4 ms·

I am 100% behind this. I've been browsing hackernews since I started in tech, it is the only forum i regularly browse, and partake in. Simply because the qualit

by kjuulh 7mo ago

I am 100% behind this. I've been browsing hackernews since I started in tech, it is the only forum i regularly browse, and partake in. Simply because the quality of submissions and conversations are so high. There has been more AI related articles this part year, and it only seems ramping. I personally haven't found the AI part of the comments as big of a deal but dang and tom might be doing more than I realize on that front. Though I do wish we'd see less AI related posts on the front page, they simply aren't sparking curiosity, it is the same wrapped in a different format, a different person commenting on our struggles and wins with AI, the 10th software "rewritten" by an AI. At this point there nearly should be a "tax" on category, as of this moment I count 8-10 related posts on the front page related to AI / LLMs. It is a hot field, but I come to hackernews, to partake in discussions about things that are interesting, and many of those just doesn't cut it, in my opinion.

iso-logi 7mo ago
I personally joined HN because of various AI discussions. Comparatively, other sites such as Reddit, Twitter and YouTube just shill content, applications or products. A ton of the posts on Reddit are just AI written ffmpeg wrappers which no one should care about but apparently people do...
- verdverm 7mo ago
  Upvoting rings on Reddit are likely not policed like they are here. That is to say, I wouldn't assume there is real interest based on Reddit points.
dang 7mo ago
The dynamics of content production are shifting hard right now. Things that used to signal something interesting are being generated in minutes with little thought. It's getting democratized, but also commoditized. It's too soon to know how this is going to shake out, so we should resist the temptation to impose rules prematurely. And we should especially not do so out of resistance to change (when has that ever worked out?) But we'll do what we need to do to keep our heads above water. Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/showlim https://news.ycombinator.com/showlim. I figure pragmatics are fine as long one keeps adjusting.
- lelanthran 7mo ago
  > The dynamics of content production are shifting hard right now. Things that used to signal something interesting are being generated in minutes with little thought. It's getting democratized, but also commoditized. That's true, but it also means that Show HN has less value than it used to: the SNR is falling off a cliff :-( I planned to post a Show HN for a new product I want to launch (all human written by myself, with only the GEO docs vibed currently), but not sure now that any decent/quality product will ever get air. All the oxygen is being sucked out by low-effort products.
  - dang 7mo ago
    That's what I mean about doing things to keep our heads above water. For example, we're restricting Show HNs for now. If you (or anyone) have ideas about other pragmatic measures we could take, we're interested.
    - lelanthran 7mo ago
      > For example, we're restricting Show HNs for now. This is promising; in what way is it restricted? Are there any extra hoops for me to jump through before (eventually) posting my ShowHN?
      - dang 7mo ago
        You'll be fine. I don't want to say much specifically because it'll just end up as extra steps on some "how to promote your project on HN" checklist somewhere.
    - akomtu 7mo ago
      Invisible text that will serve as a honey pot for LLMs is one thing to try. Imagine a comment where half of the words are marked as invisible by CSS, the other half has letters rearranged, but at the HTML level all the words look the same. LLMs will have to render pages which is a lot more expensive.
davidguetta 7mo ago
I've been on HN for 15 years and most of the times 80% of the content is not interesting to me, but i come for the 20%
Hendrikto 7mo ago
> Though I do wish we'd see less AI related posts on the front page, they simply aren't sparking curiosity, it is the same wrapped in a different format, a different person commenting on our struggles and wins with AI, the 10th software "rewritten" by an AI. Exactly. I feel like HN has never been this boring. Enough of the slop, let’s talk about interesting stuff again!
blank_dvth 7mo ago
If you haven't yet checked it out, I'd recommend taking a look at Tildes for similarly high quality submissions/conversations as on HN. It really is such a breath of fresh air compared to most other platforms.
- kjuulh 7mo ago
  Just had a look, it is pretty interesting, just from the few times I've checked the frontpage there was some interesting articles to me. with a variety of topic. Great suggestion!
rurp 7mo ago
I feel the same and find myself extending it beyond forums. I've started skipping over articles about AI more and more from authors I normally enjoy reading because so few of those articles end up being particularly interesting or insightful. AI is obviously an important topic but it has been discussed to absolute death the past couple years and very few people have anything useful to add at this point. Things will of course evolve and change in the near term but someone speculating that maybe this will happen or that will happen isn't very useful. Given the risks and unknowns I think we should collectively be treating it as a major risk to our economic and national security, and figuring out how to mitigate the downside risks without stifling the upside. But most of the people in power have zero interest in doing that so we're all going to YOLO this in real time.

