Ask HN: What is something you deeply care about?
Doesn't matter whether it's something big or small, personal or societal, get's a lot of attention or little. What is something you personally find important and care about?
But stuff like registering an appointment with my local Citizens Office, or the people at the Citizens Office workers writing a letter to some other government agency, or this other government agency storing said letter on a hard disk somewhere — this whole „digital operating system“ of a country and its people must work without any involvement of closed-source Microsoft, SAP, Apple, Google, AWS stuff being involved.
It was okay to depend on products of Big Corp back when Computers and Networks and Data where a small side quest to everyone‘s life.
But this stuff is now a fundamental building block of society.
Every line of this building block must be publicly available for everyone under a OSS license, period.
I‘m naively hopeful that stuff like the „Deutschlandstack“ is going to be tackled in all seriousness.
I pray that the EU ramps up investment in OSS projects into billions of Euros rather sooner than later.
In a car, the driver seat should, in my mind, be manually adjusted. Why? Because if the motor breaks because it has to adjust each time you sit down, and the last person to use the car is my mother or girlfriend, I literally cannot drive my car until it gets fixed because I am too tall.
But something like heated/cooled seats is perfectly fine to have as a luxury, because if my seat cooler fan breaks, I just have a sweaty back as if I didn’t have a seat cooler.
Same with manual transmissions: if I ever have my transmission start acting up and I don’t have the money to bring my car to the shop, I could probably fix it, albeit with a lot of difficulty and cursing. But an automatic? No way in hell.
Plus, my manual lasts longer, stays cooler, tows more, is more fun, provides more control, keeps me more aware and focused while driving, and is a theft deterrent.
You can apply this logic to anything: if the object becomes useless without it, it should be as basic, durable, strong, resilient, and/or foolproof as possible, but when the object would not break without it, it can have as much luxury as desired.
I’ve seen people in Ferraris in LA traffic and it looks like agony.
So I guess context often determines an additional threshold of complexity.
Why can't WhatsApp users talk to Facebook Messenger users? That's ridiculous. It'd be like Gmail users not being able to talk to Outlook users.
RCS is not the answer because it has a hard dependency on carriers and Google - I'm extremely tired and irritated that people like it and tout it as some amazing saviour. I am convinced nobody has read past all the marketing propaganda to find out how it actually works.
When I see someone on the other side of a political divide screaming, I think they're dangerous and evil. When I seem someone on my side of a political divide screaming, I think they are ALSO those things, plus ignorant, useless, and counterproductive.
- usability
- graceful degradation and stability
- minimalism, lack of third party dependencies/attack surface
- low/no build, ease of use and development
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
In the Civil War movie there’s a moment where the group is cornered by a sniper, pinned to the ground, not knowing if they’ll live beyond a few minutes or not. One of the characters looks at the flowers and the sky and is overtaken by the simple beauty of their existence. This.
"Be guided by beauty. I really mean that. Pretty much everything I’ve done has had an aesthetic component, at least to me. Now you might think ‘well, building a company that’s trading bonds, what’s so aesthetic about that?’ But, what’s aesthetic about it is doing it right. Getting the right kind of people, and approaching the problem, and doing it right […] it’s a beautiful thing to do something right."
All kinds including tech. People not wanting to allow someone to read a book because the person is "in trouble with the law." What does their breaking the law have to do with their explanations of how a technology works? Nothing...and the removal of a book says more about the vendors than it does about the supposed criminal. Generally censorship as practiced in this country is more about politics (ie: someone not liking someone else) than it is about accuracy.
There has to be a vanishingly small number of places on the internet where someone could post a question like this and immediately receive a flood of thoughtful, earnest and substantive responses.
So for all its faults, the particular version of Hacker News that’s embodied in this post + comment thread is something I care deeply about - and has had an ongoing positive impact on my life.
Great question OP!
They cover less than 0.1% of the ocean floor yet support approx. 25% of all marine species.
They are very beautiful indeed.
They provide coastal protection.
Also, they will be gone in a few decades.
Consent and respect. Kindness as the default.
Care beyond the transactional.
Art as an expression, healing, experience.
Awareness and reasoning beyond thinking and analysis.
And AI is the EXACT OPPOSITE of what we need for these to thrive...
It is however up to us to let that happen or not. Friendship, community, caring support are possible and exist.
The secret of abundance is not having more but giving from a place of generosity.
What you'd describe is a proliferation of stage 2 personalities that can take perspectives only alternatingly, but not simultaneously as in stage 3. It has become a fun and at times enlightening pastime to view the world through his framework.
Also, I try constantly to be a better father and husband. This too is challenging.
And that will show in your product. It will be kind to your users and customers.
Practice kindness in all, including your users and customers, and your product will solidify and support that kindness.
Freedom, including the ability to own and use tools as I wish.
Community.
- My kids
- My family
- My house
- Empathy
- Kindness
- Equality
- Usability
- Design / beauty
When I confide this to my close friends and family, who almost always roll their eyes, I have to admit, I can't shake of the love and relate them even if I try to.
Guess I am helpless.