codeup

Please don't get me wrong, but I never understood what "social" bookmarking is useful for. As long as my supposed ignorance persists, I'm sorry to crash the party with a simple question: why is Delicious relevant?

Assuming many or most here think it is relevant, it should be possible to respond to my question reasonably, without buzzwords and with only moderate downvoting.

TLDR for this HN thread: The problem posed by the mix of technical issues and ethnic prejudices in this "bug report" is apparently more complex than what the HN community can deal with. This is a low point for the quality of discussions on HN.

I agree with the goal in not showing points. I think it works and the benefits outweigh the costs mentioned by others.

The quality of comments on HN has increasingly suffered from people behaving like in hives. Let the content of a comment decide if you agree, not the number of others who agree with the comment.

Similarly, let the content of comments in this thread have a say in the future of not showing points on comments, not just the number of votes for or against it.

Why is it relevant?

This is a clever move.

The quality of social news websites with up-/downvoting of comments suffers when people behave like in hives. This has increasingly been the case on HN lately. Let the content of a comment decide if you agree, not the number of others who agree with the comment.

Even though most may disagree: Am I the only one who doesn't shed any tears over this news?

A dedicated browser for social networking like Flock always seemed superfluous to me. The recommendations of the Flock project point at this: use other free browsers (preferably FF) with the appropriate extensions.

"Yea but so this means they don't want to leave (because of their friends). Or they are not sure yet."

Think of it as lock-in.

You're giving your personal reasons to stay on Facebook and I'm sure many people stay on for similar reasons.

I think, however, that those who do not use it are well aware of the potential advantages of Facebook. The point is that to them, the well-known disadvantages, which you didn't mention, decisively outweigh the advantages.

It certainly is more difficult to leave Facebook if many of your friends are there to stay. Actually, the social costs of leaving or not joining Facebook can be quite high. This may explain why people hesitate even though they would like to leave.

Funny how those who pointed out that the pun is a bad one and gramatically wrong received downvotes...

The author thinks that taking notes on twitter is a cause worth defending.

Read this post unless you expect substance: "Twitter is many different things rolled into one. There are so many different useful things you can do with it. I think public class notes is a particularly interesting one."

Spot on. But this is exactly the kind of article that one would expect to get many negative comments on HN. It's critical of a hyped website and the argument isn't even economic.

It has been discussed here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1944628

You don't know why he got downvoted? It's obviously not "only in America"...

Your point that Firefox led site owners away from linking to the feed is an important one which I hadn't considered.

I also agree the icon's useful for indicating an existing feed. It's easy not to think about this use, because most of us probably just notice it when we need it but rarely click on it.

Other than the icon being an indicator, I don't find the way Firefox handles feeds too useful (that mix between bookmarks and news feeds).

I never found the RSS icon too useful. I think Firefox should keep the ability to parse RSS but most feed readers have an auto-discovery feature and that's usually enough.

In sum, the icon is another example of a broken UI for RSS, which is otherwise a great technology.

The title of the submission has been changed. It used to be "I didn't realize MIT hired Luddites."

At the time, AOL's facilitation of people going online was a pretty big exception, too. After a short while, it was time to move on, and those who showed the way ahead were those who had already been critical of AOL.

She clarifies right at the start of the interview that she is not a Luddite.

"If you want to make different demands of users of your software than those of the GPL, BSD license, etc., you should not use one of those licenses."

Licenses are legal instruments and the terms of free licenses give defined freedoms. The nag message for Apple users does not contradict the license under which Remind is published (GPL). The message, reflective of the author's "petulance" as you put it, is, legally speaking a feature of the software and it is subject to the same licensing terms.

I think you are mixing up the license with a vague notion of the "spirit" of the license. These are two different things. You may still argue that the nag message goes against the "spirit" of a free license (while not against the terms), but the counter-argument made by the author is that this measure is justified in the face of Apple's restrictive behavior.

Remind is Free Software and what you are suggesting would make the license unfree. Obviously the author doesn't want that. Instead he chose to keep Remind free and remind Apple users of Apple's opposition to Free Software. It's hard to miss the logic.

Knowing the answer and feeling somewhat nostalgic about it makes me feel old!

No you shouldn't flag the article because of this. The iPhone 4 is what triggered Kottke's post but the point he's making is more general.

No, because they could experiment with other things to make profit. Playing with spam is playing with fire. Beyond foreseeable profitability, which is what most shareholders are interested in, this would damage their reputation and their business in the long run.

Google may be experimenting to find the right balance between spam and search quality. "Right" meaning the most profitable.

Google profits more from spammy search results than from quality search results? I don't think so. Definitely not in the long run.

If the pleasure of consuming outweighs the pain of accomplishment, then what makes you think you should change ways?

The title of the submission "Why Reddit will be the next Digg" sounds like Reddit is going to go down like Digg. But the article's title is "Why Reddit will be the new Digg", and it's about how Reddit will take the top place that Digg once had.

Have you asked yourself why you have this mindset? Is it for technical curiosity, social status, boredom or something else? Whatever reason you honsetly find for that, ask yourself how much of it is externally induced through advertising, colleagues, friends etc. Once you find this out, you will have made a first step towards knowing what you really need and spending your money on just that.

Why do people write articles like this?