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Hacker News Disease

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21–30 of 41 posts

Re: Hacker News Disease

#21

So I did a little digging. This post is stolen? Word for word? lol Original article by user matmaroon in 2009: https://web.archive.org/web/20100824103317/http://mattmaroon... Spurred by their own comment in the original thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=586154 And first posted to hn by matmaroon also in 2009: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=588752 Sort of unrelated to the digging - the comments in the…

I was a court watcher then, too. Not much has changed wrt the public's understanding of law and legal proceedings than I can tell. The forums are still just as full of breathless techies extolling how they wish the law worked rather than observing what actually happens.

Re: Hacker News Disease

#22
What, so people are commenting on things they don't have a degree in? Cry me a river. Most of the Hacker News crowd doesn't have a CS degree, and came to programming precisely because intelligence transfers between skills. The idea that we can't do research and accidentally become vastly knowledgeable in a multitude of subjects is just absurd. You run into people every day on HN who know a lot despite lack of training.

Re: Hacker News Disease

#23

So I did a little digging. This post is stolen? Word for word? lol Original article by user matmaroon in 2009: https://web.archive.org/web/20100824103317/http://mattmaroon... Spurred by their own comment in the original thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=586154 And first posted to hn by matmaroon also in 2009: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=588752 Sort of unrelated to the digging - the comments in the…

[deleted]

Re: Hacker News Disease

#24

So I did a little digging. This post is stolen? Word for word? lol Original article by user matmaroon in 2009: https://web.archive.org/web/20100824103317/http://mattmaroon... Spurred by their own comment in the original thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=586154 And first posted to hn by matmaroon also in 2009: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=588752 Sort of unrelated to the digging - the comments in the…

I was a court watcher then, too. Not much has changed wrt the public's understanding of law and legal proceedings than I can tell. The forums are still just as full of breathless techies extolling how they wish the law worked rather than observing what actually happens.

This is a non-sequitur. I can "extoll how I wish the law worked" all day, and that says nothing about observing what actually happens.

Attacking "breathless techies" for discussing how they would like something to be, because observed outcomes are not this way, makes no sense what-so-ever.

Re: Hacker News Disease

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a court watcher then, too. Not much has changed wrt the public's understanding of law and legal proceedings than I can tell. The forums are still just as full of breathless techies extolling how they wish the law worked rather than observing what actually happens.

This is a non-sequitur. I can "extoll how I wish the law worked" all day, and that says nothing about observing what actually happens. Attacking "breathless techies" for discussing how they would like something to be, because observed outcomes are not this way, makes no sense what-so-ever.

You can sit around on HN all day and say whatever you want. I think that was sorta the topic of the article.

Re: Hacker News Disease

#26
post #11
post #8

Such a smart person who can "see it all" does not know that lawyers are paid by the hour so they have a pervasive incentive to take any case (even incluing lost ones) and milk those cases for as many hours as possible, since this earns them more money? Rest is "old man angry at the clouds" material.

Do you think the people hiring these companies aren't aware of that?

Yes.

I've seen it first hand in other industry. (some) Lawyers are always willing to litigate since this is their job. They dont care if you will win or lose, they just want your money. Obviously the "good lawyer" should advice you when not to litigate, but since cases take years, managers switch jobs (exactly as described in the article) and some bullshit excuses can be made - nobody really checked their success ratio. In fact, is there a study in effectiveness of those lawsuits? They probably earned some money due to chilling factor, but was it higher than cost of litigation? Probably yes as well, but the author barely even touches this subject.

The situation is often even more pervasive in IT projects - where I have seen multiple cases of consultants paid by the hour, what translated to zero incentive to actually ever finish anything. They wont kill the golden goose that lays them golden eggs. If I didnt know the decision makers (who have MBAs - so supposedly not random people), I would suspect collusion - getting kickbacks from the consultants to keep them on (who probably spend their days doing side projects for other customers). But no, it was sheer incompetence.

There are lots of people who dont care if their job makes sense or not - they will litigate/write code/do whatever as long as you pay them. They are supposed to advise you when their services are not needed, but then it might mean that they lose jobs / money, so they dont have any incentives for that.

Sadly I guess the theme of this submission is that "hacker news is stupid", so if anyone points out a flaw in the article, they will get downvoted to oblivion. Because the author is much smarter than us and obviously their article is flawless.

Also companies dont waste millions on fruitless projects /s Most companies dont even make any retrospectives into their projects, probably because so many fail.

Re: Hacker News Disease

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a non-sequitur. I can "extoll how I wish the law worked" all day, and that says nothing about observing what actually happens. Attacking "breathless techies" for discussing how they would like something to be, because observed outcomes are not this way, makes no sense what-so-ever.

You can sit around on HN all day and say whatever you want. I think that was sorta the topic of the article.

The topic of the article was ragging on internet commentors in tech forums for not being subject matter experts in every topic they discuss. It's one of the worst takes I've read in a while to be honest.

As long as everyone is being reasonably descriptive, it's perfectly fine for anybody to discuss anything.

For example, "ip law is bullshit because of {my_differing_moral_base_presumption}" is an absolutely fine thing to say, and argue. You're not being prescriptive and nobody is ill-effected, or directed to be ill-effected, by your opinions stemming from your differing moral base.

Furthermore, claims about what you think the outcome of something might be - given your limited knowledge - are perfectly fine too. For example, "I think a reasonable court would find that the claim was bullshit because it's a 30 second segment of the song mixed over some anime, out of a 50 minute talk. It's clear the intent wasn't to republish the work for profit."

There's absolutely no problem with this from the perspective of healthy conversation. You're taking a good faith approach to the discussion and saying what you think might happen given your knowledge. You may ultimately be _wrong_ but you were never saying you were _more right_ than subject matter experts anyway.

Basically the only times it's a good idea to dump on people is when someone ignorant is being prescriptive. "When you're licensing your work you should add {some_clause} because of {bad_understanding_of_law}". That's when it's harmful. Or, if you're acting in plain old bad faith.

So if the article was complaining about this kind of harmful prescriptive talk, I'd agree, but that isn't at all what I'm getting from it.

Re: Hacker News Disease

#28
post #5

> as I mentioned before, the attorneys in question are not retarded. please don't use terminology like 'retarded' in your article, we should be moving away from this as a whole

But it's the favorite go-to term for STEMlords who seek to display their merit by contrast!

it's funny because i think the edgy tech subculture that uses the term really doesn't realize how absurdly offensive it sounds to normal people. it's one of those things that can instantly alienate you, or mark you as "that guy" with zero social understanding

Re: Hacker News Disease

#29
I have some pretty significant criticisms (and agreements) with this but do not think it should be flagged. This is on topic. People, please consider writing a well thought out comment if you disagree rather than just smashing a `flag' button.

Re: Hacker News Disease

#30

I have some pretty significant criticisms (and agreements) with this but do not think it should be flagged. This is on topic. People, please consider writing a well thought out comment if you disagree rather than just smashing a `flag' button.

I think the flagging is for potential stealing of someone else's article. The link should be changed.
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