Ask HN: Are you interested in a Hacker News alternative which doesnt focus on AI
I was inspired by this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41766704
And I felt like instead of asking it to be specifically instead of AI , I really wondered if we could rather create a hackernews alternative (potentially with same ui-ish) that doesn't condone AI
We could rather have it be for open source / ask for linux etc.
I think I personally would prefer a website where I can have a fresh relief not having to worry about ai in my news for once .
I am more than willing to build it as a fun side project but I wanted to hear the community's opinion in it
(I don't want to overthrow hackernews , that's pretty stupid IMO , I just want people who don't want the latest ai hype to gather around and discuss some other cool things which are "not" AI
I've considered writing a Firefox extension that just hides any mention of AI, LLMs, etc.
But in some sense how would you do so ? would you check for a div element which looks for AI
then technically this post which is not about "AI" but rather "non AI" also gets blocked , but I do believe that this might be a good idea
Filtering out the AI related stories is one thing/challenge (the 'focus' is a wave, a trend), but otherwise, there are still plenty of submissions/discussions about other topics, I mean, you can still join us in those threads, upvote those threads. Get involved there!
You can visit my retro-computing site: twostopbits.com. No AI there!
hmm this is really cool , is this website open source?
Yes, https://github.com/jgrahamc/twostopbits
No more hacker news alternatives please
your audience is not reading...you put AI in the title!
so what should I exactly put , I am more than open to suggestions
Relax. Still your mind. You are in a calm place. Now, think of all the numbers you can. But do not think about the number seven (7). Do not think about the number 7 (seven).
HN strongly reflects whatever thing SV is all hyped about. Today it's AI. Yesterday it was cryptocurrency. I don't think it's that hard to ignore the items that don't interest you -- there are plenty that aren't about The Current Hotness -- and if you wait long enough, the topic will stop being so trendy anyway.
Hmm care to elaborate.
Though I hate AI , I am not exactly sure if this would go away or not because I am not the most betting man ever , and there have been times when all humanity was stunned by their future (Imagine if you asked someone in 60's / 80's they'd say we would get floating cars but we got internet at our fingertips ) (I don't know its hard to predict future)
What I'm saying is that HN reflects the current mood and interests of silicon valley, and silicon valley has a very strong tendency toward fads. Right now, the fad is AI.
I'm not saying AI will go away as a topic. I'm saying that AI stories won't always be so dominant on HN, because sooner or later (likely on the sooner side of later), SV's hype train will move on to something else. Then the people who aren't so interested in the new fad will be complaining about how stories related to it are too dominant on HN.
Cryptocurrency is the last great example of this. The hype train has moved on to AI, and crypto isn't the the Hot New Thing anymore. So stories about it don't dominate HN anymore. Crypto stories still appear regardless, but at a more reasonable rate.