Yeah, there's been a very notable shift here, in terms of the zeitgeist formerly being very pro-business, pro-startup, pro-innovation, and generally positive; and now the zeitgeist being very negative, cynical, anti-business, etc. Not to say that there aren't still voices on both ends of that spectrum, but the prevailing sentiment has clearly shifted.
I wouldn't say HN is "dying" but it's not the same site it used to be. I attribute that largely to a change in the composition of the community. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is a question I'll leave for the philosophers.
FWIW, I never really saw it that way... my perception was that it was more of an "anti BIG business" and "anti proprietary / locked-down / walled garden ecosystem" sentiment. But that's not the same as business per-se. Lots of hackers started businesses and even rms says that selling software for money is fine, so long as user freedom is preserved.
That said, you have a fair point about the startup/hacker "thing" being a little more modern. Then again, 1994 was a pretty long time ago now. So I guess one could argue the point about whether that should be accepted as part of the hacker ethos or not at this point.
The early days of the computer industry, at least, are nothing like that. The founders of Microsoft were hackers of the highest order, but weren't "anti BIG business" or "anti proprietary".
Likewise with the founders of Apple, HP, and countless more.
IOW - it's growing. That is neither good nor bad on its own. It just is.
Communities change through time - for better, worse, and neutral.
Also, his last essays that I can remember, defending wealth inequality, were uninformed rbagege and (rightly) excoriated on HN and the wider media.
Incidentally, your comment seems rather hostile towards the man who founded YC, created HN, and set the original quality and tone of this online community.
My comment certainly is hostile toward PG. He isn't God. I don't have to worship him, even if I'm on his site. Do you think reddit has no discussions critical of its founders?.
PG or the mods are free to kick me off if my comments about him bother them.
but it hasn't mattered to me :)
The new leadership is less intellectual, less inspiring, more inclined to politics. O tempora, o mores.
I've noticed this change, and it's one of my favorite things about HN. There are fewer naive people trumpeting the "accomplishment" of raising money. There are more people advising young devs not to work for equity.
Why should we worship the idea of a startup? Startups are not noble in and of themselves. The vast majority are just a form of gambling that only wealthy people can safely afford[1][2].
As Peter Lynch said, "An investment is simply a gamble in which you've managed to tilt the odds in your favor." But a startup is never in your favor -- even if you're convinced they are[3][4]. There's still a huge amount of luck and social capital that's required, beyond just having the right product and market. Even hyper-successful founders like Biz Stone have gone on to start failures.
To prove that startups are a gamble, look at VC firms. All but a few are money-losing operations because even they can't predict who will succeed -- and it's all they're supposed to be good at![5]
I think the US is changing (for the better) in the sense that capitalist ideals, like startups, aren't blindly worshiped anymore. People ask whether we actually need another to-do app to raise $10M. To me, that's a very welcome change.
1. https://qz.com/455109/entrepreneurs-dont-have-a-special-gene...
2. https://techcrunch.com/2015/02/08/startups-a-rich-mans-game/
3. https://smallbiztrends.com/2016/11/startup-statistics-small-...
4. "A company accepted by Y Combinator, therefore, has less than a 1-in-10 chance of being a big success." http://www.businessinsider.com/startup-odds-of-success-2013-...
5. https://hbr.org/2014/08/venture-capitalists-get-paid-well-to...
> I saw a huge decline not only in the quality
This is pretty subjective. I still see lots of amazing, fascinating comments from domain experts and people who are close to stories.
> claiming there's censorship around
There have been moderation experiments, like banning politics for a short time, but I don't know what else you're talking about. I haven't seen anyone claim they're being censored, except a few people who are posting truly awful stuff.
Yes, but it feels like we've thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Less promoting raising money as an accomplishment in and of itself is a Good Thing in my book (I've actually written on this very topic). But it feels like we've gone beyond that to a place where innovation, solving hard problems, creating new things, building new businesses, etc., are denigrated.
People ask whether we actually need another to-do app to raise $10M. To me, that's a very welcome change.
That's a fair point, but I feel like the change is much broader than that. It's not just "why do we need this new to-do app" but closer to "startups are evil in general" here lately. You see a lot of anti-capitalist bullshit and generally anti-business sentiment on here over the past couple of years. And given the historical background of this site, that's a pretty major change.
Sure. But couldn't that just be a change in demographics? It certainly reflects the zeitgeist of the US as a whole. "Late capitalism" and UBI are commonly-discussed topics now, and that wasn't true a few years ago.
The point of my original comment is that, while I agree some things have changed, I don't agree that "dying" is an objective or universal way to describe it.
Could be. Probably, even. But I'm not sure that HN "should" mirror the zeitgeist of the US as a whole (or the world as a whole, and so on). It's back to the Eternal September thing, where a community with a specific set of values / beliefs / etc. gets diluted to an excessive degree.