A major change I observe is that, unfortunately, a lot of political stuff finds place on the front page. In the past something that is likely to appear on the front page of the BBC would not appear here and it was mostly tech and startup stuff (barring the odd thing that would pique curiosity but that too I categorise under' tech'). Anything else was rare.

Also, over time, it seems to have become acceptable to show mild disrespect in communication - pasting LLM output as their own messages, leaving punctuation out (all lowercase messages), reddit meme like messages (this one not as often as the others).

I think some charm the place had is lost and it has become more utilitarian - or more of a hustler's place than a curious mind's place.

EDIT: Forgot another important one: clickbait headlines are more accepted now. In fact, the lack of integrity seems to be a badge of honour sometimes: "if you didn't regret the click, I don't regret baiting it", I recall someone saying here.

I say all this in comparison to earlier.

Too many cool little projects which are replied to with 'Why not use Y?' or 'Who needs this?'. It is as if projects are deemed as having no worth unless they are economically sound and improve productivity.

The biggest change to me is just how negative sentiment dominates everything. Claude feels straight out of a science fiction novel compared to 2016. Social media addiction though has seemed to wire people's expectation for negative sentiment. It seems like the masses find anything that is not negative digital wallowing, somewhat unrelatable.

I guess I grew out of Hacker News and software development just like I grew out of most of social media, and let me tell you, for a person that used to participate a lot in either, it is very hard to adjust.

People change while Hacker News is the voice of mainstream/big Tech, the kind most early adults mould themselves to, to become hireable commodities, until the inevitable middle age crisis and reevaluation of priorities in life. In extreme cases like mine, during large cultural changes like today, you just grow apart from places like these, and need to find a new home.

I do agree with you on one thing: the AI boom is unlike anything else we’ve gone through, and the effect it has on such an heterogeneous meeting point is just the canary in the mines, and a teaser of what will happen to the field. We will settle to a new normal eventually, but these are just the first few warning quakes before a massive reassessment of our entire digital society and what it means to be a computer programmer.

The AI obsession seems to be slowly dying down, thankfully. For awhile it felt like every single link was about AI, now it seems to only be 10-20%. I expect this to continue.

In general culture I think people are more impatient, cynical, and frustrated, and this shows on HN. But it’s still better than X, where everyone seems absurdly confident in their obscure ideas and viewpoints.

It feels to me like there are less long form “thoughtful” comments with a personal touch than maybe 5 years ago. If I could adjust HN’s settings, I would incentivize those types of comments and not the quick takes that get all the upvotes.

What I'm about to say isn't meant to be mean, but all you said up there? That's on you. That's all you. Keep doing the right thing with your votes and downvotes. Keep trying to come up with that great startup project and build it out and find an audience. Use AI to make you better, smarter, and stronger. Tolerate the ignorant and the different. Pfft...what does it matter anyway what we think of a goofball mouthing off about the remake of Like Water for Chocolate?

Take care of your self and find more fun stuff! If that means taking a vacation from HN, do it. I took a year off a while back and it did wonders. Also dumped most news. Even now, I'm writing Atari 800 programs for the next two days as a small retreat myself.

Yes, the world is on a little decline right now. That just means there's a chance coming to fix things, and the time to prepare for it just happens to be NOW! Be ready! If you do drop off HN, drop me a line and stay in touch!

Millenials have aged.

We dont care enough to be bleeding hearts - so there best be no political conversation, bc we don't want to care.

There is a slice of us that refuse to even like interact with AI -> bc they are afraid of it, either taking their jobs or becoming Skynet - I have no idea.

If more interacted with AI they would realize AI is - maybe we would have more startups again, more personal projects - the majority of people on this platform have access now to something that renders solo/small team projects much, much more plausible -> so, where are they?

That you think AI is such a limiting thing is exactly what I mean.

HN is not more close minded - the People here are. Slowly becoming the boomers for Gen Alpha/Beta to hate.

What was a little kickback has become grift to the tune of millions in plain sight. "It's just a donation for a pet project"

I grew up with that internet you miss. As noted, it became concentrated for various reasons related to network effect, uncontrolled M&A's, echo chamber attention traps, and now free porn that you can create, not just watch.

It's still possible to humanize this internet, in terms of private and small group-oriented inventions, and the many, many unmet human needs out there. Seniors need help. "Where are the exoseletons?" "Where are the SAFE self-driving cars?". Students need help in these rapidly changing times when Calvinists are locking kids under 18 from dangerous things like compilers and code repo's. And so many others need help that is not coming from the tech bro's, who are way more interested in life-extension and various transhuman things.

While medical research, vaccines and medical care are being savaged in favor of "supplements".

Downvoting? I was downvoted to zero for doing nothing but quoting an article linked in an OP that mentioned "double-tap" air strikes.

Techies need to care more about what they work on, and not in increasing Zuck's or Musk's or Jeff's wealth.

X users are being doxxed [0], and big tech has sold out to a griftarian government.

Bootstrap worthy things and let me/us know. Same here.

Small is beautiful.

[0] https://www.mintpressnews.com/x-users-find-their-real-names-...

It's not just you.

I've been on HN since about 2008, and the change is steep.

Since the site acquired social clout, status seekers have swarmed in vying for status, and an opinion orthodoxy has formed that's becoming increasingly intolerant.

Pity, but it's a natural progression.

Most of the content was, is, and will be on the same level of quality as the average AI posts.

> Does any build startups here anymore?

Not in this climate

>One of the things I've always liked about HN was that it's a very open minded place.

It still is. On discussions of tech, plenty of people chime in with their own expertise and argue. On discussion of world events, the issue is that conservatives have been finally outed as just intrinsically bad people, and people are less tolerant of their bullshit.

> Is it just me?

Plenty of people feel the en-shitifcation of the world today, not just the internet. The smart people all knew the system was going to collapse, we just didn't know when or how. This is just the start of the collapse. Its only going to get worse from here on.

Also, it’s the h1b’ification. That and boomers there either all in on Trump or TDS’d beyond reason. And probably people like me who have mostly given up. Ymmv