The one thing that stands out really clearly in the sentiment graph is how, prior to the AI sentiment trough around 2022, AI and Crypto sentiment were highly correlated in their movements.
It would be interesting to see a broader analysis across subjects and see if that shared movement wasn't about AI and crypto, but largely just sort of a fluctuation in general tone across HN, or if instead relative to general HN sentiment, sentiment on Crypto an AI movements were correlated prior to the recent divergence.
(author here) Interesting question to ask! I actually did the exact same sentiment analysis on Rust and remote work as well, but ended up cutting them from the post in the interest of brevity. My recollection is that the sentiment on those two topics wasn't particularly correlated with the sentiment on crypto or AI, but let me look up that graph and throw it in as a footnote on the article.
*EDIT*
added an addendum to the post with the sentiment analysis graph including both rust and remote work.
Interestingly, there is in fact a noticeable downward slope in average sentiment over time for those topics as well, although they both remain far more popular than either AI or crypto.
It would be interesting to see a broader analysis across subjects and see if that shared movement wasn't about AI and crypto, but largely just sort of a fluctuation in general tone across HN, or if instead relative to general HN sentiment, sentiment on Crypto an AI movements were correlated prior to the recent divergence.