Playing devil's advocate here. What harm was done by this? Was it really deserving of a news article and, further, a post on Hacker News? Now, maybe if there is a company out there working to replace or revolutionize passwords... otherwise I just don't see the point of this story.
Plenty. Anybody with ill intentions could set up a similar wifi network or tamper with the existing one and suddenly thousands of people's traffic/passwords are all being sent via MITM.
