Cute that another (days+ old) comment of mine was down-modded and flagged at the exact same time you wrote this. You know, the one that stated literal facts and nothing else.
I legitimately read the comment twice and couldn't parse it when I wrote this. I wasn't trying to be rude, I genuinely didn't understand. But pretty sure you don't care. But sure, point taken.
I didn't touch any "days+ old" comments. I did flag another comment of yours from about the same time as the one I replied to, but several other community members had already downvoted and flagged it, so I'm not taking any unilateral action here. I'm only seeing your comments because so many community members are flagging them.
> You know, the one that stated literal facts and nothing else
I don't know what comment you're referring to, but it's common for people to claim that they were "just stating facts", whilst sidestepping the fact that the choice of "facts", the context in which they are invoked and the words used to state them can very easily be inflammatory.
> I wasn't trying to be rude, I genuinely didn't understand
It's common for people to underestimate how harshly their words come across by the time they hit the page for others to read. We've had to warn you before, and you're still frequently making comments that are breaking the guidelines and being flagged by many fellow community members. You need to try harder to keep within the guidelines if you want to participate here. This is only a place where people want to participate because others make the effort to keep the standards up. We need to see you making an effort to be one of the ones to raise the standards, rather than repeatedly dragging them down.
> But pretty sure you don't care
My job is to uphold the guidelines and do what I can to keep this place from burning to the ground. That's all I care about when I'm posting comments like these.
I understood them perfectly so I'm not sure what you're talking about. It's a thoughtful high-level overview about the difference between authoritative factual communication and vibes-based speculation. I made a similar point in a thread yesterday about the various disorganized allegations of "fraud" attributed to MrBeast and how they rarely cohere into a clearly articulated harm.
I think scatterbrained, vibes based almost-theories that vaguely imitate real arguments but don't actually have the logical structure, are unfortunately common and important to be able to recognize. This article gets a lot of its rhetorical momentum from simply declaring it's fake and putting "experts" in scare quotes over and over. It claims the article is "bogus" while agreeing that the sim cards are real, were really found, really can crash cell towers, and can hide identities. It also corrects things that no one said (neither the tweet nor the NYT article they link to refer to the cache of sim cards as "phones" yet the substack corrects this phrasing).
The strongest argument makes is about the difference between espionage and cell tower crashing and the achievability of this by non state actors (it would cost "only" $1MM for anyone to do this), but a difference in interpretation is a far cry from the article actually being bogus. And the vagueposting about how quoting "high level experts" proves that the story is fake is so ridiculous I don't even know what to say. Sure, the NYT have preferred sources who probably push preferred narratives, but if you think that's proof of anything you don't know the difference between vibes and arguments.
So I completely understand GPs point and wish more comments were reacting in the same way.
When Bobby tries to convince his friend Jimmy that Charlie is lying, you shouldn't trust him if he says that "I know that Charlie is lying because apples are green".
> One of the reasons we know this story is bogus is because of the New York Times story which cites anonymous officials, “speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation”. That’s not a thing, that’s not a valid reason to grant anonymity under normal journalistic principles.
>That’s not a thing, that’s not a valid reason to grant anonymity under normal journalistic principles.
I'm not even sure the apple is green! If you search `site:nytimes.com “anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation"` you'll see that this news outlet has done this multiple times in the past.
I suppose "valid" and "normal" are giving the author a bunch of wiggle room here, but he never backs this claim up.
Normal convention is that an agency will make no comment about any ongoing investigation, because making public comment prior to bringing charges could be prejudicial to the case.
If, for whatever reason, the agency feels like it's not risking its own case and wants to blow its trumpet... it really doesn't matter what the names of the spokespeople for the agency are. They don't need to speak anonymously, as they won't get in trouble with anyone at the agency for saying what the agency told them to say to the press. The NYT could just say "officials said" and not name them.
It is not like there is a whistleblower inside the Secret Service with scuttlebutt to dish, and the NYT need to protect the identity of Deep Throat 2.0... and all they had to say was the spam operation itself didn't pose any threat to the UN conference.
I think what the blog author's arguing is that this phrase is unnecessary detail that just adds intrigue to sell a rather mundane story.
I don't know about US laws, but in most countries agencies/PMs/experts or whoever has access and is involved in the investigation, cannot make a comment if the investigation is ongoing.
Breaching of this, especially as you're making a case, in most cases at best would invalidate the whole case + bring disciplinary actions upon the individual(s) that committed the breach.
Judging by the other comments, looks similar for the US too.
If you're ever partecipated as expert in any investigation or news article you'd know you'd get usually biased hypothesis, if otherwise it meant you wouldn't have the same impact for the news story. Or if you've ever heard of the Gell-Mann amnesia effect.
Please don't comment like this on HN. These guidelines in particular, ask us to avoid commenting like this:
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer...
