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Can you please not post snarky comments or shallow dismissals to Hacker News? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. No one is saying you

by dang 10mo ago

Can you please not post snarky comments or shallow dismissals to Hacker News? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. No one is saying you owe billionaires better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

stonogo 10mo ago
What is the correct style to use to point out that there is nothing in this article beyond the news that a specific person got bored?
- randallsquared 10mo ago
  Maybe say exactly that? You can convey the sentiment without the snark, which can seem corrosive to community.
  - deathanatos 10mo ago
    I think the snark comes from (and becomes merited through) an article that shows such an utter lack of empathy towards the problems that the vast majority face on a day-to-day basis.
    - randallsquared 10mo ago
      Does every mention of Alice's hardship (even if slight, in our opinion) have to contain a disclaimer about the hardships that Bobs face?
      - Avicebron 10mo ago
        If Alice's hardship is a tone deaf slap in the face to Bob then sure, she can go without publishing it :)
      - deathanatos 10mo ago
        No, when Alice and Bob are people whose hardships are actual hardships. It's not just that it's a hardship that's rare, or that "it's just a different hardship", or something — I can read about genuine plight that might affect some small portion of the population and empathize with that, and they with me at the same time – even implicitly, without statement in the article. But this, by virtue of being written, explicitly is unempathetic, whereas "this rare cancer affects 8 people" is not. That's not a problem I wish that I had, vs. this is a problem faced by someone who is well off, to even call this a "hardship" is a stretch. To do so during a time when tech is also dragging its reputation into the mud by generally harming the rank and file, through large corporations whose actions are not held to account in anti-trust laws, to tech bro oligarchs who wine and dine with power while the rest of us are worst off in a time of unprecedented inequality, to tech laying off hundreds of thousands of employees over the last few years, to LLMs replacing hard working people with slop-generators… is just additional insult to injury. The article is simply, itself, shallow. "… Is a Lesson for the Rest of Us" — no; barring unforeseen and extremely unlikely circumstances, I'm literally never going to have the "problems" faced by Brin, because I have no expectation of ever retiring with "perpetual wealth" levels of money.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
Brian_K_White 10mo ago
Of all the things people say here (myself absolutely included), this is what got your personal attention? That's kind of interesting.
- dang 10mo ago
  I've posted 23 comments in the last 24 hours, 386 in the last month, 4828 in the last year. Plenty of things get my attention! A couple points that are important, if you want to understand how moderation works on HN: (1) we're mostly responding to a random sample of the total - there's far too much content for us to read it all. I have the impression that when someone posts a "you're moderating this, of all things?" comment, as you did here, it's usually because they've seen other cases where a comment ought to have been moderated but wasn't. Then the moderators' priorities start to look strange. The likeliest explanation for this, though, is that we just didn't see it (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=likeliest%20explanation%20by%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). You can help by flagging it or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com. (2) I've already forgotten point #2. Sorry! I fear that my short-term memory window is getting ever smaller - this is the 'sandblast' phenomenon (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20sandblast&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).
  - burner420042 10mo ago
    It's good to have you back. It wasn't the same.
- bgwalter 10mo ago
  It is everywhere now. Musk censors his X responses, Grok defends billionaires, the all-in podcast has only positive comments in suspiciously perfect English since a month or so. Previously they allowed criticism. (And hardly anyone mentions Greenland on X.)
  - dang 10mo ago
    HN hasn't changed in this respect in a good 10 years, and no one who sees what gets posted here need fear that criticism is verboten. It isn't, and will never be. We do need to do something about shallow cynicism though (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46515507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46515507 from earlier today, if curious).
deathanatos 10mo ago
I'm also going to dissent with a "but is it a shallow rebuttal?" here? TFA is a of the "problems we wish we had" sort — we're all just temporarily embarrassed billionaires here, right guys? Right?! (Because a mere million doesn't cut it, these days…) But the rank and file of us are still on Duck Tales, Larry. Especially these days. As I said in a separate comment, TFA is distinctly lacks empathy.
lovich 10mo ago
@dang, I get what you mean in a vacuum but this article is pretty insulting to the readers intelligence. The third sentence of the article is > But one misstep he admitted to might surprise a lot of people who dream of the day they can quit their 9-to-5. Does anyone really believe the co founder of google retiring after their rise to supremacy in search was the equivalent of someone quitting their 9-5? They might have well said “Google co-founder shares secrets that stealing bread to eat when you’re hungry and sleeping under bridges is actually illegal”
- snowwrestler 10mo ago
  The article is not about Sergey Brin, he is just the hook. It’s about the loss of meaning people can face after retiring, which can happen to anyone who is able to retire. That’s not everyone, but it’s also not just billionaires.
  - lovich 10mo ago
    I do not accept that the analogy was made without an implicit attempt to conflate the two positions. Most tech jobs aren’t a 9-5 either since that’s a traditional hourly job and tech has on call rotations that are unpaid. This is what I’m talking about with the article insulting the readers intelligence. If you wanted to make the point of “people who retire should be aware that they need to find meaning outside of work” then it could just say so, instead of trying to act like it’s so hard to be so wealthy that there is no more struggle in life and you need to invent new ones for yourself.
- dang 10mo ago
  I hear you! I didn't read the entire article but I agree it doesn't exactly pattern-match to very good. We highly prefer articles that respect the reader's intelligence; they aren't always easy to come by. The lede is that Sergey is back full-time at Google and I haven't happened to see any other post about that, let alone a good one. If there's a better article, we can consider changing the link. (and in any case, people still should not be posting things like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46452725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46452725 to HN, no matter how bad an article is—so the moderation point stands.)

