Reading about tech has become gradually less and less fun for me over the past 16 years.

Does anyone remember the awe that was felt the first time we encountered an iPhone. Or an iPad? I remember those days I would read tech news and sites like Ars Technica and comments were sometimes snarky and indignant but generally people were enthusiastic about reading tech because it offered glimpses into more technically advanced futures.

I wasn't browsing HN back then but I imaging the same thing was true of HN in the late 2000's and early 2010's.

Now tech sites like Ars Technica consistently have comment sections filled with immense negativity cynicism indigation and just plain old boiling rage. I avoid those comment sections now because reading such things negatively affects my mood and certainly isn't fun.

And over the past few years HN has gradually become more negative and nasty.

All this sucks. This isn't why I became interested in tech. This isn't why I used to spend time reading about technology and science.

All this sucks. This isn't why I became interested in tech. This isn't why I used to spend time reading about technology and science.

You're 16 years older now. You will have changed. HN has too, but looking back at how great it all was without also realising that your point of view is different means you're missing a big part of why it feels worse now. I've been here a long time too so I'm not going to claim I don't see the same thing, but I imagine someone who signed up 3 months ago won't have the same opinion as us old timers.

>Does anyone remember the awe that was felt the first time we encountered an iPhone. Or an iPad?

Yes, and when I first saw LLMs and image generators I experienced a similar feeling of awe. We haven't had anything like this in decades.

It is unfortunate that many people are negative and nasty about it. Local politicians are getting shot at over datacenter projects. We have truly lost the plot.

I used to think that people had learned their lesson that automation was a force for good, and we had gotten past the Luddite days of smashing looms. But it seems that is not the case, people are just as short-sighted as ever.

I still maintain the notion that tech was most exciting/peaked around 2010. Macs were awesome (and the Intel transition was complete at full strength), things were fast, OSes weren't bloated, and we didn't have flavor-of-the-month fads like cloud, crypto, NFTs, or AI.

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