The community speaks that it is obsessed with Steve Jobs? How is that many posts of something we know about going to help me learn more about business, entrepreneurship, or programming?
They were roughly simultaneous, and most have only a couple of comments each hours later. I don't think anybody is finding much value in actually reading all three dozen restatements of the same story. It was just a collective-action problem that HN doesn't have good tools for solving.
I think it's a side effect of many people submitting the story rather than explicitly upvoting it (in which case upvotes would cluster around one or two stories, as they do for the top ones). Since submissions count as upvotes, and there's a critical mass of people submitting each version of the story, they all end up on the front page. You'll notice there are a couple where the comments are alive, but in a situation like this (single story, many sources, many people submitting each without checking if it's already there), this is exactly what would happen.
It's also possible some people are hoping for a karma boost by submitting a story many others are likely to submit, and thus there is an incentive to submit a story on the gamble that noone else has done it yet, since many others are likely to submit it too.
But the truth is that if you had even a passing interest in technology from the 1970's or later, and you still have a pulse right now, there is not a single thing more worth discussing at this moment than the life and passing of this great man.
Is your life so narrowly focused on HN that you can't take a day long break from learning about "business, entrepreneurship, or programming" and visit some other sites?
From the authors, founders, luminaries, etc., of these posts, have you learned nothing more about business, entrepreneurship, or programming? The community may not be obsessed with Steve Jobs. Instead, obsessed with the innovation he has driven into this world. All of which, in turn, leads business, entrepreneurship, and programming.
There is a lot of small, interesting news coming out as people tell stories. As someone who admires, uses and develops for the products produced by Apple, and has done for a long time, I'm personally curious to discover as much as I can. For me, it's been a great learning opportunity and also has prompted me to reflect on my own business (and life) practices. Major events are great impetuses.