All: when commenting here, as anywhere on HN, kindly remain civil and substantive. Religious slurs are not allowed, nor are personal attacks.<p>We've closed this thread to noob accounts because of trolls. If you've got a new account and want to comment here, feel free to email hn@ycombinator.com.
I live in Paris and was spending the night in the middle of the hot zone. I was a few hundred meters from the Bataclan but fortunately the area I was in was spared. I tried to get a Uber but they were unavailable, "State of emergency, please stay home", the app said. I took a city bike home, rode about 10kms and barely saw anyone in the streets all the way home. It was really, really weird. I'm awfully sad that people can be proud of having killed a hundred innocents. I'm not afraid, I'm just terribly sad. Please stop this pointless killing.
In Paris right now. We are in shock. At both the scale and the extremely coordinated nature of the attacks on civilians at multiple locations.<p>I work near rue Bichat and Le Petit Cambodge, a warm little restaurant in the 10e that my colleagues and I frequent, where people were tonight killed. The Bataclan is a well-known concert venue for metal bands, where I've seen several bands play live. Les Halles is at the center of Paris. Everyone who lives here has close connections to these areas; they took place very close to our everyday lives. Even those of us fortunate enough to know that our friends are safe are reeling from what has happened.<p>This is the first time since the Second World War that France has declared a state of emergency.<p>It's too early to come to any conclusions. It's too early to talk about immediate and long-term ramifications, about connections to the refugees, how these events will make France more 'communautariste'. That time will come, but it's too early right now.<p>It's 2am right now, Paris is mostly awake. We mourn those who lost their lives.
Facebook has enabled their safety check feature:<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/safetycheck/paris_terror_attacks/" rel="nofollow">https://www.facebook.com/safetycheck/paris_terror_attacks/</a>
The repeated attacks, heavy immigration of refugees...I'm hoping for the best, but I feel like there is a powder keg here. Whether or not it is based in any fact, how this is handled and plays out is a serious concern.
Three Emergency protocols activated tonight to deal with the situation:<p>Plan multi attentats: Sudden surge of multiple situations<p>Plan blanc (in Île de France): surge of unpredictable activity of a hospital<p>Plan rouge: when there are significant casualties in a small area
I'm not entirely sure how I would define my guiding motivation in life, but I swear "do no harm" would be part of it.<p>I despair at those who believe otherwise.
This is scary. This was a well coordinated attack that usually create a lot of chatter before hand. Unlike lone wolf attacks these are somewhat easier to detect.<p>The French intelligence and counter terrorism units are either not doing their best or these terrorist are getting much better at covering their tracks.
This soils the reputation of islam. I know some good people (muslims) who suffer from prejudice on a daily basis because of attacks like these.<p>Being a muslim in a foreign country is an increasingly difficult and isolating experience.
My wife and I were just there for part of our honeymoon and literally flew out hours before, around noon on Friday. Some locals had talked to us about the recent attack some weeks ago and how they didn't want to let such people stop them from living their lives. This day is worse but I feel like the lovely people we talked to were determined, resilient and optimistic. God bless the city with peace.
The war on terror has been going on for 15 years now - are there more terrorists in 2000 or 2015?<p>Sooner or later, we will have to come to the realization that terrorism cannot be eliminated by force. Stop destabilizing Arab countries, stop imperial interference in Northern Africa, and perhaps we'll see an end to this nonsense.
I've started a translation effort of the 'State of emergency' French laws + some relevant press releases from the government: <a href="https://gist.github.com/fasterthanlime/faa2ae629d22f325beb7" rel="nofollow">https://gist.github.com/fasterthanlime/faa2ae629d22f325beb7</a><p>Feel free to suggest improvements in the comments and/or request other relevant documents to be translated.
Latest breakdown of fatalities available, from CNN and other sources:<p><pre><code> 114 and still rising at the Bataclan theater
19 at Le Belle Equipe bar
14 at the Cambodian restaurant
4 in the area of the Avenue de la Republique
4 outside the Stade de France (remarkably low death toll here given that there were two suicide bombers there)</code></pre>
Headline unfortunately is out of date. It's well over 100 deaths, according to major news sources, and unknown wounded. Just tragic and senseless.
Of all the wonderful and dangerous developments that technology has granted our species, I'm saddened to think that we have yet to find a pathway to the human spirit that can help reduce hatred and the impulses that result in such terrible actions. From school shootings in the US to warlords in distant lands, there's so much yet to achieve in the name of progress, for human kind. Surely, we have much to do, and as tragedies continue to befall people of all nationalities, creeds, and colors, reaching for betterment hopefully can be a goal for us all. The sun shall rise tomorrow, and I truly hope each new day is one we can use to its fullest for the pursuit of life.
