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Thank You HN
377 points by vitalipom on March 23, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 101 comments
Thank you HN and particularly YCombinator, admins and its founders. I found YCombinator at the age of 18-19 when I was going through my own way, I started my Bachelors university studies 4 years before I graduated from school, Computer Science has been my curiosity field ever since and YCombinator has had always fresh news, interesting content and startups (I found about it at the time through Daniel Gross who's at my age). I gave up on people on other forums such SOF, FB, LinkedIn and reddit, I've come across your forums for the first time just now and they are such sane, it's so pleasant to read your content. I'd not known about any place to be able to talk to any place with other people like me besides traveling to US to YCombinator startup combinator, and I like my job and now when I found this forum it feel such a warm place (I found it while looking for information about dbus) and it feels like I finally can talk to people who are just like me and write posts and post comments like THIS without being threatened. THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!! Mr. Graham, founders, admins you rock!!!! <3 ^_^ :)



> (I found it while looking for information about dbus)

The first place I search for tech related commentary is on https://hn.aloglia.com/ to see what articles were shared and who commented what on a particular topic on news.yc. It has served me well.

Many "experts" have taken to twitter instead of commenting here (kind of self-censored themselves from entering the discussions here) which is a shame, as twitter is an endless pit that is nigh on impossible to filter for quality opinion.


You typo'd Algolia.

https://hn.algolia.com/

I use them too, they are great for search. One thing I miss from Reddit though is the ability to sort comments. Yesterday during the Okta incident, I was trying to find new comments on that thread to get the latest news as I trust info here more than elsewhere.


i used to believe Algolia was actually called Agolia


Same here - could it be the Mandela Effect in action?


I do the same.

The diff between HN & Twitter is voting mechanism at HN.

Voting mechanism when all is said and done, has kept things sane and of high quality (though there is a echo chamber kind of vibe going, to the detriment of diversity of thoughts).


I've found the opposite to be true with echo chambers. Twitter you normally just get the person's followers echoing around

On HN, I never got the vibe of sects as anyone can be challenged and there is one singular front page instead of a custom algo home page that gives almost echo chamber by default with twitter.

Because of the quality/voting, I never regret reading HN. I often regret knowing twitter exists after reading. Even if there is good content there, it is not enjoyable to follow a multiple tweet single thought or sorting through replies. It is just plain frustrating to me.


I think large part of that is user names here are very small and anonymous. As opposed to twitter and the old style phpBB forums where everybody has a much more prominent and recognizable avatar. There, you (subconsciously) judge by the person, before reading the content.

Here, I hardly ever even read who I am replying to.


> I never got the vibe of sects as anyone can be challenged

However, I have definitely noticed that, over time, a certain set of views that were common before, have been marginalized or disappeared altogether. Particularly the libertarian/right-wing of the US political spectrum, which used to be very popular around here, is now substantially under-represented or even completely absent. I say that as someone who hated that perspective - I found certain comments maddening - but in a way it was interesting to hear views that are very far from my background.

Part of it is probably that even tangentially-political content is stomped on extremely quickly by dang. Part of it is that the growth in the number of commenters clearly changed the social and geographical composition of commenters (there are lots of internationals like me now, whereas it used to be mostly US west-coasters). Part of it is probably that certain positions "lost" the public debate. In the end, it's how it is.


There certainly is an echo chamber, but I'd argue it's way less detrimental than the shit chamber that search engines became...

At least for searching tech related comments, site:news.ycombinator.com is a mandatory filter for me on any search engine nowadays.


Search engines are more manipulative than that, for a start, large players (govts & global businesses) can game search engines which probably explains your comment describing search engines. You cant run that many sock puppets on hacker news without drawing attention unless you just do a MITM to create a fake hacker news. In that instance the original hackernews wouldnt miss you and the people doing the MITM would be able to psychologically manipulate you all they like, all it needs is someone not too hot on computer security and include an OS and device which isnt that secure over and above what a court order couldnt solicit, like root certs.


Reddit has a voting mechanism as well, but I'll argue that the "echo chamber" and closed-mindnessness of the users is a lot stronger there especially in the larger communities. Also the people here are typically more respectful to one another compared to Reddit and Twitter. Both of these factors affect how people vote on Reddit compared to HN.


