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No, the hack authors who filed the pull request are actually posting here in this thread. eg this guy: https://github.com/Kr4ken-9/cathook https://github.com/K

by paulmd 9y ago

No, the hack authors who filed the pull request are actually posting here in this thread. eg this guy: https://github.com/Kr4ken-9/cathook https://github.com/Kr4ken-9/cathook is kr4ken on HN, there's probably others here who are smart enough not to link their black-hat identity with HN. This is literally blackhats bitching that they got VAC-banned, 100% legitimately, and then concern-trolling us about what-if scenarios about some hypothetical innocent user who might have been swept up with their script-kiddie customers. Can't say that such opinions really have any place here, IMO, considering that they are the ones who created the problem in the first place. Maybe it's not worth shutting them down, but they certainly shouldn't be celebrated or legitimized in any fashion. Scorn is an entirely appropriate community reaction here, and a mod tipping the scale in favor of black-hats is not really appropriate IMO.

hitekker 9y ago
I agree. Implying that HN users aren't generally susceptible to blackhat trolling is naive. Our community has its strengths but some subjects like politics provoke a suspension of critical thinking. In this case, small time hackers being punished by a big company in a seemingly overkill way for a seemingly innocuous slight. Ideally, a moderator should be aware of the biases of the community and adjust the discussion accordingly. Or at least when the lies being perpetrated are as obvious as it is in this thread.
dang 9y ago
I wasn't talking about that and am not taking any kind of side. If you think there's abuse going on, emailing hn@ycombinator.com is the thing to do, and then we can take a closer look. My point is the orthogonal one that it's incongruent to snarkily diss HN when you're as much a part of the community as anyone else is. It makes no more sense to say "HN got trolled" than "HN debunked getting trolled". People don't do this to be informative, but rather to superciliously position themselves above others. That degrades the spirit of the community here, which is already so fragile. That's why I reply to such comments the way I did.
- hitekker 9y ago
  We may each be a part of HN but that doesn't mean we can't criticize what we perceive to be the gestalt of HN. It's like saying "<Insert Community / Country / Organization Name>, goddammit!" I personally don't mean that I'm better than everyone in said community, but that I'm disappointed with the prevailing sentiment, and so feel the need to signal my separation on the issue. It's shorthand "I don't identify with <Community> on <Issue X>". People do indeed abuse this rhetoric to feel superior to others, e.g., "Reddit is a hivemind!". But on issues where the community clearly falls prey to its biases, a little snark now should remind us to avoid those collective pitfalls in the future.

by paulmd 9y ago

hitekker 9y ago

I agree. Implying that HN users aren't generally susceptible to blackhat trolling is naive. Our community has its strengths but some subjects like politics provoke a suspension of critical thinking. In this case, small time hackers being punished by a big company in a seemingly overkill way for a seemingly innocuous slight. Ideally, a moderator should be aware of the biases of the community and adjust the discussion accordingly. Or at least when the lies being perpetrated are as obvious as it is in this thread.

dang 9y ago

I wasn't talking about that and am not taking any kind of side. If you think there's abuse going on, emailing hn@ycombinator.com is the thing to do, and then we can take a closer look. My point is the orthogonal one that it's incongruent to snarkily diss HN when you're as much a part of the community as anyone else is. It makes no more sense to say "HN got trolled" than "HN debunked getting trolled". People don't do this to be informative, but rather to superciliously position themselves above others. That degrades the spirit of the community here, which is already so fragile. That's why I reply to such comments the way I did.

hitekker 9y ago
We may each be a part of HN but that doesn't mean we can't criticize what we perceive to be the gestalt of HN. It's like saying "<Insert Community / Country / Organization Name>, goddammit!" I personally don't mean that I'm better than everyone in said community, but that I'm disappointed with the prevailing sentiment, and so feel the need to signal my separation on the issue. It's shorthand "I don't identify with <Community> on <Issue X>". People do indeed abuse this rhetoric to feel superior to others, e.g., "Reddit is a hivemind!". But on issues where the community clearly falls prey to its biases, a little snark now should remind us to avoid those collective pitfalls in the future.