5 ms·

Reading about tech has become gradually less and less fun for me over the past 16 years. Does anyone remember the awe that was felt the first time we encounter

Reading about tech has become gradually less and less fun for me over the past 16 years. Does anyone remember the awe that was felt the first time we encountered an iPhone. Or an iPad? I remember those days I would read tech news and sites like Ars Technica and comments were sometimes snarky and indignant but generally people were enthusiastic about reading tech because it offered glimpses into more technically advanced futures. I wasn't browsing HN back then but I imaging the same thing was true of HN in the late 2000's and early 2010's. Now tech sites like Ars Technica consistently have comment sections filled with immense negativity cynicism indigation and just plain old boiling rage. I avoid those comment sections now because reading such things negatively affects my mood and certainly isn't fun. And over the past few years HN has gradually become more negative and nasty. All this sucks. This isn't why I became interested in tech. This isn't why I used to spend time reading about technology and science.

Groxx 22d ago
It kinda started turning as people realized that a huge amount of the biggest people pushing tech are rabidly anti-human, incredibly racist and usually spouting nazi quotes every chance they get, and are out to exploit as many people as possible just because they can. The negativity is rather well-earned at this point. I do still enjoy tech, but the ecosystem is no longer as infused (by ratio) with nerds doing cool things.
- redsocksfan45 22d ago
  [dead]
- cj 22d ago
  [flagged]
  - dan_ggggg 22d ago
    [dead]
onion2k 22d ago
All this sucks. This isn't why I became interested in tech. This isn't why I used to spend time reading about technology and science. You're 16 years older now. You will have changed. HN has too, but looking back at how great it all was without also realising that your point of view is different means you're missing a big part of why it feels worse now. I've been here a long time too so I'm not going to claim I don't see the same thing, but I imagine someone who signed up 3 months ago won't have the same opinion as us old timers.
- brazukadev 22d ago
  > but I imagine someone who signed up 3 months ago won't have the same opinion as us old timers. that's for sure but if I got to know HN 3 months ago I would not be an active user. The content and discussions here are still interesting but the demographics that enjoy it changed over time and I (and OP) might not be the kind of people that would get interested anymore. There is no "hacker" in HN anymore, unless we count the hustlers trying to cheat their way to success. Talking about that, there are so much psyops going on in so many threads that we, the old hackers, are the ones getting hacked.
VCFundedGenYer 22d ago
I still maintain the notion that tech was most exciting/peaked around 2010. Macs were awesome (and the Intel transition was complete at full strength), things were fast, OSes weren't bloated, and we didn't have flavor-of-the-month fads like cloud, crypto, NFTs, or AI.
- hylaride 22d ago
  I can't recall who said it, but "The biggest problem with golden ages is that you never realize you're in one until it's over". There were several golden ages of tech for most people who went through them: - the pre-internet run-up of personal computing (~1975-1995) - the early internet (~ 1990-1998) - the big post-dot com crash tech boom (~ 2003-2020, but more of a golden age for employees) However, almost all golden ages (including non-tech ones) end for the same reason (the ranges above I'm excluding the last phase). Early adopters (tech enthusiasts), early implementations that focus on them, then mass market appeal that "dumbs it down", then the financialization as accountants and grifters start showing up. Same thing happened to Hollywood, the music industry, etc. We're now squarely in the last phase of the post-dotcom boom. (I'll also note that the timeframes are arguable - I'm not going to get into quibbles over minutiae)
Legend2440 22d ago
>Does anyone remember the awe that was felt the first time we encountered an iPhone. Or an iPad? Yes, and when I first saw LLMs and image generators I experienced a similar feeling of awe. We haven't had anything like this in decades. It is unfortunate that many people are negative and nasty about it. Local politicians are getting shot at over datacenter projects. We have truly lost the plot. I used to think that people had learned their lesson that automation was a force for good, and we had gotten past the Luddite days of smashing looms. But it seems that is not the case, people are just as short-sighted as ever.
- thephyber 22d ago
  Ignorance. Ignorance of the facts on the ground and the politics of the moment. Do you honestly believe that the ledger for automation has zero items in the "liabilities" column? Do you think that 100% of people whose job is displaced find another job in a reasonable amount of time and on the same order or pay / status? Do you believe that neighbors of recently built data centers have nothing to complain about? The truth is that "data center politics" is happening in the context of post-NAFTA offshoring of lots of jobs/industry, post-manufacturing migration to the South, post-hollowing of labor unions, and in the context of Trump's War on Immigration (where AI companies have likened their product to "infinite AI immigrants"). Even the White House's Ratepayer Protection Pledge (a laudable goal) event was undermined by POTUS's speech at the event. Instead of even pretending to listen to the people who are hesitant about first and second order effects of data center buildouts, he encouraged developers to push the projects through ASAP and ignore all of the naysayers. It's clear this entire project is to maximize commercial advancement, not benefit people or give voice to voters/constituents. And in a moment where we are told we have to do this ASAP because "we are in a race with China" but nobody can explain the race. It's not for AGI because China doesn't expect it to yield AGI. Perhaps Zuckerberg does, but he was wrong about crypto, then Metaverse, then open weights models training (before he returned to open weights). The US seems to be using LLMs wrong as a glorified DEI detector (DOGE using LLMs to enforce their political homodoxy) and to identify schools in Iran to bomb + double tap. China has reasonable regulations on LLMs to protect their society whereas our "regulations" seem to be the Amazon CEO texting David Sachs on a Friday evening to warn about cybersecurity in a misunderstanding between what Mythos (prerelease for select privileged users) and Fable (general release with lots of moderation controls) and the nature of the cybersecurity vulnerabilities found (they were able to be replicated with other non-Claude models). We are being outwitted by ourselves. The problem isn't the people anxious about data centers or AI. It's the clueless leaders who don't bother to anticipate the obvious outcomes of their decisions and execute a plan to mitigate it. And you desire "feeling awe" so much that you don't want to recognize that politics means not everybody is going to succumb to the same feeling of awe, and that's okay.

