The difference is that those posts link to content which shows you something interesting. As a consequence, two of them have interesting comments, too (the political one can be excused.) It's hard for me to understand what is interesting about John Resig fixing a relatively boring CSS performance bug, but I guess that's why we all have our own vote button.
I completely agree here. Hacker News has become a reddit cesspool over the last year and the types of posts popular on reddit seem to make it over here. I will leave this community in a year because I am sure the two communities will begin to mimic each other too much.
If it wasn't John Resig who "fixed" the subreddit, then this would be lost in the thousands of pointless posts. I hardly find this something worth of HN.
But this isn't an optimization that I can learn from, really. I mean, unless I made that same mistake in referencing my sprite images, which seems unlikely. Basically, look at firebug and see what all the connections are coming from and fix it.
Maybe I would have appreciated the article better if the title hadn't said "CSS optimization". That made me expect to find some secret to help me make CSS load or render faster. He really fixed a bug in the use of a CSS sprite file.
More interesting: someone finds a way to find other instances of sprite files being used incorrectly on a given domain. But I think Google PageSpeed would identify this for accessing a static file with query string.
If I wanted to read about basic CSS spriting techniques/benefits, I'd go read one of the endless reposts on A List Apart, Smashing Magazine or SitePoint (or one of the hundreds of other sites). I'd throw down solid cash on a bet that the people who come to HN come here because the type of content you'll find here is generally far above that level, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with demanding quality submissions.
We all know John is a great guy and a kickass developer, this doesn't need to be re-stated for the umpteenth time. If you'd like, though, I can happily start submitting every article on basic web design techniques I come across though. Seems like it's right up your alley, no? =)
