

Y Combinator News - pavel_lishin
https://push.cx/2015/y-combinator-news

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junto
It could be named "Rockstar ninja coder news".

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

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j_s
Isn't the author's point that 'Y Combinator' is the brand, and 'Hacker' is
just (edit: highly effective!) marketing?

In fact, it used to be called 'Startup News'!

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junto
I would argue that the vast majority of people on here have very little
interest in YC. I'm here for the interesting content and people.

Therefore there are two brands (in my humble opinion).

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dang
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.

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bhsiao
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](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.

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ksk
I think his point is that this website (or specifically, its owners) is more
aligned with mainstream corporate/VC culture than what traditionally was
considered hacker culture.

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edward
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.