I agree, and would like to highlight two differences in social network structure that help lead to HN being a more civil place than Reddit beyond just the qualities of the user-ships:

*1. Restricted comment downvoting*

A user must achieve a not-insignificant amount of karma before they can access the downvote-comment feature.

*2. Lack of emphasis on notifications, especially regarding comment replies*

This is huge! It must certainly decrease engagement in the short run to continue with the status quo, compared to Reddit notifying the user of every reply via every protocol available to them. You have to seek out a reply to your comment, which requires you to write something worth responding to. It reduces Poe’s law significantly. I would actively oppose notifications being integrated into news.ycombinator.com - the apps and readers can do as they please. Wonderful balance, thank Guthix.


I'd add also a few points

* Unappealing UI makes the site look boring. Furthermore, users have to be comfortable with the fact that there's no "easy" content, I.e., memes and one liners.

* Comment score is mostly irrelevant, so users don't try optimizing their score. This leads to better discussion.

* Only one board. Things stay on topic, as users from that toxic subboard don't leak elsewhere. So "bad" types of users don't have a place to hang out here, unlike Facebook or Reddit.

I'm much happier commenting here than on Reddit. It's demoralizing to put effort into a comment and then be buried under one liners and memes.


Don't forget dang.


Same here, but I prefer DDG [1] or Google [2]. Algolia often proves to be a much dumber algorithm to match my search intent.

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com

[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com


Many of my searches on Google nowadays are followed with either "hacker news" or "reddit" keyword.


typo in your link https://hn.algolia.com/


I also use https://hckrnews.com/ instead of the classic front page. It’s very useful.


Agreed; this is also what I do.

For me, checking the top 10 HN stories on hckrnews with a 5 minute timer set is productive/useful, since I value being informed about major tech topics.

When I scroll endlessly for an hour+ on the front page, I'm usually avoiding something, which I'm learning is bad for my overall mental health.


This is the first time I've heard of HN described as "warm"


Any place is very warm where you have people with common, niche interests discussing topics that you care about.

Besides that, HN is very nicely moderated. It might be just me, but I value non-echo-chamber places. HN is very surprisingly very diverse, and I have considered many POVs that I hadn’t considered before. HN made me a better person.

Apart from that, people in HN are generally very helpful and are keen on giving valuable advive. Thanks, everyone.

HN has been transformative in my life and journey. I am a much better engineer, well versed in diverse subjects. I am in a much better place in my career for HN. They say, "if you are the smartest person in a room, change the room, if you care to grow". I am certainly not the smartest or the most experienced person in this room, and I grew a lot and keep growing due to HN.

I lived (and now live, due to WFH) in a very small town. What I do, nobody understands. First, FB connected me with smart, accomplished expats who grew up in my town, then Quora gave me a glimpse of outside world, Amazon gave me book-gadget-parity, and Reddit gave me a good base. I learned programming with the help of Reddit recommended sources. Then finally, HN recommended sources made me, and keeps making me better.

And thanks to pirates, too, because many stuff that I could not literally afford, were available for free.

I got to know about SICP, nand2tetris, genetic programming, and a lot of other things from HN for the first time.

And the level of competence of people on HN is much higher. I get better just by trying to be worthy of this place.

A heartfelt thanks to HN.

I will make a post, too, when I am where I want to be.


> And thanks to pirates, too, because many stuff that I could not literally afford

I like to call them Good Samaritans because I also cannot literally afford to buy the interesting things I want. In the age of perpetual copyright and DRM, it would be a much less interesting world for me if I had to pay for everything. Some of the things I am most interested in cannot be found in the public library.

For example, "Beyond Good and Evil" by Friedrich Nietzsche on Amazon is $3.99 for the eBook, $17.99 Hardcover and $6.99 for paperback. Nietzsche has been dead for 122 years, so why do I have to pay? No one currently alive had anything to do with helping Nietzsche produce his work.

Pirate Bay to the rescue, I downloaded the collected works of Friedrich Nietzsche (72 books, essays and other works) for the total cost of FREE. How amazing is that? I'm not sure I could even do that by paying for it. Thank you to anyone who made that torrent available (or similar torrents.) You're doing God's work.


If you’re reading the original German, then you’re right. If you’re reading an older translation, you may also be right. If, on the other hand, you’re talking about a modern translation, then you’re not necessarily recognizing the value that translators provide (or take away) from a work.

