7 ms·

>We have simply discussed the surveillance scandal enough. There's just nothing more we can say or do that will matter right now. The opposite is true. For to

by deveac 13y ago

>We have simply discussed the surveillance scandal enough. There's just nothing more we can say or do that will matter right now. The opposite is true. For too long the minimal to zero reporting these issues have received in the majority of news outlets was met with an abundance of silence and indifference. Outside of a few communities on the net (and fewer offline), there hasn't been discussion on these issues. The Guardian finally breaks one story that manages to have legs for a week or two in the mainstream press and we're done here? No. Just no. >I, like you, appreciate the possibility of a board devoted entirely to technical content... This has never been the case for HN, nor was it ever an ideal for HN: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html From the first line of the first question about submission guidelines: On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. While most (read: not all) political posts are discouraged, the discussions around surveillance have been more technical here than anywhere, and it would be hard to conceive of a discussion with a political element being more on-topic and imperative than the discussions of late.

ricardobeat 13y ago
You seem to have ignored the gist of this whole discussion. As someone brilliantly put it in a recent thread: I assume you have taken some space from your company's meetings for discussing the NSA, SOPA and related subjects every day?
- deveac 13y ago
  Your point isn't clear. I don't believe I ignored anything, and where I was responding to the poster and the discussion, I quoted him/her so it would be clear what points I was responding to. If you have something specific to say, spell it out and maybe I can answer it for you.
  - ricardobeat 13y ago
    The "anything that good hackers would find interesting" line is not a free pass. The NSA discussion is way past the point where it's interesting to most people. I, for one, despite my interest, don't want to read about the US government, security agencies and it's political system every day. Maybe more political discussion is needed, but Hacker News is not the place for this to happen. Where is the line drawn? Should we discuss alarming health issues like sodium consumption, GMOs, sweeteners? The military industry? The lobby complex? Violence and misery in Africa? Are these less important than the Prism scandal?
    - deveac 13y ago
      >The "anything that good hackers would find interesting" line is not a free pass. Exactly. Which is why I referenced the FAQ which states that most political discussion is discouraged and articulated precisely how and why this debate is not one of those times. > The NSA discussion is way past the point where it's interesting to most people. I think you meant "to me." Judging from the post rankings, frequency, and comment scores, people in this community are interested and engaged in this topic, -more than most. For now anyway. >Maybe more political discussion is needed, but Hacker News is not the place for this to happen. Where is the line drawn? Should we discuss alarming health issues like sodium consumption, GMOs, sweeteners? The military industry? The lobby complex? Violence and misery in Africa? Are these less important than the Prism scandal? As detailed in the FAQ, this is precisely the place for this to happen. Political posts are allowed, and if you can't see how discussion about surveillance software that taps the communications of the entire globe is on topic here, even with the (completely within-framework) political element, then I don't know what to tell you. The problem isn't HN and the other users though. I think you're just tired of seeing it and will be happier in a few more news cycles when it likely dies down like it always has.
      - ricardobeat 13y ago
        > I think you meant "to me." Maybe. You also clearly have a bias towards finding these interesting, so it's a moot point. Taking rankings at face value is not ideal; there is a feedback loop, political posts are likely to engage an audience that likes and upvotes them, and bring more users with that profile to the site. Taking that to the extreme, you could have porn links take over HN in just a few hours if you let them through. It's a matter of setting directions, not catering to everyone's needs.
tptacek 13y ago
That's not true. In fact, this site has been embarrassingly bad about the technical issues of surveillance, for reasons ranging from gullibility to capriciousness. Witness for example several weeks of intense belief that Google had allowed NSA logins to its own servers in order to pull information off of them, the certainty with which people argued that NSA must have been helping the FBI track pressure cooker searches, the security implications of hardware random number generators, or, my personal favorite, the belief that Palantir must have a key role in NSA surveillance because of In-Q-Tel and I mean just look at their name. And let's not get started about the legal acumen of the site as a whole. This site has basically one method of digesting technical information about surveillance: catalog the competing claims, choose the one that assumes the most spectacular abuse by the state, and fiercely defend it regardless of evidence. It's also trivially game-able, which is I suspect a fact not lost on commenters like 'mtgx. The site isn't merely the boy who cried wolf; but rather a boy with a wolf-oriented case of Tourette's.
- deveac 13y ago
  >In fact, this site has been embarrassingly bad about the technical issues of surveillance, for reasons ranging from gullibility to capriciousness. Poor analysis by some of the users (there are a lot of non-technical commenters on here) doesn't negate the higher degree of technical discussion that has indeed been present here. Just because opinion and fallacious arguments are present doesn't mean that good technical discussion isn't. Outside of dedicated infosec communities, I am not sure what online community has had more purely technical discussion on these issues over time. Feel free to list them though, because without sarcasm, I would be happy to know of them.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - potatolicious 13y ago
    I don't think tptacek is saying that good posts don't exist on HN, of course they do. The problem is that the signal-to-noise ratio is so low nowadays that it's hardly worth wading through all the hyper-politicized vitriol just to get to it. The amount of horribly bad posts on HN has reached a proportion where they're no longer exceptions, they characterize the site as a whole. Personally I've noticed my participation drop in the last few months because of this. There are fewer and fewer people interested in engaging in a discussion, and more and more religious zealotry where it's clear poster has zero interest in opposing views, and will stoop consistently to hostility and fundamental indecency when confronted.
fivethree 13y ago
People didn't discuss it before because it only affected minorities.
anigbrowl 13y ago
While most (read: not all) political posts are discouraged, the discussions around surveillance have been more technical here than anywhere, and it would be hard to conceive of a discussion with a political element being more on-topic and imperative than the discussions of late. I'm going to disagree with the highlighted portion. On pretty much any topic related to law and government, HN in the aggregate is willfully ignorant - people rarely take the time to do research or provide citations, but go about declaring this or that to be illegal or unconstitutional with no evidence and frequently without even fielding an argument. The discussions here are as bad as the comment section at, say, the Huffington Post. A lot of people seem to think that because they're handy with computers they have special insight into every other intellectual topic. This is, sadly, not the case.
scythe 13y ago
>For too long the minimal to zero reporting these issues have received in the majority of news outlets was met with an abundance of silence and indifference. Outside of a few communities on the net (and fewer offline), there hasn't been discussion on these issues. The Guardian finally breaks one story that manages to have legs for a week or two in the mainstream press and we're done here? I feel that you've highlighted a possible underlying cause of HN's present malaise, which is: many community members here are poorly connected on the Internet. HN is an open website, which means that it is very easy for someone who is new to the Internet to find and browse. If you've been commenting a lot in the recent political threads, I can make the following predictions: you've participated in online fora for less than ten years, and you don't pursue social connections much deeper than reddit user flair. If you would like to take part in a lot of technical and political discussions regarding surveillance, you should consider joining a newsgroup or mailing list (if there still are any, I know politech and cypherpunks are dead) specifically devoted to this discussion. Usenet requires a modicum of effort (and maybe a subscription fee) to participate, which can help to limit the discussion to serious contribution by serious participants. You may also want to subscribe to and comment on blogs by people who know about these things, so you can get to know people and contribute to a discussion that, in order to be any good, must stretch on far longer than a single comment thread. There are communities devoted to this sort of discussion. The content-link plus tree-style-comments format of HN is good for day-long free-form discussion on lighthearted issues of interest to technical people. It is not suited for deep, long-term discussion of complex political issues. HN can't be usefully political even if it wants to be, any more than HN can be used to design novel methods of quantum error correction. Some things just aren't suited for the HN style of discussion.

