While I see your point, it's come to a point where I prefer to see such interesting non-tech article rather than the crcle jerking of (poorly made) benchmarks / you should do this / no you should do that / php should die / my answer to "php should die" that I should have posted as a comment but didn't because I'm only milking for more adviews / etc ...

Besides your point with which I agree (and am saddened by), the point of this community is to stimulate our collective minds, discuss ideas we wouldn't normally think of. Evolution is one such topic of conversation -- what evolutionary traits made these creatures grow so big on Ball's Pyramid, how did they grow so big so quickly, how did they get there from the other island, etc...

By expanding our collective horizons, we are able to extrapolate useful information and perhaps even apply it to our jobs or startups. For example, ant colony optimization came about by studying ants - not exactly what the OP would consider HN material. Genetic algorithms came about by studying genetics, mutations, and all things Darwin.

So instead of asking, "why is this on HN," we should ask ourselves or each other "how/what can we learn from this and apply it to our fields?"

From the guidelines:

> 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.

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

I can totally see this on TV news, as a brief spot on a slow news day. But I have to admit, if I was only going to admit one off topic story per week or something, this one would make it.

But guess if they'd cover it on radio news, it could still be on topic.

It's good to always be asking that. As someone who often thinks "no, it doesn't", I think this kind of story is ok: it's not about politics or some kind of charged topic, it's just a random, interesting story. If you want one that's in need of flagging, the "big brother speech jamming gun" one is a great candidate.

So is it unhackerlike to be politically charged?

Political discussions are usually polarised, and thus they start with pointless bickering and end with ranting flame-fests. People tend to enter the discussion knowing what they think, with little to no chance for changing their minds.

There are very many places where such discussions are welcome.

And most of those places suck. You have to wonder, can you design a discussion community framework in a way that enables more constructive discussions on these topics? Maybe something different than a straight threaded (or non-threaded) discussion forum? In the same manner that Stack Overflow tries to do it for programming and more general Q&A; not that I'm saying it'd work the same way as SO.

Not at all. It just belongs on a different site.

Science is always welcome on HN.

Judging by the 200+ up votes, yes. Plus, the aforementioned hacker news guidelines: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Every time I see someone ask, "does this belong on HN", I think exactly that. Obviously it was interesting enough for 200+ people, so if it's not interesting to you as an individual then you can move to the next article. It astonishes me how many people seem to think it's <Your Name Here> News instead of Hacker News.

That's wrong too though: if I get 1000 people who love professional cycling news to sign up to HN and start upvoting articles about Alberto Contador, that doesn't mean it's on topic.

It's wrong only if you assume that guidelines should pertain to an absurd range of deliberately destructive yet highly implausible scenarios, as opposed actual problems that could regularly occur in their absence.

My example is contrived, but if you think about things like the TSA, US electoral politics, and that sort of thing, it begins to look much more realistic.

The guidelines do specify a few things that might be interesting enough that they'll get upvoted, but still don't belong here -- "most stories about politics, crime, or sports", for example. Unfortunately, some people vote without reading the guidelines; it's up to the rest of us to use the "flag" option accordingly.

It definitely belongs here. Science is awesome and this story is remarkable.

I enjoy reading two-three non "hacker" topics every day and having it discussed with this community, instead of say reddit. Since this community is closer to my mindset.

Saying that, i see that this kind of exploration with rewards like a previous thought extinct specimens is a "hack" of nature, it was an investment, a climb to the top and a reward :) . Therefore it is hacker news.

In a way these scientists "hacked" a species from going completely extinct.

Yes.

The number of replies strongly implies "interest".

It helps prevent in-breeding of articles.