The answer is in the name. The word 'hacker' used to more refer to someone who is a tinkerer, diy engineer, curious about how systems, components, etc work. Hacker News is still somewhat true to this ethos, what's popular here aligns with this old-school curiosity mindset. Of course the exact interests of the userbase has changed over the years, but if you spend a lot of time on this forum you eventually understand some of the common themes that get the minds of the hackers turning.

Unfortunately due to the enshittification of things people are conditioned to see HN as something to be gamed and leveraged for personal gain now, but in general it's algorithm-less enough, the the mods are strict enough, (thank god) that the type of content here stays pointed towards the original 'hacker' ideals.