Wikileaks has really misled the public - <AUTHOR> http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/39215 <comment><USER2> The following comment was posted by Deviltry on Reddit.

"That's the problem with the war in Iraq... It's insurgency based. They use vans to come up and pick up the bodies, but truth be told they don't care about the bodies, they come to get the weapons/rpg's.

I know it's popular to hate America and our military action on reddit, but this particular engagement is necessary. Anyone who's ever spent time on the ground in country will tell you the same. If you are going to fight an insurgency war, you have to engage these individuals. We have made it VERY well known throughout the country that they cannot even make it look like they are going for weapons. The problem with this situation is one i've seen personally on multiple occasions... The Van pulls up, takes the bodies of the men, leaves any children/women, and takes all the weapons. Then they take pictures, and blast them across the airwaves saying Americans murdered unarmed women/children.

Queue the downvotes, but i speak from experience. If you sent us over there to operate under the absolute "good guy" mantra that you all expect, we'd end up with 100x more losses than we already have... And the insurgents would know they could get away with doing virtually anything. Honestly, the only way to end this is to get the government to get us out of that country."

[http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/bmooi/wikileaks_video_j...](http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/bmooi/wikileaks_video_just_got_released_its_titled/c0nitc0)

<comment><USER3> I watched both the short and long versions a couple of times, and there I see no justification for the claim that the truck or those in it were doing anything but trying to move the wounded man to safety. Considering (1) there were children in the front seat visible about as clearly as the weapons the men were supposedly carrying and (2) the dialogue on the radio, it seems clear that the gunman was a little too eager to engage without really considering the lethal gravity of his actions.

While on one hand, it may very well be that troops are more effective (by some simple measure) when they fire first and ask questions later, on the other, if those apache gunmen were in the shoes of the marines on the ground who have to carry wounded kids out of the rubble, or worry about those same orphans throwing grenades into their humvee windows a week later, maybe they'd be as careful looking for children as they are for RPG's.

<comment><USER2> I would guess that what made the van suspect was that it drove into the middle of a battle. Everyone within a couple of miles must have heard the 30mm High Explosive shells detonating.

<comment><USER4> > Everyone within a couple of miles must have heard the 30mm High Explosive > shells detonating.

The shooting has stopped by then. There was a long pause after the shooting and before the van arrived. Their fatal "mistake" was to assume Americans wouldn't shoot at a van that picked up an injured journalist to be taken to the hospital.

> would guess that what made the van suspect was that it drove into the middle > of a battle.

Just to clarify things. Americans here are the invaders that _created_ the battle (both on a micro and macro scale). The children in the van were just going to school and their father wanted to save a man's life. Shells exploding around them is just business as usual. That is their country, their backyard. They didn't want it, they didn't drive "into" it. It came _to them_ on their way to school.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow, the apologists are springing into action. Watch the video again. At the exact moment the correspondent is in the crosshairs of the camera and you see that he is carrying a small black bag you hear the crew saying "Yeah that's a weapon." and "Fucking prick". For God's sake, it's a guy sauntering down the middle of the road carrying a little bag and the crew is making out that they're tracking a dangerous insurgent. Then they start talking about another guy with a weapon and I would swear that the person they're looking at in the crosshairs is actually hobbing along with a crutch. Then the FireDogLake guy makes out that because the black van appears twice it is somehow ominous. He defends firing on the van because one crew member says that the person is the van is picking up weapons. Listen to the video. What he actually said is that there's a van in the area "possibly picking up weapons". Yeah, possibly doing anything. I agree that a video doesn't tell the whole story but so far the people defending the actions of the crew haven't come up with much.

<comment><USER6> There are weapons visible at various points in the video and an RPG was found at the scene, these people were not all unarmed. That the journalists were killed is tragic and may very well be due to mistakes or incompetence or even malice, but none of that is clear from this video.

What is clear is that the journalist and his driver were in the presence of armed Iraqis carrying AK-47s and RPGs at the wrong time and in the wrong place. It was common practice for Iraqi stringers for news agencies like Reuters to embed themselves with insurgents in the hope of being extremely close to the story and getting pictures they would not otherwise have been able to obtain, but it was a very risky thing to do. If soldiers have already seen the people around you carrying guns and RPGs, they're a whole lot more likely to misinterpret your camera lens as an RPG when it peeks around a corner.

There were also two Apaches at the scene, but it's not entirely clear which crew is making each comment on the radio and what they can see as we only have one viewport into this event, which comes from the gunner's sight of only one of the Apaches. It is entirely plausible that the other Apache crew _did_ clearly see weapons and that, outside the field of view of the camera we're looking at, they saw the black van picking up weapons. Further, each helicopter also has a separate sight for the pilot which can be slewed on its own axis and which we cannot see.

In short, the video lacks context and it's difficult to make a conclusive judgement without that context. We are given only one limited viewport into this event and expected to pronounce judgement on four guys who at once had a much broader and more detailed view of the situation but who also, unlike us, had to process that information in real-time, not from a video which could be rewound and played back. Whatever happened here, I'm not as ready to call it murder as WikiLeaks and some of the commenters here have been.

<comment><USER7> "There are weapons visible at various points in the video and an RPG was found at the scene, these people were not all unarmed."

The official military statement about the incident was as follows:

"The Apache crew fired because militants 'were endangering the stability of Iraq' and because they had positive identification that the militants 'had weapons and were using them against coalition and Iraqi security forces.'"

There aren't any coalition or Iraqi security forces in the area, and none are ever mentioned in the video. So while it's possible that an RPG was found at the scene, it's just as possible that the military was lying about both.

<comment><USER6> The second-to-last photograph [1] taken by Namir Noor-Eldeen shows an American Humvee and the radio calls make it clear that there is a ground force in the vicinity which was reporting a contact with the individuals on the ground, was able to see the individuals at various points in the action and was close enough that it took only 8 minutes for them to mount up and arrive on the scene. This group (apparently "Bushmaster element") appears to be the one which radios "Yeah, we had a guy shooting. And now he's behind the building" at 04:22.

Your assertion that there were no Iraqi or coalition ground forces in the area is not supported by the video.

[1] [http://duckbar.mirror.waffleimages.com/files/c7/c76f1e685afe...](http://duckbar.mirror.waffleimages.com/files/c7/c76f1e685afea0b6172abd701e69a42d890d2bd5.jpg)

<comment><USER8> They need to drive 8 minutes to get to the scene, when they are "near"? Even when halving the time for mounting and going by 20kmh they were 1km around 1.5km away. Near? What does "in the area mean"? Bagdad?