Café, croissants, gouter d'anniversaire, et ce soir, j'irais voir Spectre parceque merde (i'm in Paris)<p>( Café, croissant, birthday party, and tonight, i'll go watch Spectre - as previously planned, because f.. them. )
From reddit<p>ChickenInASuit8h535:
ISIS aren't really trying to "solve" anything in the countries they're attacking, the main motivation behind these attacks is to widen the rift between Islam and the West and bring more moderate Muslims over to their side<p>alpual7h345:
And I'm sure backlash and discrimination resulting from this attack will further alienate Muslims in France. I'm sure that's part of their intention, and I wonder why I don't see that being discussed much. Thanks for pointing that out.
French should be concerned about losing more liberties due to knee-jerk reaction from politicians wanting to "do something". Mass surveillance under the pretext of anti-terrorism.<p>Be alert.
I hope the people in Paris for the dotGo conference are okay. <a href="http://www.dotgo.eu/" rel="nofollow">http://www.dotgo.eu/</a>
We visited France/Paris for our marriage anniversary back in June; and the city left a lasting impression on for over the course of 4 days.<p>All I can say is; don't change your fundamentals. Then they have won. It's just a larger version of your bitcoin demanding DDOS bandits. Once you give in, humanity will fail.<p>I am more worried about the innocent people who are going to suffer because of this.
Every Twitter user has jumped aboard and is using the hashtag #PorteOuverte which is intended to help Parisians find a safe place to stay during these attacks. It's even trending in Australia. This shows that Twitter is a successful news aggregation and trend following service, but also proves its failure to be a platform for meaningful communication.
100+ is terrifying. While it's still morning here, 80,000 people are estimated to have already died today. (<a href="http://www.worldometers.info/" rel="nofollow">http://www.worldometers.info/</a>)<p>If these reports are accurate then we have a staggering average above 4,000 violent daily deaths. (<a href="http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/7/2/104.full" rel="nofollow">http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/7/2/104.full</a>) (<a href="http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/67403/1/a77019.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/67403/1/a77019.pdf</a>)
Calais Jungle (where refugees stay) is on fire: <a href="https://mobile.twitter.com/Harryslaststand/status/665329170340155392" rel="nofollow">https://mobile.twitter.com/Harryslaststand/status/6653291703...</a>
Prayers for those who died and their family members.<p>A reminder than the free societies must remain and and continue to defend themselves despite such terror attacks. It is important that politicians don't cave into the political goals that these terrorists might have.
The US terrorism alert level has <i>not</i> been raised, and there are no US terrorism alerts from Homeland Security following this.[1] PJM and CAISO (the two biggest US power grid operators) aren't showing any emergency actions or warnings. So the US anti-terrorism community isn't seeing an imminent threat.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.dhs.gov/news/2015/11/13/statement-secretary-jeh-c-johnson-situation-paris" rel="nofollow">http://www.dhs.gov/news/2015/11/13/statement-secretary-jeh-c...</a>
I am as saddened as on Paris shootings and killing of innocents like I'm shooting and killing of thousands of Muslims in Syria, Palestine, Iraq and Kashmir.<p>I hope Western Society/Media or elsewhere will not bring faith factor in discussion just like they don't bring it up during US shootings or killing in Palestine or elsewhere.
This will only get worse over time, in Europe and in US, more so in Europe as Europe is frankly slowly Muslimized(by 2050 they may become majority). It's the new reality. Western culture is under serious attack and the system is not designed to cope with terrorism like this _at_all_.<p>Without security, talking about freedom is meaningless.
Really sad. It's also depressing to see the response from politics. Border controls and more police presence. How likely is that to solve the underlying problems?
I'm very curious about where the attackers got those firearms. France isn't as heavily disarmed as England, but it isn't exactly the United States for firearms availability; if any of the offenders' weapons can be recovered, I'm sure there will be interesting things to learn from their serial numbers.
I don't understand how can you talk about ISIS, Nazis and Communists in the same sentence? Communism has nothing to do with violence compared to ISIS and Nazis...<p>Edit: Why downvotes? Idea of communism does not propose violence, Nazis and ISIS on the other hand do.
FWIW: The recent book "Day Of Wrath" <a href="http://www.dayofwrathbook.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.dayofwrathbook.com</a> predicts where such attacks are going.
I've seen a lot of HNers suggesting that we must over react and ramp up the war on terrorism. I'm all for cutting off immigration, but how will ramping up the wars do us any good? I don't see how another ten years "fixing" things is going to work.
Right now we don't know who these people are, where they came from and what their aims were (besides terror). Of course terror is exactly this, you don't know, you imagine the worst, and everyone reacts, often pointlessly. I wonder why France?
I have have a few twitter accounts with news on very narrow topics, for example, machine learning news, and other niche technical topics. I just went through them all and anyone who mentions the Paris attacks gets unfollowed. If I ever want news about shocking violence going on on the other side of the planet with my Machine learning news I'll resubscribe. I get inundated every day with too much information. Getting the same shock news through 30 different channels is just ridiculous. Everyone thinks they're the modern day Paul Revere when really, I already know, and they're just being annoying.