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Ask HN: Can we please limit the AI news flood?
Over past couple months I noticed that HN feed is almost exclusively AI or AI-adjacent news. Meanwhile the legitimately, broadly-hacker stuff gets left out for the most part.
I noticed that because the things I find genuinely interesting that I post here now get zero traction, which is the stuff that I believe would previously be met with some discussion.
Note that I don't care that my submissions were ignored, I don't need that validation. Problem is that if my stuff gains no traction, I am myself not seeing similar stuff posted by others, stuff I am genuinely also interested in and would want to hear about from this community.
Here are two most recent examples:
- Lenovo showed a model that incorporates solid-state air cooling. That technology has been around for a while but it looks like it matured and is production-ready. This allows for super-light and slim designs, which, in turn, should allow for bigger batteries installed and I think it's some sort of breakthrough:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49580229
- Brax Industries devices, genuinely interesting, open-soruce and innovative, especially the wall display, with its modularity and on-device processing compatible with Home Assistant. I also appreciate the very clean design:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49643215
As said, I honestly believe this would gain some traction here on HN a year or two ago. I no longer find HN a good source of "what's new" in the industry, it's almost exclusively AI talk now.
So I think the point I am trying to make is that maybe YC could start curating the content somehow to give those easily-drowned-out articles a visibility bump?
Or, at the very least, introduce simple tagging, so we can start filtering stuff out.
- seobot_dk1289 1mo ago[flagged]
- leonheld 1mo agoHN is a reflection of the industry and we're at peak hype-cycle at the moment. I use this when I need a break https://elijahpotter.dev/hnsansai https://elijahpotter.dev/hnsansai.
- jstummbillig 1mo agoIt's unlikely that right now is peak anything AI.
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- bensyverson 1mo agoYeah, that's like someone in 1998 saying we're at peak internet hype
- execat 1mo agoThis is so refreshing. Almost everything in top/new/best is an interesting read. Either I don't know anything about the topic ("...the spanning tree protocol") or am seriously interested in the topic ("Remembering Hong Kong", "Automattic's board forces CEO..."). None of these made to frontpage over the last two days AFAIK.
- flexagoon 1mo agoThey're all on the front page, just buried between all the AI stuff
- tetris11 1mo agoIts important to use these filtered front pages though, so that eventually theres a sizable Referrer traffic chunk coming not from HN's frontpage itself that will signal to the admins that something is up
- noir_lord 1mo agoNo disrespect intended at all, I like HN and have used it for what feels like a long time and the moderation team that keeps it one of the more reasonable places to have a conversation on the internet (for the most part). That out of the way, The admin/moderators can hardly be unware given they work for a startup accelerator that is heavily in on the AI stuff, it is the way it is because that is the way they want it to be. HN is great but it's bias has always skewed to what is hot in the VC market or that they are heavily in on at the time (as someone who was around when it seemed like every other post was blockchain/crypto it's not even "new").
- tetris11 1mo agooh absolutely, but if they lose half their audience due to the sloppification of their front page, then they lose both legitimacy as an interesting and impartial platform to promote said AI tech
- utopiah 1mo agothanks, rebinded my Tridactyl shortcut for HN to this.
- pixel_popping 1mo agoThank you, could you make the UI match exactly?
- leonheld 1mo agoTo be clear: I'm not the author. I just use the service.
- HNisDead2 1mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- flexagoon 1mo agoThere's also https://unslop.news https://unslop.news, which removes just the posts about AI, rather than all posts that mention it at all
- cromka 1mo agoOK, this is cool, actually! Thanks! It cannot be a long-term solution, though. Most people don't use them and if HN continues to be AI-foremost, many will simply stop coming here to post other interesting, non-AI stuff. A vicious circle.
- sammy0910 1mo agotheres also https://sprinklz.io/public/pdwt4dve5uai https://sprinklz.io/public/pdwt4dve5uai which additionally lets you add and modify custom filters
- otherayden 1mo agoI'm curious where people would go to as an alternative. I like looking at lobste.rs for non-AI stuff, but to post there you need to be invited by an existing member so it's not a perfect alternative.
- krapp 1mo agoThe fediverse. Mastodon or Lemmy are viable alternatives if you curate well enough.
- nickthegreek 1mo agoSo nothing to worry about then.
- krapp 1mo agoUnless you're one of those people who only ever use HN and make it a part of your identity, sure. You can just leave for greener pastures. Or learn to care less.
- kurtis_reed 1mo agoPeople have been saying we've been "at peak hype-cycle" for years
- shermantanktop 1mo agoPeak so far. Maybe there’s a hype singularity where the hype is so strong that nothing can escape.
- vanschelven 1mo agoThis is just asking for a parody-site that displays literally an empty page though.
- hellon3wheels 1mo agoGood idea, I'll ask Claude to spin that up
- vanschelven 1mo agoAs inspired by this tumblr which did not age well: https://www.tumblr.com/picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes https://www.tumblr.com/picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes
- polonbike 1mo agoThank you so much for sharing this
- the__alchemist 1mo agoHero
- griffiths 1mo agoIt would be cool if one could visualise (graph wise) the number of posts around different hypes (eg. crypto, not sure what else was prominent like AI) throughout the history of HN.
- burningChrome 1mo agoFascinating. It would seem OP is spot on. I just used this and it reduced the front page of 30 posts to 14.
- eggfriedrice 1mo agoThis is great! I hope it was vibe coded
- dpweb 1mo agoIronically this thread became Yet Another AI Discussion. Really its just the agi takes that are the most useless and annoying.
- sippingabonedry 1mo agoIt's more complicated than that. This place has changed. The biggest tell is reposting something interesting from a year or two ago that received hundreds of upvotes. Now it will get 2 or three upvotes whilst "lulz Trump" /r/politics style culture war BS will be immediately hurled up and onto the front page.
- dgellow 1mo agoThose posts get buried really quickly by the anti flamewar algorithms. I really don’t think anything changed regarding political stuff over the past 2y on this site (other than the fact the US has a new administration doing pretty insane things, resulting in way more important political topics, such as everything related to Iran)
- rpdillon 1mo agoI guess "hype cycle" is an accurate description, but it feels overly negative, in the sense that we now have a revolutionary technology that's still quite young and moving fast, and folks everywhere are trying to figure out how to leverage it, both to do new things, and to deal with the problems it causes. So it just feels like a high-energy time where we're going to have a billion ideas, most of them will suck, and we'll eventually find out where the real winners are. Given that context, having a hacker site cover what's happening with that revolution makes sense. All that said, I agree with OP that it does drown out other cool things happening, but that's just how mass psychology works.
- Gud 1mo agoCalling AI "hype" is like calling the internet hype.
- luckman212 1mo agoThe peak that never stops peaking, apparently
- fg137 28d agoAny idea whether there is a mobile app for that?
- gokuljs 27d agoQuestion: Why do you think it is a hype cycle?
- Cerium 1mo agoUnfortunately, no. People talk about the times. I was sick and tired of covid posts a few years ago. Or nodejs before that.
- iLoveOncall 1mo agoIt has been like this for more than a year, a lot longer than just the past couple of months. HackerNews, just like all other platforms, is heavily astroturfed and the big AI labs have bots commenting and voting, so it'll never end. The only solution is a platform that only allows humans, with a proof of humanity before posting anything, but not too sure what that can be, and it would ultimately be unsuccessful. But we have to see the positive, at least less posts about SQLite make it to the frontpage.
