webwanderings

But Wikipedia proves that the real premise is not sustainable if they don't collect donations.

So whether one defines the hierarchy of premises or not, the fact of the matter is that the intention matters. The intention of Imzy seems to be that they want to stand against Reddit, and their stand out qualification is for people to be nice via reward-system. Now here I am not going to go into the argument of whether reward systems should be used for adults...but it is one of their premise for sure.

Let me ask you this: If you want to kick "people" off, because they're not playing nicely (according to you, or normal perceptions) then why in the first place you want to invite them? Note my emphasis on people which includes you as well.

But now that's a different point altogether, isn't it? We were not talking about whether one should fulfill the demands or not. This also does not imply that the implicit rules can be automatically enforced.

If you agree that the rule-setting is unnatural under such context (i.e, the context of an online community, dealing with humans and human nature), then you would agree that you should first fix your own expectations.

If you read my comment about the Scott Peck's framework, then you can see that at the first stage, humans are generally nice to each other in any group setting. This is a modern condition: the consequences of civilized societies. But humans also tend to reach the second stage, where they are totally not nice to each other. If you read him directly, you'll get the better idea.

This argument of freedom of speech, or lack there of, is misguided and misplaced in my opinion. It tends to come up at every opportunity (every normalized social network now initially had this argument when they started in the beginning - and we're still having this misplaced argument.

> ...means that they can demand whatever

What I am simply saying is that setting such an expectation (via rules and enforcement) is unnatural for humans.

People are not going to "demand whatever" because they are not nice. You should expect them to demand whatever, even if they are nice.

What I am really trying to say is further explained here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13148978

Why would you want non-programmers to hang out at sites like HN? You are then recommending they go to Stack? This is a bad advise (happy?). But really!

I am a self-learner and I am attempting to self-learn programming lately. I would not send anyone to these two types of sites which you are recommending right out of the gate. There is no chance anyone would learn programming via HN. And a newbie commenting at Stack is going to get a rude awakening (which would then lead to morale loss).

Isn't the business model the real premise? Without which, you won't be able to self-sustain, which then renders any other supposed premise, useless.

Again, you're looking at secondary matters. Look at the consequences which results due to the primary intention.

Besides, nobody opens up their houses for strangers. So it is a flawed comparison as well. You need to be honest with the premise. You are talking about an online community which is built for a purpose. Your purpose is two-fold. You want to be a nice contributor towards some ideal (nothing wrong with that). Your second purpose is to be self-sustaining (so you can continue your goals). Again, nothing wrong with that either. But none of this has anything to do with open and inviting house, or even strangers. But look at what your purpose does: it necessarily invites strangers. You then have consequence.

You also know in your heart of heart, that if you do not invite strangers (let's also remember that we're talking about the online world), you will never be able to achieve your ideals. Because no matter how big your social circle may be, you cannot achieve your ideals through just the people you know.

You are missing the point. Your secondary intention has no relevance because your primary intention is to "invite the strangers". When you invite strangers, you should expect anything.

> Why is it so difficult to get people to abide by the basic rules of human decency and civility?

Because nobody is running these social media platforms with proper framework towards the goal of achieving such ideals.

What you are describing is a second-stage natural conditions of humans. What it needs is a push toward the third-stage. I recommend reading late Scott Peck's The Different Drum to understand this missing psychological framework.

Humans are naturally conditioned to be stuck in this second stage where nobody is nice. At first, this is better than being in the first stage, where everyone is nice. The problem however is, that the second stage needs a push towards the third stage (which is where the sanity prevails and people understand each other better).

The social media platforms are geared towards financial motives. If they were to gear towards human motives, they will implement some kind of framework (what Scott Peck did in his days).

I didn't see this as their basic premise. Their basic premise seems to hinge on the idea of "tipping people's niceness". If I am nice and helpful, then I should expect to earn a penny. And I should do the same to others.

That's actually very similar to the plot of Black Mirror's Nosedive episode.

I tried to hang on there but I didn't find much motivation to "earn anything". I am not even sure why I should reward anyone there.

