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Adrian Lamo has died

zdnet.com

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Re: Adrian Lamo has died

#121

Post by dang »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #112
CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Um, OK and rewriting history is a tactic favoured by fascists. We're not rewriting history. Allowing a transgendered person to choose a new name doesn't change the basic facts about what happened. It's just an act of compassion towards someone who would otherwise be suffering from feelings neither you nor I personally experience, but are well documented by scientists. > Shouldn't it be "Bradley Manning (now called…

You can't always raise objective facts and remain polite. I disagree. Someone changing their name and identifying as the opposite sex after being arrested (the next day I think?) in a major political scandal makes that pertinent to the history of the situation. Hiding that by pretending the person always was identified as they currently are hides facts about the situation -- are they pertinent, maybe not to the prima…

Please stop.

Re: Adrian Lamo has died

#122

Post by mmjaa »

dang wrote: post #107
mmjaa wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hundreds of thousands of innocent people are put in danger, really in harms way, because of the American publics' reticence for reigning in their military masters. You might think that American lives are worth more, but I happen to think that childrens' lives are worth more - of any nation - than any American. Or have you forgotten the innocent children that were murdered in cold blood by Americans', as revealed in t…

This comment crosses into ideological flamewar and personal attacks, which are destructive on HN regardless of how correct your underlying views may be. Please don't do those things here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think its completely ridiculous to equate criticism of American military misadventures with the catch-all "ideological flamewar" doublethink.

Its precisely because arguments against American military crimes are couched as 'ideological attacks' that they continue, unimpeded, around the world.

Re: Adrian Lamo has died

#123

Post by dang »

mmjaa wrote: post #122
dang wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment crosses into ideological flamewar and personal attacks, which are destructive on HN regardless of how correct your underlying views may be. Please don't do those things here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think its completely ridiculous to equate criticism of American military misadventures with the catch-all "ideological flamewar" doublethink. Its precisely because arguments against American military crimes are couched as 'ideological attacks' that they continue, unimpeded, around the world.

It isn't a question of criticism but of grandiose rhetoric—e.g. equating people who disagree with you with child-haters, and whatnot.

One can argue that atrocities demand intense responses and I agree with that. But I also know that on internet forums this has long degraded into garden-variety flamebait, that the discussions it produces are tedious, predictable, and worthless, and that the end state they lead to is heat death. It's for those reasons we moderate discussion this way, not because we're secret atrocity sympathizers.

Edit: I think it can be helpful to understand how this is really a question of the medium you're posting to. Heated rhetoric that might make sense in a different medium doesn't work the same way in an online forum. No awareness is raised. All it does is provoke opposite flames, and then people try to destroy each other verbally and wreck the container in the process.

If your concern is to make points about reality in the hope that someone else will shift their view a bit, the only way to do that here is neutrally, because if you can't be neutral, the state machine simply advances to state Flamewar. If your concern is to vent rage about evil, that may well be justified, but it doesn't make sense here because the destruction it causes outweighs the limited relief it brings and the zero other good it does. This isn't personal or specific to your views. It's a way of tending to the container for everybody.

Re: Adrian Lamo has died

#124

Post by krapp »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #110
CydeWeys wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comments here are honest, at least. Complicated people yield complicated discussions when they die.

There's nothing complicated about the comments here. So far they're merely awful: someone's death being used as an opportunity for people to air their grievances about that person. Imagine one of Adrian's family members sitting in a room with every person from this thread, and these comments being directed to them, in person. Fucksake HN. You're being more classless than usual today.

This seems to be typical for obituary threads about political and tech celebrities. Hacker News isn't known for its empathy on the best of days.

Go see what happened when Ian Murdock died, if you want to know how crass this site can really be.

Re: Adrian Lamo has died

#125

Post by mmjaa »

dang wrote: post #123
mmjaa wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think its completely ridiculous to equate criticism of American military misadventures with the catch-all "ideological flamewar" doublethink. Its precisely because arguments against American military crimes are couched as 'ideological attacks' that they continue, unimpeded, around the world.

