Hacker News Reader

  - what matters and what doesn't (who cares)

Seriously, and for argument's sake, the "do whatever provides value" mantra is too simplistic and provides no value to entrepreneurs or engineers (or hybrid types) whatsoever. Let alone that it doesn't contradict to any of the "lame" stuff you listed. For example, understanding how Facebook works both at the social level and technically may help you in building something that provides value to 600,000,000 Facebook users.

Finally, listing "how we are losing our civil liberties" somewhere between "who's hanging out with who" and "how much to pay for a domain name" is the best way to bury the remains of our civil liberties.

Thank you for raising this issue. "Who's hanging out with whom" is in the category that's both unimportant and very hard for an individual to change. The loss of civil liberties is a matter where it's very hard for a person to effect change, but it's an extremely important issue. I don't think it's very useful to spend 4 hours per day on the Politics section of Reddit, but to call politics "unimportant" just because it's impossible for an individual (in most cases) to make changes is short-sighted and wrong.

   The loss of civil liberties is a matter 
   where it's very hard for a person to effect change

I disagree.

In short I think good work in software and internet communications tools, like Tor, can actually have a profound effect on shaping government policy. (Tor is one of the darling s/w projects of the Swedish government.)

Slightly longer: I thought it was essentially impossible to influence government policy four or five years ago. I was interested in environmental issues and thought I would have to become a politician to be able to change things (heavens forbid). Then I fell into an opportunity where we started an open source software foundation to build online project, transparency, donation, visualisation tools for development aid.

Fast forward four years and we are working closely with the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Get invited to publicly review the work of the Swedish counterpart and sit in on bilateral talks between the USA and the Dutch on aid transparency. I see public policy change before my eyes. Of course, this is not only because something which we did, but we are at the right time and place with the right effort. However, I do know that our work changes the way policy is being shaped.

If you are curious to read more check out a couple of my blog posts:

http://bjelkeman.wordpress.com/2011/02/06/law-is-hard-code-i...

http://wearefuturegov.com/2010/11/19/guest-post-where-open-d...

but to call politics "unimportant" just because it's impossible for an individual (in most cases) to make changes is short-sighted and wrong.

Politics is important in the sense that someone needs to take care of it, but due to the reason you outlined it's unimportant to me. Given that, I'm happy to save time ignoring political stories and issues but I still think it's important and if no-one else were willing to take care of those important issues, I'd need to step up to the plate. Thankfully, they are, so I'll let them get on with it ;-)

What I'd like to see is a set of sliders. The top slider would have code ---- surf. The next slider would have video --- text.

Then you could drill down to "language x" stories or the rest on the list.

Set your sliders, then have the computer throttle the content.

The problem is the social nature of the web: I see somebody cool like edw519 commenting, so I try to form a pithy rejoinder, manging to kill an extra 7x the time. The 10 second scan morphs into a 5 minute read and reply. Rinse and repeat x times daily.

I contest the "losing our civil liberties" not being important. If there is any issue that is actually important, it's that one.

So, as we have said before and will doubtless have to say again, Hacker News is a lousy forum for political teambuilding and logrolling. It's not designed for that, at all. So we discourage political discussions here.

There are actions one can take to defend one's civil liberties. Joining the ACLU and the EFF and sending them money. Writing letters to local and national political figures. Voting out people who don't care about civil liberties, and raising money for their opponents. Practicing civil disobedience. Organizing and contributing to effective protests. Many of these are praiseworthy things, productive things, but they are also exactly what we mean by "politics", and they're not what we do on Hacker News. They are what Facebook, mailing lists, political blogs, newspaper editorial pages and comment sections, and most of the rest of the web is for.

As an activist who's actively engaged in defending for our civil liberties, I see HN as a great forum. True, there are plenty of people who share your and edw519's attitude -- but civil liberties topics always got a lot of upvotes here, so there are a lot of people who see things the way I do.

Yes, there are a lot of people who seem not to have read the site's guidelines (which include "no politics"), but that doesn't make it appropriate or right. Please let Hacker News be what it is. There are hundreds of sites for political axe grinding.

Why I don't like lists like this:

how we are losing our civil liberties

Can I ask if inserting (sneaking?) this not-trivial topic into the middle of the list along with "what makes Apple so cool", is maybe a bit, uh, underhanded? (Assuming we're in a democracy, it's supposedly up to us-citizens to care about civil liberties - so talking about this is important even if the sky is not fall). I notice there's not parenthesized easy answer either (is it "who cares" or "write your congressman"?).

Also, if you were following your own sage advice, what force brought you on this topic?

I would venture to say this is the best comment I've read on HN, ever.

Seconded. I would add something about "(i) Killer" posts, too.

Almost anything by TechCrunch, since I've been aware of them, has been fluff along these lines. Sensationalist garbage.