by dang 10mo ago

stonogo 10mo ago

What is the correct style to use to point out that there is nothing in this article beyond the news that a specific person got bored?

randallsquared 10mo ago
Maybe say exactly that? You can convey the sentiment without the snark, which can seem corrosive to community.
- deathanatos 10mo ago
  I think the snark comes from (and becomes merited through) an article that shows such an utter lack of empathy towards the problems that the vast majority face on a day-to-day basis.
  - randallsquared 10mo ago
    Does every mention of Alice's hardship (even if slight, in our opinion) have to contain a disclaimer about the hardships that Bobs face?
    - Avicebron 10mo ago
      If Alice's hardship is a tone deaf slap in the face to Bob then sure, she can go without publishing it :)
    - deathanatos 10mo ago
      No, when Alice and Bob are people whose hardships are actual hardships. It's not just that it's a hardship that's rare, or that "it's just a different hardship", or something — I can read about genuine plight that might affect some small portion of the population and empathize with that, and they with me at the same time – even implicitly, without statement in the article. But this, by virtue of being written, explicitly is unempathetic, whereas "this rare cancer affects 8 people" is not. That's not a problem I wish that I had, vs. this is a problem faced by someone who is well off, to even call this a "hardship" is a stretch. To do so during a time when tech is also dragging its reputation into the mud by generally harming the rank and file, through large corporations whose actions are not held to account in anti-trust laws, to tech bro oligarchs who wine and dine with power while the rest of us are worst off in a time of unprecedented inequality, to tech laying off hundreds of thousands of employees over the last few years, to LLMs replacing hard working people with slop-generators… is just additional insult to injury. The article is simply, itself, shallow. "… Is a Lesson for the Rest of Us" — no; barring unforeseen and extremely unlikely circumstances, I'm literally never going to have the "problems" faced by Brin, because I have no expectation of ever retiring with "perpetual wealth" levels of money.

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

Brian_K_White 10mo ago

Of all the things people say here (myself absolutely included), this is what got your personal attention? That's kind of interesting.

dang 10mo ago
I've posted 23 comments in the last 24 hours, 386 in the last month, 4828 in the last year. Plenty of things get my attention! A couple points that are important, if you want to understand how moderation works on HN: (1) we're mostly responding to a random sample of the total - there's far too much content for us to read it all. I have the impression that when someone posts a "you're moderating this, of all things?" comment, as you did here, it's usually because they've seen other cases where a comment ought to have been moderated but wasn't. Then the moderators' priorities start to look strange. The likeliest explanation for this, though, is that we just didn't see it (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=likeliest%20explanation%20by%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). You can help by flagging it or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com. (2) I've already forgotten point #2. Sorry! I fear that my short-term memory window is getting ever smaller - this is the 'sandblast' phenomenon (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20sandblast&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).
- burner420042 10mo ago
  It's good to have you back. It wasn't the same.
bgwalter 10mo ago
It is everywhere now. Musk censors his X responses, Grok defends billionaires, the all-in podcast has only positive comments in suspiciously perfect English since a month or so. Previously they allowed criticism. (And hardly anyone mentions Greenland on X.)
- dang 10mo ago
  HN hasn't changed in this respect in a good 10 years, and no one who sees what gets posted here need fear that criticism is verboten. It isn't, and will never be. We do need to do something about shallow cynicism though (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46515507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46515507 from earlier today, if curious).

deathanatos 10mo ago

I'm also going to dissent with a "but is it a shallow rebuttal?" here? TFA is a of the "problems we wish we had" sort — we're all just temporarily embarrassed billionaires here, right guys? Right?! (Because a mere million doesn't cut it, these days…) But the rank and file of us are still on Duck Tales, Larry. Especially these days. As I said in a separate comment, TFA is distinctly lacks empathy.

lovich 10mo ago

@dang, I get what you mean in a vacuum but this article is pretty insulting to the readers intelligence. The third sentence of the article is > But one misstep he admitted to might surprise a lot of people who dream of the day they can quit their 9-to-5. Does anyone really believe the co founder of google retiring after their rise to supremacy in search was the equivalent of someone quitting their 9-5? They might have well said “Google co-founder shares secrets that stealing bread to eat when you’re hungry and sleeping under bridges is actually illegal”

snowwrestler 10mo ago
The article is not about Sergey Brin, he is just the hook. It’s about the loss of meaning people can face after retiring, which can happen to anyone who is able to retire. That’s not everyone, but it’s also not just billionaires.
- lovich 10mo ago
  I do not accept that the analogy was made without an implicit attempt to conflate the two positions. Most tech jobs aren’t a 9-5 either since that’s a traditional hourly job and tech has on call rotations that are unpaid. This is what I’m talking about with the article insulting the readers intelligence. If you wanted to make the point of “people who retire should be aware that they need to find meaning outside of work” then it could just say so, instead of trying to act like it’s so hard to be so wealthy that there is no more struggle in life and you need to invent new ones for yourself.
dang 10mo ago
I hear you! I didn't read the entire article but I agree it doesn't exactly pattern-match to very good. We highly prefer articles that respect the reader's intelligence; they aren't always easy to come by. The lede is that Sergey is back full-time at Google and I haven't happened to see any other post about that, let alone a good one. If there's a better article, we can consider changing the link. (and in any case, people still should not be posting things like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46452725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46452725 to HN, no matter how bad an article is—so the moderation point stands.)