Lobsters feels a lot like the HN of a decade ago, when the community was more technical than business, and the topics were technical instead of tech business culture.
HN was originally called "Startup News". It was founded by tech business people and originally its userbase was largely startup tech people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_News
I've been here 12 years and I don't remember HN focusing solely on technical topics, unless the word "technical" has widened to mean "anything one engineer finds intellectually stimulating".
HN was never only technical, but at least it felt like the discussion was from people who build, which naturally segued into technical discussion. It felt like the majority back then were tinkerers and builders.
Nowadays it feels more like sales, marketing, management, and investor interests, and topics they find interesting which has far more popularity than anything at the implementation level.
Granted, HN probably better matches what matters these days to launch a successful company. But we're all older now and working for companies that became what we once tried to disrupt, and it shows.
You give way too much credit to the technical abilities of most venture back founders.
Good founders have always been more about sales, marketing, funding, etc.
And that’s not meant to be an insult. I’ve always been more of a fan of the people who create successful businesses from technology than the technology itself.
I have the same impression. If anything, it’s become more “generic technical” topics and less “insider founder” ones. There seems to be a lot more institutional representation here than circa 2010-2015, probably because many of the new founders then are now running establishment companies.
There used to be a lot more “hustle culture” and “growth hacking” stuff on here (10+ years ago) most of which I find disgusting, so I’m glad for that shift.
I wonder if there is some sort of bias depending on the timezone people visit because i've been visiting HN for more than a decade and for me HN always had a lot of technical discussions and topics - in fact i see it as one of the most technically oriented forums i know. In fact if it was all (or mostly) business stuff i wouldn't stick around as long i have as i do not find those topics interesting.
HN 15 years ago wasnt technical, it never was. HN is about startup business and sometimes a tech toy like whatever JS frontend is hyped this week.
The discussions are shallow and pointless, lots of actors arguing in bad faith and lots of commercial hype, lately mostly around AI to the point that the site is barely interesting for the tech-curious.
And then there's dang's moderation where he deletes comments or requires users to remove comments themselves to avoid being banned.
