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if you could press a button that would return all hostages but at the cost of 276 Palestinian civilians per hostage recovered, you would do it.

Just pointed it out for the normal folks here. Israelis are pretty radicalized.


  > if you could press a button that would return all hostages but at the cost of 276 Palestinian civilians per hostage recovered, you would do it.
Yes, I would. The Gazans should understand that and not attack us.

If your daughter was held captive by Gazans, would you not sacrifice 276 of those who vow to eradicate you, in order to save your own daughter?


That's why you are subhuman and not fit for modern society. You are literally posting Nazi opinions about favoring the complete eradication over other races as preferable to a risk to your race.

Remember that the editor of Der Sturmer was hanged at the Hague!!!


Annd it's gone. This post is deleted from the front page after being there for ~20 minutes.

Every. Single. Time.


HN is the new r/worldnews. Only the correct mindset is allowed.


They're not removing propaganda only, they are also censoring pro Palestinian views in order to better enable their own propaganda.

Do not see how this shadow group of techies forcing their views on the world can be seen as a good thing.


It's because children are by definition blameless, innocent actors.

It's impossible for a 5 year old to do evil, so it's universally agreed that even 1 child dying in a war is too many.

At least that used to be the case before this conflict.


Can someone explain how every single post about Palestine/Israel is flagged and removed the instant it hits front page?

I have seen this with around 4-5 threads personally and who knows how many I missed


Users are flagging them. I don't think it's hard to understand why: it's a divisive and flameprone topic.

Two positions that people urge us to take (different people, obviously) are (1) treat it as off topic and flag everything; or (2) have no limits, which means letting it dominate the front page. Neither of these positions are viable for HN. For reasons why I say that, see past explanations at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... - these are general explanations, not specifically about Gaza, but they apply to that also.

HN has had at least two major related threads so far:

The pro-Israel information war - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38572675 - Dec 2023 (1673 comments)

'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38616550 - Dec 2023 (1309 comments)

Here are some explanations I posted the last time this question of flags came up, in case helpful at all:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38657829

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38657527

Obviously we want commenters to have thoughtful, respectful, open conversation with each other rather than just fighting a war on HN. Equally obviously, it's pretty hard to avoid the latter. These things can only be 'graded on a curve', i.e. moderation has to shift somewhat, relative to the topic - not to do that would be expecting people not to be human, which is a losing proposition. But that does not mean the rules somehow switch off. Accounts that break the HN guidelines egregiously (such as by getting aggressive or posting in the flamewar style) are going to get warned and/or banned, regardless of who they're battling for or against. More than that, I'm not sure what we can do.


Have you noticed any patterns or organization in the flagging and voting of this subject, or does it all look organic?


I haven't looked closely, but based on what I have looked at, plus prior experience, I believe that flags of this kind are a coalition between two subgroups of user: those who dislike the content of an article for political or ideological reasons, and those who are more concerned about the content being bad for HN (e.g. because they're worried about flamewars).


> because they're worried about flamewars

Huh? I've never seen a flamewar on this topic?

I wish HN was more granular about measures for users, e.g. by marking these highly contested topics and just giving people topic-bans. Some people just completely lose their shit, and then other people lose their shit in response, and these people post a million messages by the time the rest of us managed to actually read the article and perhaps some relevant background info. It just craps up everything.

That's what Wikipedia does. Works reasonably well.

Of course it'd have to be programmed.


> I've never seen a flamewar on this topic?

What? Do you have showdead on?

I flagged this one, because “discussions” on this topic are mostly hot garbage, they are dominated by extremely motivated people shitting canned flamebait all over the place, especially early on. Indeed by the time I saw and flagged this there were already like four or five people doing exactly that, and by keeping it up, more of this type of users are invited. They are largely flagged by now, leaving an entire page of flagged stuff and more interwoven in the somewhat visible page; must be one of, if not the lowest signal-to-flag stories on HN. I can only see like 20% of 352 comments so far without showdead.


> What? Do you have showdead on?

I was joking – "woosh" as I believe the kids say.

And this is why I'd be in favour of a "topic ban".


