On: Backdoor in upstream xz/liblzma leading to SSH server compromise

[Dylan16807]

It's an interesting story, but I still don't know what you wanted as an answer to "What about".

[2OEH8eoCRo0 → Dylan16807]

They were responding to:

> It is naive to think that US intelligence agencies will act in the best interest of US citizens or companies.

With an example of them doing exactly that.

[Dylan16807 → 2OEH8eoCRo0]

This is addressed very directly by the second paragraph of my first comment. Please adjust your response to take that into account.

[fragmede → Dylan16807]

why are you so fight-y? do you have to be right, or have the last word? what is it?

[Dylan16807 → fragmede]

I'm perfectly willing to have an actual discussion, but someone coming along to ignore what I said is kind of annoying.

Is there something more productive that I could have replied with? (I know I could have been less snippy, but I think being snippy is fair there.)

[fragmede → Dylan16807]

No I think that's it. "What about it?" kinda set me off, and then "if you're confused by the wording" was unnecessarily condescending.

You coulda just pointed out that just because they did right in the case of DSA, doesn't mean we should actually ever trust them, which I would agree is the correct stance.

Mostly I think that story is neat and wanted people to know about it, so I asked a question as a performative writing technique.

[Dylan16807 → fragmede]

"What about it?" is a very real question that I still want to know the answer to. What did you want as a response when you asked that?

"If you're confused by the wording" was definitely condescending, but I think interpreting guinea-unicorn's post that way doesn't make sense. Even in your reply you didn't say you think it's the right interpretation, just that someone might believe the NSA could "only be up to evil". That followup gives the impression you were giving an FYI for readers. Which is nice to do, but then the "what about" doesn't fit.

So all of that is to say the words "what about" felt like you were deciding to read their post in an unfair way.

I'm happy to listen to an alternate explanation! But you ignored my request for why you said that, and I'm honestly kind of confused as to why that's what set you off.

So overall I think I think my first post can come across as fighty but I don't think the followups should suggest I'm making things fighty. I think my response to 2OEH8eoCRo0 was fine given the way they were ignoring half of the four sentences I had typed.