logoalt Hacker News

temoiu3yesterday at 8:50 PM2 repliesview on HN

Think the above poster is full of bologna? It's less painful for everyone involved, and the readers, to just say that and get that out of the way rather than trying to surgically draw it out over half a dozen comments. I see you do this often enough that I think you must get some pleasure out of making people squirm. We know you're smart already!


Replies

tptacekyesterday at 10:18 PM

I think their argument is verkakte but I literally don't know what they're talking about or who the NSA stooge they're referring to is, and it's not so much that I want to make them squirm so much as that I want to draw the full argument out.

I think your complaint isn't with me, but with people who hedge when confronted with direct questions. I think if you look at the thread, you'll see I wasn't exactly playing cards close to my chest.

timschmidtyesterday at 10:33 PM

I don't make a habit of googling things for people when they could do it just as quickly themselves. There is only one paper proposing the OpenSSL heartbeat feature. So I have not been unclear, nor can there be any confusion about which it is. Perhaps we'll learn someday what tptacek expects to find or not to find in it, but he'll have to spend 30 seconds with Google. As I did.

Informing one's self is a pretty low bar for having a productive conversation. When one party can't be arsed to take the initiative to do so, that usually signals the end of useful interaction.

A comment like "I googled and found this paper... it says X... that means Y to me." would feel much less like someone just looking for an argument, because it involves effort and stating a position.

If he has a point, he's free to make it. Everything he needs is at his fingertips, and there's nothing I could do to stop him, nor would I want to. I asked for a point first thing. All I've gotten in response is combative rhetoric which is neither interesting nor informative.

show 1 reply