I think that's part of the point, as someone else said; that we should reserve such stark judgment with the expectation that we don't know all the facts. Ed was pretty clear in his opinion, but probably would have held a different one had he known all the facts. To be honest, that supports the idea that he (and I; I agreed quietly) was wrong at the time.

I've taken that lesson to heart personally, just from this thread alone.

Some users get upvoted fairly quickly by username alone, too. Think pg, edw519, patio11, tptacek; I've noticed comments from them will have upvotes in seconds, regardless of content. It's just name recognition, for better or worse. pg could probably leave a comment saying only "This is a comment." and get a hundred points of karma off it. (I'd pay him to try.)

So, to an outside observer, you might suggest that these users game Hacker News but the real answer is that they have an audience. It's debatable whether that's their fault, on a case-by-case basis, though.

Then you could probably say it goes the other way: a large part of the community feels a certain way because Ed says so (in the top position), or Thomas says so. I've noticed the atmosphere of a thread change after a comment from a "well-known" person is left, rather rapidly on occasion. The momentum of a community like Hacker News is an interesting study, and although I didn't get an opportunity to watch the thread under the microscope, I bet a large part of it was shaped by Ed's comment.

Recently I've learned how Hacker News threads are living organisms, and I've noticed the impact of the commentary that I make. If you pay close attention, you'll be surprised at how the thread evolves and grows, particularly based upon what's in the top position.

Not only they get free upvotes, but the people who disagree with them sometimes get free downvotes.

See here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5033743

What you are arguing for there is quite common-sense. Who would advocate the "throw up your hands, you're screwed if they're in the DB" approach?

That exchange was ridiculous. I brushed his ego by correcting him on what is supposed to be his core competency, and he resorted to bullying and fallacious reasoning rather than admitting he was wrong.

It took some work, but I managed to corner him.

I didn't want to lose this argument because he was trying to make me look foolish when I was technically right. Since he has a lot of street cred, I feared that a lot of people would take his ramblings as correct.

And some did. I got at least three down votes on the first message.

Do you come across a kind, thoughtful suggestion and think "what's the most controversial comment I can write to score some karma" or something? Because honestly, there's no rational universe where your comment remotely makes sense.

And yes, it is Hacker News against you now, as you victimize yourself below. I sure as shit think this comment is disgusting, I hate that you left it, and I'd certainly hope that people would call you out for it (or I'd lose faith in the community). It's comments like this that make Hacker News look terrible to people that don't contribute, and it's one of those comments that's better left thought in your head.

Aaron was involved in this community in multiple ways, God forbid people express themselves at your displeasure.

It's really sad because Aaron's death hit me pretty hard last night, and I wake up this morning and see this suggestion and think "boy, I bet someone's going to piss in the Cheerios in that thread," and it almost hurts that I'm right. What a terrible place this is becoming.

See you are already blind with rage. Somebody died, and you want to leash out and find somebody to blame.

I feel sad about his death, too. I have nothing against black bars or mourning. Just against telling other people how to feel, which incidentally you do again with your post. You are sad, so you are entitled to hate me. You are welcome.

He has a point, though. It's pretty conservative to say "get help" for every thought about suicide. I think there's a difference between thinking about doing it or, say, wondering what death is like or whether you'd have the stones to go through with it. Honestly, I wonder what death is like a lot.

That being said, I tend to agree with you to be more conservative, but I've had similar thoughts as the guy you're replying to and know without a doubt that I'd never kill myself. Of course, there's probably a psychological argument that me knowing that is up for debate.

(Don't take this as displeasure with your efforts in this thread: thank you.)

I drive the conservative line because suicidal ideation is a symptom of depression and depression is a good predictor of suicide (and bloody unpleasant in itself).

People in a normal mood just don't think about suicide.

It's a reliable signal that something is wrong. And given how available help is, the smart thing to do is seek help.

I've engaged in suicidal ideation for many years. I'm not at risk of suicide, but if I thought that there was help available I would certainly seek it out.

My question is: what are the forms of help that are available? I know of A) therapy and B) medication.

I've spoken to 5 therapist for a couple sessions each, and my impression was that they are just normal people who you can talk to. They're not people who have answers, nor do they conduct their sessions with an overarching strategic plan. Rather, they're just people who you can talk to, and they will try their best to listen, even if they don't necessarily understand what you say. I know a lot of people benefit from this, but when I tried option A I didn't get anything out of it.

In my case, my mental suffering derives from loneliness. I follow John Cacioppo's work on the subject, and he claims that loneliness is a biological signal (just like hunger) that requires a response. I believe in his explanation, and so to me applying medication to ease loneliness would be similar to giving someone a pill to end their feeling of being hungry. To me that's not really a solution: in the case of hunger, food is the solution, and in the case of loneliness, connection is the solution.

Neither forms of help seem to me like they will help in my particular case. However when you say there's easy help available, you sound very confident. What am I missing?

Fair enough. Thank you again.

I was curious if some of those claims are true, especially since angst, existential despair and melancholy have been part of the human condition and described in one form or another by philosophers and others for thousands of years.

I found this:

http://www.suicidecallbackservice.org.au/Suicide-Myths.html

> Myth: All suicidal people are mentally ill. 'Normal' people do not think about suicide.

