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You know, I actually feel the contrary: Hacker News has gone the way of more hacker than startups. shrug

by markbao 17y ago

jcapote 17y ago
It makes perfect sense, hacker news should be more for startup/business news than really hacker news.
- alex_c 17y ago
  HN started out as (hacker) startup news, and it HAS been moving from that focus (part of it intentional, such as the name change to Hacker News). Your sarcasm falls a bit flat :p
  - northwind 17y ago
    Actually, no, said sarcasm does not fall flat. A good friend of mine described the articles displayed here as a "rat's nest" which does not lead anywhere. At first, I thought he was crazy; then I began critically looking at said articles. I signed up here looking for what the original post posits providing; what I found were articles about startups, business, marketing, the current/next great gold rush, followed by the token (recently it has been improving) programmer/hacker article. And the articles about startups, business, and marketing were not great on any scale; in fact upon critical review, said articles advocated rather bad strategies. Strategies which amounted to little more than legalized scams, strategies which optimize for the short term, strategies promoting win at any cost, strategies which advocate me first and to hell with the consequences; in short, strategies of which Phineas Taylor Barnum would have been proud. Before joining the Hacker News community, I was interested in starting my own business. Now that I see what is advocated as "startup culture", I want nothing to do with starting a business in the United States (because my conclusion is the culture and laws of the U.S. have optimized for short term gain, with the resulting push towards the strategies mentioned earlier). What happened to a business (either startup or established business) having integrity in all of their relationships, being a responsible citizen of the business ecosystem it operates within, and providing a legacy beyond the generation within which it was founded? In conclusion, I would be VERY interested in being involved with the community type proposed by jcapote (in any capacity: contributing member, developer, beta tester, et cetera).
davi 17y ago
Agreed. I'm a biologist, but my project has a lot in common with a startup. Back in the Startup News and early Hacker News days, I felt I had something in common with the community, and I derived inspiration and consolation from it. I still visit HN a lot but get something different from it: closer to early reddit.
fauigerzigerk 17y ago
I agree. But what I really wish to see more of is startup ideas/stories/projects that are based on deeper domain knowledge. What I'm interested in is how long standing business practices or social patterns can be disrupted by the right mix of creative business models and solving tough technological or scientific problems. I'd rather hear something about solving waste management in Naples or interesting software ideas for the upcoming smart grid than about accessing some social network on the iPhone. To be honest, I just don't need any technological solution to keep in touch with the few friends I have. And I'm utterly bored by CSS 3-liners and MySQL sharding. In general, I wish there was more cross-pollination between people with technology competence and people with domain knowledge. This may not be the worst time in history to find people with valuable domain knowledge who are looking for new opportunities and would like to join forces with hackers. I realise that this is difficult and it's obviously not HN's fault that it's so rare. Maybe ycombinator could do more to break out of the pure web dev space.

You know, I actually feel the contrary: Hacker News has gone the way of more hacker than startups. shrug

by markbao 17y ago

You know, I actually feel the contrary: Hacker News has gone the way of more hacker than startups. shrug

jcapote 17y ago

It makes perfect sense, hacker news should be more for startup/business news than really hacker news.

alex_c 17y ago
HN started out as (hacker) startup news, and it HAS been moving from that focus (part of it intentional, such as the name change to Hacker News). Your sarcasm falls a bit flat :p
- northwind 17y ago
  Actually, no, said sarcasm does not fall flat. A good friend of mine described the articles displayed here as a "rat's nest" which does not lead anywhere. At first, I thought he was crazy; then I began critically looking at said articles. I signed up here looking for what the original post posits providing; what I found were articles about startups, business, marketing, the current/next great gold rush, followed by the token (recently it has been improving) programmer/hacker article. And the articles about startups, business, and marketing were not great on any scale; in fact upon critical review, said articles advocated rather bad strategies. Strategies which amounted to little more than legalized scams, strategies which optimize for the short term, strategies promoting win at any cost, strategies which advocate me first and to hell with the consequences; in short, strategies of which Phineas Taylor Barnum would have been proud. Before joining the Hacker News community, I was interested in starting my own business. Now that I see what is advocated as "startup culture", I want nothing to do with starting a business in the United States (because my conclusion is the culture and laws of the U.S. have optimized for short term gain, with the resulting push towards the strategies mentioned earlier). What happened to a business (either startup or established business) having integrity in all of their relationships, being a responsible citizen of the business ecosystem it operates within, and providing a legacy beyond the generation within which it was founded? In conclusion, I would be VERY interested in being involved with the community type proposed by jcapote (in any capacity: contributing member, developer, beta tester, et cetera).

davi 17y ago

Agreed. I'm a biologist, but my project has a lot in common with a startup. Back in the Startup News and early Hacker News days, I felt I had something in common with the community, and I derived inspiration and consolation from it. I still visit HN a lot but get something different from it: closer to early reddit.

fauigerzigerk 17y ago

I agree. But what I really wish to see more of is startup ideas/stories/projects that are based on deeper domain knowledge. What I'm interested in is how long standing business practices or social patterns can be disrupted by the right mix of creative business models and solving tough technological or scientific problems. I'd rather hear something about solving waste management in Naples or interesting software ideas for the upcoming smart grid than about accessing some social network on the iPhone. To be honest, I just don't need any technological solution to keep in touch with the few friends I have. And I'm utterly bored by CSS 3-liners and MySQL sharding. In general, I wish there was more cross-pollination between people with technology competence and people with domain knowledge. This may not be the worst time in history to find people with valuable domain knowledge who are looking for new opportunities and would like to join forces with hackers. I realise that this is difficult and it's obviously not HN's fault that it's so rare. Maybe ycombinator could do more to break out of the pure web dev space.