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This article should be flagged for containing Argentinean government propaganda.

by dep_b 13y ago

davidw 13y ago
Welcome to the new HN. The rate of political stories after datagate broke has skyrocketed, and I don't think the genie will go quietly back in the bottle. You can downvote me all you want: I have a shitload of this useless karma stuff that I built up on the old HN.
- coldtea 13y ago
  It's a social site. HN members find those stories relevant. Perhaps some people (including, you, I presume) don't care about surveillance, privacy, freedom of information and the like enough to want to highlight those issues on HN. They'd rather talk about Google buying some company, how someone learned Golang and Node.js all day. But I wouldn't call those people "hackers". Not in the traditional cultural sense.
  - davidw 13y ago
    I don't understand the mental processes that lead you and others to think that if I don't enjoy politics taking over this site, then I must not care about the issues in question. Another site I read often is www.cyclingnews.com - they have great coverage of professional bicycle racing, which I love to read about and watch. You know what, though? I find politics annoying there too. You know where I like to read about politics? The Economist is pretty good. www.corriere.it is pretty good for local stories. And there are other sources I read from time to time. This site is a great place to talk about startups and tech. There aren't many of those. There are approximately 343244329165 sites where people can have inane discussions about things like whether the US is really "exactly like China and Russia".
    - coldtea 13y ago
      >I don't understand the mental processes that lead you and others to think that if I don't enjoy politics taking over this site, then I must not care about the issues in question. It's a very simple process. People that like sites like this "segmented" and "pure" are mostly apolitical and don't care about the issues they want to expunge from them in the first place. I've seen such people in lots of other places. Hackers tend to be all over the place. They tend to appreciate tech, science, politics, philosophy, Star Wars, startups, what have you, and to want to discuss it at the same time. Kind of like PG discusses tons of things in his essays, not just tech or startups all the time. >You know where I like to read about politics? The Economist is pretty good. Not really the outlet for a hacker interested in politics, and especially the stuff we're discussing here. Actually, it's as far away from the traditional hacker culture as you can get -- and quite far from caring about privacy, surveillance, and the whole EFF spirit too. It's basically a status quo rag for rich folks and middle class wannabes.
      - davidw 13y ago
        So you presume to know what I think and to judge me "not really a hacker" because of what I read? That's certainly the kind of open-minded thinking I'm a fan of. PLONK
        deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
  - leoedin 13y ago
    I think the point that the OP and others are trying to make is that there's plenty of places all over the world that satisfy those interests. Just because this site allows un-moderated user submissions and comments doesn't mean it's for general news. The OP and others (me included) are lamenting the fact that the popularist stories about social liberties are replacing the perhaps less popular stories about hardware design or compilers or new research in computer science. Unfortunately it has been demonstrated time and time again that popularity destroys communities.
    - coldtea 13y ago
      >The OP and others (me included) are lamenting the fact that the popularist stories about social liberties are replacing the perhaps less popular stories about hardware design or compilers or new research in computer science. Those kind of stories were not that many to begin with. Except if by "research in compSci" one means "My impressions after 1 day with Go", "Node.js cured my dog", "Web framework benchmarks 24", "Sexism in Babes-In-Bikinis-Coding conference", "LLVM 3, now with a ho-hum debugger as standard", "Functional concepts in BASIC", "Father of sextuplets,, startup founder, how I manage my time", "iOS 7 icons have colors I don't like". Everybody has his gripes about this or that content. But it's the community that makes it all relevant. And those stories have huge implications on technology, the intertubes and enterprise. >Unfortunately it has been demonstrated time and time again that popularity destroys communities. That makes no sense. Except if you take it to mean: the guys that were there earlier don't get what they like anymore, and more (and newer) people get it. Which is a pretty hipsterish sense ("Oh, that band was cool when only I liked it").
      - leoedin 13y ago
        On contemplation of Archive.org, I actually do agree with your first point. There wasn't 10 stories about the libertarian case du jour, but equally there wasn't a flood of interesting compSci stories. I guess my memory is selective! >That makes no sense. Except if you take it to mean: the guys that were there earlier don't get what they like anymore, and more (and newer) people get it. Which is a pretty hipsterish sense ("Oh, that band was cool when only I liked it"). I really can't agree with this. In 10 (12?... Getting old I guess) years of online participation, I've seen time and time again relatively small forums and websites grow in user numbers and the quality of the popular submissions/threads/posts decline. Perhaps a good example is Reddit. At one point it was a site for submitting links to news articles. The userbase was fairly heavily skewed towards tech and programmers. Looking at Archive.org from 2007 the front page is perhaps 1/3 