My main gripe with lobsters vs hn is that lobsters has a lot of specific in the weeds tech articles, like about some functionality of a specific python library. It's way too specific, I find the mix of articles on hn much better from a generalist perspective

Conversely, hn gets a lot of content which simply isn't intellectually stimulating. Like on the front page atm is pocketbase—a git repo which currently has 53k stars which I've known of for many years, and a surface level article on RAG titled 'So you wanna build a local RAG?' ~~which seems to mostly just exist so the author can plug their company in the first line.~~ which doesn't really contribute much niche knowledge you can't obtain anywhere else. As a blogger myself I can't claim superiority—I've done this plenty, but this content just doesn't seem to do as well on lobste.rs as compared to really niche content which is directly relevant to very few people, but as a result required a great deal of research and time and very possibly is of great utility to a rare few.

Edit: though to be clear this is a spectrum with heavy overlap. Just general biases I've observed. Like on Lobste.rs there is an article titled 'Electron vs. Tauri' atm.

Personally I enjoy that content a lot. My guess is that HN is read by tech interested people these days not just programmers. The risk of being more generalist is losing your distinguishing lens. If I wanted generic news with a techie take there's sites like Ars and The Verge that already do this. If HN becomes those sites it's only a losing game.