Dev laments tech community decline: HN and Lobsters 'a shadow of what they used to be'
zetalyrae · x · 2026-09-22
Developer unconed amplified a pointed take: "It's like everyone in the industry lost 30 IQ points." He argues HN and Lobsters are now shadows of their former selves—not just because half the content is AI-related, but because the rest is banal and intellectually unambitious.
He recommends Tony Finch's personal linklog (dotat.at), a curated collection of classic-style technical links spanning Rust, UNIX history, Postgres, performance work and more, calling it like "breathing fresh air after a rancid pigsty."
He also voices a telling worry: he hesitates to publish new work because it gets fed into "slop machines" and regurgitated stripped of all the care and craft he put in—a snapshot of quality anxiety in tech communities amid the AI content flood.
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