We don't need to stretch the definition of hacking to be interested in something.

while true, we also have had interesting (in my opinion, at least) things flagged and deleted in the past because they weren't topical to the community.

I suppose the irony is I was trying to head off those OTHER people who might claim this is not Hacker News. :)

The Hacker News guidelines are a bit broader than what some participants here remember (or have ever looked up):

"On-Topic: 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."

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Glad you linked to that, I was also bringing it up a while ago. People need to read the whole thing.

Personally, what attracts me to hacker news is not the actual hacker news. I can find that anywhere I want. It's that the type of person who would participate in a site called Hacker News is likely smart and holds interesting, well-reasoned positions on a whole lot of things that are actually not Hacker News.

I know all the actual "Hacker News". Like any serious person I am on the damn mailing list. But ... I like the people who'd be attracted to such a place. I read a lot of the comments. It's worthwhile.

You didn't get to the point about how if you died anything but alone and penniless, you hadn't done your job. To me, that doesn't sound like a business plan for anyone on HN.

You committed the same sin the article was talking about: you celebrated it while ignoring its major point. ;-)

Some cursory googling did not reveal Walter Cronkite's net worth, but I did find an article suggesting that his kids were concerned about how much he was going to leave to his girl friend compared to them. So alone and penniless does not seem to apply to Walter, either.

> if you died anything but alone and penniless, you hadn't done your job. To me, that doesn't sound like a business plan for anyone on HN.

I think following the moral behind that quip makes it unlikely you end up alone and penniless :)

We could build some kind of a computer network that allows people to send their classified ads to each other directly for tiny fractions of a penny, sucking away the reveneues of the newspapers. Then people could trade videos directly over the network, so they don't watch TV. When there's a natural disaster or terrorist attack, people can use this network to publish their photos and firsthand reports in minutes, and then other people using the network will pick which photos and reports are worth forwarding on. Then people won't pay any attention to TV news. Then we just need to figure out how to make it possible to publish things like the Pentagon Papers right away, before the government has the chance to suppress them. Also, we need people to use the network to spread celebrity gossip. Then the big TV news corporations will lose their air supply.

Do you think that might work?