> This seems like a non sequitur from your original complaint (not enough obscure tech content).
I don't see that person making that point.
> It’s natural that a lot of the discussion on a tech forum will focus on SV being the place where most of the biggest tech companies are
It isn't from a hacker perspective. Hacker culture is about what you can do yourself. If the homebrew computer club had been the IBM club things might have looked very differently.
> but the real value in HN is the long tail of unique content and comments from all over the world.
The complaint is that it isn't unique but usually the same narrative. You'll find plenty of Europeans on hacker news complaining about Europe. The reality is that most things are easier in Europe than in most of the US. That isn't a hard case to make. It just isn't popular.
> As I mentioned in another comment [1], the “notice-dislike” bias, often mentioned here by dang
That there is a given explanation isn't that surprising. Like when someone thinks there is a political bias on hacker news they always got in response that there can't be one because both left and right thinks there is. But that is just how a liberal bias would look like. Those more to the left would think it's too economically liberal and those more the right would think it's too culturally so. Yet the same explanation continues.
If you look at the front page now most of the technical topics aren't really current. "SSH Tunneling", "HN 15 Years ago", "NSA (2014)", "Lisp", "ScummVM", "V-USB", "Super Mario 64", "Amiga 68000", "Amiga 3000T". Those aren't really topics that requires current knowledge to discuss. On the other hand there are 3 current stories about Facebook. It's hacker nostalgia combined with a SV narrative. Which would be fine if it didn't result in current technical and hacker perspective topics clashing with that narrative.
I do realize that this is meaningless. I don't even read hacker news that much anymore. But there is my 2 cents.