8 ms·

Why do you have to add “Chinese”?

by thekuanysh 6y ago

beaner 6y ago
Who cares? It could be anything. Random descriptions add flavor. Bitcoin is also popular in China anyway.
- ttam 6y ago
  As a Chinese, I care.
  - beaner 6y ago
    Would you have cared if they said "Russian hacker"?
- ska 6y ago
  > Random descriptions add flavor. That's not flavor.
- MathCodeLove 6y ago
  Not Chinese, I also care. That comment is an example of subtle racism. Image the following comment: "You better buy a good bike lock, else you're at risk of having it stolen by a black man." A comment like the one above would spark near universal outrage at the commenter, and with good reason. It's racist, and the original comment here is the same. Unnecessarily racist.
  - tossmeout 6y ago
    You're incorrect. Chinese is a nationality, not a race, which means this isn't racism. An accurate description would be that this is stereotyping on the basis of nationality. As such, a more accurate comparison than "black man stealing a bike" would be to something like a "Nigerian scammer," which is an archetype I don't think most of us have a problem with. Other examples I never see complaints about: "Russian hacker," "American imperialist," etc.
    - komali2 6y ago
      > Chinese is a nationality, not a race, This isn't really true on it's own, and besides, isn't even a good faith interpretation. In an America where rural Asian-ethnicity people are facing discrimination because of covid being called "Chinese Virus," I think it's bold to claim that the concept of China as a country and Chinese as a racial heritage are not conflated.
      - tossmeout 6y ago
        > This isn't really true on it's own How is this not true? Genuinely curious. > In an America where rural Asian-ethnicity people are facing discrimination because of covid being called "Chinese Virus…" That's because of the specific context of who is saying "Chinese Virus," who their audience is, and why they're saying it. This context is different. Nobody on Hacker News who encounters the phrase "Chinese hacker" is going to suddenly start discriminating against Chinese people, any more than we discriminate against Nigerians despite the fact that "Nigerian scammer" is a cliche in tech circles.
        komali2 6y ago
        > How is this not true? Genuinely curious. I'd delve deeper beyond my comment because there's a lot of reasons I'm not the greatest source, not the least of which I'm just some white american dude with a comically terrible grasp of ONE dialect/language of Chinese and a wikipedia sourced knowledge of Chinese history. Here's my understanding: Chinese can refer to many things that have their origin in what we call Mainland China these days. Chinese Language. Chinese History. Chinese Food. Chinese territory. Chinese government. Chinese people (citizens). Chinese people (ethnicity). The word is super-descriptive in that way, because that region, for three thousand years, was "homogenous" in a convenient way for propagandists and the history writers throughout time. But if you delve in, you can see that it's truly absurd to refer to anything as Chinese. Chinese language - well, sure, Mandarin, right? But only because the seat of government is in Beijing, and it just picked that flavor. Nearly every city in the borders of the PRC have their own distinct dialect, or straight up separate language. The written system was invented in the 1950s based off a historical system that didn't just write Chinese, it wrote Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, and also every language in between (Guangzhounese aka Cantonese, Shanghainese, Japanese sub-languages, etc). Which is "Chinese writing?" Which language is "Chinese language?" And what about when the Huns were around? What about when the Mongolians ruled it all? Was that "Chinese?" (a PRC censor would