11mo ago
That's true of the US population in general too. Their quality of life has been decreasing due to accelerated globalization (sans the top ~10% of asset holders).
tkiolp4 11mo ago
HN is so depressing, but at the same time so Im addicted to it. It’s like tiktok but for people who enjoy plain text and hacking related stuff. When I first visited HN more than 10 years ago (without account) like, 90% of the content was exciting and you got to learn something. Nowadays it’s about 40-50%, and the rest is crap (including comments). I have been trying to leave HN, let’s see if I can do it in 2026.
- zenlot 11mo ago
  Whereabout you plan to move?
- LPisGood 11mo ago
  Haven’t people been saying that since the late 2000’s?
  - steveklabnik 11mo ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills. The actual quote has links, the first of which is to a comment from 2009.
    - dingnuts 11mo ago
      particularly ironic comment from an HN/lobsters celebrity account lol this website isn't turning into Reddit, this website has been a pretentious orange subreddit for well over a decade if not right from the get go and a link to this site's Reddiquette page (just as ignored as on any subreddit!) is evidence TO that effect, and not against it! the fact that the link petuously denies reality notwithstanding!
      - steveklabnik 11mo ago
        I mean, I'm not saying I think it's some sort of bastion of intellectual superiority, just that "have people been saying this place has been going downhill for a long time" is true.
FergusArgyll 11mo ago
Once you understand this, you realize maybe it's not that something is wrong with LLMs, crypto, Google, Apple, Windows, Amazon, the US, Rust, not-rust, JavaScript, Israel, copyright & VCs. It's just a negative place.
fouc 11mo ago
I disagree it's "toward the left" but I would also disagree if you said "toward the right". By that I mean I've observed BOTH extremes happening.
- jimbokun 11mo ago
  We've seen the same kinds of discourse arrive here as is common on other social media sites, where too much political discourse is just signaling what tribe you belong to and vilifying anyone outside it.
lisbbb 11mo ago
[flagged]
- Imustaskforhelp 11mo ago
  I am not sure, I would say I just joined hackernews for a year so I don't know the whole situation. but the way I see it, If I assume you are correct, hackernews is in a bit of rough spot because there was this one comment which did some analysis and it feels like hackernews is definitely saturating a bit/(peaked?) From my personal experience, I feel like we all just use reddit (as the article says) and so we just deal with the annoyances with it and not look for anything else. Or perhaps we join some discord communities. If people who are within Hackernews are resonating this statement, its in a tough spot because people say such things. Perhaps, its that Hackernews grew too big for some people and its too small for others. Perhaps one side's currently on reddit not even knowing about it and the other's complaining it on hackernews And perhaps there's also a middle sweet spot where people aren't complaining but nobody hears them either because they got nothing to complain. But from the outside what people see are other people complaining about hackernews on hackernews. Same goes for redditors too I guess. I checked your comment and it says 5 months, I had been assuming you were here for years from the tone but perhaps I was wrong. I don't know but to me hackernews felt like an information arbitrage of sorts which had these tid-bits of info which made me feel better if I ever were to do somethings like this or gave me confidence in myself in finding the right tool for the right job If you are tired of hackernews, I would suggest you to open up a fediverse lemmy instance about anything related to hackernews because of the masses perhaps, then you would have less people but more signal since clearly someone would be interested if you create a lemmy instance about similar topics to hackernews but the problem then becomes is if that thing stays idle. I see your concerns but do you have any suggestions, I see dang and others around here, I am sure if they could do something about it, they probably would?
evantbyrne 11mo ago
> Hacker News, probably noticeably since 2016 or so, has been a negative, curmudgeonly place. It has become political (toward the left), sclerotic, and bitterly nostalgic. It's bad and no longer represents the future. I notice it every time I visit. It's sad. An easy way to help with the negativity is to stop leaving bait comments
- bbor 11mo ago
