6 ms·

So, a story about SV being polluted has 156 points right now, and sits nicely in the middle of the front page. It's an important story, apparently. Meanwhile,

• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• crazygringo 7y ago
  That's a particularly uncharitable interpretation. It's much more likely is that everyone's well aware of climate change (I'm sure I've read many hundreds of articles over my lifetime), but this is the first many people have heard of SV pollution (it certainly is for me).
  • endorphone 7y ago
    This would explain one post rising quickly while another fades. When people are actively flagging, however, that's an entirely different, much more insidious action.
    • paulddraper 7y ago
      > much more insidious action I'm missing something. What exactly is the agenda?
      • ryandrake 7y ago
        Climate Change Burnout. I don’t flag articles on CC but I’ve been tempted to. There’s a new one every two days and they all say basically the same thing. Regardless of one’s political views, the onslaught of constant alarm can be exhausting. The people who don’t think it’s a problem are not going to be convinced by the 215th news article published this year.
      • enraged_camel 7y ago
        There is no agenda, but people absolutely use the flagging feature for selfish reasons, e.g. “Dammit, I’m so tired of reading about this topic!” When in reality, it is intended for marking content that breaks the site guidelines.
  • jwr 7y ago
    Well, which do you think is more important/pressing right now?
    • mikeash 7y ago
      The #2 story on the front page right now is “A photo survey of the blackboards of mathematicians.” Maybe front page rank isn’t about how important or pressing the story is?
    • mbesto 7y ago
      1) Hacker News ranking isn't about "what is more important/pressing right now" to a global audience. This is about what's interesting for the hacker audience at this moment. 2) It's generally frowned upon to comment about "why isn't this story getting more upvotes", etc. In other words, it's not adding value to the conversation, so please refrain from doing so and use the upvote/flagging features if you feel outraged something isn't getting the attention it deserves. 3) If you don't like something on the frontpage then don't upvote it. Simple. 4) I don't live in SV, but many people who are "Hackers" do. The article specifically targets tech companies who have offices in SV and are impacting the environment.
• te_chris 7y ago
  Can't believe that got flagged. Dang et al, are you able to see if there's some sort of flagging ring or similar going on? I get that political stories normally get flagged, but a Nature article is not that.
  • endorphone 7y ago
    There are a large enough group of people who believe that climate change is political because some deniers have politicized science as if you can debate against science and fact.
    • jwr 7y ago
      I find this kind of behavior on HN both surprising and depressing. Do we really care more about SV pollution than about the entire planet? I am honestly not sure if I want to continue to participate in this community.
      • Kiro 7y ago
        I think you're making too big a deal of this. I would be really surprised if there's a flag ring going on considering the karma you need in order to be able to flag and articles about the environment are on the FP all the time.
    • aldoushuxley001 7y ago
      Ironically it’s climate change advocates who have politicized science. The IPCC, whose reports are fundamental to climate change advocacy, is an intergovernmental panel. It is the epitome of politicized science. Judge whether or not this kind of politicized science is good or not, but in general I do agree that politicizing science is most likely a negative and ultimately a corruption of science.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  • jerf 7y ago
    Even ignoring the political aspects, we don't need six articles a day on HN about climate change. If nothing else, it's preaching to the choir. There's no news in most climate change articles, to say nothing of "Hacker" news. If HN runs simply on what people consider politically important, it might as well shut down and just be a redirect to the Huffington Post or something. There is abundant evidence that online communities end up in certain strange attractors [1], and the dominant political narrative of the day is one of the strongest ones. I didn't flag the particular article in question, but yes, I absolutely flag any article that can be replaced with little or no loss with $POPULAR_POLITICAL_NARRATIVE_IS_TRUE, regardless of which narrative it is, even the ones I more-or-less agree with. I doubt HN is anybody's sole source of news and it doesn't need to join the stampeding horde of other websites who publish that article 20 times a day. [1]: A math term, not a term of judgment.