say ABSOLUTELY NOT and probably say you were treasonous to the harmony of Chinese culture for even suggesting it). Chinese food - different in every city. Chinese government - which one, the Democratic one that is seated in Taiwan, or the Autocratic one seated in Beijing? Or the City State of Hong Kong? Or the dead kingdoms? I'm trying to indicate here why trying to say "Chinese is a nationality, not race" is a silly thing to say when Chinese can mean so many things that so say it's "not" something is a hard thing to prove. On top of all this, walk up to your average American and say "Chinese" and these subtleties are completely lost - EVERYONE knows what you mean by Chinese, well, it's Orange Chicken and Communism! That's what the American education system teaches us, after all, or at least, what it taught me growing up in rural America. Ask Chinese people, or Taiwanese people (which I have done), what it means to be a Chinese person, and you'll likely get a very careful separation of the concept of Chinese person from the PRC. Many Taiwanese people would consider themselves Chinese if they had the opportunity to ensure the distinction was being made that this didn't mean they were pro-Beijing, simply that their history and culture shared or was identical to many people that happened to be born in Beijing. > Nobody on Hacker News who encounters the phrase "Chinese hacker" is going to suddenly start discriminating against Chinese people, Yesterday there was a thread about the experience of Black programmers in tech and I got into some discussions there that have destroyed my ability to believe in a sentence like this. There are avowed racists on this site. I went through the history of one who danced the blade well enough to occasionally fire off comments about how African people are genetically predisposed to lower IQ, without getting flagged/banned. This is a website like any other, a good one with better rules and moderation, yes, but an internet breeding ground anyway.
- jdironman 6y ago
  I want to say, apt username.
aezakmi 6y ago
Should've written Israeli
ip26 6y ago
I'd be more worried about the Elbonians
swagonomixxx 6y ago
Perhaps experience. In my experience, hackers are most frequently Russian, but of course as you suggested, they could be of any ethnicity.
JoshuaDavid 6y ago
I think it's serving as shorthand for "in a country halfway around the world, with a government that isn't going to intervene on your behalf as a foreigner even if you figure out who did it and hand them the evidence on a silver platter".
- komali2 6y ago
  Right, it wasn't necessarily hateful on purpose, but as another poster pointed out, what does it mean that we default to using one specific group of people for that example? If they'd said "PRC hacker" it'd be a different story, but the word "Chinese" conflates a nationality and heritage. It does this, by the way, in written Chinese as well, hence a lot of arguments I've had in the past with PRC-citizen exchange students about whether Taiwanese people are Chinese or not (even though they are, obviously, not PRC citizens, Taiwan being a sovereign nation).
  - whatsmyusername 6y ago
    When the shoe fits wear it.
  - antepodius 6y ago
    I find your worry interesting and mildly humorous. You seem to be worried about hurting the feelings of chinese people for personal western moral reasons, but seem fine with insulting the PRC. Personally, given that the Chinese will likely dominate the world over the course of the next century, I'd be less worried about insults for ethical/antiracism reasons (they're going to be the ascendant ethnicity and culture soon, don't worry- they'll be fine!) and more worried about insulting them or the PRC for reasons of self-preservation.
    - komali2 6y ago
