[Enginerrrd]

I emphatically disagree. HN is one of the best places I've found on the entire internet to get a pulse on the future. You have SME's on almost every subject imaginable that populate this sub. I've seen things coming down the pipe anywhere from a week to 2-4 months before the news really broke by reading through the comments here. That's INVALUABLE to me.

From the guidelines for acceptable posts: >"Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

I'm not sure why you think world news / geopolitics / epidemiology / public interventions is something unworthy of inspiring intellectual curiosity?

[gerdesj]

I agree with you. HN has a certain degree of self control built in and dang's all seeing eye helps bring people back in-line. Only recently, Dan hauled me up for being a bit of a tosser and I apologised.

There are world renowned experts on many subjects that hang around here and the likes of me who aren't. I too have a wide range of interests and they extend way beyond IT. It's great when a big hitter sidles on in and gives some insights from the front lines.

This is probably the only forum that I have seen discussion relating to SARS-CoV-2 that has been close to useful or at least somewhat civil, err not a complete flamewar, OK slightly civil.

[wkat4242]

I agree. It feels a lot like the internet and in particular Usenet was before the floodgates opened. It was a select community of mainly academics and people with a strong interest and it was very common too see big names going head to head (the big Linus vs Tanenbaum discussion on kernel design as a particular example). It was an amazing place.

Hacker News feels like it stems from that era even though it doesn't. It's just very well moderated and just enough under the radar to avoid being heavily politicized. I think the excellent moderation and the community shaped by it makes all the difference.

[unsupp0rted]

I first learned of Covid about 3.5 months before most of the rest of the world here on HN. Seriously.

[Enginerrrd]

Oh yeah, I believe you. I bought my first masks in late December, and more again in January.

[dsfyu404ed]

>You have SME's on almost every subject imaginable that populate this sub.

And they keep their mouths shut because this place suffers from the same problem as Reddit where anyone with a deep understanding and nuanced view gets their comments down-voted into oblivion by the hordes of people who know just enough to sound like they know what they're talking about but not enough to actually know what they're talking about and who don't understand the nuanced take. Communities that vote on what opinions are rightthink and wrongthink all have this problem.