As some others have mentioned, the /new page is a better source for the quirkier stuff. I'd recommend checking out the HN blogs newsletter, which rounds up a lot of those types of things since they're items that were posted to personal blogs: https://hnblogs.substack.com
I’ve switched to /new rather than front page, because the good hacker stuff is being lost in all the boring manager stuff that has a stranglehold on the front page. But part of what you’re seeing is that the HN front page resembles HBR rather uncomfortably these days: endless posts about the latest developments in management theory and practices, except about AI minions instead of human ones. Yawn. I’d rather scroll through the raw feed where I can find amazing things like the plasma antenna from this morning :D
We wanted to do things like this for ages but never had time. Justin at YC has been nailing it (I'm biased, of course) and a bunch of us have been enjoying nominating candidates for this treatment - a bit like HN's own second-chance pool (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308), but through this different channel.
Anyone who wants to send a nomination, please do! hn@ycombinator.com is best.
I'm really loving the little descriptions with pics included. Is there any chance we might be able to get an rss feed for these posts? I know there was mention of maybe getting on mastodon too but in this case mastodons lack of pics in their rss feeds would reduce the charm a little.
I feel that. Not that I was around for this, but look back to the demo scene. You used to be able to show off a cool animation that you made using a seldom-used feature on a Commodore 64, or console, and that was a really cool thing to look at.
Now it's people talking about how they orchestrated a bunch of agents. Its not fun.
I think there are real needs that go unaddressed, while people create solutions to non-needs, because they are "cool and exciting" even if they address no other need than being "cool and exciting" (which skyrockets your planned IPO) until the market decides that it solves nothing else, and creates even bigger problems, especially environmental.
Don't despair! These perceptions usually have to do with the stage of people's relationship with HN. The same patterns have repeated many times over the years
It tends to cycle, just like many relationships. The flush of novelty is exciting; it contrasts positively with what's available elsewhere. Then you notice the annoying things, then the dismaying ones. Eventually that too becomes background, which other positive-again things can stand out from. At some point you realize it has all been there all along, if in fluctuating proportions.
It's affected by macro trends (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...) and the swings going on in the world at large. It's affected by what's going on in a person's own life. Perhaps most of all, it's affected by the impact of the most recent things you happened to see that made an impression. There is a strong component of randomness in the latter.
People in an 'up' cycle with HN don't tend to make posts about it, so posts like this—through no fault of any one poster—are dominated by the 'down' cycle. There is a long tradition of these, going back about as far as HN itself. It produces a paradoxical "things have always been getting worse" sensation if you zoom back far enough.
Even if OPs views are not shared by everyone, HN has changed significantly from when I first started using it circa 2009.
Back then, from my memory, it was far more focused on solo entrepreneurs bootstrapping their own tech startups, blogs and tutorials on new/interesting tech, and some discussion around starting/running businesses.
Today HN is basically just a tech news site, focused largely on new AI announcements.
I don't really blame HN for this, but the thing I personally loved about this site is basically gone. The world has moved on though... I joined HN back when a dude in his bedroom with some tech and business skills could potentially build the next Facebook. This kind of thing doesn't really happen anymore.
I also think the commenters here have changed. It feels less tolerant than I remember it. I notice that downvotes are now commonly handed out to people who share differences of opinion. This was something HN was very intolerant of in the past.
I'm still here though. At the end of the day HN is still more interesting and less toxic than most communities online.
My problem isn't really filtering out the AI (there's plenty of options for that) is just the void left by people posting and working on AI things, writing about how AI is great, stupid, useful, useless.
I know it's the nature of HN to be centered (nay, fixated) on the latest things, but I think I'm the wake of so much AI content, the people who would have otherwise done something else are doing AI things or posting elsewhere
As others have pointed out there are still fun things, but I feel like there are quantifiably fewer things that I enjoy on here, every week.
I used to love scrolling hn first thing in the morning and now I rarely do
Broadly speaking, all the progressives and creatives have left HN.
It began several years ago. Now, this place is filled with a certain type of person...
There are many reasons for it but part of it is that the moderation team actively curtails all discussion of progressive or political topics even as the world tilts into chaos and strife due to technological issues that are relevant to this community and its parent company.
