Hacker News, Sans AI

A programmer named Elijah Potter looked at Hacker News — the internet’s favorite watercooler for tech people — and decided the AI takeover had officially become too much. So he built HNSansAI, a version of the site that pulls in stories and simply tosses out anything mentioning artificial intelligence buzzwords like OpenAI, Anthropic, Copilot, or “LLM” (short for large language model). In other words: a drama-free feed for people who miss the days when tech arguments were about literally anything else.

But of course, the real show was in the reactions. One commenter immediately delivered pure doom with “Hug of death?”, suggesting the project might collapse under the weight of sudden attention. Another went even harder, roasting the site as being “hosted on a baked potato,” which is internet-speak for “this thing is moving like it’s powered by a sad kitchen appliance.” And in a perfect little comedy twist, someone confessed they clicked in thinking “sans AI” meant a font, not “without artificial intelligence.”

Then came the plot twist: not everyone wants less AI — some want more, just smarter. One user bragged they built a Hacker News tool that uses AI to sort and tag posts so readers can skip annoying topics themselves. Another chimed in with a cleaner version hosted as static pages, subtly flexing a more reliable setup. So while Elijah’s project clearly hit a nerve, the comments turned it into a mini culture war: ban the robot talk, filter it better, or just laugh at the server while it melts.