Your argument is flawed. Your primary intention is to invite total strangers into your house. You then cannot force your rules on them, because they can naturally demand things.

Edit: Besides, nobody opens up their houses for strangers. So it is a flawed comparison as well. You need to be honest with the premise. You are talking about an online community which is built for a purpose. Your purpose is two-fold. You want to be a nice contributor towards some ideal (nothing wrong with that). Your second purpose is to be self-sustaining (so you can continue your goals). Again, nothing wrong with that either. But none of this has anything to do with open and inviting house, or even strangers. But look at what your purpose does: it necessarily invites strangers. You then have consequence.

You also know in your heart of heart, that if you do not invite strangers (let's also remember that we're talking about the online world), you will never be able to achieve your ideals. Because no matter how big your social circle may be, you cannot achieve your ideals through just the people you know.

That's what I meant exactly. When it comes to US news and big events, HN forgets all its policies. If the policy is "all" then stick with the principles, or else it doesn't work.

This guy's job - and his company - depends on you being on "social media", but not on Internet? What an irony!

When you say "all", make sure you follow through. But I don't know how you're going to distinguish between politics and 'current events'. In any case, US news seems to always take precedence over anyone else in the world.

Skytap also has a good (fast and quick) solution, with all the docker bells and whistles.

Does anyone know if NPR recently used this (or something similar) recently, on a story? I recall listening to a story in my car (hardly paying attention) and the person narrating the story, sounded unusual. I thought it is probably computer generated but I couldn't tell for sure. I guess the general public better get ready to tell the difference?

> my feeling is, is that anything that is larger human scale invokes mechanisms concerned with religion so you have a priesthood with white coats, you know all the paraphernalia were there and some people thought it would take over the world and some people wanted it to take over the world, and some people were afraid it would take over the world, and none of those things happened.

Can things be said any more brilliantly, for all inclusive matters involving humans?

If you add a timer on the tasks, I'll consider moving. I need the native platform to provide a start/stop timer on tasks.

This is incredible. Thank you for your generosity and kindness in opening this up for everyone.

Good read. Author certainly knows how to write long form.

I'd want one of these boards to have a timer, for a change! None of the services anywhere offer embedded timer/stop watch. You start a task, you should be able to time it.

It's in French; adds a second level of difficulty due to language difference.

Since it is addressing beginning programmers, I would like to add my take. I'm not a programmer but I have many years worth of computer experience. Programming never appealed to me because it never came naturally.

Lately I (once again) started paying attention to programming and started looking around. I went from one e-book and MOOC to another with much of the python hype (previously in my - failed - attempt, I tried Perl, PhP etc, when they were in vogue). Well I have eventually concluded, that the problem with programming is not necessarily me, but it is the lack of proper padagogy itself. There are programmers galore out there trying to teach via YouTube and MOOCs, but most are code monkeys who know what they're doing but I wouldn't call them "teachers".

So my search eventually led me to Scheme/Racket where I see some signs and hope of proper learning (I'm not going to be able to afford myself to take a college level CS). I looked into Small Talk as well but as of now I don't see a proper MOOC on it. I have started Racket course (BSL) on EdX. After spending much time and energy chasing Python basics and going nowhere, i feel I can possibly and eventually learn programming the way it is meant to be.

Agree. I have couple of RSS on few of the search keywords; have been working fine for a while now. Feedly (which I don't use on daily basis) makes it very hard to extract the feed URL. I lost track of how I discovered YouTube RSS links.

I use Digg RSS Reader with hundreds of feeds. It became my only go to place after I abandoned social media.

Digg RSS Reader has been unbelievably good. The best thing about it (so far - knock on wood) that they don't tinker or change anything, because everything is working like it should. I don't really see a reason to try anyone else.

Chromebook.

I bought the cheap one (Lenovo) sometime ago. It has a good battery life, very lightweight and compact. I have seen the same being used by many people (in the same category). It is the most trouble free and productive piece of material there is. Ignore all these security software and Linux etc. Just hookup uBlock and Ghostery into the user's Google Chrome account and you're done.

Yes, but keychain is not there on the online portal of iCloud, which wouldn't be helpful if you're on different OS.