I've been using this site since 2008. This is my second account from 2009. HN very much used to be a tech niche site. I realize that for newer users to HN, the appeal is like r/programming or r/technology but with a more text oriented interface or higher SNR or whatever but this is a shift in audience and there are folks like I on this site who still want to use it for niche content.
There are still threads where people do discuss gory details, even if the topics aren't technical. A lot of the mapping articles on the site bring out folks with deep knowledge about mapping stacks. Alternate energy threads do it too. It can be like that for LLMs also, but the user base has to want this site to be more than just Yet Another Tech News Aggregator thread.
For me as of late I've come to realize that the current audience wants YATNE more than they want deep discussion here and so I modulate my time here accordingly. The LLM threads bring me here because experts like jart chime in.
> I've been using this site since 2008. This is my second account from 2009.
I did not really like HN back in the day because it felt too startup-y, but maybe I got a wrong impression. I much preferred Ars Technica and their forum (now, Ars is much less compelling).
> For me as of late I've come to realize that the current audience wants YATNE more than they want deep discussion here and so I modulate my time here accordingly.
I think it depends on the stories. Different subjects have different demographics, and I have almost completely stopped reading physics stuff because it is way too Reddit-like (and full of confident people asserting embarrassingly wrong facts). I can see how you could feel about fields closer to your interests being dumbed down by over-confident non-specialists.
There are still good, highly technical discussions, but it is true that the home page is a bit limited and inefficient to find them.
There are still threads where people do discuss gory details, even if the topics aren't technical. A lot of the mapping articles on the site bring out folks with deep knowledge about mapping stacks. Alternate energy threads do it too. It can be like that for LLMs also, but the user base has to want this site to be more than just Yet Another Tech News Aggregator thread.
For me as of late I've come to realize that the current audience wants YATNE more than they want deep discussion here and so I modulate my time here accordingly. The LLM threads bring me here because experts like jart chime in.