I too continue to visit HN in part because its one of the rare places that feeds my smart side and inspires/stimulates/satisfies that aspect of my existence. At the same time I've repeatedly come close to abandoning HN entirely because of another aspect interwoven seemingly equally with the first thing, which might be described as a kind of smart-idiocy, different flavors of it, whether recursive irrelevant descents into subjective trivial minutia, or points-scoring one-upmanship in the field of PC-ness, the occasional pro-VC/pro-startup propaganda, or merely the blatant uncharitable assumptions about the intelligence/knowledge of the other party, or the increasing cases of "you want to learn more about 'foo', really? Gosh golly, let me Google that term for you, here are my top 5 results, and I suggest you learn about Wikipedia, Amazon, YouTube, Khan Academy, etc.", or the thinly-disguised self-promotional posts/comments (humble-bragging, etc).

Summary: there is gold here, utter gold. There is also shit, reeking shit. Make your choice, choose your focus, then tune your dial.

You're a clever boy seeing as how you've packed all that into 33 days.

People can (and do) change accounts for many reasons. It's also quite common for people to just read articles/comments without commenting themselves, therefore no login is required.

Did these possibilities not occur to you?

I know those possibilities exist. I wrote it under the assumption that the syngrog66 has another more longstanding username. I was trying to be funny by teasing him.

this sounds reasonable

I've packed it into multiple decades. there is something else I'd like to feel allowed to say, but, barring that, hoping that @dang instantly bans you for extreme personal rudeness. If he does not, yet another notch in what I see as the dark side or decline of HN.

I don't know how long hacker news is on the go, multiple decades surprises me. However you only registered 33 days ago, that was the point I was making. If you find that to be 'extreme personal rudeness' then you must get offended a lot.

> You're a clever boy

I await your ban from @dang. otherwise I will re-conclude that HN has too high a ratio anymore of assholes-to-signal.

I'm not precious, I don't mind you calling me an asshole.

your original comment to me was rude and creepy. therefore I stand by my initial reaction. especially considering the historical ecosystem of HN

however... I've looked at your follow-up comments since, and I've spelunked through your post history. Therefore I now believe you did truly make a mistake, and that you honestly did not intend to sound the way that you did. And you gave some reasonable responses. I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.

I've learned to take an increasingly hard-line against assholes in real life. But I've also learned to try even harder to show empathy and see things from other people's shoes. Therefore I apologize if you felt I over-reacted. And I look forward to seeing awesome contributions from you here in the future. ;-)

Cheers, thanks for the kind words and for being big enough to come back like this. I apologise as well, my attempts at humour fall flat a lot of the time. A little of it goes a long way according to my wife. Best wishes to you.

ha! ok cool. I hear you.

> I literally think that coming here makes me a smarter person in the long run.

Good ole' placebo effect :-)