Best thing about HN are the quality of posts and the comments. No politics, mainly focused around technology and intellectually challenging posts. It gives you idea of technology trends, and how others are handling challenges similar to yours - something equivalent of going to a conference, but without going to a conference. Some of the comments here are even better than the article and when you combine both, you get a complete perspective. You learn not only technology but how to lead people, how to(and not to) run a company based on what/how you absorb from HN. It's the quality of comments that makes it better than any such site/forum out there. I still remember a comment - which was almost equivalent to a dozen books, around why some people are successful - something to the effect that it is not that we lack information, or lack access to information but the fact that our mind is so full of input that we don't act on what we already know we need to do. Very few other places, I've found such thought provoking comments.