I remember when it was "startup news" and mostly for startup founders. Then it became "Hacker News" and about "Anything that good hackers would find interesting".
Not sure what everyones definition of a "good hacker" is. But somehow I would expect more outlandish topics then all the discussions about corporate software jobs and tools we see.
Is there a smaller communitiy somewhere, where less "normies" with normal jobs hang out and more founders and makers? Maybe a community where you have to show what you are building before you can enter?
The inevitable question to ask, taking a cursory glance at your own contributions, is why would such a community accept you as a member? You seem like exactly the kind of 'normie' you're complaining about. You want to hang out with founders and makers? What's your startup? What have you made? Where's your Github profile? Show us your whitepaper on something technical, and how many citations you have. Did you even win the Putnam?
I mean, your last submission was asking about hiring a social media manager on Fiverr, come on.
…
I personally don't give a shit about start ups and despise the culture around it.
I'm here for articles and comments that “gratifies one's intellectual curiosity”.
https://ontology2.com/essays/HackerNewsForHackers/
I was infuriated that the HN homepage was choked with articles about Apple products. I built an anti-Apple rule into this
https://ontology2.com/essays/ClassifyingHackerNewsArticles/
but it was really a mistake because (1) my classifier learned it anyway and (2) Apple articles fell out of favor. At that time Apple had done a round of product announcements that I was thought were underwhelming. Soon Apple articles fell back to a reasonable rate and I found later product announcements from Apple more interesting.
So it is the same thing with Rust, cryptocurrency, "cancel culture" and every other topic that gets popular for a while.
What a curious filter. Personally I'm not a fan of gatekeeping like that. Unless it was very carefully overseen it could become really toxic. Though I suppose the value is that it would filter out folks who talk a big game with little to show for it.
There are plenty of "special" communities. Usually they find you.
Don't overlook the reality of what happened to startup culture:
Early 2000s: Startups were cool but then the bubble burst and they became a laughing stock. Military and defense seemed like "serious" work, and startups like Palantir tried to bridge the gap.
By 2010 startups were again starting to attract people away from traditional "prestige" careers like investment banking, private equity, and medicine. This brought more of the standard careerist status seekers and crowded out some of the dreamers and visionaries, but there was generally room for everyone.
By 2015 the generational shift toward increasing numbers of millenials led to a blurring of the distinction between careerists and dreamers in favor of a more pragmatic form of work identity centered around work/life balance. The pandemic and some long overdue social movements accelerated this further.
But the downside of the millennial "integration" of work+life is the increased appreciation of stability and harmony. This pushes organizations toward monoculture and sometimes (sadly) toward censorship and the elevation of conformity, albeit a variety of conformity that allows for a fair bit of individual aesthetic expression (fashion, pronouns, etc.)
In that sense, HN is simply following the trend, and may in fact have helped lead the charge. Mods want HN to embody the ideals of being predictable, respectable, authoritative, as well as supportive and empathetic. The idea adopted by the mods is that when you remove conspiracy theories, flame wars, and overtly political topics, you achieve those ideals.
I know the mods were not intending to cause this to happen, but they seem to have taken their mission a bit too seriously and extended their wrath onto anyone playing devil's advocate or posting too rapidly, etc.
Now HN has a much more sterile, corporate feel. Before the change, politics was occasionally discussed in a mostly mature and friendly way, and unhelpful comments were simply downvoted without the "help" of moderators.
Censorship and strict "community standards" about what is considered an appropriate vs inappropriate opinion, and what comment style is considered acceptable (to mods) has become the norm.
Fortunately, HN can still do a pretty good job of covering programming related topics and some startup-relevant stuff, but the old HN, the place where I often found my mind getting changed by an insightful comment or a dialog between others, seems to be gone forever.
Your definition of "hacker" may vary, but a hacker with a computer is also a programmer.
Considering that Hacker News is a website accessed via the internet using a computer.
So a hacker can hack on things without a von Neumann-style computer.
But if you are hacking on it, you'd be a programmer.
I say all this because of all the communities I have found online, this one feels the most at home. And I’m the most distant person from “normal” I know. This community is great, I learn things everyday. Whatever it is and whatever it is turning into, I hope it keeps the spirit I see on it everyday.
HN has always been a Startup site, but us programmer geeks also have interest in tech. Now people post their projects and don't even explain what they are or anything, and regular news shows up here too.. why?
Some days it’s politics, science, tech news, Flame wars about the best language or frameworks.
HN hated legacy mature tech like : PHP + MYSQL, in favor of cutting edge or niche tech.
“If the average joe can easily code and deploy it” it’s bad
This has changed, although you’ll see JS folks talking about server side rendering like it’s a new invention
I think it's clear from Paul Graham's essays that he always basically defined "hacking" as just programming. He then created Hacker News.
> Then it became "Hacker News" and about "Anything that good hackers would find interesting".
Well, yes.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
*What to Submit*
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting.
> But somehow I would expect more outlandish topics then all the discussions about corporate software jobs and tools we see.
Well, I don't know, if you're interested in that you can submit such things and upvote them. But I wouldn't necessarily expect founders to post more off the wall stuff.
> Is there a smaller communitiy somewhere, where less "normies" with normal jobs hang out and more founders and makers?
Yes, https://lobste.rs/
Sounds like the name 'Hacker News' is relevant then.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with that though