by deveac 13y ago

ricardobeat 13y ago

You seem to have ignored the gist of this whole discussion. As someone brilliantly put it in a recent thread: I assume you have taken some space from your company's meetings for discussing the NSA, SOPA and related subjects every day?

deveac 13y ago
Your point isn't clear. I don't believe I ignored anything, and where I was responding to the poster and the discussion, I quoted him/her so it would be clear what points I was responding to. If you have something specific to say, spell it out and maybe I can answer it for you.
- ricardobeat 13y ago
  The "anything that good hackers would find interesting" line is not a free pass. The NSA discussion is way past the point where it's interesting to most people. I, for one, despite my interest, don't want to read about the US government, security agencies and it's political system every day. Maybe more political discussion is needed, but Hacker News is not the place for this to happen. Where is the line drawn? Should we discuss alarming health issues like sodium consumption, GMOs, sweeteners? The military industry? The lobby complex? Violence and misery in Africa? Are these less important than the Prism scandal?
  - deveac 13y ago
    >The "anything that good hackers would find interesting" line is not a free pass. Exactly. Which is why I referenced the FAQ which states that most political discussion is discouraged and articulated precisely how and why this debate is not one of those times. > The NSA discussion is way past the point where it's interesting to most people. I think you meant "to me." Judging from the post rankings, frequency, and comment scores, people in this community are interested and engaged in this topic, -more than most. For now anyway. >Maybe more political discussion is needed, but Hacker News is not the place for this to happen. Where is the line drawn? Should we discuss alarming health issues like sodium consumption, GMOs, sweeteners? The military industry? The lobby complex? Violence and misery in Africa? Are these less important than the Prism scandal? As detailed in the FAQ, this is precisely the place for this to happen. Political posts are allowed, and if you can't see how discussion about surveillance software that taps the communications of the entire globe is on topic here, even with the (completely within-framework) political element, then I don't know what to tell you. The problem isn't HN and the other users though. I think you're just tired of seeing it and will be happier in a few more news cycles when it likely dies down like it always has.
    - ricardobeat 13y ago
      > I think you meant "to me." Maybe. You also clearly have a bias towards finding these interesting, so it's a moot point. Taking rankings at face value is not ideal; there is a feedback loop, political posts are likely to engage an audience that likes and upvotes them, and bring more users with that profile to the site. Taking that to the extreme, you could have porn links take over HN in just a few hours if you let them through. It's a matter of setting directions, not catering to everyone's needs.

