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Forgive me if I'm misinterpreting your question. I believe it should be "Ask HN" (Hacker News) and "Ask YC" (Y Combinator). I haven't been around here for too long, but I have seen many Ask HN threads and none specifically addressed to YC. Those threads about the Y Combinator process are usually of the form "Ask PG: " (Paul Graham) or "Ask HN: YC Founders, what do you think about X?"

I think "as khn" is "Ask Hacker News" and "as kyc" is "Ask Y Combinator".

I believe it's just the text formatting gone awry. They are:

ask hn (ask hacker news) and ask yc (ask Y Combinator).

ask yc was obviously more popular in the early days.

You're correct. I don't know why the plot headings did that, in the tags they are correct.