I love this type of stuff too, but be aware ycombinator is a start up incubator - people showing off there wares is presumably encouraged, up to a point.

It is and the leaders of yc even give instructions on how to best do their "launch hn."

Launch and Show HN are different I think.

I don't think it qualifies as advertising. People come to Hacker News to see what hackers are working on. It's certainly a major reason why I come here.

Every Show HN post I've seen was interesting. Motivated me to start my own projects and polish them so I can show them here. It's a really good feeling when someone else submits your work and you get to talk about it.

> It's a really good feeling when someone else submits your work and you get to talk about it.

You may only "Show HN" something you've made yourself.

https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html

I know, I've never made a Show HN post myself. I meant to say other people independently submitted my project here once.

Do you get the impression that novel shows are pushed out by the more corporate ones?

If you see here [1], many of them are building by orgs trying to sell some services. They may or may not violate the guidelines though.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/show

yeah and that's why interesting show HNs get upvoted