The original name of HN was "Startup News". Paul generalized the theme about a year into it to include anything interesting to hackers. I also noticed the bias

The original name of HN was "Startup News". Paul generalized the theme about a year into it to include anything interesting to hackers. I also noticed the bias towards business and motivational material as opposed to programming, but that's probably just the luck of the draw. Hacker Monthly is a static slice of a dynamic process.