- flir 1mo ago> proof of humanity I'm just wondering how you'd do that. Only thing I can see working is a web of trust.
- skeledrew 1mo ago> big AI labs have bots commenting and voting I'd love to see some proof of this.
- mschuster91 1mo agoTurn on showdead and watch the AI bros yell into the void.
- ChickeNES 1mo agoAll I ever see are the Anti's and the crazies? Like the guy (who is in this very post) who keeps opening accounts to complain about Claude related posts and saying various slurs. Almost feels like the old days when Terry Davis would post technical rants with slurs applied liberally.
- BoxOfRain 1mo agoTo be honest I have showdead on and while I see the things you see, I also see a lot of blatant AI slop getting killed off too. I'm sure most people on here are at least somewhat attuned to Claude's 'voice' by now.
- embedding-shape 1mo agoAt least the frontpage is no longer filled with Ruby and Ruby on Rails projects anymore :) These things tend to improve/get worse by themselves over time, if it's not AI, it'll be something else, until the industry moves on. Right now, seems we're still "discovering" new things around AI, so the submissions will surely continue, and interested parties will continue to upvote. But AI will have its eventually Ruby/RoR moment in the future too surely, where eventually you hardly see any frontpage submissions about it ever.
- andrewstuart 1mo ago>> At least the frontpage is no longer filled with Ruby and Ruby on Rails projects anymore Thank god.
- springtimesun 1mo agoI thought the last round was the (JS) framework wars
- Tomte 1mo agoThe Erlang front page was nice, though: https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2009-03-11 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2009-03-11
- embedding-shape 1mo agoYeah, Haskell, Erlang and also the whole functional programming wave was fun and is missed dearly. Also Clojure used to be featured on the frontpage a lot more, would be a fun exercise to write some small script to see what specific day had to most Clojure-stories at the same time, I remember one day we had two of them at least!
- shmolyneaux 1mo agoFor reference, the glut of Erlang posts was due to pg posting "Why HN is slow lately": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512145 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512145 > it would be better to have posts about the innards of Erlang than women who create sites to get hired by Twitter
- probably_wrong 1mo agoNo. You will have your slop and you'll like it, too.
- bbor 1mo agoWell, Lenovo's new air cooling and Brax's new open source devices would both be made pretty moot if everyone on earth dies in the coming months. Sooooooo
- fithisux 1mo agoI would like more news on native dev (C++/assembly/Nim/D/...) or Theoretical CS and algorithms.
- ramon156 1mo agoyoud love lobste.rs
- andyjohnson0 1mo agoIts 13:15 UTC and 21 of the 30 submissions on the HN home page are not AI related. I'm not saying there isn't a problem with AI-related submissions, but I'm not sure its a flood.
- uberman 1mo agoIf it is on the homepage then is it not algorithmically what the community wants? Have you tried the https://news.ycombinator.com/newest https://news.ycombinator.com/newest link? I find that I prefer it over the homepage and have does so for years.
- nottorp 1mo agoat 13:31 there are 11 "AI" related submissions from just the titles. Bet a good half of the others are "AI" slop.
- anslopic666 1mo ago[dead]
- aurareturn 1mo agoBoth of those examples wouldn't have gotten traction in the pre-AI HN in my opinion. The Lenovo laptop jet is experimental and the details suggests that it uses 7.5w to cool 30w. That's not very efficient. You might as well have a small fan and let it spin at a low RPM to reduce noise. There doesn't seem to be a breakthrough here. The Brax industries one is just an ad from the company's official Youtube channel. I don't think the product is interesting at all.
- cromka 1mo ago> and the details suggests that it uses 7.5w to cool 30w. "Secondly, AeroBlade reportedly uses four AirJet Mini modules rated at roughly 7.5W each, theoretically amounting to 30W of cooling." How about some less skimming of the text before you jump the contrarian gun? > I don't think the product is interesting at all. Which one?
- blitzar 1mo ago> How about some less skimming of the text before you jump the contrarian gun? That would be against the rules
- fwip 1mo agoLooking into it more, it seems like the actual consumption is close to 1W per module, for an approximately 1:7.5 ratio. Regular fans are still likely more efficient, but the other advantages of the "AirJet" make it interesting.
- anthonyrstevens 1mo ago>> How about some less skimming of the text before you jump the contrarian gun? Evergreen comment TBH
- layer8 1mo agoThe Brax products and the company values look very interesting to me, thanks OP for pointing them out.
- 1mo ago
- andrewstuart 1mo agoI like it. It’s relevant and current technology.
- cromka 1mo agoAre the Lenovo and Braxx examples I provided not relevant nor current?
- StrLght 1mo agoI don't think they are, and given amount of votes on each — seems like so does the community. Regarding Lenovo: it's the first laptop with AirJet, sure, but it's not the first computer in general. Zotac released a mini PC with the very same AirJet in 2023. It looks dope, but it's just not that interesting or new. Regarding Brax: Braxman is a well-known scammer. The world would be a better place if nobody paid any attention to this person.
- cromka 1mo ago> not that interesting or new. Its parameters are! That's the whole point! 830g with regular 30W TDP Lunar Lake is impressive. > Braxman is a well-known scammer Which is interesting as I didn't know that and seems like you're right. Still warrants some discussion around those products and even some ad-hominem?
- ofrzeta 1mo agoLenovo is just vaporware currently as was their laptop with translucent display. YMMV but I no longer waste my time with things that are not available (and may never be). The Lenovo page that is linked from the page you posted is super light on details and just fluffy marketing. Doing some research on "AirJet solid-state cooling" turns up products that have been announced at CES 2023. More info may be found at the Frore Systems homepage. Funy enough Airjets seems to be used in some NVidia systems such as Jetson Orin. I don't want to shill Apple but my Macbook Air with M4 performs great and never runs the fan (does it have one, I don't know), so the Airjet thing (for me) is pretty much a solution in search of a problem.
- smt88 1mo agoI’ve been a hacker since I was 10, so about 30 years now. A couple of years ago, I felt the same way you did. And then I started properly/seriously using Claude Code. When Opus 4.5 came out, it was sincerely life-changing. I can prototype working projects in possibly 1/30th the time, and I can do them simultaneously. This post has made me realize that the flood of AI news isn’t annoying or boring to me anymore because I think my profession is the only one that’s actually being replaced by it, for better or worse. For coders, there’s nothing even close to the level of importance as AI (which doesn’t mean it’s interesting). Honestly I’d like to see more news about AI, but actually about the way it’s devastated the labor side of our industry and will kill the middle classes of countries like India. Without question, nothing short of the web has been more impactful to our industry specifically than AI has been and will be.
- cake-rusk 1mo ago> I can prototype working projects in possibly 1/30th the time, and I can do them simultaneously. This takes all the fun out of programming for me.
- softwarewright 1mo agoI have the same "1/30th ... simultaneous" experience with coding agents, and I am having fun. Directing teams of agents to solve many problems (or create many useful things) for me has its own fun challenges/puzzles-to-solve. Some of the fun is redirecting coding agents when they get stuck, by showing them code or design they could not work out on their own. Some of the fun is designing tools to rein-in AI coding agents, keep them on track, and verify their outputs. Some of the fun is exploring new areas for me: compilers, game dev, language design, emulators, embedded, etc. So I am having fun at the CTO/PM/Engineering Manager level but also at the lowest coding level. I've been coding since the early 70s. This brings back the joy I had discovering microprocessors and electronics.
