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.
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.
From my perspective, all that is true, but it's not HN's job to be the zone that is flooded by it. HN's job is to be a place for intellectually curious stories and conversations. We have to hold fast to that mandate because if we don't, the site will quickly cease to exist for its intended purpose.
What this means in practice is that there's some space for discussing these topics, but only some, and not nearly enough to fully cover everything that's going on right now.
I understand that a lot of users want this to be otherwise. Quite rightly, they feel like current events are important and deserve a great deal more airtime. But our first responsibility is to preserve HN for its intended purpose, and HN is not an instrument that can accommodate much more of this. The threads that I listed above are, from HN's point of view, already a lot.
It's a pity, because to the extent that discussion here is marginally* more substantive than what's available elsewhere, it's natural to wish that it could be applied to much more important issues. Why care about the origins of Proto-Indo-European when the government is being burned down? and so on. We should turn our attention to the things that matter! But this argument just doesn't work in practice. The only thing that would happen if we "flooded the zone" on HN too is that the place would burn out.
* emphasis on "marginally". I'm not claiming it's particularly good—there is a great deal not to like.
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.
> a place where only non-controversial stories and conversations are encouraged
I've made a list of 23 threads (see the reply below), all from the last month. There are over 13k comments in those threads alone, and it's not a complete list.
At first that seems counterintuitive (like Jevons' paradox, or Yogi Berra's "nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded"). But it's not so paradoxical. These aren't factual propositions, they're expressions of a feeling—what people are really saying is not that there is no coverage of these topics, but that they would like more coverage. They often use words like "no", "zero", "never", and "nothing" to express how they feel, but what they mean by these words is "not enough". Which is fair enough. The community always splits between users who want more and users who feel like it's too much.
Also, it's easy to miss any particular thread or sequence of threads. Even among regular HN readers, there will be many who haven't seen even one of the 23 threads listed below, or who only saw 1 or 2, and therefore might naturally feel like none of this is being discussed. Among those, there will be some who feel strongly about it, and some of these will naturally express their feeling in the way I described above. Nonetheless, in reality there is a large amount of this discussion happening—it is by far the most-discussed topic of recent weeks, and will likely continue to be.
> also seems a bit condescending
Sorry for giving that impression! I often add a disclaimer like that because I don't want to sound like I'm making excessive claims about HN's discussion quality. The most I can say is that median discussion quality here is modestly better than elsewhere on the internet, but at its worst it's still pretty bad. I don't mean to put down HN commenters who are using the site thoughtfully. You have to remember that as moderators we see a lot of stuff like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43018472, to pick the most recent example. In fact we must see more of that than any other reader, simply because it's our job to.
> They often use words like "no", "zero", "never", and "nothing" to express how they feel, but what they mean by these words is "not enough".
Hyperbole is worse than that, IMHO. It inflames and serves almost no other purpose.
Imagine someone writes, "politician X is the most corrupt ever". What does that tell us? One bit of information (yes/no on this politician), and that the author has strong emotions about it (maybe 2-4 more bits - are they 4 of 4 angry? 16 of 16?); or very possibly they want to perform strong emotion because that energizes the interaction, draws attention, 'wins' the day, or is an aggressive negotiating position (reducing it to ~1-2 bits); and/or they could do those things reflexively and without a conscious plan, participating in a fun social dynamic that is muscle memory from years on the the Internet (reducing it to ~0-2 bits). Maybe it's just easier.
Whatever it is, what we don't learn - what the hyperbole wipes out - is knowledge and learning. We learn - acquire novel knowledge - little regarding X; what X does black, white, and mostly grey (what shades?); what is corrupt and not corrupt about X; what corruption is, the grey areas, and how that applies here, and of course much more. There are gigabits or maybe terabits to say here, dissertations and books, more than could be said in a lifetime. Another thing we could learn is the author as a person and their feelings, including their anger - how, why, when, what kind, etc. - giga-terabits more. On these vast landscapes of knowledge and emotion, we need each other's perspectives and insights to navigate and see what's valuable.
But all real information and nuance and complexity is washed away by the ultimate, by hyperbole. It's so ___, there is nothing to think about. Just a few bits is all you need.
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.
That's a fair point and it's true that some of the threads I listed fell off the front page quickly, but others were on the front page for 7 hours, 9 hours, 22 hours, 26 hours, and so on.
> a more critical issue than the origins of Proto-Indo-European because it directly affects millions of lives
For sure. I've made the same point many times over the years. I dug up a sample:
The question isn't whether current events are more important than, say, "making my own basketball hoops" or "3rd century irrigation systems" or "Do spiders dream?" or any of the other obscure things that have spent time on HN's front page. Current events are far more important than these, and indeed almost anything on HN's front page.
But if you're arguing that HN should prioritize stories by importance, then you're arguing that HN should become a current affairs site. That's not the mandate of the site.
If you're not arguing that, then I think we agree in principle, and disagree only about the degree to which the valve for such stories should be open. I get that you think it should be opened further, and many users agree with you; but then, many users feel that it should be tightened further. We have to think about satisfying the whole community (as best we can), not just one constituency; and we have to think about preserving the site for its intended mandate, which could all too easily be washed away by a tsunami of legitimately more important stories.
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.