tptacek 13y ago

That's not true. In fact, this site has been embarrassingly bad about the technical issues of surveillance, for reasons ranging from gullibility to capriciousness. Witness for example several weeks of intense belief that Google had allowed NSA logins to its own servers in order to pull information off of them, the certainty with which people argued that NSA must have been helping the FBI track pressure cooker searches, the security implications of hardware random number generators, or, my personal favorite, the belief that Palantir must have a key role in NSA surveillance because of In-Q-Tel and I mean just look at their name. And let's not get started about the legal acumen of the site as a whole. This site has basically one method of digesting technical information about surveillance: catalog the competing claims, choose the one that assumes the most spectacular abuse by the state, and fiercely defend it regardless of evidence. It's also trivially game-able, which is I suspect a fact not lost on commenters like 'mtgx. The site isn't merely the boy who cried wolf; but rather a boy with a wolf-oriented case of Tourette's.

deveac 13y ago
>In fact, this site has been embarrassingly bad about the technical issues of surveillance, for reasons ranging from gullibility to capriciousness. Poor analysis by some of the users (there are a lot of non-technical commenters on here) doesn't negate the higher degree of technical discussion that has indeed been present here. Just because opinion and fallacious arguments are present doesn't mean that good technical discussion isn't. Outside of dedicated infosec communities, I am not sure what online community has had more purely technical discussion on these issues over time. Feel free to list them though, because without sarcasm, I would be happy to know of them.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- potatolicious 13y ago
  I don't think tptacek is saying that good posts don't exist on HN, of course they do. The problem is that the signal-to-noise ratio is so low nowadays that it's hardly worth wading through all the hyper-politicized vitriol just to get to it. The amount of horribly bad posts on HN has reached a proportion where they're no longer exceptions, they characterize the site as a whole. Personally I've noticed my participation drop in the last few months because of this. There are fewer and fewer people interested in engaging in a discussion, and more and more religious zealotry where it's clear poster has zero interest in opposing views, and will stoop consistently to hostility and fundamental indecency when confronted.

fivethree 13y ago

People didn't discuss it before because it only affected minorities.

anigbrowl 13y ago

While most (read: not all) political posts are discouraged, the discussions around surveillance have been more technical here than anywhere, and it would be hard to conceive of a discussion with a political element being more on-topic and imperative than the discussions of late. I'm going to disagree with the highlighted portion. On pretty much any topic related to law and government, HN in the aggregate is willfully ignorant - people rarely take the time to do research or provide citations, but go about declaring this or that to be illegal or unconstitutional with no evidence and frequently without even fielding an argument. The discussions here are as bad as the comment section at, say, the Huffington Post. A lot of people seem to think that because they're handy with computers they have special insight into every other intellectual topic. This is, sadly, not the case.

scythe 13y ago

>For too long the minimal to zero reporting these issues have received in the majority of news outlets was met with an abundance of silence and indifference. Outside of a few communities on the net (and fewer offline), there hasn't been discussion on these issues. The Guardian finally breaks one story that manages to have legs for a week or two in the mainstream press and we're done here? I feel that you've highlighted a possible underlying cause of HN's present malaise, which is: many community members here are poorly connected on the Internet. HN is an open website, which means that it is very easy for someone who is new to the Internet to find and browse. If you've been commenting a lot in the recent political threads, I can make the following predictions: you've participated in online fora for less than ten years, and you don't pursue social connections much deeper than reddit user flair. If you would like to take part in a lot of technical and political discussions regarding surveillance, you should consider joining a newsgroup or mailing list (if there still are any, I know politech and cypherpunks are dead) specifically devoted to this discussion. Usenet requires a modicum of effort (and maybe a subscription fee) to participate, which can help to limit the discussion to serious contribution by serious participants. You may also want to subscribe to and comment on blogs by people who know about these things, so you can get to know people and contribute to a discussion that, in order to be any good, must stretch on far longer than a single comment thread. There are communities devoted to this sort of discussion. The content-link plus tree-style-comments format of HN is good for day-long free-form discussion on lighthearted issues of interest to technical people. It is not suited for deep, long-term discussion of complex political issues. HN can't be usefully political even if it wants to be, any more than HN can be used to design novel methods of quantum error correction. Some things just aren't suited for the HN style of discussion.