[birken]

Reading also has an additional cost, which is if you read things that are wrong it can teach you incorrect things in addition to wasting your time reading it. Especially in the startup space, a lot of people like to write their experiences into lessons when they have no basis for doing so. I imagine they want more people to read their article/blog post and it is some manner of self promotion. That is fine, but as a reader, you can just ignore whatever their have to say, it probably isn't useful.

Paul Graham is an obvious exception. He writes semi infrequently (1-2 essays a month as of recently), goes to great lengths to have them edited by people with diverse viewpoints and based on his position and experience has a great perspective to give useful lessons. There are other good writers, but not many, and pg is probably the best due to his unique perspective. And in my opinion, HN voters seem to vote up "entertainment" stories more than useful ones. So you can't assume if something is on the top of HN, it is useful in any way.