      This is assuming, of course, that the PRC value system and legal framework is lock-step with Chinese modern ethics, traditional ethics, or Chinese culture. Whiiiiich of course assume that that's homogeneous, which, obviously, it isn't. Just like "Western morals" aren't (I'm trying to be good faith in parsing that and I can't figure out what you mean by western morals). So when you say "The Chinese will be the ascendant ethnicity and culture," do you mean the rural American scapegoat? Aka, chopsticks, epicanthic folds, and Simplified Chinese? I could see how that could be the meat and potatoes of the argument, because even if what that actually ends up meaning in reality is that though a separatist Democratic movement overthrows the CCP, the (future) USA populist government successfully redefines the Chinese Threat to include this completely different political structure to fall under the umbrella of "Chinese," which society has allowed to mean what I'm arguing we should prevent it to mean. I can say where you're completely wrong - it's not mildly humorous to find me in this position. It's fucking hilarious. Of all political considerations on earth nothing heats my blood more than the evils of Xi Jinping and the tyrannical PRC regime. They are bullies, they violate human rights, and they should be overthrown. I have to balance this against my love of all the good things that Chinese culture brings to the table, just by nature of being a bunch of humans with a rich ancestral background forming their language, food, traditions, etc. And by Chinese I again refer to that concept vague even in any of the languages that adopted the Chinese writing system.
Damorian 6y ago
Anecdote, but I once ran a blog for many years. Country breakdown for traffic was roughly 30% China, 30% Russia, and 30% US. Almost 100% of requests out of China and Russia were hacking attempts, I assume mostly by bots. They've earned a reputation and there's nothing wrong pointing it out. If you operate a website, unless China and Russia are part of your market/audience, I'd suggest blocking them altogether.
- McAtNite 6y ago
  Just wanted to second this. I ran several public Linux servers at a major university. China and Russia based IPs we’re constantly trying to brute force all of our servers. It got the point where we would just apply a geoblock just in case one finally managed to get through. I’m all for avoiding nationalistic dog whistles when discussing things, but both China and Russia have rightfully earned their places as bad actors on the internet.
  - warent 6y ago
    It adds no information or value to the discussion by giving the hackers a nationality. If there was a statistic that the majority of hackers wore hoodies, would we be calling that out and saying "Attacked by hackers in hoodies?" Obviously not because their clothing has nothing to do with the fact that they're malicious. What's happening here is profiling and it doesn't work. Add that to the fact that there are of course bad actors in countries including the US who happen to have proxies in other countries. Geolocating the IP address tells us nothing. The largest botnets came from a variety of nationalities and are rarely Chinese. Conficker was allegedly from the Ukraine, and a Swede plead guilty. Alureon came from Estonia. Mariposa from spain. Stop with the emotionally-charged flame baiting based on shallow data and anecdotal information.
    - TurkishPoptart 6y ago
      Thank you for making the world a better place through your valiant activism.
    - rowanG077 6y ago
grandridge 6y ago
Why don't you just grow up and realize we don't live in a utopia where no one's feelings get hurt. It's an earned reputation with a simple identifier
tomcooks 6y ago
Among the cheapest reliable VPS you can buy to scan others' networks
hnersarecunts 6y ago
Just the usual Hacker News racism we've come to know and despise. This site is rife with it, unfortunately.

