5 ms·

What do you want to debate?

PaulHoule 5y ago
I think "debate" is a poisoned word because it suggests there is a battle between two different positions. If English isn't your native language you can be excused for not knowing the precise meaning of similar words, but on the other hand Hacker News is under current assault from people who want to drive away discussion on anything other than "debates" about vaccination, cancel culture, the role of women in society and similar topics. I think the OP wants to have a "discussion" and my contribution to that is that this is the first I heard there was any trouble with mobile phones in Portugal and the best way to build consciousness of this is not even to have a "discussion" (lots of people are just going to roll their eyes at this) but rather post an article about it, wait for the article to drop to the bottom of the "new" page, post another article, and probably one will hit. (e.g. it doesn't help that Portugese is a somewhat obscure language but I had no trouble reading the press release that you linked to even though I am just a little bit self-taught in Spanish.)
- bombcar 5y ago
  Yeah, discussion is the word they're looking for, and the reality is that since HN is an English website, it's unlikely to notice something happening in a non-English country unless it's really explosive or gets reported in English somewhere. Even with AWS - us-east-1 goes down and it's top of the HN, but if af-south-1 eats it it might not even register.
  - netsharc 5y ago
    OP's question smells like "Why isn't mainstream media talking about this" and whenever someone asks that, I always wonder if they ask that question because they think "MSM is being controlled by the elite and is censoring discussion!", which makes me wary of engaging any discussion with them. Then again, hello to Sinclair Media and Rupert Murdoch!
- pjc50 5y ago
  > the role of women in society Articles on this, especially relating to the role of women in tech, get flagged off the front page in minutes.
  - PaulHoule 5y ago
    I see the issue in the articles that get flagged is a confusion between the personal and the political. Frequently the story is that a person received a relatively minor slight and then, in reacting to it, had something worse happen, fought more, had more trouble, fought more, etc. They don't come to the conclusion that they got caught in one of these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_finger_trap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_finger_trap or that "always having to have the last word" leads to a bad outcome but rather that the deck is stacked against them. One story with this structure was that a women went to a tech conference on the west coast and encountered some stupid guy who made a boob joke right out of The Big Bang Theory. The woman tweeted about it and created a firestorm that resulted in both the man and woman getting fired. Incel BS gets flagged too.

I think "debate" is a poisoned word because it suggests there is a battle between two different positions. If English isn't your native language you can be excused for not knowing the precise meaning of similar words, but on the other hand Hacker News is under current assault from people who want to drive away discussion on anything other than "debates" about vaccination, cancel culture, the role of women in society and similar topics. I think the OP wants to have a "discussion" and my contribution to that is that this is the first I heard there was any trouble with mobile phones in Portugal and the best way to build consciousness of this is not even to have a "discussion" (lots of people are just going to roll their eyes at this) but rather post an article about it, wait for the article to drop to the bottom of the "new" page, post another article, and probably one will hit. (e.g. it doesn't help that Portugese is a somewhat obscure language but I had no trouble reading the press release that you linked to even though I am just a little bit self-taught in Spanish.)

bombcar 5y ago
Yeah, discussion is the word they're looking for, and the reality is that since HN is an English website, it's unlikely to notice something happening in a non-English country unless it's really explosive or gets reported in English somewhere. Even with AWS - us-east-1 goes down and it's top of the HN, but if af-south-1 eats it it might not even register.
- netsharc 5y ago
  OP's question smells like "Why isn't mainstream media talking about this" and whenever someone asks that, I always wonder if they ask that question because they think "MSM is being controlled by the elite and is censoring discussion!", which makes me wary of engaging any discussion with them. Then again, hello to Sinclair Media and Rupert Murdoch!
pjc50 5y ago
> the role of women in society Articles on this, especially relating to the role of women in tech, get flagged off the front page in minutes.
- PaulHoule 5y ago
  I see the issue in the articles that get flagged is a confusion between the personal and the political. Frequently the story is that a person received a relatively minor slight and then, in reacting to it, had something worse happen, fought more, had more trouble, fought more, etc. They don't come to the conclusion that they got caught in one of these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_finger_trap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_finger_trap or that "always having to have the last word" leads to a bad outcome but rather that the deck is stacked against them. One story with this structure was that a women went to a tech conference on the west coast and encountered some stupid guy who made a boob joke right out of The Big Bang Theory. The woman tweeted about it and created a firestorm that resulted in both the man and woman getting fired. Incel BS gets flagged too.