Since Fall 2013 I've been reading HN twice a day -- over coffee in the morning and in the evening after dinner. I am a nomadic contractor who works in the blue-collar basement of the IT industry, with several years experience in Silicon Valley, Portland and Austin as a datacenter technician, service reliability engineer, and general-purpose nuts-&-bolts computer guy. For me, HN opened a window on an entirely new dimension of the industry: the world-view of the elite class in venture capital and entrepreneurship. It's fascinating to read the same articles they read, to see the world through their eyes. I don't always agree with the ultra-capitalist weltanschauung on HN, but I think I understand it better, to a certain extent.<p>Aside from the politics, I have learned a great deal from HN about my own technical domain: the hegemony of the Linux operating system, advantages/limitations of RESTful APIs, python as the (arguably) preferred scripting language, and much more. But the best aspect of HN is, in my opinion, the continuous stream of commentary and discussion about books on a variety of topics. It was here that I discovered Joseph Frank's magisterial biography of Fyodor Dostoevsky, which alone was worth the price of admission.<p>Overall, I consider HN to be an intellectual oasis in the chaotic desert known as the Internet. Many thanks to the women and men who develop and maintain this remarkable web site. Bon courage.