And the discussion at hacker news is illuminating...

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3272980

On Nov 29, 2011, at 1:30 PM, Mark A. Matienzo wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 1:25 PM, Jonathan Rochkind <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> Don't know if the link is in error, or what. Anyone know what software
>> Hacker News and this Library News clone are based on, for real, and where to
>> look at the source/documentation?  Trying to google for what open source
>> software Hacker News runs on, I'm not having any luck.
> 
> Hacker News, and presumably Library News, both run using news.arc,
> which is written the the Arc dialect of Lisp. The news program is
> packaged with the Arc distribution:
> 
> https://github.com/nex3/arc/blob/master/news.arc
> 
> Mark A. Matienzo
> Digital Archivist, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library
> Technical Architect, ArchivesSpace