mgl

I do not think this is a technology problem.

I think it is a problem of how we changed: shorter attention spans, and a much larger volume of information to process.

Short forms win, long forms vanish, which is a tragedy in itself as good writing requires good understanding, and understanding is impossible without attention.

I'm in my 40s. I remember lcamtuf from pl.comp.security when I was just getting started playing with FreeBSD and other fun stuff.

Democratization of access has its victims.

I miss the old newsgroups. I wish we could land again in that weird, colorful oceans of geeky individuals with their quirks and interesting nerdy takes.

15 years ago, HN was about bootstrapping and early YC stars.

10 years ago, HN was in full VC-enterprise sauce.

5 years ago, it was crypto and NFTs, and how I switch jobs every quarter.

Now it is a blurry view into the future through the black mirror of AI.

How could we jump back into the cozy past again?

I do not have a clear answer, but what seems to work for you are small groups of friends and friends of friends hanging out on WhatsApp or Discord, discussing geeky news together in the context of their backgrounds. But these are very curated and very closed groups, still operating on the social media platforms of behemoths.

Would now be the right time to restart self-hosted message boards or Mattermost/Campfire instances?