Slashdot has stayed much more consistently tech than HN. That's partly by design; HN is meant for stories "deeply insightful" and apparently "good hackers aren't just interested in tech." pg submitted a story about his favorite restaurant, that's just a community aspect here (something Slashdot really lacks, especially since it's more anonymous than HN). On the other hand, a lot of it is due to their story selection relying on approval by a handful of editors, versus the anyone can upvote on most social news sites. This really anchored their content in tech. Digg rose and fell as a tech news site as its userbase drifted into shallow entertainment news, taking the top ten stories with them. Same with the Reddit frontpage, though many subreddits are still good. Slashdot has outlasted both of them, and even one-ups HN a bit at avoiding unimportant but drama-filled stories (SV journalists writing about each other, tweet wars, allegations of plagiarism etc.). If anything, the selective greenlighting of stories (versus redlighting through moderation) helps avoid gossipy "news" that evokes strong emotions in readers but are of little to no importance.