If there is a greater incidence of seemingly off-topic (politics, crime, or sports) submissions, it's likely correlated to the fact that tech is more and more inseparable from everyday life and policy decisions, and vice versa. One of my favorite memories from early 2020 HN was someone angrily asking why stories about Covid-19 were making the front page, as if they couldn't imagine how a potential pandemic might deeply affect the tech sector.