[ykl]

From the HN guidelines: “Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work.”

First, there’s some backstory behind that infamous Verge PC guide video- it’s not really Stefan Etienne (the guy in the video)’s fault, and The Verge eventually also acknowledged that it wasn’t a great video. Stefan is a great sport and wound up doing a followup with Linus Tech Tips [1]. At this point dragging up the PC build video is a tired meme and isn’t really useful commentary anywhere; it feels like a bit of a low blow.

Second, “this guy also built their new site” is categorically untrue; Stefan hasn’t worked for The Verge for some time, and I’m fairly certain that in actuality it was some larger team that built the new site and worked hard to do so.

Third, critiques on HN should be constructive instead of dismissive. I for one miss the information density that the old site provided, but there are elements of the new site that I think are great. I love the idea behind their “story stream” feed; I think having a specifically curated, opinionated topical news feed with an actual editorial voice is a huge breath of fresh air compared with having algorithmically generated news feeds shoved in front of my eyes on Twitter or Facebook or wherever. The cleaner design of article pages and overall fast load time are nice improvements too; the previous version of The Verge was notoriously slow to load. On a whole I think there’s more to like than dislike, and I’m sure they’ll keep iterating and tweaking the site over time. Broadly I’m willing to give the new design a chance and see where it goes (as opposed to just posting a cheap dismissal on HN for the sake of getting a zinger in).

[1] https://youtu.be/QKzmYsySGFQ