NotAnOtter (u/NotAnOtter)

NotAnOtter commented on Ask HN: Is Reddit going the way of Stack Overflow? · Posted by u/NotAnOtter

ksherlock · 5 months ago

There are, ~140,000 active subreddits.

Dudes be like "Reddit sucks". My brother in Christ, you made the sandwich.

NotAnOtter · 5 months ago

Bad faith argument

NotAnOtter commented on Ask HN: Is Reddit going the way of Stack Overflow? · Posted by u/NotAnOtter

fracus · 5 months ago

SO falling before AI doesn't preclude AI killing SO. You aren't listening to anything I've been saying. Your graph is meaningless. If it wasn't for AI, SO would still be used. It isn't more complicated than that.

NotAnOtter · 5 months ago

Not gonna keep going back and forth when you seem to agree but are choosing to be difficult. We agree SO was falling before LLM's hit the market. We agree LLM's accelerated SO's demise.

You seem to think they weren't failing before LLM (simply rapidly losing member activity), which is a narrative that I won't follow.

NotAnOtter commented on Ask HN: Is Reddit going the way of Stack Overflow? · Posted by u/NotAnOtter

chistev · 5 months ago

Every time I create a Reddit account and try making a comment or a post I get banned instantly. Regardless of if I use a completely different device, email, ip.

It's eerie.

NotAnOtter · 5 months ago

It's pretty wild. Meanwhile bot farms just shuffle all identifiers.

They are actively harming human users in defense of their toxic mods & botters. Site is dying and they are the murderer.

NotAnOtter commented on Ask HN: Is Reddit going the way of Stack Overflow? · Posted by u/NotAnOtter

fracus · 5 months ago

Stack Overflow is dead because of AI. Devs can get quicker answers with less hassle with AI. Without AI there is no other option for amateur devs to get answers, so Stack Overflow would otherwise still be used. This isn't difficult logic.

NotAnOtter · 5 months ago

Then explain the usage chart declining since ~2015?

As I said in my original post, LLM was the final nail in the coffin. I'm not arguing they aren't related. I'm saying they SO was falling long before LLM's took over. This isn't difficult logic.

NotAnOtter commented on Ask HN: Is Reddit going the way of Stack Overflow? · Posted by u/NotAnOtter

itake · 5 months ago

As toxic and awful as reddit is, unlike SO, Quora, etc. I don't see what people will move onto?

SO -> Github Issues, LLMs

Quora -> Medium/Substack/SO/SE

/., Digg, Quora -> Reddit -> ??

I'd love something to replace reddit, but I can't find another platform that is as open (e.g. don't need an account), has the diversity of topics.

The political (and sub-reddit) echo chambers are ridiculous though.

NotAnOtter · 5 months ago

IMO the community will fracture in two directions. Reddit's differentiator over Instragram, twitter etc. is that it's community based rather than individual based (with the algo making psuedo communities)

I feel some users will leach into platforms that created even more walled gardens, i.e. Discord, or platforms that reduce the sense of walled gardens i.e. Twitter.

NotAnOtter commented on Ask HN: Is Reddit going the way of Stack Overflow? · Posted by u/NotAnOtter

fracus · 5 months ago

I think Stack Overflow went dead because of AI specifically. The issues you mention just made that transition easier for people. Before AI, people had no choice but to suffer the toxic mods at Stack Overflow.

Reddit isn't comparable, as AI has not replaced human opinion.

NotAnOtter · 5 months ago

> I think Stack Overflow went dead because of AI specifically

This doesn't hold up when looking at usage charts. There is a clear peak around ~2015 with a steady decline through to now. LLM's came to market in their current form in the last couple years, and took a couple years to be broadly adopted. There was a clear and obvious market fall off way before AI / LLM.

> Reddit isn't comparable

I agree with that in isolation; but since I don't agree with the AI premise this isn't especially relevant. I don't think AI will replace Reddit, I think one of the other major platforms will absorb it's users like Reddit / Hackerrank / better documentation / back searching absorbed SO's users through 2015-2021

NotAnOtter commented on Ask HN: Is Reddit going the way of Stack Overflow? · Posted by u/NotAnOtter

orionblastar · 5 months ago

Just like Quroa, Reddit is overwhelmed by chatbots and spam. As the spammers and chatbots vote up each other's posts and the administrators and moderators can't keep up.

NotAnOtter · 5 months ago

I feel Quora gave up years ago though.

When you load a random content page, the top 50% of the page is a question, the bottom 50% is an ad that is designed to look like a comment, and the entire right panel is ads. Quora is more ads than content, you have to scroll and decipher what is or isn't an ad based on their greyed 2px font ad disclaimer.

NotAnOtter commented on Underwater turbine spinning for 6 years off Scotland's coast is a breakthrough apnews.com/article/tidal-... · Posted by u/djoldman

IshKebab · 7 months ago

This is such a misguided concern I'm wondering if you are concern trolling...

NotAnOtter · 7 months ago

How are concerns about ecological impact misplaced when discussing solutions to ecological problems. It feels pretty relevant to me.

And from everything I've seen/heard, tidal based solutions are just fundamentally incompatible with their product. Keeping sensitive metalic moving parts in saline solution exposed to the sun for years on end - paired with other random things like boating accidents or marine life - it's a non-starter. Constructing these things creates pollution. If it's lifecycle impact is less than oil's, great, I just don't believe we'll ever get to a state where it's better than oil AND (solar/geo/wind) + Batteries.

NotAnOtter commented on Underwater turbine spinning for 6 years off Scotland's coast is a breakthrough apnews.com/article/tidal-... · Posted by u/djoldman

ben_w · 7 months ago

While all that is true, the problem is specifically how much it can cost in the worst case. There's only been one Chernobyl out of about 400 reactors, and its cleanup cost amortised over all those reactors makes a surprisingly small difference to the cost of electricity, but also Chernobyl was bad enough to be considered a significant part of the collapse of the USSR.

Likewise, although it's absolutely true we're only talking about a few football fields of even the more voluminous low-level waste (high-level is about the size of one small block of flats), this is difficult to collect when it's a layer of dust spread over a few hundred square kilometres or dissolved in the seawater.

If one of the UK reactors had gone up like Chernobyl, the UK would have ceased to exist, not because of the radioactive kind of fallout but simply the economic fallout would have done it in.

NotAnOtter · 7 months ago

It's a massive stretch to think one poorly placed meltdown somewhere in the UK would lead to the UK collapsing. I suspect it would be visible on a 10 year GDP chart but not "trending towards 0" levels of economic fallout.

Also I might just be misinformed but I thought nearly all of the radioactive waste from nuclear plants is already collected. It's not a collection problem, it's a storage problem. And a "what do we do when the energy company shuts down and stops maintaining their storage yard" problem.