I see a couple things interacting here to promote this kind of post. 1. The bar is low to call yourself a programmer and have a programmer's blog. Maybe they

I see a couple things interacting here to promote this kind of post. 1. The bar is low to call yourself a programmer and have a programmer's blog. Maybe they have a university degree that required them to take courses in a variety of fields to become well rounded. Maybe they just went to a technical school and got good job experience. Maybe they just jumped into a programming job after dropping out of highschool. They might be very good programmers, but not knowledgeable about anything else and not particularly aware of it. 2. HNews has a lot of programmers in it's membership. Earth shaking stuff from a variety of diverse fields gets promoted because programmers have diverse interests, but they also tend to read a lot of other programmers' blogs and post them, even if they are somewhat less than earthshaking. Every news source has its weaknesses, and the tendency to see low-effort, poorly researched programmer blog posts promoted above genuinely interesting material is one of HNews's problems.