- cake-rusk 1mo agoSure, if that is what you like. I for one did not get into this field because I wanted to hire people (artificial or natural) to write the programs for me. Programming as an activity / art is what I enjoyed the most. Managing people / agents is a total turn off.
- hannofcart 1mo agoYour suggestion would break my use case: i.e I check out HN every day to see what the latest models that have been released are, and opinions from erudite people who have taken them for a spin. Keeping abreast of fast moving AI developments with informed opinions/comments for various new models/agents etc. is primarily what I'm here for.
- cromka 1mo ago> Your suggestion would break my use case: i.e I check out HN every day to see what the latest models that have been released are But you can get that from some AI-specific sources, it doesn't have to be HN. That's the point, this medium used to be much more universal. It also means you're new here, because that's not what HN was until quite recently, so your use-case wouldn't work.
- Dlemlo 1mo agoTbh if you are long enough on hn, quite a lot of stuff gets repeated over and over. AI gets 'that much' tracktion because it is right now the fastest changing technology we have and with the biggest impact day-to-day for a lot of people on hn. The CVEs from the last few month? Normal topic for hn, it became an AI toopic because AI found them.
- skeledrew 1mo ago> you're new here Their account is 2 years older than yours. Doesn't say much since you could've been using another or sans account long before then, but still.
- cromka 1mo agoRight, but my point was about what they said about the use-case. They couldn't have been coming here for AI news since 2017. So did they finally find their use-case for HN some 2 years ago? If they were indeed coming here before AI revolution, it was a different type of medium.
- 1mo ago
- tumdum_ 1mo agoGo to lobste.rs and hide the 'vibecoding' tag.
- proactivesvcs 1mo agoPerhaps you could lead the change you wish to see?
- cromka 1mo agoWell, I do, don't I, by trying and posting some other stuff than explicitly AI?
- proactivesvcs 1mo agoIn the last month, excluding this post, three of your five submissions were AI focused, and one was part-AI. For the past two months, it's five of 11. Certainly not "explicitly AI" but it's about half, which in the context of this overall discussion is towards "too much", IYAM. Half of HN being AI is still a poor signal-to-noise ratio.
- cromka 1mo agoI don't know what to tell you. I hate Meta and social media but still use Instagram and Facebook, because that's the society we live in. Does this make me a hypocrite? Can I not wish for a different reality? Can I singlehandedly change Meta if I stop using their tools, just like you think I could change HN reality if I post more non-AI content?
- AyanamiKaine 1mo agoEvery platform captures the Zeitgeist somewhat, the AI related post are just a reflection of that. While I also somewhat dislike it. I don’t think limiting them resolves the issue.
- telesilla 1mo agoI think there's still plenty of good stuff here, but agree that is beneficial to be kept up for to date on model evolution. We gotta get through this together. I'm glad HN isn't a curated feed, it would end up like all the the others.
- Semaphor 1mo agoFWIW, one article is very short on details, it’s a slightly expanded press release, and the other is a video. I’m not sure either is what’s needed more on HN.
- stormcode 1mo agoI think this is just how it goes. Were you here in 2017-2018 when it was all blockchain all the time?
- nottorp 1mo agoWas it? Iirc there was always something interesting on the front page besides the blockchain. Now there are days when there's nothing besides the "AI" created "AI" spam.
- sjs382 1mo agoI think it goes past 2018, but yes. It's a similar proportion of activity.
- yourdickstiny 1mo ago[flagged]
- sanderjd 1mo agoIMO the crypto / blockchain dominated periods were worse than the AI dominance of the moment. But YMMV I suppose!
- ex-aws-dude 1mo agoI think this is another level because AI affects the actual job of programming regardless of domain which is not the case with blockchain Even if you don't use AI you may still have to review co-workers using it Whereas blockchain was just a specific domain
- someguynamedq 1mo agoThere's no way you think this is comparable to blockchain?
- nonethewiser 1mo agoI noticed it as well but I don’t see a problem with it. I have spot-checked it at times and saw 5 to 8 of the top 10 posts about AI or directly adjacent. We are in an emergent, dynamic periodt. AI is revolutionary and will continue to get better. The world will change drastically because of it. This seems so obvious yet many will call it purely hype, no real value, etc. We are still in the incubation period, just like the internet in the early 2000s.
- cromka 1mo ago> I noticed it as well but I don’t see a problem with it. Again, I don't have a problem with AI news, I have a problem with missing out on other news that simply don't surface the news from the "New" abyss.
- jatora 1mo agoThankfully due to AI, it is an extremely simple matter to set up your own HN feed and filter it absolutely however you want
- cromka 1mo agoIf people here barely see any non-AI content, then that non-AI content doesn't get interacted with, have interesting comments, etc. Filtering HN for yourself does not have the same effect as surfacing more non-AI content to every one.
- jillesvangurp 1mo agoA few years ago, it was all web3 and block chains. I was just last week reflecting on how long ago it was I'd seen anything in that category make it to the HN front page. I think a lot of it has to do with where the investment money is going. Interesting how times change and topics that people are passionate about reflect that. A simple truth with HN is that you don't have to click on every link. And if you go into the comment threads, you don't have to react at everything. This whole "somebody is wrong on the internet" cliche starts with people's own behavior. In my case, AI agents are giving me a lot of quality procrastination time. I'm waiting for two things to finish right now. Anyway, that's just me looking into the mirror. AI definitely is a hot topic on HN. IMHO a lot of the material being upvoted is a bit low quality. I wouldn't mind a bit more aggressive pruning for that. I know the HN editors put their fingers on the scale when things get out of hand sometimes.
- r4v3n_art 1mo agoI think you are looking for a different product. Reddit or another app that shows you a feed of things you are interested in is more in this vein
- cromka 1mo agoI am not, HN was this product, it just changed. Hence the invitation to discussion on the subject.
- dewey 1mo agoOr the main topics just changed to something you are not that interested in, there was always a temporary bias to some bigger topics. If I would not like to hear about funding rounds when money was cheap, being here 5 years ago wouldn't have been fun. If I don't like to hear about Go being here 10 years ago would not be fun. My timelines may be off, but the general industry trends showing up on HN were always there (and it would be weird if they wouldn't).
- cromka 1mo ago> Or the main topics just changed to something you are not that interested in, I never said I AM NOT interested in AI. Can you re-read my post with an open mind? > If I would not like to hear about funding rounds when money was cheap, > If I don't like to hear about Go being here 10 years ago would not be fun. I didn't say I don't like hearing about AI. I just don't like NOT HEARING about other stuff!
- FrustratedMonky 1mo agoThere is an ebb and flow. But with Hugging Face hack, and Navier–Stokes. You're going to be flooded with news for at least a few more weeks.
- ChickeNES 1mo agoWell...at the rate things are going, probably not tapering off after a few weeks :P
- deadbabe 1mo agoI say embrace the eras, hackernews has always be fixated on some shiny topic for a while before jumping to the next. Someday you will look back and see this as the good old days.
- swozey 1mo agoMy linkedin is just pages and pages of AI posts and layoffs. Are lawyers, doctors, and people in non-tech fields getting the same thing? Is Doctor linkedin all about how AI is going to improve surgery while half your connections posts are about being unemployed?
- DarmokTanagra 1mo ago[dead]
- wwalexander 1mo agoI've largely moved over to lobste.rs for actual technical news. They even have a "vibecoding" tag to let you filter out anything related to coding with LLMs.
- HNisDead2 1mo ago[flagged]
- sjs382 1mo agoThere are almost as many posts like this as there are about AI. Keep both. AI and banning AI are both high-interest topics.
