Why are you here?

To get the latest github status outages in real time

But more seriously, it's just a higher bar of contribution than other forums on the internet with more interesting articles and points of view.

> Being part of a community that was solving problems, "improving the world," gave me hope and purpose.

This attitude in tech is honestly exhausting. It reminds me of that fake Tech Crunch Disrupt scene in the first season of Silicon Valley. The sooner you kind of give up on this and have fun with the problems you have the easier it is to enjoy your work, imho.

I’m here for the intelligent, relatively anonymous discussion.

Many people on here have similar life experiences and interests to me so it’s nice to be around those folks without the vanity of normal social media.

Re: your loss of hope, I completely disagree. Quality of life has never been better and there are many incredibly smart people trying to solve very hard problems to make it even better. There is and always has been suffering. And there is and always have been people trying to fix it.

I also disagree that the social fabric is at risk of collapse. I only see things on the internet that makes it look like the world is falling apart. But my reality, and my community’s reality doesn’t even get close to matching that.

If you just go by the news, yeah, it may seem like everything is terrible all the time. But if you allow for a slightly larger perspective, you can see that things have never been better for humanity. Just look at the massive improvement in average life expectancy over the past 200 years [0]. Through the unrelenting application of human ingenuity, we've more than doubled the average life expectancy (while also massively increasing the number of people on earth). For the people who can focus on specific problems, we can figure out ways to massively improve the quality of life of billions of people. Often it comes out of accidental discoveries or information that jumps across domain boundaries, and I learn a lot across domain boundaries here on HN.

I wish the news celebrated the good more often, but the business model rewards attention, and I guess people give more attention to the bad than the good. But just look back over your own lifetime and note the progress.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy?tab=chart...

> I used to believe that startups were meant to solve painful problems. But the most painful problems in the world aren't even discussed here.

Not all painful problems have technical or market based solutions. I'd wager most don't. Those problems are outside the realm of startups.

> Myself, I've lost hope. My hope that 'things will get better' is lost.

Are you so sure things are actually getting worse? I'm not particularly convinced. I'd agree we have some major problems - decay in our institutions and a growing lack of trust, in particular. I think the perception that everything is crumbling is mostly driven by more powerful/pervasive means of injecting vitriolic narratives into society rather than actual crumbling. Just the same, I wouldn't choose to live in any other time. Would you?

I joined in 2010. I visit the site, on average, 4-5 times a day.

Things HN has done for me:

* Gotten me a job

* Helped me expand my technical skills

* Helped me promote my books and side projects

* Entertained me

* Kept me up to date on tech and science news

* Allowed me to "give back" when I have useful advice

* Helped me realize I never want to found a startup

Also want to give a shout-out to HN's moderation team, who do a great job of keeping trolls at bay and encouraging constructive conversation.

I am yet to find another place on the internet (not that I'm actively searching) that has the quality of discourse as I've seen on HN.

People (and the mods like dang play a huge part here too) here generally believe _deeply_ in problem solving, looking as objectively as possible at whatever the topic is, and just learning more. There's a genuine curiosity here that resonates with me. I'm a deeply curious person and really find dramatics as a distraction from actually learning about topics.

I've also found that for just about any topic, there's always someone here that knows about it deeply to have an opinion (not just regurgitating an armchair opinion they read in another article, but what seems to be one borne out of some knowledge or experience) and is willing to talk about it in detail without dumbing things down, and there's a debate that ensues.

For all those reasons, HN is the site I frequent the most and is the most enriching.

In general, I find the technical detail here better than anywhere else. When discussing a new technology or methodology there's always a wealth of knowledge and wisdom in the comments. In every popular thread there seems to be a handful of true experts/specialists as well as others who have had to deal with the topic at hand in the real world and not just research/lab.

btw, I can't think of a worse place to look for hope than the Internet. If you're looking for hope then talk to your friends and family IRL and realize how much they love you and understand that level of love is actually not uncommon in society. The Internet has none.

