Ask HN: Do you consider Hacker News to be a positive/useful use of your time? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Do you consider Hacker News to be a positive/useful use of your time?

#101

Post by muzani » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 3:01 AM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #96

bradlys wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ooph. Don’t go into any kind of “political” thread then. You’ll find critical thinking goes out the window as soon as you touch a sacred cow.

Political discussions on HN have always been very low quality, but anything about COVID or vaccines is also a $#!+ show lately. Way too many anti-vax commenters.

Political discussions anywhere are a shit show. Political topics are highly discouraged here, and often flagged.

There seems to be a loophole with tech politics though, often related to FAANG etc or discrimination/diversity.

Re: Ask HN: Do you consider Hacker News to be a positive/useful use of your time?

#102

Post by sedan_baklazhan » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 6:40 AM UTC

lapaz17 wrote: post #81

sedan_baklazhan wrote: post #80

HN is very focused on interesting topics and polite discussions. I'm constantly learning new little things here, also I already bought ~10 books based on local recommendations. I don't view HN as a waste of time at all

Which books if you dont mind?

There is a lot of threads like "recommend books". I've bought DOOM and Wolfenstein 3D black books (excellent reads!), books on Commodore and Amiga history, Helen Custer's Windows NT book (excellent as well!) and some others.

Re: Ask HN: Do you consider Hacker News to be a positive/useful use of your time?

#103

Post by p0d » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 8:52 AM UTC

I am a technologist and religious. I think hacker news is one of the few places I feel free to be both. I am not looking for a platform to be religious however my answers to philosophical questions are generally handled with respect. HN keeps me up to speed with tech and let's me be myself.

Re: Ask HN: Do you consider Hacker News to be a positive/useful use of your time?

#104

Post by ravish0007 » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 2:47 PM UTC

HN solved my existential crisis. I prefer hckrnews.com and often feels like I'm just wasting time but few posts and comments really changed the way I look at many things.

Re: Ask HN: Do you consider Hacker News to be a positive/useful use of your time?

#105

Post by dang » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 5:57 PM UTC

cupcakesupreme wrote: post #86

I did once. Then I noticed a suspicious rise of articles in my top 120 (my arbitrary limit) that were “uniquely targeted to me”. That bothered me. I felt gamed. Now HN is throwaway central. I'm not disrespectful, but this has affected how much of myself I put into my participation. Make me think even for a second that I'm responding to a bot, balrog will appear! This continues to this day, and worse is that some comm…

I don't know what you meant by "uniquely targeted to me", but we don't uniquely target any user here. Everyone sees the same things. See https://hn.algolia.com/?query=silo%20by%3Adang&dateRange=all.... One exception to that is the 'hide' feature, which people can use to hide stories they don't want to see. But that's users targeting themselves.