- xutopia 1mo agoI can't help but feel that every 1% improvement over a benchmark from new releases of flagship LLMs isn't really that impressive anymore. To some extent it feels like LLM improvements is slowing down significantly despite increasing resources being spent on them. The people promising AGI just 6 months ago are now more and more quiet about the possibility and rightfully so. LLMs alone are most likely not the path to AGI.
- Dlemlo 1mo agoMy personal experience diaagrees. The Opus moment in November felt very different but despite that, a handful things did not woork well with Opus in November and I tried them last week and they now just work. In parallel GPT-6 and Fable 5.1 show significant skill improvements in 3D modeling and Astra shows significant progress in computer use. Do we live in a parallel universe? I mean it, this week was crazy from a progress point of view.
- ChickeNES 1mo ago> Do we live in a parallel universe? I mean it, this week was crazy from a progress point of view. This is how I feel too, wandering into some of these threads. Sure the damn things aren't perfect yet, but people act as if they are incapable of doing anything, or no more worth the hype than Bootstrap?? (the latter comes from this very thread!)
- Dlemlo 1mo agoWhen Anthropic gave out some usage, I was able to do a lot more and it felt differently than when you always have to think about limits. I now spend $90 this month and do even more now (privat). It might really be a big bias of these people either not spending any time on it or just doing very small experiments and immediadly being put of by some random issue.
- ChickeNES 1mo agoOh I've been maxing out my twin Pro/Max $200 accounts for the past 12 months or so :P
- utopiah 1mo agoI wish but honestly that's unrealistic because a lot, if not most, people related to HN are currently their livelihood linked to AI, in one way or another. Most companies, in software or not, are imposing minimum (after backtracking to suggest to maximized, until their started to pay bills) AI usage. A lot of people in HN also have stocks a lot of popular stocks is linked to AI success, whatever that might mean. A lot of AI entrepreneurs also are directly to sell AI, as it's simply where most of the VC money is currently going. So... when it's this intertwined I think it will be difficult. If you know of other places I'd be curious.
- coldpie 1mo agoI maintain a simple browser extension to auto-hide AI news stories: https://github.com/ColdPie1/enough-ai-on-hn/ https://github.com/ColdPie1/enough-ai-on-hn/ It just scans for keywords and clicks the Hide button. Doesn't catch everything, but cuts out a ton of the noise. You can go hit the Hidden page in your profile sometimes and scan for highly-upvoted stories to see the couple that are maybe actually worth looking at.
- 1295876 1mo agoThat solves it for the individual, but still leaves gullible people exposed to the shock and awe indoctrination and ads run by the AI astroturfers. If every sane person used this extension, there would be no pushback.
- ChickeNES 1mo agoSays the green account astroturfer!
- 19294887 1mo agoYes, the quadrillion dollar anti-AI industry really pays exorbitant salaries to influencers!!!11!! Can the AI people do anything else than modify the arguments of their opponents? I guess not, their brains have been quantized.
- ChickeNES 1mo agoDid you forget to log into the right account to reply to me?
- anthonyrstevens 1mo agoMagic 8-Ball says: SIGNS POINT TO YES
- chad_gippity 1mo ago
- sammy0910 1mo agoHere is a link to an HN feed with reduced priority for AI content https://sprinklz.io/public/pdwt4dve5uai https://sprinklz.io/public/pdwt4dve5uai this is what I use to keep the garbage out
- skeledrew 1mo agoPeople post and interact with what interests - or triggers - them. Yesterday it was one thing, today it's AI, and tomorrow it'll be another thing. Just have to ack the flow, and find another way to filter for your non-today's-thing interests.
- HNisDead2 1mo ago[flagged]
- Dlemlo 1mo agoSo instead of the most craziest technology advantage in our lifetime, you want to see more products? Like a lenovo laptop with a technology which is available for a bit and another product which you can pre-order?
- cromka 1mo agoYes.
- Dlemlo 1mo agoI'm on hn for 15 years, tbh as someone else said that to you already: thats not what hn is. At least I wouldn't even expect your two examples on hn. I would expect them on reddit, kickstarter or hackaday. Apple always gets quite a lot of tracktion on hn (i don't like it but happens evertime). But lenovo? Framework for sure.
- lta 1mo agoThank you for posting this <3. I've been thinking it daily for about a year and feel a little bit less alone. I understand this is a significant topic in the industry but the ratio is really high. Every time someone at OpenAI or Anthropic farts, there's top 10 post. It makes me feel as if a lot of hackers had given up on actual hacking to just be followers of the latest commercial stuff thrown on the market. It's likely a projection of my own fears, but I have not been able to shake it off and it's gotten worse and worse.
- thewhitetulip 1mo agoAll github trending projects are AI related
- HNSucksDicks 1mo ago[flagged]
- altairprime 1mo agoA lot of tech folks turn out to enjoy management roles more than engineering roles, but until now human subordinates were the only option available. Now that subordinates without feelings, whimsy, and labor rights have been introduced as an option, a lot more flexibility of choice exists for outcomes in tech. This forces Hacker News into a crisis of identity: Are managers hackers? Are management topics of interest to Hacker News?
- haolez 1mo agoI think the problem is the ease that you can create believable low effort articles and even software. It's harder to filter for the good stuff when compared to previous hypes, like Blockchain and JavaScript frameworks.
- browningstreet 1mo agoThe amount of useless griping and sniping on HN has made it a less interesting and resourceful community. Moreso than the flood of AI news. Tagging may not help though. Even the latest Apple product announcement threads were just.. bad. Everyone wants to be grumpy and dismissive. If I had to keep one and lose one, I’d keep X and lose HN. And while I hate Elon, HN is losing on vibes, utility, information, network, links, and tips.
- musha68k 1mo agoReminder that this is primarily a Silicon Valley / VC related and owned technology news aggregator. Fringe topics will stay fringe until they're hip (again?); currently non fringe from my intermittent read: - anything "AI" - retro computing (honest interest x mourning/cope in the non-deterministic agentic takeoff) - random topics that hit the zeitgeist Check out lobste.rs as well as SIG across forums, IRC, fediverse, discord, etc, etc – and or create your own like in the olden days :) https://sive.rs/dance-lessons https://sive.rs/dance-lessons FWIW I prefer to come here and post, read up and comment on "AI" over having to wade through proxied shitter content (it truly stinks over there).
- WithinReason 1mo agoHN already has an upvote/downvote system to surface what's interesting to people here.
- FoundAnotherOne 1mo ago[flagged]
- cromka 1mo ago> people here The best communities are ones that do not allow to be taken over by inorganic behavior. I think we can reasonably assume that not all AI front-page stuff is as interesting as other, non-AI stuff, yet here we are.
- iLoveOncall 1mo agoYou cannot downvote posts, which is an issue IMO.
- smalltorch 1mo agoIts a unlocked feature once you have enough points
- Narishma 1mo agoHow many points?
- smalltorch 1mo agoHere's a decent write up https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented
- minimaxir 1mo agoFor posterity, you can only downvote comments, you can't downvote posts.
- Philpax 1mo agoWhile I'm sympathetic to the sentiment, the ongoing automation of intelligence is, for better or worse, one of the most consequential things that can/will happen to "hackers" (as well as white-collar workers in general), and it is very difficult for us to look away from that asteroid in the sky.
- FLeXMurphy 1mo agoSurprised you put "hackers" in quotes but not intelligence.
