> Isn't it curious that folks like kim dotcom who do not hold hospitals or anyone to ransom earn global notoriety, are raided by swat teams and face the full face of the law while those that hold hospitals to ransom can operate with impunity with people reduced to tracking their bitcoin earnings on twitter.
Isn't it curious that people who are known to the authorities are arrested, whereas persons unknown are not? That's your question?
You may be downvoted to oblivion for asking how it gets on the front page (some people think it is of interest is the usual answer, IIRC), but honestly, however this ended up here, I am struggling to work out the point of it is.
It's four short paragraphs, short enough for a forum comment, of someone vaguely talking about UI, with zero examples. It's also the only post on the site. Fishy.
I feel bad saying this as the author may just have English as a second language but due to some wacky, essentially meaningless sentences, I did wonder if the point was it's an example of text generated by "AI".
Edit: And this gets downvoted within seconds. Ridiculous.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. He wasn't calling the OP a sinner, or even questioning his posting on HN, he was telling him to do something to stop the abuse of his sister.
Indeed. Rather than worrying about hurting the feelings of someone sharing a "difficult situation" (the horrible exploitation and abuse of someone else, that they admit themselves they "feel complicit" in), perhaps some people here should spare more concern for the actual victim.
Comments on HN do nothing for the victim, and it's self-righteous posturing to pretend they do. We don't do this kind of thing because we care about someone we'd never heard of until a minute ago. It's an opportune way to get some of our own anger out and see ourselves as moral at the same time.
Lashing out at the person you're talking to, on the other hand, actually can do harm—and that only means hurting the victim further as well.
What was the point of the original comment then, in your opinion? Just to upset people here?
> and it's self-righteous posturing to pretend they do.
This is nothing more than your opinion, based on nothing more than your imagination.
> We don't do this kind of thing because we care about someone we'd never heard of until a minute ago. It's an opportune way to get some of our own anger out and see ourselves as moral at the same time.
So if someone you didn't know a minute ago was hit by a bus, or tripped on the pavement, or dropped their shopping, the only reason you'd stop to help is because you want to show how moral you are?
Most people are not that sociopathic, and I doubt you're unaware of that fact, so I'm not sure why you're pretending other people's motives can only be selfish or insincere.
> Lashing out at the person you're talking to, on the other hand, actually can do harm—and that only means hurting the victim further as well.
Can you quote where the poster "lashed out" at the OP, because all I remember is they called him complicit in the exploitation (which the OP said himself is what he feels) and then said "free her".
And as per usual, downvoter/s (assuming they are genuine downvotes) are totally incapable of addressing any of the points made. Just more mindless dislikes.
I'm afraid your comments to HN have been breaking the site guidelines badly for quite a while. You've been uncivil—often egregiously so, such as repeatedly accusing others of being Nazis—and gotten into lots of flamewars. This is unacceptable, we ban accounts that do it, and I'm banning yours now.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com. We unban accounts when people give us reason to believe that they'll follow the site rules in the future.
You're banning my account because I had the temerity to ask you to back up your claims, including the deletion of another poster's comment then falsely claiming he "lashed out" at someone in it.
Who you're trying to kid, other than yourself, by pretending otherwise is anyone's guess, but if I'd genuinely been badly violating the rules for quite a while, why was I only banned now, after posting something to you that you're unable to answer?
As for "repeatedly accusing others of being Nazis", now you're not even trying. That's simply a blatant lie that anyone reading this before you delete it can verify is false merely by checking my posts.
The only time I've even called someone a "Nazi sympathizer" is WRT an actual Nazi sympathizer, in this thread:
Just as Holocaust denial isn't *literally* saying the Holocaust
didn't happen, being a Nazi sympathizer is not about shouting
Sieg Heil, it's about picking away at small things here and
there. Minimizing or ignoring the crimes or victims of the Nazis
(which cyberferret did), emphasizing the offences of the Allies
(which cyberferret did), posting misinformation and/or lies
(which cyberferret did). All textbook far-right/neo-Nazi tactics.
cyberferret posted lies straight from the David Irving school of Nazi atrocity denial and was upvoted by the resident far-right crowd here at Hacker News, who, as all crybabies do when they lose the argument, also started flagging posts they don't like, to be rescued by the mods.
