It was actually submitted at least twice yesterday:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6562394

On HN, gaining interest depends on many factors. Great to see the story finally in the pole position! :)

How much you can relate to the title is very important -- even on HN. Look at the 3 submission titles on HN:

(1) Cryptographer Adi Shamir Prevented from Attending NSA History Conference

(2) How The Government Blocked An Expert From Attending Its Own Cryptology Symposium

(3) Adi Shamir--the "S" in RSA encryption--Prevented from Attending US Crypto Talks

Number 3 (this submission) is getting the exposure the story deserves, and the reason (I think) is that everyone on HN knows what RSA is, and would have respect for its inventors.

Number 3 is by far the best title, as it explains exactly who Shamir is and why we should care. I wasn't aware whom he was prior to that title.

I think that in this case the HN renaming policy isn't doing the story a favour.

And now the current (3) title is "Adi Shamir Prevented from Attending Crypto and Cryptology Conferences".

And as always, there is no accountability for the mod who destroyed the very useful information in the submitted title.

The title wasn't editorializing or linkbaiting. It helped inform those of us who didn't recognize Dr. Shamir's name at first glance.

Shame on the mod who did this.

Shame on HN for encouraging this destruction of value.

"Early on" in HN history, posters would generally respect the "original title" mandate but upon occasion (1) would qualify it -- briefly, concisely -- with a few words in square brackets, e.g. [the "S" in "RSA"].

I don't know whether the mods still generally accept this, but I'd suggest it for such instances. And try not to intermingle bracketed qualifications within the title; appending them is generally better.

I'm not a mod, and I don't know whether this is (still) an accepted practice. So, just my suggestion.

--

(1) when really helpful; not all nor anything approaching a majority of the time

> I find it difficult to believe that there are people who know about RSA, but not about Adi Shamir.

I've heard of RSA (and DSA) and come across it every time I've needed a key pair (e.g for GitHub) but never thought what the letters stood for. Finding out the name of one of the people behind it is news to me.

Do you recognize the names Robert McCool and Guido van Rossum?

You might not know the names but they invented some important technologies that HN people use and respect (the original Apache server and the Python programming language, respectively).

It would be hard to relate to a story that said "Robert McCool denied US visa" or "Guido van Rossum endured US visa hassles".

Here. Didn't know about about him but have used RSA quite often.

I don't know why you were downvoted. I would have reacted just like you, but actually people replying to you raise a good point.

I think it really depends on the type of work you are doing. People in research are used to cite other authors in their paper (and we even call a paper by it's author + conference/journal name, not by its actual title) and are thus more prone to remember the name of people behind technologies. It may very well be the case that in some other types of profession you don't do this association as easily.

I personally learned about Shamir over a year after I first heard the name RSA. RSA is commonplace; every first-year computer science student knows how it works, and it's the easiest example of how to do public key cryptography. Shamir's other work in secret sharing and linear and differential cryptanalysis is slightly more obscure.

As many others have already said, I, too, am one of those guilty parties.

Add me to the list of people who know of one, but not the other.