Furthermore, take a look at the top 30 currently on HN, approximately 1/3 of them are in some way promotional (either of some product or self-promotion, delivered as news or a testimonial or story).
Like these headlines: 1. Thank You Rails 2. The article about Mark Pincus at a startup at Berkley Mixer 3. HP working on distributed sensory mechanisms 4. The physics of bras 5. How to write a great novel 6. The interview with Y-Combinator that wasn't 7. Japanese teenage boy improves rails 8. Being open and honest about the startup process
In some way, these articles promote a company, a technology, the author of the posts value, and so on.
This post about MacHeist is just feels more blatant.
But I am happy to have people like you in the community that open up debate.