> These days all you'll find are rehashed to death AI talking points but even a year ago, things were far better. What happened?
I hate to state the obvious but AI and bots happened, first slowly and then all at once (tm). Plus the usual conflicts of interest which are now the main driving force, this site is no exception.
Our industry (particularly SV) is extremely fad-driven, and HN naturally reflects that. It's always been the case that whatever the current hotness is tends to dominate the posts that appear here. It does make it suck if you don't share an interest in whatever the current thing happens to be, but the industry, and HN, will eventually move on to the next Hot Thing.
Last year wasn't it all about X and Twitter? I would say 2 years ago :D
I guess there's much more public now :shrug:
Old traditions leave place to new ones.
The thing is that I don't really stand by that article and didn't really stand by it two years later because things really changed. When I wrote that there had been an Apple conference that I thought was particularly boring, today the Apple obsession is tamed and Apple news interests me more (and Apple fanboys turned from being uncritical to talking like one of those "Why X Sucks" videos that are big on Youtube, where X could be a fast food chain, video game studio, ...)
Looking at the list of hosts there I note that people still post articles from The New York Times despite them hardly ever frontpaging. I think phys.org (ScienceX) wasn't a thing back then, there was a time I thought I was the main booster (like I am for https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=coindesk.com) but it's a big source that many people post from and others complain about. (YOShInOn and I short circuit it and post the original paper if it is open access as much as we can)
BTW, I count four articles about AI on the front page right now, it's not like it is totally overrun.
> These days all you'll find are rehashed to death AI talking points but even a year ago, things were far better. What happened?
I hate to state the obvious but AI and bots happened, first slowly and then all at once (tm). Plus the usual conflicts of interest which are now the main driving force, this site is no exception.
10 years ago people were talking about how HN used to be more interesting.
Our industry (particularly SV) is extremely fad-driven, and HN naturally reflects that. It's always been the case that whatever the current hotness is tends to dominate the posts that appear here. It does make it suck if you don't share an interest in whatever the current thing happens to be, but the industry, and HN, will eventually move on to the next Hot Thing.
Last year wasn't it all about X and Twitter? I would say 2 years ago :D I guess there's much more public now :shrug: Old traditions leave place to new ones.
I thought my interests changed or I got more busy
And hence checked hn less
But maybe it’s just less interesting indeed
I was there long ago
https://ontology2.com/essays/HackerNewsForHackers/
The thing is that I don't really stand by that article and didn't really stand by it two years later because things really changed. When I wrote that there had been an Apple conference that I thought was particularly boring, today the Apple obsession is tamed and Apple news interests me more (and Apple fanboys turned from being uncritical to talking like one of those "Why X Sucks" videos that are big on Youtube, where X could be a fast food chain, video game studio, ...)
Looking at the list of hosts there I note that people still post articles from The New York Times despite them hardly ever frontpaging. I think phys.org (ScienceX) wasn't a thing back then, there was a time I thought I was the main booster (like I am for https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=coindesk.com) but it's a big source that many people post from and others complain about. (YOShInOn and I short circuit it and post the original paper if it is open access as much as we can)
BTW, I count four articles about AI on the front page right now, it's not like it is totally overrun.
Maybe you just harbor a level of dislike for AI that makes discussion of relevant tech news unpalatable to you.
I don't know I dislike it, maybe numb to it after the years of hype. I was an early adopter like many of us so that may be a factor.
Someone has the actual stats but it feels like there are 3 big categories:
Tech misused by the newly anointed US oligarchy - flagged
Self-promotional spam - flagged
Bland AI stuff - not flagged
Result - bland AI HN.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44484996
from Data on AI-related Show HN posts - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44463249 - July 2025
But how do I search for "awful things the oligarchy does"?
https://news.ycombinator.com/active
https://github.com/vitoplantamura/HackerNewsRemovals
(llms are likely your friend for classification, emit output somewhere outside of the control of the forum)
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