It's slightly more productive than procrastinating on other sites.
Ask HN: How do you benefit from Hacker News?
11–20 of 46 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you benefit from Hacker News?
#12To me, it serves as a powerful cautionary tale. Ten years ago, it was a vibrant community where pg, pmarca, DHH, and many other quite accomplished individuals commented regularly.
It's not like that now. The elves have left middle earth.
HN's greatest contributors of the past, have been gone for years. Worse still, the site's audience has broadened greatly and its content has shifted towards the very mainstream news topics that it once avoided. Moderators have clear political axes to grind. While the site initially shunned submissions related to politics (and even codified this in its guidelines), it's no longer uncommon for flags to be turned off explicitly political stories that lead to viscous flame wars.
HN is invaluable, as a reminder in the fragility of communities and of the impermanence of anything we create. If a project that some of the smartest people on the planet put their heart and soul into can fall apart so ruinously, who are we to have any ego about our creations?
Re: Ask HN: How do you benefit from Hacker News?
#13Honestly I don't know if I do anymore!
I've been on HN for nearly 8 years now. I felt like HN used to give me a big edge in tech. Much of my value system around architecture, engineering, and working were at least partially formed and shaped by reading HN - articles and comments.
These days, I feel like HN has degenerated substantially. If you have an opinion that goes against the majority's view, you will get downvoted rather than argued against. The echo chamber on HN is bad these days.
I feel like many articles on the front page are not original (reposts, celebrity person/company worship, mass media links, etc.). There is a lack of any original insight.
I still stick around though - occasionally there is that gem in the rough. And it gives me some practice to voice my own opinions, like I'm doing here.
Re: Ask HN: How do you benefit from Hacker News?
#14To me, it serves as a powerful cautionary tale. Ten years ago, it was a vibrant community where pg, pmarca, DHH, and many other quite accomplished individuals commented regularly. It's not like that now. The elves have left middle earth. HN's greatest contributors of the past, have been gone for years. Worse still, the site's audience has broadened greatly and its content has shifted towards the very mainstream news…
Do you know where the new elves are?
Re: Ask HN: How do you benefit from Hacker News?
#15HackerNews is a great community. I love the comments because they come from people much smarter than me. I actually started to make a newsletter from comments which contain an important lesson: https://lessonsofhn.com Sadly the newsletter has only 4 subscribers and I might discontinue it in the future. However, I will not stop favoriting comments which contain important lessons. Now I'm thinking about building a tool…
One more subscriber ;)
Re: Ask HN: How do you benefit from Hacker News?
#16Re: Ask HN: How do you benefit from Hacker News?
#17HackerNews is a great community. I love the comments because they come from people much smarter than me. I actually started to make a newsletter from comments which contain an important lesson: https://lessonsofhn.com Sadly the newsletter has only 4 subscribers and I might discontinue it in the future. However, I will not stop favoriting comments which contain important lessons. Now I'm thinking about building a tool…
One more subscriber ;)
Thank you :) I hope you will enjoy the next emails :D
Re: Ask HN: How do you benefit from Hacker News?
#18I like it for curation of articles I'd otherwise not likely find (esp. ones that aren't new, which makes it feel like a temporally separate newsfeed).
I also like the general distaste for clickbait, markety bullshit,etc. I guess in that respect, it's like all the brains you'd expect from silicon valley with very little of the Kool Aid.
...but mostly I just like seeing people piss & moan about Electron using >50MB of RAM
Re: Ask HN: How do you benefit from Hacker News?
#19To me, it serves as a powerful cautionary tale. Ten years ago, it was a vibrant community where pg, pmarca, DHH, and many other quite accomplished individuals commented regularly. It's not like that now. The elves have left middle earth. HN's greatest contributors of the past, have been gone for years. Worse still, the site's audience has broadened greatly and its content has shifted towards the very mainstream news…
Do you know where the new elves are?
Did we know those elves were elves at the time?
Re: Ask HN: How do you benefit from Hacker News?
#20I like how comment authors employ real critical thinking, unlike places like reddit where all the top comments echo each other. So fresh perspectives helps me learn from people with different viewpoints who aren't afraid to question others when they're wrong/BSing.