I agree I've lurked around here for a while but I remember there being a lot less hullabaloo about facebook, google, and apple when I first started browsing and a good amount more about startups, python (and other language) tricks and cool geeky things. I understand that facebook, google, and apple are interesting with how "evil" or "great" they are on a day to day basis but I prefer more geeky articles that wouldn't make it to the front page on reddit.
Though people will just say I'm remembering wrong and saying that quality has dwindled is a figment of my imagination but just look what makes it to the front page on a day to day basis.
It's definitely not your imagination. I see articles here daily that if posted a year ago would have been criticized for not being worthy of Hacker News. Fortunately the discussion here is still mostly civil and intelligent. I've been reading a few haskell papers recently that I'll submit soon, but I think papers are more suitable submissions for weekends so people have time to digest them.
Though people will just say I'm remembering wrong and saying that quality has dwindled is a figment of my imagination but just look what makes it to the front page on a day to day basis.