Metacomment: As I've gradually shifted from reading, listening, or watching news, which I increasingly find almost wholly irrelevant, if not downright insulting, to expose myself to, I'm relying on curated sources, and HN in particular, to a larger degree.

So this is the first I'd heard the news, some 13 hours after posting as I write.

One thought that occurs is that HN has something rather good going on, in its incentives, audience, financing (HN isn't a revenue center, but does feed awareness of YC), and resulting informational production. Developing it further might be of interest, or finding a way to tap into it to produce a higher-quality "what's happening of significance in the world" product (feeds and filters off of HN already exist, e.g., the HN subreddit, basRSS).

And a substantial part of that is the culture that's been specifically cultivated. Researching the issue of trolling online, I happened across a post from nearly two weeks ago (which I'd missed in first appearance) on Time magazine's "how trolls are ruining the Internet" article. HN admin and mod dang offered a rebuke to an uncharitably rude comment, in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12322114

The context for that was my experiences in the past week in a new community which turns out to be quite centrally founded on the principle of pervasive anonymity. An interesting premise, but difficult to get right. My venture there didn't go well: https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/500ysb/the_imz...

There's also the premise that news itself is often simply unproductive and unhealthy, and its different formats, particularly television/video, but also radio and print, have some fairly deep psychological influences, despite the fact that individual stories often have little personal impact -- we can neither do much about them, nor they to us. This isn't always the case, but the factors that do make news matter, relevance, context, background, and an exposing of the powers and reasons behind events, is rarely part of the modern product, which emphasises shock, reaction, outrage, and distraction. Not only mainstream commercial television, but the "better" sources -- BBC, CBC, NPR, PBS, The New York Times, Telegraph, and Guardian.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-ro...

I receive a local paper. I'll listen briefly to headlines. I occasionally read news sites directly online. But whether it's me or the media, something seems changed, and relevance is largely missing.

Just to give an example, the local paper where I'm visiting carried a story this morning about an "artificial leaf" development by a university research team. The story ran a half page, from a news service billing itself as ecological news -- one of the many wire-service pieces that fills what's left of the business section of the paper on Mondays. Hoping for an explanation of the design, mechansim, or product, in that half page, there was one sentence revealing anyof this, and I quote:

Here’s how it works: The energy of the sun rearranges the chemical bonds of the carbon dioxide.

Read it for yourself: http://www.chicagotribune.com/bluesky/originals/ct-uic-artif...

Literally the entire remainder of the article was noninformational filler. A paragraph or two of which on why synfuels-based energy storage is useful, I can understand. But ... this isn't even pretending to inform.

(There's a Science article which reveals slightly more: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6298/467)

The remainder of the paper is similarly loaded with anti-information. A brief news roundup buried in the back of the first section contains what little actual news is present, again largely wire articles. There's perhaps a well-written article every week or two. Op-eds are occasionally, though rarely, considered. A friend characterises the columnists as largely writing about themselves or to each other. And yes, this is the same Tronc product John Oliver lampooned, with absolute justification, consummate skill, and delightful effect, on HBO a few weeks back.

Oliver's right: the media business environment stinks. But Tronc have stopped even trying.

So: HN, an intelligent audience, a diversity of views, a fostering of civility, even in disagreement, principled readership, and quite frankly a really boring design asthetic, are all soft-power influences shaping a quite useful information stream.

Thoughts kicked up by seeing this headline in the story list.

And yes, beyond that, I'll miss Wilder, a gentle but brave comic genius of our age.