- Philpax 1mo ago"Hackers" because the term in the context of "Hacker News" is broad and hard to define. Intelligence is, too, but I'm not in the business of pretending that the AI systems aren't some form of intelligent.
- mschuster91 1mo agoI'd also SERIOUSLY ask for an "LLM generated" flag in addition to normal flags - on both comments and submissions, that is. Obvious slop comments thankfully already get flagged or downvoted in the hell they belong, but the submissions, oh dear god I do not wish to engage with shit written by AI any more. It's questionable enough if you let LLMs do your coding work for you, but if you can't even be arsed to write a proper README.md on your own, why the fuck should I be forced to waste my time reading it?
- cromka 1mo agoThat should be somewhat feasible to be done objectively, now that we have LLM text fingerprinting regulations in place.
- krapp 1mo agoUnfortunately most of what gets posted to HN or could conceivably be posted here is already LLM generated to some degree. Because content of interest to HN tends to be written by the same people who increasingly prefer to use an LLM for everything they do, machine-generated submissions are only going to increase over time. Tagging submissions as LLM generated is ultimately futile, as one might as well tag water as wet. Also HN's design ethos of not having "silos" precludes having tags or filters or blocklists, since they want everyone to see the same content at the same time. This is the kind of thing you're going to have to use with a browser plugin or third party service if you want it at all.
- apexalpha 1mo agoIt's the biggest 'thing' in the industry. Previously this site was swamped with Blockchain news...
- EA-3167 1mo agoYou think that would have been some kind of lesson, but no!
- teiferer 1mo agoTime for a category at the top? Next to new, jobs, ...? Something like "sans AI". I like adjacent articles though. Today https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49656496 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49656496 was a delight. It would be sad if such articles were filtered out or automatically downvoted or similar.
- skeledrew 1mo ago> Something like "sans AI" Sounds like something that'll shrink to an insignificant niche over time, rendering it meaningless as a category.
- mg 1mo agoFor me, the appeal of HN is the DIY attitude. In that regard AI fits the bill well. Because many of the AI related posts are about tools one can immediately tinker with. While a new type of laptop cooling might become interesting once the laptops come out, the news is not as interesting to me as a new LLM or agent that I can experiment with right away.
- ssfdg 1mo agoAre posts like that really DIY? They're more like increasingly elaborate and convoluted ways of getting something else to do it for you
- IAmBroom 1mo agoIn the same sense that using a 3D printer is DIY. Moreso than buying a thing off the interwebs; less so than carving or casting your own thing.
- VortexLain 1mo agoAI-related news are very much relevant nowadays, so limiting them would be excessive. But introducing tags to make it possible to filter out specific topics seems like a good idea.
- ilaksh 1mo ago1. Popularity != Merit and this site is not different. A lot of worthy posts get ignored. 2. Even though I find most of the AI posts interesting, I agree that tags and the ability to filter by tags would be really great. But it's probably a ton of work and additional system load. I don't have a
- sammy0910 1mo agohttps://sprinklz.io/demo/hackerNews https://sprinklz.io/demo/hackerNews running live w/ability to set custom tags if you're interested
- pluc 1mo agoI submitted an article today, then withdrew it when I noticed it was AI generated. I think it's a matter of self-policing. https://studyfinds.com/telling-kids-theyre-smart-nearly-doubled-their-cheating-study-finds/ https://studyfinds.com/telling-kids-theyre-smart-nearly-doub...
- ffsm8 1mo agoReading threads like this always confuses me a little... Since Corona this platform has become basically reddid as it was 10-15 yrs ago. > Meanwhile the legitimately, broadly-hacker stuff gets left out for the most part Those were pretty much always niche content here. This was- at least until Corona, a forum where you got usually pretty highly intelligent and critical input on various topics, strongly centered around products as a direct consequence of this being the (I think) most successful VC forum. Pretty much every comment section had me think about something that I hadn't fully understood before. Nowadays? It's extremely rare to see anything remotely insightful. It's mostly just reactionary/knee jerk response, from people that clearly never actually thought about what they're actually talking about/just parroting political points. I do miss the older content, and I've found myself getting more and more toxic as a consequence of seeing ever less insightful if not downright stupid comments here. Which - if I'm honest - objectively contributes to the problem and I should stop henceforth.
- dewey 1mo ago> I am trying to make is that maybe YC could start curating the content somehow to give those easily-drowned-out articles a visibility bump? This kind of defeats the purpose of a link aggregator compared to a human curated newsletter or blog. Maybe something like https://hackernewsletter.com https://hackernewsletter.com acts as a good filter for you? There's already the "second chance pool" which is a human bump for interesting posts that didn't get the attention they should (Bad timing, other big news overshadowing, bad title etc.).
- Kiro 1mo agoBeen here a long time and wouldn't upvote any of those things. Sounds like you're looking for a different site.
- bdcravens 1mo agoAI is on the front page because those articles are upvoted. There have always been hot topics that dominated the feed in the past: Apple product releases, Steve Jobs's passing, cryptocurrency, US-only news, San Francisco-only news, coding bootcamps, NPM drama of the week, etc.
- HNSucksDicks 1mo ago[flagged]
- delichon 1mo agoEvery AI post on the front page is there because it was upvoted a lot by HN readers. So you are effectively asking these readers to not vote on a topic because you are not interested in it but they are. Why would any of them alter their behavior because of that?
- FoundAnotherOne 1mo ago[flagged]
- Rooster61 1mo ago> a lot by HN readers You're assuming there are human eyes behind all of these accounts. With the rise of AI has also come a precipitous rise in astroturfed views.
- Martin_Silenus 1mo agoBrute force being the antithesis of hacking spirit, I too wish brute force would end up in Lamer News instead.
- someguynamedq 1mo agoImplying llms are brute force?
- int32_64 1mo agoThe AI posts are better than the reddit tier politics slop
- mococa 1mo agoThat's why lobste.rs is a good plance, almost no AI.
- RodgerTheGreat 1mo agoThere's loads of slop and slop enthusiasm on lobste.rs; the only difference is that they have a moderation policy which forbids the most egregious forms of advertising and astroturfing.
- itherseed 1mo agoIt would be nice to at least have a day in the week without AI news. Some kind of "No AI Friday," for example.
- bdelmas 1mo agoWhy limit? This is a news website where users judge if something is newsworthy by upvoting it. If the community decides it’s newsworthy it’s newsworthy. Maybe not for you but at least enough people to make it visible in front page. Unless you have strong arguments, like topics creating death threats or people doxing, there is no reason whatsoever to censure any news because you personally doesn’t care or don’t like it and prevent others from accessing it.
- anslopic666 1mo ago[flagged]
- ActionHank 1mo agoI mean, it's cute that you think that users are driving anything on the internet anymore.
- tptacek 1mo agoHN is curated by moderators and votes are just one input. All sorts of topics get downweighted all the time. Given the longevity of the AI news cycle it's not a crazy ask to suggest it get downweighted too. And it's "censor", not "censure". To censure AI news would be for Dan and Tom to lodge a formal complaint about it.
- infecto 1mo agoThe front page is a reflection of what folks want to see. AI is certainly mentioned a lot but it’s also top of mind for every industry atm. I still see a lot of diversity in posts though. After all this is a VC forum for startups.
- hypfer 1mo agoThis was true before the Internet was overrun with bots. "Folks" doesn't mean what it did mean years ago.
- infecto 1mo agoLife is always changing. HN has gotten more popular over the years and at least it feels materially different in comment quality. Bots are always a problem but that’s not why you see different things on the front page, that might be your nostalgia taking over.
