The last information 'dang confirmed was that Hacker News is a server with something like 256GB RAM, dual 3Ghz decacore Xeon CPUs and 10TB of storage space (I'd guess maybe closer to 20 these days).
That costs a few thousand to build, including the motherboard, case, power supply and a good cooling solution. Unfortunately, you'd probably pay the total cost of the hardware per month with a cloud service :)
So that's the hardware. Y-Combinator also has (at least two) full-time moderators who need to be paid. But while it might not directly bring in any revenue, Hacker News is one of the best industry watering holes. It's a powerful brand mechanism that brings together a lot of high-signal people that are either worth investing in for startup ventures or who are capable of helping those that Y-Combinator chooses to invest in. It doesn't need to see direct returns on the forum because it offers excellent human capital for seeding investments and ideas (see Dropbox, for example).
Wow, that's a lot more than I expected, considering how simple and lightweight the website is.
I think there are others in the background.
per month? Care to explain ?
How are the moderators compensated? There are no ads or anything on HN.
Even if it was just a simple hobby site by PG and it actually cost him a non-trivial amount of money to run/maintain, he is still doing it. He likes his hobby so he takes money from his job/investments and spends it on his hobby. Just like you when you buy your computer game, how are you affording it?