<comment><USER6> Merely halving the time for mounting and assuming a 20km/h travel speed without any stops (bearing in mind this is a combat zone) seems a bit arbitrary. In any case, the radio calls seem to affirm that the ground element was in visual range of the people before the gunships even opened fire and Namir's photo, if it was indeed taken at the scene as we assume, shows the ground force as being pretty close, perhaps no more than 100-300 m away.

<comment><USER8> If they were 100m away, why did it take them several minutes to arrive while the helos circled? Even when crouching (from my exp in the the army), looking for ambushes during house fighting you're faster going down a street than this.

<comment><USER6> Maybe they had soldiers spread out and it took a while to call them back and mount up? Maybe one of the vehicles had mechanical problems? Maybe they even decided to hold for a few minutes to wait and see if any more surprises would show up? We can't know.

Regardless, this discussion is now irrelevant, as it has been confirmed elsewhere that the photo I posted above was taken at this scene, presumably while Namir was peeking around the corner. That photo shows US troops no further than 200 m away, if I recall that lens's capabilities correctly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am not American; though I usually side with democratic countries as much as I can.

However, if you made a really big mistake and went to war with a country which posed no credible threat to you (at least in hindsight when this shooting took place) I'd imagine people would err on the side of caution when shooting somebody's family and loved ones.

At least in this part of the world, what is coming across is that your army does not care much about killing people - if they are not American or Western.

And to add some rhetoric, what gives America the moral right to talk about human rights when the Iraqi death toll exceeds well over one hundred thousand? -- What happened in Tiananmen is a mere _hundredth_ of what is happening in Iraq.

Killing ten Iraqis to save an American soldier is not justifiable, any which way you look at it.

<comment><USER10> _Killing ten Iraqis to save an American soldier is not justifiable, any which way you look at it._

As messed up as it may sound to you, I'd rather my friends make it home. As far as I'm concerned, the blood is on the hands of the people who started and continued the war; not the ones who have to actually fight it.

<comment><USER11> > the blood is on the hands of the people who started and continued the war

> not the ones who have to actually fight it.

The nazis probably said the same.

<comment><USER10> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwins_law>

I think it's laughable to try to draw a comparison between soldiers messing[0] up and causing collateral damage and the Holocaust.

[0] edit: unnecessarily foul language

<comment><USER11> > I think it's laughable to try to draw a comparison between soldiers fucking > up and causing collateral damage and the Holocaust.

That's not what you said. You said...

> the blood is on the hands of the people who started and continued the war > > not the ones who have to actually fight it.

I disagree with that statement. With the same argument, one can justify all war killings. Even the act of Nazis. We don't bring in Godwins law when discussing and comparing war and killings.

<comment><USER10> but there's a difference between being a German soldier and manning the death camp. No one takes issue with the German soldiers who invaded France -- they were doing their jobs. The problem is with the people who rounded up the innocent women and children, put them in trains, and then sent them off to die.

You can certainly make an argument that they're the same, but I think there's a pretty clear practical distinction between the two.

<comment><USER12> Is it really much comfort to say: well, at least we're not rounding them up into death camps?

I don't find people do much discriminating between different groups of Nazis. The infantry perpetuated violence and death just as much as the death-camp members. After all, what do you think they did to the newly-conquered populations those polite infantrymen rounded up?

There's also a difference between the world 100 years ago and today. We live in a more civilized, more peaceful time. The violence in Iraq is some of the broadest and most destructive of our day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> After I saw the first video, I did some googling around and reading about the rules of engagement during an insurgency. Under the Geneva Convention, clearly identified medical personnel treating combatants removed from combat are protected. However, if an armed combatant is attempting to help another combatant get to cover, they're both fair game. There's a grey area when it's not clear if a person helping a combatant to cover is a civilian or a combatant.

That's the first part. The second part is that the Army and other forces have made it very clear that attempting to take any weapons from the battlefield counts as engagement, and they will fire at anyone attempting to do so. Apparently this was a big problem during the start of the war - if they took out insurgents, their guns would often be grabbed and ran away with, and presumably used again later. So that's a clear situation right now - attempting to remove weapons from a battlefield will get you fired upon.

It's unclear who was in the van, and if they were attempting to take weapons, though.

<comment><USER14> Everyone picking up the bodies and from the van was clearly UNARMED. Unarmed non-combatants were picking up the body of an unarmed non-combatant who never held a weapon.

<comment><USER15> If I was running an insurgency in Iraq, I would keep a guy in the back of an unmarked van with an RPG and I would drive around pretending to pick up bodies. I think I'd probably get a lot of kills that way. I don't think it's fair to say the van was clearly unarmed, especially when you consider the fact that the van could have been called in to make a pickup by a group of people confirmed to have at least one RPG and at least one AK-47.

In the moment of the firefight it was unclear whether the van was armed or not. Was was clear to the soldiers was that the van responded very quickly to a group of wounded people who had several confirmed weapons among them. Also, as others have mentioned, the soldiers knew the insurgency has used similar tactics in the past to salvage weapons and ammo.

<comment><USER16> It doesn't surprise me they found an RPG on the ground after the chopper reported there was one.

I have it on good authority from people who were actually on the ground that soldiers regularly keep RPG's and AK-47's in the Humvees such that if they do kill an innocent civilian, they just place the AK-47 or RPG on or near the victim to make them look like an insurgent. I don't know if that's what happened in this particular instance, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was.

Edit: I guess I'm being down voted for hearsay? Well, I worked with a number of soldiers and have a few friends who are infantry. This _does_ happen, whether people want to accept it or not. Again, it could be that there was someone, or multiple people, were armed in this particular instance. I don't know. I haven't, to my knowledge, met anyone that was involved in this incident to ask. I have, however, talked to a number of people that were on the ground, that did have to take the lives of other people, and did have to cover things up when they made a mistake.

<comment><USER17> I hesitated before downvoting you; but I feel I have to because it's very easy (even with the edit) to make these claims online with little or no substance.

I feel if this was readily admitted to yourself it would have been admitted to others too and, by now, made it to the mainstream news. Where it would have been a massive, massive story.

I also feel all we have is your word and really that's not enough for such a huge claim!

Finally statements such as _whether people want to accept it or not_ sound a lot like "typical" internet style rhetoric used to attach credence to a story.

<comment><USER16> You're right, and I hesitated before even posting it.