> Fact: Thoughts of suicide are not uncommon and can occur for anyone. People who see suicide as an option are in emotional pain and may be desperately unhappy. Although mental illnesses such as depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia may be associated with suicidal thinking and behaviour, not everyone who contemplates suicide is living with mental illness.

They don't cite their sources, though it seems to be an australian national suicide prevention site so presumably their claims are not just made up.

I agree, but they're putting the same facts in a different light.

This question is really about the stigma of suicidal ideation ("Oh no, what if I'm a crazy person?"), rather than the fact that suicidal ideation is a serious symptom that should trigger reaching out for help.

I have no words. I've been sitting with my phone's cursor blinking in this box and, for the first time in a long time, my stomach has turned so much from this news that I have nothing to write.

What an absolutely dreadful shame. My heart is wrenched for his family and all of us, who lost a brilliant young man. I'm a month older than he was, and to imagine someone my age thinking there was no way out... with all of the possibilities of his life, a life just beginning.

Christ.

When you are faced with 35 years of jail and $1Mln fine - i guess you start thinking out of the box...

What about being in jail with a laptop and internet ? That kind of prison seems more human in this case.

A lot of prisoners have no access to the outside world, including the internet. Many prisons lack even a basic library. Inmates working with The Last Mile (http://thelastmile.org/) tweet by passing their tweets written on paper to volunteers who actually enter them.

You don't hear of any high-profile bank disclosures, which I imagine is probably because they have security teams that keep up with everything religiously. Most old brick banks have internal systems architected in ways that a younger intruder in the Anonymous mold wouldn't know anything about, as well; you're starting to get into big iron Cobol land.

That said, I don't think it's an impossible task (is anything?), and I'm sure some day there will be a large disclosure through some means, internally-assisted or otherwise.

Nothing is impossible, but remotely hacking a bank is pretty damn close. A number of years ago, a friend worked for a large multi-national bank. He once described to me some of the key components of the security system. While the details are hazy (such as I understood them at the time), I do remember that one of the key points was that one of the "very important" servers that handled transactions between outside entities (i.e. other banks) and internal systems was double-firewalled. That is, you couldn't initiate connections from the internet or the intranet. The server would only make connections to hosts of its own choosing, on its own schedule.

Modifying or updating anything on the server required physical access.

That server was located in a secure vault.

There was actually a high-profile incident not too long ago with one of the big banks' online banking system. Users could view other people's account information just by incrementing an integer in the URL as I recall. It's not necessarily so much that banks are secure, but hacking them is much riskier than hacking Bitcoin sites, especially for white-hats.

Are you thinking of Heroku? Heroku isn't a bank.

It was probably Santander: http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Santander-s-onlin..., though there have been other instances of bad bank web practices.

Putting plaintext passwords in a cookie doesn't sound anything like incrementing an integer in a URL.

There's nothing to be gained from following him around and badgering him because he won't talk to you. You're stooping to his level, which is satisfyingly ironic given the topic.

He disengaged you pretty unabashedly, so do the rest of us a favor and stop beating him up over something mindlessly stupid. It reflects more on you than him. Remember how I called you a troll in the past? Bingo.

I was wondering if I knew the rest of your username. Nice of you to continue to stalk and harass me and call me names.

I made two whole comments in this thread (I didn't even realize they were the same person until you said something. I don't keep a black book of users to berate as you do). You just saw an opportunity to harass me some more. Leave me alone. For the third or fourth time. Maybe you wouldn't need so many accounts.

You literally contributed nothing except for to try to harass me more. How childish can you continue to be? Your little episode was like 7 months ago before you rage quit HN, it's time to let it go and get over your petty grudge, jsprinkles.

I'm assuming this whole thread is performance art to tie in with the whole "don't take grudges public" point.

I have no way of contacting him out of band and he follows me around calling me names about something that upset him months ago. I guess I should be turn the cheek and ignore him.

You know my identity but not my e-mail? jed@jedsmith.org. Fire away.

I'm realizing I might regret this, but if you want to contact me out of band, I'm offering the opportunity. I also don't expect that you will.

Is that 4 accounts that have been hell banned now, Jed? You can call me "troll" all you want and bang away at that downvote arrow.

His view is less about the reason and more about the action itself.

Threads like this are a nice sampling of the kinds of people you find on Hacker News. I find myself saying "yep, I'd work for you," "not in a million years," and so on. It's fun. Try it.

Hint: Immediate-fire responses are managers who shouldn't have reports. Take notes.

You'd rather work for some unassertive, passive-aggressive guy who lets employees betray his trust and just turns the other cheek?

I said "immediate-fire", not "fire". Take time to consider all the facts before reacting; reacting quickly is usually a sign of a bad manager.

OK, so you'd rather work for a guy who fires the adulterer the next day, not the same day that he finds out he's been poking his wife? Because he's taken 24 hours to "think it over"?

I can understand if the employee was caught stealing petty cash or fudging the time sheets; then you'd want some semblance of due process to gain absolute proof, give him a chance to resign rather than be fired, etc.

But adultery? Confessed adultery?

It's not about the proof required to fire him. It's about understanding the situation entirely before reacting. Immediate reactions are usually problematic because emotions are involved, particularly in this case.

Some of us actually enjoy the sun, you know (another reason not to live in the city, unless you love fog).