  Reminds me of on interaction a few months ago where I mentioned the left-right spectrum in passing and someone accused me of making HN a worse place, only to call me a "snowflake" in their very next response! As usual, "things shouldn't be so political" is often uttered from a highly-political sense of discomfort. The quintessential example for me was its usage in US anti-desegregation rhetoric in the 1960s, alongside its resurgence in the anti-DEI movement today -- demanding that no one discuss our shared institutions is too often an endorsement of them, rather than an honest effort to focus on something else. "toward the left" aside, it's always a little frustrating to read the ubiquitous "this place sucks" comments on here and Reddit. I have tons of problems with HN--both petty (markdown when??) and fundamental (SV/PE has metastasized in a discomforting way...)--but I'm still here because I love it, and think it's one of the best communities the internet has to offer. Specific critiques of specific people or ideas are always welcome, but comments like "everyone here is curmudgeonly" just makes me wonder why they bother to log on in the first place...
  - jimbokun 11mo ago
    [flagged]
    - 100721 11mo ago
      Genuinely curious: would you mind please explaining to me how your contributions are more productive than the person you are responding to (read: attacking)? It reads like you are upset at the poster using "DEI" and projecting your own behaviors onto them ("tedious and unproductive political discourse", "immune from critique or any burden of evidence").
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
Hammershaft 11mo ago
The bitter politics can also be right wing and you can spot it when migration topics pop up. What distinguishes so much of the right wing and left wing politics is that so much of it is angry and zero sum. I've also been looking for greener pastures. Lobsters has better technical signal/noise but is much more bitter, zero sum, and political.
wsatb 11mo ago
> It has become political (toward the left) I don’t feel this way at all. Maybe it’s one of the only places you’re actually consuming mixed opinions.
- yunnpp 11mo ago
  I will even go as far as stating that it is one of the only few places left on the Internet where you can see differing opinions interleave in a not-completely destructive manner. Really no idea what OP is talking about because it has not been at all my experience.
madeofpalk 11mo ago
I promise you Hacker News was exactly like this back in 2011. > It has become political (toward the left) I wonder what you're talking about - your definition of 'political' or 'left'. Tech and politics are so deeply intrenched. More than just "is DEI evil and there's no such thing as algorithmic bias". Should Apple be restricted from collecting its Apple Tax and locking down its devices?? Should the EU be able to regulate American companies? Should governments demand encryption back doors in devices? Should Australia ban teens from social network? Should there be a Right to Repair for our devices? Honestly one of my biggest gripes with HN is that it does seem to be a place where pretty regressive social viewpoints seem to flourish.
- ryandrake 11mo ago
  It would be informative if, when someone complains that XYZ is "to the left" they define exactly what they mean. Is the person they are complaining about really advocating for the proletariat to seize the means of production?
  - cauefcr 11mo ago
    Most times i read political things on HN it looks like visiting a comment straight from ayn rand's delusions, but that's to be expected of the country with two right wing parties pretending to compete.
  - Uehreka 11mo ago
    It is not in the interest of “people who complain about things being too far left” to get specific. To do so can only increase the number of people who realize they disagree with them. The vagueness is purposeful.
skeeter2020 11mo ago
comment from account created ~4 years before the supposed noticeable decline: Here's a content-free opinion post designed to trigger more of the negative comments I really hate, but I'll keep coming back.
ErroneousBosh 11mo ago
> It has become political (toward the left) Clever people tend to be on the political left. Computery people tend to be on the left because they have a higher level of literacy. That's also why there are no particularly successful right-wing comedians.
D-Coder 11mo ago
You should definitely demand your money back.
venturecruelty 11mo ago
Lmao sure. Every comment I make about unions gets downvoted, and every comment about "maybe it's okay to destroy the planet for one more solid quarter" shoots into the stratosphere. More projection here than a drive-in movie theatre... This website sucks, but not because of any (incorrectly) perceived leftwing bias.
scrollop 11mo ago
There's a social media platform that seems right up your alley. It's something to do with "Truth"...

