I find myself not checking my Facebook feed as often as before. Instead I check the HN feed more and more everyday. Am I alone? Between VR, AI, Cryptos, etc, I love the technologies of today's world. Very exciting time ahead. Thanks HN.
I'm a 30 yo self-taught programmer from Romania and I've found this page a couple of months ago... since then this is my point of entry to the WWW, this is really adictive! :D
Been a HN user for 6+ years and after all these years HN is still pretty much the only feed I check on a daily basis.
(not on Facebook so my example may not be very relevant)
The thing I love about the experience can be summed up as:
- no click bait headlines
- no endless "engagement", notifications, round navigation and noise (incredible quality of content curation)
- amazing community (comments are often more insightful than the source)
Basically there comes a moment when you're up to date - reading done - and can carry on with life afterwards.
Hackernews takes this claim seriously, and has opinions about it.
Delicious irony. Someone "hates" HN enough to spend all their time here and then write a send up of it every freakin week. It does not even appear to be monetized.
I stopped using Facebook years ago and the quality of my life improved notably, I would highly recommend it based on my own experience. I personally found it to be a huge waste of time, and also full of useless information that amounts to brain pollution. Do you really care what an excoworker from an old job ate for breakfast? Do you really want to know a grade school classmates political opinions? Do you really want to see vacation photos of someone you sort of once knew? How much time, energy, brain power, do you devote to any of this? Does it give you any value in your life? Does it make you feel good? etc etc etc
You might think "oh but I like it to stay in touch with people!" but eh... pick up the phone and call someone, or send them a text message. Actually communicate with the people you want to keep in touch with. Casually observing what someone is doing via internet voyeurism is not staying in touch.
I find that it's a near perfect niche for news. It's slim and dead-simple: there's one feed (two if you count new, then the subdivisions show and ask), no following or friends, direct messaging is even excluded. It was built into a niche, and it expanded to fill it perfectly.
I'm thinking that both Facebook and Twitter has lost that early adopter, frontier mindset that initially drew us to it. Reddit had it for a few years but has lost it now and HS has some of it in a niche way.
I think that there's a huge space, a huge potential for a new social network which we, early adopters, will jump in and love.
HN sounds very similar to the FFF forum in Gibson's pattern recognition novel. And I mean it in a good way. Also, if it's not on Hacker News, then it's not news.
The FFF forum, to me, was similar to the Unfiction Forums - which was very active at the time the book was released, and both dealt with mysteries and puzzles of online phenomena - with found footage (for FFF) & Alternate Reality Games (Unfiction).
ARG players knew they were playing a game, but there is also a game and excitement about finding out whether an online mystery is actually a game or not.
I think wherever there's sizable amount of devs, engineers & creators are in a group. Things get pretty meta and discussions run deep in subject and quality. Good to be on HN. May people post really good tech and exciting world happenings and create a multicultural world-view among the users.
Strange, I'm absolutely jaded on the technologies of today's world. The web and mobile phones have locked us into a shitty content consuming culture. Almost nobody is writing real novel software, they're just gluing together premade parts and managing the plumbing. I don't even blame them, the amount of effort required to just get people to look at something that doesn't open with 1 click is immense.
But shunting data in and out of sql databases and making REST APIs is not novel tech work, it's just a very fragile way of describing and maintaining policy. The tech sites of old had more interesting and novel implementations in a handful of articles than passes through HN in a week, and it wasn't stuck behind a SaaS wall either.
As for VR or AI, one is stuck in a rut of uninspired arcade shovelware and the other is being used for terrifying totalitarian purposes. Welcome to cyberpunk dystopia, population you.
My own feeling is that we're now smack dab in the middle of two tech hype cycles, and yeah - it does seem kind of boring right now to be honest.
We've probably hit and passed peak web/app/social but the horizon technologies seem still very immature, with relatively high barriers to experimentation.
I've found this is reflected in my own experience perusing HN. In the past I found something on the first page almost every single day that blew my hair back. Now I'm mostly like "Oh, some ancient civilization used scorpion venom to make birthday cakes..." or "Oh, this React library hit version 8.5.2...guess I'll go...make a CRUD app now?"
I don't think my experience says anything about HN though - this community is as good as ever. I'm probably just getting old. One thing I know for sure is that there's a ton of opportunity out there for those with a prepared mind and enthusiasm for technology.