Also, for books, it’s always worth trying Gutenberg, first: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/779


> For example, "Beyond Good and Evil" by Friedrich Nietzsche on Amazon is $3.99 for the eBook, $17.99 Hardcover and $6.99 for paperback. Nietzsche has been dead for 122 years, so why do I have to pay? No one currently alive had anything to do with helping Nietzsche produce his work.

> Pirate Bay to the rescue, I downloaded the collected works of Friedrich Nietzsche (72 books, essays and other works) for the total cost of FREE. How amazing is that? I'm not sure I could even do that by paying for it.

You have a good point, but chose a bad example. For works that are public domain or otherwise out of copyright (at least, non-obscure ones), you have fairly good legal download options, starting with Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive:

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/779

https://archive.org/search.php?query=Nietzsche&and[]=creator...

Within that set of public domain works, the most popular ones often have somewhat nicer (but still free) editions from places like Standard Ebooks, Feedbooks, and Manybooks:

https://standardebooks.org/ebooks?query=Nietzsche

https://www.feedbooks.com/search?protection=without_drm&quer...

https://manybooks.net/search-book?search=Nietzsche


This is great. I didn't realize this. I was confused when I saw Amazon was charging so I went to PB


Amazon has free stuff too, but they've made those harder to find, you can't generally get there by browsing. But if you search for what you want and then sort results by price, that usually does the trick.


It all depends on whether you summarize a thread by its best or worst comment. At best, HN is way better. At worst, while hardly 'warm', it rarely ruins my day, which I appreciate.


This. HN is all about keeping a high signal-to-noise ratio. Noisy "reddit-like" or "twitter-like" comments are typically downvoted, and this seems to help reduce flamewars & negative emotional responses. This leads to a much more pleasant experience for HN readers.


Whenever I want to investigate a technical topic that is in the news, my process is to first read several articles from decent publications to get grounded. Then I come here to go over current (and past) discussions of the topic. I am almost always rewarded with a better understanding. Very often we get comments from people directly involved. Keep it up Dang.


It also depends on your timezone. I live in Germany. When I get up in the morning, most heated discussions have cooled down, a consensus has been found in some way or another. I hardly ever see the most toxic comments, because they are downvoted.


Compared to many other online communities it honestly is.

I mean sure there are aggressive responses but nothing like the vitriol you see on many other platforms.


I know many will disagree, but for me, the reason this place is so rad is that it doesn't aspire to be an "online community".

By not striving, it achieves it.

The interface plays a major role. Most are turned away by how 1999 it looks. The flip side of that is that the "community" here is much like those of the 90's. You had to be somewhat intelligent to get online in the first place, and most everyone who could had a lot in common right out of the gate. No need to contrive "community", it forms organically, as it should.


I am not sure how most people think about it, but I prefer inferfaces like HN's and Dan Luu's blog (https://danluu.com/). They are very simple and the most important thing is the content. I just feel I don't get to waste time with things I don't care.


I frequently see people politely correcting misbehavior on HN. And I'm always astonished to see misbehaved users stand corrected in a polite way.

This is unimaginable in most major forums I know.


I don't think HN gets enough credit for this. I've never tried to moderate a public forum, but given how low the standard of discourse is on the Internet in general I've always taken it for granted that the house rules and the mods here do a fantastic job of keeping threads on point.

I'm taking OP's description of "warm" to mean "not hostile", which I think is true. I've seen people throw out baseless insults on front page threads and you can watch them be buried live in real time over the course of about 15 seconds.

It's one thing to have a set of civil house rules for a forum, but the community here is much better at enforcing them than any other I've seen in this space.


Agree. I guess HN can be credited for attracting and holding such a community together. Which is what matters in HN, really...


Sure there are exceptions, but I'd say it's much better than most online communities.

The couple of times that I've been (factually) wrong about something on here I'd say it was 50/50 between being corrected politely and abrasively. Compare that to twitter, where it seems the entire point of the website is to dunk on people, and 50/50 is not so bad.


It depends. HN may be hash / cold or even rude on many topics, Web3, Crypto ( Blockchain is fine though ), Ads, Social Network. You get some heated debate in other areas.

But generally speaking HN is very "warm" when you ask for help in desperate situations. And it is not just bound to Tech. You have Chemist, Physicist, Biologist, Lawyers, Doctors, Virologist, Finance ( Non - FinTech ), Food Sectors, People actually working inside government etc etc, ( 12+ years in I am surprised at the diversity of expert reading HN. ) nerds from all around the world hanging on HN, You have professionals giving you some advices or at least a place to start and improve the situation while you may be completely helpless or clueless.