programming related, 1/3 "interest" articles and 1/3 current events. There's not a single link to an image. My belief is that when a site grows in popularity, and so the interests and backgrounds of the users expands, the posts that consistantly attract more interest or votes are those which appeal to the largest common aspect of the community - the community itself. Once Reddit was large enough to have its own in-jokes and themes, submissions related to those tended to receive lots of attention. I think many people enjoy belonging to online communities with injokes, and so once it started that shift the demographic of new users changed as well. In 2007 nobody would have strongly defined themselves as a "redditor" in the way that people do today because at that point it was nothing more than a site for sharing interesting news articles. As someone who enjoys reading thought provoking articles (and sometimes commenting on them), I find it frustrating to see websites I like move towards lowest-common-denominator submissions. I'm no fan of "it was better in my day" baseless nostalgia, but Archive.org provides us a fairly effective window into the past and it is clear that many sites are today demonstrably different than they were a few years ago. I don't think it's elitist (or "hipsterish") to want to maintain the spirit and submission quality that was the basis for this sites popularity.
- mpyne 13y ago
  > You can downvote me all you want: I have a shitload of this useless karma stuff that I built up on the old HN. I, on the other hand, have built only a few small open source things. My karma consists overwhelming of political-related posts. But I still liked HN better when I had nothing to contribute to the conversation, as there was always a comment to upvote which had already said what I had wanted to say.
coldtea 13y ago
Whereas the tons of articles of US propaganda are OK, right? Including stuff that is said "matter of factly" but are blatant BS. If you think it has "argentinian government propaganda" point to it. Not to the obvious fact (that it was written by the argentinian president). Specifics. What is propaganda in it, what is bad about it, etc. Even more appreciated would be n extra line or two, of why "argentinean government propaganda", even if it DID exist in the article, would be of any concern to us (as if Argentina is some powerful country that messes up with our own or something).
- dep_b 13y ago
  Well first of all the Twitter channel of the president is a government propaganda channel, not a news channel. I don't disapprove of them doing that, they need to win another election and this is their stage. > [a word which here evokes the memory of the last dictatorship, which exterminated some ten to thirty thousand of its political opponents, a crime that wasn't successfully prosecuted until Sra. Fernandez and her late husband did so in their presidencies] That is a totally unnecessary glorifying addition not even present in the original tweets. Has little to do with the subject but hey let's drag it in. Happy to see those fuckers locked up though, no question about that. > [This is a reference to the President's years-long struggle against preventative injunctions put in place by Argentine courts against her efforts to break up the big Argentine media trusts that are her strongest local political enemies.] Another addition that tries to justify the pretty questionable action of limiting the powers of the Supreme Court. I allow anybody to have an opinion but if this is clearly written by a staunch supporter of the government copying and adding to what I already consider propaganda I just want to let people know that it is what it is: propaganda.
  - coldtea 13y ago
    >Well first of all the Twitter channel of the president is a government propaganda channel, not a news channel. That's a circular argument. It's only a propaganda channel if the president it's dishonest. And even then, it's only propaganda if she is dishonest in THOSE particular tweets. >That is a totally unnecessary glorifying addition not even present in the original tweets. Has little to do with the subject but hey let's drag it in. Happy to see those fuckers locked up though, no question about that. For one, it's not even present on the original tweets, as you say. I'd hardly call it "propaganda" by the president, that some random person on the internet put it as a "reference note" on his translation. Not to mention that, Argentinians will read the original Spanish in her account and not the guy's english translation. So they won't even see it. I don't see where's the "glorifying", either in his addition or the original tweet either. I mean, even if she did used the word "impunity" also as a reference to those people. >Another addition that tries to justify the pretty questionable action of limiting the powers of the Supreme Court. Perhaps -- but it also serves to give some context to the reader that doesn't know about this (and who, of course, doesn't vote in Argentina, so any propaganda won't do anything for him). >I allow anybody to have an opinion but if this is clearly written by a staunch supporter of the government copying and adding to what I already consider propaganda I just want to let people know that it is what it is: propaganda. Sorry, but I'm more of the impression that you are a staunch non-supporter of this government than the opposite! I mean you took all this offence to a translation by some random guy (I think he's on HN too -- maybe the one who posted this), and two small additions of reference notes, that weren't even meant for the Argentinian voters (who will, of course, read the original spanish tweets). Propaganda is too strong a word. You can publicly agree with a government and it's actions without being a "propagandist". If I say "the health reform in the US is a good thing" is that propaganda?

