I left reddit as soon as they fractured it into subreddits. The cool thing about HN is that it simultaneously has a diversity of subjects and a community.

Cue some johnny-b-goode to point you to the feature request link at the bottom of the page ;)

But you're right. For starters just two categories would do, hacking and everything else.

If I understand correctly, HN has always had two categories. They just haven't been explicitly put into the UI: Hacking/startups and things that interest hackers.

We've kicked this can around quite a bit, and so far PG doesn't seem to be feeling enough pain to make a change.

Perhaps things will change.