Comment by corresation | Hacker News Reader

Comment by corresation | Hacker News Reader

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Why? Naval gazing? Proving someone wrong?

If the NY Times wrote an article claiming that Sergey Brin dumped raw sewage from his yacht, the responses would be based upon the assumption of accuracy of that story. If the story isn't accurate, it will quickly be corrected (and legal avenues should be exercised, such as libel lawsuits), which has to some degree happened in this case.

But what are people really supposed to do? For every story everyone must stay quiet? Let claims bake for a period? Put a disclaimer "If this story is accurate..." before every statement? That should be presumed.

In the end, though, while I had no comment on the original story (it seemed like a classic "they're rich...get 'em!" kind of story), I certainly don't find Parker a more reasonable chap after this 10,000 word outing. His argument is essentially-

a) Steelhead trout are stupid anyways. I'm humorously paraphrasing, but they are an endangered/threatened species, and you can't simply lump them in with Rainbow trout and pretend it's all good regardless.

b) Ignorance of the law is no defense. Saying that a group was formed before you were born makes one sound a bit like a jackass (maybe that's what the NSA is claiming? The various rights were written before they were born, so...)

c) He's good because he leveraged someone else's significant mismanagement of the forest, therefore he has no culpability. This is a bit of a tragedy of the commons thing, but his argument seems to be that all of this development happened in a vacuum and he just happened to be a sad passerby who might as well make use of it.

I don't think he needs to apologize to anyone, and it sounds like the land was horrendously mismanaged by the company that owns it, however this doesn't get sympathy.

I'm so happy somebody brought up his wacky paragraph about steelhead trout that classified them as a "fancy" rainbow trout, which is like exactly how Glenn Beck would have put it. It's exactly the kind of equivocating BS that a professional editor would have caught and cut.

Also, there's some irony that Parker chose to publish this rant about click bait (and other journalistic sins) in Techcrunch.

> If the NY Times wrote an article claiming that Sergey Brin dumped raw sewage from his yacht, the responses would be based upon the assumption of accuracy of that story.

You should not assume the news is accurate. Read the news for entertainment, not facts.

In EVERY single case where I have been involved in something that later got on the news it was reported incorrectly. Every single time.

The news is not accurate because they don't care about that. They care about being interesting, and that's how you should read it.

It gets really sad when wikipedia editors force incorrect information to stay in an article because a news source said so. Even when it's wrong.

People should be taught from a young age: "The majority of what you hear and learn will be wrong."

To paraphrase you... what was Parker really supposed to do? Every time he wants to have an event on private property, he has to check that the owner isn't violating any of a myriad regulations imposed by countless regulatory bodies? That doesn't seem feasible.

Everyone commits 3 hypothetical felonies a day - he just has more assets he's risking and does things that draw more attention.

This is why very wealthy people have to have lawyers to circumscribe their actions, and security guards to protect them, and ... Not a wonderful way to go through life, I suppose, and unfortunate that we live in a world that requires things like that.

Yes, those poor rich people.

Please don't be so dismissive. Rich people tend to have it better than others. But that doesn't mean they don't in some ways have it worse, it doesn't mean they don't deserve sympathy for those things, and it doesn't mean that we shouldn't talk about those things.

I don't really fault him. He was the beneficiary of someone else's mismanagement of protected lands, however.

Every time he wants to have an event on private property, he has to check that the owner isn't violating any of a myriad regulations imposed by countless regulatory bodies?

He had a multi-million dollar event. Yes, in such cases -- especially where the use is atypical -- the event planners do perform significant legal and liability checks to ensure that the use is compliant with all laws and regulations.

Given that he had rented the facility from a hotel that had done that in the past, and the atypicality was mainly in the secrecy and set design they wanted, I don't think that it's unreasonable to expect that the hotel had all of its permits in order. It's a reasonable mistake -- though one that, as you point out, should have been caught by his wedding planner.

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