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Is Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning

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Re: Is Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning

#171

Post by [deleted] »

nobody_r_knows wrote: post #167
anonymous908213 wrote: post #154

The worst part of the death of Show HN is that most of these people are so allergic to putting any effort in that they can't even write the description themselves. The repo's readme, the ShowHN post, and often even their comments will all be fully LLM-generated. This doesn't even take skill! Writing good marketing copy might take skill, but ShowHN isn't (supposed to be) marketing. Just describe the project in your ow…

> I promise it's not that hard. How many non-native English speakers are on HN? If it's more than 30%, why should they have to use a whole new language if they can just let an LLM do it in a natural sounding way.

[deleted]

Re: Is Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning

#172

Post by PaulHoule »

foxmoss wrote: post #152
marginalia_nu wrote: post #10

I don't actually mind AI-aided development, a tool is a tool and should be used if you find it useful, but I think the vibe coded show HN projects are overall pretty boring. They generally don't have a lot of work put into them, and as a result, the author (pilot?) hasn't generally thought too much about the problem space, and so there isn't really much of a discussion to be had. The cool part about pre-AI show HN is…

As someone who posts blogs and projects out of my own enjoyment, no AI for code generation, handed edited blog, I still have no idea how to signal to people that I actually know what I’m talking about. Every step of the process could’ve been done by an LLM, albeit worse, so I don’t have a way of signifying my projects as something different. Considering putting a “No LLMs used in this project” tag at the start but th…

Communicating that you know what you are talking about and that you're different is a lot of work. I think being visibly "anti-AI" makes you look as much of an NPC as someone who "vibe coded XYZ." It takes care, consistency and most of all showing people something they've never seen before. It also helps to get in the habit of doing in person demos, if you want to win hackathons it really helps to be good at (1) giving demos on stage and (2) have a sense of what it takes to make something that is good to demo.

I have two projects right now on the threshold of "Show HN" that I used AI for but could have completed without AI. I'm never going to say "I did this with AI". For instance there is this HR monitor demo

https://gen5.info/demo/biofeedback/

which needs tuning up for mobile (so I can do an in-person demo to people who work on HRV) but most all being able to run with pre-recorded data so that people who don't have a BTLE HR monitor can see how cool it is.

Another thing I am tuning up for "never saw anything like this" impact is a system of tokens that I give people when I go out as-a-foxographer

https://mastodon.social/@UP8/116086491667959840

I am used to marketing funnels having 5% effectiveness and it blows my mind that at least 75% of the tokens I give out get scanned and that is with the old conventional cards that have the same back side. The number + suit tokens are particularly good as a "self-working demo" because it is easy to talk about them, when somebody flags me down because they noticed my hood I can show them a few cards that are all different and let them choose one or say "Look, you got the 9 of Bees!"

Re: Is Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning

#173

Post by dang »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #169
nobody_r_knows wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I promise it's not that hard. How many non-native English speakers are on HN? If it's more than 30%, why should they have to use a whole new language if they can just let an LLM do it in a natural sounding way.

I’d rather read broken english than LLM output.

Yes, that's what we tell people too.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Re: Is Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning

#174

Post by jstrieb »

majicDave wrote: post #149
weird-eye-issue wrote: post #5

I did a Show HN a few years ago on another account. It got no upvotes but that website/app has generated over $6m in revenue in that time (over $4.5m profit). Not sure what my point is but thought I'd share

This happens all the time, it’s a good thing to really keep in mind. All of my best projects were dismissed initially and continue to be. There is a reddit post where I announced Blockheads to a handful of “looks like a crappy Minecraft ripoff” comments. It went on to be played by 50 million people.

If those announcement posts don't take off, how do you end up finding a community of users/players?

Re: Is Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning

#175

Post by fuzzfactor »

tyre wrote: post #160
DrewADesign wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

” The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time.” — Tom Cargill, Bell Labs Some day I’m going to get a crystal ball for statistics. Getting bored with a project was always a thing— after the first push, I don’t encounter like 80% of my coding side projects until I’m cleaning— bu…

> I’ll bet the abandonment rate for side projects has skyrocketed My experience is the opposite. It’s so much easier to have an LLM grind the last mile annoyances (e.g. installing and debugging compilation bullshit on a specific raspberry pi + unmaintained 3p library versions.) I can focus on the parts I love, including writing them all by hand, and push the “this isn’t fun, I’d rather do something else” bits to a mi…

You both have very good points here, but once I get finished with both of the 90% programming times, and everything seems to finally work with no more bugs (and it's true), then for my heavy industry work I look forward to spending 10X as much effort testing compared to coding.

Re: Is Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning

#176

Post by short_sells_poo »

nativeit wrote: post #159
zero_shift wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the great benefits of AI tools, is they allow anyone to build stuff... even if they have no ideas or knowledge. One of the great drawbacks of AI tools, is they allow anyone to build stuff... even if they have no ideas or knowledge. It used to be that ShowHN was a filter: in order to show stuff, you had to have done work. And if you did the work, you probably thought about the problem, at the very least the pro…

I have yet to see any of these that wouldn’t have been far better off self-hosting an existing open source app. This habit of having an LLM either clone (or even worse, cobble together a vague facsimile) of existing software and claiming it as your own is just sort of sad.

I actually came to this realization recently. I'm part of a modding community for a game, and we are seeing an influx of vibe coded mods. The one distinguishing feature of these is that they are entirely parasitic. They only take, they do not contribute.

In the past, new modders would often contribute to existing mods to get their feet wet and quite often they'd turn into maintainers when the original authors burnt out.

But vibe coders never do this. They basically unilaterally just take existing mods' source code, feed this into their LLM of choice and generate a derivative work. They don't contribute back anything, because they don't even try to understand what they are doing.

Their ideas might be novel, but they don't contribute in any way to the common good in terms of capabilities or infrastructure. It's becoming nigh impossible to police this, and I fear the endgame is a sea of AI generated slop which will inevitably implode once the truly innovative stuff dies and and people who actually do the work stop doing so.

Re: Is Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning

#177

Post by dang »

Yes, we need to do something about this and tomhow and I are talking about it - it's not clear yet what.

Raising the quality bar would likely cut down on quantity as a side effect, and that would be a nice solution. One idea that a user proposed is a review queue where experienced HN users would help new Show HN submitters craft their posts to be more interesting and fit HN's conventions more.

Re: Is Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning

#178

Post by SCdF »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #165
SCdF wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, and were gonna see this everywhere that AI can touch. Our filter functions for books, video, music, etc are all now broken. And worst of all that breaking coincides with an avalanche of slop, making detection even harder. There is this real disconnect between what the visible level of effort implies you've done, and what you actually have to do. It's going to be interesting to see how our filters get rewired…

I have a sci-fi series I've followed religiously for probably 10 years now. It's called the 'Undying Mercenaries' series. The author is prolific, like he's been putting out a book in this series every 6 months since 2011. I'm sure he has used ghost writers in the past, but the books were always generally a good time. Last year though I purchased the next book in the series and I am 99% sure it was AI generated. None…

Yes, I have not bought a few books after reading their free chapters and getting suspicious.

Honestly: there is SO much media, certainly for entertainment. I may just pretend nothing after 2022 exists.

Re: Is Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning

#179

Post by seanw444 »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #169
nobody_r_knows wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I promise it's not that hard. How many non-native English speakers are on HN? If it's more than 30%, why should they have to use a whole new language if they can just let an LLM do it in a natural sounding way.

I’d rather read broken english than LLM output.

Ditto
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