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It's the opposite of shade, unless GP is being sarcastic. "Class act" is normally a compliment, and in the context here it sounds to me like they're congratulating Baidu/the researchers in being transparent about where their ideas came from.

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To be fair, I think I see "[real] class act" almost always used sarcastically.

I've never seen it used that way.

Any compliment can be repurposed as sarcasm, but it's obscenely cynical to immediately assume a compliment is sarcastic - instead of just a compliment. And by the way, there's no 'real' in the poster's message.

Yet you responded to my comment in the most cynical way possible. I was excusing the misunderstanding -- I assumed that the parent might only have seen it used cynically as that is a charitable way to interpret the apparent miscommunication and is quite possible. You shit on my comment and then told me doing such things is "cynical". Imagine a pipe before the closing square-bracket if you wish -- the standard editorial convention as I learnt it was that square-bracketed terms may be present or not (in English Language prose).

Cheers.

Now you understand why I thought something written in good faith might be interpreted as shade. Happens all the time.

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