It's definitely lost that small town charm, but given how much it has grown it's still remarkably good.
To another 6 years!
1. http://www.ycombinator.com/announcingnews.html
2. http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/15gkq/startup_ne...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_lifecycle
I'll try not to lower the bar too much... :P
People who originally built and pioneered the Internet were the Xel'Naga, the original users of the Internet pre-September 1993 are the Protoss, and all the newbs who have flooded the Internet since are the Zerg.
And then you have Terrans like me who are fragmented, caught in the middle, and have to choose sides. I choose to protect and fight for the Internet.
Yes, you must've:
http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/15gkq/startup_ne...
Happy sixth anniversary to all of us poor saps who were checking reddit the morning of Feb 20, 2007.
I know that I was reading Reddit at the time, but I think I read about News.ycombinator on another site - Perhaps Techcrunch?
One of the things that really flavored the early community was that many (most?) of the members were also applicants to YC, so were both a) very interested in startups, and b) all trying to be on their best behavior.
I recall at the time being concerned anytime a post didn't get at least 5 votes, because it meant that I likely wasn't contributing to the conversation substantively enough.
The site's flavor has changed a lot over time - From YC applicants, to general Startup News, to a more broad Hacker News, but it's still one of my favorite communities.
As of writing I created my account 2170 days ago. It is by far my most visited site (at least once a day). Sure the content isn't as great as it use to be, but I expect that with the increase in traffic and submissions. It is still head and shoulders above the rest though.
Happy birthday HN!