• manigandham 7y ago
  Everyone knows about climate change, that's not news. However there's a lot of denial about how bad rich areas like Silicon Valley and SF are today with pollution and population. The bubble is how the SV/tech community wants to change the world but has trouble maintaining its own backyard.
  • autotune 7y ago
    NIMBY-ism ever present and accounted for.
    • cj 7y ago
      If it were "NIMBY", then SV/SF companies wouldn't contribute to pollution within Silicon Valley but would pollute elsewhere. I think the point of the article is that companies are indeed polluting in their own backyard.
      • Nasrudith 7y ago
        More like their ancestors polluted in their own backyard. The hardware companies that worked with them already left or went out of business. Trying to collectivize the guilt would be just silly like "NYC companies are responsible for the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire and the 2008 financial crisis".
    • trenning 7y ago
      It's not NIMBY-ism when SV has been an established tech hub for 'like-minded' people for over 50 years. It's just you guys now. You don't get to use that excuse when you've pushed out everybody else because the only people still living there are tech employees making at least 200k year and all the millionaires and billionaires that have made their fortune from tech
• turk73 7y ago
  Tired of hearing "climate change" with no solutions other than somehow I have to pay more for less and scale back my lifestyle. Meanwhile, I know that to solve any climate problems we probably need to kill off 4 billion people.
• badpun 7y ago
  To be frank, there's hardly any convincing climate change science in the Nature story. It's mostly about activism, CO2 emissions with only some super high-level info of impact of greenhouse gases on people (without justifications or models given). It reads like a political story, not scientific one - I didn't know that nature is publishing such stuff.
• corodra 7y ago
  Eh, I don't think "tech bubble" is appropriate to nail down the problems. Egotism and hubris, along with thinking being above the rest of society is the problem. And to be fair, it shows up here in HN too. There's a weird mentality of "Well I'm smart in computers and programming, that automatically makes me an expert in civil infrastructure, economic theory, social support programs, agriculture, etc". I mean, seriously, it's really weird and it's happening constantly. It's like a lot of this "revolutionary SV agriculture startups". They're bunk and retarded. They're just 1940s-1970s research projects without ever citing or learning from trails already blazed. They act like "No one has ever researched how to grow food, here I come to rescue with my power of programming and social media posts! Venture capital firms, I'm ready for money!" Not a single one realizes that a lot of large scale, efficient and affordable farming practices were pioneered by people like Norman Borlaug. But they "draw inspiration" from a random SV ceo. Just pisses me off. Plus, "The people's voice matters. We must democratize everything... as long as they only agree with me." Reality is, silicon valley is not really different from the old titans of industry. One difference, the old assholes were upfront "You need something, I hire people to make it, and I'm in it for the money." The valley, "I'm here for you. You giving me your money is the best way to make the world a better place through [insert disruptive product]. You'll be happy with a lighter wallet. We're going to save the world together."
  • bavell 7y ago
    I agree with your overall perception of SV as an outsider myself. There are very smart people doing big things alongside starry-eyed naive people doing silly things. Sometimes it's a blurry line between the two and sometimes I can't help but facepalm at some of the stories I hear coming out of SV...
    • corodra 7y ago
      Well, let's be honest about the "intelligent" part. Sure, there are some brilliant computer engineers out in SV. But would you say they're necessarily smart financial planners? The cost of living in a lot of parts of Cali in generally are ridiculous and some of the most expensive in the country. A lot of SV companies complain that there are not enough capable programmers in the area. Well, if a 50k-70k salary in other parts of the country gets you a decent sized house, a car, cheaper food and cheaper well... everything. While a 120k in SV gets you a studio apartment and reliant on public transpo... I mean, what makes more sense? God have mercy if you have kids. So if you have a segment of engineers who believe living in SV is "smart" financially... do you really want them to make opinions on government spending? I'm not saying that "people not living in Cali" are instantly money smart. But, you don't quickly take financial advice from a friend that's gone bankrupt twice, is always in crippling debt due to overspending and throws money at ideas largely based on keywords. I guess my long drawn out rant is just the problem where lots of folks consider SV "smart". Thus they're allowed to have an affecting opinion on things they're truly not "smart" about.