To be honest, the number of "linode screwed up" posts on hacker news the last few years would be educational to you, and if I remember correctly, ryanlol even got a slap on the wrist due to one of those situations.
At this point, I am bored of people asking for citations on hacker news for things that are should be part of our tribal knowledge.
I meant it in the way of shared knowledge, just like we all know how to bypass a NYT filter, or that someone is going to complain about the lack of native scrolling in an article, especially on a Show HN.
I definitely agree that there is a huge amount of that type of thinking on HN (of course), reading the amount of people who used github but didnt know the different between it and git and were commenting today was a personal education.
Of course, you can judge it differently, but following that link convinced me that the claims are probably not "baseless smearing", that it's a well-intentioned advice. Just from the link itself I wouldn't know on what grounds tptacek came to his conclusion, and I wouldn't heed his advice without further research, BUT I'm 99% sure that if I researched I'd find many well-documented arguments in favour of tptacek opinion/advice. I'd even bet on this: you say it's baseless, I say I can easily find the reasoning and arguments behind what tptacek said. Want to bet?
Oh, by the way:
> Sincerely, it's too much to ask?
Let's turn it around: a person with a lot of experience offers an advice on the matter he's experienced with. Is it too much to ask the readers to first, at least, google a bit before commenting? Why do you think you are entitled to receive even more of that person's attention and time?
At this point, I am bored of people asking for citations on hacker news for things that are should be part of our tribal knowledge.
https://www.google.com/search?q=linode+hacks&ie=utf-8&oe=utf... About 2,810 results (0.34 seconds)