Have you looked at their body of work? An embedded YouTube video does not negate their ethos.

Well, it kind of negates it a little bit, because they are against trackers, and state that their website does not use them, but they are spreading Google's trackers through their website.

Of course, this is almost certainly accidental and I'd think it would be corrected if it were brought to their attention, and the meat of their work is in domains other than lightweight websites.

I'm glad this is the best critique we can do.

Brings to mind a comment I saw here the other day observing that some on HN seem to default to a rather "unkind" mode.

I don't default to unkind mode on every topic. Perhaps I phrased the comment too negatively here however. Note though that as a later comment pointed out, they claim to have "no tracking or analytics," so clearly this was a mistake on their part. A commitment to no tracking is also something I would expect from a site like this making the claims they are making. So clearly my criticism itself was well placed, even if the delivery was too harsh. Also, I would think they would at least check to see what embedding a youtube video does before doing it. And I do think embedding the youtube video is strange even ignoring the tracking for a site that describes itself as "small." Is it really small if you have a massive iframe embedded in it?

compare, perhaps, the adjacent thread that had comments like "I got that complaint about my blog too, and here's how I fixed it" and a bunch of other things that seemed plausible and helpful? (I don't know if 100r will make those changes, but I'm certainly going to look at them for some of my own youtube links...)

It's a cynical point of view ("Yet you yourselves participate in society! Curious!") but it holds some validity. They are using some very advanced tools to rage against the capitalist machine. Attacking modern power structures using tools and privileges that arise from those same power structures seems... well, ungrateful at times. The lives they're living were utterly inconceivable for most of human history.

That said, it'd be even more cynical to dismiss all of the work and thought that Rek and Devine have put out there because certain elements of it seem a bit hypocritical from a certain point of view. I just spent a couple of hours surfing through their site, reading about their philosophy, and find myself respecting the parts I disagree with almost as much as the parts I identify with. That kind of content is exactly what HN's good for discovering.

Yes it may seem ungrateful at times but I think they are doing a service by presenting alternatives. From that point of view I think we should be grateful. Ofc I am jealous of their lifestyle but if I wanted to do that badly enough I'm sure I could work towards it too I guess?

The HN audience seem to encourage this type of comment by consistently upvoting them, like how the current top comment is one that complains about tracking due to embedded video as opposed to something that is materially related to the site contents.

I will do my part by upvoting the other comments, but judging by the karma ranking and comment history of some of these commenters, I think I am in the minority.

>by consistently upvoting them

My comment is actually downvoted at -3 points currently. As for the top comment, I don't see the issue with pointing out that the site is enabling the tracking of users when it claims not to, especially since it is directly related to the topic of the site itself. I don't think being unconditionally positive is in line with the site's goal of promoting "intellectual curiosity."

>judging by the karma ranking and comment history of some of these commenters

That top comment is from John Nagle of Nagle's algorithm. I doubt his karma is from being negative.

> That top comment is from John Nagle of Nagle's algorithm. I doubt his karma is from being negative.

A relentless cynicism and the willingness to shoot down bad ideas are vital for producing anything worthwhile. Someone who was able to improve real-world networking is very likely to have been "negative" by modern standards.

Good point. By "negative" there I meant unhelpfully negative.

I'm not sure I agree relentless cynicism is productive. Skepticism yes, that's very healthy.

But unchecked cynicism tends to result in a general lack of trust that is not very conducive to progress.

> I don't see the issue with pointing out that the site is enabling the tracking of users when it claims not to,

Which, in a sense ends up being anímical the ethos at hand, with many blogfolk now securing their own sites, with a nice, ongoing discussion about many technical options to achieve that. Sounds like a good outcome.-