I believe the main change is just that Hacker News went from being a very specific subset of the population to becoming much more mainstream. Ten years ago it was, at least in my opinion, mostly early adopters of internet technology and in general people who had enough funds that they could fail without being devastated. Nowadays, in addition to the traditional VC route, there's also the indie hackers movement. Those founders typically aren't friends with old money, so they will bring a different perspective on financial risks.
> Nowadays, in addition to the traditional VC route, there's also the indie hackers movement. Those founders typically aren't friends with old money, so they will bring a different perspective on financial risks.
When I first started hanging around HN (around 2011 or so), the general vibe seemed much more like indie-hacker types to me, lots of anger at VCs and the hockey stick growth required.
Honestly though, the following decade was a massive tech bull market which presumably pulled lots of HN denizens in (including me). Maybe we're getting back to that a little bit with tech layoffs and potential opportunities in other industries.
You should watch the Arstechnica homepage then. They have authors who essentially get all their writing assignments based on how popular a story is ranking on this website. That is pretty mainstream.