So someone recently linked to this post https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm and one of the techniques mentioned harmonises with this sort of post. Not saying your pain isn't real OP, just that folks should consider perhaps why you feel hopeless (hint: youre being manipulated)

Technique #4 - 'INFORMATION COLLECTION'

Information collection is also a very effective method to determine the psychological level of the forum members, and to gather intelligence that can be used against them. In this technique in a light and positive environment a 'show you mine so me yours' posting is initiated. From the number of replies and the answers that are provided much statistical information can be gathered. An example is to post your 'favourite weapon' and then encourage other members of the forum to showcase what they have. In this matter it can be determined by reverse proration what percentage of the forum community owns a firearm, and or a illegal weapon. This same method can be used by posing as one of the form members and posting your favourite 'technique of operation.' From the replies various methods that the group utilizes can be studied and effective methods developed to stop them from their activities.

> And I believe we can all agree, regardless of political affiliation, that the fabric of society is itself 'at risk' of collapse.

No, we don't all agree. The most we can probably all agree on is that we're in for some unique and turbulent times. Because this is true of almost every generation, in one way or another.

Consider the possibility that your entire worldview may be highly skewed by an extremely unhealthy information diet. Like someone eating cheeseburgers for every meal, feeling terrible all the time, and then assuming everyone else must feel terrible too.

I would prescribe a new information diet rich in biography/history books to maintain mental regularity and perspective.

> And I believe we can all agree, regardless of political affiliation, that the fabric of society is itself 'at risk' of collapse.

If you mean political division within the US. There is a hyper polarization occurring where the far ends of both main parties are taking the reigns.

As someone that is opposed at a fundamental level to most state power, I'm OK with this development. You see more and more federalism occurring because of inaction or intractable disagreements with the federal government, from immigrant sanctuary and drug sanctuary on the left, to firearm sanctuary on the right.

There is a wide scale sorting process occurring where the red states will become more red, and the blue states will become more blue. If in that process, the federal government is neutered and people are able to choose governance with their feet, I view that as a net benefit to humanity.

There are arguments about what this means long term for security in the rest of the world, but I am less concerned with European and Pacific affairs than with our own. Additionally, I can't name a positive benefit to the US policy of foreign intervention over the past 20 years, whereas the negatives have an extremely long list.

I'm here because the other news site I used to visit (Slashdot) became a cesspool of people spamming swastikas (and host files unsolicited advices!) during 2010-2020. All I wanted was to read news and discussing interesting articles so I ended up here. HN seemed "ugly" at first, now I love the way it is.

> "improving the world", "solve painful problems"

This is sales pitch. 99% of the times it actually means "we want to appear as cool (and 'benevolent') as possible while we bill you monthly". It's just a facade. All they care is the might buck, and everything else is debatable.

> the fabric of society is itself 'at risk' of collapse

It’s not. We live in a unique time in history (living memory at least) where all parts of society, hidden and unhidden, are interacting in real time globally. We’ve never had this before!

What we as kids and our parents/grandparents as adults mistook for idyllic society where we all get along and life is great and nobody has problems, was in reality a thin veneer draped over a seedy underbelly of raw mess. People pretended to fit in. A lot.

Ask anyone from an underrepresented or even repressed group how great that society was. Bet they’ll say it wasn’t.

Society isn’t collapsing. It is revealing itself. This is the real humanity. The way it’s always been. Varied and messy.

As for why I’m here – same reason I’ve always been online. Because likeminded people who get a kick out of similar things as myself are few and far between in real life. Online, there’s plenty. HN in particular has a good mix of high signal discussion on interesting topics.

I'm here mostly for interesting news. The submitted topics are fairly diverse, sometimes quite unusual, and more likely to be interesting or informative than any of the other news sources I know. The "community" aspect is every bit as horrifying here as most anywhere else, and the bulk of the comments are just as useless and frustrating here as elsewhere. The exceptions so far continue to make it worth sifting through the nonsense, here, which I can't say about anywhere else now.

