This is a hypocritical response and not directed at you or your comment specifically, but I'm personally a bit sick of the top comments in each HN thread being (often pedantic) sidenotes.

There's nothing wrong with sidenotes, and I don't think there are more sidenotes than previously, but it seems as though the level of relevant on-topic discourse has fallen leading to off-topic comments bubbling to the top. This is disappointing as the comments used to tell me more about the article than the article itself.