I probably wasn't the only one who wasn't too sure about refocusing the site. One negative is that for those of us outside the Silicon Valley or YCombinator, it's possible that the articles and comments would focus more on programming than startup advice. On the other hand, maybe it would be great to refocus every 6 months. It would be a very unique idea. This is not to disrespect what you've done--thank you for the articles, startup school, this site, community, and ycombinator.
>"interesting things on the edges/fringes of markets, society, and technology. Imo, those are what you have to pay attention to"
Well, at least the new direction will give you one of those three things.
I've submitted a share of "interesting" things, but they're usually drowned out by "easy reading" Hopefully, the human editor factor will allow the proposed indirect control of the swarm.
I've had some interesting discussions over at octonews--but it's a different niche--hardware/sci/tech/health. I'd love it if yc.news is able to turn itself into hacker news. I had missed the mid 2006 reddit, and hearing great insight is often more valuable than the actual article itself. Not that how to fill out a term sheet, analysis on facebook, or top ten things to get started on your startup isn't interesting, but one can only take so much of that in the last 3 months.
I cheer the new direction