Please don't post shallow dismissals...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Cute that another (days+ old) comment of mine was down-modded and flagged at the exact same time you wrote this. You know, the one that stated literal facts and nothing else.
I legitimately read the comment twice and couldn't parse it when I wrote this. I wasn't trying to be rude, I genuinely didn't understand. But pretty sure you don't care. But sure, point taken.
I didn't touch any "days+ old" comments. I did flag another comment of yours from about the same time as the one I replied to, but several other community members had already downvoted and flagged it, so I'm not taking any unilateral action here. I'm only seeing your comments because so many community members are flagging them.
> You know, the one that stated literal facts and nothing else
I don't know what comment you're referring to, but it's common for people to claim that they were "just stating facts", whilst sidestepping the fact that the choice of "facts", the context in which they are invoked and the words used to state them can very easily be inflammatory.
> I wasn't trying to be rude, I genuinely didn't understand
It's common for people to underestimate how harshly their words come across by the time they hit the page for others to read. We've had to warn you before, and you're still frequently making comments that are breaking the guidelines and being flagged by many fellow community members. You need to try harder to keep within the guidelines if you want to participate here. This is only a place where people want to participate because others make the effort to keep the standards up. We need to see you making an effort to be one of the ones to raise the standards, rather than repeatedly dragging them down.
> But pretty sure you don't care
My job is to uphold the guidelines and do what I can to keep this place from burning to the ground. That's all I care about when I'm posting comments like these.
> But sure, point taken
I hope so!
I understood them perfectly so I'm not sure what you're talking about. It's a thoughtful high-level overview about the difference between authoritative factual communication and vibes-based speculation. I made a similar point in a thread yesterday about the various disorganized allegations of "fraud" attributed to MrBeast and how they rarely cohere into a clearly articulated harm.
I think scatterbrained, vibes based almost-theories that vaguely imitate real arguments but don't actually have the logical structure, are unfortunately common and important to be able to recognize. This article gets a lot of its rhetorical momentum from simply declaring it's fake and putting "experts" in scare quotes over and over. It claims the article is "bogus" while agreeing that the sim cards are real, were really found, really can crash cell towers, and can hide identities. It also corrects things that no one said (neither the tweet nor the NYT article they link to refer to the cache of sim cards as "phones" yet the substack corrects this phrasing).
The strongest argument makes is about the difference between espionage and cell tower crashing and the achievability of this by non state actors (it would cost "only" $1MM for anyone to do this), but a difference in interpretation is a far cry from the article actually being bogus. And the vagueposting about how quoting "high level experts" proves that the story is fake is so ridiculous I don't even know what to say. Sure, the NYT have preferred sources who probably push preferred narratives, but if you think that's proof of anything you don't know the difference between vibes and arguments.
So I completely understand GPs point and wish more comments were reacting in the same way.
...more like an ELI5? Sure.
When Bobby tries to convince his friend Jimmy that Charlie is lying, you shouldn't trust him if he says that "I know that Charlie is lying because apples are green".
> One of the reasons we know this story is bogus is because of the New York Times story which cites anonymous officials, “speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation”. That’s not a thing, that’s not a valid reason to grant anonymity under normal journalistic principles.
>That’s not a thing, that’s not a valid reason to grant anonymity under normal journalistic principles.
I'm not even sure the apple is green! If you search `site:nytimes.com “anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation"` you'll see that this news outlet has done this multiple times in the past.
I suppose "valid" and "normal" are giving the author a bunch of wiggle room here, but he never backs this claim up.
Normal convention is that an agency will make no comment about any ongoing investigation, because making public comment prior to bringing charges could be prejudicial to the case.
If, for whatever reason, the agency feels like it's not risking its own case and wants to blow its trumpet... it really doesn't matter what the names of the spokespeople for the agency are. They don't need to speak anonymously, as they won't get in trouble with anyone at the agency for saying what the agency told them to say to the press. The NYT could just say "officials said" and not name them.
It is not like there is a whistleblower inside the Secret Service with scuttlebutt to dish, and the NYT need to protect the identity of Deep Throat 2.0... and all they had to say was the spam operation itself didn't pose any threat to the UN conference.
I think what the blog author's arguing is that this phrase is unnecessary detail that just adds intrigue to sell a rather mundane story.
I don't know about US laws, but in most countries agencies/PMs/experts or whoever has access and is involved in the investigation, cannot make a comment if the investigation is ongoing.
Breaching of this, especially as you're making a case, in most cases at best would invalidate the whole case + bring disciplinary actions upon the individual(s) that committed the breach.
Judging by the other comments, looks similar for the US too.
If you're ever partecipated as expert in any investigation or news article you'd know you'd get usually biased hypothesis, if otherwise it meant you wouldn't have the same impact for the news story. Or if you've ever heard of the Gell-Mann amnesia effect.