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The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

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Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

#161
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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He created markdown, does that not tick the programmer / technologist box? Few people will create anything quite as impactful.

He defined markdown 2 decades ago, and the definition had so many problems (ambiguities, etc) that people felt the need to define better definitions like Commonmark.

Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

#162
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for bringing my attention to the comment guidelines, I'll try to keep to them in the future. I assure you, I do write here in good faith. I'm open to listening to those who oppose the EU's position on Apple's ecosystem. I draw the line at people comparing Apple's circumstances with those portrayed in Harrison Bergeron. Apple, its developer community and its app ecosystem are unlike anyone in that story, and th…

> But what are his credentials? When he weighs the merits of a programming language, an API, a platform, or anything technical, I want him to speak from experience. Sure, but he doesn't actually do that very much, does he? Like, that is absolutely not the focus of the blog. He talks a lot about the business of Apple, Apple's products and their direction, and how Apple interacts with various communities. I don't think…

Apple's business relies tremendously on its developer relations. If Gruber doesn't regularly navigate that wedge of the ecosystem, then I don't think he can speak with authority on its soundness. I mean I wouldn't!

Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

#163
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He created markdown, does that not tick the programmer / technologist box? Few people will create anything quite as impactful.

Two decades ago. Does that mean his take on smartphone screen size or Blue Sky vs Threads is anything HN in general needs to hear? Probably not. But I'll bet if he wrote a considered piece on "The Next Generation of Markdown" or something it would do numbers. I mean, they compared him with Richard M. Stallman, who we know was extraordinarily consequential and influential in technology, but that doesn't mean his takes…

If RMS or Gruber released code with any frequency, I think the HN community would be very interested. I wouldn't necessarily warm up to either of them, but it would lend a lot of credence to whatever their stances are.

Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

#164
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But what are his credentials? When he weighs the merits of a programming language, an API, a platform, or anything technical, I want him to speak from experience. Sure, but he doesn't actually do that very much, does he? Like, that is absolutely not the focus of the blog. He talks a lot about the business of Apple, Apple's products and their direction, and how Apple interacts with various communities. I don't think…

Apple's business relies tremendously on its developer relations. If Gruber doesn't regularly navigate that wedge of the ecosystem, then I don't think he can speak with authority on its soundness. I mean I wouldn't!

I'd say that knowing and interacting with a lot of active developers probably counts. As far as I can tell, he has those connections.

Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect it's driven by the Olde School Linux / Free Software contingent of HN commenters / voters. Here is an example[1]: "The #1 story on Hacker News at 2023:08:21T15:41Z is a 2021 discussion of Linux desktop packaging tools. Hypothesis: HN story up-voters are heavily drawn from Free / Open Source Software folks interested in issues that were broadly discussed in "tech" two decades ago (Linux for the desktop!) and…

I agree, and expressed something similar in another command on this thread here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43493805 that HN is trending more and more from a general site for software/hardware makers, and more towards a Linux/OSS specific site. That's a notable trend overall, but not really a problem on its own. Every community is inevitably going to lean a certain way. But it doesn't really explain the ange…

> like Apple goes around living in these folks head rent free

Not rent-free. 30% in the App Store. And 100% in the PWA they don't let me ask users to install.

Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect it's driven by the Olde School Linux / Free Software contingent of HN commenters / voters. Here is an example[1]: "The #1 story on Hacker News at 2023:08:21T15:41Z is a 2021 discussion of Linux desktop packaging tools. Hypothesis: HN story up-voters are heavily drawn from Free / Open Source Software folks interested in issues that were broadly discussed in "tech" two decades ago (Linux for the desktop!) and…

I agree, and expressed something similar in another command on this thread here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43493805 that HN is trending more and more from a general site for software/hardware makers, and more towards a Linux/OSS specific site. That's a notable trend overall, but not really a problem on its own. Every community is inevitably going to lean a certain way. But it doesn't really explain the ange…

