[possibility]

Sam owns YC, YC owns HN, what does it matter? The whole purpose of HN is to make Sam (and the other partners, and investors, and YC startups) money. Mindshare is incredibly valuable. It's advertising that doesn't totally suck.

[pyrophane]

Hacker News is a bit of a misnomer. It doesn't, nor has it ever, served hackers. This is a site for the startup kids, and you either love it or hate it, but you gotta accept it for what it is.

[dang]

Actually the better part of HN's audience isn't involved in startups and a sizeable portion (dismayingly sizeable in my view) is cynical about them.

"Startup kids" is too dismissive. Some of the very best comments about startups come from grizzled veterans. Will ChuckMcM or Animats mind if I call them grizzled? Let's just pause to appreciate what incredible value they and others add to this community from the wealth of their experience.

Than again, depending on your definition of "kid" there are "kids" on HN whose experience with startups is already impressive. Experience should perhaps be measured in iterations, not years.

HN has many subgroups, including plenty of hackers. Plenty of purely technical stories make the front page. And the startup and hacker groups overlap.

We get complaints about the balance whichever way HN trends.

[giancarlostoro]

Lots of hackers are well known for their vast knowledge of the tech scene including vague startups that nobody has heard of. I know I make 'hackers' sound like hipsters but labels are usually poorly representations of a generic set of traits, people just turn todays newer labels and magnify the worst of the worst. Coincidentally I never liked labels, but hacker and geek are things that gave me a piece of mind after scraping out of high school (mostly geek).

[mchahn]

> It doesn't, nor has it ever, served hackers.

Wrong. When I first lurked here a high-percentage of posts here were relating to startup concerns. The number have dropped dramatically over time. My non-hacker son-in-law who only knows finance was a hacker news reader a few years ago, hoping to learn tips about starting something up. He gave up due to the dwindling number of such posts.

[simula67]

Hacker News has its biases, but that does not mean it cannot serve hackers.

[nefitty]

The point is that a lot of us lose sight of the bias inherent here. Sometimes I get lost in how great HN is, especially compared to similar online communities.