I think Aphyr's series was a little too meaty for the general HN audience (of today).
Talking about things like the FLP impossibility result, CAP theorem and specifying protocols with TLA+ may be a bit over the heads of many HN readers - clearly, people would rather read stories about the latest funding round, acquisition or frontend UI framework than a substantive article on distributed systems.
It's not fair to imply that these thing are over the heads of HN readers. There are plenty of smart people that just might not care about distributed systems enough to read through. Does my lack of reading medical journals speak to my ability to read/comprehend them?
Talking about things like the FLP impossibility result, CAP theorem and specifying protocols with TLA+ may be a bit over the heads of many HN readers - clearly, people would rather read stories about the latest funding round, acquisition or frontend UI framework than a substantive article on distributed systems.