For those reasons, I personally would not object if YC decided to change the name of Hacker News to something else. The current name seems misleading, at least to me.
Yes, the whole idea sounds like a progressive attack by the word police looking for another target to cancel.
A not so long time ago there were these thick stacks of paper bound in twine, glue and leather called dictionaries that contained words and their understood meanings and it made it far more difficult to change a words meaning, it seems as with everything in this modern world the time for a meaning to be changed has accelerated to the point that ridiculous definitions can be twisted and imposed upon any word now.
Personally I prefer the darker meaning of hacker than the 2000s "G rated" version of hacker but that's probably because of my age.
So
To all the hackers, crackers and phreaks still out there...all your bases are belong to us, we are legion, we do not forget, expect us.
What's particularly funny here is that the "has fun making computers do things" definition of hacker predates the "breaking into things" definition. What you're referring to was called a "cracker"until the 90s.