Snowden/NSA articles frequently contain impassioned defenses about how relevant they are to the tech community at large, and I agree, but the problem with their

Snowden/NSA articles frequently contain impassioned defenses about how relevant they are to the tech community at large, and I agree, but the problem with their proliferation is the topic bleed they lead to. Once political discussions feel normal, you get things like this completely pointless rehashing of "socialism" vs "Randianism" this afternoon: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6156035 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6156035 I have generally come down on the side of considering complaints about the downward slide of the site as mostly rosy-painted nostalgia, but I do think an article as blatantly off-topic and political as that would have quickly been flagged as recently as 3 or 4 months ago.