DOGE member previously fired by cybersecurity firm for leaking company secrets

Post by dang » Sun, Feb 09, 2025, 9:20 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #67

dang wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You know perfectly well" is a way of accusing another person of being disingenuous and this is a step into personal attack. We don't know what others know—that would require being a mind-reader—and it's against the site guidelines to be aggressive about it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

We have a good idea because other people have comment histories and have demonstrated their own linguistic analytical skills on many occasions.

Post by itronitron » Mon, Feb 10, 2025, 3:58 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #70

itronitron wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> it's not enough to demand that we unflag more stories about a specific $Topic that some users feel strongly about. That argument doesn't work because there is always such a $Topic going on. Your line of reasoning doesn't make any sense. Flagging the story hides valuable information, and if the topic is always going on then there is clearly interest in the community.

If my point didn't make sense, it may be because I compressed it too much. Here's some background information followed by a decompressed version of that specific point. The optimal HN front page is not one consisting of stories that the strongest-feeling subsets of users feel strongest about. That would optimize for indignation and sensationalism—definitely incompatible with HN's mandate. The tug-of-war between upvot…

Post by dang » Mon, Feb 10, 2025, 9:08 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #74

dang wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe that's reliable, but more importantly, you seem to be denying the emotional thrust of what you wrote. "You know perfectly well [etc.]" is an aggressive trope to begin with, and you followed it with other similar thrusts ("Stop trying to", "which is extremely obvious"). Your comment would have been just fine if it started at the "Many posts are being [etc.]"

Weird you are able to characterize 'you know perfectly well' as an aggressive trope without having any special insight into my mental state, but when I characterize something someone else wrote, you want to be all philosophical and say that we can't make any inferences about other people. My original comment expressed skepticism about the idea that an expressive remark should be interpreted as a formal assertion of f…