Removing "hide" is the wrong call. People, especially in work environments, need to be able to hide links for all sorts of reasons. For example, if you work at Apple and there is an inflammatory article or if you've recently lost a family member to suicide and there is an article on a famous figure in the tech community committing suicide like Aaron Swartz, you probably don't want to see that on the homepage of HN for the day. It's one of the best features of Reddit and HN, imo.