Looking at that thread, I think I understand what's going on, which was really not very clear from your intervention. I thought you were being petty about terminology.

I could not understand why you were bugging me for my use of the term good hackers, when the obvious main point to be made was, if yes or no the article was, in fact, HN material, which I felt and continue to feel it is.

Many of us haven't been around this site as long as some of the people raising their concerns in the thread you pointed me to. We don't know what it was like in the old days, our only compass for what makes a good HN post is the guidelines, which can be interpreted subjectively in many situations ([...]That includes more than hacking and startups[...], [...]anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity[...]). Some of the best articles that I've found on this site snuggly fit within those characteristics (e.g. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978295). I believe the current one to have some of those same characteristics, because it highlights an out-of-the-box approach to a problem so very uncommon in the mainstream. 4 days ago I was chatting about homelessness with my business partner, and we were discussing hypothetical solutions to fix it, or at least make it less of a problem and reasons why they would or wouldn't work and some of our solutions were pretty much along those lines and also raised some ethical/moral questions. We're both programmers and though this is arguably not hacker material, we're also entrepreneurs and our ideas often stem from these little discussions that help us look beyond the status quo.

It seems from the thread that you posted that some old timers are trying to get HN to fit back into its old box. I'm still unsure if it would have much appeal to the kind of topics I'm referring to. If their veteran status grant them a say in the direction of HN, I can only suggest to push for clearer guidelines.

Btw, I cannot remove the good hackers from the original post to the thread, it appears that the "edit" timer has expired.

This article: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978295 has stuck with me since it was posted a while ago.

I guess everyone who goes there knows the dangers, and would be prepared for the worst.

Actually, Everest is considered as on the easier side for an eight-thousander [1]. Annapurna got %38 (2007 figures) [2] and K2 got %25 [3].

For some interesting discussion on Everest fatalities, try this one [4]. "No shortcuts to the top" by Ed Viesturs and the well known "Into thin air" by Jon Krakauer are two good books on the subject, if you want to read more.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-thousander [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annapurna [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K2 {4] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978295