[keithwinstein]

I'm sorry you're going through this! But also a little suspicious because a nearly word-for-word message was posted four days ago on Reddit with some of the details different, including the major and presence of a master's degree, but most of the same phrasing (https://www.reddit.com/r/mit/comments/1q9gdff/unemployed_alm...). If these rants are somehow from the same person (maybe you did both majors and only discussed one in each post?), fair enough and I really am sorry, but I do wonder if we're being experimented upon. :-(

[windowshopping]

Wow, good catch. It is exactly the same post but listing mechanical engineering against instead of software engineering. And this is from a new account.

[yodon]

Genuine question: Is this karma farming? Why would one try to karma farm on a site where karma brings no value (other than a low one-time threshold where you gain an unimportant power)?

[muwtyhg]

There is more value for having karma on this site than Reddit. You unlock new HackerNews abilities (flag, report, vouch) as you hit certain point thresholds. Reddit has no such feature.

> other than a low one-time threshold where you gain an unimportant power

What power is "important" in your opinion? Is being able to flag or vouch for flagged links unimportant?

[ImprovedSilence]

It could be that. It could be AI farming. Ask questions you want AI to be able to answer, get a bunch of reasonable comments for the models to gobble up. Next time you ask google, gemeni might even post links to this very post! I'd say it's 50/50 if it's for AI or astroturfing.

[hysan]

I think hitting the flagging threshold is probably the most tangible power as having enough accounts with that power will let you “suppress” certain topics. At least until a mod intervenes.

(Unless I’m misremembering. I think flagging required some level of karma. Or was that vouching?)

[irthomasthomas]

Those who replied earnestly are going on a list. You will be added to a different list for spoiling the experiment.

[schmookeeg]

This bums me out so much. It means that we need the concept of "late-stage internet" to join capitalism describing things that were awesome and now they're much worse and getting worse-rer. :/

[red-iron-pine]

20-50% of the responses in every topic in HN are probably bots.

this one is just obvious.

note: this may also be an automated response

[Windchaser]

Note that if you're looking for the differences between the two comments, look at the bits in asterisks ("course 6").

Might be other differences; I haven't run it through a diff

[cyrialize]

Dang, and I felt like I wrote up a good response lol

[mlmonkey]

The Reddit post says course 2 and this one says course 6 !!! Definitely not the same person.

/s