It isn't a question of criticism but of grandiose rhetoric—e.g. equating people who disagree with you with child-haters, and whatnot. One can argue that atrocities demand intense responses and I agree with that. But I also know that on internet forums this has long degraded into garden-variety flamebait, that the discussions it produces are tedious, predictable, and worthless, and that the end state they lead to is h…

Fair enough. I'll find other ways to make my point.

Re: Adrian Lamo has died

#126

Post by _wmd »

dang wrote: post #116
_wmd wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thoroughly agreed. Would love to see the mods taking a much more active role in this thread

Users have flagged the submission and some of the less humane comments in the thread. That's probably the right outcome, given that there's no way to stop the discussion from being about the events of 8 years ago, but probably no good discussion about them to be had in this context.

I had some of my comments pruned not so long ago (not by you AFAIK) for daring offend the religion of Lisp, it seems a no brainer that half the comments in this thread should be flushed down the toilet with far greater vigour, just as my Lisp comments were. One would hope editorial policy places higher priority on human life than it does Lisp

Meanwhile thanks for popping up. I've applied my flags :)

Re: Adrian Lamo has died

#127

Post by moyix »

dang wrote: post #116
_wmd wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thoroughly agreed. Would love to see the mods taking a much more active role in this thread

Users have flagged the submission and some of the less humane comments in the thread. That's probably the right outcome, given that there's no way to stop the discussion from being about the events of 8 years ago, but probably no good discussion about them to be had in this context.

Perhaps the link could be changed to a news article rather than the Facebook page? For example:

http://www.zdnet.com/article/adrian-lamo-hacker-dies/

Re: Adrian Lamo has died

#128

Post by CydeWeys »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #102
CydeWeys wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A name is a label (think C pointer) to a specific person. So yes, Lamo did report the person now known as Chelsea Manning. It was the person that was reported, not a name. Names in themselves are almost entirely inconsequential.

So, do you remember when the President of USA had that Apprentice show on TV? To me that's wrong, the President didn't, but Donald Trump did. There's no reason to hide that Trump hasn't always been president, and it's informative to know that he wasn't president at the time he was a TV character in a "game" (?) show. If the name is inconsequential why does anyone care if you refer to the correct historical fact that…

President is a job title, not a name.

Re: Adrian Lamo has died

#129

Post by VectorLock »

whichwalrus wrote: post #101

Sorry, this story isn't very interesting, but it really stuck with me nonetheless, and I wanted to share. Adrian had a passing romance with a friend of mine, and thus ended up traveling through the city I grew up in. This was long before Chelsea Manning, etc. I was a super shy, rather awkward teenage girl. I suppose the teenage part has changed.. but I digress. I loved the idea of mischief, but at the same time, I wa…

This is a good description of the kind of hacker Adrian was. He wasn't a write finely crafted shell code to exploit a buffer overflow in an application or deep knowledge of the esoterica of how CPUs function Spectre Meltdown kind of hacker. He'd just try the knob on a door he wasn't supposed to go through and surprise it was open.

Re: Adrian Lamo has died

#130

Post by pbhjpbhj »

ddingus wrote: post #113
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, OK and rewriting history is a tactic favoured by fascists. Now, where did that get us, nowhere. There was no person of that public identity in existence at the time, doesn't that make it impossible for such a person to have done something. Suppose Chelsea Manning were now to revert to calling himself Bradley (a situation not without precedent), or choose a further name - why should that change how we report factu…

You get to do that. Others get to do what they are doing too. It's not about that. I'm not gonna tell you what to do, but I will absolutely tell you something about what it means. Maybe you don't know. Frankly, your preferences are toxic. The toxicity is rooted in lack of consideration for others. Nobody is objective. Even you. And that lack of consideration actually undermines your stated goal of objectivity. It's n…

So, person B who was born male chooses at age 30 to identify as some other gender. You then say they were a different _sex_ their whole life, and consider that objective truth?

Now, as happens occasionally, person B realises they now wish to identify with their birth sex and not their assumed gender. What's the objective truth now.

Isn't the whole "well in a different gender" completely sexist, why do I have to fall in line with someone's quantised buttons of gender because they choose to self-identify in a different way to me?

Perhaps instead of people demanding others rewrite the past they should get over themselves. Accept what's true and can't be changed and get on with it.

Now I can be condescending to you and tell you to think about it if you like ...?

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