alt Hacker Newsthat isn't the gotcha you think it is.
Y combinator absolutely profits from encouraging group think and positive attitudes about things they're involved in.
How else would you get a large part of the tech world to somehow believe that suckling on the teat of Venture capital until that elusive "exit" is the holy grail of business models?
Regardless of how you think HN makes the service free, I'm pointing out to the OP that he is using a service that is free and he is the product. It seems like he is ok with this concept. So why wouldn't he be ok with he Mozilla free VPN concept.