This is the same "Everything was better in the old days" stuff... I just can lol about it.
Why I stopped reading HN (2010)
141–150 of 302 posts
Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gotta say Hackerdaily is impressive. Where you pre-load the article for some sites, is that RSS you're using or something else? Also any chance you'd share the source for this?
Thank you! I mainly build it to learn GraphQL and Postgres for myself. But if people are interested, I could share the source in the future.
I'd like to express interest. I really like your take on how to group the information available and think that you design is very pleasant.
There is even a movement that thinks building a HN reader is "A spiritual successor to TodoMVC".[1] I don't know if that is of any interest to you but I thought leave that here.
Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)
#143To me a large part of the value of HN is the back-catalog. When I'm researching something I frequently do a site:news.ycombinator.com search on DuckDuckGo to see what HN users have to say about the topic. I've been doing this for a long time, only recently I decided to get over my fear of participating in the internet and created an account to comment now and then when I have something to say. And I can see how parti…
To me a large part of the value of HN is the back-catalog. That's not a very flattering thing to say. I do the same as you. Yesterday I wanted information about Monero and did the site: trick with good results. What I find annoying is the partisan chilling effect. Not just discussions about politics, that I try to avoid because I know it's doomed. But about anything. There is a front-page technical programming discus…
> Not just discussions about politics,
I still find HN to be one of the most politics-free places on the Internet, which is nice. Granted, I avoid almost everything that talks about US computer programmers vs the rest of the world computer programmers, discussions which tend to have not that nice xenophobic nuance to them, but the rest of the discussions are pretty civil.
Also (and of course), I also avoid almost everything related to Apple-Google-Tesla, the conflict of interests in here are too big (lots of Apple/Google employees, lots of owners of Tesla shares), so I realise that nothing productive can come out of those conversations. Surprisingly, I find that Microsoft employees are a lot more open to criticism, and I say that as a person who used to dislike MS massively (I still hold them partly responsible for the failure of OLPC)
Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)
#144I'd be interested to know how often Paul Graham reads HN these days, compared to the past. Last post was 6 months ago. Prior to that, only responses to his announcement of Bel. Other than Bel, no submissions since 2014.
I'd guess he has some resentment of increasingly polarised discussions (and maybe procrastination by users?); I've run a forum for 10+ years and resent a lot of the trends in the way people talk to each other, and I certainly read/post a lot less on my own site as a result. Or could just be changes in priorities in having children?
I've long suspected that he and/or a small subset of valued users have migrated somewhere else, even if to a private Slack/similar. Often feels like some past regulars are missing.
Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
To me a large part of the value of HN is the back-catalog. That's not a very flattering thing to say. I do the same as you. Yesterday I wanted information about Monero and did the site: trick with good results. What I find annoying is the partisan chilling effect. Not just discussions about politics, that I try to avoid because I know it's doomed. But about anything. There is a front-page technical programming discus…
> Not just discussions about politics, I still find HN to be one of the most politics-free places on the Internet, which is nice. Granted, I avoid almost everything that talks about US computer programmers vs the rest of the world computer programmers, discussions which tend to have not that nice xenophobic nuance to them, but the rest of the discussions are pretty civil. Also (and of course), I also avoid almost eve…
I'd really be interested in hearing which TECHNICAL forums are more political?
Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)
#146I've been thinking a lot lately about blindspots. They're easy to see in other people, and downright glaring when it comes to politics or other collective opinions. By definition, hard to spot in yourself. Objectively, they're likely to exist. In any case, I think most of us have felt what the writer here feels, about HN or some other forum. It's hard to know how much of it is internal to us & how much of it is the f…
> I've been thinking a lot lately about blindspots. I think it works like this: blindspots are so hard to see, but if they are inconvenient, they will get pushback . great effort will be spent creating counter-arguments i.e. arguments against, but not so much arguments for. Effort will be spent repeating them so these counterarguments will become well-known, and accepted. Soon enough, there will be a lamp-shade effec…
> I personally hate so-called "identity politics" because it gives people a personal, group-identity stake in things that not only bias their perspective, but often add a strong emotive current to topics that fuels the creation of stigmas and taboos as above.
This is why I'll never understand people who are crazy about . No matter who they are, they will do something you disagree with. It's much easier to recognize what they did is wrong if you were never part of their group to start. Instead, I see people twisting themselves in knots to defend positions they would normally denounce.
And not just too single out politics, but I see the same thing with companies (like Apple). I also don't want to sound holier than thou either, since I've recognized it in myself before. This joining a tribe is part of the human condition, so it's something I have to actively fight against.
Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)
#147I uninstalled my 3rd party reddit app the other day for very similar reasons. I love reddit as a way for getting my tech news, but there's just so much about the platform that I don't like which is becoming harder and harder to avoid. The communities I really enjoy (r/cpp, r/MachineLearning, r/DataScience) are still for the most part wonderful communities and they provide killer feeds that let me stay up to date with…
Ditto. On Reddit even a percieved differing opinion results in hate mail, insulting and shouting. It's one of the reasons I never signed up to Twitter.
Twitter is driven by engagement, which in turn is driven by controversy.
Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
TBH on Hacker News it's also a problem. If you have a point of view that is consistent with the majority of users (or with the users who write lots of comments), then everything is fine. But if your point of view differs, then you're often downvoted into oblivion. This is often not a good place for discussing things.
Karma points are both a blessing and a curse. They are good as a form of gate-keeping but bad because I too have found myself deciding not to post a comment in case it got down-voted to oblivion. In fact I debated whether or not to post this comment for those same reasons. I try to take down voted comments on the chin (and one of mine at -4 was absolutely warranted) but at other times it can be dis-heartening to see…
I hate it when I get downvoted to for asking a question, usually when someone posts a vague or unsubstantiated comment.
It's one thing to downvote an opinion, but downvoting anyone who questions an opinion, or clarification?!
Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)
#149HN is a great place to study bad logic - people are smart enough to avoid the common fallacies, so you get some interesting bad forms. That said, where can you have an conversation, without requiring qualification to entry, about complex topics without bad arguments getting in the way of progress?
Ok, you've got my attention. Where can you have a conversation that requires qualification and is about similar topics?
Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)
#150I'd be interested to know how often Paul Graham reads HN these days, compared to the past. Last post was 6 months ago. Prior to that, only responses to his announcement of Bel. Other than Bel, no submissions since 2014. I'd guess he has some resentment of increasingly polarised discussions (and maybe procrastination by users?); I've run a forum for 10+ years and resent a lot of the trends in the way people talk to ea…
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