Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

"Semantic arguments are particularly insidious. Trained logicians should know that semantic meaning is arbitrary (unless the actual argument is about language). The worst thing you can do is to have an argument in which you talk past each other because you each have a different idea about what the words mean."

It doesn't make sense to dismiss an argument as merely semantic if you are talking about something more than just arbitrary definitions. In many cases, pro- and anti-abortion people have a genuine disagreement about the point at which life begins. This isn't merely a disagreement about how to define a particular word. You can, if you want to, characterize it as a dispute about what it 'means' for something to be alive, but that's a much deeper issue than a mere semantic quibble. (The debate can't, for example, be resolved by introducing two new terms alive* and alive†, with both sides of the debate agreeing that a foetus is alive* but not alive†.)

There is a life to a forum... for badly run forums it's measured in years, for the best of the best a couple of decades.

There is a tension... between the core audience ageing and evolving, and the forum staying still. If the forum evolves too then it is less accessible to newer people, if it stays stagnant it drives away the core as it doesn't keep track with their growth.

Those forums that walk a middle path extend the life of the forum the longest, at the risk of excluding some original members and being slightly less accessible... but overall good for all.

The real key to it is not preserving the forums themselves but to preserve the connections people make... to split larger communities into multiple communities when they get too big so that they continue to serve each audience and those who navigate across those audiences will do so.

I'm not a believer in the Reddit model of subreddits as I think communities need a stronger identity of their own, an independence and freedom to be whatever they will be... rather than a micro-clone of the parent and still living at home with the parent.

What should be easier: Creating and running forums, cheaply, by yourself or hosted, and driving engagement around an interest. If the cost (mental, time, $$$) for this is massively reduced then it becomes easier to create forums and split large struggling communities into smaller thriving ones... in total the audience increases, but there's a natural limit to what a single forum can do.

What constitutes a hack has changed.

Once upon a time it was clever things you could do with hardware. Like how Carmack figured out how to do smooth side-scrolling on EGA hardware, leading to Commander Keen.

These days, it seems a hack is often duct-taping together a bunch of third-party stuff, often for visual effect. E.g. connecting a database of some kind to a map, or a funky visualization. With a broader audience online, something that relates to a wider audience gets more traction.

I think there is overlap between both of these kinds of hack and startups, but the overlap is bigger with the latter kind. Building a business using as many shortcuts as you can, leveraging what other people built, is much more efficient than doing almost everything yourself, which is what was required in the early days. The early days was about exploiting hardware; these days, it's about exploiting existing software and data.

Detailed posts about languages and libraries isn't really hack territory IMO, unless they're exploits of some kind.

Have been reading reddit since 5 or so years now, but pretty much only the frontpage. I like reddit but it has gotten so political and toxic. Many posts boil down to "haha look how stupid this person is". I sometimes skim the controversial comments to see what the hive mind disapproves of. Recently, on the mega threat of Trump being covid positive, the controversial comments were along the lines of "I don't like Trump but I hope he gets better, nobody deserves covid". So not wishing someone death is bad? Overall reddit is pretty toxic.

Depends on the timezone, I guess?

When I browse, it's a mix between the two groups and a third group that upvotes and engages with the post you said "hackers in the archetypical sense" would.

(The timezone thing is starting to become my stock reply; when I browse the semi-regular threads of how HN is going downhill or no longer populated by hackers, half of the claims disagree with my daily experience on this site. Can't explain it in any other way.)