Brian Kernighan's recent lecture on language design, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg4U4r_AgJU, is an example (not sure if it was on hacker news). I'm working on SIMD in Go and don't want to make avoidable mistakes.
I'd particularly like to see examples of the kind of content people think used to appear on HN and doesn't anymore. My guess is that this is more nostalgia bias than reality, but if that's wrong, we need to know.
Here are a couple of examples of the kind of content that I think would have been upvoted 5-6 years ago, but nowadays seems to die in the /new queue or not even make it that far.
They're not truly stellar, outstanding examples because I don't have enough time to dig through 100 to find 5 that would fit, but I found them pretty interesting and think that 6 years ago they would have gotten at least some upvotes and discussion.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10606780 - actionable suggestions backed up by practical experience. Slightly shilling his new startup, but also interesting and worth a read. I added it to my bookmarks. 1 upvote in the /new queue, from me.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10606876 - Found on Medium, wasn't even submitted to HN. Interesting discussion, actionable advice, focused on very HN-centric topic (Lean Startup). No upvotes so far.
Overall, I find that I have better luck discovering this kind of content on HN these days from reading /new than reading the front page. However, that still involves kissing a LOT of frogs because of the /new signal-to-noise ratio. I almost never see this sort of content make it to the front page in 2015.
I've been meaning to test to see if I'm subject to nostalgia bias on this. Any suggestions for how to do so?
FWIW, I have a VERY strong feeling that the content on HN has shifted since about five years ago, to the point that I've been trying to find a site that has more of the entrepreneurship / practical advice that I used to see on HN a lot. ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10190783 )
However, I don't have data to back it up (yet).
I can't swear that these things don't appear on HN any more, but in terms of what I'm looking for, and used to find on HN, I'd say stuff like Brennan Dunn or Jason Cohen's writing on practical entrepreneurship:
I very, very rarely see posts like that upvoted on HN any more. And if it does briefly appear, it tends to get significantly downvoted and criticised - I recall an Empire Flippers article recently that took a lot of flak in the comments section (despite defence from Patio11 amongst others) and disappeared.
More tech / programming-focused stuff bubbles up with some regularity, but the micro-ISV / lifestyle business and even startup advice hardly ever appears from what I see.