This account evidently got flagged "troll" for speaking against the Apple-worship cult found on HN, and banned from submitting stories and commenting more than twice a day (or so). That and I got put in the low end of a QOS-bin making the site load really, really slow while logged in.
If this is how people not blindly praising Apple is treated on this site, it does indeed explain the super-weird Apple bias here. Guys: It's not healthy.