I think the old school design (Verdana font, simple UI) of HN makes it feel "warm" to me, reminiscent of the older days when internet communities were a lot smaller. I hope it never tries to redesign itself like Reddit did.


It’s like, I feel ashamed here if I’m not at least marginally nice and contributing to the conversation.

Compared to Reddit, where such behavior is par for the course.


Strong agree. And I love Reddit, not least for how very different it is to HN, but I come here for totally different reasons (and totally different discussions).


I agree with it being warm, in the sense that because people are honest, you know that a compliment is not just someone going through some ritual, but their actual pinon.

A place with room for constructive (or not) criticism, one that is not oppressed by outrage culture and people vigilant to construe everything you say as a personal insult that must be condemned, a place where you can be sure to be told directly when and why you're wrong, that is indeed a warm place, one where you don't doubt that people mean what they say.


It isn't always warm, but it's definitely better. Also, posts are usually not as low effort as in other communities.


Better than what? I don't appreciate "warmth" when I'm looking for insightful discussion about technology. If I need that I will leave the computer.


It's easy to forget how in other forums you must become hardened against people often telling you to get hurt or otherwise perish. The admins do a heroic job on the whole preventing that culture here.


>It's easy to forget how in other forums you must become hardened against people often telling you to get hurt or otherwise perish

When slurs, personal attacks and incivility are fair game you can't attack inconvenient opinions by complaining that they are not presented in a high enough brow manner.

This tilts the balance of power in favor of whatever the local majority opinion is (as if voting wasn't a strong enough mechanism for doing that) because every subjective rule you can possibly use to exclude commentary will always get wielded harder against the minority opinion.


The default is "hot". People yelling at each other about not using bcrypt or using too much Java.

Warm is nice. HN can lean cold, which is not so bad either.


It's very rare you'll get personally attacked here.

I had to stop using Reddit/Twitter for the most part. You can't have a reasonable discourse on those platforms.

On Reddit I got called slurs, I've had people tell me I'm a horrible human for saying you can't afford LA on 40k a year. Here people are at least civil.


There are tons of nice people on HN and they are connected fairly well out of band besides of HN. I've seen HN come together to help others in times of need on more than one occasion and if I look at my close circle a large chunk of them initially came to me through HN.


HN is one of the only places I know where I can have intelligent, polite discussions with people I disagree with strongly. I've even been convinced I was wrong from time to time! That counts for a lot.


I would like to echo this. I found HN during my first internship, I was pre-med, but got a job imaging laptops.

They had a fully manual setup, so I built a PXE server and automated it. Using the extra time, I browsed HN and taught myself Python (off of someone here's recommendation).

I went back to schoool in the fall and ace intro to programming, fail Organic Chemistry, and the rest was history.

I'm 25 now, starting my own company coming off of a few years in the industry and I have no idea how I would've done it without this community. You all were the anonymous angels and devils on my metaphorical shoulders.


…and a huge thanks to @dang as well!


For the new people: @dang is the moderator here and is a huge part of the reason why HN remains pleasant and constructive. He doesn't just use admin tools to prune the bad, he often actively sets a good example by gently reaching out to offenders to talk about what they can do differently. I can't imagine how much work he must put into this site, but it's sure appreciated!


Is he the only moderator? That's impressive.

After a decade or so on reddit and twitter, I tend towards snark and shit talking and jokes when posting online. I've received a gentle nudge or two from dang and it's so much more effective than e.g. twitter account blocking & suspensions or being summarily dismissed from a subreddit. I may drop a little quip here every now and then but generally if I don't have the time and effort available to articulate what I think without being combative, I don't post it here. It's been made clear to me that's not what this place is for.


He's far more than 'the moderator', though that is his most visible interaction with the site visitors.


Hopping aboard the praise train.. my two interactions with @dang include:

1. I made my first submission to HN many years ago. I got an email helpfully suggesting edits to better present the content. It ended with a "Thanks for posting good things to Hacker News" - that part stuck with me, I thought it was nice.

2. I had a later submission that I thought would be an instant hit, but it didn't get traction. I emailed HN to see if it's okay to resubmit. @dang responded with tips on how to get traction, then ended the email with: "Good luck! It's hard to predict what HN will find interesting, and so few posts end up 'making it' with this audience that I hope you don't feel bad either way."

