[run4yourlives]

Agreed, although the top comment here was actually quite interesting.

HN has made an exception for all things US gov't spying related. I even lost my flagging rights for flagging all the snowden stuff (which I thought was exactly what you were supposed to do when you thought something was off topic... not my fault it was the entire front page!)

It's an important topic, but like you I preferred when HN was an oasis of tech away from this nonsense.

[nitrogen]

It's an important topic, but like you I preferred when HN was an oasis of tech away from this nonsense.

Unfortunately, politics have invaded our tech oasis, and I don't mean HN. The politicization and militarization of technology is undeniable; at this point, retreating to some new oasis and denying it won't make it go away. While I do want a site where I can see more articles about Erlang and lambda calculus, for now at least, I can accept the pressing need to maintain focus on political issues that undermine our ability to build the technology we want and have it used for good instead of evil.

[run4yourlives]

>The politicization and militarization of technology is undeniable

You make this statement as if it was some sort of new happening. This is as old as technology itself. Finding new ways to kill each other has been the number one driver of technology progress, and always has been.

[DanBC]

I strongly agree that there is too much "shallowly interesting" stuff, rather than "deeply interesting" stuff on HN.

It's a shame that people who flag "too much" fluff lose their flagging ability. I flag 4 submissions per day; I still have my flag button. I upvote good articles on new. I've been restricting my comments on the fluff articles. I've been upvoting the comments in good submission threads.

Perhaps someone could create an "HN-Shallowly-interesting"?

[forgottenpaswrd]

"It's an important topic, but like you I preferred when HN was an oasis of tech away from this nonsense."

So you like playing with your tech toys completely indifferent to the actual effect of these toys in people's life.

This is called egoism and onanism, looking for granting yourself pleasure without caring for anything or anybody else.

[run4yourlives]

No, it's called focusing on a particular topic at one time.

You cannot concern yourself with politics all the damn time any more than you can concern yourself with anything else exclusively.

[unclebucknasty]

Wonder if it would make sense to have two categories: Tech and non-tech. Though some topics would definitely straddle the line.

[kirubakaran]

How did you find out that you lost your flagging rights? Did the 'flag' link disappear?

[run4yourlives]

Pretty much, yup.