[geeksam]

How is it not HN material? This reminds me of the 2006 Malcolm Gladwell piece about "Million Dollar Murray" that showed up here last summer ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1582582 ). Both stories pose a problem that has a well-known set of "accepted" solutions, and describe a novel and counterintuitive solution for an edge case. Which sounds like one definition of a hack to me.

Granted, the approach described here is more morally ambiguous than Gladwell's piece, because it has the added dimension of allowing people to continue to harm themselves. But I think there are interesting arguments to be made in both cases, and I'm glad to have had this piece brought to my attention.

[reeses]

I'm surprised that you didn't get the "Oh my god, Malcolm Gladwell is the devil!" crowd after you with this one. :-)

Much of the Gladwell posting here recently seems to be of the,"Look, I can make up an article or book with no intellectual rigor behind it as well as Gladwell can!"