@dang is a good person that cares about HN content and the people that use it.


@dang is truly a legend. Shared some thoughts with him about an idea I had and feedback was truly insightful. Massive hat-tip to the legend!


I have seen and read from @dang often throughout my many years of journey with HN, but never got to know who really is @dang.

Is their true identity a secret? If not, can someone please point me out to their real name. I am just curious about their profile and would like to have a look at their LinkedIn or Twitter if they are on there.

I do not wish to pry open anyone's anonymity and so if their identity is a secret, I am fine with that. I honestly just want to have a look at their journey which sometimes LinkedIn / Twitter / GitHub / individual blogs provide.


dang is Daniel Gackle; see https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/th....


He's a real person, his name is known, but I can't in good conscience share it when you admit you want it to "stalk" their internet and real life profile. Leave the guy alone, he's already busy moderating this unruly bunch.


I’d recommend reading https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/th...


If only reddit mods were as fair and balanced.


He’s the HN secret sauce.


Thank you HN!

I wonder what are the costs to run a community of this size (hosting and moderation) and no ads.


I believe the whole community is an ad for YCombinator ;)


my fave fun fact for the scalability nerds - all of hn runs on a single machine with one backup https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16076041

cant cost more than $100/month?

moderation i’d ballpark maybe 200-250k/yr. chump change for yc


I don't really remember how I found HN. It's been some years I've been reading posts and comments daily. It has definitely helped me in my career and in expanding my knowledge. Hands down the best internet community I've ever joined!


I owe most of my career growth to HN community. I never thought of this place at warm when I first joined. But now, I feel attached the HN crowd. Especially the unique perspective I get from the comments. No echo chambers!

Thank you pg and dang!


I am writing a non-fiction book and it’s going well so far, but recently it occurred to me that (despite the negativity present here), I have benefitted so much from spending my smartphone-addiction attention here, in this place, rather than pretty much any other app on my phone.

I would not be half as far in my project without HN. It’s makes me think about the European parlors and coffeehouses that fostered great European curiosity. In a digital world full of places devoid of this curiousity, it can still be found here.

Heck, this happened today, specifically with the thread regarding Colossal Cave Adventure. The top comment directed me to resources that just so happened to save me a chapter of work.

Obviously this is just my project, and I don’t expect my happiness with this development to change the lives of others, but it’s a good thing for me. It’s especially good when compared to the other places I could be; ideally I would throw my phone and laptop off a bridge and achieve inner peace.

Barring that, I’m glad to be here, and thankful for your project. It did positively affect the lives’ of others. At the risk of this comment sounding like a copypasta, I hope you understand my meaning well enough. I don’t think I’m alone in this experience here.


I like your coffee shop analogy... Do you have a particular client of choice for browsing? Or just your phone web browser? I usually skim the top 10 articles using a Feedly RSS, but I agree with your assessment that maybe it's worth just skipping the rest of the internet...


I found HN because I used to work on a chat app (which is mercifully dead) and there was a thread here with much outrage about one of our numerous outages ;D


Ouch! Nothing like finding a thread where people are discussing how your work isn’t meeting their expectations. :-) hope you’re doing bigger and better things.


I teach at a university in Japan. Over the past year, I taught several freshman English-as-a-foreign-language classes that I titled “Online Discussion.” I got the idea for the course after having read HN discussions for a couple of years. I taught the class live online using Zoom.

On the first day of each term, I showed the students HN and asked them to explore the site as homework; at the beginning of the next class, I asked for their comments about it. Below are some excerpts. (The students submitted their comments in writing through an online form. Most of the rest of the semester was spent with them having HN-like discussions with each other.)

“What I found interesting about Hacker News is that there are posts relating to a variety of fields, from purely technological topics to topics that are fairly easier to get at. In that way, not only is it a platform for one to openly express their thoughts, but also a platform where one could get feedback on a topic of their interest and their take on it. The fact that there are very limited comments that are inflammatory or offensive (as far as I have read) probably makes Hacker News a viable platform for such discussions.”

