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Comment by fizzbitch | Hacker News Reader

Preach it! Humor should be disallowed on HN. I come here for uberserious discussion only.

Or uplyfting insights.

Hey, we've got company: in the MS blog's comments, there's a fellow who archly informs the peasants that "I usually archive & star (bookmark) articles that have an amazingly interesting or peculiar technical aspects. With this one, I’ll gladly make an exception."

Dammit, Raymond Chen is out of pocket for a refund on that guy's subscription.

I think you're misreading that, seems to me he means he'll make an exception and bookmark this article despite it not being technical because he enjoyed the story.

> Dammit, Raymond Chen is out of pocket for a refund on that guy's subscription.

?!? That sounded like a positive review from somebody who liked the article. He says it's neither amazingly interesting nor technical, but still good enough to bookmark.

Woah, I misread it too and in retrospective, it looks like an honest mistake to make. That pessage could mean the both things (could give positive or negative intent). I wonder what other such good examples can be. And does such phenomenon is called with some name?

It's called a backhanded compliment.

> I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve. This was unexpected and rather difficult. There was some scattered clapping, but most of them were trying to work it out and see if it came to a compliment.

- LOTR

I was expecting some report of an obscure border dispute. Loved how this one ended.

Bonus points that it was written by Raymond Chen, I am a longtime fan of his writing.

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