Ask HN: How does HN earn money to keep going? - bhnmmhmd
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dsacco
Hacker News is actually relatively cheap to run, because Y-Combinator owns and
maintains the server hardware in-house. Instead of paying a monthly bill to a
cloud company, they opted to pay a lot (relatively) for a dedicated server and
amortize the cost. The only ongoing costs are electricity, internet bandwidth
and (I assume) offsite backups.

The last information 'dang confirmed was that Hacker News is a server with
something like 256GB RAM, dual 3Ghz decacore Xeon CPUs and 10TB of storage
space (I'd guess maybe closer to 20 these days).

That costs a few thousand to build, including the motherboard, case, power
supply and a good cooling solution. Unfortunately, you'd probably pay the
total cost of the hardware _per month_ with a cloud service :)

So that's the hardware. Y-Combinator also has (at least two) full-time
moderators who need to be paid. But while it might not directly bring in any
revenue, Hacker News is one of the best industry watering holes. It's a
powerful brand mechanism that brings together a lot of high-signal people that
are either worth investing in for startup ventures or who are capable of
helping those that Y-Combinator chooses to invest in. It doesn't need to see
direct returns on the forum because it offers excellent human capital for
seeding investments and ideas (see Dropbox, for example).

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miguelrochefort
> The last information 'dang confirmed was that Hacker News is a server with
> something like 256GB RAM, dual 3Ghz decacore Xeon CPUs and 10TB of storage
> space (I'd guess maybe closer to 20 these days).

Wow, that's a lot more than I expected, considering how simple and lightweight
the website is.

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dontJudge
Doesn't mean all the space is used. And 10TB isn't a big deal. El-cheapo
laptops used by soccer moms have 1-2TB drives.

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segmondy
My chromebook has 16gb SSD. I want an apple laptop, but the cheapest has only
128gb SSD.

------
dozzie
It's a private venture of Y Combinator company. Why do you think it needs any
earnings?

~~~
bhnmmhmd
I'm curious because it takes a lot of time and attention by moderators to keep
the HN atmosphere as civil and informative as we experience now.

How are the moderators compensated? There are no ads or anything on HN.

~~~
crypticlizard
There are advertisements placed on the front page by yc companies looking to
hire.

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bhnmmhmd
I always thought they're free.

~~~
crypticlizard
If it was free anyone could post ads looking to hire. It's exclusive
advertising to a high value potential customer.

