Has this submission ever reached the HN homepage? I personally tried to submit it twice but no upvotes at all, which I believe it deserves. I just checked the history again [0], none of the post ever made it, which is unfortunate. I thought Hacker News readers would be interested in a RISC processor built in the Game of Life.
I won't say it's political, and it isn't about karma. There are political submissions (I sometimes submit/upvote political articles deliberately to "test the water", i.e. not because I agree, I simply want to see what are the opinions here), and there are cases when people care about karma.
But often, there are simply many technically interesting articles you'd want to share, and I have a small history of success of submitting technically interesting articles to the homepage with no politics involved, such as tips and tricks of microcontrollers or the use of 50-ohm transmission line in RF engineering. My conclusion is that an attractive title [0] and some luck is needed. However, I tried to include the keyword "Building a RISC processor in Game of Life", but it still fails to get any votes.
My conclusion is, unfortunately, the majority of HN reader doesn't know what the Game of Life is and/or doesn't think building things in GoF is attractive.
[0] HN has a fairly strict "original title" rule to discourage clickbait, I mostly agree, but sometimes a title genuinely doesn't completely explain and provide enough context about what is in the article, which is otherwise interesting. No votes and no readers would be the result, which isn't really fair.