I hear you and I hear the other users expressing similar feelings, but what you guys need to understand is that the community is split on this, and the larger part does not want the frontpage to be taken over by this (or by anything else, presumably).
The more repetitive these threads get, the lower-quality they become. The most recent ones have been truly terrible, by the standards of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. That's another key indicator of which way to adjust the valve. The more people are unable to discuss this topic thoughtfully, the further it drifts from the intended spirit of the site.
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.
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").
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.
What we LOVE is a market free of force and fraud, and we love rule of law. Within that there are very nuanced conversations to be had about when the threshold for force or fraud has been reached.
Enforcement of contracts is essential to a healthy society, but is it good to enforce a contract where one party either lied or coerced the other to sign? No, or at least not necessarily.
The nature of the contract between social media platforms and their users (both explicit and implicit) has changed dramatically since the days that Twitter was "the free speech wing of the free speech party". Users have sacrificed a increasing amount of privacy for less and less obvious benefit. In the meantime, many people have come to depend upon these services for connecting with others, for their livelihoods, and for news independent of corporate media.
Have the social media companies deceived their users? Or have they forced unconscionable terms upon their users? Have they violated consumer protection laws?
I am not a lawyer. I don't know the answers to those questions. But I do know that there are some lawyers and judges who do think that some of these social media companies have overstepped. We don't necessarily need a civil rights case, or a constitutional amendment, or even to repeal Section 230. All I think is necessary is for existing contract and consumer protection laws be litigated and enforced.
This kind of action would benefit both left and right, and I think is more constructive than opportunistically deciding that "businesses can do whatever they want" when you think it only hurts people on the right.
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.
I honestly think you should stop trying to read minds. You aren't very good at it.
Perhaps you should try reading my words instead and responding to them rather than the imaginary things you pretend I actually think? It might work out better.
Can you please tell me what "my version" of free speech is? Is this different from the normal understanding of free speech? Because I haven't actually said anything about "free speech" other than quoting Jack Dorsey.
While I do believe in the necessity of freedom of speech (not just the first amendment, but a particular set of cultural values) those abstract values aren't my primary concern here. My concerns (across the various tech platforms out there) are:
* the disruption to peoples' businesses that result from the opaque and largely incontestable content moderation process. This is mainly a concern where the content in question does not violate either the law nor the TOS.
* The exploitation of consumers through the gradual degradation of privacy.
* The attempts to undermine consumer rights by removing users' options for legal remedy in the TOS
Basically, if users' are providing value to these platforms through advertising revenue, mine-able private information, transaction fees, etc. what expectations can the users' have with regard to the value they receive and how they are treated by the platforms? I do not think the answer of "nothing" is acceptable.
Yes, I know it's confusing because the language has been so thoroughly corrupted over the last decade.
Let me show you my reasoning:
JSON is not a hypertext, even if you include URLs in it. [0]
HATEOAS requires a hypertext (see the first word of the acronym)
HATEOAS is "an essential part of the of the 'uniform interface' feature of REST" [1]
Therefore a JSON API, even with some embedded URLs, using multiple HTTP Methods and following a traditional hierarchical path scheme, is not REST-ful.
[0] - A sufficiently advanced client could interpret a JSON-encoded hypertext in a general, uniform manner. However, in practice, this is almost never the case.
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.
Cities live and die based on those with real roots in the city. Which is why it’s largely not worthwhile to shape city policy on the desire of “tourists” who are either transient or “if 1 bad thing I don’t like happens I’m leaving immediately”
All public sector unions should be banned, I'm not going to fight you on that one. But, again, I just don't share this optimism.
>The majority of MPD are suburban Trump supporters and like all Trump supporters they can't stand progressive places like Minneapolis.
Maybe things have changed since I moved away in 2013, but this wasn't true back then. Both parents of one of my classmates in elementary school were cops and lived in South Minneapolis. If it is true today, that seems to suggest an interesting selection bias no? Either MPD only hires surburban Trump supporters or only these suburban Trump supporters want to sign up to be cops in the city. In either case, and like I mentioned above, we get to watch a neat little experiment play out in real time if we're going to disband the MPD and rebuild it.
It was true, even back then. In 2015, only 5.4% of the MPD lived within city limits. [1] This isn't a recent change, and IMO it's a major driver of the "occupier"/"us vs them" mindset many cops in the MPD appear to have. (example: [2])
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.
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:
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.
You are missing the point of credit cards vs long term loans.
> The main reason people don't use credit cards to buy houses now is due to the credit limit.
suppose you want to buy a $500k home. You go to a bank and they offer you 30 years at, say 3.5%.
You go to your credit card provider and somehow get a $500k limit. Your payments looks something like 1 (one) month at 0% or as long as it takes (based on minimum payment) at 16.99%.
Which do you choose?
If you think you can change the economics of the credit card to be closer to the bank, you will end up with many of the same overheads that the bank has, and you will no longer be a credit card. I.e., you will not provide near instantaneous access to a line of credit.
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.
> The main reason people don't use credit cards to buy houses now is due to the credit limit.
No, that is definitely not why.
> 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.
I’ve never heard of this. I’ve never even heard of anyone meeting the buyer/seller for any length of time in a real estate transaction.
> 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.
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.