Precisely, and that was no accident, since the idea for both sites came from pg. Of course he knew it was in Reddit's interest to grow, but when it lost the property of being interesting for him personally to read, he created HN, a smaller sibling, and kept it that way by design.

You should. HN can't be all things, so if you'd rather have something else, create it and make a community with others who share your preferences. Several have spun off from HN over the years, much as HN did from Reddit.

There is room for a lot more internet communities. Plenty of permutations haven't been tried yet, or were tried and failed for extraneous reasons.