Asking to have a tech forum in 2026 that doesn’t discuss AI is about as much of a Luddite as asking about having tech forum anytime in the past 25 years that doesn’t discuss the internet or the 15 that doesn’t discuss mobile.

Absolutely everything in tech is touched by AI/ML in 2026 except micro controllers/embedded systems

On another note - YC 25 batch

https://www.extruct.ai/data-room/ycombinator-companies-s25/

YC 24 batch

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Uy2aWoeRZopMIaXXxY2E...

On a personal note, I lead cloud + app dev implementations for a consulting company. I’ve had 5 projects since the beginning of last year and they have all involved Amazon hosted LLMs in some form or fashion.

Every single project I’ve been brought in with at pre sales has also involved Gen AI and/or traditional ML.

• subsection1h

  today at 8:39 AM

  There are plenty of tech forums that don't discuss AI. I think your confusion might be the result of you equating tech with "writing code for employers."

  By the way, have you seriously never written[1] so much as a single backup script to back up a personal system? You only use GUI backup software?

  [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46634535#:~:text=As%20f...

• add-sub-mul-div

  today at 2:36 AM

  Yes we already know it's omnipresent, that's the point. Some would rather lead in a different direction than follow like NPCs.

  • raw_anon_1111

    today at 2:48 AM

    I too wish the world hadn’t moved on from when I started programming on a 1Mhz Apple //e in 1986 or from my first job as a Fortran and C programmer on DEC Vax and stratus VOS mainframes…

    I also loved programming on these in 2007 using Windows Compact Framework.

    https://weareconker.com/blog/is-windows-ce-still-supported-i...

    But after being in this game for 30 years professionally and after half century of living on this earth, I still haven’t overcome my addictions to food and shelter and while I’m in pretty good shape, I don’t think I could start a successful career by opening an OnlyFans account so instead, I keep up to date on where the industry is…

I don't think its possible, you're just going to have to wait for the hype to die down like any hype wave

When's the last time you saw blockchain on the front page?

• raw_anon_1111

  today at 5:01 AM

  Blockchain was useless and in 5.5 years of working in cloud consulting - first at AWS and now at a 3rd party firm, I never once heard a serious business ask - “how can we make or save money using the blockchain”.

HN minus AI:

https://histre.com/hn/?tags=+all-ai

(Dis: it's mine, but it's free)

• nanocat

  today at 7:57 AM

  This is cool! Thanks for sharing it.

  I’m more interested in forums that attract a crowd much more measured and skeptical about AI, though - I know there are a lot of you here at HN (like me)

Only about 20% of front-page links are related to AI. I think it's impossible to have a productive discussion on the tech industry nowadays without AI in context.

• bigstrat2003

  today at 2:58 AM

  On the contrary, I don't think productive discussions (or even interesting ones) can be had about AI. We've seen what it has to offer (not much), now we are just waiting for the hype bubble to burst like it did for blockchain and so many other things before.

• krapp

  today at 12:15 AM

  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ There are far fewer posts about "politics" than AI, and they all get flagged ruthlessly even when they have a legitimate tech angle.

  If people don't like AI related content then I encourage them to treat those posts the way they do politics.

https://news.ycombinator.com/active

If you are feeling overwhelmed with slop posts about ai, camp on the new page and upvote any halfway decent story about something else. Many of us would thank you if they knew.

lainchan

Try lobsters and probably Reddit which have a hard stance against AI.

You're right in HN heading down the path in favouring slop, constant posts and startups about AI with now 'influencers' (simonw in particular) aggressively posting and shilling AI.

With the moderators knowing that these 'influencers' and their kind violate the HN guidelines every day by purposefully linking back to their site for farming backlinks.

It might as well be called AI news.

• stuxnet79

  today at 6:43 AM

  Lobste.rs has a hard stance against AI? This can't be true. I browse the front page every so often & there seems to be a fair amount of overlap between it and HN. At least for the upvoted articles.

• csomar

  today at 6:52 AM

  Lobsters stance is anti-AI and cautious at best. But plenty of AI-related articles there.