Y Combinator News

It could be named "Rockstar ninja coder news".

Or maybe the author could just recognise that a brand's name doesn't often change.

pg was part of the east coast MIT/Lisp hacker culture and his use of the term predates YC by many years. That's why HN is called what it is. I don't see why one would begrudge this. Indeed, YC itself started as a hack, so it would be truer to say that the H led to the Y than vice versa.

It's true that the word "hacker" has morphed and become diluted, but that's what happens when subcultures go mainstream, and words are always changing anyhow. I don't like it either, but it happens.

I'm not sure what the point is. That YC continues to use the word "hacker" to selfishly attract the kind of people who aim for billion-dollar exits instead of moderate returns? The author might be interested to know pg has written an essay on this.

http://www.paulgraham.com/swan.html

Anyway, if I had to wager a guess, I'd go with the Occam's-razor explanation that YC uses the word hacker because its founders identify as hackers in the original sense of the word. In fact, that hackers are better at starting breakout companies practically seems to be YC's thesis.

This site used to be called Startup News. Using a name that is different from the URL means you can rename it without needing to change the web address.