Its stories like this why I come to HN. HN may have started as interesting stuff for the Silicon Valley VC circuit, but you can't survive on a diet of just high risk investing weirdness.
Oh, no no no. It started as a way for pg to read more interesting things, literally about anything. Byzantine coins and cat prints in medieval manuscripts are two that I recall from years past. The site has always been for intellectual diversity above all else. Keeping that going is the thing we care about most.
In other words this article is 100% certified original Hacker News, and it warms my heart (freshly grateful to still be attached to the rest of my body) to see it at #1.
I enjoyed this post very much but I would be very sad if posts like these became more frequent over here as I wouldn't have a good source of startups and tech anymore.
So your enjoyment of this delightfully written article (good taste, I must say!) can be apprehension-free.
HN has since almost forever been about more than Tech and startups. Here's the guidelines from 2008: https://web.archive.org/web/20080616133301/http://ycombinato...
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
You're right when you say there has always been more to HN than tech and startups but I would says they are the defining aspects of HN.
Regarding that line on the guideline you quote, I really wish it would be changed. It is literally used to justify the admission of anything since how could you argue with someone that something is not interesting. It's a completely subjective and useless method to define what's on-topic. But that's just my opinion.
We have tons of differentiating features from reddit and HN.
SPZU-AI1ABLII8IIZP
SPZU-0KUXJ0U86OA7W
SPZU-QNOKQG5Y4U1G3
SPZU-GQI7XVHO2ZSOA
SPZU-6TBV5ATE15JWH
SPZU-WW5ICQ53ZBB4O
SPZU-34MFZ049TSKT9
SPZU-T7G36FFZRYC1G
EDIT: I exchanged the old used codes for new fresh ones.
I'd like to check it out but all the invites seem to be gone. I guess I'll wait for a real invite.
>Your invite should arrive no later than July, 2026.
HAH! I had a good laugh about that one.
>Seriously though, want in today?
>Just send out a quick tweet to help others discover Snapzu and as a token of our appreciation we will bump you to the top of the list and send you an invite code within 24 hours
Might take you up on this later today. ;)
And, while I don't describe myself as a "social justice warrior", but a skeptic, seeing this (mostly upvoted) comment regarding the admins kind of turned me off, especially considering the replies.
>These admins are super nerdy, have low self-esteem, not to popular with the ladies, are slightly autistic (on the spectrum) have little to no social life, and have generally weak personalities when it comes to social issues. I can spot these guys a mile a way. So when you team them up with a feminist who is telling them they are awful oppressors, some of them are going to buckle and just ask "OK, what can I do to help?" And that's where this PC/feminist/transgender agenda gets codified into an actual company course of action or policy.
As a result, many of the members of voat are the types of people who seem to have a chip on their shoulder when it comes to things like being civil on the internet. They are the types of people who obsess over reddit's current CEO Ellen Pao, or who hold opinions which they defend with "free speech" in the way described by this comic[1]. Honestly, in my opinion they're just assholes.
What makes it different?