nine_k 11mo ago

The site indeed is trying to be an artistic treatise, as opposed to being a clear, easy-to-read manifesto. It touches many themes I have read about many times, so I skimmed most of the content. It came to the expected indie-web conclusions and recommendations. Indie Web, while nice and fascinating, lacks the large audience. You write things down, and nobody cares. Well, maybe a few friends who keep an eye, and a hiring manager when your candidacy is considered for another job. Some people are fine with that, and just enjoy the process of producing content, and seeing it published. They are a minority. Most people come to consume more than to produce, and to get quick feedback. The most efficient way for an indie website to gain an audience is to be briefly featured on one of these bad, terrifying behemoths of the current Web, like Reddit, or Xitter, or, well, HN. A few dozen people will bookmark it, or subscribe to the RSS feed. Sites that are true works of art and craft, like https://ciechanow.ski/ https://ciechanow.ski/, will get remembered more widely, but true works of art are rare. It is, definitely, very possible to build a rhizome of small indie sites, along the lines of Web 1.0. But they would also benefit from a thoughtful symbiosis with the "big bad" giants of the modern Web.

nativeit 11mo ago
> Sites that are true works of art and craft, like https://ciechanow.ski/ https://ciechanow.ski/, will get remembered more widely, but true works of art are rare. This is a really nifty website.
- nine_k 11mo ago
  I'd say that "nifty" is an understatement; "a masterpiece" would be more proper.
trekz 11mo ago
[dead]
ceroxylon 11mo ago
> The most efficient way for an indie website to gain an audience is to be briefly featured on one of these bad, terrifying behemoths of the current Web This is what the article / indieweb mean with POSSE https://indieweb.org/POSSE https://indieweb.org/POSSE

CGMthrowaway 11mo ago

The best design is invisible

d-lisp 11mo ago
You can only be blind for things you cannot notice. What you cannot notice is what shapes your "noticement" ability. The best design is the shape of your perception. The best design is already implemented in your reception of reality. The quest for "good design" is a game. On the other hand, your aesthetical culture and the shape of your perception create a system in which elements are more or less "understandable", "readable", "accessible". The game of design does not have stable rules and is inconsistent among world populations. "No design" is impossible, the nature of reality is such that entities are embodied. To be embodied is to be rendered in the game of design. Ideas are not embodied OR their apparent embodiment in the game of design (electrical information ?) does not contain their content for the observer. "No design" is perceptually inintelligible.
- CGMthrowaway 11mo ago
  Sure, the medium is the message. But if the medium distracts from the message it means they are not aligned well (side note I put your comment into LLM to make sense of what it meant re my comment without mentioning HN, it said "this is a classic Hacker News–style metaphysical sidestep: You made a practical design aphorism, He responded with ontology and epistemology. That usually signals polite disagreement or intellectual one‑upmanship" LOL)
  - Imustaskforhelp 11mo ago
    > (side note I put your comment into LLM to make sense of what it meant re my comment without mentioning HN, it said "this is a classic Hacker News–style metaphysical sidestep: You made a practical design aphorism, He responded with ontology and epistemology. That usually signals polite disagreement or intellectual one‑upmanship" LOL) Woah homie, watch out for the model which is trained on reddit comments dataset to talk about intellectual one-upmanship xD Also another thing but holy shit, LLM's are sycophantic man, it tries uses big words itself to show how the person has intellectual one-upmanship while cozying you up by saying practical design aphorism. Like I agree with both of you guys and there's nuance but I am pretty sure that nobody's tryna sound intellectual hopefully. Sorry for turning this into a rant about LLM's being sycophantic but man I tried today watching big bang and asked it if sheldon and raj were better duo in more common about physics (theorist and astrophysicist) since I was watching a episode where they both have dark matter in common and chatgpt agreed Then I just felt the sycophancy in my heart so I opened up a new thread and I think I used the same prompt and changed it to sheldon and leonard and it ended up saying yes again. The problem felt so annoying to me that I ended up looking at a sycophancy index being frustrated of sorts and wrote a lengthy ddg prompt lol to find this https://www.glazebench.com/ https://www.glazebench.com/ We really don't need more yes man's in our lives and honestly I will take up a less intelligent model than a sycophantic one. So I am curious what your guys opinion are on it too as sometimes I use LLM's as a search engines to familiarize myself with things I don't know and I am lately feeling it will just say yes to anything even silly ideas so I would never know what's the truth matter of the reality ykwim?

reactordev 11mo ago

Welcome to the web. It’s this behavior that has led me to pursue more analog endeavors. I still need it to work but when I’m not working, I’m not online.

nativeit 11mo ago

Gimme 10 minutes, notepad, and 10,000 GIFs, and I'll give you the World [Wide Web] of my youth.

k12sosse 11mo ago
I'd show you mine but it's currently.. UNDER CONSTRUCTION
acomjean 11mo ago
>10,000 GIFs half of dancing hampsters. De da dee dee doh! [1]https://web.archive.org/web/20000301193204/http://www.hamsterdance.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20000301193204/http://www.hamste... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampster_Dance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampster_Dance I do miss "memepool" and snarky curation from ye olde web days https://web.archive.org/web/20050225005911/http://memepool.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20050225005911/http://memepool.c...

