I think from a technical standpoint, Fuchsia as a modern redesign of an operating system is very interesting.
However, from a technical point of view, the Windows kernel is just as exciting but the restrictions on the source code and its use make it very hard to build excitement in a community like this.
From a practical standpoint, the whole goal of the project is to throw out the open source system because manufacturers can't be arsed to play nice with open source. The philosophy behind it undoes a lot of the technical merit that would otherwise make it exciting.
Had Red Hat, Canonical or another such company been behind the project, I think the community would be all over it. With the way things are going, this is probably going to go down in the open source world like Darwin has: a few hackers building on top of it, but mostly everything is left up to the big corporation managing it. This is entirely different from Android, where enhancements are often built into custom ROMs made possible purely by the GPL nature of the kernel source code, enhancements that more than once made their way into the core Android project.
While I'm excited about a brand new kernel, I'm disheartened by knowing this project is a harbinger of death for large parts of the custom ROM scene. When Fuchsia appears on phones, we'll be thrown back into the days of customising Windows Mobile installs, by moving around special DLLs and copying over magical data files. Open source makes it easier to modify existing code, but manufacturers won't be running the open source version of that code.
>> when did HN become such a bitter, hurtful community
I don't think this happened. However, since HN inception, more and more people (edit to clarify: in the general population) worry about bad uses of technical advances. This is true outside HN and it reflects in the community. Both are good things in my opinion.
> When reasonable people stopped commenting
Quite the contrary. People are considering the whole picture, not merely the technical aspect of things. They are also thinking about the long term consequences and what is at stake. Technical aspects do not live in a vacuum.
I'm quite happy that people are no longer unconditionally in awe about new tech stuff regardless of what is at stake.
I actually understand people who only want to consider technical stuff less and less, as someone who is interested in technical stuff a lot. Please, think critically.
It does not mean you need to be against Fuchsia or anything. Just broaden your sight and take the time to consider whether things are done according to your values, and don't be angry against people who do.
People leaving might look to you as "more and more people worrying", but in reality the numbers don't show that. It's just your observation bias that is telling you what you want to believe.
On Reddit, this kind of situation on a subreddit is called a "circlejerk".
I'm aware that I may have biases and that my social group is not representative but do you have these numbers you are speaking about? Because you seem sure about this so I'd appreciate to be taught against my biases.
Until that, I'll stay with the idea that much more people are at least aware of issues around new tech today than before Snowden revelations, let alone the beginning of the 2000s, and some of them are not happy with this even if they haven't taken actual actions, and even if they are not the majority.
HN is probably only in advance on those topics compared to the general population by the way.
(I added a clarification to the original post because I'm not sure you understood my post like I intended and the sentence was indeed ambiguous)
This is so true. Just look at the number of comments on any technical post on here (e.g. the "how to write a syscall" post earlier today) vs any post having to do google/facebook/amazon.
It's pretty clear that some people are only on this site to hate on "big tech"
"Larry and Sergey won't respect you in the morning." was a slogan here 10 years ago. Quite appropriate for a startup forum.
It isn't new. There was a time when anything anti-Google or anti-Apple was downvoted to oblivion around 5 years ago, but that absolutely wasn't the historical norm (thankfully).
The whole tech landscape was much more optimistic place 10-15 years ago. There was a time when "do no evil" was not a joke in relation to Google. Against Google the bitterness is especially understandable considering how high pedestal they have fallen from.
The invention of dynamite was a great technical success.
The technical achievement here is not so special, but the implied goal (removing user rights by switching from a GPL to an MIT/BSD operating system on billions of devices) is.
The HN I remember would celebrate this technical success.