That said, it'd be even more cynical to dismiss all of the work and thought that Rek and Devine have put out there because certain elements of it seem a bit hypocritical from a certain point of view. I just spent a couple of hours surfing through their site, reading about their philosophy, and find myself respecting the parts I disagree with almost as much as the parts I identify with. That kind of content is exactly what HN's good for discovering.
I will do my part by upvoting the other comments, but judging by the karma ranking and comment history of some of these commenters, I think I am in the minority.
My comment is actually downvoted at -3 points currently. As for the top comment, I don't see the issue with pointing out that the site is enabling the tracking of users when it claims not to, especially since it is directly related to the topic of the site itself. I don't think being unconditionally positive is in line with the site's goal of promoting "intellectual curiosity."
>judging by the karma ranking and comment history of some of these commenters
That top comment is from John Nagle of Nagle's algorithm. I doubt his karma is from being negative.
A relentless cynicism and the willingness to shoot down bad ideas are vital for producing anything worthwhile. Someone who was able to improve real-world networking is very likely to have been "negative" by modern standards.
But unchecked cynicism tends to result in a general lack of trust that is not very conducive to progress.
Which, in a sense ends up being anímical the ethos at hand, with many blogfolk now securing their own sites, with a nice, ongoing discussion about many technical options to achieve that. Sounds like a good outcome.-