Why do you have to add “Chinese”?

beaner 6y ago

Who cares? It could be anything. Random descriptions add flavor. Bitcoin is also popular in China anyway.

ttam 6y ago
As a Chinese, I care.
- beaner 6y ago
  Would you have cared if they said "Russian hacker"?
ska 6y ago
> Random descriptions add flavor. That's not flavor.
MathCodeLove 6y ago
Not Chinese, I also care. That comment is an example of subtle racism. Image the following comment: "You better buy a good bike lock, else you're at risk of having it stolen by a black man." A comment like the one above would spark near universal outrage at the commenter, and with good reason. It's racist, and the original comment here is the same. Unnecessarily racist.
- tossmeout 6y ago
  You're incorrect. Chinese is a nationality, not a race, which means this isn't racism. An accurate description would be that this is stereotyping on the basis of nationality. As such, a more accurate comparison than "black man stealing a bike" would be to something like a "Nigerian scammer," which is an archetype I don't think most of us have a problem with. Other examples I never see complaints about: "Russian hacker," "American imperialist," etc.
  - komali2 6y ago
    > Chinese is a nationality, not a race, This isn't really true on it's own, and besides, isn't even a good faith interpretation. In an America where rural Asian-ethnicity people are facing discrimination because of covid being called "Chinese Virus," I think it's bold to claim that the concept of China as a country and Chinese as a racial heritage are not conflated.
    - tossmeout 6y ago
      > This isn't really true on it's own How is this not true? Genuinely curious. > In an America where rural Asian-ethnicity people are facing discrimination because of covid being called "Chinese Virus…" That's because of the specific context of who is saying "Chinese Virus," who their audience is, and why they're saying it. This context is different. Nobody on Hacker News who encounters the phrase "Chinese hacker" is going to suddenly start discriminating against Chinese people, any more than we discriminate against Nigerians despite the fact that "Nigerian scammer" is a cliche in tech circles.
      - komali2 6y ago
        > How is this not true? Genuinely curious. I'd delve deeper beyond my comment because there's a lot of reasons I'm not the greatest source, not the least of which I'm just some white american dude with a comically terrible grasp of ONE dialect/language of Chinese and a wikipedia sourced knowledge of Chinese history. Here's my understanding: Chinese can refer to many things that have their origin in what we call Mainland China these days. Chinese Language. Chinese History. Chinese Food. Chinese territory. Chinese government. Chinese people (citizens). Chinese people (ethnicity). The word is super-descriptive in that way, because that region, for three thousand years, was "homogenous" in a convenient way for propagandists and the history writers throughout time. But if you delve in, you can see that it's truly absurd to refer to anything as Chinese. Chinese language - well, sure, Mandarin, right? But only because the seat of government is in Beijing, and it just picked that flavor. Nearly every city in the borders of the PRC have their own distinct dialect, or straight up separate language. The written system was invented in the 1950s based off a historical system that didn't just write Chinese, it wrote Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, and also every language in between (Guangzhounese aka Cantonese, Shanghainese, Japanese sub-languages, etc). Which is "Chinese writing?" Which language is "Chinese language?" And what about when the Huns were around? What about when the Mongolians ruled it all? Was that "Chinese?" (a PRC censor would say ABSOLUTELY NOT and probably say you were treasonous to the harmony of Chinese culture for even suggesting it). Chinese food - different in every city. Chinese government - which one, the Democratic one that is seated in Taiwan, or the Autocratic one seated in Beijing? Or the City State of Hong Kong? Or the dead kingdoms? I'm trying to indicate here why trying to say "Chinese is a nationality, not race" is a silly thing to say when Chinese can mean so many things that so say it's "not" something is a hard thing to prove. On top of all this, walk up to your average American and say "Chinese" and these subtleties are completely lost - EVERYONE knows what you mean by Chinese, well, it's Orange Chicken and Communism! That's what the American education system teaches us, after all, or at least, what it taught me growing up in rural America. Ask Chinese people, or Taiwanese people (which I have done), what it means to be a Chinese person, and you'll likely get a very careful separation of the concept of Chinese person from the PRC. Many Taiwanese people would consider themselves Chinese if they had the opportunity to ensure the distinction was being made that this didn't mean they were pro-Beijing, simply that their history and culture shared or was identical to many people that happened to be born in Beijing. > Nobody on Hacker News who encounters the phrase "Chinese hacker" is going to suddenly start discriminating against Chinese people, Yesterday there was a thread about the experience of Black programmers in tech and I got into some discussions there that have destroyed my ability to believe in a sentence like this. There are avowed racists on this site. I went through the history of one who danced the blade well enough to occasionally fire off comments about how African people are genetically predisposed to lower IQ, without getting flagged/banned. This is a website like any other, a good one with better rules and moderation, yes, but an internet breeding ground anyway.
jdironman 6y ago
I want to say, apt username.

aezakmi 6y ago

Should've written Israeli

ip26 6y ago

I'd be more worried about the Elbonians

swagonomixxx 6y ago

Perhaps experience. In my experience, hackers are most frequently Russian, but of course as you suggested, they could be of any ethnicity.

JoshuaDavid 6y ago

I think it's serving as shorthand for "in a country halfway around the world, with a government that isn't going to intervene on your behalf as a foreigner even if you figure out who did it and hand them the evidence on a silver platter".

