Agreed. I definitely felt like it was far more obscure and hacker-y five years ago. I remember things like Beej's guide to Network Programming were (https://beej.us/guide/bgnet/) formed the crux of the content - now there's far more "thought-pieces".

Agreed, I wished more individual content made it through. I'm trying to keep an eye on the /new queue and upvote it early, but it's tricky. And my pet peeve, people submitting dupes over and over instead of checking before posting doesn't help, since it's mostly mainstream stuff that gets repeated, drowning the niche out even further.

Are there any other communities that have a feel similar to the old HN, in your opinion?

Unfortunately no, I think this sort of trend has essentially eaten most major communication channels. Even reddit is 10x more tame, “middle class average” and predictably corporate than the forum culture the internet had ~1995-2010, before winner-take-all social media sites ate everything.

Agreed, reddit is now full of corporate fanboys.

Once a site/forum hits enough critical mass it's guaranteed to become corporate.

Social media exists to 1) push ads, or 2) shape consensus.

The end state of both is $$$.

I consider HN being too corporate already. But I think there is an easy solution, where voting power just needs to be adjusted for at least those corporate domains and maybe in general to give more weight to diverse domains.

Secure scuttle butt has an interesting old school tech community feel, but it's not a site per se and is really just a p2p social network.

There's a place called lobste.rs but it's unfortunately invite only. Seems relatively active.

Couldn't this be said of the broader diversification of demographics/interests/end goals within the tech worker and hackers communities at large?