Do you think the early magic is lost? If yes, then what do you think has changed?
Your account is two years old, but the question is (and gets) so old it's even in the guidelines
"If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a common semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills. "
About topic: there is a lot more politics, a lot less about hacking and tinkering. I dont if HN has changed. It is much more popular now.
Or maybe the world has changed.
We've got prominent people like John Nagle or Alan Kay talking about stuff.
We've got people who were involved in Maxis early games (SimFarm etc.) commenting little nuggets about the games and how the name "The Sims" was chosen.
We've got people I have never heard of who talk about interprocess communication on QNX. Or about barrel machines and Intel Xeon programming. Or about lots of other interesting stuff.
None of which fits into "let's talk how awesome my startup is".
I like the more relaxed atmosphere, but would like to see more interesting technical articles getting to the front page, and less repeated news things being cross posted around the internet.
Spending a bit more time on /newest is probably a good idea.
HN is my homepage now. If it was just news on startups that would be interesting but not something I would visit daily. Just like I don't visit Apple or Android news sites daily. It's a good mix (I would even say firehose) of topics and I like it that way.