I thought since you were complaining that everything was dead then it must have been a different username, and that you had created a new one to be able to post. It wasn't clear, but I guess you just didn't know.

I've never seen this sort of thing happen. Were they "dead on arrival"? When you posted the links, did you then check to make sure there was a reply comment box? Did you log out and see if they were there? Did they die after some time?

There are web sites that are banned, and links to them are simply never alive. I don't know the list off-hand - you can find them with a search. However it's certainly true that techcrunch isn't one of them, so that doesn't explain everything.

I've been on this site for a significant time, and I can't explain all your links being dead, comment-less and point-less. You might send an email to PG and ask, but be I would suggest that you be clear, complete, concise, and patient. The shorter your email the more likely he can reply immediately.

I also suggest you run an experiment and submit a link to a page somewhere, see if it has a comment box, log out, see if it's still there, log back in, delete it, then include the result of that in your email.