HN-material arguably includes Silicon Valley/VC-funded entrepreneurial effort, as success stories tend to spawn competitors or inspiration in other fields. Not sure the origination of JPay, but it competes in the same industry as the HN-seeded Pigeon.ly [0]. That said, I don't understand your metric of measuring a company's potential relevance to HN readers. For any given tech startup, I would think revenues/funding rounds/programmers hired is enough of a relevance metric for the average stereotypical HN-ner. But you think HN-relevance is predicated on what proportion of the said startup's userbase would include the typical HN user?
> It does go into just enough detail about JPay to bring a smile to my face
I shudder to think that the description of the exploitive terms of the deal would bring a smile to anyone's face, but in addition to the fully comprehensive summary provided by the text, the article provides an in-text link to the full state contract with JPay; I'm not sure how much more detail it is possible to provide.
> I shudder to think that the description of the exploitive terms of the deal would bring a smile to anyone's face
The past several decades have seen that idiots and their resources are departed less swiftly than before. I gladly welcome solutions to that set of problems.
Just by looking at the text, it looks like 40% of the text deals with JPay's specific business details (pricing for its services), and 30% of background info (e.g. a description of the contract, services rendered, the specific government dept.). And 30% rhetoric, arguing that this is an exploitative deal and that lawmakers have not performed due diligence in considering the long-term impact of this revenue model. Not sure what the right proportion of content mix is needed to make this a legitimate article in your eyes, but consider that not everyone feels the immediate need to argue the public policy position.
[0] https://blog.ycombinator.com/pigeon-dot-ly-yc-w15-a-startup-...