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Comment by sophacles | Hacker News Reader

Are you asking: "why does the site with 'news' in it's name report news?"

Or are you asking: "how does this earthquake in the place where much tech is centered and a large number of HN users live pertain to HN?"

The answer turns out to be the same: it's relevant to a lot of people here and they upvoted it.

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These are all obvious answers. Still begs the question of what's the value of having these discussions here. There are plenty of discussions that are not permitted on HN (even if they would garner useful discussion). I only posit that this type of news also lends no value to this forum (SV locals don't or shouldn't depend on HN for local emergency news), and so should be removed/banned. Just my 2¢ - downvote away.

There is fascinating science and technology associated with earthquakes, as well as interesting stories and history (though fewer of those in this thread)

the value is connection. you're free to disregard that, but as humans, and not automatons, we sell to connect to out fellow humans in more ways than work. now, you can point out that it's a very SV-centric post, and it is, but there's a ton of other SV news here, so that objection's probably moot. Other regions of the world experience earthquakes and the discussion of the science and technology behind the early warning system that was deployed is interesting beyond the bay area.

I find it helps to remember that I don't have to click on every link on this site. If something doesn't look particularly appealing to me, I remind myself that there are other folks who read the site too, and while I don't understand why some of the things here are interesting to folks it's still OK that they are here - I am not the sole member of the "target audience". I just skip that link and read something more appealing.

It enabled this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33335391 which, I would argue, adds a lot of value.

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