They claim it is in service of maintaining a conflict-free community and that they are "apolitical" but that is a deception, a straight up lie - censorship of speech is INTRINSICALLY political and the class whom it benefits the most is the class in power. That means the censorship policy here is literally authoritarianism in action. Just dressed up as innocent old "moderation policy". It's a lie. And anyone and everyone who has ever spoken out against Trump, Sam Altman, etc, on this site finds out very quickly that they are subject to thought policing. Either explicitly with moderation actions or implicitly with the threat of a ban -- or, more insidious, the shadow ban. Which the mods here are known to use. (You are silenced without knowing it.)
So, naturally, the only kind of personality who would condone or enjoy such authoritarian suppression of speech which benefits the rich and stifles all opposition to their will would be -- you guessed it -- people who are themselves uncritical authoritarians. The "top down authority" model makes sense to them.
These people may not recognize themselves by that label. Nevertheless it is a psychological type and it has to do with the structure of the parent-child relationship. It is still prevalent in America, especially in red states (though it isn't limited to red states -- other cohorts might be religious families, families of european descent, families with old money or strong patriarchal figures...) where the parent is the "boss" and the child must conform to what is expected.
Those people internalize a "whatever the boss says is right and who am I to fight it" attitude.
Those are the ones who are left behind when all the sensible adults recognize that the speech here is cooled, stifled, or outright silenced in service of the VC's who are actively burning the world to the ground.
As some others have mentioned, the /new page is a better source for the quirkier stuff. I'd recommend checking out the HN blogs newsletter, which rounds up a lot of those types of things since they're items that were posted to personal blogs: https://hnblogs.substack.com
I’ve switched to /new rather than front page, because the good hacker stuff is being lost in all the boring manager stuff that has a stranglehold on the front page. But part of what you’re seeing is that the HN front page resembles HBR rather uncomfortably these days: endless posts about the latest developments in management theory and practices, except about AI minions instead of human ones. Yawn. I’d rather scroll through the raw feed where I can find amazing things like the plasma antenna from this morning :D
Maybe this will cheer you up? Selected fun things in HN's intended spirit:
https://x.com/hackernews
We wanted to do things like this for ages but never had time. Justin at YC has been nailing it (I'm biased, of course) and a bunch of us have been enjoying nominating candidates for this treatment - a bit like HN's own second-chance pool (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308), but through this different channel.
Anyone who wants to send a nomination, please do! hn@ycombinator.com is best.
I'm really loving the little descriptions with pics included. Is there any chance we might be able to get an rss feed for these posts? I know there was mention of maybe getting on mastodon too but in this case mastodons lack of pics in their rss feeds would reduce the charm a little.
This is delightful.
Would you consider including a mastodon feed for this for those of us who don't habitually include the X formerly known as Twitter in our diet?
Absolutely! or rather, I will pass the request on to the people who are actually doing the work, and hope they will look kindly on it :)
I don't understand mastoverse mechanics, so perhaps someone could suggest the most HN-friendly way to go about it?
Cross posting to Bluesky too would be cool, and reach even more people. There are many ways to post, but lots of people use https://typefully.com
I feel that. Not that I was around for this, but look back to the demo scene. You used to be able to show off a cool animation that you made using a seldom-used feature on a Commodore 64, or console, and that was a really cool thing to look at.
Now it's people talking about how they orchestrated a bunch of agents. Its not fun.
I think there are real needs that go unaddressed, while people create solutions to non-needs, because they are "cool and exciting" even if they address no other need than being "cool and exciting" (which skyrockets your planned IPO) until the market decides that it solves nothing else, and creates even bigger problems, especially environmental.
Those real needs won't go away. Until addressed.
What are they? Find out add address them.
> Where's the fun stuff? Where's the joy?
It's there, you just have to look harder.
Like this story about Vecos, which fits your definition of "fun stuff", was posted earlier today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49984984
Thanks for this! I put it in the SCP (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308).
