I would recommend not linking to jwz's website. Use web archive or something if you have to. jwz dislikes Hacker News and intentionally shows an NSFW image when Referer header shows Hacker News.
Can he at least update the text? HN was full of entrepreneurs and wantrepreneurs years ago. It is mostly big- and mid tech employees now, tech bureaucrats if you will.
Not to belabor the meta discussion, but your comment sparked a question. If it is how you say, and using a politico-economic lens, I wonder if there has been any discernible shift in commenter attitudes as the demographics have changed. Specifically, if the shift was from entrepreneurs -> skilled wage workers, as you’ve asserted.
The interests of the petit bourgeoisie (entrepreneurs, et al), the professional management class and that of skilled workers sometimes overlap. I think those overlaps would probably translate to some overarching strains of belief, for example, the tendency toward libertarian viewpoints on HN.
Sorry for the tangent, just had to get that out of my head!
This is OT, but I can't resist. I've been around HN since 2011, and tone has definitely shifted in the last 5-6 years. I used to stumble on HN posts that infuriated me relatively often, it was part of the deal (i.e. understanding how the self-appointed entrepreneurial classes actually rationalize certain things). That doesn't really happen anymore.
> those overlaps would probably translate to some overarching strains of belief, for example, the tendency toward libertarian viewpoints
The opposite is actually true, in my experience. Hardcore libertarian views on HN have been largely quashed into irrelevance, they only survive in lore. New commenters who join and expect HN to be a nest of hyper-capitalists are quickly downvoted into oblivion. Which is not a terrible thing in the great scheme of things, from the personal perspective of somebody who would likely dislike their point of view; but it has definitely taken something away from the HN experience, and possibly pushed some people towards worse (more radicalized) forums.
What I miss about the old HN is learning about all the cool new programming tools, libraries, frameworks, etc and participating in the discussions about them. These days, you rarely see posts about programming tools, unless it is one of the big ones like React, Qt, or TypeScript. I used to stumble upon so many great tools on HN, but that has become a rare experience these days.
Is there still somewhere on the web, perhaps on Reddit or another platform, where you can find such posts and discussions?
>Is there still somewhere on the web, perhaps on Reddit or another platform, where you can find such posts and discussions?
If they exist it would be wise not to link it here, or else the same fate would befall the new community. My advice is to search for a small community around a niche topic (say a specific text editor or programming language).
There are some great Reddit subs for niche projects, the trouble is discoverability. Those I’ve found have always been via obscure links or a chance hunt after finding a git repo.
I’ve also been around for donkeys years, and I agree mostly. Certain topics bring the “screw you, got mine” opinions back out of the woodworks at times, but yeah it’s far less prevalent.
> Hardcore libertarian views on HN have been largely quashed into irrelevance
Having seen a few threads recently (notably "Parler off AWS") where those views seemed quite exuberant, I'm not sure they've been quashed; maybe dormant until the right thread comes along?
It has something to do with the 1990's dot-com culture, like the original Netscape was somehow more pure than what came after, and this causes him to view modern inheritors like YC with a jaundiced eye.
It's quite nice of Apple to strip this by default in Safari—didn't even realize it was a thing until I switched over to Chrome to see what you were talking about.
I tested Safari on iOS, iPadOS and macOS and it didn’t strip the “referer” header for any of them. WatchOS did strip it though I’m not sure that counts as Safari.
