Downvote me if you will, but I do not think this article belong on the front page of Hacker news. It is a interesting illuminating article but it belongs on Reddit or even Slashdot.
This stuff has been covered on TV. May be not on the channel that you like to watch --- but it has been covered. Search BBC or CNN. From CNN.com: http://articles.cnn.com/2010-12-26/world/israel.mossad.repor...
And that is why I think is topic is better suited to Reddit and not here.
As for the TV thing -- were you sure to bitch about the topicality of the iPhone release based on this guideline? What about the "stolen" iPhone? How about anything wikileaks related? All the stuff posted here about academia? Do math papers count -- they are not actually about hacking, just about maths, frequently with no direct relation to hacking.
Nobody posted "stolen" iPhone story here 6 months after the fact. The Dubai news story has been covered on TV and is very old. More cherry picked quote from the guidelines -- "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports ...."
You are right , hacking is not just about node.js. Personally speaking, I love articles from Academia , and maths , even when they are not related to programming languages.
This article is a stale crime/politics/current affairs type of story that does not belong here.
As for your cherry picking -- you are obviously pretty bad at it: most does not mean all, which means this story should be investigated on the grounds of "is it like the bulk of other political and crime stories". This article is unlike well over 90% of crime and politics stories, both on the face of it an on deeper inspection. Those other stories simply report crime with vague speculation on motive, and no details on follow-up. Political stories are usually he-said/she-said pieces on the fights between personalities. This doesn't match those, and therefore doesn't qualify as "most". Good try, tho!
"if they'd cover it on TV News, it's probably off-topic"
Keyword being probably. In any case the OP is right. This post gratifies one's intellectual curiosity (or at least mine, though it seems like most of HN thinks the same), and is a breath of fresh air in comparison to the dozens of Vim tips type of posts you find throughout the day.
A few new things that stood out:
- the description of Dagan's mgmt style and how it negatively affected the mission
- the way the author (a presumably non-techie) described the lock picking and practicing of lock picking (did the picker actually test the picking of the locks as the author suggests or did the team assume the locks would be electronic and simply bring a device that could pick any known lock?). the author glosses over this and makes a short inference, but it made me wonder.
- the Austrian private switchboard. i didn't know this kind of thing existed. can i get access to one?
So I agree with comments from many other people about it just being an interesting story, but those are 3 bits that made me think and made it worth my time.
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