Oh, great, it's those jokers from the Russian Reich again.

<sarcasm> Because nothing says "valid political concerns", like a cyber attack on a foreign government. </sarcasm>

I don't see how pissing off your trading partners is helping the Putin regime and its apologists. This is what got them in this mess to begin with. I suspect we're dealing with a regime that refuses to learn the lessons of history and thus more sanctions and isolation are justified.

One of the worst things about dictatorships is that the leaders start making very irrational decisions, just because you "embarrass" them or so they "don't look weak" or whatever. They take it personal.

In a (real) democracy that's usually much harder to do, since there are many more decision makers who have to act on something, and even if there are a few emotional ones, the rest can keep cool heads and restrict them and make decisions for the long term future of the country.

There's nothing in the least irrational about their decisions of this nature. They're trying to avoid, for example, a preference cascade that could take them from being at the top of the world to in front of a firing squad in as little as 4 days: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceau%C8%99escu%27s_final_speec...

Whatever makes you think most of them give a sh*t about "the long term future of the country"?

Hitler, strangely enough, actually did ... just very very poorly.... That's actually something he had in common with what I might call some of the "first generation revolutionary dictators", like Lenin (New Economic Policy) and Mao (where country != the people, who he believed to be very expendable in part because there were so many). But the 2nd generation, such as Stalin, or those who didn't actually do the revolution thing, like Ceaușescu ... I can't think of any examples off the top of my head.

>make decisions for the long term future of the country.

Or from a more Machiavellian perspective, they know their position is ultimately a temp job. Obama will be gone soon, but Putin will stay. Obama has no incentive to build up some massive cult of personality like dictators do. Its unneeded. Dictators, on the other hand, rule by the fist and part of that fist is building some asinine strongman personality for the borscht eaters who buy into that crap.

Exactly, it is insane, how personal some people in the ex-USSR perceive some things. The way Russian society went absolutely bonkers over the Pussy Riot case is one example. The reaction to protests and the subsequent revolution in Ukraine is another.

I agree, it is mind boggling.

From personal experience: I've talked to people I know from Russia, who are supportive of the current regime. What either ends the conversation or gets misdirected in nanoseconds is the question "What's in it for you?" when discussing the gov't decisions. For example, even without the sanctions, the Crimea annexation would cost the Russian taxpayer an insane amount, but as far as I could tell people supporting the decision tend to forget that fact.

And Germans have learnt the hard way that an autocratic non democatic govenment by a cluadillo nevver ends well.

I see this on the front page of HN, and nothing about the terrorist attacks in France (which happened more than 24 f* hours ago), and I am sad.

Granted, these events have nothing to do with tech, but I'm amazed that nobody here is willing to show their support for freedom of speech and democracy.

I am sad that absolutely no one upvoted this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8856502

There is no need to post about that event here. You can rest assured that almost every user will be exposed to it in other sources and has a chance to publish condolences there.

"Nobody here is willing to show their support for freedom of speech and democracy" is a fallacy. If you know HN, you can see a lot of discussion of these topics, especially when they clash with technology or if technological aspects are touched.

Yes, what happened is horrible. But this does not mean that every site everywhere has to participate in the aftermath. There are many events every day that "should" have public awareness, but I feel we should also have the right and opportunity to stay in focused, filtered sub-communities. HN is about "hacker stuff" foremost, not politics, religion or current affairs.

Current news, anything CNN reports 24/7, generally get flagged by users (like me) because it's off-topic.

I'm honestly slightly annoyed by that pseudo-intellectual, opaque use of the super-downvote "flagging". HN regularily votes boring CSS hacks and fleeting technology topics to the top and hastily flags submissions about feminism, politics and AI, instead of trying to turn them into interesting discussions. There is also a strange aversion against any kind of humor, which does not really suit what hackers stand for either. The reason for this is, of course, to prevent trolling, flame wars and memes, but it seems HN is often overly strict in that regard.

Have you been paying any attention to HN for the past three years? Plenty of articles about feminism, politics, and AI make it to the top on a fairly irregular basis, but they still make it to the top.

And who are you to make a point about "what hackers stand for"?

Yes, I have been here for some years, I know plenty of hackers and many of them are pretty humorous too. I think the HN site guidelines capture the things hackers are interested in quite well: "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity". Though there should probably be an appendix to match the current state of HN: "… but is not controversial". However, I think especially the controversial things are intellectually curious, for example when Musk and Hawking warn against AI and when three female CS students try to raise awareness for gender issues.

I think HN is trapped: On the one hand flagging is necessary to mitigate the constant influx of people who write poor comments which might scare people away, on the other hand it often chokes off interesting topics. What's left is a lot of boring and fleeting stuff, which eventually scares people away too. Fixing this situation is difficult, but maybe it would be a good start to stop downvoting contrary opinions, digressing and humorous comments, and to stop hastily judge other people. What's wrong for example with someone who is concerned that there is not enough awareness for free speech and democracy on HN? If that is his or her perception, why does it deserve a downvote?

I've never seen a compiler throw a compilation error due to a user's genitalia nor self-identification. Can you link me to which compilers are doing that?

There's nothing at your link. Also, this was #1 for quite a while yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8851832

I saw a post about it, shortly after it happened, and upvoted it, but it was deleted.