zlacker

>>cwan+(OP)
It certainly does seem that HN has become increasingly more political in recent days. Yes, I can understand a post on body-scanner technology and it's applications to travel security, but do we really need to see blog posts about how person n opted out, or how person x experienced an unusual pat-down? Yes, for Americans (and non-Americans alike), these are important issues, but HN does not need to become an aggregate site for stories such as these.

There is a strong commitment by the community to prevent the site becoming like digg, reddit, or slashdot. Losing focus on the topics that brought us here in the first place (technology, startup culture, and programming) is the first step on that path in my opinion.

All I can ask is please, try not to submit/vote up stories which are not particularly related to tech. It's not what I'm interested in discussing in this particular venue.

Or maybe I'm just in the minority. I guess time will tell.

P.S. Just because you put the word "Hacker" in your article/title, doesn't mean it belongs here.

>>amelim+u1
It would be completely ridiculous to try to remove political discussion from HN.

Politics is involved with _everything_ the world has to offer; and more specifically, politics is fundamentally bound to technology.

The fact that people like making 'cool stuff', will always have a flip-side. We need to be able to talk about the way that technology is utilised and that (necessarily) involves political discussion.

Without this kind of discussion, people involved in the tech industry are destined to become unthinking drones .. consideration of ethics and politics is essential if technology stands any chance of making the world a better place.

>>lwhi+W3
Any way you slice it, discussion on ways to bypass scanners is not that relevant to technology. More importantly, there are a large number of sites where 'politics' can be discussed, don't infest a hacker site with it.

>>Charur+w4
It's entirely relevant to technology.

Whether you like it or not, technology doesn't happen in a vacuum. Technology relates to people and society in a big way.

When usage of a device (like the millimetre wave scanner) is misguided and unappreciated by a large number of people, why on earth _shouldn't_ it be discussed on a tech forum?

It's not enough to take the view that 'I just make the stuff .. other people can choose whether it's a good idea'.

We all have a responsibility to consider whether what we create is going to result in anything 'good' and what 'good' actually means.

>>lwhi+15
That's bypassing the point. Discussed once, absolutely; discussed in hundreds of posts, maybe not so much.

http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+i...