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

snorbleck 11mo ago

unique has gone away. everything must fit into some cookie-cutter pre-formatted mold that everyone has to agree upon OR ELSE!

ChuckMcM 11mo ago

Yup. Pretty much everything seems better when you're being nostalgic. And that is singularly due to the human tendency to forget the bad parts and remember only the good ones (it's a solid self care strategy). I had fond memories of programming my CP/M machine back in the day, built a re-creation and was painfully aware of how limiting a 25 line by 80 character display could be. Nostalgia, remembering the good times, reality some things really sucked too. Then there is the paradox of freedom to deal with, specifically if everyone is free to change anything they like to be the way they like it, other people will hate it and the entire system will be "bad." But for everyone to use the same basic frame work, and the dislike for the lack of freedom will be a common cause that builds community. Back in the early days of the web and SGML, the focus was reversed, which is to say "web" sites would just publish content and the "user" could apply what ever style they liked to get a presentation that worked for them. This infuriated web site authors who had their own idea about how their web site should look and act on your display. You were the consumer and they presented and if you didn't like it go somewhere else. You can still see vestiges of that with things like "use this font to show things" Etc. So yeah, nostalgia is never a good motivation for a manifesto. :-)

Imustaskforhelp 11mo ago
Y'know, the thing which you did is probably the best way to make use out of nostalgia. Like of course you had your CP/M machine and it had its restrictions but you are seeing them now with the added information of the current stage There were also things that you liked too and still like and they may be better than somethings in current time So you can then take things that you like and add it to modern or remove previous restrictions by taking access to modern upgrades. > So yeah, nostalgia is never a good motivation for a manifesto. :-) I think the problem's more so spiritual. The social contract is sort of falling off in most countries. So there is a nostalgia for the previous social contracts and the things which were with them like the old internet because to be honest the current monopolistic internet does influence with things like lobbying and chrony capitalism to actively break that social contract via corrupt schemes. People want to do something about it, but speaking as a young guy, we didn't witness the old era so we ourselves are frustrated too but most don't create manifesto's due to it and try to find hobbies or similar things as we try to find the meaning of our life and role in the world But for the people who have witnessed the old internet, they have that nostalgia to end up to and that's partially why they end up creating a manifesto of sorts themselves. The reality of the situation to me feels like things are slipping up in multiple areas and others. Do you really feel that the govt. has best interests for you, the average citizen? Chances are no, So this is probably why liberterian philosophy is really spreading and the idea of freedom itself. Heck I joined linux and the journey behind it all because I played a game and it had root level kernel access and I realized that there really was no way to effectively prove that it wasn't gone (it was chinese company [riot] so I wasn't sure if I wanted it) I ended up looking at linux and then just watched enough videos until I convinced myself to use it one day and just switched. But Most people are really land-locked into the Microsoft ecosystem, even tiny nuances can be enough for some. using Linux was the reason why I switched from trying to go from finance to computer science. I already knew CS but I loved finance too but In the end I ended up picking CS because I felt like there were chances of making real impact myself which were more unique to me than say chartered accountant. So my point is, I am not sure if I would even be here if I had even the slightest of nuances. Heck, I am not even much of a gamer but my first distro was nobara linux which focused on gaming because I was worried about gaming or worried about wine or smth. So I had switched to nobara. Looking now, I say to others oh just use this or that and other things and see it as the most obvious decisions sometimes but by writing this comment, I just wanted to say that change can be scary sometimes. > Then there is the paradox of freedom to deal with, specifically if everyone is free to change anything they like to be the way they like it, other people will hate it and the entire system will be "bad." But for everyone to use the same basic frame work, and the dislike for the lack of freedom will be a common cause that builds community. I would say let the man have his freedom. I would consider having more choices to be less of a burden than few choices in most occasions. Of course one's mind feels that there is a sweet spot but in longevity I feel like its the evolution of ideas and more ideas means more the competition and we will see more innovation as such.

thorum 11mo ago

The real trend is toward personalization on the user’s side of things. Instead of interacting directly with a website, your web-browsing agent will extract the parts of the website you actually care about and present them to you in whatever format, medium and design style you prefer.