My correction of him - using facts taken from his own link that he hadn't even bothered to read - was downvoted, and I was attacked by the mods for calling him what he is, just as you're doing now, in line with the far-right bias of Hacker News.
Another example of that far-right bias - that I'm not the only person to have noticed or remarked upon - is mentioned in the same thread, where you or some other mod deleted an entirely civil undisputed historical fact:
"Maybe we should also remember that most of the people who signed this document owned slaves"
because it had so many upvotes it couldn't be buried in downvotes by far-right racists here.
This is the site you're running. Apparently you're not ashamed of it.
This is bizarre. Informative, factual posts that are not rude or insulting are "off topic" now?
It wasn't a grammar Nazi post or about a typo, advice/advise is a common and easily corrected error that should be corrected, and I did so as politely as possible. Most people would appreciate it (I know I would).
All you've done by removing a single post (with multiple upvotes) from the thread is increase the chances that other people will copy/make the same mistake.
Edit: in fact it's even more baffling than I first thought, you didn't even remove it, you simply moved it to a position where some people, if they get that far, will not understand what it's about.
I think I've whined about downvotes (specific ones and in general terms) in the distant past (it gets you nowhere, and is boring) and I think they often cause the kind of negativity this site otherwise attempts to avoid, but in this case maybe some people just disagree with you on the tangential subject you brought up, but didn't want to get into a discussion about it with you, or didn't want to see a discussion on that subject float to the top.
Please don't mistake me, I wasn't trying to whine about downvotes. I wanted to find out the reason why people are downvoting, rather than replying. Hacker News strikes me as a very odd place; on one hand, encouraging discussion of interesting topics, on the other hand, giving a group of people with more than 500 points this ability to hide discussion they like.
It would be much better if, rather than disagreeing by downvoting, which is effectively a statement like "I don't like that" (which humorously, HN discourages if you state explicitly), to either say nothing at all (like those with <500 karma) or to state your disagreement.
For me it's hard, too. The HN moderators have decided to block me from posting too quickly. I never used to get this message until recently; now I am told that "You're posting too fast, please slow down.", which to be honest, I can't describe the words of irritation I would otherwise use if I wasn't being civil on this forum. It's so silly to be stopping people from engaging in quick discussion. I know it's to prevent flamewars, but the fact that it applies even if I'm not flaming (which I don't do much here) is ridiculous.
The worst part is where the HN moderators roll in with the classic "we've detached this and marked it off-topic". This is perhaps the one thing which reddit/<n>chan gets right, the moderators won't tell you that something is off topic just because they think it is. It evidently isn't off topic if people are discussing it.
This website really does baffle me sometimes. In some cases it's unparalleled for informative discussion where I can learn sometimes about hotter topics. On the other hand, it has this truly horrible and infantile elite-downvoters culture which exists to control how you think and what kind of opinions you espouse, for fear of being downvoted. It encourages self-censure to the tune of the opinion of the downvoting group. You have to dance their jig, or have your comment greyed out, which probably attracts more downvotes.
Having one discussion floating to the top doesn't mean that the other discussions are unavailable. If it really is as uninteresting as the downvoter thinks it is, few people will engage in it.
I'm sorry for the rant, but this website is very grating, and it's not because of the users, it's because of the way it's run, and what powers the users have. It's almost as if downvoting was implemented beacuse it's known to be exactly like an "I don't like that" message, which will make anyone annoyed when all they want to do is engage in thoughtful discussion. And don't get me started on how people will downvote you on topics when you speak of politics they disagree with or make cogent points. I've noticed this on both sides; when I speak of my Communism and anarchism, I'm getting downvoted for it. When some speak of their strongly libertarian "an"cap principles, they're getting downvoted. And time and time again, I've been told by those helpful commenters - it's not beacuse of the quality of my comments. It's just that people disagree. And that means I get my comment greyed out and I'm not allowed to post more than twice every two hours.
