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Comment by dguaraglia | Hacker News Reader

To be honest, I don't see how this has anything to do with the ethos and general topic of HN. Flagging.

It's about an entrepreneur who built a business from scratch and how he got to the stage of building said business. That has everything to do with HN. Far more so than a JavaScript date picker or how airport security is "killing us" (which violates the 'If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic' guideline by a country mile.)

Except perhaps there isn't a whole lot of mystery about how to make a porn site, or that such sites make a lot of money, or that law enforcement and the legislative bodies will attempt to shut them down.

Porn is a very crowded business, with some groups doing very well and operating well within the law. Of course, their are many attempts that fail, which we do not see. Much like every other industry.

The complaint and flagging was about it being against the "ethos and general topic" not a lack of "mystery."

A lack of mystery could merely make something dull or obvious rather than off topic or against the ethos of the site. Dullness or obviousness is rarely an impediment to reaching the HN front page (cf. "On Being a Junior Developer.")

Nonetheless, I found it interesting. If I were to want mystery, however, I'd read Harry Potter instead of HN.

> ... that law enforcement and the legislative bodies will attempt to shut them down.

reminds me how heterogeneous the thing we call "western world" actually is.

I am not sure I understand your comment.

From the HN Guidelines[0]: "If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did."

[0] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Oops, sorry, missed that one. Considering the bad karma I got from my comment, I'll definitely follow that guideline from now on :)

fwiw, I read HN daily and found this article more interesting than most of the posts on here.

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