My hypothesis is that about 300 people whose identities were formed by participating in the Slashdot / LWN / etc. communities c. 2000-2005 are active HN participants in 2025. They saw the dream of Linux beating Windows fail—and worse, they saw Macintosh become the high-status alternative to Windows. They saw the Olde Internet of hand-coded web sites be swamped by the arrival of humanity using smart phones, and they hate it. They are like 60 year old sports fans upset about the rise of analytics, or '70s rock fans bemoaning hiphop, or Socrates berating scribblers for displacing orators. Evidence: the 400-point popularity of dozens of recent stories on Firefox minutia—Firefox does not matter, nor does Brave (note: I worked for Mozilla for four years). The many, many stories about reviving the pre-smartphone Web. Probably other topic clusters I am forgetting—Web standards?

Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

#167
post #54

It’s not just Gruber. As both a medium-high HN karma person and a Gruber fan I can say there is a definite reduction in the overall quality of discourse around Apple news versus general topics on HN. Much more knee jerk reactions. I theorize this is due to the overall startup versus incumbents focus as well as the hacker ethos of being opposed to more buttoned up closed systems meant for the general public. Like for…

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> The most upvoted comments in all of them is how sideloading and interoperability are worse than death

Not even remotely true.

Top voted comment is complaining about not being able to run Linux on the iPad: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40207322

Top voted comment is wishing the US would do the same as the EU: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40773883

Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, and expressed something similar in another command on this thread here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43493805 that HN is trending more and more from a general site for software/hardware makers, and more towards a Linux/OSS specific site. That's a notable trend overall, but not really a problem on its own. Every community is inevitably going to lean a certain way. But it doesn't really explain the ange…

> like Apple goes around living in these folks head rent free Not rent-free. 30% in the App Store. And 100% in the PWA they don't let me ask users to install.

Are you saying these things make you angry at Apple? I.e., I'm still having trouble understanding, e.g., why not just make software for the many other platforms that are more aligned with your values? E.g., if I made games, I'd probably ship on Steam and not even try to ship on Nintendo, but I wouldn't hate Nintendo for that, I'd just target platforms that I'm more aligned with. I'm just having a hard time picturing hating another platform for having values different than mine when there are so many options available, why not just focus on the other options?

Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> John Gruber can be thoughtful and form his own opinion while still being an Apple shill. Cannot parse. Maybe using the word "shill" is putting too fine a point in it?

Maybe. I landed on "shill" because it's a word he chose, and it seemed to fit when I read it. Let me try and define what it means, and how it's different from an advocate, an apologist or a sycophant. A shill promotes something to others partly because that thing's success aligns with their prosperity. That causal chain motivates them to look past the thing's flaws, the people it negatively impacts, and the merits of…

Yeah, that was where I had a problem — a shill in my mind always toes the line, cannot be objective.

(I'm too dense to understand your last sentence. :-) Sometimes when I take time to cogitate on a thing it will come to me though.)

Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

#170
post #16

It's certainly possible there's a backend flag on the site. But from the comments I see on Reddit, I suspect there may be a simpler explanation: a lot of people for some reason really dislike John Gruber and view him as someone who slavishly praises Apple. I'm a big John Gruber fan, and I don't think this is true in the slightest. I think he thinks carefully, forms his own opinions, and is very willing to intensely c…

> But overall the algorithm has kept HN an interesting place. Any good moderation policy has side effects and tradeoffs.

I don’t think so. From his follow-up:

> My thesis is that the above might once have been an accurate summary of how Hacker News functions, but hasn’t been for years, and that there now exists a cabal of moderator/admins with their thumbs on the scale, and their personal predilections are the primary steering force of what’s permitted to surface and what gets ghosted. This moderation cabal operates more or less in secret. Their actions, and thus even their usernames, are invisible — lest the HN community discover that it’s steering things about as much as Maggie Simpson is.

Sounds right to me.

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