leanstartupnoob

I'd arguing that HN should take a stand against the unprecedented shift towards authoritarianism. At best be are in a new era of McCarthyism. At worst the entire federal government is going to crumble and be dissolved.

This is not hyperbole!

Trump and Elon have started the first round of firing federal workers. A friend's organization just laid off 1500 people because 80% of their funding comes from the federal government.

Yes, HN is a special place. But your silence allows countless other special places to be destroyed. By the end of Trump's term HN might not even survive anyway.

The volume of threads alone does not tell the full story because the visibility of controversial content is just as important as its existence. Even if thousands of comments exist on topics, the way the platform functions means these stories quickly fall off the front page and limits their influence. HN guidelines also discourage political or activating content, making it less likely that stories about these urgent issues, such as Trump stealing $80 million in FEMA aid from New York, will even be posted.

The destruction of the federal government is a more critical issue than the origins of Proto-Indo-European people because it directly affects millions of lives in tangible ways. Yes historical curiosities are valuable, but they do not carry the same immediate, material consequences as a government being hollowed out from within.

From my perspective it seems like HN abandoned the mandate of intellectually curious stories and conversations and is instead a place where only non-controversial stories and conversations are encouraged. If people can only talk about things where no one can vociferously disagree then we aren't really being inquisitive and curious, merely eccentric.

Your comment of "discussion here is marginally* more substantive" footnoted that it's not particularly good also seems a bit condescending. Its dismissive to those attempting to engage with these stories in good faith even if a vocal minority are behaving in bad faith. When a dozen stories are popping up and disappearing in a few hours it feels a lot harder to participate in a thoughtful and substantial ways.

I can understand HN is in a rough spot. But on the other hand, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.

First off, thanks for providing all of the moderation energy and you clearly maintain a level of civility on hacker news across a wide range of controversial topics.

However, I think placing this long list of stories all under the same MOT demonstrates that conversation is "happening", but at the same time it isn't really happening.

One of the key strategies used by Trump and Putin is to flood the zone (“Flood the zone with shit”: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/1/16/20991816/i...)

As an example, the parent story of this comment is no longer on the front page and instead of anything related to Musk at the fed there is now another distraction about him trying to buy OpenAI.

I haven't read all of the above articles, but from just a cursory glance it looks like many different important events are happening. If they happened one at a time over the course of a year no one would consider it MOT, but because its all happening in the same week it gets mashed together. Individual stories quickly fall off the front page.

I would like to see some discussion on the Dark Gothic Maga video (How Tech Billionaires Plan to Destroy America) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RpPTRcz1no

On one hand it comes across like a conspiracy video, but on the other hand she plays direct video clips of major tech figures talking about dismantling the government and dividing the world into small nation states. Trump and Musk have also both stated they want to eliminate large amounts of the federal government.

I would love to get some perspective from those who have personally interacted with those people over the last 10 years.

This video probably falls under what you consider "activating", but it seems like we need to have conversations around this type of issue rather than letting rational voices get drowned out by the sea of angry shouting.

> Oh, you're our cloud cost reduction guy? I don't think we need your skills anymore, that's not a problem anymore.

That's a somewhat cynical view, but I'm sure there are plenty of other MBAs looking for people with proven experience cutting cloud costs.

Seems like you are the one being uncharitable.

For better or worse there are tons of both reasonable and unreasonable factors as to why a large company would replace a part time developer's side project with something that costs 9 figures.

You don't know those reasons, the person you replied to doesn't know those reasons, and in fact the OP probably doesn't even know those reasons (they "used to turn up to that customer annually for maintenance").

Hard to read your comment as anything other than defending the law as "something must be done" to protect the poor non-professionals.

> All I think is necessary is for existing contract and consumer protection laws be litigated and enforced.

Ergo, what you really want is government to enforce your version of free speech through "existing" contract law.

Twitter is a private company with zero legal authority to enforce anything other than not sharing your tweets.

Be honest that you really want to use the force of government laws to mandate that Twitter spreads your version of free speech across the platform paid for and developed by Twitter.

