This is a well known thing and pretty much everybody on HN is probably aware of this.

Is it just me, or is a lot more fluff getting to the front page of Hacker News these days?

Apparently, it's just you. PG comes around every once in a while when people ask this and says that the spam filters (or whatever they are) he trained on the original HN data set haven't started drifting toward the positive yet.

Yes. But what amused me wat the others who were also put in jail. Didn't know about them.

...at least now they are.

this is why HN should allow people one down vote each week, or month.

That's what flagging is for.

As long as we are debating the quality of submissions...

I have seen much worse posted on here. I mean, I guess I could have submitted a post about how long I wear my contact lenses or something...not my style though.