I really wish intelligent discussion like on HN would take place on other websites (except reddit). That way, I wouldn't have to deal with this elite-downvoter culture. And before someone brings up the point that discussion here is intelligent because of the power to downvote, it would be nice if there were some evidence for that assertion. Mailing lists and forums and the old-style chans (by old-style I mean before the addition of backlinks and "(You)"s) didn't have downvotes.
> since they believe that this has huge ramifications for their child's life as a Jew, and if you read the Bible you can definitely see why
Is the argument here that if someone happens to believe in a particular practice (that impacts on somebody else's life), it should be completely off-limits and tolerated without question just because it appears in a religious text?
> why right away submit them to permanently changing into a transsexual? Yet the same progressives who argue against circumcision would argue for gender reassignment surgery.
Which "progressives" are arguing for babies to have gender reassignment surgery?
Ok, for the sake of facts, and I'm not quoting Wikipedia.
- Spain named several governors for those islands from 1774 to 1810. Sovereignity was clearly stated by Spain over those islands.
- During that time, those islands depended of Buenos Aires government.
- If Spain owned Argentina plus the Malvinas, then once Argentina got its independence from Spain, the Malvinas were included as part of that independence.
- 1820, frigate La Heroína sailed to Malvinas to take possesion of it
- 1825, Great Britain admitted Argentina's independence from Spain, but didn't claim the islands.
- 1828, Buenos Aires government granted Port Soledad to Luis Vernet, for building up a colony. For this purpose, he shipped 100 inhabitants to the islands.
- 1829, Vernet was named as governor of the islands
- 1833, Great Britain took the Malvinas, and expelled the inhabitants from the islands.
Not to mention other facts like geology, and that the UN approved the new map for Argentina, which expands the continental shelf all around the islands.[1][2]
So, care to tell me how can Argentina OWN all the argentinean sea shelf AROUND the islands, BUT the islands?
> 1825, Great Britain admitted Argentina's independence from Spain, but didn't claim the islands.
They claimed the Falkland Islands before Argentina even existed as an independent country, as I said in my post. They didn't have to make a new claim every time they recognized a new country.
"Evidence" of what? A line drawn by Argentina around territory they want to take over? I'm going to assume you're kidding.
a) anyone can claim any territory they like; that doesn't automatically make the claim legitimate or credible
b) claiming a territory is academic unless you can actually enforce your claim
c) Britain claimed the Falklands (decades) before "Argentina" even existed in any form as an independent country
d) if a "British" claim and presence on islands with no native population is illegitimate, what does that make a "Spanish" claim and presence on land taken from the native population that is now called "Argentina"?
Maybe the people of the Falklands are going home when the people of Argentina do.
Even after so-called "Argentine independence" - half a century after Britain claimed the Falklands - "Argentina" didn't exist even remotely like the country we know today.
In fact even by 1865 - 100 YEARS after the British claimed the Falklands, and 15 years after "Argentina" relinquished claims in the treaty of Arana Southern - this is what "Argentina" looked like:
So who do the British owe the Falklands to again? Buenos Aires? United Provinces of the River Plate? Argentine Confederation? Chile? Uruguay? Araucania and Patagonia? Spain?
Tell me again the one about returning stolen land.
Oh, so your argument is that the country changed. Big deal.
Again: Spain asserted sovereignity over those islands as part of the colony way before that.
The "line drawn by Argentina" is the territory accepted by the UN. That little organization where all the countries are represented. I understand from what you say that you favor the rule of the strongest instead of the actual law and common sense, but it's something real and concrete: the Argentinean sea surrounds the islands, and it's been proved to be a part of the country. The UK has absolutely NOTHING to do there, as their country is on the other hemisphere.
I'll reply to the rest of the "arguments" as you so call them, about the "claims" they did. I need to retrieve some information from the library first, so I can give you some proper references, instead of Google, as you did. Maybe that way you can learn something.
This is going to go absolutely nowhere other than me repeating the same hard facts and you refusing to hear and accept them, but I'll just address this:
> The "line drawn by Argentina" is the territory accepted by the UN.
Do you not even understand what's written in the link you posted as "evidence" or something?
