Comment by hluska | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hluska | Hacker News Reader

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While your intentions may have been around discussion, I don’t want to be marketed to when I’m trying to understand something unrelated. I have a business degree so I intimately understand that HN is technically free and it’s nice to get free eyeballs, but we are people too. I’m so much more than a credit card number, yet you’ve reduced me to a user acquisition in the most insulting way possible.

Perhaps instead of your ideas, it’s worth seeding your own personal make up with a firm statement of ethics??

Are you the kind of person who will hijack conversations to promote your product? Or do you have integrity?

Just purely out of concern for your business, do you have a cofounder who could handle marketing for you? If so, consider letting her have complete control over that function. It’s genuinely sad to see a founder squander goodwill on shitty marketing.

In founder mode, I pretty much only think about these data structures. So I am (admittedly) not that sensitive to how it comes across.

Spam would be raising the topic on unrelated posts. This is a context where I can find people who get it. The biggest single thing we need now is critical feedback on the tech from folks who understand the area. You’re right I probably should have raised the questions about mergability and finality without referencing other discussions.

Because I don’t want to spam, I didn’t link externally, just to conversation on HN. As a reader I often follow links like this because I’m here to learn about new projects and where the people who make them think they’ll be useful.

ps I emailed the address in your profile, I have a feeling you are right about something here and I want to explore.

> Spam would be raising the topic on unrelated posts.

I think you need to reread the conversation, because you did post your marketing comment while ignoring the context, making your comment unrelated.

If you want it distilled down from my perspective, it went something like this:

> Trog: Doubts about the necessity of Merkle trees. Looking for a conversation about the pros and cons of Merkle trees and double ledger accounting.

> You: Look at our product. Incidentally it uses Merkle trees, but I am not going to mention anything about their use. No mention of pros and cons of Merkle trees. No mention of double ledger accounting.

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