[mindcrime]

You have to understand, before it was called "Hacker News", this was "Startup News". A heavy focus on startup culture and entrepreneurship is a part of the DNA of this site. I expect it will always be that way. Complaining about startup / entrepreneur articles here is almost akin to getting in the water and then complaining that you got wet.

[alberich]

Funny that a lot of articles here wouldn't really be categorized as "hacker" news :) Lately, everything is "hacking". Seems like the word lost its meaning.

[potatolicious]

It's been like that forever - "hack" has become a buzzwordy synonym for "clever trick".

Found a cool way to get the word out on your product? You've "hacked marketing". Have an increment improvement on an existing concept? You've "hacked" that vertical. Interesting new job posting system? "Hacked recruitment".

I'm pretty sick of this community/field forcibly inventing words for every old thing instead of just calling it like it is - and this includes all of the "growth hacker" crap over the last few days. We're doing the same shit everyone else has been doing for hundreds of years, except we've changed the context to involve technology. These buzzwordy exclusive words we use do not actually describe fundamentally different concepts, they're just opportunities to fall all over ourselves and fawn at ourselves in the mirror.

[CodeCube]

That is in fact the origin of the term. Check out the book Hackers, by Steven Levy (http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Computer-Revolution-Steven-Lev...) and read up on how the Tech Model Railroad Club appreciated 'clever tricks' on how someone solved something, and it didn't necessarily have to be a 'technical hack' to warrant the phrase.

Another great text on the topic was written by Stallman: http://stallman.org/articles/on-hacking.html

"It didn't become easy—for practical purposes, using two chopsticks is completely superior. But precisely because using three in one hand is hard and ordinarily never thought of, it has 'hack value', as my lunch companions immediately recognized. Playfully doing something difficult, whether useful or not, that is hacking."

[gioele]

And nice, playful hacks get discarded as "Totally unusable." because they do not work on latest iOS. [1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4442829

[nirvana]

When I've pointed it out, people have told me that political diatribes are appropriate here because "x is relevant to hackers and this is for anything hackers find relevant".

[nihonjon]

I'm talking about all these Tony Robbins wannabes and content companies using startup/entrepreneurship as an angle.

Useful voices: 37signals folks, Eris Reiss, HBR, anyone here, etc.

Not useful voices: Inc.com, Forbes.com, Random dude running on investment alone, linkbait like "<insert superlative> <noun> for <insert phrase about startups or entrepreneurship>".