There's a difference in what some people are willing to say to a friend and what people are willing to say to a reporter. Honestly, it's surprising to me that more things like this incident and other like it haven't made it to the mainstream media. Ask any soldier that was on the ground (especially around 2007), and they'll tell you that, maybe, 10% of what is going on in Iraq is actually being reported. There's a bunch of stuff that goes on that you will never hear about.

From what I can tell, most people that were over there would rather leave most of it behind them. I haven't met anyone that's come back better for it, and very few of them are willing to go into any detail about the incidents unless it's with someone they're extremely comfortable with. When they do open up, it seems to come with an understanding that it won't be shared, and if it is, no names or specifics will be brought up.

Even after leaving Iraq, these guys can still face penalties if it's found that they were covering things up. I'm not sure what, if anything, they'd be charged with, but most of them are still within the Statutes of Limitations of the UCMJ for Court Marshal, and there are worse punishments beyond that that have no Statutes of Limitations.

I trust the stories that were told to me because they came from multiple people that weren't connected save for being in the military and having been stationed in Iraq at some point in time. If my word isn't enough for you (and I don't blame you if it isn't) then feel free to pass it off as another random person on the internet repeating a possible fabrication.

<comment><USER17> I mulled over this last night and today; here's my current thinking.

If this is true it is more than a step beyond what we have seen here. In the video we see a tragically mistaken engagement (which I understand) and then a terrible, idiotic, but I feel not malicious, attack on unarmed civilians. Even the restriction of information released by the army, whilst something I don't agree with, is understandable.

However; finding a mistake on the ground then covering it up by planting weapons? That's fraud and a war crime. _It's morally and legally reprehensible_.

This is why I feel it is probably not true (or a one off you have heard about); if it is a prevalent thing then it surely would have been reported by now (I cannot believe there is not one person in the US army that would be morally outraged by this).

If it is true; it needs to be outed, stopped and prosecuted.

Of everything posted on this subject this idea is the one that sickens me the most :(

<comment><USER16> There's several issues at stake here. The first is that these guys are under extreme amounts of stress. The level of stress the average soldier faces in a war zone (and that's what it is) is unimaginable to pretty much anyone that hasn't been there. I've heard stories of some things these guys are faced with, and none of it is pretty. I've had to take a step back from some of it, and I didn't even experience it directly. When you get an RPG shot at you that bounces off the front of your Humvee and by some miracle, it doesn't go off, you don't walk away from that the same. Having to stab someone repeatedly in order to save your own life. Shooting at actual people. Not some representation of people, but actual living, breathing human beings, and seeing the carnage wrought by your bullets. It's hard to even comprehend.

Now, imagine these guys come back and are generally able to continue to carry on some sort of a normal life at home. There's a lot of training involved here, and part of it is that you were simply ordered to do it. The chain of command is a real force, something the average soldier respects enough to go into a situation that very well could end their life. They also fear it. It's a force that's almost worse than death. Would you want to admit mistakes, or would you feel better about simply covering them up? This hypothetical soldier is already hardened enough to take the life of another person without feeling intense amounts of guilt. What is covering up a mistake compared to that?

There's also an insane amount of camaraderie amongst soldiers. These guys are willing to go into the line of fire to get back a _piece_ of their buddy to send back home, because no soldier gets left behind. Would you risk your hide to get back part of your friend's dead body in order to have a proper burial? I don't know if I would, but that's a fairly ubiquitous feeling amongst soldiers. These guys will fight and die for their fellow soldiers, dead or alive. If you would already put your _life_ on the line for someone, why wouldn't you help them cover something up?

Finally, the perception of people (civilians or combatants) from the view of a soldier is horribly skewed from what it is at home. They aren't really humans when they're on the battlefield. They're targets. The guilt doesn't really hit until after these guys get home. When you're in the midst of it, you're worried about your own survival, and the survival of those you care about. They don't seem to be particularly worried about the collateral damage. If they make a few mistakes, oh well. It's better than not pulling the trigger and finding out they were actually the enemy.

I'm not saying it's okay. It's certainly deplorable behavior. I'm just saying it's understandable, from where I sit. If I were put in a similar situation, I'm not sure how I would react. No one does, but the only way to prevent is to simply not go to war.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Regardless, no one is allowed to be armed except for Iraqi police and Coalition forces. There is no such thing as an armed Iraqi escort for journalists"

Err.. no. Under Iraqi law, everyone was allowed to keep one gun at home. These guns were mostly AK-47s (because that was what was issued to the army). See <http://johnrlott.tripod.com/armediraqis.html> for example discussion of this.

I believe there was an attempt to change this law during 2007, but confiscation was not widely enforced and the law has since been changed back.

<comment><USER6> But as I understand it, by 2007 they were not permitted to take those guns out from their houses. This is why the US's rules of engagement pretty much stated that anybody in the street with a weapon who was not part of the Iraqi security services was fair game.

So the quoted comment may not have been entirely accurate with regards to Iraqis as a whole, but it was in fact accurate with regards to Iraqis carrying weapons in the street and the fact that there was no such thing as an armed Iraqi escort for journalists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Hammers home the point that the integrity of any journalism is contingent on editing, and context.

Yet still I'm glad for the leak - for the first time in months I heard more discussion and awareness that a war we're bankrolling is still raging instead of celebrity infididelity.

<comment><USER20> Re: your second point, here's a good example of what you mean: <http://i.imgur.com/NVih0.jpg>

(via @chrisloos)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> There's clearly something fishy about the video if only because we're obviously coming in half way through whatever happened. But the real problem isn't the behavior of the soldiers as much as it's the military not making it's case before this video broke. The author here is raising some valid points but they're all speculation because the military hasn't released anything officially.

Military tribunals should be public record (like civilian trials) and the public that funds the military should be allowed to see what's going on over there and why certain things happened. ESPECIALLY when there were possible non-combatant casualties (I'm talking about the alleged camera men)

Clearly the names of the soldiers would have to be withheld to avoid retribution but there should be some public record when something like this happens

<comment><USER22> The military has now released the records on their investigations:

[http://www2.centcom.mil/sites/foia/rr/CENTCOM%20Regulation%2...](http://www2.centcom.mil/sites/foia/rr/CENTCOM%20Regulation%20CCR%2025210/Forms/AllItems.aspx?RootFolder=%2fsites%2ffoia%2frr%2fCENTCOM%20Regulation%20CCR%2025210%2fDeath%20of%20Reuters%20Journalists&FolderCTID=&View=%7b41BA1AAF%2d785A%2d481A%2dA630%2d12470AFCD6FD%7d)

I suppose that this information wouldn't have been released, at least for a long time, without their hand being forced by wikileaks. However it is also not reasonable to expect everything to be immediately public; there is going to be a ton of sensitive information, and it's not practical to redact and release everything by default. Obviously, it's in the US interest for this kind of thing not to be front page news, but that doesn't mean that by not publicizing it there is a coverup or something illegal going on either. Everybody, including Wikileaks, has an agenda.

