[ChrisNorstrom]

WHY IS THIS on the front page of Hacker News? This is a community of Entrepreneurs and Hackers. What is this Reddit now? Flag this crap into oblivion.

Edit: Thanks for the down votes. No I won't back down. I've seen this happen to Digg when it first started then Reddit and now HN. We used to be a community for hackers by hackers and entrepreneurs / aspiring entrepreneurs. Now we're being over-run by a group of info-addicted maniacs who want HN to turn into another time sink. Over the last 2 months I've been taking screenshots of the stupid nonsense that shows up on the front page. The pattern is undeniable. HN is getting more political and more off topic. The same thing that led to the downfall of Digg and Reddit and why we ran to HN to start anew.

Edit: Thank you to everyone who flagged it. It's gone now.

[daeken]

While I personally agree with you that this particular story may not be HN-suitable, the rules are clear on this. 1) If you dislike a story, flag it and move on. Don't comment on its suitability. 2) Don't complain about downvotes -- it's all noise, no signal. 3) What is suitable for HN is "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." What that means is that, sometimes, we end up with curious stories like this.

At the end of the day, your best bet for keeping the SNR on the site high is to flag the noise and contribute as much as you can to the signal. Post things that are interesting to you, comment with whatever insight you can give, and don't sweat the small stuff. HN is okay.

[falcolas]

Speaking only for myself: Because it's a fascinating story. It is, simultaneously, a story of extreme security failure, the body's amazing abilities to cope with extreme circumstances, and a story where someone lives to see the end.

Is it about technology or business? Not directly. Is it about an event that we, as technologists or entrepreneurs, might care about? Yes. This makes it worth keeping on HN to me.

[marshray]

And Kayak calls taking two different airlines a "Hacker Fare".