Lobsters is the natural choice - thoughtful tech discussion with strong moderation against hype. Also worth checking: comp.lang.* Usenet groups (surprisingly active), Reddit's niche programming subreddits (r/rust, r/golang), and specialty forums like electro-tech-online.com for hardware folks.
The key difference: smaller communities attract people who are there for the craft, not engagement metrics.
Lobsters is the natural choice - thoughtful tech discussion with strong moderation against hype. Also worth checking: comp.lang.* Usenet groups (surprisingly active), Reddit's niche programming subreddits (r/rust, r/golang), and specialty forums like electro-tech-online.com for hardware folks.
The key difference: smaller communities attract people who are there for the craft, not engagement metrics.
Mailing lists for some of the stuff I use (Emacs, openbsd,...)
So far I've been able to keep it out of my various fediverse feeds and accounts.
“I miss what HN was before Ai and LLMs started dominating everything!”
This might be your solution:
https://hn-ai.org/
I was thinking couldn't you just filter the AI stuff out. It normally seems to be less than 20% of items.