<comment><USER23> "he military has now released the records on their investigations: [url]

The site seems to be down.

"Unknown Error

Troubleshoot issues with Windows SharePoint Services. "

SharePoint? :-P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> :(. A lot of people seem to be _completely_ missing the point of this video. It isn't that some journalists were killed, it's that they were killed _in sport_. The people speaking while they're shooting them are acting as though they _want_ them dead, not as though they're taking their lives in an effort to protect themselves.

Did you see the part where the dying journalist is bleeding out on the curb and trying to crawl for cover? The helicopter gunner is saying something to the effect of "just pick up a weapon just pick up a weapon"; he's looking for an excuse to pull the trigger. Howabout the part before they shoot of the van that was trying to help people get out of the area? The gunner kept changing the subject _back_ to whether or not he could open fire on it. Again, he _wanted_ to kill the people inside, wanted to see a big explosion.

Yes, there are bad things that happen in war, this video is meant to illuminate the manner in which some of these bad things are happening.

Again, it isn't _that_ people were killed, it was _how_ they were killed and _why_ they were killed.

<comment><USER25> I find this outrage prissy. I don't know anything about war, but even I know that it's utterly naive to expect that soldiers wouldn't get off on killing people. It is completely to be expected. The fantasy that war would somehow be more acceptable or even possible without it is not serious; it's a head-in- the-sand refusal to consider the ugliness of the thing. Next up: they aren't faithful to their wives while on tour, either.

Edit: this comment comes across a little more harshly than I intended. The reason isn't you; it's that I just finished watching the Wikileaks founder in an interview, and his self-righteousness in making the same point really turned me off. The guy could barely contain his glee. I think this kind of outrage is all about stroking one's own moral delicacies. Expecting anything at all about killing people to be decent is foolish.

Mainly I'm angry at him for ruining my faith in Wikileaks and turning my world into one in which now no one plays that vital role. Guess I was the naive one. I had thought they were something like the Red Cross of information. Now they seem like ideologues who want to get on TV.

One more edit: now that I think of it, I should have figured this out from the way they were hyping the video before they released it.

Ok one more: there's clearly controversy about whether the soldiers followed the rules or not. _That_ question is serious. But I highly doubt any rules of engagement have anything to say about how much fun killing is not supposed to be. This is part of the don't-ask-don't-tell contract (the real one) that society has with the military: here are the conditions under which you can be a serial killer; we will call you a hero for it; just don't tell us about it.

<comment><USER26> > I don't know anything about war, but even I know that it's utterly naive to > expect that soldiers wouldn't get off on killing people. It is completely to > be expected.

How far are you willing to take this argument? Statistically speaking, it's to be expected that invading armies will rape a substantial portion of the female population. Would it therefore be "prissy" to be outraged if this happens?

>This is part of the don't-ask-don't-tell contract (the real one) that society has with the military: here are the conditions under which you can be a serial killer; we will call you a hero for it; just don't tell us about it.

I think it's still ok to be disturbed by that. It may be true that this incident is just one example of the generally terrible nature of war. But that doesn't make it any less terrible, or make people's reactions to it illegitimate.

I hope that this sort of reaction becomes more and more common, so that we eventually figure out that war is, you know, a bad thing.

<comment><USER25> The difference is that we ask soldiers to kill people, we don't ask them to rape them. To ask, pay, and celebrate them for doing the former and then fastidiously insist that they only do it in a way that conforms to our hero fantasies is incongruent.

That being said, it is naive to unleash violence and not expect it to spill over. So I guess in the case of war rape I would say that while it's not prissy to be outraged by it, it is to be surprised.

As a side note, I've never been comfortable with these kinds of arguments that go too far beyond the immediate context. A context grounds a problem; it gives you a real situation to refer back to and prevent going off the rails. The more purely abstract these things become, the more arbitrary they get. I don't trust disembodied reason. But that is a complete tangent; sorry!

<comment><USER26> >To ask, pay, and celebrate them for doing the former and then fastidiously insist that they only do it in a way that conforms to our hero fantasies is incongruent.

Well, it would be incongruent to do that, yes, but I don't ask them or pay them or celebrate them.

I expect the soldiers in the video are just doing what a lot of people would do in the same situation. That might make their behavior in some sense "normal", but it doesn't make it OK, or beyond reasonable criticism.

Most of what you're saying could equally well be applied to (e.g.) criticism of suicide bombers. It may well be the case that suicide bombers are not, as a rule, unusually evil people. If you have the relevant life experiences, you might even have a sense that you'd do the same thing if you were in their position -- in the same way that it's easy for an American to feel some sympathy for the soldiers in this video. Nonetheless, the actions of suicide bombers are unambiguously wrong, and are rightly subject to criticism.

(Of course, I'm not attempting to equate the soldiers' actions with suicide bombing, it's just an analogy.)

<comment><USER17> _I expect the soldiers in the video are just doing what a lot of people would do in the same situation._

They are reacting as they have been trained to react; war is hell, the army build in defense mechanisms like this to ensure soldiers can fight (emotional detachment, jock attitude), they also ingrain absolute discipline to try and avoid scenario's exactly like this.

EDIT: supporting evidence - read some military training manuals. They basically detail the attitude training attempts to instill in a soldier. _shrug_ this is common to pretty much every standing army in the history of ever :) (emotional detachment especially)

<comment><USER26> I agree with you, but I don't see how it goes against what I was saying.

<comment><USER17> I wasn't disagreeing - just adding something :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> people are focusing on the wrong area of this story...yes killing that first group of people was a dick move, but it might get justified by ROE....killing the people in the van who tried to help was also a dick move...but it can still be justified by calling it a gray area.

The actual story here is that the army decided to cover up this whole issue in the first place(i.e. them saying they had no idea how the kids got wounded)

<comment><USER28> This is the real story, and has been from the beginning. All this discussion is very good, but it's disappointing more people don't care about censorship. On that note... <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/us/20generals.html>

<comment><USER28> _italics_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I watched this video from end to end. It is entirely possible that this was a team setting up an ambush and filming it.

