The tone on HN used to be that “Hacker” was synonymous with “VC backed startup founder”, there used to be whole discussions centered around the founder persona and its nature, the more traditional definitions of “hacker” got paid lip service.

I’d say that LinkedIn speech was born right here.

At the time hacker meant informal programmer, among other things. “I’m hacking on my book review website” “I’m hacking on a desktop filesharing app.” Those hackers sometimes got a nice swing at it and this place has indeed always been a finance-friendly venue for these nerds to commingle.

It’s 2025 and things move along. People still post their file sharing tools here, but yeah I agree that it does hit different now.