I'd guess that your tone, combined with the borderline off-topic-ness and the fact that you haven't really added anything to the conversation ticked people off.

I'd guess that your tone, combined with the borderline off-topic-ness and the fact that you haven't really added anything to the conversation ticked people off. I wouldn't and didn't downvote you based on that comment, but certainly wouldn't upvote. I suspect if you'd phrased it differently and maybe made it a little more useful, people would have responded differently, e.g. "I really admire these calculator hackers, it's amazing what can be done on these simple machines, e.g. these cool games: [link], [link] and [link]." The HN userbase appreciates a high signal/noise ratio. Merely calling something "cool" is considered noise. Hope that helps.