2.Ideally HN would've been the internet utopia that the intelligentsia turned to for respite and nourishment. But if HN(algorithm+users) performs a filtering function on all the posts submitted, then it has evolved to consistently rank posts relating to web-based software development over anything else. Now this previous sentence is rather harsh. There are many wonderful articles on physics , social sciences , philosophy, history etc that are featured on a daily basis. But for each such article upvoted there are a multitude of github.io's .(Which,again is great. HN is after all for hackers and entrepreneurs). Every now and then though I come across a post linking to a blog that provides such delightful insight , a visualization of vectors , a new perspective on chemical analysis ,a novel line of questioning on the usefulness of reason and logic that I wonder if there is a multitude of such material 'out there' that I may be missing out on.
3.By grad student I meant anyone pursuing a rigorous(again dodgy semantics) scientific education(whether enrolled or on their own) while trying to fit the pieces(the various dependencies,if you will) together.
4.As for the whole possibility of creating such a site , I was merely checking(at least at the time of posting) if I was the only one that felt the necessity .