Comment by supernova87a | Hacker News Reader

Comment by supernova87a | Hacker News Reader

What's the concern that's being identified in all these stories? It would be good to have an enumeration of clear concerns.

Is it that:

1) the companies are letting Americans' hardware be controlled / data escape and be monitored in China, or

2) that people in China subject to their laws (un-American as those laws may be) are being monitored (and worse)?

Because if it's the first topic, how do we not manage to buy/require/put in technical safeguards against our own people being monitored, or our equipment being taken over remotely? If we can't even do that, then how is any equipment we buy safe? But if we do, then is the argument that we're helping China get stronger by contributing to their economy or technological dominance? And that's undesirable to have a power shift that decreases our standing?

Who's responsible for deciding what standing we want to have in the world? Who's guiding that steering wheel and what's the destination? I daresay it's odd for the administration to be speaking up about this one thing, when it's mute on so many other factors that set our technological dominance.

Or if the 2nd argument, how far do our laws extend? Is that a principle to be applied to all countries by us, that they should not do things to their own citizens that would be illegal here? If we want universally respected laws to apply to other countries, I would think we could do ourselves a favor by respecting other laws and organizations that we currently choose to say are not in our convenience to follow.

Or is it something else? If you want me to be patriotic, tell me what I'm signing up for.

[flagged]

So, if I were being sarcastic/cynical -- I would say, "so we object to China trying to become a global superpower by investing in the arts, media, technology, and a slew of other things that cause economic gains for their people?" How dare they stoop to such tactics.

I would actually feel more in earnest about the above joke if it didn't come with (or was trying to mask) the torture, economic espionage, etc.

> FYI, if you stand up two false straw men, you look like a collaborator with the CCP. <joke> You communist. </joke>

This breaks the site guidelines—quite badly actually. Insinuating that someone is a "collaborator" is...well, it's hard to believe that we've returned to an age where people do this kind of thing, however trivially on the internet. Adding joke tags doesn't help much, and it's notable that you didn't wrap your entire insinuation in them anyhow.

Would you mind reading https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and using HN in the intended spirit? Note that they include:

Assume good faith.

"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."

Edit: so far, every comment your account has posted has been using HN for political/ideological/national battle. That's not what this site is for, and we ban accounts that do this, so please don't misuse HN this way. No, that's not because we're communist collaborators—it's because we're trying to protect HN from flamewar, regardless of which angle the flamebait flies in from.

It's clearly tongue in cheek, how can you not see that? I mean there are joke tags!

"Adding joke tags doesn't help much, and it's notable that you didn't wrap your entire insinuation in them anyhow."

[edit] Retracting my unnecessary jab around the moderator's comments being modified several times and their moderation leaving a lot to be desired. The latter was rude and uncalled for.

I'll refrain from commenting on you personally, but I will say that I've been here for around a decade and dang's moderation has been excellent over that entire period.

Sometimes it has even been aimed at my comments, and I cannot really cite a single example where I feel dang has been unfair.

I would also note that you failed to even attempt to say why you think dang's moderation was lacking, here.

Oh it's true that I build my comments by posting an initial stub and then adding to them bit by bit. That's the process that works, for whatever reason. But I'd never do that to create a misleading impression—on the contrary, in such cases I'll always add "Edit". If you replied before I added the bit about joke tags, I didn't see that and I'm sorry.

I actually have the 'delay' field in my profile set to allow time for such incremental edits, but not for long enough to mask all of them.

Robin Hood isn’t exactly in line with American principles either. Guy against the law robs from the rich to give to the poor. I feel like Peter Pan is the replacement figure.

Cultural manipulation is a little woolly, does it have other names you like?

Robin Hood is actually quite aligned with American values. Standing up to, or outright rejecting unjust laws/taxation was a major factor in the birth of the country. It also embraces aspects of the American psyche that value the act and social contribution of the subversive. always had a place near and dear to the American cultural heart, in spite of what the law and order crowd would have you believe.

It has, however, aged poorly, as the arm of the law has lengthened, the voice of the town crier become nigh-unignorable, and the medium of the truly successful in the sense of magnitude of value extracted vs. value provided by has become far harder to assail since it is generally a private individual doing it instead of an authority figure.

Then again, timea are a changin'.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com