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.
It can't be off-topic shit if it is within the topic guidelines set by the site, by definition. You could always go away and run your own site if you think the attitude of the mods and community here are worthy of shame.
No, not directly, but don't you just like 'hacking' the possible futures that could have arisen from that discussion among the three men in a tin can? Games theoretic approaches to what they could have known under the sea with failing air supplies?
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.
[1] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html