To discover aspects of the world and opinions that I wouldn't find anywhere else. I learn a lot of things reading through different articles and comments posted here.

When I find out how things work in reality, or how people think things work, it makes the problems I face have a clearer course of action, or helps me reach a clearer resolution on how to handle them. Even with a hope lost on what is possible or that my purpose was misguided, that much is always there for me.

I'm here because I have a bad habbit of visiting the same sites when I am bored. Sometimes I like to make provocative statments, and anticipate people disagreeing with me which causes a small dopamine rush. For example, I might see you say something like

> I used to believe that startups were meant to solve painful problems

and then I'd respond

> If you ask me, startups are about outsorcing research and development out of larger, risk-avese organisations, so that they may fail outside but get bought up if they don't. The fact that a few manage to survive on their own is not the intention.

And I'd say this in full knowledge that ycombinator is about startups, and the site exists to attract interest to these startups inbetween other content.

So all in all I'd rather not be here.

I'm here because for any interesting article there is a fairly high chance a couple of experts on the topic will be talking about it in the comments.

i'm here to learn about new cool things.

one of the things I think makes HN unique is that we can discuss things without "having to agree that the fabric of society is at risk of collapse." Whether it is or isn't, the teardown of a T1 router is cool.

I often feel the need to comment in ways that i hope remind others that not everybody agrees with their opinions. You can call it trolling, I hope to add information or at least amusement.

But mostly I enjoy the acquisition of new bits of (probably not immediately useful, but new to me) technical knowledge from others who share the same joy.

I've been a wannabe developer since I graduated college with a BS in physics. I taught myself C#, python, and some C++, for a few different things I was interested in. I'm generally interested in tech hardware and computer science. The HN community incredible experience in all kinds of domains, and so I like to see what people have to say on interesting topics.

I guess I see the world's problems as just another engineering challenge. Just put in the work to create value. Make things better piece by piece.

> And I believe we can all agree, regardless of political affiliation, that the fabric of society is itself 'at risk' of collapse.

I disagree. I'm fairly optimistic. Yes there are problems. But there's plenty of good things happening as well. Perhaps it depends what you're looking for?

I actually don't come here for the tech contributions primarily (even though I enjoy tech). The most interesting contributions are when non-tech contributions make it to the top.

You're the 3rd post I see here about depressing matters. The other ones:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31565514

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31565012

I come here because HN is the best place to be wrong on the internet, and that has been a very efficient way to learn. I read the comments here before the article most times. When they're good, they're really the best, and when they're weak, they're a good sense of what the current convention is.

I would agree we are in an era of forced change, where a small cadre of people using the logic of a few simple ideas have literally conspired to impose their will on the rest of us via our systems of reconciliation (laws, etc) that are built on language. I often think about how my morals obligate me to respond, and what I keep going back to is that the opposite or negation of fear is faith, where if I feel fear, it is the necessary effect of lacking faith, and where one has faith, they cannot have fear. Big fuzzy thoughts certainly, but much simpler when you think about faith not as a rational conclusion, but as an axiom on which all your perception is founded. As life, we are meant to thrive, and for the good of all other life to thrive as well.

What attracted me to the hacker ethos when I was a kid was that what we believe and think doesn't make us good, it's what we in fact physically do and make in the world that matters, so I post here to give words and form to thoughts.

Regarding the percieved problems and suffering of "the world," they're mostly an artifact of narrative. Terrible things happen, but I think suffering itself is also a choice. Worrying is a substitute activity, politics is what we engage in when we have chosen to inferiorize ourselves to what we percieve to be power, or autonomy, usually after eschewing truth. Talking about it as anything other than fancy sportsball is a neurotic vice of conflict addiction. They do it because they love it, it's just for the intensity.

Maybe your question was unintentionally ontological, but it's funny to think that perhaps the answer, "to thrive," is as appropriate as any?

What are the most painful problems in the world, in your opinion? I think many users feel similarly to you, but the topics aren't brought up enough to generate conversation.