IAmGraydon 11mo ago
Where is that a trend? It really doesn’t work in most cases because often the information and the design are not separable. One needs the other to convey the intended meaning.
PunchyHamster 11mo ago
I miss RSS too

arjie 11mo ago

I think that social networks are not meant to be moderated at scale. We are meant to have what I call 'overlay networks': we occupy the same infrastructure but see content filtered to the style that befits us. Most social networks have the notion of friend symmetry, but I think that read-time filtering needn't be like that. To that end, I made a trivial Chrome extension and an equivalent CRUD backend that just helps me store lists of users I like and dislike. The former are highlighted, and the latter are simply removed from comments. As an example, the user I'm responding to is someone whose comments I like so I have had them in my highlight list for two months now and not regretted it https://overmod.org/lists/view?pk=ELpqNsanTYP9_wZXNjdF-FcEOcuu7jjeW9tgQyhCmss https://overmod.org/lists/view?pk=ELpqNsanTYP9_wZXNjdF-FcEOc... My personal tool is particularly idiosyncratic but I think information sieving is particularly important these days, so I recommend everyone build something like this for themselves. One thing I've found it particularly helpful with is the usual outrage bait. But I also killfile users who I think particularly misunderstand the comments they respond to, and I also killfile users who express what I think are low-information views.

esseph 11mo ago
Beware of trapping yourself in a manufactured social bubble of emotional comfortable
- arjie 11mo ago
  If it happens it happens. I can only hope that the result is boredom rather than increased engagement.
  - rapidfl 11mo ago
    that's an interesting point. A echo chamber could lead to fatigue and boredom. Reels is able to keep me engaged because it is able to surface similar content I would like but from different users. And they have such a breadth of producers these days. The X home feed algo is not so good apart from it being text only, even for infotainment content. YT shorts also does not work as good as the Insta algo
- 11mo ago

PunchyHamster 11mo ago

Unique is not a quality hard to achieve And they are complaining precisely because it has pompous title. If it was "badly designed but personal website" there would be much less of that

jaapz 11mo ago
It's just a fun title, don't read so much into it

pavlus 11mo ago

I've read your comment before visiting the site, and it got me wondering -- how bad can it be? Can it be worse than those acid green on red sites of the 90s-00s? Imagine my surprise, when I opened the site and it looked and felt just like a museum or art exhibit. This was the literal feeling I had -- being at an art gallery, but online. I guess, these comments tell more about the commenters, than TFA. We should remind ourselves to be more critical to the content we consume, regardless where it comes from.

ch4s3 11mo ago
Yeah, its a really beautiful site.
100721 11mo ago
I think it'd be good to keep in mind that Hacker News is mostly populated by a demographic commonly referred to as "Tech Bros" who, for the most part, are here as part of their journey in creating profitable businesses.
- LoganDark 11mo ago
  Is that the definition of tech bros? I thought tech bros were people who shilled cryptocurrencies, NFTs and other grifts.
  - Uehreka 11mo ago
    The definition of “Tech bros” is “tech people you don’t like”. There’s no agreed upon definition (just like how people disagree about what is/isn’t a “grift”) because it’s not meant to be descriptive, it’s a rhetorical device.
    - Nevermark 11mo ago
      Saying we don't like someone because we deem them to be a tech bro, is indeed a circular argument. But saying we don't like someone that calls themself a tech bro? Well they had it coming.

Kholin 11mo ago

Actually they could turn on reader view mode if they use Firefox, because this is website, all content present as the W3C standards, users could read the content as any form as they like.

raincole 11mo ago

If you name your site "A website to destroy all websites" you're basically inviting people to judge it with extremely critical standard.

kawfey 11mo ago
My blogpost titled “Millennials are killing ham radio” has received the most hits out of all of my other posts. It got me an interview with IEEE Spectrum and basically cemented my name as a ham radio influencer. Amateur radio is a remarkably niche hobby so that kind of attention is rare, but it took ragebait to do it. A title like “The Next Generation of Ham Radio” would have flopped. I know this because that’s what I titled it first, and after 40 views in 2 months I slightly rewrote it and reposted it under the new title and within a day it appeared on just about every ham radio forum, facebook group, numerous email reflectors, and so on.
- youoy 11mo ago
  I finished reading this comment wondering what should I take away from it. Is it better to include alarming titles and be read? Or the other way around? Or what would be the sweet middle point?
  - ludicrousdispla 11mo ago
    I'm really curious how a blogpost titled “Millennials are killing ham sandwiches” would fare, in comparison.
    - ghssds 11mo ago
      Don't get me started on how delicious Subway was 30 years ago compared to the pale version we have now.
Nevermark 11mo ago
These are people who don't understand whimsy or other forms of contrast enhancing rhetoric. Designed to make reading interesting, points extra clear, etc. Not designed to fool anyone into some random extremist view. It may be that people who don't pick up on subtext humor, post more than average.

