HN is for hackers, not startup founders. There just ends up being a disproportionate amount of stuff about startups, because YC is in the startup business.
And therein lies the problem. As HN and Y Combinator itself have grown, as well as the general startup climate, HN has become increasingly startup focused to the point where many would describe it as "for startup founders" rather than "for hackers". And there are a lot of new users who like it that way (or assume it's supposed to be that way). But then you have the old guard like tptacek who would like nothing more than to see HN filled with only hard tech/science posts. That's a gap that isn't going to be filled with any algorithmic tweak or new comment layout.
I would strongly prefer an HN that only had startup posts. I think this part of the thread is going off the rails, though. The problem is, "how do you improve comment quality on HN". We can probably avoid debating the premise of the question, and just focus on the (plentiful) ideas themselves.