I'm here because I've found a community of kindred spirits. We vent our spleen and pick each other's examples apart a bit too much, but moderation and an amazing job by the mods like DanG, keep us in line.

Technology is a tool that can be used for good or evil. In our case, we're on the timeline where instead of the singularity being used to uplift man, it's called the Algorithm, and used to commodify our dissent. Except here... an oasis from that.

There are powerful ideas still left to be implemented which can address the major technical issues, as well as the biggest issue facing mankind, the need to convey complex concepts without losing context.

We'll have all sorts of upsetting news fed to us by that evil AI, but know that it's not as dire as all that, for the most part. Focus on the things you can control, and celebrate the wins when they happen.

"And I believe we can all agree, regardless of political affiliation, that the fabric of society is itself 'at risk' of collapse."

No? It certainly is being undermined and sky is falling perception is certainly fueled by old and social media, but if you talk to an average person on the street, you won't hear them actually preparing for a collapse ( and you rest assured that if anyone actually thought a collapse is coming, they would be preparing so that at least they are not caught unprepared ). They might not tell the truth, but that is another story.

"Why are you here?"

Probably best place online for talking with people I don't know and people who are likely smarter than me. It is not without flaws and its own biases, but compared to most communities out there, its not even really comparable. Also, it is a bad habit now.

I am here for a similar reason, but I don't consider it an escape from reality. The loss of hope you are talking about is being manufactured by our news media, political parties and foreign actors. It is not reality. The reality is that we are more peaceful, secure and have less misery than for most of human history. The reality is that diligent people are working hard every day within their domains to advance the state of the art, to keep solving hard problems, to make the world just a little better. So I come here to plug into that reality a bit and disengage with something that brings me anger and anxiety and is often not the least bit true.

So as you watch people here solve problems and build new things, don't forget that to take your inspiration from that and build some new things in your own life and community.

I'm here to find weird nieche blog posts, and get insights about what the most overpriviliged people in the world think is right and just in the world.

I’ve been lurking on HN for a while now, and decided to make a new account so I can start posting and contributing more. I like this place because it always has interesting things being posted and the people are all generally civil and looking to learn and spread knowledge.

I like the culture of this website. I don’t really come here to solve big world problems. I mostly come to learn new things and see new perspectives.

In a world of instagram, tik tok, and Reddit, this place is a godsend. I’ve tried to quit all social media and spend my time on more productive websites and places. I found myself checking and commenting on HN more.

I feel like even the worst comments here are just way better than a place like reddit. I’ve found a couple other small sites i like to visit as well.

Not your question, but as an older guy, I'd recommend turning off "news" and other pipelines of trending opinions/media. I've seen over the years how fake and pointless most of it is. Sometimes things seem "up", and other times "down", and many times these are really out of sync with reality.

Yes there's real problems in the world, but focus on you, your family, and friends and neighbors. If you want to do something "more" than that, then go and live somewhere else in the world where people are really hurting and could use some help.

The rest of this tech stuff is just a job to earn money for the above, it's not your purpose.

Interesting stories and discussions. I think the threads about startups and their issues are the least interesting and I mostly just skip over them. Everything else I've found to be positive or creatively motivational.

My hope that 'things will get better' is lost.

I do think that things are getting better, only it doesn't happen where we're looking at, but elsewhere.

And I believe we can all agree, regardless of political affiliation, that the fabric of society is itself 'at risk' of collapse.

I believe we've been confusing consensus with propaganda (from every side) for decades. I don't think that's sustainable, except in periods of strong growth, when consquences can be covered.

Crisis are times to understand.

I've also learned to be humble. To first try to fix my life, before thinking about fixing the world.

I'm here to observe, not to judge.

> we can all agree...that the fabric of society is itself 'at risk' of collapse

We can? Maybe I'm on the wrong site...

After de-Googling and quitting Facebook, I just wanted some place to still serve as a decent news aggregator and discussion forum without social features or anyone building an ad profile based on which threads I'm engaging with. I don't give a crap about startups, but this seemed like the only sane place left for somewhat generalist topics after Scott Alexander's spat with the New York Times made him way too much of a hero for the "anti-racists are the real racists" crowd and poisoned his comments section.