That’s really sad to hear, coming from someone who just joined hn cuz I wanted something different
Don't despair! These perceptions usually have to do with the stage of people's relationship with HN. The same patterns have repeated many times over the years
It tends to cycle, just like many relationships. The flush of novelty is exciting; it contrasts positively with what's available elsewhere. Then you notice the annoying things, then the dismaying ones. Eventually that too becomes background, which other positive-again things can stand out from. At some point you realize it has all been there all along, if in fluctuating proportions.
It's affected by macro trends (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...) and the swings going on in the world at large. It's affected by what's going on in a person's own life. Perhaps most of all, it's affected by the impact of the most recent things you happened to see that made an impression. There is a strong component of randomness in the latter.
People in an 'up' cycle with HN don't tend to make posts about it, so posts like this—through no fault of any one poster—are dominated by the 'down' cycle. There is a long tradition of these, going back about as far as HN itself. It produces a paradoxical "things have always been getting worse" sensation if you zoom back far enough.
Even if OPs views are not shared by everyone, HN has changed significantly from when I first started using it circa 2009.
Back then, from my memory, it was far more focused on solo entrepreneurs bootstrapping their own tech startups, blogs and tutorials on new/interesting tech, and some discussion around starting/running businesses.
Today HN is basically just a tech news site, focused largely on new AI announcements.
I don't really blame HN for this, but the thing I personally loved about this site is basically gone. The world has moved on though... I joined HN back when a dude in his bedroom with some tech and business skills could potentially build the next Facebook. This kind of thing doesn't really happen anymore.
I also think the commenters here have changed. It feels less tolerant than I remember it. I notice that downvotes are now commonly handed out to people who share differences of opinion. This was something HN was very intolerant of in the past.
I'm still here though. At the end of the day HN is still more interesting and less toxic than most communities online.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49660482
There’s this post from a few weeks ago, if you just wanna filter out all the AI content
My problem isn't really filtering out the AI (there's plenty of options for that) is just the void left by people posting and working on AI things, writing about how AI is great, stupid, useful, useless.
I know it's the nature of HN to be centered (nay, fixated) on the latest things, but I think I'm the wake of so much AI content, the people who would have otherwise done something else are doing AI things or posting elsewhere
As others have pointed out there are still fun things, but I feel like there are quantifiably fewer things that I enjoy on here, every week.
I used to love scrolling hn first thing in the morning and now I rarely do
Get your T levels checked.
We are spoiled
Broadly speaking, all the progressives and creatives have left HN.
It began several years ago. Now, this place is filled with a certain type of person...
There are many reasons for it but part of it is that the moderation team actively curtails all discussion of progressive or political topics even as the world tilts into chaos and strife due to technological issues that are relevant to this community and its parent company.
They claim it is in service of maintaining a conflict-free community and that they are "apolitical" but that is a deception, a straight up lie - censorship of speech is INTRINSICALLY political and the class whom it benefits the most is the class in power. That means the censorship policy here is literally authoritarianism in action. Just dressed up as innocent old "moderation policy". It's a lie. And anyone and everyone who has ever spoken out against Trump, Sam Altman, etc, on this site finds out very quickly that they are subject to thought policing. Either explicitly with moderation actions or implicitly with the threat of a ban -- or, more insidious, the shadow ban. Which the mods here are known to use. (You are silenced without knowing it.)
So, naturally, the only kind of personality who would condone or enjoy such authoritarian suppression of speech which benefits the rich and stifles all opposition to their will would be -- you guessed it -- people who are themselves uncritical authoritarians. The "top down authority" model makes sense to them.
These people may not recognize themselves by that label. Nevertheless it is a psychological type and it has to do with the structure of the parent-child relationship. It is still prevalent in America, especially in red states (though it isn't limited to red states -- other cohorts might be religious families, families of european descent, families with old money or strong patriarchal figures...) where the parent is the "boss" and the child must conform to what is expected.
Those people internalize a "whatever the boss says is right and who am I to fight it" attitude.
Those are the ones who are left behind when all the sensible adults recognize that the speech here is cooled, stifled, or outright silenced in service of the VC's who are actively burning the world to the ground.
Apparently, new gamedev meta is to not show gameplay early since it can be stolen via AI and released before you do.