Live data from Hacker News

It's weird that most of “Hacker” news is dominated by business news

news.ycombinator.com

111–120 of 295 posts

Re: It's weird that most of “Hacker” news is dominated by business news

#111

Funny, 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…

Hackers have long been interested in politics/culture/public policy. There has always been a strong anti-authoritarian ethos to hacker culture, one where personal privacy and bodily autonomy and the right to encryption were intrinsically at odds with corporate and government attempts to control and surveil, and I hope that doesn't go away.

It mostly has gone away. There is a certain type of corporation that we just have to trust now, since seemingly noone is qualified to judge the brilliant people who work there or the merits of their product. Some jurisdictions even require you to prove you use this product as a condition of employment or entry into business establishments.

Re: It's weird that most of “Hacker” news is dominated by business news

#113
Very surprised to see this post and thread... Actually feeling a bit happy and vindicated.

I pointed this out very recently and got downvoted heavily.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28479960

I still believe that if the thread above can make it to the top then introspection is needed.

Peace.

Re: It's weird that most of “Hacker” news is dominated by business news

#114
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hackers have long been interested in politics/culture/public policy. There has always been a strong anti-authoritarian ethos to hacker culture, one where personal privacy and bodily autonomy and the right to encryption were intrinsically at odds with corporate and government attempts to control and surveil, and I hope that doesn't go away.

> Hackers have long been interested in politics/culture/public policy. Well, yes, but usually from an aesthetic perspective, rather than a moralistic one. E.g. bad laws and cronyism being seen as ugly hacks and misfeatures on what could be a beautiful and elegant system of law ; the cleverness of computer intrusion being more important than its consequences ; the Internet (Tor, cryptocurrency, whatever) "routing arou…

[deleted]

Re: It's weird that most of “Hacker” news is dominated by business news

#115
post #29

Yes. 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". Somet…

[deleted]

Re: It's weird that most of “Hacker” news is dominated by business news

#116
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your overall thrust, but I certainly wouldn't have picked those examples. The diet threads just make me roll my eyes and think "Californians will believe anything"! (Sorry California, I know you don't all fit the stereotype.)

Have you had avocado toast? It’ll rock your world, seriously.

It's not 16 dollar a slice good. Let's be real here.

Re: It's weird that most of “Hacker” news is dominated by business news

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I could filter all politics out of hacker news that would be great. the comments especially are filled with "useful idiots" I have filtered a lot of politics on twitter by blocking prominent politicians and mute words.

> the comments especially are filled with "useful idiots" Does such a broad brush add to the discussion? Disagreement can be healthy. I'd say the varied political and philosophical perspectives of HN and Slashdot contributed a lot to changing my worldview. (Hopefully for the better, though we're all still learning.)

[deleted]

Re: It's weird that most of “Hacker” news is dominated by business news

#118

Software is becoming less and less of a tech industry and more and more commoditized. Very little innovation in the past 5-10 years. Very few successful companies during that time have come about by having incredibly innovative and novel technology - almost all are simply using run of the mill, commoditized technology to solve business problems that they have large domain knowledge of. Given this, it makes total sens…

> Very little innovation in the past 5-10 years.

That means the time is now! The changes and innovations that we are looking for are being formed right now! I can't wait to see what comes out of all this. Sure the HN community is getting a little homogenized but the creator of the next big thing is likely already here among us, and they're unknowingly depending on us to seed them with the concepts and values that we care about.

Re: It's weird that most of “Hacker” news is dominated by business news

#119
post #83

I think as reddit continued to decline, more people here became interested in debating politics, societal stuff since there was no other "serious" place for it. I wish some of that stuff wasn't here, since it takes away from discussions in other threads. But (and I hope dang sees this) occasionally when HN "strays" away from tech it's absolutely brilliant. There's tons of discussion here on some health issues, diets,…

I agree with your overall thrust, but I certainly wouldn't have picked those examples. The diet threads just make me roll my eyes and think "Californians will believe anything"! (Sorry California, I know you don't all fit the stereotype.)

I think California having the lowest Covid-19 rate in the nation has helped its reputation a lot. We’ve traditionally caught a lot of flack for woo woo crystal healing but it seems Texas and Florida are totally stealing our thunder these days.

Re: It's weird that most of “Hacker” news is dominated by business news

#120
post #2

go 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.

Related, the upvoting has a snowball effect. I'm sorry to say but most people are too lazy to read a link that doesn't already have a few upvotes. Why is a post with 800+ points on the front page more worthy of your clicks then a brand new post? ( And yes, i'm slightly bitter my submissions aren't more popular)
Post reply on HN