Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A stupid joke resulting in a silly news cycle

kiwiziti.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 177 posts

Re: A stupid joke resulting in a silly news cycle

#71

Post by pessimizer »

mdoms wrote: post #50
pvg wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right but this is called 'programmer humor'. Plus it's obviously not serious if you think about it for more than 60 seconds.

I just took a very quick look at the subreddit (absolutely awful stuff BTW, who finds this crap funny?) and already found 2 instances of people sharing "real" stories in the comments to joke posts. Should both of these be taken as jokes? They are not presented as such. https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/u0elnq/com... > I completely forget the example problem we were doing, but back when I was learning…

The second one is quite obviously a joke.

Re: A stupid joke resulting in a silly news cycle

#72

Post by pbhjpbhj »

mdoms wrote: post #31
pvg wrote: post #20

The crucial detail that is a little buried in the piece is that the original 'explanation' was posted in /r/ProgrammerHumor so it said right on the tin it was a joke. But the (seemingly clearly intended as a joke) details temporarily nerd-sniped a lot of people's senses of humor right out of their brains. The HN discussion discussion from back then is still fun reading with a number of commenters very invested in the…

I don't think something presented as fact in the comments to a joke is always going to be taken as a joke. Lots of people post their (supposedly) factual war stories in the comments of The Daily WTF and similar websites.

>Lots of people post their (supposedly) factual war stories in the comments of The Daily WTF [...] //

I've always assumed they're apocryphal, ie based on the truth but considerably dramatised to be more "Daily WTF" material, somewhat like The Onion articles. Basically, if your best source is an internet comment in a joke-y forum, just like if your best source is "Rob from accounts said at the water-cooler", then some corroboration before you promulgate that information would be absolutely in order.

Re: A stupid joke resulting in a silly news cycle

#73

Post by bastawhiz »

chrisseaton wrote: post #55
bitcharmer wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you feel responsible for generating misinformation? This is a bizarre stance to take. Social media was always filled with false information. It's entirely on news outlets to verify what they decide to publish.

Why fuel the problem by seeding more false information?

Should we also remove the fiction section from libraries?

Re: A stupid joke resulting in a silly news cycle

#74

Post by kortilla »

kibwen wrote: post #52
bastawhiz wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely not. Should The Onion be considered fake news? It was a parody account, which was labeled as such. Journalists who can't even be bothered to tap through to the profile don't get my sympathy.

Ten years ago I would have agreed with you. These days I know that humans are too gullible to be able to understand obvious satire, and the consequences are deleterious for society. As someone who has long appreciated The Onion, I am now of the opinion that they should not legally be allowed to call themselves a news source, in the same way that someone cannot legally claim to be an expert in an accredited field. We…

That’s ridiculous because we don’t have the ability to censor the entire internet to police what websites call themselves “news”. If your solution to this is to police the word “news”, it’s dead on arrival.

People claim they are engineers/doctors/lawyers on the internet all of the time and there is no repercussion. We are only able to actually police those terms when it comes to actual business transactions.

Re: A stupid joke resulting in a silly news cycle

#75

Post by zamadatix »

jameshart wrote: post #21
TheDudeMan wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And his link to the Google collision was not an accidental collision, like the rest of his ramblings were discussing.

Right - that’s a SHA1 collision, which has nothing to do with the possibility of a UUID collision. I worry that some people might take away from this that UUID collisions are actually something to worry about (nonsensical kindergarten cubby analogies and so on). Really, truly, UUIDs can be assumed unique. We’re not relying on luck.

UUIDs can be assumed unique because we are relying on luck, not the other way around. The cubby example is actually a pretty good example of why the luck is on your side to the point you should never worry about it. The SHA1 collision not as much.

Re: A stupid joke resulting in a silly news cycle

#76

Post by kibwen »

bastawhiz wrote: post #70
kibwen wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ten years ago I would have agreed with you. These days I know that humans are too gullible to be able to understand obvious satire, and the consequences are deleterious for society. As someone who has long appreciated The Onion, I am now of the opinion that they should not legally be allowed to call themselves a news source, in the same way that someone cannot legally claim to be an expert in an accredited field. We…

So my Twitter, which does not claim to be a news source or post anything other than silly jokes, should also be disallowed because some journalists are too lazy to do their job?

No, if you're not calling yourself news then there's no false advertising going on.

Re: A stupid joke resulting in a silly news cycle

#77

Post by pessimizer »

rootusrootus wrote: post #10
mdoms wrote: post #8

This doesn't seem like a joke, it seems like a guy outright spreading misinformation. Not sure what was the point of the UUID preamble, his "joke" has nothing to say about UUIDs.

Only if people take seriously the posts random anonymous strangers make on r/programmerhumor. The real source of disinformation here is whomever decided to repeat the dry humor without the context of it coming from a joke subreddit.

Some people will believe everything they read, and they are friends with people who will believe everything they heard from a friend.

Re: A stupid joke resulting in a silly news cycle

#79

Post by kortilla »

chrisseaton wrote: post #64
bitcharmer wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something tells me you also regard stand-up comedy as harmful.

Nobody confuses a stand-up club as news - people do confuse Twitter as news.

“My use case for satire is obvious but yours is not”

Re: A stupid joke resulting in a silly news cycle

#80

Post by bastawhiz »

krallja wrote: post #57
chrisseaton wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you feel responsible for generating misinformation? You say there was zero evidence behind the article, but the evidence was your Tweet, and it was really your Tweet that had zero evidence behind it.

One very important concept of journalism is getting a fact “verified.” Often you need either an incredibly trusted source or multiple sources. The journalist should not have reported it. But their fact checker committed a grave error by allowing a story to run with “some rando on Twitter said…” as the only source.

*some rando claiming to be a parody on Twitter
Post reply on HN