I hate this. Hate, hate, hate it. This technique from the "Lean Startup" movement to gauge whether an idea might have legs by putting up a fake landing page, and then harvesting email addresses.
Hate it.
Feels actively dishonest.
What I hate even more is blatantly copying from a project that already exists. Sure, the target audience is different and the focus is on people who don't know how to code.
But where's the business model? Will they be hosting the "HN clone" on their own servers? I thought Reddit already does that.