I think it's a fair assertion. It's not especially necessary for the HN crowd since we're largely technical folks, but not everyone here does software, right? It does assume a little familiarity with some abstract software knowledge.
I'm new here, but my reasoning was that it seemed a lot more technical than what else was being posted in that comment thread. Most of that seemed to be "is this a big deal?", not "why does this work?". I'm still learning, so is that kind of "disclaimer" something to avoid?
I don't think anyone's going to honestly yell at you for disclaimers if you feel you need them, but I think it's safe to assume that the folks here know how to use Google and Wikipedia and are fairly smart.
So long as you're not talking about something extremely esoteric relative to the sort of stuff that shows up here on a regular basis. I would feel comfortable referring to the Sieve of Eratosthenes in an offhand manner. Anyone on HN can probably look at the Wikipedia page and figure out what's going on.
If I refer to Negishi coupling, on the other hand, I should probably try to explain what they are and it might be prudent to provide a disclaimer that I'm going into esoteric O-chem stuff.
