Oops, sorry about that. I never had an issue before...but funny after visiting HN, see exactly what you mean. (Clearing the cookies avoids the classic rick roll video). Anyway, yeah i guess the tilde folks are "characters". But, separate of that, the community i've interacted with is quite fun, respectful, and good-natured. I also failed to mention a sort of equivalent to HN, which i frequent (with similar topics to HN but often nicer crowd): https://tildes.net/

...Tilde.net used to be only open to invite not open to anyone creating an account...so if interested - and still not open to the public - i can trigger to send you an invite.