Reading this old story again it's interesting to recontextualize it into 2011. Would this have still happened they same way today, when tools are cheap (or free!) and online distribution gives everyone a large enough audience? (Obviously the PPC being a prototype and not available commercially throws a wrench in my hypothesis but bear with me)

This story is, in one sense, the antidote to the "Don't Call Yourself a Programmer" article. These guys were programmers. They programmed because they liked to program, not to add business value.

And a Google Tech Talk about the same: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7497796873809571567

However HN gets new visitors all the time, something old could be new to me, and something old to me could be new to you.

I wonder what the rationale is behind letting the same link be resubmitted (especially after it's been frontpaged once)

If you submit a repeat URL it normally upvotes the first submission and redirects you their. This only happens for about a week though.

Chalk it up to another thing that could be improved but won't because news.arc is designed more for elegance and showing off arc.