Social news site, Y Combinator community, startup links, programming discussions, ranking, moderation, Show HN, Ask HN, and tech culture
Hacker News
Hacker News is a social news and discussion website focused on computing, startups, research, engineering, business, and other topics that interest technically curious readers.
What Hacker News is
Hacker News is a social news website for technology, startups, programming, science, business, and intellectually curious links. Readers use news.ycombinator.com to find stories, submit links, ask questions, share projects, and debate ideas in threaded comment sections.
The front page
The front page is a constantly changing list of stories. A link can rise when users vote for it and discussion stays active, but ranking is not a raw popularity contest; HN also uses flags, anti-abuse systems, site weighting, and moderation to reduce spam and overheated threads.
What people post
HN is best known for engineering posts, startup launches, technical essays, research papers, security writeups, open-source projects, business analysis, and unusual primary sources. Text posts such as Ask HN and Show HN let people ask the community for advice or present something they built.
Community norms
The site has a deliberately plain interface and a culture that rewards detailed, substantive comments. Its guidelines ask users to avoid personal attacks, low-effort arguments, repetitive jokes, and promotional behavior that tries to manufacture votes or comments.
Relationship to Y Combinator
HN is connected to Y Combinator, the startup accelerator, but the FAQ separates ownership from day-to-day editorial choices. YC-related job posts and startup launches can appear on the site, while normal discussion and ranking still depend on the broader HN system.
Strengths and limits
The site can surface excellent technical writing and expert comments quickly, especially on software and startup topics. It can also reflect the biases of its audience: some subjects get intense scrutiny, some perspectives are overrepresented, and fast-moving threads may reward confident claims before careful context catches up.
Why it matters
Hacker News became part of the information diet for many programmers, founders, investors, researchers, and product builders. A single post can send traffic to a small project, shape debate around a new tool, or expose a technical idea to people who can test, critique, and extend it.