[gwd]

Sorry to be dense, but can someone explain why this is on the front page? Obvs sad for this person, seems like she had a fun time, but that's true of millions of people. Take this as "Help me see what I'm obviously not seeing", not a complaint.

[293984j29384]

As someone with ALS and won't see next year, please do not post my memoriam page to HN.

[dombama]

Hey friend, I just lost someone close to me from Parkinson's coincidentally the same exact day as the woman in the story and just a few miles from her. If you have any servers you want to keep running for a while or any EOL tech logistics your family won't understand I'd be happy to help. I can post your memoriam page wherever it belongs. My email is in my profile.

[293984j29384]

Thank you for that incredibly kind offer. I've spent the last year or so automating everything I can. I've made peace with letting go. You spend your entire life accumulating "stuff" to only realize none of it matters.

[arm32]

You won't be able to stop me.

[dombama]

Framingham is a Boston suburb. Boston is maybe a #4-5 tech hub in the US, so there are a fair number of Massachusetts folks on here for whom it'll be a local story. I've seen non-tech Boston area stories on the front page once in a while.

Also when I first saw the headline, I (incorrectly) assumed it was an auto-posted obituary and clicked to see the tech. I could see in this scary political climate, with US morality on the rise, and a few prominent new "DeathTech" startups, this audience might be curious about tech for EOL planning. Long time HNers (the ones who are more likely to vote on articles) are aging and that cohort are now in their 40s–50s and increasingly aware of their mortality as they themselves, family and friends confront challenging medical issues.

[glenstein]

A perfectly fair question, and predictably but unfortunately down voted.

I think it's of interest because (1) it implicitly presents a question of how to go about a premeditated end-of-life message to be shared in an online space.

And (2) relative to typical prose in this context, it's a bit cheeky, more like an "aw, shucks" than a grand tragedy. Something about it reached across the veil of impersonality, again in a digital space. And to me at least it's raising a question of how you choose to express yourself and how that choice gives you life in the ability to be regarded and known by others, and perhaps an even more general question of how we're all already doing something like that on a day to day basis. I don't think anyone who voted on it said any of that stuff out loud but you could feel those themes as implicitly present even if it's hard to put your finger on exactly what they are.

To your point I don't think it's the only message that has questions like those behind it, but I don't think it's ever been teed up for community discussion quite like this.

[fartfeatures]

I don't understand what it is doing here either.

[icar]

The same reason some political posts end up in HN. Nothing to do with tech, nor startups, nor anything related to them. This page is just a curated American news outlet, with a decent comment section.

Edit: I'll obviously get downvoted for this, but that's my point of view. I'm from Europe.