komali2 6y ago
Right, it wasn't necessarily hateful on purpose, but as another poster pointed out, what does it mean that we default to using one specific group of people for that example? If they'd said "PRC hacker" it'd be a different story, but the word "Chinese" conflates a nationality and heritage. It does this, by the way, in written Chinese as well, hence a lot of arguments I've had in the past with PRC-citizen exchange students about whether Taiwanese people are Chinese or not (even though they are, obviously, not PRC citizens, Taiwan being a sovereign nation).
- whatsmyusername 6y ago
  When the shoe fits wear it.
- antepodius 6y ago
  I find your worry interesting and mildly humorous. You seem to be worried about hurting the feelings of chinese people for personal western moral reasons, but seem fine with insulting the PRC. Personally, given that the Chinese will likely dominate the world over the course of the next century, I'd be less worried about insults for ethical/antiracism reasons (they're going to be the ascendant ethnicity and culture soon, don't worry- they'll be fine!) and more worried about insulting them or the PRC for reasons of self-preservation.
  - komali2 6y ago
    This is assuming, of course, that the PRC value system and legal framework is lock-step with Chinese modern ethics, traditional ethics, or Chinese culture. Whiiiiich of course assume that that's homogeneous, which, obviously, it isn't. Just like "Western morals" aren't (I'm trying to be good faith in parsing that and I can't figure out what you mean by western morals). So when you say "The Chinese will be the ascendant ethnicity and culture," do you mean the rural American scapegoat? Aka, chopsticks, epicanthic folds, and Simplified Chinese? I could see how that could be the meat and potatoes of the argument, because even if what that actually ends up meaning in reality is that though a separatist Democratic movement overthrows the CCP, the (future) USA populist government successfully redefines the Chinese Threat to include this completely different political structure to fall under the umbrella of "Chinese," which society has allowed to mean what I'm arguing we should prevent it to mean. I can say where you're completely wrong - it's not mildly humorous to find me in this position. It's fucking hilarious. Of all political considerations on earth nothing heats my blood more than the evils of Xi Jinping and the tyrannical PRC regime. They are bullies, they violate human rights, and they should be overthrown. I have to balance this against my love of all the good things that Chinese culture brings to the table, just by nature of being a bunch of humans with a rich ancestral background forming their language, food, traditions, etc. And by Chinese I again refer to that concept vague even in any of the languages that adopted the Chinese writing system.

Damorian 6y ago

Anecdote, but I once ran a blog for many years. Country breakdown for traffic was roughly 30% China, 30% Russia, and 30% US. Almost 100% of requests out of China and Russia were hacking attempts, I assume mostly by bots. They've earned a reputation and there's nothing wrong pointing it out. If you operate a website, unless China and Russia are part of your market/audience, I'd suggest blocking them altogether.

McAtNite 6y ago
Just wanted to second this. I ran several public Linux servers at a major university. China and Russia based IPs we’re constantly trying to brute force all of our servers. It got the point where we would just apply a geoblock just in case one finally managed to get through. I’m all for avoiding nationalistic dog whistles when discussing things, but both China and Russia have rightfully earned their places as bad actors on the internet.
- warent 6y ago
  It adds no information or value to the discussion by giving the hackers a nationality. If there was a statistic that the majority of hackers wore hoodies, would we be calling that out and saying "Attacked by hackers in hoodies?" Obviously not because their clothing has nothing to do with the fact that they're malicious. What's happening here is profiling and it doesn't work. Add that to the fact that there are of course bad actors in countries including the US who happen to have proxies in other countries. Geolocating the IP address tells us nothing. The largest botnets came from a variety of nationalities and are rarely Chinese. Conficker was allegedly from the Ukraine, and a Swede plead guilty. Alureon came from Estonia. Mariposa from spain. Stop with the emotionally-charged flame baiting based on shallow data and anecdotal information.
  - TurkishPoptart 6y ago
    Thank you for making the world a better place through your valiant activism.
  - rowanG077 6y ago

grandridge 6y ago

Why don't you just grow up and realize we don't live in a utopia where no one's feelings get hurt. It's an earned reputation with a simple identifier

tomcooks 6y ago

Among the cheapest reliable VPS you can buy to scan others' networks

hnersarecunts 6y ago

Just the usual Hacker News racism we've come to know and despise. This site is rife with it, unfortunately.