“I thought that Hacker News had a decent discussion that you don't see on other sites like Twitter, where lies and trolling are prevalent, but not on Hacker News. It's a great site. The ability to reply in multiple levels is also very attractive. Not only does it allow for multiple levels of replies, but it is also very easy to read and organize, making it very easy for people to understand the comments. I think it's very important to take advantage of platforms like this to have more and more discussions and to use our time in a meaningful way as we move more and more online because of the coronavirus.”

“It is interesting to see how the people discussing are respectful of each other, unlike Twitter or YouTube comments. I think I saw something close to the right way to have a discussion.”

“I found it interesting that so many anonymous people joined online discussion which was so constructive. The contents are serious, but I feel that people can post their comment very freely and frequently since it is anonymous, so I think it encourages positive exchange of each opinions.”

“It is surprising that the discussion is proceeding properly without the existence of a certain person to control the topic or lead the discussion. Most of the users seem to be good-mannered and credible because they include actual figures in their comment and cite sources.”

“It is the first time for me to see an English BBS, so it is very fresh and interesting. I think it is good that the replies are right below the comments, because in a Japanese BBS, the comments and replies are often separated.”


Interesting, did anybody comment on the lack of eye candy and image and video posts in comments? Because I think those are key elements in keeping HN nice.


I agree with you about the attractions of the text-only format, and several students mentioned that positively as well.

They also liked the lack of advertisements. I had to point out that the launch announcements and job postings that appear on the front page, while discreet, are essentially ads and presumably help pay the bills (including @dang’s well-earned salary).

The students were put off at first, as I expected they would be, by the high level of specialized knowledge that seems to be necessary to understand the posts and discussions. I tried to help by pointing them to discussions on relatively general topics that I thought they might find interesting, such as [1, 2, 3, 4]. I also told them that nobody understands, or is interested in, everything that is discussed on HN.

I turn sixty-five in a couple of weeks, which means I am nearly a half century older than my students. One of the unique strengths of HN is that it is interesting and valuable both for me at the end of my career and for young people who have not yet started theirs.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27548204

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28356141

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28436836

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29330953


I wonder if any of them made HN a permanent part of their life. Thank you for responding!


I found HN from the TechLead on youtube... while he was sane.


Growing up, I never thought I would find a career I enjoyed. Never had an answer for what I wanted to be. Very happy to be in tech and working on things that make millions of people’s lives better.


This can be true, but tech also can arguably make millions of people's lives worse.

Just like anything else. It really depends on who's implementing the tech and their intentions.

Need to care about ourselves and our intentions for "make the world a better place" a true reality.


?What is this? If it really is just a matter of who is implementing the tech and their intentions then this post is really just impugning the op apropos nothing. The reality is more complicated than the line the non tech people run to try to win political fights. The consequences are more complicated than intentions of anyone. Successful systems build around that.


We need more people working on things they believe are making the world better these days, I'm not sure what your comment is trying to accomplish


The "make the world a better place" is a jab that got popularized by the show Silicon Valley. They poked fun about how every startup claims they're making the world a better place, and it didn't matter what they actually did. A food delivery service would claim it. Some B2B SaaS would claim it.

And it's all a bunch of baloney. Unless you're solving a problem that threatens the world (climate change, disease, healthcare, hunger, poverty, homelessness, etc.), then "make the world a better place" is eye-roll worthy.


And what are our intentions?


If we go by the choices we've made as an industry our intentions are how can we make a ton of money and effectively kill more people. (The first large scale software project and literally the reason our industry was so well funded to start was how can we better guide these missiles to their targets)

Also, anecdote incoming, the largest budget I've ever had on a software project was for a "Defense" project. I'm aware that I'm a hippocrit btw and have made a ton of money from our industry and have now got to a point I am lucky enough to pick my projects to avoid questionable ones.

My point was, tech isn't trying to make the world better, we're trying to make a buck and solve interesting problems (some of which objectively make the world worse). Let's be honest with ourselves more.


If we go by the choices we've made as an industry our intentions are how can we make a ton of money and effectively get more people to stay indoors. Our nation hasn't been at war since we invented computers and television because our natural desire for conflict is pacified by video games, Netflix, and YouTube.

Also, anecdote incoming, the largest budget I've ever had on a software project was for a "FAANG" project. I'm aware that I'm a hypocrite btw and have made a ton of money from our industry and have now got to a point I am lucky enough to pick my projects to avoid questionable ones.

My point is, tech isn't trying to advance the nasty, brutish, and short struggle of human evolution, we're trying to make a buck and solve interesting problems (some of which objectively make the world worse). Let's be honest with ourselves more.