It’s a daily ritual that covers one of my core needs. That need is staying up to date with my industry. At the partner level of professional firms you are expected to keep up to date with your industry news. When I was focused on US income tax, that was very easy. There was a few dedicated portals I would check each morning to make sure I caught all of the latest trends in the IRS, treasury, and other related entities (we did things called provisions in the context of public company audits requiring its own upkeep).

I transitioned to fin tech (web development specifically) almost two decades ago and early on one of my biggest struggles was keeping up with the state of the industry. I was checking dozens of portals and wasn’t even certain that I wasn’t missing anything because sometimes they would update the documentation without updating the version number!

Anyway one day I was at a Ruby meet up and joined a discussion where a senior was mentoring a group of juniors and he advised they all read HN daily to keep up to date on what technologies to pick. I checked it out, it served that need any my need, so I never looked back.

All these years later I still start my day off every morning with a perusal of the first few pages looking for Ruby/React/Python(in the context of vis like matplotlib) articles and then consider myself up to date enough (unlikely any major development I’m unaware of). And of course I come back multiple times per day looking for life style discussions simply because I feel the level of discourse here is generally much better than similar topics when discussed on Reddit.

I’ve been on an off a few times since maybe 2015-2016.

To be honest, usually there’s something interesting going on on this site, and I’m bored a lot. Even if the “interesting” is something bad.

Certain topics do generate good discussion, and in retro tech threads there’s always some good war stories. HN seems to be particularly good at curating a lot of good material related to systems programming particularly, and I have dozens of very high quality articles on various subjects saved.

>Why Are You Here?

For the most part, HN is still relatively politics free. Those spaces are few and far between nowadays.

Unfortunately, that's changing. It has a lot to do with the fact that so many people here have livelihoods that depend on the "Silicon Valley" ecosystem, and that system is showing cracks in the facade. You can see it in the shifting of the public perception of Tech; the hoi polloi are sick of it, and politicians are scared of it.

I take breaks here and there at works, and at night I read online with a movie/show in the background on the TV.

HN is the only outlet aggregator with a modicum of value, there's nothing else on the internet that comes close, everything else is just so blah.

Maybe the time is ripe for a startup to curate/aggregate content of value, or maybe it's just a sign of the status quo: nobody cares about anything of any depth.

The markets will decide, for now TikTok reigns supreme.

Habit, mostly.

I usually have the comments link hidden, because most of the time it's very biased in the direction opposite to my own, so that just causes my blood pressure to rise.

Lately it's not particularly interesting. A small cohort of blogs gets featured every week with fairly mundane posts.

Lots of mainstream publications pushing narratives.

This used to be a site that had interesting and niche content, now it's just bland corpo circlejerk 98% of the time...

Most startups and businesses will fail. Go look up that thread where antirez premiered Redis, and the one from the Dropbox founders too. Lots of naysayers or just flat reactions. If it was obvious what would change the world, we'd all be millions doing it. HN gives you a higher chance of seeing it than not, esp. the outrage machines that pass as newspapers and broadcast these days.

1. Find out about new technology from a high quality source with decent commentary

2. Get a sense of what people in technology are thinking about technology and society (though no doubt quite skewed).

3. It's my only connection or source of insight into the Imperium, living as I do in a European province. Admittedly it is not much, but I can't do twitter, facebook, reddit or American news: it's too too bad.

Not to sound too stupid but what do people mean by "that the fabric of society is itself 'at risk' of collapse."

I typically think of Mongols sacking Rome as society collapsing. All I see going on now is some people not agreeing on public policy, not Mongols on the horizon.

As for why I am here, mostly to kill time waiting for meetings, drinking coffee and to see how the other half live.

The only reason for me to be here is that I find it to give me a competitive advantage over my colleagues (in the IT field). For example, I get to know new relevant tech first, and more important and I get to know relevant opinions of such tech as well.