The fact that a Reuters photojourno was involved only fortifies the plausibility of this theory, since wire photojournos are well-known for "embedding" with insurgents.

I'm not saying one way or the other (unlike many others). I'm proposing an alternative theory that I believe is just as likely as the "collateral murder" storyline.

<comment><USER18> It's a good theory. Unfortunately no other weapons (apart from a single AK-47 - which was commonly carried in 2007 Baghdad) or bombs were found, so I can just as easily say that they might have been aliens from Xenu.

I do think that there are more extenuating circumstances than some may think (it was 2007 in Baghdad - people forget how bad things were there). But claims that those people were anything other than a random group of people will require some evidence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I am usually the last to complain about "the state of hacker news" and such, but the fact that this article has managed to amass such a large number of points so quickly does indicate that there is a need for moderation.

this has nothing to do with hacker news, it is replying to conjecture with conjecture, even though the wikileaks story had a very relevant back story (power of the internet, freedom of press, etc) this ignores it all and just gives someones opinion on their interpretation of a highly controversial video.

<comment><USER31> actually you've mentioned the state of HN more than most:

      http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1223767
      http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1171670
      http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1148739
      http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1086310

First of all, the flagging handles things, so why complain?

And for what it's worth, the discussions on here involve many intelligent, well-informed people whose opinions are worth high value. Certainly there are technical things discussed, but I think most people here are interested in all sorts of other "hacks," including sociology hacks, a category, I would argue, to which this article relates.

<comment><USER30> only one of those mentions the state of hacker news

and the complaining is because the flagging does not handle things, there are always going to be popular articles that will be inevitably posted that have absolutely nothing to do with hacker news.

but yeh, the crowd has spoken.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> For anyone who watched the video, attempts to support the actions of the helicopter gunner seem to be on very shaky grounds indeed. The victims are mostly, or entirely, unarmed and attacking people trying to rescue the injured is an act of questionable legality. This looks like a war crime similar to those committed in Vietnam.

<comment><USER33> The US has a very bad history in 'judging its own' when it comes to war crimes, only under intense media pressure has there ever been any legal action against the perpetrators, and usually it was limited to the lower ranks.

And then there is the 'invade the Hague act':

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service- Members%27_Pro...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service- Members%27_Protection_Act)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I can't even begin to follow some of the moral reasoning on this page.

The soldiers have to be there to keep the peace, as part of their humanitarian mission towards the Iraqi people. Because the soldiers are there, they have to protect themselves against the violent insurgents among the Iraqi people, by killing anyone who presents any kind of threat. Don't you see, they had to kill the Iraqis in order to save them.

If we didn't massacre Iraqis, we wouldn't be able to safely patrol their cities, and then where would that leave the Iraqis? Completely unprotected.

<comment><USER35> Please don't protect my country, we'll do what you say!

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I am not American. I did support the initial Iraq War because in some cases, I believe the ends justifies the means. Yes, we can argue that Bush went for oil - which he probably did, but that's besides the point.

At the end of the day, Iraq just had another relatively successful democratic election where there is even more accurate representation than the first one. It will likely continue to improve, with bumps as they go along, but that would have never happened had Saddam been there still. The new government will be a coalition government run by all major sects. Not one dominating and robbing everybody else.

Why Iraq? I know. Why go to Iraq and not more 'dire' situations like Rwanda, Darfur, Sierra Leone, etc.? I get it, yes those would be good too..but that doesn't take away from the fact that a few million people have some semblance of a democratic institution that works alongside their religion (despite what they had been taught for the last few decades).

I too support the escalation in Afghanistan for the same reason. When all is said and done and the Afghani people have more powerful institutions in place and it will be well worth it. Al-Qaeda will have less fertile ground to recruit from. Until then, it will be a difficult road to travel.

Like any war, there is collateral damage. I don't think the issue with this video is the fact that there is collateral damage in war. It's more the coverup.

While I tend to be pro-military, I think in a case like this, where I am SURE their post-operation analysis revealed that they messed up big time, they should have come clean. Yes, the politics might have made the war more difficult...but it would have been the right thing to do. At the very least, for the families of the reporters killed.

</comment><comment><USER37> Make no mistake: this footage is significant. This is America's Jallianwala Bagh. This is the wholesale firing on unarmed civilians as an everyday activity.

To say, "But they were in a war zone," is disingenuous. America made it a war zone. America came there under a false premise and won't leave.

And how can they ever leave? Iraq is above nothing less than an ocean of untapped oil at a time when the Saudi fields are declining. Iraq is an OPEC breaker. And it's that dedicated supply in a time when the world's _biggest industry_ had the price skyrocket in a few years from $20 to around $90. America is one of the only countries that can't survive if oil hits about $120 for any extended period. This isn't about money; this is about survival.

But when you find yourself killing unarmed civilians because they have under their feet an untapped fortune, because they have under their feet what you need to keep your lifestyle, you have to stop and look at yourself in the mirror at what you've become.

Wikileaks didn't mislead us. The U.S. Government mislead us, and worse, we mislead ourselves.

</comment><comment><USER38> The author like many other posters is making the mistake of thinking that some of us put fault on the individual soldiers. In their own shoes I would've done the same thing, with the things hanging on the shoulders I couldn't tell if it was an AK-47 or a camera so I would've opened fire.

What most people is complaining about is the military secrecy and handling of this business, not the "mass murder of civilians" (like some of WL editors try to make it look) but the lack of reaction and respect by the army. If they had released the same video explaining the circumstances instead of hiding the details the situation would be different now.

Short: The blame's on the high command, not on the individual soldiers.

<comment><USER35> That's probably the same reason why the commanders want to keep it secret. Because most people will just have a jerk reaction and blame the soldiers, which in turn put pressure on the soldiers in the field.

While I think the higher ups are to be blamed for even going to war, it's the people who elected them. So I don't really know who to blame.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> No reason to invoke ROE or Geneva convention at all. "Brains are more important than process".

How on Earth can anyone feel that it's OK to take people's lives based on so little evidence? "Looks like two of the guys are carrying guns. Let's kill them all." We all know that this is the kind of thing happens in war, but that doesn't make it excusable. I can't interpret the actions of the soldiers in any other way than murder.

</comment><comment><USER40> It's clear that the author felt "let down" by the video. But I don't think he can make a case that wikileaks misrepresented the video. Rather, I think he had unrealistic expectations.

