Kobo is the sort of device which would make HN happy. The software is much more open and permissive than Kindle. Integrates with Calibre more tightly. Has a fairly rich ecosystem of tweaks and addons which don't require a jailbreak. Wish it didn't have secure boot but am otherwise pretty happy with it.

Kobo feels like something I actually own. More so than Kindle or even my iDevices. That's a little unusual these days from a mainstream product and that will make its users enthusiastic.