> "Anything that good hackers would find interesting." "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

So that can literally be anything...

> If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

This caveats it nicely. This is certainly off-topic for HN.

"Major world events are pretty much always on topic. We just don't need minor regular news events here."

Sure, it fits, but HN is a notoriously inferior general news site.

If you heard about this first here, you're ill informed.

If this was your only source for this news, you're VERY ill informed.

It's a shame, HN first descended into being basically just a Reddit Subreddit hosted on a differently URL, and is now morphing into reddit.com/r/reddit.com (the anything-goes general reddit subreddit) with a slightly more technical audience.

Considering that the most useful link/comment in this thread is a link to a vastly superior, just incomparably more useful and informing reddit link, I think the point is made quite nicely.

Oh well, I guess HN is a wrapper around Reddit these days.

And if you are in a zone that needs to be concerned about it, you'll already have been made aware of it by more direct means than reading HN.

Edit: I live in Japan. I don't rely on HN for earthquake news.

..and for those that don't, probably a large majority of Hacker News readers live in an earthquake-prone region and worry about whether they're prepared for the next time a significant earthquake is going to happen to them.