Huge downvote to this. Saying that a hacker community shouldn't be interested in the Snowden revelations is ridiculous, and listing him alongside New World Order conspiracy theories is just insulting.
Second, I disagree, and agree with the grandparent that that other place (or any other place, really) would make a perfect place for discussing all those things you list.
Actionable articles about the business of software and technology to help build same. That's what we're here for. If you'd like more stuff to talk about, there's lots more internet out there. You're free to hang out at more than one place.
This absolutely includes NSA/Snowden news and any other news relating the intersection between politics and technology.
A snark one-two liner sitting on the top of the comment page is hardly a comment that's adding anything interesting to the discussion of Libre News
As a wise man once said, and I paraphrase: So basically anything upvoted by this community is considered on topic since enough people deemed it worthwhile.
Really?
http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
The guidelines do also say, "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics [etc.]," but then qualify, "unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon."
It might be that HN has reached a point at which there ought to be a split with accompanying comment police to enforce it, but it seems presumptuous to assume that the decision has already been made in alignment with your particular preferences.
That's not true. PG has said the opposite many times.
Commenting is for when one has something to say.
It's hilarious because in every thread about every piece of surveillance infrastructure that ratchets the United States irreversibly towards totalitarianism, there are complaints that this is political and inappropriate for Hacker News.
You want a tech startup hook on every Snowden leak? 1984-tech is probably a great field for entreperneurial minded hackers. Too many people are stuck disrupting laundry and taxicabs! Think big, and disrupt democracy. Change the way people cling to power.
All of the surveillance state's gear is software, written by developers. Just think: you could be one of those developers! Get your piece of the pie, and talk about it on HN. There's a whole world of posts there:
- Best ways to monitor mobile use patterns while minimizing app footprint?
- What database should I store the entire world's email in?
- Ask HN: I'm a founder of a spying SaaS platform -- how can I launder "black money" from intelligence agencies?
- Ask HN: What Saudi telecos are hiring hackers to help them spy on their people?
Just remember to pitch a fit every time the mobile equivalent of a popup ad gets blogged about. Because those developers are giving us all a bad name, damn it.
People just can't help looking at problems like that even when the consequences just aren't good from a civil liberties perspective. I think that's what makes it great HN material.
(Also I wish I could upvote this more for "disrupt democracy" :)
If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
And for "on topic":
anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Mainstream US-centric political news is not particularly intellectually gratifying and not what this site has ever done well. Reddit and Twitter had all the same pointless arguments.
And I say "mainstream" because perhaps the only hacker-specific part of the story was Snowden being a sys-admin. His revelations and the impact of the story were felt across all of society and were not specifically related to hackerdom (the follow up stories about DEF CON or protecting your own privacy by technical means, however, were clearly hacker oriented and well suited to HN).
Whether or not that means it shouldn't be here at all is up for debate, but don't act as though he's being insulting when he's just supporting something that's reasonable. He can voice his reasons just as you can voice yours. You're the one being more insulting.
>On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
So basically anything upvoted by this community is considered on topic since enough people deem it gratifying intellectual curiosity.
Secondly, the insulting part is about how he snarkly listed Snowden alongside conspiracy theories. Like him or not, the risks he's taken to get this information out deserve him some level of repspect.