Can someone kindly provide some history of this to those of us that weren't here in 2007?

To spell out the analogy, they both:

1) Are young and have started or been part of successful startups

2) Have blogs where they exhibit a strong personality through their writings, which are sometimes controversial but always tinged with elitism.*

3) Were/are darlings of Hacker News, with a high percentage of their blog posts making it high on the front page

*Not that there's anything wrong with that

Hopefully I manage to avoid any comparisons to Paris Hilton.

I miss Aaron's posts :(

I still check out his blog occasionally.