Confusing.

"Pandering"? What possible definition of "pandering" are you using? This is an article about the origins of a technical communications medium, origins which apparently have some relation to semantics, commented on by the most eminent linguist I know of.

And since you're being all meta here and everything, and since you took the time to influence what's on the front page in this case, it's curious you apparently had no problem with yesterday's front page post which contained pertinent hacker news like...wait for it....the letter from divorced Ronald Reagan advising his son on marriage - a post you commented in and happened to take the time to include an Amazon affiliate link in.