I agree. I think HN is moving towards people talking past each other and pointless posturing, A lot of it, no doubt, is people consuming political material from other media and then sort of regurgitating it here. That's great if you can barf up more than just an arguing talking head. It's not so cool if you all have is rancor and mindless talking points.<p>I find that I have to be the most careful about the stories I agree with. That's when the critical thinking shields are down and bad stuff slips through.<p>As a defense to the HN-is-going-to-heck problem? I just don't read HN comments that much any more. I use my aggregation site to view all major tech sites and browse stories from there (shameless plug: <a href="http://project-management-methodologies.net/" rel="nofollow">http://project-management-methodologies.net/</a>)<p>HN is still a great place to hang out with like-minded technical guys working on startups. It's just moved from a small coffee house to a large stadium, and the crowd has changed from people wanting to make things people like to a smorgasbord of folks in all kinds of situations. It's a lot noisier and the chit-chat isn't as focused as it used to be. I still like it, but I find the downside of engaging in idle non-focused chatter to be bigger than the upside of learning something that can make a difference in the world.<p>Didn't used to be that way, sadly