He got his expectations up because a) Reuters had been unsuccessfully trying to obtain this video via FOIA b) wikileaks employees had been detained by various gov'ts and c) the video had been heavily encrypted. All of these things are facts, and not a misrepresentation on the part of wikileaks.

However, these facts seemed to indicate that the gov't cared about this video not getting out quite a bit, and raised his expectations. Maybe he didn't know what a helicopter video looks like; maybe he expected it to look like Generation Kill, with dudes being like "muahahha let's kill babies and rape women!"

However, I didn't think the video would really be anything but boring. What's news is that the U.S. tried to bury this video, not that it makes for great TV.

<comment><USER41> > b) wikileaks employees had been detained by various gov'ts and

This turned out to be _false_ , the guy that was detained in Iceland was detained for breaking into somebody's business and there is little or no evidence it had anything to do with his relationship to wikileaks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> From the first paragraph it seems the author is angered he did not witness 'an unprovoked massacre of unarmed civilians'. I think that could have been rephrased much much better.

</comment><comment><USER43> I hate to sound cold, but without context that video says absolutely nothing.

All that video, in its present form, with the present information available says is: investigate further.

</comment><comment><USER44> In one short clip, the war has been shown up for what it is: a morally corrupt act that has no hope of making the U.S. friends nor assure it of future security.

The bombings in Moscow reminds everybody that the price of security in the future for citizens of the US will be rule under totalitarian government. For the three hundred million people in the States, I hope you've learnt your lesson.

</comment><comment><USER45> I hadn't seen or heard about this video prior to this article.

<http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20001802-38.html> seems to have it embedded and a description.

<comment><AUTHOR> Its been on HN for more than 12 hours: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1241879>

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> What is the video in question? There's a video on the front page of wikileaks, but it's not a "39 minute video".

</comment><comment><USER47> As pilots and CO were not punished I've learned it is clear that assisting the wounded ( no weapons were picked up ) will get you full of DU bullets. Carrying anything in your hands may be the excuse for a gunship a mile away to open fire.

Given these GI Joe tactics the average Iraqi might as well be carrying an RPG, and might as well shoot down that Apache helicopter. 7+ years of murderous Yankee mayhem is enough already.

</comment><comment><USER48> Blame the victim. They shouldn't have been in Iraq. They shouldn't have been near someone bad. They should have marked the van.

You shouldn't have murdered them. Killing should be the last resort, even in the heat of battle.

<comment><USER49> ummmm no. The whole point of the heat of battle is death. What you mean I think is that getting into the heat of battle should be the last resort.

<comment><USER48> We have non-lethal ways of taking down an opponent. We should be doing that instead, even if it's more costly.

<comment><USER16> There's no way to have a non-lethal round come out of a helicopter that's a mile away. If you want something that will maintain any semblance of accuracy over a mile, it has to be high-velocity. Anything moving fast enough to be accurate over a mile isn't going to be non-lethal.

Now, you could argue that they could be close enough that they could reasonably fire an accurate shot with a non-lethal round, but that also puts them much, much closer to danger. At a mile away, they're comfortable enough that they (should) be able to take the time to assess the threat and figure out if lethal force is necessary. If they have to be close enough for a non- lethal round, I doubt they'd ever switch to it since at that range, you really want lethality if you're in a big target (i.e. a helicopter).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> The comments both here and on reddit contain many vivid examples of how people react to a marketing message.

Virtually nobody changed their mind (many simply got more strident in their position when confronted with opposing interpretations.) Many commenters overemphasized the portions of the video that agree with their existing beliefs, while downplaying or arguing portions that were not in line with those beliefs.

It makes me wonder if perhaps precision is overrated when it comes to writing. Perhaps an imprecise record of one's beliefs would be more popular, as it would allow room for this sort of selective interpretation.

</comment><comment><USER51> There is so much wrong with this article, I don't know where to start.

<comment><USER52> You could start from the beginning...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> After viewing the video, it clearly is an unprovoked massacre.

LINK: _This is clear considering they approached the hot zone at the beginning of the video with intel, either from ground troops, or from the another Apache, that there were armed combatants in the area._

The video indicates there was ONE combatant, and that the group of people was NOT him. @2:49: air: "we had a guy shooting, now he's behind the building" @2:52: ground: "Uh, negative, he was uh, right in front of the Brad. Uh, 'bout there one 'o clock. Haven't seen anything since then"

LINK: _As for the possible observation of an RPG, which some suggest could be a tripod,_

The "RPG" @2:32 was clearly a telephoto lens pointed at the ground. I've never heard anyone claim it was a tripod, it is clearly a photo camera with a telephoto lens. I don't see how you can refute this if you examine the frame between 2:40 and 2:41, it is CLEARLY the camera with a telephoto lens that he is holding completely in front of him pointed at the ground.

When the van comes to pickup the target, NO ONE IS ARMED. The CO should never have given them permission to engage unarmed people "for picking up the bodies", PERIOD. According to the Huffingon Post the driver of the van was a good Samaritan on his way to take his small children to a tutoring session.

<comment><USER53> _if you examine the frame between 2:40 and 2:41_

I don't think people do that in combat. If you're ever in combat, or in a situation with armed people who think you may want to kill them, I _highly recommend_ that you make it very obvious you're not armed. If they look at the footage of how you died and say "Oh! If we _examine the frame_ , it looks like he wasn't going to kill us, after all!" I guess you'll be vindicated.

<comment><USER54> In the military investigation, it is revealed that the man crouching around the corner with the camera was taking a picture of US troops 100 meters away. The timestamped photo was found on the camera later.

So he's in an area where combat has occurred, crouching around a corner, pointing a long tube at US troops. No press is suspected to be in the area. Other men in his group are undeniably armed with weapons. He's a threat by any reasonable standard.

Two RPGs are, in fact, found at the site by ground forces, as is an automatic rifle. There were combatants in this group.</comment></comment></comment>


FetLife loses its ability to process credit card payments - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/03/payment-processors-are-still-policing-your-sex-life <comment><USER2> From what I've heard they actually aren't accepting Bitcoin any more (counter to the claim in the EFF article) because Coinbase dropped them for the same reason. I would suggest that it's time for them to look into a self-hosted Bitcoin payment processor.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/5q5jj2/fetlifecom_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/5q5jj2/fetlifecom_big_bdsm_community_announces_that/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The link to the eff.org site is probably SFW, depending where you W. Clearly FetLife itself won't be.</comment>


Lessons from Space (for software engineering) - <AUTHOR> http://www.spinellis.gr/blog/20111030/ <comment><USER2> Great analogy to promote simplicity and modularity.</comment>


Ask HN: How will immigration laws affect the freelance marketplace? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Which freelance marketplace?