The problem with topics bans is that you can sabotage topics you don't like to silence them. E.g. Rust evangelicals could have been silenced quite easely by flame baiting their posts.


Some people really don't need a whole lot of baiting; for example there's a top-level comment that reads (entire comment): "'peaceful support of Palestine'", without condemning Hamas is still pro-Hamas action in this case."

Never mind the stuff that's just outright beyond the pale.

So we can start with that.


Just some blend war mongerer trying make us choose side between Netanyahu and Hamas, pretending those are the options. Or what is your analysis?


What if it was organic? It would suck wouldn't it eh?


Thank you dang for allowing this discussion. Our profession needs to wrestle with issues like this openly, and do so in a respectful way in the spirit of John Milton and John Stewart Mill.


The pro-Israel information war - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38572675 - Dec 2023 (1673 comments)

I posted that one, and while it went somewhat well by the standards of such a controversial topic, it was still contentious and had a lot of bad feeling. I submitted it because there was a nexus to both the dynamics of influence operations and individual movers and shakes in the SV community.

In general I think submitting on a topic like this requires some sort of hacker-specific angle - involving people in the industry, or the impact of technological change, or a new dynamic emerging from some unexpected source (eg cheap consumer-tech drones in the Ukraine conflict).

It's not that other topics shouldn't be discussed on HN, anything sufficiently unusual to be news cn be worth a look. But we should also be mindful that if the community can't provide more than baseline insight/expertise on a trending news topic, the resulting discussion will probably be shallow and have little value.


> posting in the flamewar style

What is the flamewar style?


Presumably aggrssively calling people names, spamming the replies with insults and trying to provoke others into an argument without actually expressing any ideas.


I've also had my por palestinian posts flagged. the really insane thing is I never call for violence and every assertion I make about human rights violations I make gets backed up with a link to a documentary or news story. I even tryto avoid using aljezeera as a my lone source. Over the last to months I've spent a lot of time researching teh history of the conflict and it becomes clear that the israeli side depends on people being apathetic to whats going on.


> it becomes clear that the israeli side depends on people being apathetic to whats going on.

this is flamebait


Possibly due to the topic attracting emotional, inflammatory responses rather than an objective, on-topic discussion.

Some people can't resist and have to turn every thread into a battlefield as if this achieves something on the ground. (Often citing the exact same disinformation that has been propagating across social media.)


Because it doesn’t belong here and it’s inflammatory. Also most articles are heavily biased but claim not to be. For example, they trust numbers given by an internationally recognized terrorist organization. But tell me again how it’s not biased.


If there is asymmetric risk and reward, then do what wall street does: exploit the shit out of it and make bank.

Oh wait, most people would rather complain about someone making a billion ("Hur dur he didn't work 1 million times harder than a factory worker Hur dur") than at least try to make your own billion.


When considering opportunity cost, it’s more time efficient, imho, to live a life well lived and buy lottery tickets than spend decades to “earn” a billion when it’s more luck than “hard work.” You can do everything right and still fail (startup failure, early employee dilution, etc). You can also fail your way to being a billionaire (Adam Neumann @ WeWork). Best to recognize the sham (most startups fail, most startup equity ends up worthless or at parity with what you would’ve earned as wages elsewhere) before you’ve spent too much precious time on it you can never buy back. Survivorship bias is rampant in the startup scene, Silicon Valley even more so.

One of my side projects is a website where you can convert startup equity offers to the number of lottery tickets you need to buy to have equal odds of financial success (while working a more stable and/or lucrative job), it’s just not done yet. I hope to share it soon!

TLDR Don’t work at a startup, get exposure to that asset class or equivalent returns via other means. You’re just making founders and investment funds wealthy with your precious time.


Your goal shouldnt be to work at at an early startup. As you mentioned it's not worth it.

Your goal is to be a founder at a startup, and for all of people's claims that startup success is entirely luck that is not true.

Luck certainly plays a role, hell being in the position to choose between being a founder vs employee of someone else startup requires incredible luck, on a global scale.

But, me and you, the privileged 0.1% of the world, are masters of our destiny. To claim otherwise is to accept mediocrity as inevitable and not the consequences of our decisions.


