[stanleydrew]

Well now you are backtracking into a semi-legitimate interpretation of your comment as not snarky. If you didn't mean to snark you could have just originally said

"We should expect comments about the NSA and spying to become a part of the common dialog regarding technology and personal information. Asking them to go away is just asking people to stick their head in the sand and ignore it."

That is a useful comment that would further the discussion. So I will now respond to that, since I don't want to debate what snark means.

I don't mind useful or constructive comments about technology and the NSA, but most of the comments I see are very reactionary and misinformed and painfully naiive. They are similar to all the old comments on stories about Microsoft where people would say things like "Micro$oft is obviously evil" and such.

So if a comment is interesting and useful, and happens to be about the NSA, then great. I haven't seen many of those.

[cheald]

I chose brevity, and can see how it would be interpreted as snark. I wasn't aiming for that, but it was a simple question that deserved a simple answer, IMO.

> I don't mind useful or constructive comments about technology and the NSA, but most of the comments I see are very reactionary and misinformed and painfully naiive.

Perhaps our energy would be better spent pointing out why these comments are naiive and misinformed, rather than discussing whether they're worth saying at all, then?

[stanleydrew]

Totally agree that we should discuss why these comments are naiive rather than further engage in the meta-discussion. Perhaps we can start over?

(Meta-meta-point: I wish I could collapse comment threads on HN.)

[dreamfactory]

The security and related technological implications of the device seem relevant to any potential user and completely on topic to me. Agree it's unfortunate that battery life, form factor etc are overshadowed by recent revelations, and regrettable that Apple chose such a tasteless feature in the circumstances.