Ask HN: Can we please slow down the stories about Edward Snowden?

I agree that it matters, and it's important, and so on. I also feel that it's something of a watershed in the site's history in that there are a lot more unrelated political articles appearing in its wake, with negative consequences for the quality of discourse and content here. I feel that, long term, if not checked, this will lead to a decline in the quality of the site. Actually... I'm a bit pessimistic in any case. This latest go round seems to have attracted/brought out people mainly interested in politics, so I'm not really sure there's much that can be done in any event.

    > Ecuador too of all countries is taking an anti-US stance. It's a
    > strange country to claim to be supporting human rights

You don't need noble intentions to score political points by accepting a high-profile refugee fleeing from a government largely hostile to you.

> "Stories on HN don't have to be about hacking [...] but they do have to be deeply interesting."

I understand that many people here share your pessimism and this NSA business is surely getting tiresome for them.

It might be I'm just more naive and personally invested in this widescale spying thing because privacy on the internet is something I've always deepely cared about. But that's why, until this thing is sorted out (if at all, I have no idea how), all this wonderful technical stuff that's usually discussed here appears somehow less important in the lights of recent events (to me).

Edit: That doesn't mean that we should flood Hacker News with links to unreliable tabloid articles and force out the technical content entirely, of course. There has to be a middle ground.

I too am not from the US, but this impacts me directly. Perhaps, even more so than US citizens, as they have rights (for the moment, at least).

It wouldn't be much of an issue if I didn't use Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, heck, even Oracle products. Not to mention that traceroute shows that most internet routes pass through the US, even if the destination is not there. After all, the fattest pipes are to the US.

I, and most posters here, have done nothing wrong. But the Stasi, if it still existed, might think otherwise. The US seems to be ok right now and focused on "terrorists" (real or imaginary), but we don't now who is going to eventually replace Obama.

I have faith that the american people will eventually put an end to the madness, before it is too late. But, in the meantime, please keep the NSA and Snowden news coming.

There might be more problems in addition to what he helped uncover, but whether they are voiced might depend on what happens to Snowden.

You wouldn't halt QA process until you fix a critical security issue in your production system, especially if the fix might take some time. You'd probably be paying even more attention to improving bug visibility after such an incident, to make sure other problems are noticed in time.