I think of the "new" in the "news" in "hacker news" as being like the used clothing store in my home town that used to be called "New to You".
HN is for anything that gratifies intellectual curiosity (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). Sometimes that's news in the usual sense of the word, but often it's more obscure things, and those are welcome here.
In the case of classics/perennials like the OP, there are of course a lot of readers for whom the story is anything but new, but it's important that we also take care of the newer cohorts of users and make sure they get some exposure to the classics too. That's one reason why reposts are allowed after a year or so.