Is there an alternative to HN out there where I can read threads and see people actually discuss developments in AI in a positive, mature way? I just fired open the GitHub founder's one (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46961345) and the comments are all "I hate they way they said it" or "It's useless" or, of course the opposite "Pff, I do that already". I'm sort of sick of this empty excuse for debate. Is it just /r/LLM or something? Where are the intelligent debaters hannging out?
Hacker News Alternative Where People Are Positive About AI
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Re: Hacker News Alternative Where People Are Positive About AI
#2I have also been wanting this. Thinking about building something. Of course it takes more than code, it needs a community, and I don't know how to bootstrap that. But it seems to me there ought to be a lot of people dissatisfied with the current discourse on sites like HN. I certainly am. (and AI is far from the only topic where discussion is lacking.)
I came to HN from Slashdot, and it's been a good run. But, as they say, all good things...
Re: Hacker News Alternative Where People Are Positive About AI
#3If you said this about crypto, you'd be destitute and listening to an echo chamber about how great the future of finance is. AI is due certain criticism.
Re: Hacker News Alternative Where People Are Positive About AI
#4I have also been wanting this. Thinking about building something. Of course it takes more than code, it needs a community, and I don't know how to bootstrap that. But it seems to me there ought to be a lot of people dissatisfied with the current discourse on sites like HN. I certainly am. (and AI is far from the only topic where discussion is lacking.) I came to HN from Slashdot, and it's been a good run. But, as the…
Yeah, it needs heavy moderation to remove the worthless fluff comments so that readers get high signal-to-noise. You can think an idea is bad but, you know, you gotta say why and have a debate about the details.
Re: Hacker News Alternative Where People Are Positive About AI
#5I see many positive posts about AI. It is true some sentiment is negative, but I prefer a mixture of opinions to an echo chamber. I hear LinkedIn is very pro AI in sentiment so you should look there.
Re: Hacker News Alternative Where People Are Positive About AI
#6I have also been wanting this. Thinking about building something. Of course it takes more than code, it needs a community, and I don't know how to bootstrap that. But it seems to me there ought to be a lot of people dissatisfied with the current discourse on sites like HN. I certainly am. (and AI is far from the only topic where discussion is lacking.) I came to HN from Slashdot, and it's been a good run. But, as the…
Yeah, it needs heavy moderation to remove the worthless fluff comments so that readers get high signal-to-noise. You can think an idea is bad but, you know, you gotta say why and have a debate about the details.
Exactly. I think there's an opportunity right now to reinvent public forum moderation with LLMs. Karpathy's recent post is going in the right direction I think: https://karpathy.bearblog.dev/auto-grade-hn/
Re: Hacker News Alternative Where People Are Positive About AI
#7ChatGPT: Summary of the tweet by Matt Shumer (@mattshumer_)
• He posted a message emphasizing that when people ask him “what’s going on with AI,” he usually gives a safe, simple answer.
• He said the real truth about what’s happening in AI sounds “insane,” and that he’s “done holding back.”
• He mentioned writing something he wishes he could personally sit down and tell people he cares about, and suggested people share it with others who need to read it.
Re: Hacker News Alternative Where People Are Positive About AI
#8Please vibe code it then post it as a Show HN so that everyone here who does nothing but glaze AI can fuck off there and leave us alone.
Re: Hacker News Alternative Where People Are Positive About AI
#9I think framing it as a site for people that are positive about AI is probably the wrong way to go, but around it kf you don't want just a bunch of AI psychosis posts and nothing else.
I think it would be better if, instead of being defined in terms of being "positive" about AI (in the sense of saying that everything to do with AI is all great and rosy and awesome, and thinking every new AI thing is the next big thing, and praising every vibe-coded piece of slop), the focus was explicitly on having mature, software engineering-focused discussions of how to actually understand, make, and use AI and AI tools/harnesses, where it's taken as common ground that these are tools, not magical genies that will usher in the rapture of the nerds or make software development obsolete, nor uniquely evil technologies that only fascists could ever use or like or that are completely useless, or tools that only talentless hacks who don't care about the craft, good use. So basically to avoid shallow dismissals and endless culture of war arguments.
I would love to have a place that discusses the pros and cons of different ways of approaching specification, natural language programming, DSLs, property-based testing, behavior-driven development, lightweight formal methods like model checking, or even more heavyweight formal methods like doing proofs, etc, as means of using the extra time and lowered cognitive load allowed by AI coding agents to actually increase the reliability and improve the documentation of your project and as a result, get better reliability and more productivity out of the agents themselves!
Some examples of this kind of discussion that I actually find useful are:
- https://kiro.dev/blog/kiro-and-the-future-of-software-develo... - https://kiro.dev/blog/property-based-testing/ https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.09008 - https://brooker.co.za/blog/2025/12/16/natural-language.html - https://brooker.co.za/blog/2020/06/23/code.html - https://martin.kleppmann.com/2025/12/08/ai-formal-verificati... https://emsh.cat/one-human-one-agent-one-browser/ - https://friendlybit.com/python/writing-justhtml-with-coding-... - https://checkeagle.com/checklists/njr/a-month-of-chat-orient... - https://mitchellh.com/writing/my-ai-adoption-journey - example of the stuff I'm trying out: https://gist.github.com/alexispurslane/4d01ac5522f1b58be2bc1...
Re: Hacker News Alternative Where People Are Positive About AI
#10I have also been wanting this. Thinking about building something. Of course it takes more than code, it needs a community, and I don't know how to bootstrap that. But it seems to me there ought to be a lot of people dissatisfied with the current discourse on sites like HN. I certainly am. (and AI is far from the only topic where discussion is lacking.) I came to HN from Slashdot, and it's been a good run. But, as the…
I think it's doable with a heavy dose of LLM moderation. If you do something like this, I'd be happy to help get things started. The quality of discussion here is just... bleh these days. I don't need AI positivity, just something that sounds more intellectual than people shouting "nuh uh" "uh huh" at each other.