I don't think immigration laws can affect freelance marketplaces that much (but maybe only in industries that are heavily regulated and require freelancers from within-city/state/country).

If you apply labour-supply theory and the fact that the marketplace is global, the buyers will either look for the cheapest or the best quality or both (at the same time). So whether you're in the Philippines or New York City, immigration laws apply under certain situations only.

Based on your question ... I think money-flow regulation laws can affect freelance a lot more.</comment>


Neural Complete – A neural network that autocompletes neural network code - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kootenpv/neural_complete <comment><USER2> A note: looking at the code, this isn't a seq2seq Keras model. The core model code is a fork of the base Keras text generation example ([https://github.com/fchollet/keras/blob/master/examples/lstm_...](https://github.com/fchollet/keras/blob/master/examples/lstm_text_generation.py)), which works like a char-rnn where the previous 80 characters will predict the 81st character, then feed the generated characters back into the model. In the server implementation, the server keeps predicting characters until it hits a break character, which will then serve the generated characters to the user.

In a seq2seq implementation, you need to predict all output characters _simultaneously_ (i.e. model input is all characters in a line, model output is all characters in the next line), which in Keras involves using a TimeDistributed(Dense()) layer. (see the Keras example for seq2seq: [https://github.com/fchollet/keras/blob/master/examples/addit...](https://github.com/fchollet/keras/blob/master/examples/addition_rnn.py)) This also requires more sequence ETL and a _lot_ more training time.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are totally right: I was mixing up with another project I'm working on where I _am_ using seq2seq (using only tensorflow) :) I will update the text of the repo. Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This reminds me a bit of auto-sklearn[1] for automatically select the machine learning algorithm to use and its parameters (and so isn't quite doing it at code level like this one).

[1] [https://github.com/automl/auto-sklearn](https://github.com/automl/auto- sklearn)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea, I also have a similar project in the making: [https://github.com/kootenpv/xtoy](https://github.com/kootenpv/xtoy) . This one does optimisation of finding a machine learning model using evolutionary search, but mainly focuses on just taking any kind of data and coming up with a prediction (missing data, text data, date/time data etc). It's a lot of fun :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > It would be very fun to experiment with a future model in which it will use > the python AST and take out variable naming out of the equation.

So what if we use AST as a source for the code structure? Also, there are other metadata such as filename (e.g. reducer.js), path (./components), project dependencies (package.json for JavaScript projects), amount of github stars and forks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, these things should ideally be taken into account. I have been contacted by a company that is actually working on it: [http://sourced.tech/](http://sourced.tech/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> and so it begins

</comment><comment><USER6> i imagine a future where the programmer is just there in case the AI does a mistake.

<comment><USER7> > in case the AI does a mistake

such as using tabs for indentation

<comment><USER8> At some point in the future there will be a silicidal holy war between different sentient AIs and it will be fought over Tabs versus Spaces.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha! That's gonna be scary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> m-j-fox I will train on Tim Pope's dataset and see if the computer comes up with a useful plugin.</comment>


Fact Checking Won't Save Us from Fake News - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fact-checking-wont-save-us-from-fake-news/ <comment><USER2> Interesting historical perspective on fake news.

Still hoping that people tire of it or that the truth comes eventually out seems defeatist. The internet traditionally solved the spam problem by thought leaders moving on to the next platform but in the age of Facebook the network effects keep people in place.

When I look at the issue from a economic and systems view the question is not how to stop any individual fake news story but how to tune the parameters so that there is

\- Feedback to creators of fake news (historically fines or loss of head)

\- Feedback to spreaders of fake news (historically fines or loss of licensee or head)

\- Alternate views reaching readers of fake news

\- Educational starting at school: Science, critical thinking and a culture that at times appreciates Grey+Complex+Diverse over Black&White+Simple

At the moment it is simply too profitable to do it. It is simply working too well to stop it. There is not a single measure that can stop it.</comment>


Ask HN: Managing and sharing personal health records? - <AUTHOR>

So I've been in Germany for a while now and the other day had to visit a doctor for the first time in a few years. I was a bit surprised when one of the nurses approached me to fill out a paper form with some basic information about myself: name, phone number, medications, past history, etc. Why was I surprised? Because we're in 2015 and the way this should work is that someone should be able to scan my medical card (which has an electronic chip in it BTW) and get access to whatever information I've chosen to share. I can't even imagine how hard this is for the elderly to manage...<p>What are your thoughts on this? Do you personally use anything to manage your own health records(e.g. Microsoft's Health Vault)? I'm thinking something should exist that is like Snapchat\Dropbox for medical records where I can choose what to give access to and to whom for whatever period is necessary. Cheers! <comment><USER2> HIPAA. The regulators mean well and the health data security situation is poor but the penalties and overhead it introduces mean you either have an awful locked down system no one wants to use or a "system" that uses fax or paper "tech" so old there are no regulations against it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can I request digital records from them in case I move outside the US? Or will each individual have to scan/classify data on their own?

<comment><USER2> They must by law provide you a copy of your records but they may charge you a processing fee for retrieving hard copies and sending them to you.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: FilmForTonight.com - Help on choosing a film to watch - <AUTHOR> http://filmfortonight.com/

<comment><USER2> Hey HN, at the start of summer I began this project as a means to learn more programming before I began university. Every time I sat down by myself or with a friend to watch a film I/we could never decide what to watch and just relied on the related films section on IMDb and that caused us to keep watching the same type of films. So at the start of summer I decided to build a website that would do the hard work for me, by picking films at complete random from IMDb. All the films on our database have a rating above 6.8 and have had over 7,000 votes.

I'm currently working on a system so that you can track what films you have watched so that you don't keep getting films you have already seen, but that will be a few months away from now.

All feedback is welcome, if you hate it then tell me why and if you love it then go watch some films!

Love From FILMFORTONIGHT</comment>


Show HN: An API that lets you power an e-commerce site with Uber-like deliveries - <AUTHOR> http://www.blip.delivery <comment><AUTHOR> Im the founder, just looking to get some feedback from people on my startup. We're also building an iPad app for brick and mortar stores without e-commerece, to power with deliveries.

