I've been here 12 years and I don't remember HN focusing solely on technical topics, unless the word "technical" has widened to mean "anything one engineer finds intellectually stimulating".
Nowadays it feels more like sales, marketing, management, and investor interests, and topics they find interesting which has far more popularity than anything at the implementation level.
Granted, HN probably better matches what matters these days to launch a successful company. But we're all older now and working for companies that became what we once tried to disrupt, and it shows.
Good founders have always been more about sales, marketing, funding, etc.
And that’s not meant to be an insult. I’ve always been more of a fan of the people who create successful businesses from technology than the technology itself.
The discussions are shallow and pointless, lots of actors arguing in bad faith and lots of commercial hype, lately mostly around AI to the point that the site is barely interesting for the tech-curious.
And then there's dang's moderation where he deletes comments or requires users to remove comments themselves to avoid being banned.