Comment by kristopolous | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kristopolous | Hacker News Reader

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Also, this part:

"Medical research organizations and those who work for them should be vigilant against threat actors seeking to steal >>>>>intellectual property<<<<< or other sensitive data related to America’s response to the COVID19 pandemic,” said Bill Evanina, Director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center. “Now is the time to protect the critical research you’re conducting.”

We're STILL talking about IP, patents, secrecy, and profit, on the pandemic, during the pandemic, with the government encouraging people to Not Share Information and Keep It As Secret as possible.

The disease is highly contagious and delays can mean millions of deaths and trillions in lost business, double digit unemployment, riots and civil wars, he knows this, right?

That's more important then $.65 versus $.59 EPS during a quarterly earnings call.

These people are so clueless, like some dopey out of touch aristocracy right before they collapse.

Please don't do flamewars on HN. You fed this one badly.

It helps nothing, regardless of how right you are or feel, and how wrong others are or you feel they are. It just makes this place even worse.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

>>> sensitive data<<<

Why didn't you highlight that?

Also, not all IP is for profit.

A lot of non-profits also have IP.

Well there is still the cold war with china and each side already blaming the other who is responsible, so the winner is the one, who can report success on a vaccine or treatment first.

It is still a global power struggle, who cares for human lives in that game?

It's one sided. One side has 800 military bases in 70 countries and routinely threatens to invade countries, and just did a coup in Latin America last November and the other is where all their factories are.

So no, don't buy it. It's the global thug being thuggish

Yeah, but the other side would like to have that much bases, too. And is increasing influence wherever they can. (big in africa and increasingly in south america, too). Also there are still some other sides, who probably join forces, if the US pushes too much.

Not every culture values brash thuggish belligerency as a social good.

Most counties are trying to work collaboratively and collectively on these things. US is the wacky outlier and they think everyone is like them.

We're talking about a country too arrogant to adopt the metric system, meters are just too much for them. The optics of possibly using international standards is too high of a political cost because then they'd use the same thing as everyone else. The Horror! America is like an executive who insists on having their own private elevator.

Basic things remain completely unadopted because that would look too much like collaboration. There's clearly an insane actor here, like some pearl clutching out of touch aristocracy riding around in town thinking the peasants love us as we argue how generous we should be wording a letter of forgiveness for wanting a revolution.

If the US is so bad at everything, then why did they become power number 1? Just by military force? Well, even if you think so, military requires collaboration, too.

I mean, you could write big books about things, they do bad, no doubt (and people do). But ... I could write books about what goes wrong here in germany as well. And as for china: well, they are about to implement a social karma system, because in the great socialist country, corruption(aka selfishness) is very, very common. And for some mysterious reasons, also the leaders of the party have all become very rich. So I am curious, if they will implement the karma system (which says, whether you get a job, university, tax deduction ...) for themself in an equal manner.

We're talking about a country too arrogant to adopt the metric system, meters are just too much for them.

Sorry, can't hear you from all the way up here on the moon.

Please don't perpetuate flamewars on HN. It just makes things even worse.

We've had to ask you about this many times in the past. If you'd make a point of reviewing the site guidelines and not backsliding like this, we'd be grateful.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

So, OK, the person who starts the off-topic flamefest gets voted up for it, while I... never mind.

I don't see what you're referring to, but either way, isn't this kind of complaint just a little childish?

Not so much a complaint, childish or otherwise, but a genuine question about your moderation policy. The topic of this story is not the metric system, or whether or not certain stereotypes are OK to propagate. On what planet is this (below) less offensive than what I posted, basically just poking gentle fun back at him?

We're talking about a country too arrogant to adopt the metric system, meters are just too much for them. The optics of possibly using international standards is too high of a political cost because then they'd use the same thing as everyone else. The Horror! America is like an executive who insists on having their own private elevator.

I think my own comment history speaks for itself as being representative of someone who doesn't start flame wars, or whose posts otherwise make HN a worse place in general. Yet I'm often the participant whom you go out of your way to call out.

I enjoy taking what amounts to troll bait at face value, responding in kind while still attempting to add something to the conversation, and seeing where the conversation goes from there. If you have a problem with that, your problem is actually with the original trollbait or flamebait, not with me. I'm not usually the bad guy in these threads. Certainly not in this one.

I chided that user more than I chided you. Did you not see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22904101?

Even if I hadn't though, it's your responsibility to follow the rules regardless of what others do. "But he started it!" is what I just referred to as a childish complaint. A less childish response would be to take responsibility for what one did, fix it going forward, and not plead other people's bad behavior as an excuse for your own. If we've been very unjust, other users will point it out.

We do our level best to be evenhanded, but we can't come close to seeing everything that gets posted, so you're never going to get perfect consistency from moderation here.

It always feels like the mods are harder on you than others, but that's an illusion. I'm not going out of my way to call you out; I barely recognize your username. My brain has been sandblasted into statelessness after years of doing this. If you've gotten repeated admonishments, it's because you've repeatedly broken the rules. The solution is to stop doing that, and also to stop posting bickering meta-comments, which just add noise and are of interest to no one else. If you need to express yourself about that, you're welcome to do so at hn@ycombinator.com.

> I enjoy taking what amounts to troll bait at face value, responding in kind while still attempting to add something to the conversation, and seeing where the conversation goes from there. If you have a problem with that, your problem is actually with the original trollbait or flamebait, not with me. I'm not usually the bad guy in these threads.

What you're describing is feeding trolls, which the HN guidelines (using nicer language) explicitly ask you not to do. It turns small flamewars into large ones, and the fault is with both parties. You're underestimating how much damage this does.

We all have a strong cognitive bias toward seeing the other person as "the bad guy" and ourselves as pure, or at least not-as-bad-as-him, which can be used to justify anything. Meanwhile the other guy has just the opposite view. That's how we get tedious spats. Please don't do this on HN any more.

Fair enough -- no, I didn't see your earlier comment to the other user. Apologies.

The thing about "feeding trolls" is, troll bait is often in the eye of the beholder. I don't believe he was deliberately "trolling" in the sense of posting deliberately-inflammatory material to provoke an irrational response or lower the level of discourse. Rather, I don't doubt for a moment that he holds precisely his stated beliefs about Americans as a group, and posted them because he felt that this was a welcoming environment for such sentiments. My post wasn't an attempt to feed a troll, so much as it was a way of arguing that no, this isn't the anti-American echo chamber he thinks it is.

I agree that both our posts would have been best kept out of the thread. Thanks for your feedback in that direction (and believe me, I do recognize and respect the hard work you put in here.)

Sorry, I don't value your response with brash thuggish belligerency as a social good. I think it's actually destructive and creates a hostile dysfunctional unhappy society of depressed people who turn to pain medicine and isolation because they can no longer turn to their neighbor.

Gotta say, that got dark in a hurry. Hope you're doing OK, in all seriousness.

Thanks for your concern.

I'm fine. The systemic consequences of the cultural norms we choose are very real. We do it all the time without noticing and it's really unhealthy for us and others.

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