Since it seems like 80% of HN nowadays is focussed on the AI industry, I’m on the search for a good tech forum that focuses on the rest. Can you post your favourite non-AI-obsessed forum?
Asking to have a tech forum in 2026 that doesn’t discuss AI is about as much of a Luddite as asking about having tech forum anytime in the past 25 years that doesn’t discuss the internet or the 15 that doesn’t discuss mobile.
Absolutely everything in tech is touched by AI/ML in 2026 except micro controllers/embedded systems
On a personal note, I lead cloud + app dev implementations for a consulting company. I’ve had 5 projects since the beginning of last year and they have all involved Amazon hosted LLMs in some form or fashion.
Every single project I’ve been brought in with at pre sales has also involved Gen AI and/or traditional ML.
There are plenty of tech forums that don't discuss AI. I think your confusion might be the result of you equating tech with "writing code for employers."
By the way, have you seriously never written[1] so much as a single backup script to back up a personal system? You only use GUI backup software?
Touching on a subject doesn't make something directly topical.
Makefiles touch on C programming; they are not topical in a C language forum.
Most AI discussion as a tangent to another topic is utterly unproductive, uninteresting, repetitive and off-topic. The same half a dozen points are rehashed. Most of the commentary is someone's subjective experience which nobody else can exactly replicate.
Almost everything in tech runs on switching power supplies. That doesn't mean tech forums on all subjects should tolerate intruders incessantly blathering about power supplies.
Social media has made it normal to have closed social circles. You like a couple posts by Karpathy and LeCun and your feed is now full of AI. Or you like a post by the anti-AI folks and your feed is now on how useless or harmful it is.
With HN, we all see the same news. But now it's far to the extreme of either party.
HN is often around the early majority of the Innovation Adoption curve. I was actually going to ask why Clawdbot wasn't even mentioned on HN when it had been everywhere else... but the news did hit the front page a few days later. There's a few killer updates from the AI coding groups which only get 0-2 upvotes and disappear.
HN is not the place to go to be up to date on AI, it's where you go to see the news that has hit the mainstream. Opus 4.6 was "leaked" on media and hyped as if it were Claude 5 or something. By the time the news was actually out, people had formed their opinions.
Blockchain was useless and in 5.5 years of working in cloud consulting - first at AWS and now at a 3rd party firm, I never once heard a serious business ask - “how can we make or save money using the blockchain”.
I’m more interested in forums that attract a crowd much more measured and skeptical about AI, though - I know there are a lot of you here at HN (like me)
Only about 20% of front-page links are related to AI. I think it's impossible to have a productive discussion on the tech industry nowadays without AI in context.
On the contrary, I don't think productive discussions (or even interesting ones) can be had about AI. We've seen what it has to offer (not much), now we are just waiting for the hype bubble to burst like it did for blockchain and so many other things before.
Try lobsters and probably Reddit which have a hard stance against AI.
You're right in HN heading down the path in favouring slop, constant posts and startups about AI with now 'influencers' (simonw in particular) aggressively posting and shilling AI.
With the moderators knowing that these 'influencers' and their kind violate the HN guidelines every day by purposefully linking back to their site for farming backlinks.
For most reddit posts you can generate some rage bait against an llm using an llm, this way you cut the middle man out. Most subreddits eat that up without a second thought.
Lobste.rs has a hard stance against AI? This can't be true. I browse the front page every so often & there seems to be a fair amount of overlap between it and HN. At least for the upvoted articles.
Honestly, you might want to step outside tech altogether. Join a local civic or neighborhood organization or volunteer with a nonprofit. There was a nice thread last year about libraries.
Channeling Steve Blank, get out of the building! You’ll run into real problems faced by real people who often have limited exposure to both AI and tech, but who can still benefit enormously. Listening and engaging is always a good first step before jumping in to suggestions.
In this space, needs are far more data and visualization driven, which are not strictly AI related. It may also be both a useful and humbling antidote to hype cycles.
If you are feeling overwhelmed with slop posts about ai, camp on the new page and upvote any halfway decent story about something else. Many of us would thank you if they knew.
This is roughly what I've been doing. I consider it a duty: Occasionally (once or more a day) review "new". Flag any spam articles, or generic LLM hype articles; update science or non-LLM-focused technology ones.