venturecruelty 11mo ago

I don't know when this retcon happened, but this was never actually a site for hackers. People here complain because they like the modern web, because it pays their salaries. They get fabulously rich because of the steady enshittification of the web.

alex1138 11mo ago

I can't take HN seriously, I just can't. It's where I get a lot of information but the naval gazing is endemic here. It's a certain type of culture, mixed in with the genuinely good posts and people who work in the industry

vulk 11mo ago

I think you are stepping in the same trap as the author. In search of uniqueness you end up doing the same thing over and over. The author starts with "we’re doom-scrolling brain-rot on the attention-farm, we’re getting slop from the feed." and continue with a web page that dooms scrolls emphasizing on big titles with pictures out of context, hard to read layout etc. There is a lot of valid criticism in the comments. Of course uniqueness and beauty is probably subjective thing but I think about this often about the web. For example if you spend some time in websites like awwwards, dribbble, framer gallery you are going to end up with same design over and over. I am not sure when exactly but probably in the early 00's graphic prints started to get into web, and sure it does seems cool, and different but I don't think the web should be a graphic print. I am really struggling to find unique web pages, websites these days they are all the same, and in search of their "uniqueness" they often fail big with the user experience. One website that is unique in my opinion very well taught is - https://usgraphics.com/ https://usgraphics.com/ everything about it makes sense, the pages, the labels, colours, buttons at every step on the website you know why are you there you know purpose of everything it is hard to get lost, and not understand the purpose of the page. It looks very simple but the design is sophisticated.

defanor 11mo ago

I thought the point is to pass along the message, though the one that is brought up quite regularly: sharing the joy of making websites, and such making as a way for anyone to contribute a little to the overall construction/improvement of the Web. Besides, it does seem to work without JS, though the layout is quite broken: header texts overflow (whatever is the window width), the text column is 45 characters wide instead of occupying the window width, all of which demonstrates the possible downsides of such diverse websites. That is not to say that they outweigh the benefits, but such downsides are not necessary to include, either.

ludicrousdispla 11mo ago

I feel they have made stylistic choices that detract from the intent of their writing.

andai 11mo ago

I thought HN's ideal website was a text file? It's beautiful to be sure, I wanted to actually read what the author had to say, and stuff kept flying around my screen, so I did not get far. Maybe if I printed it out... Edit: Half joking with the printing (although I do find it much easier to read printed materials), but it definitely seems to me it that the author was trying to make a magazine and not a website. (A magazine where everything moves while you're trying to look at it!)

Cactus_HN 11mo ago

All the criticism and thoughts regarding both the topic and website are nothing more than personal perspectives.

almosthere 11mo ago

The funny thing about comments about that - the browser is the most HACKED thing. If you were to compare a web page using HTML/JS/etc... to any app from the 80s/90s/00s/etc... it is light years beyond those technologies. So for people that complain about JS/font sizes/etc.. why haven't you all migrated to some form of browser that works for you, or plugin combination that makes things work for you - so you can just STOP. We have all the COOKIE ACCEPT/OPTIONS MADNESS because of people like you. I mean for f-sake we even have agentic tools that can summarize the thing for you so you don't even have to visit it.

EasyMark 11mo ago

Yeah, not everyone wants to just write .md files and push to github webpage :) . I know that's what I personally like doing, but others have a more artistic flair and I try to just let things "be" the way they are. I think the message of the webpage was sincere and that's good enough for me.

crusty 11mo ago

Just saying... you actually don't need JavaScript. I run NoScript, and unlike a lot of sites my HN client opens in-app without the ability to interact with the extension, I could read the site just fine. The only thing 'missing' were the fade-ins, which I found after your comment tempted me to open the site in the full browser and allow scripts from the site I want actually missing. Lovely design, just slightly lovelier without the js.