This article should be flagged for containing Argentinean government propaganda.

by dep_b 13y ago

This article should be flagged for containing Argentinean government propaganda.

Welcome to the new HN. The rate of political stories after datagate broke has skyrocketed, and I don't think the genie will go quietly back in the bottle. You can downvote me all you want: I have a shitload of this useless karma stuff that I built up on the old HN.

coldtea 13y ago
It's a social site. HN members find those stories relevant. Perhaps some people (including, you, I presume) don't care about surveillance, privacy, freedom of information and the like enough to want to highlight those issues on HN. They'd rather talk about Google buying some company, how someone learned Golang and Node.js all day. But I wouldn't call those people "hackers". Not in the traditional cultural sense.
- davidw 13y ago
  I don't understand the mental processes that lead you and others to think that if I don't enjoy politics taking over this site, then I must not care about the issues in question. Another site I read often is www.cyclingnews.com - they have great coverage of professional bicycle racing, which I love to read about and watch. You know what, though? I find politics annoying there too. You know where I like to read about politics? The Economist is pretty good. www.corriere.it is pretty good for local stories. And there are other sources I read from time to time. This site is a great place to talk about startups and tech. There aren't many of those. There are approximately 343244329165 sites where people can have inane discussions about things like whether the US is really "exactly like China and Russia".
  - coldtea 13y ago
    >I don't understand the mental processes that lead you and others to think that if I don't enjoy politics taking over this site, then I must not care about the issues in question. It's a very simple process. People that like sites like this "segmented" and "pure" are mostly apolitical and don't care about the issues they want to expunge from them in the first place. I've seen such people in lots of other places. Hackers tend to be all over the place. They tend to appreciate tech, science, politics, philosophy, Star Wars, startups, what have you, and to want to discuss it at the same time. Kind of like PG discusses tons of things in his essays, not just tech or startups all the time. >You know where I like to read about politics? The Economist is pretty good. Not really the outlet for a hacker interested in politics, and especially the stuff we're discussing here. Actually, it's as far away from the traditional hacker culture as you can get -- and quite far from caring about privacy, surveillance, and the whole EFF spirit too. It's basically a status quo rag for rich folks and middle class wannabes.
    - davidw 13y ago
      So you presume to know what I think and to judge me "not really a hacker" because of what I read? That's certainly the kind of open-minded thinking I'm a fan of. PLONK
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
- leoedin 13y ago
  I think the point that the OP and others are trying to make is that there's plenty of places all over the world that satisfy those interests. Just because this site allows un-moderated user submissions and comments doesn't mean it's for general news. The OP and others (me included) are lamenting the fact that the popularist stories about social liberties are replacing the perhaps less popular stories about hardware design or compilers or new research in computer science. Unfortunately it has been demonstrated time and time again that popularity destroys communities.
  - coldtea 13y ago
    >The OP and others (me included) are lamenting the fact that the popularist stories about social liberties are replacing the perhaps less popular stories about hardware design or compilers or new research in computer science. Those kind of stories were not that many to begin with. Except if by "research in compSci" one means "My impressions after 1 day with Go", "Node.js cured my dog", "Web framework benchmarks 24", "Sexism in Babes-In-Bikinis-Coding conference", "LLVM 3, now with a ho-hum debugger as standard", "Functional concepts in BASIC", "Father of sextuplets,, startup founder, how I manage my time", "iOS 7 icons have colors I don't like". Everybody has his gripes about this or that content. But it's the community that makes it all relevant. And those stories have huge implications on technology, the intertubes and enterprise. >Unfortunately it has been demonstrated time and time again that popularity destroys communities. That makes no sense. Except if you take it to mean: the guys that were there earlier don't get what they like anymore, and more (and newer) people get it. Which is a pretty hipsterish sense ("Oh, that band was cool when only I liked it").
    - leoedin 13y ago
      On contemplation of Archive.org, I actually do agree with your first point. There wasn't 10 stories about the libertarian case du jour, but equally there wasn't a flood of interesting compSci stories. I guess my memory is selective! >That makes no sense. Except if you take it to mean: the guys that were there earlier don't get what they like anymore, and more (and newer) people get it. Which is a pretty hipsterish sense ("Oh, that band was cool when only I liked it"). I really can't agree with this. In 10 (12?... Getting old I guess) years of online participation, I've seen time and time again relatively small forums and websites grow in user numbers and the quality of the popular submissions/threads/posts decline. Perhaps a good example is Reddit. At one point it was a site for submitting links to news articles. The userbase was fairly heavily skewed towards tech and programmers. Looking at Archive.org from 2007 the front page is perhaps 1/3 programming related, 1/3 "interest" articles and 1/3 current events. There's not a single link to an image. My belief is that when a site grows in popularity, and so the interests and backgrounds of the users expands, the posts that consistantly attract more interest or votes are those which appeal to the largest common aspect of the community - the community itself. Once Reddit was large enough to have its own in-jokes and themes, submissions related to those tended to receive lots of attention. I think many people enjoy belonging to online communities with injokes, and so once it started that shift the demographic of new users changed as well. In 2007 nobody would have strongly defined themselves as a "redditor" in the way that people do today because at that point it was nothing more than a site for sharing interesting news articles. As someone who enjoys reading thought provoking articles (and sometimes commenting on them), I find it frustrating to see websites I like move towards lowest-common-denominator submissions. I'm no fan of "it was better in my day" baseless nostalgia, but Archive.org provides us a fairly effective window into the past and it is clear that many sites are today demonstrably different than they were a few years ago. I don't think it's elitist (or "hipsterish") to want to maintain the spirit and submission quality that was the basis for this sites popularity.
mpyne 13y ago
> You can downvote me all you want: I have a shitload of this useless karma stuff that I built up on the old HN. I, on the other hand, have built only a few small open source things. My karma consists overwhelming of political-related posts. But I still liked HN better when I had nothing to contribute to the conversation, as there was always a comment to upvote which had already said what I had wanted to say.