I even upvote AI or LLM-centered articles if they're not centered on "How agents and vibe coding have/haven't/will/will not changed everything about coding" - it's these that have grown intolerable in the past few weeks.
raw_anon_1111|23 days ago
Absolutely everything in tech is touched by AI/ML in 2026 except micro controllers/embedded systems
On another note - YC 25 batch
https://www.extruct.ai/data-room/ycombinator-companies-s25/
YC 24 batch
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Uy2aWoeRZopMIaXXxY2E...
On a personal note, I lead cloud + app dev implementations for a consulting company. I’ve had 5 projects since the beginning of last year and they have all involved Amazon hosted LLMs in some form or fashion.
Every single project I’ve been brought in with at pre sales has also involved Gen AI and/or traditional ML.
subsection1h|23 days ago
By the way, have you seriously never written[1] so much as a single backup script to back up a personal system? You only use GUI backup software?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46634535#:~:text=As%20f...
add-sub-mul-div|23 days ago
kazinator|20 days ago
Makefiles touch on C programming; they are not topical in a C language forum.
Most AI discussion as a tangent to another topic is utterly unproductive, uninteresting, repetitive and off-topic. The same half a dozen points are rehashed. Most of the commentary is someone's subjective experience which nobody else can exactly replicate.
Almost everything in tech runs on switching power supplies. That doesn't mean tech forums on all subjects should tolerate intruders incessantly blathering about power supplies.
stephenr|22 days ago
Cargo cultists are going to cargo cult.
muzani|23 days ago
Social media has made it normal to have closed social circles. You like a couple posts by Karpathy and LeCun and your feed is now full of AI. Or you like a post by the anti-AI folks and your feed is now on how useless or harmful it is.
With HN, we all see the same news. But now it's far to the extreme of either party.
HN is often around the early majority of the Innovation Adoption curve. I was actually going to ask why Clawdbot wasn't even mentioned on HN when it had been everywhere else... but the news did hit the front page a few days later. There's a few killer updates from the AI coding groups which only get 0-2 upvotes and disappear.
HN is not the place to go to be up to date on AI, it's where you go to see the news that has hit the mainstream. Opus 4.6 was "leaked" on media and hyped as if it were Claude 5 or something. By the time the news was actually out, people had formed their opinions.
ex-aws-dude|23 days ago
When's the last time you saw blockchain on the front page?
raw_anon_1111|23 days ago
kirubakaran|23 days ago
https://histre.com/hn/?tags=+all-ai
(Dis: it's mine, but it's free)
nanocat|23 days ago
I’m more interested in forums that attract a crowd much more measured and skeptical about AI, though - I know there are a lot of you here at HN (like me)
atleastoptimal|24 days ago
krapp|24 days ago
If people don't like AI related content then I encourage them to treat those posts the way they do politics.
bigstrat2003|23 days ago
gus_massa|23 days ago
lucenet|24 days ago
reductum|17 days ago
kgraves|24 days ago
You're right in HN heading down the path in favouring slop, constant posts and startups about AI with now 'influencers' (simonw in particular) aggressively posting and shilling AI.
With the moderators knowing that these 'influencers' and their kind violate the HN guidelines every day by purposefully linking back to their site for farming backlinks.
It might as well be called AI news.
isbvhodnvemrwvn|20 days ago
csomar|23 days ago
stuxnet79|23 days ago
jryan49|20 days ago
nextos|21 days ago
waldopat|20 days ago
Channeling Steve Blank, get out of the building! You’ll run into real problems faced by real people who often have limited exposure to both AI and tech, but who can still benefit enormously. Listening and engaging is always a good first step before jumping in to suggestions.
In this space, needs are far more data and visualization driven, which are not strictly AI related. It may also be both a useful and humbling antidote to hype cycles.
bjourne|20 days ago
PaulHoule|24 days ago
the__alchemist|22 days ago
I even upvote AI or LLM-centered articles if they're not centered on "How agents and vibe coding have/haven't/will/will not changed everything about coding" - it's these that have grown intolerable in the past few weeks.
aebtebeten|23 days ago
otreblatercero|21 days ago
mmphosis|23 days ago
sepulchreroot|23 days ago