It probably IS expensive to host because it’s written in a language no one uses without an optimizing compiler, and apprently most of the “db” is flatfiles on disk, some of which get read on every request.

Computers are fast. This isn't a particularly demanding workload; pages for users that aren't logged in are cached, and there probably aren't a ton of people logged in.

Last time I looked, Let's Encrypt had one big beefy Postgres database to issue pretty much every single TLS certificate on the Internet. Computers are fast.

You vastly underestimate how much impact ONE server can make if you don't use modern cloud garbage tech

its hosted on a single random server, so no, in absolute terms it very unlikely is expensive.

HN isn't that expensive to host. We have two servers at a colo and various backups to S3.

Now you’re getting somewhere. At this point HN has hundreds of undocumented features and isn’t the technical cakewalk you think but sure, factor out the tech part. Just do the math on moderation costs vs. revenue generated by text-only ads with zero visual distinction.

Moderation as good as HN would require at least 3 costly staffers, fully loaded cost something like $30K-$250K each, fully loaded depending on where they live.

If doing HN were easy there would be a dozen awesome competitors.

You are wrong on so many levels. HN IS the ad. The whole point of HN is to push VC narratives and "Greed is good" style things onto nerds and less-nerdy but more business hungry folks. It's not meant to generate any revenue at all, it's a marketing funnel.

Moderation is pretty much JUST dang.

HN DOES have competitors, lobste.rs is pretty much directly competing, and more importantly, this very concept of "simple board to post links and comment" was borrowed to build freaking REDDIT

Reddit predates HN by two years

You're right, but mrguyorama isn't wrong either since the same person came up with both ideas. They just had the time arrow reversed.

I know it might be hard to believe, but it's not the point of HN to push VC narratives or "greed is good". The strategy is much simpler and has a bunch of nice properties, one being that it works even better if you tell people what it is. It's simply to keep the community interested and happy. That's not easy, but it's the way to maximize HN's value—even if you look at it in the most self-interested way from YC's point of view.

I've written a bunch about this in the past: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... If you (or anyone) read those explanations and end up still having a question which I haven't answered there, I'd like to know what it is.