I can't think of a single person who embodies the spirit of this site more than Woz. dang could replace the guidelines with a picture of Woz and we'd all know what it meant.
https://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Early/...
HN is a very strong net positive IMO. YC could easily monetize it into oblivion. They don't.
I guess that's not conventional monetisation.
Hacker news is designed for and targeted at hackers. In the sense of the word that means people who write code, not people who break into things. Other people with similar tastes also like it.
Since it's run by YC and the initial users were mostly YC founders, there is inevitably a startup spin to the stories that are popular here. In fact the site was originally called Startup News. But it turned out to be boring to have so much of a startup focus, so we changed the name and the focus to be more general.
Also: https://web.archive.org/web/20070624055731/http://www.founde...
Woz has always carried a near perfect approval rate in our community. I've never seen anyone come close.
I realize that’s a normative claim. Like the blind men and the elephant, we’re each touching a different part.
And your argument is based on the fact that you’d like this to be true as well as the fact that the vc company behind this site said, “Trust us bro!”
How is that different from the cow saying, “The farmer told us we’re walking through a fun maze!”
Marketing budgets can fund stuff whose authenticity is independent of who’s writing the check, right? Especially when their audience is extra-contrarian and sensitive to authenticity. Xerox can be an evil megacorp and also be sugar daddy to the PARC.
If the fun maze is taking YC’s money and using it to start a company, sure, I see your point. I’d say (right here on YC’s digital estate!) probably don’t do that.
If the fun maze is the community that’s emerged on this site, which is indeed something the VC firm sponsors (surprisingly cheaply)…
Then in my case, it’s different because I frequently walk through the fun maze for as long as the maze is fun, then I wander back out to my fields. If the maze stopped being fun, or started requiring me to set aside my values, I would stop coming, and the farmer knows that.
The farmer doesn’t prod me, much less sneak up on me with a captive bolt. He doesn’t try to milk me while I’m walking through his maze. If I’m ever considering selling my steak, I’ll probably apply commercial reasoning to my choice of abattoir, regardless of how fun the maze was.
I contribute voluntarily, I enjoy the voluntary contributions of others. It’s a maze where people want to come.
I’d like this to be true, so I contribute to it being true, and I observe others contributing to sustaining its truth too. Intersubjective belief creates reality!
I think “follow the money” is the cliche that applies here.
> Especially when their audience is extra-contrarian and sensitive to authenticity.
I think you mean that the audience likes to think of itself as extra-contrarian and sensitive to authenticity?
The audience will talk until they’re blue in the face about why this marketing project (HN) is so much different from and so much more authentic than other marketing projects.
The marketing seems to be working on this supposedly contrarian and sensitive to authentiity audience!
My god jolly, I feel like Ken's the person you might be referring to.
Wozniak is great as well. Perhaps we (or people?) might affiliate him more with Hackernews given he was co-founder of a company which many founders within HN might want to achieve (or replicate?)
But the other way I view HN is a place of curiosity, a place of tinkering. I saw the interview of Ken Thompson and I don't know about you guys, but Ken Thompson talked in his interview about how when he was in between houses at a hotel when he was in high school, and there were girls who he used to wave at so he was half-way through to making essentially a pixelated device through which he could write letters (from what I remember from his interview)
I personally have done something similar although from a software side and not with a hardware side. But I feel like after 70 years, the transition from hardware to software is one which is understandable :)
I mean... Ken's 80 year old and really sharp. I only saw him thinking about things literally 70 year old just once almost like loading things into his mind at the start of interview and he was effortless afterwards talking about it.
I don't know enough about wozniak to qualify him for this
But what I can say was that today I was watching the Ken Thompson interview and literally after 15-30 minutes of the 4 hour interview. I was like, this belongs on hackernews and submitted it here. (Not sure if this counts as promotion but seriously everyone just watch this interview of Ken Thompson!)
Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=309siTvApbY
Hackernews discussion I submitted (Currently zero response after 8 hours tho) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46793919] Kenneth Lane Thompson, 1983 ACM Turing Award Recipient (Video Interview)
SO I don't know if there's a particular reason why my HN submission about got literally 0 response after 8 hours or if because of it, Ken Thompson wouldn't qualify for it. But I am gonna be honest and say that in my mind, Ken Thompson's the legend which really embodies the HN spirit. Not sure if other parts of HN community also feel so but I still feel that they do even though there was no response on the HN post (could just be the timing at what I posted and many other things) but yea.
I highly recommend everyone to go watch the interview if you have 4-5 hours of free time right now.
I can certainly see why he would be the "model employee" of the new tech elite/political class, though, and what they desperately want all of us to be! Sit down, shut up, and get back to work!