Which government agency is censoring Twitter?

Conservatives and libertarians LOVE to bleat about property rights, but they can't handle it when private parties won't provide free advertising for right-wing conspiracies.

> not understanding how web 1.0 worked and really groking REST/HATEOAS (which has since been hijacked for JSON APIs, which is complete nonsense.)

Anyone who really grokked REST would never say it's nonsense to use with a JSON API.

As another commenter pointed out, Over 90% of MPD has been from outside the metro for a long time.

Sounds like you never really knew what's going on here. The MPD is incompetent and wiping the slate clean is not an extreme position to many people here.

I still live in Minneapolis and most people that I know want to stay.

Everyone who watched the video knows George Floyd was murdered, but the MPD and its union still want to fight their termination and all charges.

MPD response to protesters has been incompetent, callous, and malicious. The majority of MPD are suburban Trump supporters and like all Trump supporters they can't stand progressive places like Minneapolis. The last straw for me was when the MPD police arrested a reporter in broad daylight on live TV.

> I’ve never even heard of anyone meeting the buyer/seller for any length of time

Yes, that's my point. When I bought and sold my house I was in the same room as the other private party. We made chit-chat and it was neat, but there was no reason we had to be there other than paperwork convenience. As paperwork continues to move online I don't see why that is necessary.

The point is that credit cards are just lines of credit. Which typically have the high costs that you pointed out. But there's nothing special about the 16.99% interest rate and many people have cards with special intro rates at 0% lasting for 6-12 months.

I don't see a lot of reasons why we can't eventually have pre-approved 30-yr mortgage credit cards accepted by companies like OpenDoor focused on selling houses.

Patrick is obviously smart, but I'm struck by how he's also a pompous know it all. Just look at his answer to someone asking about buying a house with a credit card:

https://capiche.com/q/whats-your-vision-of-e-commerce-in-203...

The main reason people don't use credit cards to buy houses now is due to the credit limit. Someone rich enough to have a $300,000 credit limit probably doesn't want to buy just a $300K house. However... it's easy to imagine the building or construction industry creating a credit card type product for home builders or renovators backed by a credit line sufficient to buy distressed properties.

> Will we see people buy houses online? I mean, clearly yes, we will see that. Will it become dominant to do it without meeting one's counterparty and/or broker? That feels unlikely.

Has Patrick ever even bought a house? Some people might think it's nice to meet the buyer/seller, but the only reason you really get together in the same room is to sign a bunch of paperwork at the same time. As patio might say, "there already exists a non-zero amount of lawyers executing real estate deals without the physical presence of the actual buyer and or seller". I see no reason for the trend to dissipate.

> I never saw closing these questions as lacking in compassion. Often there were plenty of existing questions the posters could've used as reference. It was clearly easier for them to ask another question rather than research.

People like you are why Server Fault sucks. I once asked a simple question about logging in microseconds instead of milliseconds. I received a bunch of condescending responses to RTFM and that I should "hire a developer" to figure it out. Site admins closed the question as being "low effort" or something equally stupid.

I'm a developer with over 20 years experience. I read the whole manual and the product clearly only documented milliseconds. I have thousands of karma points on the main site, but because I never used Server Fault everyone treated me like a newb who's first reaction was running to Server Fault.

Server Fault is filled with arrogant admins who would rather be assholes than help.

I think the main problem is actually the reputation system. People like you get MAD because someone asks a question you can't answer in 5 minutes because then you can't get your karma points so easily. You get MAD because someone else might earn a bunch of karma from "easy" questions you don't want to bother answering.

I'm actually happy to find this competitor because it validates a lot of my thinking and confirms that a market exists for this type of service.

At this time the other company has a more "feature rich" solution already built which is very similar to what I would provide. My product is basically vaporware today.

I'm wondering how to approach my customers about this other site without pushing them to that solution. Sounds like you are suggesting to use a strong list of differentiators. That seems like a good idea.

Talking to some of the other guy's customers sounds good too.