I’m at not so delusional as to believe in this level of exceptionalism. Strive for success, but humility is equally important.


As a 0.1%er you are already exceptionally lucky.

What's 1 more roll of the dice?


I would say that depends on the opportunity costs and how many sides those dice have.

Also, I'm curious where you got that .1% number.


Your comment exemplifies my point. I don't think people should be exploiting their employees. Frankly, if I make $1B for myself and not at least 10% as much for each of my employees, then I'm not a good leader in my own opinion.

And, oh wait, I guess some people would rather complain about people complaining rather than make their own $1B...


Who says I'm not trying to make my own billion?


I would say if you're wasting time browsing this site and engaging in conversation, then you're not really trying. That time would be spent on your company (look at other self-made billionaires).


I'll bookmark this.

See you in 10 years, and you'd better hope this comment doesn't turn into the infamous Dropbox comment.


Why would I care? Whether you make a billion or not doesn't affect me. Statistically speaking, the odds are very much in my favor.

I hope you do make it, and that you use much of it to give your employees great bonuses and give to charity.


Disclaimer, I'm all for stopping climate change and think it's the biggest issue facing our generation.

But nothing indicates non runaway climate change is an existential level event for humanity. Nothing.

By comparing it to asteroids, and then 10, 20, 30 years in the future, when what happens is nowhere near to the complete eradication of all humans on earth that you are predicting with this comparison, why are you surprised that people don't take activists and scientists seriously.

Stop with the hyperbole. Stick with the facts and only the facts and you may notice that we will have more support then ever in the fight against climate change.


What about the fact that Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2? And with climbing average temperatures more and more of it will be released all over the Arctic due to thawing permafrost. Where 'Arctic' means Sibira, Alaska, Canada, not only north-pole.

Some say this is a feedback loop.

For some others this is an abstraction which has no concrete meaning.

Why?

Haven't you ever experienced an acoustic feedback loop, where the setup began to screech and howl because the microphone amplification was too strong and/or the speakers too loud?

I think now is the time where we begin to hear the first upswings of that, and it will get louder and louder.

Deafening.

Until we pull the plug.

Considering the inertia of the systems involved it's already too late.

So our plug will be pulled instead, sooner or later.

Except by sucking all that shit out of the air with excess electricty by whichever means, and turning it into something which makes it stay out of the air.

That may make it bearable, maybe.


Why is this comment being downvoted? Valid point.


You mentioned that you can optimize which investments get solds. Assuming my risk tolerance is fine with stock index funds, what happens if I want to withdraw, say 1/2 of my portfolio but the S/P 500 is down 20% (aka March 2020 withdrawal).

Would this go through and the customer loses 10% of their account value or will you guys stop such a withdrawal.


Let's use concrete numbers just to make it easier. Say you have $10K in your account. You would be withdrawing $5K which we would allow. If you did this withdraw while the markets were close, and the value of your portfolio is only $8K when the markets are open, you would have $3K left in your account.


For certain populations (ie young women) the risks from AstraZeneca vaccine outweigh the risks from covid.

Old people shouldnt be scared yes, but young people should approach it with caution. And isn't that what the government is saying anyways- confirm with doctor and then get it?


They outweigh the risks of COVID when there is very little covid. That situation can change much faster than you can get two doses in to your arm.


The issue with claiming that the pandemic caused these extra deaths is that we don't know if it did.this is because the reactions to covid (lockdown) could have just as easily impacted people dying.

It's not so simple so as to attribute all excess mortality to covid.


Of course, that on its own is not enough to prove that all of the excess deaths are due to COVID.

But when you have the count of COVID deaths, and they more or less match up with the number of excess deaths, I think it's a reasonable conclusion. Sure, there are excess deaths not accounted for and we can dig into those, but overall, the numbers match up.

There's a bit of Occam's Razor here, too. We have an explanation with numbers that match up quite nicely. Yet, due to the politicization of the pandemic, you have claims that "we don't know for sure" or worse yet, alternate theories with absolutely zero evidence to back it up. I'm open to hear theories, just as long as there is data to support them. I haven't seen any.


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