HN frontpage feels boring now?

Question

Browsing the front page feels homogeneous these days.It seems like what gets voted to the top these days are no longer "things people find interesting" but are all either boring "big industry news", or common-denominator topics that people have contentious opinions about rather than any real novelty.Does anyone else feel similarly that there are hardly any interesting or different or quirky topics that gets voted up these days?

MrVandemar · Accepted Answer

I find the preponderance of AI topics pretty dull myself. Doesn't interest me. Tell me about markup languages, weird science, fun games, interesting presentations, old programming languages, new programming languages, accessibility ...And there's stories where the first comment is "reads like it's written by AI", it will make me far less likely to read the actual article, because I find AI writing somewhat nauseating.

luxpir · Answer

Worth discussing.

krapp · Answer

The thing is - people here find industry news and contentious topics (and AI) interesting. A lot of people here only find that interesting and would vehemently oppose anything else as "off-topic." I guess you could check the second-chance pool (https://news.ycombinator.com/pool) for decent stories, IDK.

gdulli · Answer

The values are not what they once were. Curiosity and creation have given way to summarization and generation.

broknbottle · Answer

agreed. I previously spent like the last 15+ years checking hacker news every morning at the start of the day but within last year I've found the content to be less interesting and hacker news has lost its stickiness.

rramadass · Answer

&ldquo;Your scorn for mediocrity blinds you to its vast primitive power. You stand in the glare of your own brilliance, unable to see into the dim corners of the room, to dilate your eyes and see the potential dangers of the mass, the wad of humanity. Even as I tell you this, dear student, you cannot quite believe that lesser men, in whatever numbers, can really defeat you. But we are in the age of the mediocre man. He is dull, colorless, boring &mdash; but inevitably victorious. The amoeba outlives the tiger because it divides and continues in its immortal monotony. The masses are the final tyrants. See how, in the arts, Kabuki wanes and withers while popular novels of violence and mindless action swamp the mind of the mass reader. And even in that timid genre, no author dares to produce a genuinely superior man as his hero, for in his rage of shame the mass man will send his yojimbo, the critic, to defend him. The roar of the plodders is inarticulate, but deafening. They have no brain, but they have a thousand arms to grasp and clutch at you, drag you down.&rdquo;― Trevanian, Shibumi

schmookeeg · Answer

I share your take, but I think from the other side of the coin -- I am frequently finding interesting topics [flagged] by the time I click through, and it's mildly infuriating.