ascv
This kind of assumption is naive (no offense) and reminds me of the denialism regarding Russian disinformation. You do not need to "infiltrate" the site with "agents". It's fairly easy to write a script checking the front page for mentions of China and manually checking the thread to possibly respond with a comment. Before dismissing concerns like this as conspiratorial or silly, you should do some research on the topic:
[1] https://gking.harvard.edu/files/gking/files/50c.pdf?m=146479...
[2] https://www.info-res.org/post/revealed-coordinated-attempt-t...
[3] https://www.techdirt.com/2021/12/15/how-china-uses-western-i...
[4] https://www.state.gov/prc-efforts-to-manipulate-global-publi...
[5] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/05/dozens-of-fake-news-websites...
[6] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/28/china-m...
[7] https://www.lawfareblog.com/understanding-pro-china-propagan...
[8] https://mediamanipulation.org/case-studies/astroturfing-how-...
> the general implication here on HN is that China is the current Big Bad and everything they do is uniquely bad
The CCP is hostile to many Western values (e.g. free speech) and they are a primary geopolitical antagonist to the U.S. It's not unreasonable for a mostly U.S. user base to see the worst in CCP behavior or be biased against the CCP.
It seems like my comment was just an entry point for you to shit on gc which, ironically, I mostly agree with in this context.
They could have tried 1 other version (not 4) and picked either the latest (1.13) or the version that contains the GC improvements (1.12) to test. Usually when you are looking to upgrade something you skim the release notes so testing 1.12 or 1.13 is obvious especially when 1.12 seems to specifically address their performance concern.
If upgrading something avoids a service re-write that is usually the way to go unless you were looking for an excuse to re-write the service in the first place which may have been the case.
edit:
It turns out they did exactly what my comment stated: they tested the latest version (1.10). It's just that this article was published recently but the events happened quite a while back.
My favorite is when you apply somewhere and receive no response. Then several months later, you're contacted by a recruiter from the company at which point you've long past moved on with an offer from somewhere else.
edit: to answer your question, I don't know. You might find this interesting though: