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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

#351

Post by fdefitte »

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…

The filter used to be effort. You had to care enough to spend weeks on something, which meant you probably understood the problem deeply. Now that filter is gone and we get a flood of "I prompted this in 20 minutes" posts where the author can't answer a single follow-up about their own code. The interesting Show HNs still exist, they're just buried under noise.

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

#352

Post by arrsingh »

Maybe there should be some sort of filter for certain high volume posts types - for example: Github repos. A Github Repo (or OSS) project must have a certain number of stars / forks / watchers whatever before it will appear on Show HN.

If you can't get atleast 20 stars then its probably not ready for the wider world to see it.

I'm sure there's problems with that approach but the current situation doesn't seem to be working.

Disclaimer: I tried to do a Show HN today and it didn't make it (and to be fair I wouldn't have made it past the filter I proposed above so I guess its working).

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

#353

Post by elendee »

Make a GPT filter / constitution. "1-10 how much does this post introduce useful, technical information in a clear and concise way that is likely written by a human".

Something like that. Of course adjust as needed to prevent gaming it. And AI will not always be "fair". But since it is a computer, it should be equally unfair to all.

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

#354

Post by yoyohello13 »

epolanski wrote: post #350
yoyohello13 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. It's basically "people who know how shit works" vs "people who don't know how shit works". I hope we still have at least some people in category 1 or else we just end up with Wall-E.

Many people that really know their shit use AI too.

Of course. People tend to conflate ‘using AI while coding’ with ‘vibe coding’, but they are very different. That’s why I like the framing of “understanding” vs “not understanding”

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

#355

Post by righthand »

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…

> the author (pilot?)

Viber

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

#356

Post by kshri24 »

dang wrote: post #177

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.

You can cut 90-95% of the slop posts by checking the project's GitHub repository. If it has .cursor / .claude folders it should be automatically pushed into a slow queue with the queue shifting every X hours. For example, this really popular post from 27 days ago was just pure AI slop. It got on to front page of HN and stayed there for days. Should have been nuked the very first hour:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46710710

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

#357

Post by anhsirksai »

Or that's the intent of late. Anything that's catches attention, is a new pivot by one of the YC's earlier company. Everyone seems to be pivoting to that flashy new thing that has come out this weekend. And by the time the showHN post catches enough eyeballs here, there is a product out there built on top of the idea.

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

#358

Post by protocolture »

fainpul wrote: post #129
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…

People who got "enabled" by AI to produce stuff, just need to learn to keep their "target audience of one"-projects to themselves. Right now it feels like those fresh parents who show every person they meet the latest photos / videos of their baby, thinking everybody will find them super cute and interesting.

>People who got "enabled" by AI to produce stuff, just need to learn to keep their "target audience of one"-projects to themselves.

This is what I do. I have tons of cool (to me) shit I have built with LLM assistance. I only wheel my dumb stuff out if its specifically relevant to someone.

But I am also not doing it as a resume hobby, just as a hobby. A lot of people are trying to jump from hobby to career. The recognition is the point for some.

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