Classifying posts by the submitted site, "general news" has fallen from about 8% to 4% of all front-page stories, from 2009 to 2022.

(2009 selected as the first couple of years of HN were still sorting things out, 2022 as the most recent complete year with data available.)

Submissions specific to programming or software projects have arguably increased though that's in part as they're easier to determine based on github/gitlab URLs.

For 2022 the sites-based classification is:

2022
Posts: 10,950 Sites: 1,158 Submitters: 1,397

Class Stories Votes (mean) Comments (mean)
UNCLASSIFIED: 4838 1439100 297.46 766470 158.43
programming: 1146 308222 268.95 117139 102.22
blog: 1123 322989 287.61 202251 180.10
academic / science: 571 131810 230.84 74684 130.80
general news: 444 158965 358.03 154772 348.59
n/a: 432 167275 387.21 125304 290.06
corporate comm.: 408 145583 356.82 86243 211.38
tech news: 400 122049 305.12 92895 232.24
social media: 252 124105 492.48 87830 348.53
general interest: 222 53305 240.11 47007 211.74
business news: 167 58116 348.00 63474 380.08
government: 128 49602 387.52 37619 293.90
software: 122 37479 307.20 16820 137.87
technology: 113 26182 231.70 14264 126.23
video: 111 29189 262.96 14370 129.46
general info (wiki): 72 13318 184.97 6544 90.89
science news: 69 17118 248.09 10916 158.20
general discussion: 31 13035 420.48 8616 277.94
general info: 26 4436 170.62 3165 121.73
healthcare / medicine: 25 6915 276.60 4808 192.32
tech discussion: 20 6000 300.00 2757 137.85
tech support: 18 7912 439.56 4192 232.89
database: 17 5791 340.65 1878 110.47
web design: 17 4443 261.35 2728 160.47
cybersecurity: 16 3221 201.31 1635 102.19
literature: 14 1973 140.93 1316 94.00
entertainment news: 14 4687 334.79 3018 215.57
political commentary: 13 5522 424.77 5796 445.85
law: 11 5015 455.91 3350 304.55
health news: 11 2946 267.82 2400 218.18
cryptocurrency: 11 7013 637.55 7610 691.82
tech publications: 11 2415 219.55 1278 116.18
misc documents: 10 3422 342.20 2065 206.50
hardware: 7 1997 285.29 1185 169.29
mailing list: 7 2154 307.71 877 125.29
entertainment: 7 2382 340.29 738 105.43
sport / recreation: 7 2307 329.57 1793 256.14
political news: 6 2065 344.17 1697 282.83
military: 5 734 146.80 254 50.80
books: 4 701 175.25 310 77.50
images: 3 1255 418.33 579 193.00
journalism: 3 975 325.00 477 159.00
technology & society: 3 487 162.33 412 137.33
webcomic: 2 748 374.00 493 246.50
economics: 2 278 139.00 276 138.00
usability ui/ux: 2 344 172.00 306 153.00
business education: 2 364 182.00 204 102.00
social justice news: 2 552 276.00 602 301.00
outdoors / environment: 2 720 360.00 417 208.50
legal news: 1 333 333.00 191 191.00
crowdfunding: 1 339 339.00 114 114.00
organisations: 1 137 137.00 126 126.00

That's little different from either 2021 or 2023 to date. There is less focus on general news and more on programming-specific domains than in the first three years of Hacker News.

I can give breakdowns on classifications if requested, but basically:

- "programming" is typically a github/gitlab URL or language-specific domain (python.org, golang.org, etc.)

- "blog" is either an identifiable blogging site or a site verified to be a blog.

- "academic / science" is either an edu (or other cc-tld equivalent) domain, or a scientific publication (e.g., nature.com, stanford.edu, u-tokyo.ac.jp)

- "general news" is a general-interest news site, (e.g., nytimes.com, wsj.com, washingtonpost.com)

- "n/a" is a post without a URL, typically an "Ask ...", "Tell ...", "Who's hiring", or related post.

- "corporate comm." is on a corporate domain about that corporation, e.g., apple.com, blog.mozilla.org)

- "general interest" is usually a general-interest magazine, or other general-topic site (e.g., theatlantic.com, newyorker.com, archive.org)

Etc.

I've manually classified 16,185 "sites" (many thankfully by regex), of 52,642 total in the front-page archive, or about 30%, which cover ~= 65% of all HN front-page stories. "UNCLASSIFIED" tends strongly toward blogs and corporate sites based on some sampled selections. All sites with >= 17 front-page posts have been classified.

The actual story topic may not correspond to the site classification. "general news" topics often concern tech-related businesses, technology, products, legislation, regulation, etc., though they may also relate to general news items, of course.