[knightinblue]

The only real shame in this case is that HN is becoming a place for people to air their trivial meta nonsense.

You got an unwanted piece of email? Take a second to mark it as spam and be done with it. Sweet mother of god, you got it via HN?? Once again, take the exact same second to mark it as spam and be done it. But don't assume that it affects the big scheme of things concerning HN, because it doesn't. A single company trolling for emails is orthogonal to the evolution/erosion of HN.

P.S. You're feeling 'sad'? This is all it takes to make you feel sad? Jesus.

[RiderOfGiraffes]

I've posted it because I think it's another marker that points to the continuing change here on HN. Yes, I've marked the email as spam, although not processed it the usual way because it is close to stuff I do for real. I've now made a tweak to the spam processing so that the email address I use here now requires the marker I name in my profile, rather than just being a hint. Sure, it took me 10 seconds to read the email, decide it was spam, check the source, adjust the filtering, and move on.

Submitting this item has let me see that others have got it, it is bulk, and to measure the expectation. At a casual glance it seems that most of the longer serving contibutors are saying the same thing - it's a shame, and it's a sign of the decline on HN. Most of the newer contributors are saying the same thing - welcome to the internet, why should you expect anything different?

The correlation isn't 100%, but it seems to be real. If I get time later I might actually go away and find out what the correlation coefficent really is.

But for now, it's information about those who visit/inhabit HN. If you don't find it interesting then you could take one second to sigh and move on, shaking your head about the sad state of people who post trivial meta nonsense.

PS: I'm not feeling suicidally depressed, but it has had an overall negative impact on my day. That's why I'm going off and doing more programming - that cheers me up.