I'm aware of that history, and personally am here despite rather than because of it. I don't really have much interest in startups, but afaik there isn't currently another good general-purpose tech-discussion site. Slashdot isn't quite what it used to be, kuro5hin is now a dive bar, reddit.com/r/programming is overall worse than HN, and other forums I know about are good but only in relatively small niches (e.g. Lambda the Ultimate for academic-slanted PLs).
It is hard to deny the connections between Y Combinator/PG and the startup scene. I guess we all have our reasons for coming here.
Regarding the old name of the site, you did spur me to look up the dates involved (definitely before I got here, which was maybe a few years ago):
"The site was created by Paul Graham in February 2007. Initially it was called Startup News or occasionally News.YC. On August 14, 2007 it became known by its current name."
Well, when you consider that Hacker News was called Startup News when I first became aware of it,
http://web.archive.org/web/20070226001637/http://news.ycombi...
I think that misses out on a lot of the history that made this site what it is today.