"Yes, leaks can be part of a strategic move by politicians and it can be a source of exploitation by political operators but to equate all anonymous sourcing with propaganda is misleading."
AFAICT, the blog author never equated _all_ anonymous sourcing with propaganda. The blog post is not titled "The NYT is bogus"
Instead, the blog post discusses a specific story that relates to a specific "SIM farm"
It questions why _in this particular instance_, relating to a "SIM farm", the source needed to remain anonymous
But that is not the only reason the author thinks the SIM farm story is bogus/hype
Based on technical knowledge/experience, the author opines the "SIM farm" was set up for common criminal activity, not as a system purposefully designed to overload a cell tower
It is the later opinion, not the one about the NYT, that is interesting to me in terms of evaluating this "news" hence I am curious what similar experience the parent commenter may have, if any
After so many years of being exposed to it on HN and the developer blogs submitted to HN, I have become accustomed to dismissive tone and black-and-white, all-or-nothing, pick-a-side thinking from software developers, i.e., what the parent calls "absolutism", absence of "nuance", etc. Probably not a day goes by without some HN commenter trying to dismiss "mainstream media", making some nonsensical complaint about news reporting that they dislike
Silicon Valley is now intermediating the publication of these worthless opinions for profit: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and so on
But, like I suggested, if one reads the blog author's source code and discussions of programming and cryptography, then one might be more willing to tolerate some personal opinions about the NYT. Ideally, programmers would only comment online about programming, and not, for example, about journalism, but that's not what happens in reality
AFAICT, the blog author never equated _all_ anonymous sourcing with propaganda. The blog post is not titled "The NYT is bogus"
Instead, the blog post discusses a specific story that relates to a specific "SIM farm"
It questions why _in this particular instance_, relating to a "SIM farm", the source needed to remain anonymous
But that is not the only reason the author thinks the SIM farm story is bogus/hype
Based on technical knowledge/experience, the author opines the "SIM farm" was set up for common criminal activity, not as a system purposefully designed to overload a cell tower
It is the later opinion, not the one about the NYT, that is interesting to me in terms of evaluating this "news" hence I am curious what similar experience the parent commenter may have, if any
After so many years of being exposed to it on HN and the developer blogs submitted to HN, I have become accustomed to dismissive tone and black-and-white, all-or-nothing, pick-a-side thinking from software developers, i.e., what the parent calls "absolutism", absence of "nuance", etc. Probably not a day goes by without some HN commenter trying to dismiss "mainstream media", making some nonsensical complaint about news reporting that they dislike
Silicon Valley is now intermediating the publication of these worthless opinions for profit: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and so on
But, like I suggested, if one reads the blog author's source code and discussions of programming and cryptography, then one might be more willing to tolerate some personal opinions about the NYT. Ideally, programmers would only comment online about programming, and not, for example, about journalism, but that's not what happens in reality