> I wish there was a no tech version of hackers news for this type of content only
I used to think the same thing, but I've come to appreciate exposure to highly-technical content (outside my wheelhouse) that also "gratifies ones intellectual curiosity." I don't necessarily deeply care about the merits of GUIs and TUIs, but once it's pointed out, I can see the importance of being keyboard driven (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49479837). And I find it valuable fairly often to have a passing familiarity with the fact that something like this is being discussed by intellectuals in the tech space.
For smart, curious people, exposure is valuable even if you don't have the time to understand something very well.
To be more specific, I think most of us would like to have a "not the current tech thing" page. So a front page that isn't 50-90% LLM content in 2026. In 2020 that would be crypto. Etc
https://www.unslop.news/ has been a breeze of fresh air to avoid all the LLM news. I don't care so much about them but there's so much LLM-adjacent content that it requires actual effort to find the non-LLM stuff.
From what I've observed (from the complaints people make about what is and isn't "HN worthy") most people who voice an opinion would prefer HN only have technical stories. It's common enough that it's explicitly called out in the guidelines: (On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups.)
This is a forum run by a Silicon Valley startup incubator. Unfortunately tech stories and whatever the current tech thing is will always dominate. And HN's design ethos of "no silos" means everyone has to see all of that content, and it will always push everything else down, especially anything non-technical (unless the mods force it up, which they can and sometimes do.)
The only way to get what you want (I do think it's an interesting idea and I'd like to see it) would be to start another forum entirely or else build a third party client to filter out all of the AI slop. Such stories will always be diamonds in the rough here.
Which means, surely, "no tech" and "no current impactful world". You would lose that sight from a community largely trained on hard facts ("works/doesnotwork") and creation, invention, management, on real grounds.
"Intellectual curiosity" as a "bubble", as an escape into a closed reality, is not a good thing. "Oh, the colours of nature in its taxologies!". And meanwhile maybe the world that is allowing you that intellectual growth is eroded.
Just skim through the submissions and pick your thing, obviously.
There's no shortage of sources seeking to deliver the most important news as quickly as possible. It's the niche stuff that few people care about that requires effort to seek out.
Go one level up and you're talking about HN as it is echewing anything "political" for the same reason (politics is mainstream and doesn't satisfy intellectual curiosity.) But it isn't any more grounded in "reality" to discuss the taxonomy of programming languages than birds or Sumerian kings. All of it is an escape from reality. None of it is discussing children getting blown up in Gaza, or famine in Sudan, or what have you.
There is a difference between "trying to discourage what stimulates gut-talk in a part of the population" and refusing it as a legitimate topic. Already if we can reason about it it is intellectually interesting; if it has non evident roots and outcomes it is intellectually interesting.
And there are reasons why what will concern us directly is important to be notified and discussed to be clarified.
The community, not the articles, is where I feel /. had value, and where HN has value. Another site with more-relevant-to-me articles but a different community would provide me far less value.
It is precisely the hard tech articles and focus that keeps the valuable community on HN.