coldtea 13y ago

Whereas the tons of articles of US propaganda are OK, right? Including stuff that is said "matter of factly" but are blatant BS. If you think it has "argentinian government propaganda" point to it. Not to the obvious fact (that it was written by the argentinian president). Specifics. What is propaganda in it, what is bad about it, etc. Even more appreciated would be n extra line or two, of why "argentinean government propaganda", even if it DID exist in the article, would be of any concern to us (as if Argentina is some powerful country that messes up with our own or something).

dep_b 13y ago
Well first of all the Twitter channel of the president is a government propaganda channel, not a news channel. I don't disapprove of them doing that, they need to win another election and this is their stage. > [a word which here evokes the memory of the last dictatorship, which exterminated some ten to thirty thousand of its political opponents, a crime that wasn't successfully prosecuted until Sra. Fernandez and her late husband did so in their presidencies] That is a totally unnecessary glorifying addition not even present in the original tweets. Has little to do with the subject but hey let's drag it in. Happy to see those fuckers locked up though, no question about that. > [This is a reference to the President's years-long struggle against preventative injunctions put in place by Argentine courts against her efforts to break up the big Argentine media trusts that are her strongest local political enemies.] Another addition that tries to justify the pretty questionable action of limiting the powers of the Supreme Court. I allow anybody to have an opinion but if this is clearly written by a staunch supporter of the government copying and adding to what I already consider propaganda I just want to let people know that it is what it is: propaganda.
- coldtea 13y ago
  >Well first of all the Twitter channel of the president is a government propaganda channel, not a news channel. That's a circular argument. It's only a propaganda channel if the president it's dishonest. And even then, it's only propaganda if she is dishonest in THOSE particular tweets. >That is a totally unnecessary glorifying addition not even present in the original tweets. Has little to do with the subject but hey let's drag it in. Happy to see those fuckers locked up though, no question about that. For one, it's not even present on the original tweets, as you say. I'd hardly call it "propaganda" by the president, that some random person on the internet put it as a "reference note" on his translation. Not to mention that, Argentinians will read the original Spanish in her account and not the guy's english translation. So they won't even see it. I don't see where's the "glorifying", either in his addition or the original tweet either. I mean, even if she did used the word "impunity" also as a reference to those people. >Another addition that tries to justify the pretty questionable action of limiting the powers of the Supreme Court. Perhaps -- but it also serves to give some context to the reader that doesn't know about this (and who, of course, doesn't vote in Argentina, so any propaganda won't do anything for him). >I allow anybody to have an opinion but if this is clearly written by a staunch supporter of the government copying and adding to what I already consider propaganda I just want to let people know that it is what it is: propaganda. Sorry, but I'm more of the impression that you are a staunch non-supporter of this government than the opposite! I mean you took all this offence to a translation by some random guy (I think he's on HN too -- maybe the one who posted this), and two small additions of reference notes, that weren't even meant for the Argentinian voters (who will, of course, read the original spanish tweets). Propaganda is too strong a word. You can publicly agree with a government and it's actions without being a "propagandist". If I say "the health reform in the US is a good thing" is that propaganda?