[pavlov]

This is a new inversion to me. The common complaint used to be that HN has become too much of a startup hustler site and strayed away from its programming roots, as in: “Back in the good old days you’d have the front page full of Erlang articles only”

[ThrowawayR2]

The original poster might a point, at least from a certain point of view. The topics on HN are programming topics but they're almost all corporate / enterprise programming topics. Contrast that with the mythos of hackers from the pre-2000s era and their romanticized tales of nerd badassery in pushing hardware and software to its limits and their rebelliousness against what the "suits" (corporate programmers, a.k.a. us) say they're supposed to be able to do and HN would seem to have very little to do with hacking and its spirit of curiosity.