nejlika

That is true. But I would have guessed that HN would have been a great place to find those hidden gems because of how niche some stuff around here can be. I guess one part of the problem could be that it is now more difficult to be widely influential: everybody is more or less specialized into narrow fields of study or activity - leading to fewer people being widely interacted with and having their ideas shared.

He was one of the few I could think of too. But it feels like they are few and far between. Given the potential for reach of the internet I'd expect for more people to become more known, and not become people only known to a handful of active contemporaries as happened to Von Neumann

Then isn't sending reports without verifying their validity the same thing?