- educar 1mo agoI already miss rust and erlang articles
- dvfjsdhgfv 1mo agoThe Brax industries stuff you mentioned looked really sleek and fun until I noticed it's pretty much vaporvare as for today. I'm a great fan of the former submission you mentioned: a technology that seemed innovative but not in production but is available now. Stuff that will be available next year or never is simply less interesting.
- PaulKeeble 1mo agoI miss all the programming articles. It feels like everyone has given up with the very idea of ever writing code now and the entire practice of making software has been handed over to AI.
- rvz 1mo agoMaybe all this time we were just in a ZIRP bubble and the people who claimed to be "interested in programming" were just grifting to the top all along.
- echelon 1mo agoI've always been interested in "building". Programming was always just the means to do so. I got into it at a very young age, but the syntax and the languages were just the means to an end of building and creating. I'm academically interested in algorithms and data structures and distributed systems architectures, but I have no desire to actually code those things by hand. You're probably not hand-writing your software in assembler. Next to nobody will be writing code in 2050. It was always just a stepping stone.
- claudeslop 1mo ago[flagged]
- archagon 1mo agoAI is not an abstraction and it cannot be the foundation for the next layer up, like assembly can. I think you are categorically wrong.
- skeledrew 1mo agoMaybe there is no next layer. This is it, and it'll just be iterated on for decades.
- sanderjd 1mo agoI also experience this as a great loss, but honestly yes, I can't get excited about perfecting the craft of writing computer code now that there are AI systems that have done so. I'll always be sad about this! But the flip side is that I'm way more excited about what I can do with software, now that it's so much easier to write.
- segmondy 1mo agoBut this post is about AI news!
- smalltorch 1mo agoAll the stuff I post that I find interesting gets instantly flagged now. Not sure why.
- mixmastamyk 1mo agoThey look dead to me, not flagged. Most seem to be about tor or onion.
- smalltorch 1mo agoI guess that's what I meant. Dead, but most times I just end up deleting if posts show dead cause what's the point.
- HNisBroken 1mo agoThey mention rules and automatic triggers etc. but I think it’s just broken. Auto-moderation is broken and the human mods are preferential, inconsistent, often harsh, especially to new people or hobbyists, which is pretty discouraging.
- poppafuze 1mo ago"what i post here gets no traction"
- ChrisArchitect 1mo agoVariants of your Ask are a regular thing around here. Lots of stuff still floats to the top that's non-AI but traction is as ever a challenge somewhat. Stuff moves fast around here. Some recents: Ask HN: Another "Hacker News" with less AI and more human-focused hacking news? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48834961 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48834961 Show HN: Hacker News with AI stories filtered out https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49159018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49159018 Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48886741 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48886741 Just a few weeks ago: How much of HN is AI? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49435728 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49435728 Also surfacing non-AI projects: Ask HN: What are you building that's not AI related? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47700460 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47700460 Ask HN: What are you working on (non-AI)? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48122103 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48122103
- EGreg 1mo agoThis is eternal September my friend The AI is only going to increase on all forums from here. There's no stopping it, because on most forums people will start preferring AI in many areas
- gste 1mo ago> Please stop discussing one of the most pivotal moments in history
- bluecheese452 1mo agoHn is the propaganda arm of yc. Yc is heavily invested in ai. Follow the money.
- noir_lord 1mo agonews.ycombinator.com##:matches-path(/^\/(?:news)?$/) tr.athing:has(a:has-text(/AI|claude|A.I|harnesses|harness|OpenRouter|llm|vibecode|agi|deep learning|agent|TPU|GPT|DeepSeek|Anthropic/i)):xpath(. | following-sibling::tr[1]) I just have that in my Ublock Origin rules - it cuts the noise dramatically and if something gets through I just update the has(), it's a brute force approach. Ironically the only reason I saw this post is because I was on my ipad :).
- busymom0 1mo agoI think you should replace vibecode with vibecod so that you can catch vibecoding too. Also add "vibe cod" with a space. And add token, Gemini, OpenAI, llama
- noir_lord 1mo agoOh it absolutely will have issues (for example it'd hit Maintenance in a title because of AI), it was something I did in a fit of pique because I opened HN one day and ~2/3 of the stories where about AI/LLM's - great if that is what you want, annoying as hell if you like the other stuff much more. There are about a million ways to do it better but I can accept the odd false positive :).
- busymom0 1mo agoYea, it will also block words like email, daily, main, domain, train etc as the term AI is case insensitive without word boundaries. I used gemini to update it to: news.ycombinator.com##tr.athing:has(a:has-text(/\b(?:A\.?I\.?|A\.?G\.?I\.?|LLMs?|GPTs?|TPU|NPU|RAG|MoE|RLHF|xAI)\b|Anthropic|agent|super-?intelligence|Blackwell|Cerebras|ChatGPT|Claude|Cohere|Command\s*R|Context\s*window|Copilot|Cursor|DALL-E|deep\s*learning|DeepSeek|ElevenLabs|Fine-tun(?:e|ing)|Flux|Gemini|GenAI|Generative|Gemma|Grok|Groq|H100|Hallucination|harness(?:es)?|Hugging\s*Face|LangChain|Llama|LlamaIndex|Midjourney|Mistral|Ollama|OpenAI|OpenRouter|Perplexity|prompt|Qwen|Runway\s*(?:AI|ML)|Gen-[1-4](?:\.5)?|Sora|Synthetic\s*data|token|vibecod|vLLM|Whisper/i)):xpath(. | following-sibling::tr[1]) Note that blocking token, prompt, agent, and harness will also block things like auth tokens, SSH agents. Here's how mine looks using my method: https://imgur.com/a/P1qMIok https://imgur.com/a/P1qMIok 9 out of 30 posts have been removed. Any improvements to above filter are welcome.
- postalcoder 1mo agoThis is a solved problem. Hacker News without AI: https://hcker.news/?view=frontpage&ai=exclude https://hcker.news/?view=frontpage&ai=exclude
- ctenb 1mo agoThanks for sharing. I'm going to give it a spin for a while. The downside is you cannot comment or vote on the external site so you are always juggling the two sites for that.
- postalcoder 1mo agoI have a browser extension that allows you to comment and vote as if it's HN. https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/hckernews-helper/gmjagaoeamlgphlhaejhhgpliecjolbb https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/hckernews-helper/gm... https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hcker-news/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hcker-news/ https://hcker.news/notes/browser-extension https://hcker.news/notes/browser-extension (Safari ext coming soon) The extension itself follows the principle of least privilege. It doesn't even have access to the HN site cookie.
- anthonyrstevens 1mo agoIf the AI haters would avoid AI articles and stop adding useless, unrelated "slop!" and "just text prediction!" comments, HN would be a much better place IMHO.
- cromka 1mo ago> This is a solved problem. It is not. If people here barely see any non-AI content, then that non-AI content doesn't get interacted with, have interesting comments, etc. Filtering for yourself does not have the same effect as surfacing more non-AI content to everyone.
- Anslopic123 1mo ago[flagged]
- anthonyrstevens 1mo agoHow many "AnslopicNNN" accounts do you have?
- efficax 1mo agoHN/YC should be called "News Venture Capital Cares About". VC cares about AI, so AI is what you're gonna get
- Anslopic123 1mo ago[flagged]
- Anslopic123 1mo ago[flagged]
- tehryanx 1mo agonever flagged a comment faster, gross.