What a great post. I come from a place where there are threads along the lines of "ITT: We talk like we're on Hacker News". I too came across HN when I was young (13 or 14) but it would be nearly 10 years before I became an active user. Wonderful place. Some of the best tech related convos outside of the IRC and Discord information silos and certainly one of the best news sources.


I found it back in 2017 and I had no idea what YCombinator was (other than the funny website name) until I started as an engineer for a YC S19 startup. I was coming here daily by them but I’ve got a new found love after discovering what the actual company does (and I now know and understand the actual name and that makes it even better.)

I’m on my second company now (YC W21.) Here’s hoping to 20 more…


Thanks to the poster for reminding us of the value that HN provides by bringing everyone here together, I'm also grateful for HN and enjoy reading it and found the expertise, diversity and politeness on here fabulous and extremely valuable.

If it wasn't free, I'd pay for it! Plenty of decent hackers, and even a few painters. ;-)


Coming from a similar backgroud, I have to second this. Cheers.


Thanks HN as well. I complain a lot about it, but it's my first read in the morning. There's so much content that satisfies my curiosity.


File this under the evidence that now is, in fact, the golden age of hacker news. In three years when we are all whinging about how 'things have changed around here' consider this thread and an different one from a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26278011


People have been complaining that Hacker News is going downhill or "turning into Reddit" since the beginning. Here's a decade old comment from pg about staving off the site's decline[0], with the earliest "turning into reddit" complaint in 2009[1] and the newest (that I could find) from a month ago [2]. It's so common for new accounts to complain about it that it's specifically called out in the guidelines.

Doubtless every time, there were also people who thought they were in a "golden age" for Hacker News. People see what they want to see, and they're all subjectively correct given their individual perspectives. If you avoid certain subjects and certain threads (or certain times of day), Hacker News seems like a bastion of civility, intellect and gravitas. Elsewhere, it's a dumpster fire. Turn showdead off and follow dang's comments if you want to see the other side of the coin here, although I wouldn't recommend it.

[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403696

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=576431

[2]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30380300


Welcome! HN is definitely my internet home. Hope you find yourself in some awesome convos too.


> ...and it feels like I finally can talk to people who are just like me and write posts and post comments like THIS without being threatened.

Being threatened is never ok but dissent and different opinions are good and should be encouraged. And just to show you my point this thread comes off as a naive kid excited he's found like minded people who won't change his world view. I don't think we should be celebrating that.

HN is an advertisement product for a venture capitalist fund. None of this is being run for the benefit of humanity, or to provide a safe space for us techies to opine. It's to make a buck, which is fine ... but let's not kid ourselves about it's intent.

And I enjoy it too obviously or I wouldn't be here, but at this point i enjoy it because I get to show that not all techies share the same mind.

Also, if you feel warm and welcome, ignore me. That's the beauty of the internet, you get to pick and choose what you consume. Just don't only pick the things you agree with or that make you feel safe, that road leads to trouble.


HN is one of the first websites I open every day since years.


<3 no u


You're welcome!


It was great, but in the last couple of years the toxicity and arrogance is just unbearable and moderation doesn't help anymore. I guess it's the popularity. People behave very differently in big numbers. Silly insignificant articles are on the front page all the time.

A less toxic site is https://lobste.rs/ which reminds me the earlier days of HN, with a smaller, more thoughtful community.


I'm on HN for about 2 years now, but I spend a considerable amount of time on old posts via algolia. I've heard the claim you brought up a couple of time recently and it doens't match my experience. This is not about whether or not things are good as they are, but if they were better in the past. And my perception is, that the overall tone has gotten better over the time. I often stumble across unfriendly and cynical comments on those old threads which I feel like would be light light grey really fast these days.

But this is very subjective, I guess. From my observation, nowadays there is a bigger share of threads that aren't tech-related. Maybe this brings in a different kind of people (like myself) who lower the quality of the tech-related stuff. Just a thought...


It depends on the threads you frequent and on how early you get in. I avoid the political discussions for the most part, because these days those get toxic no matter where you are. And if you're in in the first few minutes of a conversation before the froth has a chance to settle, you'll see something different than you will a few hours in.


The nice thing about Lobsters is that there are no posts about Canadian truckers or whatever the latest controversy is. That certainly makes for less toxicity.




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