Calacanis does not seem worth trusting based on this.
2. Loren shouldn't have and that was not cool.
3. Daniel has problems and needs to get help. I feel bad for him because doing something so extreme at a young age so publicly is, well, not good.
4. Good on the company who turned Daniel in and who confessed--that's brave. It was also really stupid and desperate to even consider, let alone promise, giving a laptop in return for a blog post. Honestly, if you're company doesn't get attention don't get desperate... just keep trying!
5. Bad on me for sending this to Loren. I honestly didn't even read the whole thing... I was like "oh here is an email from the dude who got extorted cool... " I actually didn't think it was that big of deal.
6. If you can do a story about Open Angel Forum on Thursday and get it to the top slot on HN I will gladly give you an Apple Tablet.
Anyway, I've got more important things to attend to at 1AM than Daniel extortion plot fall out.
peace and love,
jcal
And this: If you can do a story about Open Angel Forum on Thursday and get it to the top slot on HN I will gladly give you an Apple Tablet.
Always an agenda, eh. Even if the event is news-worthy (and organization good), together with the rest of your post it certainly made me sneer.
also, i get noting out of doing Open Angel Forum other than pleasure (and maybe the ability to cherry pick a couple of amazing investments from time to time if the startups will have me!). it's a pure labor of love....
... don't hate.
Pretending it's not a big deal makes you sound ignorant. If and when mahalo fails, and you end up having to sell your tesla, no ones going to be around to support you.
Sounds like a big deal to me. Not good when good men like Sam have to deal with men of dubious morals and ethics and for the kicker we get to hear that the issue is that our sense [of] humor is lacking.
Peace and love.
1) In the case of obvious trolling or idiocy, e.g. "lol your mom sucks" or "ur dumb", downvoting below zero is warranted because those comments are stuff that we don't want to see at all.
2) In the case of everything else, downvoting is warranted, imho, only when something has been upvoted beyond where it should be. For example, if Jason's posts were at 50 upvotes, I would downvote them, because that's totally unwarranted. In this case, I'd downvote them even at 10 points... they're relevant because of who he is and how he's connected to this, but not that insightful.
Basically, for all non-troll posts, you should upvote/downvote based on whether you feel the post has the points it deserves, and generally never downvote below zero.
In this case, Jason, although controversial, is not an obvious stupid troll - he's responding to points that people are making. I would like to see his posts somewhere between 1 and 5 points, rather than at -4.
I guess since there are no explicit references in the HN guidelines it's up to each user to make his or her mind up themselves.
I actually end up upvoting a lot of <1 point comments, even ones I disagree with. If the comment is reasonably coherent and not trolling, it usually shouldn't be below 1.
Some people don't like lies, other people don't like off-topic posts, other people don't like fallacies, and other people just don't have time to write a disagreement post ... especially if the assertions made in the down-voted comment aren't worth bothering with.
And if down-voting should have a purpose ... then it should definitely be for filtering out people not in HN's demographic.
That might be true for people who want to use HN to talk about politics or religion, but Jason is definitely in our demographic. He's a web startup founder, whether or not his startup sucks.
Give the guy some credit for showing up in front of the firing squad and trying to defend himself.
Or we can turn this into a complete echo chamber where we can all bad-mouth Jason in absentia.
there are a group of them who down vote everything i post... doesn't matter how insightful... TEN DOWN VOTES!!
it's kind of funny.
there are a group of them who down vote everything i post... doesn't matter how insightful...
I don't have much experience in the industry other than reading a few blogs and even I could not spot any insights in most of your past comments in HN (especially the ones from the SEOmoz debate).
Anyway, I've got more important things to attend to at 1AM than Daniel extortion plot fall out.
Really? This is enough to piss off anyone who read it. As far as I can understand you forwarded a private email. You have more important things to do than attending to things you screwed up? I can't understand what is so insightful in that.
(Good that you apologized to Daniel. Kudos)
Just a simple apology would probably have been your best bet. Everyone makes mistakes. Best not to lash out at the people you've already harmed.
If you look at your comment history, this is not true. Some people are down voting you extensively in this thread, this is not true for the whole community or even for your comments outside this thread.
How else would you indicate strong disagreement with a comment given the HN culture of well thought out replies and a zero cost binary device for weighing in on an issue, when you have nothing else to contribute other than "I disagree"/"I do not like your post"?
For instance, I upvoted Calcanis' comment (to rescue it from negative number territory) and upvoted the people who pointed out the insincerity / inconsistency. Both kinds of posts advanced the general knowledge.
I didn't have to upvote the more personal attacks on Calcanis. But it did feel pretty good. ;)
For me, changing a statement like this is pretty close to lying and is probably worse than trolling.
Never email something you're not comfortable with sharing with the world. Aside from the security concerns, your email is not going to be read in a clean room and you never know what distraction, mood or state's caught the recipient.
it would have been kept confidential if it said confidential in the subject line or first line. i get 400-500 emails a day... i scan most.
http://twitter.com/Jason/status/9866153749 http://twitter.com/Jason/status/9866120496
Bullshit.
I also think it's amusing that you call Sam a loser for dithering when asked to give a bribe, but here you are trying to bribe your way onto Hacker News.
that being said, he is a hero for coming out about his mistake!
peace and love... peace and love... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAU0l7325w0
This AFTER you forwarded a confidential email to a third-party who used it to threaten Sam.
Satire dude. Satire.
When I read it I was 50/50 as to whether he was being sarcastic or not. I guess I came down on the wrong side. :)
JC: Bad on me for sending this to Loren. I honestly didn't even read the whole thing... I was like "oh here is an email from the dude who got extorted cool... " I actually didn't think it was that big of deal.
Sam Odio was dumb enough to open his mouth even..I mean when you blab that bad over internet about what you thought you got away with why do you expect it to be secret for long?
Also, I've been careful to only reveal information about my friend that was already public. See Daniel's mixergy interview: http://mixergy.com/daniel-brusilovsky/
It's already known that Daniel received an iMac and who he received it from.
And, making fun of Daniel is a slam dunk right now. Everyone seems to be doing it. I think the more honorable thing is to think when others are outraged.
As a person building a startup and startup products there is no room for behavior in which both sides of the bribe get a free pass.
S Odio is just as guilty as Daniel..
We do not need this type of fraud in our tech industry as it leads to bigger fraud crimes.
Okay back to code..rant mode off
How else should he have reacted?