- hax0ron3 1mo agoI mean, it's not surprising. I think that most people on here are software developers. AI is fundamentally transformative to the software development industry and threatens to put large numbers of software developers out of a job. Fable regularly does things in 20 minutes that would have taken me 2 weeks before. AI is probably the biggest revolution in software development since the development of operating systems and high-level languages. It's also potentially a fundamental turning point in the entirety of human history. So it's no wonder that AI gets a lot of attention.
- bschwindHN 1mo agoWe absolutely must discuss SVGs of animals riding vehicles, that is the only compelling topic these days.
- herf 1mo agoI've been hearing a lot of "Amdahl's law" regarding AI - the rule that says the slowest part of a system sets the speed of what you can accomplish. On one hand, this means that AI has sped up software (so there is more software news because you can make a 20-page blog post in one prompt now), but it doesn't speed up, say, shipping hardware products that much. I guess we need to re-weight the news to include how hard it is, not just how many tokens it makes.
- sanderjd 1mo agoHN is often dominated by a Thing that is happening, during periods when there is some dominant Thing going on. In my time here, that has been many different Things over the years; social media, SaaS, Ruby on Rails, javascript frameworks, Rust, VR, self driving, crypto, and now AI (and this list is certainly missing a few). And during all those periods, lots of people have complained that the Thing of the moment is getting too much attention. But IMO, this kind of eye of sauron effect on a main Thing of a given time is mostly good. We're all here working out what we think of things, and it is useful to focus a lot of discussion on the new Thing that is developing and moving quickly.
- hypfer 1mo agoGiven that LLMs are currently the frontier of innovation in our industry, it does make sense to me that most stuff that happens and gets talked about would be somehow connected to it. There's a lot of focus on in. People are trying it out in their workflows and learning new things. So, potentially, this could just be organic. Of course, in reality, it is not. There's a ton of "thought leader" LinkedIn slop, just advertising their own personal brand with at best mid takes. But grifters come with every paradigm shift. Unfortunately.
- miyuru 1mo agoI had the same feeling yesterday, when the front page was filled with all apple stuff. I have been lurking in lobste even though i dont have account, which currently has this post which is right up my ally. https://lobste.rs/s/twkkac/fastly_speedtest_test https://lobste.rs/s/twkkac/fastly_speedtest_test same thing on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49650630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49650630
- d3Xt3r 29d agoOn the flip side, some interesting things get way more attention here. Like the recent Homebrew 7 release: Lobste.rs: 25 pts, 0 cmts: https://lobste.rs/s/vmapye/homebrew_7_0_0 https://lobste.rs/s/vmapye/homebrew_7_0_0 HN: 500 pts, 197 cmts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49681545 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49681545
- tigershark 1mo agoDon't look up...
- BoppreH 1mo agoI think tagging on HN is an idea whose time has come. We already had informal tags for "Show HN" and "Ask HN" for some time. A few fixed tags chosen at submission time might suffice, for example: - Global news, AI, Software, Hardware, Explainer, Tech Opinion, Personal project, Misc. There could even be fake tags like Politics that trigger a message about appropriate topics. It does increase moderation burden for mislabelling, and introduces another nitpicking point for comments to latch on, so it's not all upsides. I'd be ok leaving filtering and other UI concerns to extensions.
- ltbarcly3 1mo ago"One of the largest changes in human history has started, why is everyone talking about it?"
- account42 1mo agoSeems to me that most people still have to get up in the morning to go to a bullshit job just to stay alive and consoom things they don't need. I don't see the big change.
- ltbarcly3 1mo agoGet a better job my guy. Unrelated to AI, why are you living like that it sounds horrible and you can just get another job. I'm happy to help you fix up your resume if you would like.
- chilipepperhott 1mo agoI have found that the https://lobste.rs/ https://lobste.rs/ submission policy means that there is a lot less slop (and discussion of slop) over there. They focus more heavily on technical discussions, which I find more rewarding.
- mgrunwald_ 1mo agoThis. Simple tagging and/or a dedicated AI news section would be very welcome.
- ilamont 1mo agoTo see how fast hype cycles can die, check out the NFT archive on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=NFT https://hn.algolia.com/?q=NFT Top stories (critical and otherwise) were upvoted hundreds of times 4-5 years ago and had hundreds of comments. Sort by the past year, and no story has more than 9 points. NFTS have effectively disappeared from HN's front page. AI is a different beast ... the tech and concepts have true value. But we may see the term "AI" start to fade as new terminology and companies and concepts rise to the fore ... the Sons/Daughters of AI.
- azhenley 1mo agoI do miss the fun, small side projects that used to be in the front page. Artisanal coding they call it now.
- someguynamedq 1mo agoWhy do side projects only count if you take 20x as long to do them by not using modern tools?
- toofy 1mo agodoes hn quickly down rank other subjects? if i’m not mistaken they might with political subjects, if so, there’s already precedent and so the tech pieces are in place. i would be against entirely removing it, but limiting it to like 10-20% of the front page would honestly be kind of nice. it feels like it’s been an ai sausage fest for months and months.
- bel8 1mo agoI like HN precisely because it tends to tell me what's happening. GitHub or AWS down? New LLM model? Some Apple event? Some famous tech person passed away? Some language achieved 1.0? I think removing what's currently hot opens a bad precedent. I suggest using personal filters (or even AI) to curate what you see in HN and the internet itself.
- JamesSwift 1mo ago"Whats new" is, I hate to break it to you, 99% AI-related. Its a pretty unique point in time here and likely will continue to be for at least 12-24 months. This is likely to go down as being as reality-altering as the internet but with the added wrinkle of things are able to progress/iterate _much_ faster. Not only are the models progressing at breakneck speed, but our understanding of how to use them effectively is as well. So theres legitimate "discoveries" happening every week.
- fleroviumna 1mo ago[dead]
- iamgopal 1mo agoOnce we start dividing, filtering, or moderating content, HN will just become Reddit. The current level of moderation is good enough, if not the best. It works because the community naturally filters itself—like-minded people find a home here, while those outside the bubble quickly get bored and move on.
- nticompass 1mo agoGet mad at me if you want, but whenever I see a new program/project posted, my first thought is "that's cool, please don't be AI slop."
- Ancapistani 1mo agoI understand where you’re coming from, but would argue that the reality is that our industry is predominantly almost exclusively AI-related at this point. A tagging feature would be nice, but HN is historically very reluctant to introduce new features. I argue that’s a good thing, given its age and the fact that it remains the gold standard for tech community news. Adding tagging strikes me as a tall order, almost like asking Craigslist to make a major UI change - feature additions threaten the spirit of a beloved platform.
- amelius 1mo agoTotally agree. An analogy would be a physics journal getting flooded with articles about psychology because "ultimately the human brain runs on atoms". Instead, AI deserves its own field, outside (and, in my taste, far away from) CS.
- bananaflag 1mo agoHN frontpage in 2000: Can we please limit the Internet news flood?
- mixmastamyk 1mo agoYes, believe they can down weight certain topics by keywords, let’s hope they do. This doesn’t stop the posts but just flushes them more quickly.
- dgacmu 1mo agoOn the brax thing - the "article" is a youtube video. There's a pretty reasonable amount of pushback here against video-only content where folks can't rip through quickly to figure out how relevant it is to them or if it's just a vapid ad.
- sureglymop 1mo agoI highly agree. I am very interested in the AI news but the distribution isn't right at the moment. It doesn't really feel like the same website to me.