On the dark side, HN has made me more arrogant when it comes to IT discussions. I'm trying to quit HN, though.

To learn.

I interview a lot of engineers and one of my questions is: "how do you keep up to date with technology?"

I want to hear about the forums they visit (ie, HN!), youtube channels, peers, heck even magazines, radio or TV. Unfortunately most of them don't have an answer for this. One day, maybe I'll find another HN'er...

Because /. died. I'm here to keep tabs on tech edge and up and coming things. Also, for the comment section. I like when people post their successes but I'm also thirsty for failures.

The reality is I'm here because I like startups, startup tech, building new (cool) things, and trying to make a difference.

Honestly, for prosaic reasons. Most of the posts are interesting, most of the comments are interesting and there isn't an obsession with "internet points". I'm sorry if this sounds elitist, but it is also less crowded than other places. I almost never see bots or trolls.

To check if my internet connection is working. I have the impression that HN loads faster than google

I come here mostly for the comment section. Often I'll find some genuine nuggets of wisdom & occasionally nuanced discussions (but this is getting rarer). I also use HN to aggregate links better than I would be able to on Google/DDG/Reddit/etc.

I sincerely think that you are consuming too much material from social media and news outlets, so you think that the whole world is on fire everyday. Eliminate these things from your life and focus on local problems before trying to save the whole world.

I'm here to learn and to keep up with latest happenings in the world of technology. I believe that there are many smart and intelligent people here doing great stuffs. Interacting with these people helps me to see things in different perspectives.

Mainly the same reasons as you, but in terms of actually interacting here - I like coming to a place where my default position is to assume whoever I'm talking to is smarter than I am. 99% of the time they are and it broadens my horizons.

I come here out of a bad procrastination habit, however I do find a lot of the comments and discourse to be highly valuable. It's a nice break from other forms of social media where the principe of charity is thrown out the window.

I lurk here to keep myself abreast of what's going on in tech from the perspective of professionals like myself.

Folks here are smart as hell, so HN has always been a way for me to be a little fish in an ocean. Keeps me humble and I learn a lot.

1) I am here to check the latest and greatest bleeding edge stuff.

Then I assess the latest flavor of the month across the stack and try to avoid using it at all costs.

2) To check what is being cloned the most as a product - but it's pretty much the same the last ten years - slick minimalistic SaaS UI that pulls some data. But sometimes, I see some glimpses of brilliance.

3) To read the occasional interesting discussions on some more political topics.

4) Someone has already gone through the trouble of finding cool links, and I follow them.

Comment on the hard problems:

The majority of HARD! World Changing if solved problems are not gonna be solved by showing a grid in React ... :)

I was told there would be punch and pie.

I'm here because there is genuine discourse on the latest topics amongst an intelligent group of people. The basic html/readable, ad free and digestible content is a bonus.

To learn from smart people and contribute value when possible.

Very high-quality conversation, interesting topics, interesting people from all walks of life, and very reliable way to keep tabs on tech.

Hmm, I guess my view of what I expected out of HN changed in the same way. Though I attribute it solely to growing older (and pervasive internet). But my goal was always distraction.

Reading a bunch of interesting stuff is great to soothe your anxiety, and most articles don’t get you hooked like a great book does, so I’m not (so much) at risk of reading really late into the night.

> So now, I most frequently come here for a distraction.

I come here to read all these posts complaining about having too many distractions.

I'd love to tell you it's to keep up on trends and ideas in tech, but really it's just to watch random alt-right trolls occasionally post thinly-veiled bullshit about eugenics and read the comments whenever anybody suggests poor people aren't just lazy, and also the crypto bro rage.

The tech stuff is cool too, I guess.

I am here against my better judgment. Marveling how much time you beautiful people are willing to lose.. Goodbye :)

I've been feeling this same way recently. Used to love checking here, seeing people's projects, finding the new trends and ideas. And I don't think hn has changed but more my perspective on the software industry (and the world?).

I literally cannot think of the last time software has changed and made my life better. And there are endless examples of it making the world worse.

