I've never really understood what those are in the first place, and am curious what they'll be following this statement of editorial independence. Are those advertisements dang does and will continue to pick and choose? Not that I really care, but they've always seemed a bit out of place.
Indeed the nice thing about the current arrangement is that the YC startup job ads are completely up-front, always work the same way, and have a fixed effect on the front page. So it doesn't affect editorial judgment at all. (Except that we try to take linkbait out of the titles and I'm surprised that no YC startup has asked us about that yet.)
I qualified that with "immediate" because an independent HN focused on intellectual curiosity is what's best for YC's business. That's the global optimum. It would be foolish to trade it away for any local one (e.g. handling a particular YC-related story differently). What makes HN valuable to YC is optimizing its value to the community. Everyone at YC knows that.
The main benefit of today's announcement is if it helps us make that clearer to others. Understandably, people sometimes take it for granted that since HN is owned by an investment business, it must directly serve that business. Those concerns won't go away, but it will be nice to be able to point to the org structure and say that's why it's set up that way.