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It does take a lot of context out. I know what Google is. No idea what "NSO" is.



On the other hand, "Israel's" makes it sound like it's a governmental intelligence agency rather than a company. Misleading context could be worse than no context.


Sure... I'm no expert. But "NSO" is CLEARLY not enough context for readers...full stop.


On HN, there's no need for every title to explain itself fully, especially when it's trivial to find out the missing information. It's good for readers here to have to work a little: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Also, many readers have followed this story and know what NSO is. There's no title that fits the bill for everyone.


I respectfully disagree. A three letter acronym implies shared understanding. NSA, CIA, GHQ, MI6, KGB, IBM, AMZ, USA, etc, are globally recongized. NSO is ambiguous and confusing in a headline and demands explanation.

Google tells me that "NSO" is "Nurse Malpractice" for the entire first page fold. I assume it's similarly unhelpful in other regions for other people. 'Cmon, it's not a big, recognized, entity. Wait a year and the problem will be even more apperent.


There have been a number of posts about NSO on HN, and most of them do not say Israel in the title. But most of them do say "NSO Group" instead of "NSO", so maybe this title should have said that too. Although you might blame that on Reuters as well for not having "Group" in their title when that is actually in the name of the company.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&prefix=true&query=NSO&...


Good point. "NSO Group" would have helped me a lot, and avoids the immediate political innuendo. @dang: An obvious compromise.


Ok, we can do that.


Literally the first sentence of the Reuters article says what it is. It's not as if this is hard to answer.

The principle that it's good for readers to work a little is bedrock on HN. We want users who figure things out for themselves. That spurs the intellectual curiosity HN exists for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


You disagree with calling a company by their name?

If you have an issue with how they named their company, you could write to their CEO and let him know that he is using 3 letter entity names improperly. Unless you want the community to pick a new name to bestow upon them, I’m not sure what you expect from us.


Apparently, their name is "NSO Group". So I agree with many of your points.

Or we could all just simultaneously guess what popular 3 letter NSO acronym it really is?

https://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/NSO

Seriously, that's a lame answer. There's almost certainly another "NSO" company with more past or future notoriety/revenue/whatever. Why be ambiguous when that's not actually their name? The name is , "NSO Group".


This entire thread could have been avoided by you simply reading the first sentence of the article. No Google searches or long discussion needed.


The first sentence of the article states "surveillance firm NSO Group".




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