All the issues caused by beloved industry giant AirBnB breaking regulations and ruining local neighborhoods. Software being the thing that caused the worst plane crash in years. Endless privacy violations from essentially every company. I've had to deal with Google's support recently and that was AI hell.

Even products I consider good are only getting worse. I still have a decades old Photoshop because you could actually buy it back then and the new features really arent worth it.

Software seems to be just a very efficient tool for the shareholders of the world to "capture value" and to find new and innovative ways to make our lives worse and more expensive.

These days I mostly read out of habit and because there's always something happening (unlike the discords/forums im in which are nicer but less poppin') and really compared to other places its still nice

But the right-wing anti-woke crowd and the optimistic "tech will save the world" types are hard to stomach for me.

I've been dreaming of quitting the industry altogether, though there are a lot of benefits for staying. Maybe find one of the incredibly rare places that actually have a vision for the world (non-profit?). Even where I work at an accessibility company that ostensibly is making the world better it really feels more like spinning wheels and corporate power plays more than any real desire to do anything good. Because honestly, if the customer went for a competitors product that would be fine?

Anyways sorry for the rambling. Things seem bleak and hopeless and regardless of whether things will ultimately get better (maybe? im not convinced) they will certainly get worse for the foreseeable future. I don't want to be part of the group making it worse and tech companies pretty much are. Yada yada captialism

Certainly worse things to do than read hackernews tho :p

I 'm hoping that one day it will become interesting again

Also because it's like reddit but with older people.

I started using HN without knowing that it was formerly a startup news thing.

I think I've summed my HN usage pretty nicely here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29673736

see what's new in the world of stem with a dash of reverse engineering of the world around me.

Nothing but pure enjoyment. It's the smartest place (of appreciable scale) on the internet.

>Why are you here?

Where else should we go? It is not like there is another forum like what you describe.

The articles here give me something to talk about with colleagues and managers during one-on-ones.

That's really it.

I always check the comments section every time to see if someone says "what a waste of time" or "tldr;" before clicking though :)

I guess to answer right this moment? I have about 100,000 sqlite3 entries being processed in production. 1 time pain where i cant do anything there. Cant even check up on the progress because it would take sql queries to check. Then in dev, I have a counter to keep track and the number is still going up. It's processing about 10/second and should get to about 150k updates.

Bit of a problem because this shouldn't be so slow.

>I've been following HN for the past decade. It was an inspiration to see so many people working to make things better.

In terms of why HN? Nowhere better to be. I wouldn't recommend anyone be on platforms like Facebook, reddit, or twitter. You're going to make lists you dont want to be on. The world war has started.

>Being part of a community that was solving problems, "improving the world," gave me hope and purpose.

I want to believe!

>I used to believe that startups were meant to solve painful problems. But the most painful problems in the world aren't even discussed here.

Not allowed to discuss those on HN, you'll get rapidly flagged and downvoted. You'd be banned near instantly on those other platforms if you discuss those. In fact it's worse. You won't know you're banned, they hide the fact you were banned in order to deflate the issues. Yet they still exist as issues and the longer they go unaddressed the bigger the problems become.

I haven't actually seen this happen before where 1 political side is working so hard to control this so much and it's only going to be at their own detriment.

>And I believe we can all agree, regardless of political affiliation, that the fabric of society is itself 'at risk' of collapse.

Hard to disagree with this. Which market hasn't crashed in relation? Stock? Crypto? Money? etc?

>Today I'm here, hoping, to find a little hope.

This has been coming for 30 years. It will result in a new religion and boy this new religion is rather large. Puts other recent new religions like scientology to shame.

Flipside, we also have a few other societal inflection points which have to be addressed. Even better is that these are not going to be popular at all.

Here's the hope. Over the next 50 years the world will be a completely different place. There's going to be a ton of pain along the way but we will reach a fundamental life value which is fantastic.

I prefer feed of curated articles in all kind of topics rather than news that are more or less propaganda. I completely stoped reding news three years ago. Since then, HN and few RSS channels are enough for me.