If you have any feedback for me, especially functionality related, or just that the fonts I've used on my website are crappy, let me know :)

</comment><comment><USER2> Only available in Canada?

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently, yes. But we plan to scale to the US soon too!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like a great idea!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!</comment></comment>


How fast is your server? use just ping. - <AUTHOR> http://just-ping.com/index.php?vh=18.104.22.168&c=&s=ping%21&vtt=1237408353&vhost=_&c=

<comment><USER2> It is not how fast your server is. It is how fast different geographically network can access your server('s network).

Beside that, it is a very nice service for webmasters.</comment>


Monkey-read, monkey-do entrepreneurship - <AUTHOR> http://ambershah.com/2010/09/monkey-read-monkey-do-entrepreneurship

<comment><USER2> Her point about thinking for yourself is condescending. She's hardly alone in believing that she's a critical thinker that evaluates advice objectively. Everyone thinks that about themselves. No one thinks they're a monkey.

Regarding the post she's replying to, she didn't provide any evidence that she's succeeded while ignoring the advice of experts.

Her one example (which was 75% of her post) would be more convincing if it didn't seem like she was rationalizing her preexisting view point. She also describes that she has someone who is co-founder in all but name, which weakens the argument further.

I have to admit that I'm uncomfortable with how much of PG's advice I agree with. There are probably a lot of little things I disagree with, but I can't think of any big ones. Between the previous thread and this submission I was hoping to have at least a few nuggets of disagreement to hold on to. Unfortunately that's not the case.

<comment><USER3> I don't think it's necessary to _disagree_ with a certain amount of someone's work- it's more important to be able to explain exactly why you agree with or don't agree with someone. This is what really prevents you from being the proverbial sheep.

<comment><USER2> Of course you're right and that is exactly how I feel. The problem is that it's _uncomfortable_ for me to agree so much with someone. It's very rare as well. Even with people whose opinion's I respect as highly as PG's there tends to be a lot to disagree with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _> "A company with $200K per year revenue with a single person and no plans to "exit" would be a failure in YC"_

It might not be what YC is after but I don't think it they'd consider it a failure either. Am I wrong?

<comment><USER5> yeah, it wouldn't be a YC failure, it would just probably be a company YC wouldn't invest in. why would a single-person 200k/year profit company need YC?

edit: this seems to me like she's confused. YC's preferences on companies that they would like to invest their time and money in doesn't necessarily equal "the best way" for all entrepreneurs under all situations and circumstances.

<comment><USER6> _YC's preferences on companies that they would like to invest their time and money in doesn't necessarily equal "the best way" for all entrepreneurs under all situations and circumstances._

That is certainly true. We would never claim otherwise. YC invests in startups, and only a tiny fraction of the millions of small companies in the US are startups. Nearly all are service businesses whose prospects for growth are minimal.

Startup founders are a very small subset of entrepreneurs.

<comment><USER7> This is interesting to me. I consider what I have a startup, but what is the distinction? I'm not sure what about the $200K statement makes me an entrepreneur and not a startup. I'm assuming we are talking about scalable tech business, not consulting.

EDIT: Updated for clarity.

<comment><USER6> I don't know what you're doing, but consulting is not the only way to have limited growth prospects. A company could also be making a product for a niche market (and not be doing it merely as a way to get started engaging with users). I believe some people call these niche software companies MicroISVs.

<comment><USER8> I think you need to start qualifying 'startup'a little more, particularly when the topic tends towards hair splitting.

It looks like the definition a lot of people use is one that includes your startup as a subset.

I find it so frustrating reading through threads like this that get all bogged down in semantic nitpicking. It also opens a door to a particularly annoying type of quasi-trolling or baiting. Maybe 'startups that exit' or something

<comment><USER6> I've found the best strategy (as with most words) is just to use the word the way it's used in standard, educated usage.

In standard usage, a startup does not mean any newly created company. It means a newly created company designed to scale dramatically. Most of the 20 million businesses in the US are not startups, because they aren't designed to scale. They're either service businesses or niche product businesses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It is sort of a catch 22 for her to say how silly it is to have a co-founder when you are young and unproven. If you are capable of doing it yourself, then yes, of course you should. However, many people who are capable of doing themselves may not be ready to handle all of the aspects, especially if it is their first time out.

There are a few lessons that I have taken from browsing HackerNews over the last year. Two of them come to mind.

The first is that it is not simple to do everything involved in creating a startup. Even if you know what you are doing. There are factors to hinder great products and great people, from reaching the consumer.

The second is that there is no shortage of great ideas for startups. The real bottle neck seems to be the execution of great ideas.

If you are capable of doing it by yourself, but you take on a partner, you do lose out financially or you could create complications. But no one ever said it had to be your last startup. You can always take on of the great new ideas and branch out again.

Even if it is a disaster, you will discover that you can do it alone.

Or the other scenario, you discover that you work well together. Now, you have have too much brain power, time, energy and money. These resources are incredibly useful at expanding your startup, starting a second, or just making life easier.

I like her cynicism about everything she reads. That is just a normal part of rationality. Even if it is aimed against the mighty Paul Graham. However, I have to disagree with her assertions. I believe teams are greater than the sum of their parts, even if team member can do all work alone.

<comment><USER7> By the way, I didn't say cofounders are silly, just that I choose not to have one right now. It's a choice often met with disdain from a certain group of people: "you will definitely fail". Others have already proven that single founder can work, the test now is whether I can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> ok... I think she has a point but didn't cut to meat of things(These days people apply link-bait heavily).

I have notice that people repeat exactly what pg says and nothing else. I don't have a problem with repeating, but I think they also need to add to what he says.

I kind of carry around a formula: 95% copy and 5% innovation. Innovation should be low because it reflects taking a risk that by simply copying would mitigate. But, Innovation should never be zero as you effectively don't add anything to the community and become less competitive.

Currently, pg might have a set of belief that he has found empirically to be true. But if you consider the search for the optimal set of rules for forming a start-up, I think pg might have reach a local maximum and it is necessary for start-ups both in YC and out to search this space that defer from pg current views, so a new higher local maximum can be achieve for the entire community.(Think Particle Swarm Optimization)</comment>


Show HN: Hacker Daily – 6 sources all in one place - <AUTHOR> http://hackerdaily.co/

<comment><USER2> I like the layout and loading indicator, unfortunately that's all i'm seeing :-P never seems to actually load

</comment><comment><USER3> Isn't accessing Medium in unofficial ways against their TOS?</comment>