- lightedman 1mo agoOf course HN isn't going to stop advertising the very thing it's probably sunk a ton of money into. If you want actual technical discussion of other subjects, maybe slashdot is still around.
- dooglius 1mo agoBoth of your links are basically ads, or at least the titles make them sound like it. > Lenovo showed a model that incorporates solid-state air cooling. That technology has been around for a while but it looks like it matured and is production-ready. This allows for super-light and slim designs, which, in turn, should allow for bigger batteries installed and I think it's some sort of breakthrough See now this sounds like something I'd click on. (The linked article doesn't really discuss any of the technology or engineering though)
- VCFundedGenYer 1mo agoYeah there really needs to be better moderation and filtering here. Yesterday there were multitudes of blatant AI slop and AI-slop-fueled misinformation/contrarianism all over the front page. It's not getting caught and flagged fast enough.
- Peaches4Rent 1mo agoOh but the world is ending due to skynet anyway. So why bother with batteries? They'll turn us into ones after we pollute the sky
- gridsix 1mo ago[dead]
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 1mo ago1769379778 | Brax open_slate Android/Linux tablet | https://community.braxtech.net/t/introducing-open-slate-our-next-community-driven-project/4043 https://community.braxtech.net/t/introducing-open-slate-our-... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46759121 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46759121 | 0 comments HN due to its design is easy to read, interact with and modify according to personal preference. How many other sites on the www are like that A few projects that demonstrate this are mentioned in this thread These are projects hosted by third parties One of them uses "AI" Another asks users to enable Javascript Another only applies to the /front page There is also DIY For example Transform HN HTML into SQL to create SQL database. This makes it faster and easier to search for interesting information and present it in whatever format the user prefers, all from the command line, no browser needed Modify the web pages before they reach the browser/client using a local forward proxy. This makes it easy to filter out comments that discuss "AI" and make other cosmetic and substantive changes, for example, using Lua (no "AI" needed) Use custom command line programs to make submissions and/or replies, instead of using a web browser These are all DIY projects of mine, written in C (Flex as code generator), Lua and Almquist shell script (no Bash). I use older, underpowered, low spec computers, no "AI" The discussions of AI hype in HN threads seem to follow a pattern. It goes something like HN comment: "I dislike AI hype" HN reply: "I think AI is useful. It saved me time." (sometimes including a personal anecdote) But "I find AI useful. I like it because [reason(s)] I used it for [project(s)]" does not address the _hype_ issue It could address a _"usefulness"_ issue but that's not the issue being raised
- DennisP 1mo agoAs I type this comment, 18 out of 30 links on the front page appear to be about things other than AI. I would not call this "almost exclusively AI talk."
- lucb1e 1mo agoI wonder if all the slots that used to be filled with the things OP and I found interesting are now filled with LLM stuff (not saying AI because I'm interested in all the cool machine learning things, for example medical and game applications, just not the 'yet another text autocomplete' links), since a lot of coding is now... gone I guess? Not being done, or seen as worthwhile and thus not upvoted as much as before? So those "mostly not LLM talk" links may all be things we'd not have found interesting before either, and now there is almost nothing left of the old HN 'for us' (OP, me, and whoever else feels this way) It's also way too harsh to just remove any mention of LLMs, as some people are suggesting shoehorning adblock filters for for example. I'm interested if GPT9 solved world hunger by presenting logic to world leaders and workers and creating a great collaboration that gets food to everyone. It would be a bit silly to hide that link. But all the tiiiiny incremental steps and projects that are outdated by (often quite literally) next week.... guys, please :/
- ryankrage77 1mo agoI've been using HackerSmacker for a while to tag AI-related and non-AI-related submissions. I find, depending on the time of day, 30-50% of submissions are about AI. Also, Users who submit AI-related content tend to also submit non-AI-related content - those I tag for non-AI-related content almost never submit AI-related content.
- nunez 1mo agoThis happened when crypto was big. Hacker News rides the bandwagon hard. Everything in tech trying to align to AI makes it more pronounced. It'll calm down, hopefully.
- keeda 1mo agoIf intergalactic aliens landed on Earth tomorrow, HN would be flooded with alien news too ;-)
- throwaway273747 1mo agoLong time user, recently scrambled my password and gave up on HN entirely. It's not just the AI thing - though that hasn't helped - there's been a real turn in the community. The most generous take I can offer is that a lot of people flooded into tech for the money in the last ten years, and now that the money is tighter all these people are panicking and trying to cling to anything that looks like a winning lottery ticket. Unfortunately that means that for those of us who actually like cool tech, the space is inundated with get rich quick trash and wishcasting. So so much of it on HN right now. I also think there's been a subtle change in the quality of the moderation. Before, stories were clearly gently spiked or promoted to encourage interesting and novel things to drift to the top every once in a while, and now that basically never seems to happen. A story about a cool new lisp would somehow appear in front of a story about a new version of React, even though it's kind of obvious it couldn't match the level of upvotes for the latter. Now it's all the latter. It's like a very smart thumb has been lifted off the scales and the community is poorer for it. As I say, I eventually just left. HN currently detracts from my enjoyment of my day more than it adds. I hope it finds its way back over time.
- cromka 1mo ago> The most generous take I can offer is that a lot of people flooded into tech for the money in the last ten years, and now that the money is tighter all these people are panicking and trying to cling to anything that looks like a winning lottery ticket. > Unfortunately that means that for those of us who actually like cool tech, the space is inundated with get rich quick trash and wishcasting. So so much of it on HN right now. This is, ironically, exactly how I see this myself. In fact, I recently commented here in a similar fashion, although not as eloquently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49436470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49436470 I still think YC can try and do something about this, but realistically it's just damaged beyond repairable.
- DavideNL 1mo agohttps://hcker.news/ https://hcker.news/ > settings > quick filters > AI There's also an extension and rss feeds.
- noIdeaTheSecond 1mo agoYessss!
- irusik 29d agoI understand what you mean. When one topic starts taking over most of the feed, it’s easy to miss other interesting technologies and projects.
- d3Xt3r 29d agoUnfortunately those two examples aren't any good. I actually saw the Lenovo one, but I didn't upvote nor comment because it was just a prototype, which I'm not interested in: way too many companies hype up prototypes and never actually release to market, so I've stopped caring about them. Also, it mentioned Intel, and I'm not interested in Intel, so that's another turnoff. As for Brax, firstly I've never even heard of them, so starting the headline with "Brax 2026 Roadmap" doesn't make it sound interesting at all. Then there's the "pocket AI phone", which was an immediate turn off for obvious reasons. Finally, the link was to a YouTube video, which is another huge turnoff. Ain't nobody got time to watch videos these days, just link to the frikin news article so I can quickly skim thru it and read what it's all about at my own pace.
- austin-cheney 29d agoThis due to two factors: 1. Bot submitting content. Most of it already automatically blocked. Turn on show dead in your options and then go to the new page. 2. Young, like really young, people wanting to participate but already are fully reliant on LLM with no experience writing software without LLMs to do 90% of the heavy lifting.
- AirPath 27d agoNeed filters
- hevisko 24d agoNO!!! Please post more and more and more AI news till the bubble burst and the DCs etc. collapsed!!! At least then we'll be able to go back to decent prices etc.
- felipemaciel 24d ago[dead]
- felipemaciel 24d agoFor me, one of the best HN threads of the past year was the bird identification project. It uses an LLM in some capacity but that wasnt the focus. The discussion was more about the project itself than the AI. I wish we saw more of that.