Don't be a tool.
And it's really not that hard to look up a user's profile to see where they work if they put that sort of information there.
You know, a lot of people here look up to you. When you write stuff like that it has a lot more influence than when some newbie account does. I would probably say that the influence is negative, assuming HN is a thing that you care about.
After submitting I see that you changed your post. The link is not much better.
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5992358
> I'm glad you approve. No, wait, I don't give a shit.
So someone asked if you've done work for the NSA. Who cares? Clearly you have the ability, it's not the most offensive thing in the world even if it's a bit naive. The person doesn't necessarily know that it's totally against your values, assuming that this is the source of the offense.
I'm not offended at someone suggesting I might have worked for NSA. You still don't get it.
(I changed the parent not because I'm uncomfortable with it, but because I wrote it before I saw the comment below that I ended up replying to; either "go fuck yourself" or the response I wrote downthread work for me, but both together seemed pointless).
Even if true, I wouldn't say this indicated you were a shill, because shills are generally paid to push propaganda.
People are naturally biased by their experiences in positive or negative ways. You made what could be construed as a pro-NSA comment in an environment dominated by anti-NSA sentiment, and somebody made an assumption that maybe you had a good experience working at the NSA and wanted to clarify it.
For what it's worth, it never occurred to me that you were a shill or a former employee, the suggestion is absurd and totally out of left-field.
Respectfully, not because I'm fed up talking about this but because I don't want to be one of those threads where 'pg has to comment and say "will you guys please stop", I'm going to leave it at that.
I recall you checking me on a similar point once upon a time.
Edit: for what it's worth, I agree with your observation that things aren't as bad as, say, they were with the Pinkertons breaking strikes up.
Still, don't be a tool.
As for being a tool, well, it wasn't an awful question. For what it's worth I never worked with them either.
HN has too much tolerance for this 1000% totally bogus intellectually insulting rhetorical tactic. It demeans everyone.
The people writing these idiotic "you must be a shill for {Microsoft,Mozilla,NSA}" comments think they're clever, but what they're really saying is "not only do I not understand what the Fundamental Attribution Error is, but I can't even comprehend the idea of someone disagreeing with me or even presenting a fact or idea that challenges my preconceptions; no, it's much more likely that this is a bad faith comment than that I don't know everything there is to know about every topic".
And then other people cheer them on!
There is no online community anywhere on the Internet less capable of spotting a shill than Hacker News. Any competent shill could immediately see how to game the site.
I was just offering a perspective on effective methods of communication. Whether it means anything to anyone other than myself, it has no effect on my continued meager offerings in the future.
Anyways...
Today at noon, I hope to see tptacek-class crypto experts at our Seattle Westlake Mall, I hope to see some crypto hackavists providing popular personal security advice and tools.