The very first sentences state (emphasis/capitalization mine):
"The Argentine Foreign Ministry announced on 28 March 2016 that it
had gained international recognition of a claim to an exceptionally
large continental shelf.
BUT THEY WERE MISTAKEN.
[...]
On 23 May 2016, the [UN] Commission made public its recommendations
and ONLY A SMALL PROPORTION OF THE ARGENTINE CLAIM WAS ENDORSED.
This paper explains the legal regime and the political process
that led the Commission to REFUSE TO CONSIDER THE ARGENTINE CLAIM
TO THE SHELF AROUND THE ISLANDS CONTROLLED BY THE UNITED KINGDOM,
AND TO A PART OF ANTARCTICA.
And, after citing Argentine government lies on the matter, and fake news reports from Argentina and the UK, it concludes with the following:
the Argentine Foreign Ministry knew NO PART OF THE CONTINENTAL
SHELF AROUND THE ISLANDS UNDER BRITISH CONTROL WOULD BE CONSIDERED
by the sub-commission.
[...]
Indeed, the legal situation was so unambiguous that THE ARGENTINE
DELEGATION DID NOT EVEN ASK FOR THE FULL SUBMISSION TO BE CONSIDERED.
You literally, objectively, as a matter of fact don't know what you are talking about here.
Just for the record: you're defending an imperial colony in the 21st century, that exists for the sole purpose of having a claim for the UK over Antartida. That's it. That's the whole point of the UK being there. Of course the oil and fish are a plus, but if those islands were closer to Brazil, they would've left a long time ago.
He didn't say that what happened to other people and not him long before he was even born was worse than what happened during the Blitz, he said British people "never really got to experience the horrors" of WWII, which is simply a denial of fact, offensive and the words of someone who doesn't know even basic history.
Not everywhere in Eastern Europe was Stalingrad or Warsaw, particularly in fascist, anti-Semitic states like Romania, which eagerly invaded the USSR alongside its Nazi ally, and was second only to Nazi Germany in murdering Jews.
> He didn't say that what happened to other people and not him long before he was even born was worse than what happened during the Blitz, he said British people "never really got to experience the horrors" of WWII, which is simply a denial of fact, offensive and the words of someone who doesn't know even basic history.
I know my basic history, thank you very much. I moved office recently and in my way to work I'm passing on a street which used to have a Jewish cemetery until 1942 (or 1943). At that point all the tombstones were taken way, the buried taken who knows where and some garden was built in that place. On my way to my previous office I used to pass on the street where 2 Jewish synagogues had been burned in 1941, by the members of a right wing party which was all powerful back then.
> "never really got to experience the horrors" of WWII, which is simply a denial of fact, offensive and the words of someone who doesn't know even basic history.
Have the British experienced the horrors of communism, which was brought to us directly by WW2? No, they have not.
> Not everywhere in Eastern Europe was Stalingrad or Warsaw, particularly in fascist, anti-Semitic states like Romania, which eagerly invaded the USSR alongside its Nazi ally, and was second only to Nazi Germany in murdering Jews.
We invaded USSR because of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, which saw the Soviets take part of our country (I'll let you search on wikipedia which part exactly). I, for myself, do not think that was the best decision for us to take, but saying that we invaded USSR like we were the Golden Horde searching for things to loot then you're utterly mistaken.
> offensive and the words of someone who doesn't know even basic history.
I don't care if people get so easily offended by things that are very close to the truth (as in we can't never know the historical truth 100%). To put it more bluntly, I was always asking myself as a kid, in my head: "Has my grand-mother been raped by the Russians as they entered our country?". Answer: she was probably not, or, if she was, it doesn't matter, now, as she's dead, but that question was put by a lot of kids and grand-kids after WW2 all the way from Berlin to the gates of Moscow (you can replace "Russian soldiers" with "German soldiers" as you go East). What I'm trying to say is that things on the Continent have been fucking bleak, and what happened in Britain, as a comparison, is kids' play. I don't care if you find that offensive or not.
