[tptacek]

Just a tip that I hope is helpful to you. I agree that the parent comment is a bad comment. But it's also a two-sentence comment, and one that was clearly heading for the illegible light grey abyss.

So what I'm suggesting you think about next time you comment is how much weight you're donating to that comment by dignifying it with a long response.

Another thing to consider is that when you take an ill-considered and mean-spirited comment and pick it apart in detail, you beg other people on the thread to critique your analysis. At which point (from several years of experience on HN) we're all off to the races in a meta-debate, the terms of which were set by a self-evidently terrible comment.

When you see terrible comments like this, just vote them down. Or, if you have to reply, vote it down and then write a careful reply, with brevity.

[dang]

This is hard-won HN wisdom. It's 100% correct and, if everyone would take it to heart, would make a huge difference around here. Flames would still break out, but they'd die off for being oxygen-deprived.

If I may tack on one thing: if you have flagging privileges, please flag comments that are truly bad for HN. You can do that by clicking 'link' above the comment, which will take you to the item page which has a 'flag' link. We monitor those flags and take action based on them.