I've worked in tech for over 10 years. I'm here to stay current with trends & ideas. I quit Facebook and major news outlets several years ago; this is the only news I read besides The Pour Over.

I'm here because I enjoy talking to people who are smarter than me.

Less BS.

Less BS in the comments, less BS in the posts, etc.

Honestly, feels like what reddit _should_ feel like or at least used to feel like. When I engage with ppl on HN I don't feel like I'll get a bad faith reply.

I’m here to be surprised. I love the things I find here that would have never crossed my path just reading the news, and the news I see elsewhere, I’m elated by informed discussion of it here.

For a variety of reasons, I like to see how delusional people who work in the tech industry are. This is the best place to do that that I've found.

I'm here because I don't know where else to go...

I'm here to learn new things that the technical community is doing. I'm also here to share what I'm up to as I hack my dumb ideas together.

I feel there are more reasons to optimistic, and this is due to technology. Here is the thought experiment to contend with: Could Nazi Germany emerge today, or does the speed of information create a barrier to wide spread building of momentum? It's worth thinking about.

The unfortunate aspect is that the noise in the system is exhausting, and I think it's better to just focus on living a good life and not get swept up into any movement.

I am drawn to HN for its diversity of content.

What was "improving the world" for you?

Why are there so many lost/doomer threads recently. People starting to realise delivering meaningless "value" to shareholders while turning the Earth in to an uninhabitable scorched, polluted, plastic covered wasteland was not such a good idea? Need someone to say its okay sweetie, its not your fault, you definitely couldn't have seen thaaat one coming. A guilty conscience?

If you're talking about HackerNews in particular, I'm here to troll white supremacists and little more.

> And I believe we can all agree, regardless of political affiliation, that the fabric of society is itself 'at risk' of collapse.

I don't agree at all. Perhaps you might need to spend less time reading news and social media? The real people in my real life all get along, even the MAGA and socialist people.

Anyway, I'm here because this is the closest thing to "You are the average of your closest five [highly-technical] friends." I don't really know a lot of high-tier, highly-technical people in meatspace.

Because the news feed is moderately high quality, the comments are usually very high quality (like slashdot in the 90's), and what ends up in the news feed is relatively uncorrelated to the rest of my news sources.

Re startups: They aren't here to solve painful problems, they are here to make the shareholders and especially the founders/early investors gobs of money. When central banks failed to consider the risk pricing nature of interest rates and pushed them to near zero because inflation was happening in the third world rather than in the first, it became easier to make those guys money through deceit rather than coming up with a good idea and implementing it to solve a problem and so that's what we've had going on.

Re fabric of society: It's not at risk of collapse, it's just undergoing radical change because the identity marxists have pulled a Martin Luther and are out in full force shouting their grievances. We are in a time of digesting complaint and deciding what tiny part of it is true and needs to be addressed and what part is just the rantings of radicals holding to a poor mental model of the world with religious zeal. It will sort itself out one way or the other and things will eventually be fine.

Where i supposed to be?

Expert opinion & not-mainstream points of view.

Buried amidst all the low key fascism are some interesting technical articles.

It's so american how you think, I'm cringing. Helping the WORLD, just that ? Let's all try to first help ourselves maybe a kid or two of our own, and we'll see if we have time for the "world".

Ofc you now think "the fabric of society is at risk of collapse" since the disappointement you felt when you realized the world barely even spoke english, let alone asked for your help, crushed you into depression.

I dont like when boomer say we're basically vociferating snowflakes but serious you talk only in hyperbole centered around you enormous power over the entire planet. Read yourself, focus on things you can act upon.

The technical CS/Programming discussions have some very good comments. For other fields here it is barely better that the Daily News comment section.

There are very nice people who can help you with difficult-to-find information. As in : "I remember this very obscure game in the 90s who came in some shareware magazine bla bla bla" 20 min later "That must be super-Ultroon the Mechanic Dinosaur, I played it a lot..."