This kind of programming elitism is a general bummer: what good does it do to gatekeep “hacker” in this way?

Even the context is absurd: we’re on a website that calls itself “Hacker News” but caters chiefly to the relatively narrow and un-hacker-like interests of a handful of overcapitalized investors.

I took it to mean a second definition describing a particular aesthetic identity, e.g. dark-mode everything, tiny and/or monospace fonts, use of the word "rice" as a verb, etc. I'm totally down for two of those so this isn't said with disdain ;)

Perhaps "hax0r" would be more appropriate.