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I’m sorry, I did not mean for this comment to be a political point, but rather an observation on how technology is used in mass atrocities. I was hoping to rais

I’m sorry, I did not mean for this comment to be a political point, but rather an observation on how technology is used in mass atrocities. I was hoping to raise a point which I find interesting, which other may or may not agree with. I’ve gotten a couple of excellent replies here raising interesting counterpoints. After posting this, and reading the replies, I’m actually less convinced about my original point. That is, I’ve learned something.

dang 2y ago
I believe you, but it's too fine a distinction to make a difference on the important point. Your account has obviously been primarily (even exclusively) focused on this one topic for quite a while now. That's not allowed on HN because if we did allow it, HN would dramatically shift towards becoming a current-affairs site, which is not its mandate. This is not to say that the topic doesn't matter. Of course it matters, a great deal—more than almost anything that gets discussed here. But that not only doesn't change the above point, it makes it even more important. As I said the last time I replied to you, I appreciate that your comments have mostly not been breaking the site guidelines in other ways. But the "primarily" rule applies regardless. I don't want to ban you as you've been here a long time and have used the site as intended in the past. But I have to go quite a long way back into the past before that becomes visible. This is not ok.
tptacek 2y ago
One nerd to another, I'm rooting for you here, and just want to write a note real quickly that it's very easy to get sucked into this topic. The dopamine circuit we're playing with is a quirk of homo messageboardicus. A couple days ago I did a bunch of conscious things to keep me away from this topic on HN, and with a day or so of detox I've regained my original perspective that this is a deeply cursed species of HN thread. There's lots of other stuff to talk about! I got very lucky, and the very next day someone started an argument about the futility and/or propriety of user-mode TCP/IP stacks and WireGuard. I wish for you a similarly irresistible nerd snipe for whatever nerd topic lights you up. Good luck!
- runarberg 2y ago
  That would be cross browser support for MathML, or other tools to get math expressions typeset on the web. Those discussions only pop up like once every six months though. I’m actually way more of a lurker here. There are e.g. once a month a submission about Bayesian Analysis (and a guaranteed once a year submission about Kalman Filters) which I religiously read but hardly ever contribute to (unless a frequentist is advocating for IQ tests or other psychometric devises; then I for sure contribute; but that can lead to flame-wars easily). Every so often there is a back end engineer with an “opinion” on the front end stack which I sometimes answer for, however that often be a flame-y subject, for some reason I’m less tempted to be sucked into flamewars when the subject is actually aligned with my expertise.

dang 2y ago

I believe you, but it's too fine a distinction to make a difference on the important point. Your account has obviously been primarily (even exclusively) focused on this one topic for quite a while now. That's not allowed on HN because if we did allow it, HN would dramatically shift towards becoming a current-affairs site, which is not its mandate. This is not to say that the topic doesn't matter. Of course it matters, a great deal—more than almost anything that gets discussed here. But that not only doesn't change the above point, it makes it even more important. As I said the last time I replied to you, I appreciate that your comments have mostly not been breaking the site guidelines in other ways. But the "primarily" rule applies regardless. I don't want to ban you as you've been here a long time and have used the site as intended in the past. But I have to go quite a long way back into the past before that becomes visible. This is not ok.

tptacek 2y ago

One nerd to another, I'm rooting for you here, and just want to write a note real quickly that it's very easy to get sucked into this topic. The dopamine circuit we're playing with is a quirk of homo messageboardicus. A couple days ago I did a bunch of conscious things to keep me away from this topic on HN, and with a day or so of detox I've regained my original perspective that this is a deeply cursed species of HN thread. There's lots of other stuff to talk about! I got very lucky, and the very next day someone started an argument about the futility and/or propriety of user-mode TCP/IP stacks and WireGuard. I wish for you a similarly irresistible nerd snipe for whatever nerd topic lights you up. Good luck!

runarberg 2y ago
That would be cross browser support for MathML, or other tools to get math expressions typeset on the web. Those discussions only pop up like once every six months though. I’m actually way more of a lurker here. There are e.g. once a month a submission about Bayesian Analysis (and a guaranteed once a year submission about Kalman Filters) which I religiously read but hardly ever contribute to (unless a frequentist is advocating for IQ tests or other psychometric devises; then I for sure contribute; but that can lead to flame-wars easily). Every so often there is a back end engineer with an “opinion” on the front end stack which I sometimes answer for, however that often be a flame-y subject, for some reason I’m less tempted to be sucked into flamewars when the subject is actually aligned with my expertise.