What I'm trying to say is that things on the Continent have been fucking bleak, and what happened in Britain, as a comparison, is kids' play
Putting aside your ridiculous belief that Brits did not suffer in WW2, what I don't get about your position is that the EU is run by powerful, entirely unaccountable leaders who very frequently and publicly take a dump on the entire concept of democracy and voting. The EU's law making is done in secret, which is similar only to North Korea in opacity.
And the EU is busy telling eastern European countries they're going to be punished financially and legally for not adopting "european values" (as these countries are without a doubt in Europe geographically, what that means of course is "german values").
Of all the people who should be attuned to the dangers of powerful leaders who dislike referendums, citizens of ex-Soviet countries should be the MOST aware. Yet you are running headlong into another giant undemocratic bloc.
This thread has gotten quite uncivil. It takes a lot of extra care and effort on heated topics to resist this, but nevertheless it isn't the kind of discussion we're after and it violates the guidelines. Please take that extra care.
I don't believe the other poster was decent or civil in the way he posted, but purely with regard to what I wrote, I agree, I made mistakes in the way I replied and apologize.
> Yeah, we overhere on the Continent (especially here in the East) got it a lot worst than the British.
Yeah, after all your parents had to endure the horror of no central heating occasionally, an unimaginable atrocity beyond comprehension that nobody - certainly that no pampered "Brit" living in their ivory tower - has ever had to endure.
> some of you people need to learn more about history
Says the person who thinks Castro remained Cuban leader because the country is sunny.
> Yeah, after all your parents had to endure the horror of no central heating occasionally, an unimaginable atrocity beyond comprehension that nobody - certainly that no pampered "Brit" living in their ivory towers - has ever had to endure.
That was caused by communism, and communism was brought to our country by us being on the wrong side of the Wall after WW2. And if you think that raising a kid with no fucking heat to speak of in the middle of an Eastern European winter (we're not talking about the foggy winters you got over there in the British Isles) then you really need to also learn about geography.
> Says the person who thinks Castro remained Cuban leader because the country is sunny.
There was a discussion in a thread about Venezuela recently where some HN-er was discovering the incredible truth about how the end of civilization, i.e. mass revolts, is about 6 missing meals away (too lazy to search for the link, the thread happened in the last 2 weeks or so). During the December 1989 revolt against communism people on the street were shouting for having electrical power and heating in their homes, and if possible more food in the stores. But you can't possibly know that, the British
haven't revolted or protested for anything meaningful since the Levellers.
I know that the audience in here tends to be pretty pampered, generally speaking, but I was also thinking that a lot of HN-ers would compensate that by reading more about what's happening and and what happened in the world.
The whole discussion started on the premises that people on the Continent have had it way worse in recent times compared to the British (I'd call WW2 and everything that happened after it as "recent times", as we've got our grand-parents and parents as living proofs of said times), that's why an organization like the European Union that has managed to make us not fight between ourselves anymore (among other things) is a great fucking accomplishment. I was implying that the Brits not really knowing and not directly experiencing the horrors of recent history they feel sort of pampered, not fully realizing what they're throwing away.
> why not say what's the hardest thing you've ever had to endure in your life
If it matters I remember my mother sending me the the store to purchase rationed bread and sugar, as 8-year old kid or so. I was finding that normal. Food was not plentiful, to use an euphemism. What I don't remember is how in one those winters that you call "just weather" I was about to die as a kid because of the cold in my parents' house.
It's easy to imagine how "Jews run Hollywood" is used (well we don't have to imagine; we know, and examples are probably not hard to find).
OTOH, unless we're saying Jews in Hollywood, or George Soros, get a free pass just because they happen to be Jewish (assuming Soros even is; I suspect most people who criticise him don't know), then we need to be careful of silencing legitimate criticism by falsely labelling it anti-Semitic.
That's the point though: it's quite difficult to conceive "lots of Jews in Hollywood" as a criticism rather than a pretty anodyne fact unless one is making "Hollywood is liberal because Jewish conspiracies are using it as a tool to push their agenda upon an unsuspecting public" which seem rather more deeply rooted in anti-Semitism than reality
Isn't it curious that people who are known to the authorities are arrested, whereas persons unknown are not? That's your question?