I think people want to browse HN and not have to put much mental effort in, so more "news" articles are upvoted, commented on, etc.
Most people here don't read the articles, so there isn't much mental effort being put in either way.
It's weird that most of “Hacker” news is dominated by business news
21–30 of 295 posts
Re: It's weird that most of “Hacker” news is dominated by business news
#22What intrigues me is that the "Hackers", who care about state, programs, and process, haven't turned attention to the State, and set about un-jacking its programs and streamlining its process.
Why haven't we got a robust git server with anonymous read-only access for everyone who pays taxes that holds all (unclassified) legislation/regulation affecting society?
Commits would be possible for elected officials/appointees only.
Similarly transparent treatment for the tax code.
Come on, Hackers: let's beat the entropy out of (or at least minimize it) in the res publica.
Re: It's weird that most of “Hacker” news is dominated by business news
#23Had the same thought when Rent the Runway's IPO was on the front page. They're not even a tech company.
Re: It's weird that most of “Hacker” news is dominated by business news
#24Funny, I'd say there's less, no, a LOT less, startup / business oriented discussion here than in the past. To me, the big thing that has emerged over the past few years has been a lot more "stuff" that can loosely be described as "politics / culture / public policy / society" or whatever. And if I could wave a magic wand and change anything, I'd ban that stuff. Because I agree, " I'd like to see conversations about s…
These types of articles are actually what kept me here. The unique blend of comp sci, and socio-political-economic-whatever discussions is fantastic.
I really think it makes the site worse. I’m already an avid Twitter user, I come to Hacker News for discussions and content that I couldn’t find anywhere else. The political discourse on here is just lower-quality and less interesting than on Twitter.
Re: It's weird that most of “Hacker” news is dominated by business news
#25go to /new and upvote the stuff you want to see more of. Surprisingly few people seem to do so, and early voting has quite an effect.
The first half-hour is crucial. The continued success of your post is generally defined by reaching (and staying on) the front page.
Yeah, and not for any mysterious or secret reason either - new is sorted by time, and front by .. ok that's a bit mysterious and secret, but some function of points, comments, time, views, clicks, etc.
So, roughly speaking, you have until another full page's worth of new comes in to get enough engagement to rank in the front two or three pages.
Re: It's weird that most of “Hacker” news is dominated by business news
#26Try lobste.rs ( https://lobste.rs ) if you want "real" hacker news. They punish non-technical submissions.
Ooh good recommendation, lobste.rs is cool. I've been looking for someone with a potential invite for a while too if anyone here is offering :).
Re: It's weird that most of “Hacker” news is dominated by business news
#27If only business news.
A few months ago HN was flooded with articles about Navalny.
There is quite a lot of this kind of political spam, from different countries.
Re: It's weird that most of “Hacker” news is dominated by business news
#28There's a lot of stuff here about software that doesn't make the front page. I tend to scan the front page first and then go look at what's in the "new" section. There's a lot of good stuff there that doesn't generate a lot of comments that I follow the links provided.
I'll come back and leave a comment on some of those. But by the time I do they may be a page or two deeper and not much makes the front page if they haven't already by that point. A later post on the same subject might make the front page though. I've seen that happen a lot here.
That said, there's still a lot here about "software, hardware, computer science". As far as "hacker culture" goes I'm not really sure what that is.
Re: It's weird that most of “Hacker” news is dominated by business news
#29Yes. Posts like "How to make $1 million with embarrassingly little work" are always going to make it to the HN frontpage.
Which makes me wonder. Are we here to discuss technology? Or are we here to daydream how we get rich while sleeping?
Also the "hackers" on HN are increasingly buying systems that are built to resist hacking and that have a target audience that can be described as "mom, dad and grandparents". Something feels not right.
Re: It's weird that most of “Hacker” news is dominated by business news
#30Funny, I'd say there's less, no, a LOT less, startup / business oriented discussion here than in the past. To me, the big thing that has emerged over the past few years has been a lot more "stuff" that can loosely be described as "politics / culture / public policy / society" or whatever. And if I could wave a magic wand and change anything, I'd ban that stuff. Because I agree, " I'd like to see conversations about s…
I actually think this is a problem hackers have in general. It's the Zuckerberg problem. You build something cool, you want to talk about all the tricks you did to scale to N billion users and all anyone can talk about is that genocide you caused. You just built the tech, right? It's all about the Tech. Except it's not about the tech when you're actually having an effect on people's lives, and we should be more willi…
Except it's not about the tech when you're actually having an effect on people's lives, and we should be more willing to openly talk about that. Is it easier to pretend that stuff doesn't exist? Sure. But it does exist, and we do need to actually discuss what happens in the real world due to the technology we work on.
I agree with you, and I'm not asking anybody to pretend that anything doesn't exist. It's just that I would prefer that the "politics / culture / social / whatever" conversations happen somewhere else. But that's just me. I understand that not everyone will agree.
But still, for me, I'd much rather see "How I built a startup on Guile" than yet another story about how (Facebook|Instagram|TikTok|Twitter|Usenet|Gopher|UUCP|BBS's|whatever) are bad for our mental health. shrug
Even better, I'd like to see "How I wrote my own Guile interpreter in COBOL, added Java and Rebol interop, ported it to the Raspberry Pi, and interfaced it with my handbuilt analog computer, and then built a startup out of it."