It's hard to quantify, but there have been changes on HN over the past year. I do suspect that's going to be as hard to change as it is to quantify, however.

I think that this is partly, because a lot of the truly great content has already been posted. Hacker and geek culture is really a small town once you get over the big learning curve. There are only so many PG essays, Greenspun essays, Spolsky articles, Jargon file content, The Cathedral and the Bazzar, In the Beginning Was the Command Line, PMarca blogs etc.. that can be posted. After the bulk of these got posted, the early adopters started having to work harder to find content that was as good. As they say, the low hanging fruit is easiest to pick.

I know that this has been true for myself, at least. I put a lot of hard work into finding great content and posting it on Hacker News. But, the well for me is running dry. It's harder to come across articles/essays/posts that are as good , because there are only so many great, game changing articles about hacking and startup life that have been written.

So, I've changed my focus from trying to post great articles, to trying to improve the quality of comments that I can post. And, I'm spending more time getting through school so I can get to work on my startup instead of just reading about them.