HN was always more than mere startup culture / computer science posts.
The same way that every balanced programmer (or scientist for that matter) has always been.
And it's difficult to be an entrepreneur of any major scale if one doesn't understand the society they live in, its culture, and its roots. Selling socks, maybe.
Celebrity news and gossip is explicitly the sort of mainstream content which HN is supposed to select against, and which doesn't belong here. No one on Hacker News cared enough about Chuck Berry to post about him when he was alive, why should his death be worth discussing now?
Someone's death is often a moment to consider them, and HN has had discussions like this for years. I'm sure no two readers share the same list of which such discussions belong on HN, but as long as it's not excessive or predictable I don't see why we shouldn't have them. Chuck Berry's a pretty important historical figure.
I was downvoted considerably when I made similar complaints in the Carrie Fisher thread, and so far I'm at -1 for my comment here.
It could be because Chuck Berry isn't nearly as much of a trigger for pop-cultural nostalgia and trivia as Carrie Fisher, and so the thread simply isn't as popular, or it could be that I'm not entirely wrong.
I used to be fine with these threads but over time they've gotten more and more grating to me.
The same way that every balanced programmer (or scientist for that matter) has always been.
And it's difficult to be an entrepreneur of any major scale if one doesn't understand the society they live in, its culture, and its roots. Selling socks, maybe.