I'd call it my primary professional news source, along with Twitter. HN gives me a lot of useful information about trends in the startup world, in (mostly web)

I'd call it my primary professional news source, along with Twitter. HN gives me a lot of useful information about trends in the startup world, in (mostly web) technology, and so on. And it's interesting seeing what people here think about the world news that makes it through. But my real primary news source is probably my RSS reader. There's a LOT of news out there that I care about which doesn't make it onto HN. A lot of national and world news doesn't make it here, and I like being generally informed about what's going on. I also keep up with local news, and the current events in various scientific subfields which are relevant to my interests, but not the web startup crowd here.