by kjuulh 7mo ago

iso-logi 7mo ago

I personally joined HN because of various AI discussions. Comparatively, other sites such as Reddit, Twitter and YouTube just shill content, applications or products. A ton of the posts on Reddit are just AI written ffmpeg wrappers which no one should care about but apparently people do...

verdverm 7mo ago
Upvoting rings on Reddit are likely not policed like they are here. That is to say, I wouldn't assume there is real interest based on Reddit points.

dang 7mo ago

The dynamics of content production are shifting hard right now. Things that used to signal something interesting are being generated in minutes with little thought. It's getting democratized, but also commoditized. It's too soon to know how this is going to shake out, so we should resist the temptation to impose rules prematurely. And we should especially not do so out of resistance to change (when has that ever worked out?) But we'll do what we need to do to keep our heads above water. Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/showlim https://news.ycombinator.com/showlim. I figure pragmatics are fine as long one keeps adjusting.

lelanthran 7mo ago
> The dynamics of content production are shifting hard right now. Things that used to signal something interesting are being generated in minutes with little thought. It's getting democratized, but also commoditized. That's true, but it also means that Show HN has less value than it used to: the SNR is falling off a cliff :-( I planned to post a Show HN for a new product I want to launch (all human written by myself, with only the GEO docs vibed currently), but not sure now that any decent/quality product will ever get air. All the oxygen is being sucked out by low-effort products.
- dang 7mo ago
  That's what I mean about doing things to keep our heads above water. For example, we're restricting Show HNs for now. If you (or anyone) have ideas about other pragmatic measures we could take, we're interested.
  - lelanthran 7mo ago
    > For example, we're restricting Show HNs for now. This is promising; in what way is it restricted? Are there any extra hoops for me to jump through before (eventually) posting my ShowHN?
    - dang 7mo ago
      You'll be fine. I don't want to say much specifically because it'll just end up as extra steps on some "how to promote your project on HN" checklist somewhere.
  - akomtu 7mo ago
    Invisible text that will serve as a honey pot for LLMs is one thing to try. Imagine a comment where half of the words are marked as invisible by CSS, the other half has letters rearranged, but at the HTML level all the words look the same. LLMs will have to render pages which is a lot more expensive.

davidguetta 7mo ago

I've been on HN for 15 years and most of the times 80% of the content is not interesting to me, but i come for the 20%

Hendrikto 7mo ago

> Though I do wish we'd see less AI related posts on the front page, they simply aren't sparking curiosity, it is the same wrapped in a different format, a different person commenting on our struggles and wins with AI, the 10th software "rewritten" by an AI. Exactly. I feel like HN has never been this boring. Enough of the slop, let’s talk about interesting stuff again!

blank_dvth 7mo ago

If you haven't yet checked it out, I'd recommend taking a look at Tildes for similarly high quality submissions/conversations as on HN. It really is such a breath of fresh air compared to most other platforms.

kjuulh 7mo ago
Just had a look, it is pretty interesting, just from the few times I've checked the frontpage there was some interesting articles to me. with a variety of topic. Great suggestion!

rurp 7mo ago

I feel the same and find myself extending it beyond forums. I've started skipping over articles about AI more and more from authors I normally enjoy reading because so few of those articles end up being particularly interesting or insightful. AI is obviously an important topic but it has been discussed to absolute death the past couple years and very few people have anything useful to add at this point. Things will of course evolve and change in the near term but someone speculating that maybe this will happen or that will happen isn't very useful. Given the risks and unknowns I think we should collectively be treating it as a major risk to our economic and national security, and figuring out how to mitigate the downside risks without stifling the upside. But most of the people in power have zero interest in doing that so we're all going to YOLO this in real time.