Huawei staff CVs reveal alleged links to Chinese intelligence agencies • Hacker News Board

Re: Huawei staff CVs reveal alleged links to Chinese intelligence agencies

#161

Post by ptx » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 5:39 PM UTC

boapnuaput wrote: post #98

geofft wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I do. Here's a few reasons: - I genuinely think that the Huawei stories are by and large protectionist fearmongering and that Huawei products would win in a free and high-information (and high-correct-information, of course) market. I think better, cheaper products are good for the US. - If Huawei is actually using their products to spy, or there is even a belief of such, that incentivizes the use of end-to-end…

Today is a Lucky 10000 day for you. We'll start with human rights in China [0] and look at some highlights. (Yes, every citation is to Wikipedia today. You've earned it.) * There are millions of people imprisoned in China. Could be as few as 1.5mil, but likelier around 3.5mil, [2] including likely over 1mil in "re-education" concentration camps in the Western region of Xinjiang. [1] By comparison, while the USA's leg…

> The Communist Party of China wants to appear to have a unified will. To this end, they tend to allow whatever the Central Committee wants ...

This is the principle of democratic centralism[1]. A case could be made for conceptions of democracy other than the western one, but with the abolishment of term limits China is not making that case very well.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_centralism

Re: Huawei staff CVs reveal alleged links to Chinese intelligence agencies

#162

Post by dang » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 5:42 PM UTC

avereveard wrote: post #44

_8j50 wrote: post #12

Tons of former NSA persons work in the US private sector,especially within infosec.

[flagged]

Please don't post unsubstantive comments here, and please don't make lazy canned arguments. That breaks the site guidelines against shallow dismissals and name-calling.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20338307

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Huawei staff CVs reveal alleged links to Chinese intelligence agencies

#163

Post by hih0 » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 6:00 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #157

MiroF wrote: post #26

wild - this thread appears to be brigaded by pro CCP posters

This comment breaks the site guidelines. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow them when posting here? When people's views are divided, internet readers are a million times too quick to assume that the other side is brigading, shilling, spying, astroturfing, promoting secret agendas, fifth-columning, foreign-agenting, or (this seems to be the latest favorite word) disinge…

It's really not. If you spent 10 minutes on HN Algolia and looked through all threads that reference China in the title (e.g. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=china&sort=byPopularity&prefix...), and then visited the comment section of any thread that had no relation to USA (e.g. "WeChat is Watching: Living in China with the app that knows everything about me", "Report on forced organ harvesting in China", etc.) then you'll always find Chinese nationalists/shills resorting to US whataboutism.. You can try to do the same with any other country, and you won't see this trend.

It's also very common for threads that are negative towards China to quickly disappear from the frontpage for no reason despite just recently appearing, or even being at the first position. An example from a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20336543. I really don't understand how you can deny this.

Re: Huawei staff CVs reveal alleged links to Chinese intelligence agencies

#164

Post by dang » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 6:03 PM UTC

hih0 wrote: post #163

dang wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment breaks the site guidelines. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow them when posting here? When people's views are divided, internet readers are a million times too quick to assume that the other side is brigading, shilling, spying, astroturfing, promoting secret agendas, fifth-columning, foreign-agenting, or (this seems to be the latest favorite word) disinge…

It's really not. If you spent 10 minutes on HN Algolia and looked through all threads that reference China in the title (e.g. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=china&sort=byPopularity&prefix... ), and then visited the comment section of any thread that had no relation to USA (e.g. "WeChat is Watching: Living in China with the app that knows everything about me", "Report on forced organ harvesting in China", etc.) then yo…

> you'll always find Chinese nationalists/shills resorting to US whataboutism

You've broken the site guidelines again with this. That's not cool. I'm not sure what to do besides repeat the explanation and links I just gave you.

> You can try to do the same with any other country, and you won't see this trend

Of course. That's the geopolitical battle of the moment. It was the same with Russia a year ago. All this shows is what controversy is hot right now.

> It's also very common for threads that are negative towards China to quickly disappear from the frontpage

Moderators routinely downweight hot controversies and political battles, as well as articles that repeat what has already been discussed recently. If we didn't, the front page would consist of nothing but that. Your mistake is in jumping to the conclusion that this has anything to do with our own political views or some secret bias about China. It does not. Our job is to protect HN from (a) mind-numbing repetition, and (b) earth-scorching flamewars. Why? Because those things kill intellectual curiosity, which is the point of this site. Everything we do as mods follows from that principle.

By the way, that last bit can be inverted to get a reliable test for moderator action on HN. If moderators do X, can you find a path from the principle of intellectual curiosity to X? If so, that's probably why we did it. If not, you can always ask us what the path is. We're happy to answer questions, but (again) as the guidelines say, it's better to send them to hn@ycombinator.com.

Re: Huawei staff CVs reveal alleged links to Chinese intelligence agencies

#165

Post by __sy__ » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 6:11 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #96

geofft wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I do. Here's a few reasons: - I genuinely think that the Huawei stories are by and large protectionist fearmongering and that Huawei products would win in a free and high-information (and high-correct-information, of course) market. I think better, cheaper products are good for the US. - If Huawei is actually using their products to spy, or there is even a belief of such, that incentivizes the use of end-to-end…

>that incentivizes the use of end-to-end secure protocols that don't trust routers That doesn't work for metadata. Also, confidentiality is only one aspect of security. You also want availability, which can't be assured with clever crypto.

this. I wish this comment was at the top of this thread. Saying that end-to-end encryption will somehow fix the Huawei threat is utter nonsense.

