I agree that "gratifies intellectual curiosity" is overly broad, and often used to justify things that probably shouldn't be on HN, but I think HardyLueng has a point with "Also remember that hackers are typically young and a large part of their psyche can be defined by that monumental event happened almost 10 years ago."

9/11 and the War on Terror have defined my generation. The death of one of the most focal figures of this conflict will likely have massive effects. There could be plenty of interesting discussion on what will happen as a result of this.

Unfortunately, as with most political topics, responses seem to be largely simple reaction, rather than in depth analysis. It's possible that this could lead to interesting discussion here, but it mostly didn't, in my opinion.

Now, does it belong on Hacker News? I don't know. My first thought was "politics/news, flag it", but I'm less sure now that I think about it. If we occasionally get topics like this that are massive news, but not necessarily directly HN, I think it's ok. But if we start getting them daily, something has gone wrong. Every once in a while for a world-changing event is fine, but it should only be for truly momentous news.

It's just fascinating don't you think?

I think you're arguing for the sake of arguing, so I won't spend much time going back and forth. But I'm sure someone somewhere is thinking really hard about making an iPhone game that takes advantage of this development (e.g. "Angry CIA").

[no that's not what I was thinking about; one of mine is along the line of American psyche as defined by the event, the pivot (optimism), and the potential impact on customer behavior]

Hacking society: hiding for so long.