5 ms·

This is such a cynical statement that I'm tired of seeing on HN. Yes, the article mentions a product from the company, not in a sneaky way. The rest of it, som

by gk1 8y ago

This is such a cynical statement that I'm tired of seeing on HN. Yes, the article mentions a product from the company, not in a sneaky way. The rest of it, some 2,800 words, is interesting and informative--to me, at least. An article can be both informative and self-serving, and there's nothing wrong with that, provided there's no deception. Most of what you read online is self-serving, in some way.

aaron695 8y ago
> An article can be both informative But this isn't. It's a lie. And it's not hard to tell. It's more a article for Reddit or Voat than HN. paradoxparalax offers actually interesting info above. The article - Divide a room into 4, wtf. Some rooms are 4 times larger than other, this makes no sense. Just the first line should tip you off the reader is a sucker - "This is without a doubt most thorough guide to detecting hidden cameras and covert spy gear that is online." This is just bad advice - "If this is your first time staying in a new hotel or an Airbnb, automatically assume that you are currently being recorded and surveilled." Every hotel room could be surveilled? Rubbish. See paradoxparalax for situations where it actually might be true. That's called adding info, compared to suckering a dumb reader into be paranoid, assumably to buy stuff.
CyberDildonics 8y ago
If you think this is cynical, you don't understand modern advertising.
- solveit 8y ago
  The point isn't that the article isn't an advertisement, it's that it isn't just an advertisement. If it provides value we shouldn't immediately dismiss it just for being an ad.
ouid 8y ago
>provided there's no deception. First of all, your caveat does not hold. This article is deceptive in full. None of the advice presented here is good at all... "divide the room into quadrants and search each quadrant"? Why? Just search the entire room. The article fundamentally gives the impression that you will not actually be able to locate any spygear unless you have an RF detector and a camera beacon simply by not giving any good advice otherwise. "Check if the outlet covers have been changed?" right, because when I bug a house that I own, I also buy a new outlet cover. No one trying to sell you something is going to tell you how you could effectively live your life without their product. This is fundamentally deceptive, and seems to have gone so far as to have fooled even you.
- booleandilemma 8y ago
  None of the advice presented here is good at all... "divide the room into quadrants and search each quadrant"? Why? The article answers that: Splitting the room into sections will help you to systematically and meticulously go through the room and clear each section without skipping over any of the fine details. This strategy is generally known as “divide and conquer”.
  - ouid 8y ago
    no, the strategy of divide and conquer exclusively refers to situations in which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, in this case they are exactly equal. In military parlance, it means that you have a much greater advantage against 2 armies of half size separately than against them both simultaneously. This is known as Lanchester's law, and the whole point is that it's non-linear. In algorithms, the idea is roughly that, given a method which solves a problem, it is often cheaper to split your input, solve each half, then merge them, than it is to run the algorithm on the entire input. Again, non-linear. Dividing your room into quadrants provides NO advantage to searching your room. You still have to search each unit area methodically.
    - pergadad 8y ago
      The suggestion is not about efficiency, it's about not forgetting anything.
      - ouid 8y ago
        I'm pretty sure most people have a pretty intuitive understanding of how to perform a methodical search of a room. The article promises clever tricks for finding bugs and cameras in a room without having to spend any money, and fails to deliver on that premise, deceptively, because it is solely an advertisement for a device that is FAR more expensive than it needs to be.
        mrob 8y ago
zby 8y ago
It might be read as cynical - but in itself it is just a statement of fact. It is informative.
TeMPOraL 8y ago
> An article can be both informative and self-serving, and there's nothing wrong with that, provided there's no deception. Most of what you read online is self-serving, in some way. But can it be, really? Usually one of the two goals suffers badly. The top 50% of this article reads like low-effort content marketing cookie-cutter nonsense, and I almost stop reading there. It got somewhat interesting towards the other half, true, but someone interested in informing people instead of pushing their product (and the need for their products) could easily shorten this article by 50+%.
eps 8y ago
The article is very shallow and it's just a wordy regurgiration of common sense stuff. Certainly not something of professional level it claims to describe.

by gk1 8y ago

aaron695 8y ago

> An article can be both informative But this isn't. It's a lie. And it's not hard to tell. It's more a article for Reddit or Voat than HN. paradoxparalax offers actually interesting info above. The article - Divide a room into 4, wtf. Some rooms are 4 times larger than other, this makes no sense. Just the first line should tip you off the reader is a sucker - "This is without a doubt most thorough guide to detecting hidden cameras and covert spy gear that is online." This is just bad advice - "If this is your first time staying in a new hotel or an Airbnb, automatically assume that you are currently being recorded and surveilled." Every hotel room could be surveilled? Rubbish. See paradoxparalax for situations where it actually might be true. That's called adding info, compared to suckering a dumb reader into be paranoid, assumably to buy stuff.

CyberDildonics 8y ago

If you think this is cynical, you don't understand modern advertising.

solveit 8y ago
The point isn't that the article isn't an advertisement, it's that it isn't just an advertisement. If it provides value we shouldn't immediately dismiss it just for being an ad.

ouid 8y ago

>provided there's no deception. First of all, your caveat does not hold. This article is deceptive in full. None of the advice presented here is good at all... "divide the room into quadrants and search each quadrant"? Why? Just search the entire room. The article fundamentally gives the impression that you will not actually be able to locate any spygear unless you have an RF detector and a camera beacon simply by not giving any good advice otherwise. "Check if the outlet covers have been changed?" right, because when I bug a house that I own, I also buy a new outlet cover. No one trying to sell you something is going to tell you how you could effectively live your life without their product. This is fundamentally deceptive, and seems to have gone so far as to have fooled even you.

booleandilemma 8y ago
None of the advice presented here is good at all... "divide the room into quadrants and search each quadrant"? Why? The article answers that: Splitting the room into sections will help you to systematically and meticulously go through the room and clear each section without skipping over any of the fine details. This strategy is generally known as “divide and conquer”.
- ouid 8y ago
  no, the strategy of divide and conquer exclusively refers to situations in which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, in this case they are exactly equal. In military parlance, it means that you have a much greater advantage against 2 armies of half size separately than against them both simultaneously. This is known as Lanchester's law, and the whole point is that it's non-linear. In algorithms, the idea is roughly that, given a method which solves a problem, it is often cheaper to split your input, solve each half, then merge them, than it is to run the algorithm on the entire input. Again, non-linear. Dividing your room into quadrants provides NO advantage to searching your room. You still have to search each unit area methodically.
  - pergadad 8y ago
    The suggestion is not about efficiency, it's about not forgetting anything.
    - ouid 8y ago
      I'm pretty sure most people have a pretty intuitive understanding of how to perform a methodical search of a room. The article promises clever tricks for finding bugs and cameras in a room without having to spend any money, and fails to deliver on that premise, deceptively, because it is solely an advertisement for a device that is FAR more expensive than it needs to be.
      - mrob 8y ago

zby 8y ago

It might be read as cynical - but in itself it is just a statement of fact. It is informative.

TeMPOraL 8y ago

> An article can be both informative and self-serving, and there's nothing wrong with that, provided there's no deception. Most of what you read online is self-serving, in some way. But can it be, really? Usually one of the two goals suffers badly. The top 50% of this article reads like low-effort content marketing cookie-cutter nonsense, and I almost stop reading there. It got somewhat interesting towards the other half, true, but someone interested in informing people instead of pushing their product (and the need for their products) could easily shorten this article by 50+%.

eps 8y ago

The article is very shallow and it's just a wordy regurgiration of common sense stuff. Certainly not something of professional level it claims to describe.