Re: Huawei staff CVs reveal alleged links to Chinese intelligence agencies

#166

Post by hih0 » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 7:23 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #164

hih0 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really not. If you spent 10 minutes on HN Algolia and looked through all threads that reference China in the title (e.g. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=china&sort=byPopularity&prefix... ), and then visited the comment section of any thread that had no relation to USA (e.g. "WeChat is Watching: Living in China with the app that knows everything about me", "Report on forced organ harvesting in China", etc.) then yo…

> you'll always find Chinese nationalists/shills resorting to US whataboutism You've broken the site guidelines again with this. That's not cool. I'm not sure what to do besides repeat the explanation and links I just gave you. > You can try to do the same with any other country, and you won't see this trend Of course. That's the geopolitical battle of the moment. It was the same with Russia a year ago. All this show…

Could you clarify one thing: if a thread has already reached the frontpage (and is in a position where it should only continue to gain popularity rather than disappear, e.g. 50 upvotes in 20 minutes), does mass flagging the thread have any influence on its score? Because from outside observations it surely seems like it does, especially when you take into consideration that I’ve on several occasions seen a thread get knocked out, only for a moderator to push the thread back to the frontpage again.

I would also argue that by allowing users to resort to US whataboutism then these comments break multiple rules by introducing flamewars and engaging in political battles.. which, in my opinion, result in you failing to prevent (a) mind-numbing repetition, and (b) earth-scorching flamewars.

I’m also very curious about the logic behind down-weighting this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20336543. In my opinion, it’s very high quality journalism, with two journalists risking their lives to give unprecedented access to a region that’s been technologically cut off from the rest of the world. I also believe it’s the first time we saw what China did to the children of the families that had been sent to the camps.

Re: Huawei staff CVs reveal alleged links to Chinese intelligence agencies

#167

Post by LoSboccacc » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 7:53 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #162

avereveard wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Please don't post unsubstantive comments here, and please don't make lazy canned arguments. That breaks the site guidelines against shallow dismissals and name-calling. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20338307 https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

hacker news, where pointing out people using literal propaganda tools to derail an argument is 'unsubstantive'

Re: Huawei staff CVs reveal alleged links to Chinese intelligence agencies

#168

Post by dang » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 8:43 PM UTC

LoSboccacc wrote: post #167

dang wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't post unsubstantive comments here, and please don't make lazy canned arguments. That breaks the site guidelines against shallow dismissals and name-calling. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20338307 https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

hacker news, where pointing out people using literal propaganda tools to derail an argument is 'unsubstantive'

There's no contradiction there. The comment was quite unsubstantive.

Re: Huawei staff CVs reveal alleged links to Chinese intelligence agencies

#169

Post by dang » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 8:46 PM UTC

hih0 wrote: post #166

dang wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you'll always find Chinese nationalists/shills resorting to US whataboutism You've broken the site guidelines again with this. That's not cool. I'm not sure what to do besides repeat the explanation and links I just gave you. > You can try to do the same with any other country, and you won't see this trend Of course. That's the geopolitical battle of the moment. It was the same with Russia a year ago. All this show…

Could you clarify one thing: if a thread has already reached the frontpage (and is in a position where it should only continue to gain popularity rather than disappear, e.g. 50 upvotes in 20 minutes), does mass flagging the thread have any influence on its score? Because from outside observations it surely seems like it does, especially when you take into consideration that I’ve on several occasions seen a thread get…

Normally I'm happy to answer questions like this. But when you repeat the very provocation that I just asked you twice to omit from your HN comments, my trust in your good faith diminishes.

It's unfortunately common for some users to question HN moderation as a way of challenging the mods to political or ideological duels. Our experience with that is that no matter how patiently one answers, every answer is met with a fresh flurry of litigious questions, because the purpose is not to learn but to fight. This is risky for us—it amounts to a DoS attack on the site, quickly exhausting our time and energy, stealing resources from other users and from work we might do to improve HN for everybody.

I'd be delighted to be wrong, but your comment seems to signal that you don't want to use HN as intended, which includes respecting the way it is currently moderated. So first I need a reason to believe that you actually do want that, and then I'll be happy to answer whatever you like.

Re: Huawei staff CVs reveal alleged links to Chinese intelligence agencies

#170

Post by AmericanChopper » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 9:56 PM UTC

pinkfoot wrote: post #137

AmericanChopper wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the context of national security, the keyword is actually “NSA”. Having US intel working in US infrastructure is not a threat to national security, having Chinese intel working in US infrastructure is.

Until the NSA is captured by a faction of the USA hostile to its values. Then it won't be so much fun. You're almost there.

Regardless of how hostile you think the NSA is towards the rights of the US people, it’s still not a national security problem. For that to be a national security problem, the NSA would have to be hostile towards the objectives of the US government.

In addition to that, if you think the US government is more hostile towards its citizenry than the Chinese government is, well... Also, if you’re relying on infrastructure that the government controls for your security, then the intentions of the NSA aren’t really your biggest problem.