Ah man, just tried to submit this with the title "Discord cuts ties with Peter Thiel-backed SaaS once code tied to US spying found" which is slightly better I think, and fits exactly within 80 characters :)
I think the whole "after its code was found tied to U.S. surveillance efforts" part is new and wasn't known before, so feels important to have in the title too. Although most of us probably assumed it was true before too.
> once code tied to US spying found
New and also should be the big story.
"Butcher cuts ties with supplier when steaks found to be human meat" shouldnt be a story about changing suppliers ...
You might email @dang and request a title change. hn@ycombinator.com is the email address.
That would have been a better title, I agree.
Is this actually a thing that is true?
I don't think HN titles are judged by "is it true?" but rather how close the submission title is to the original title and otherwise represents the content of the submission.
> "after its code was found tied to U.S. surveillance efforts" part is new ... Although most of us probably assumed it was true before too.
This makes me feel VERY old.
641A: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
Retroactive telecom immunity: https://www.eff.org/press/archives/2008/10/17
The government spying on what you do has been old news for 20 years. Snowden should not have been a shocking revelation to any one but it was, and that was 13 years ago.
Its less of a "assumed it was true" and more of a "oh look another one, not shocking".
> The government spying on what you do has been old news for 20 years.
The methodology has evolved dramatically in those 20 years, what we've seen from Snowden is almost certainly obsolete in the light of new surveillance tactics. Even as a pessimist myself, I'm still routinely shocked by the lengths that American tech has been bugged.
Salt Typhoon is really the icing on this cake; "lawful" intercept turned against the state that implemented it. There are more twists left in this story no matter how jaded you might feel.