2) Yes, but those appear to be the actual semantics of uv/dv buttons, not the intended meaning. It's sad but true. This has it's own impact, people tend to talk about the things that people will agree with in order to get upvotes.
3) Yes a million times. The actual Apple/Google/Microsoft discussions here are a very tiny signal in a fantastic epic pile of ideological noise. These are companies we can learn a lot from by looking at their successes and mistakes, but it's virtually impossible because people have invested far too much time making their purchase of products these companies make part of their personal identities.
4) Meh, maybe. That's just the way a community like this might skew.
5) Yeah well. But I find I'm fantastically up-to-date on the technology and business concepts for this area.
6) I actually find the comments on HN and interesting meta-discussion to most everything that shows up. I typically don't care to talk with the author of something. Most of the time, the link target isn't a blog with a comments section anyways.
7) Oh well. I'm not sure blogging is that great a benefit to humanity anyways.
I'm surprised it's not over the mysterious rules that PG tweaks constantly on the site, or the slow degradation along the HN->reddit->digg->4chan path.
And common, no alternate site that he's going to?!