I find the content and focus different between Slashdot and HN--probably driven by the underlying demographics.
Slashdot tends to focus on stories that low-level IT workers and geeks care about: you see alot of sysadmin stuff, political activism from a geek-liberal point of view, oddball stories, etc. Basically, the IT equivalent of cat pictures. I believe the demographics skew to high schoolers and bearded gnomes.
HN, on the other hand, has more entrepreneurial, business, and hardcore science and technology stuff. The content tends to be more high-level and more useful to those in the know. The demographics are Y Combinator types (mainly naive recent college grads) with a mix of Googlers, VCs, other high-powered industry players.
That said, I suspect some Slashdot users have migrated to HN, which would explain a lot of recent changes at HN.
Slashdot tends to focus on stories that low-level IT workers and geeks care about: you see alot of sysadmin stuff, political activism from a geek-liberal point of view, oddball stories, etc. Basically, the IT equivalent of cat pictures. I believe the demographics skew to high schoolers and bearded gnomes.
HN, on the other hand, has more entrepreneurial, business, and hardcore science and technology stuff. The content tends to be more high-level and more useful to those in the know. The demographics are Y Combinator types (mainly naive recent college grads) with a mix of Googlers, VCs, other high-powered industry players.
That said, I suspect some Slashdot users have migrated to HN, which would explain a lot of recent changes at HN.