Groxx 22d ago

It kinda started turning as people realized that a huge amount of the biggest people pushing tech are rabidly anti-human, incredibly racist and usually spouting nazi quotes every chance they get, and are out to exploit as many people as possible just because they can. The negativity is rather well-earned at this point. I do still enjoy tech, but the ecosystem is no longer as infused (by ratio) with nerds doing cool things.

redsocksfan45 22d ago
[dead]
cj 22d ago
[flagged]
- dan_ggggg 22d ago
  [dead]

onion2k 22d ago

All this sucks. This isn't why I became interested in tech. This isn't why I used to spend time reading about technology and science. You're 16 years older now. You will have changed. HN has too, but looking back at how great it all was without also realising that your point of view is different means you're missing a big part of why it feels worse now. I've been here a long time too so I'm not going to claim I don't see the same thing, but I imagine someone who signed up 3 months ago won't have the same opinion as us old timers.

brazukadev 22d ago
> but I imagine someone who signed up 3 months ago won't have the same opinion as us old timers. that's for sure but if I got to know HN 3 months ago I would not be an active user. The content and discussions here are still interesting but the demographics that enjoy it changed over time and I (and OP) might not be the kind of people that would get interested anymore. There is no "hacker" in HN anymore, unless we count the hustlers trying to cheat their way to success. Talking about that, there are so much psyops going on in so many threads that we, the old hackers, are the ones getting hacked.

VCFundedGenYer 22d ago

I still maintain the notion that tech was most exciting/peaked around 2010. Macs were awesome (and the Intel transition was complete at full strength), things were fast, OSes weren't bloated, and we didn't have flavor-of-the-month fads like cloud, crypto, NFTs, or AI.

hylaride 22d ago
I can't recall who said it, but "The biggest problem with golden ages is that you never realize you're in one until it's over". There were several golden ages of tech for most people who went through them: - the pre-internet run-up of personal computing (~1975-1995) - the early internet (~ 1990-1998) - the big post-dot com crash tech boom (~ 2003-2020, but more of a golden age for employees) However, almost all golden ages (including non-tech ones) end for the same reason (the ranges above I'm excluding the last phase). Early adopters (tech enthusiasts), early implementations that focus on them, then mass market appeal that "dumbs it down", then the financialization as accountants and grifters start showing up. Same thing happened to Hollywood, the music industry, etc. We're now squarely in the last phase of the post-dotcom boom. (I'll also note that the timeframes are arguable - I'm not going to get into quibbles over minutiae)

Legend2440 22d ago

>Does anyone remember the awe that was felt the first time we encountered an iPhone. Or an iPad? Yes, and when I first saw LLMs and image generators I experienced a similar feeling of awe. We haven't had anything like this in decades. It is unfortunate that many people are negative and nasty about it. Local politicians are getting shot at over datacenter projects. We have truly lost the plot. I used to think that people had learned their lesson that automation was a force for good, and we had gotten past the Luddite days of smashing looms. But it seems that is not the case, people are just as short-sighted as ever.

thephyber 22d ago
Ignorance. Ignorance of the facts on the ground and the politics of the moment. Do you honestly believe that the ledger for automation has zero items in the "liabilities" column? Do you think that 100% of people whose job is displaced find another job in a reasonable amount of time and on the same order or pay / status? Do you believe that neighbors of recently built data centers have nothing to complain about? The truth is that "data center politics" is happening in the context of post-NAFTA offshoring of lots of jobs/industry, post-manufacturing migration to the South, post-hollowing of labor unions, and in the context of Trump's War on Immigration (where AI companies have likened their product to "infinite AI immigrants"). Even the White House's Ratepayer Protection Pledge (a laudable goal) event was undermined by POTUS's speech at the event. Instead of even pretending to listen to the people who are hesitant about first and second order effects of data center buildouts, he encouraged developers to push the projects through ASAP and ignore all of the naysayers. It's clear this entire project is to maximize commercial advancement, not benefit people or give voice to voters/constituents. And in a moment where we are told we have to do this ASAP because "we are in a race with China" but nobody can explain the race. It's not for AGI because China doesn't expect it to yield AGI. Perhaps Zuckerberg does, but he was wrong about crypto, then Metaverse, then open weights models training (before he returned to open weights). The US seems to be using LLMs wrong as a glorified DEI detector (DOGE using LLMs to enforce their political homodoxy) and to identify schools in Iran to bomb + double tap. China has reasonable regulations on LLMs to protect their society whereas our "regulations" seem to be the Amazon CEO texting David Sachs on a Friday evening to warn about cybersecurity in a misunderstanding between what Mythos (prerelease for select privileged users) and Fable (general release with lots of moderation controls) and the nature of the cybersecurity vulnerabilities found (they were able to be replicated with other non-Claude models). We are being outwitted by ourselves. The problem isn't the people anxious about data centers or AI. It's the clueless leaders who don't bother to anticipate the obvious outcomes of their decisions and execute a plan to mitigate it. And you desire "feeling awe" so much that you don't want to recognize that politics means not everybody is going to succumb to the same feeling of awe, and that's okay.