> Almost nobody is writing real novel software, they're just gluing together premade parts and managing the plumbing.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
One man's "novel implementation" is another man's "unreadable and unmaintainable pile of hacks".
I'm not saying we should all standardize on a single set of tools, but after the fourth project you've cleaned up that spends tens of GB of RAM editing XML files, you'd probably wish "uses a database" was a business requirement for every future project too (just as an example).
[+] [-] pssst|8 years ago|reply
I'm a 30 yo self-taught programmer from Romania and I've found this page a couple of months ago... since then this is my point of entry to the WWW, this is really adictive! :D
Great job maintining this!
[+] [-] amorroxic|8 years ago|reply
The thing I love about the experience can be summed up as: - no click bait headlines - no endless "engagement", notifications, round navigation and noise (incredible quality of content curation) - amazing community (comments are often more insightful than the source)
Basically there comes a moment when you're up to date - reading done - and can carry on with life afterwards.
[+] [-] lproven|8 years ago|reply
http://n-gate.com/
[+] [-] Mz|8 years ago|reply
Delicious irony. Someone "hates" HN enough to spend all their time here and then write a send up of it every freakin week. It does not even appear to be monetized.
[+] [-] clairity|8 years ago|reply
but seriously, hn is great as a daily news source. one person's echo chamber is another person's wisdom of the crowds. =)
[+] [-] ripexz|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sergiotapia|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cholantesh|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notadoc|8 years ago|reply
You might think "oh but I like it to stay in touch with people!" but eh... pick up the phone and call someone, or send them a text message. Actually communicate with the people you want to keep in touch with. Casually observing what someone is doing via internet voyeurism is not staying in touch.
[+] [-] marsRoverDev|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kk_cz|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] owebmaster|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arximboldi|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matthberg|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rahimnathwani|8 years ago|reply
If you still use an RSS reader, you can follow a specific user's comments:
https://hn.algolia.com/userfeed/rahimnathwani
[+] [-] COil|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nicky0|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chippy|8 years ago|reply
I think that there's a huge space, a huge potential for a new social network which we, early adopters, will jump in and love.
[+] [-] slang800|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TurboHaskal|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thatwebdude|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] luord|8 years ago|reply
I use Facebook to keep up with friends and family. I use HN, among others, to keep up with technology.
I see no reason for dropping one or the other, they don't even intersect for me.
[+] [-] parski|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zabana|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chippy|8 years ago|reply
ARG players knew they were playing a game, but there is also a game and excitement about finding out whether an online mystery is actually a game or not.
[+] [-] manoj_venkat92|8 years ago|reply
Like they say in Canada : "Peace Ooooot"
[+] [-] dirtylowprofile|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Inconel|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] companyhen|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tnone|8 years ago|reply
But shunting data in and out of sql databases and making REST APIs is not novel tech work, it's just a very fragile way of describing and maintaining policy. The tech sites of old had more interesting and novel implementations in a handful of articles than passes through HN in a week, and it wasn't stuck behind a SaaS wall either.
As for VR or AI, one is stuck in a rut of uninspired arcade shovelware and the other is being used for terrifying totalitarian purposes. Welcome to cyberpunk dystopia, population you.
[+] [-] increment_i|8 years ago|reply
We've probably hit and passed peak web/app/social but the horizon technologies seem still very immature, with relatively high barriers to experimentation.
I've found this is reflected in my own experience perusing HN. In the past I found something on the first page almost every single day that blew my hair back. Now I'm mostly like "Oh, some ancient civilization used scorpion venom to make birthday cakes..." or "Oh, this React library hit version 8.5.2...guess I'll go...make a CRUD app now?"
I don't think my experience says anything about HN though - this community is as good as ever. I'm probably just getting old. One thing I know for sure is that there's a ton of opportunity out there for those with a prepared mind and enthusiasm for technology.
[+] [-] striking|8 years ago|reply
You say that like it's a bad thing.
One man's "novel implementation" is another man's "unreadable and unmaintainable pile of hacks".
I'm not saying we should all standardize on a single set of tools, but after the fourth project you've cleaned up that spends tens of GB of RAM editing XML files, you'd probably wish "uses a database" was a business requirement for every future project too (just as an example).
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] danielharrison|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chinmayv|8 years ago|reply