Hacker News Reader

Comment by danilocampos | Hacker News Reader

So Dave Winer gets sanctimonious about a tiny change to a small side-product of Google's and he extrapolates many conclusions based on Mayer's entirely natural eye rolling.

As a meta comment, Winer is a unfortunate last name for this gentleman given the overall tone and timbre of what he has to say. Google giving preferential treatment to Blogger content, by giving special SERP positioning, distinctive formatting, or other embellishment, would have been worth making a fuss about. That would have been a big deal.

But this is a little button on a toolbar that many Google users never even used. And it's only for creating content, which is a side-show to Google's main purpose, which is finding content.

This is how you squander your capital.

View on HN

We're talking about someone who contributed a lot to the internet as it is today, so a minimal measure of respect would seem to be in order. Not that personal attacks are OK in other cases.

But if we're doing character critique, I wouldn't say he typically whines a lot. He does occasionally come across as bitter and self-indulgent on his blog however.

I have to say that in this example, he either doesn't do a good job of explaining what's so horrible about "the button problem", or it is indeed an instance where walking out on the conference call was probably the kindest thing Mayer could have done. A lot of us would probably have either laughed or yelled at him.

On the other hand, I can see how the intent of making the Blog This! button software-agnostic was ahead of its time. I certainly wish there had been more of that, it would have led to a different set of rules for web apps as they are today. But I guess (or rather: hope) the point where the web globally recognizes the value and spirit of openness is still in the future.

"On the other hand, I can see how the intent of making the Blog This! button software-agnostic was ahead of its time."

At the risk of putting words in his mouth, I imagine part of his frustration is probably that making it software-dependent was a regression. There was already a budding ecosystem of blog-system-agnostic authoring tools, building off protocols he'd had a significant hand in, and while the protocol as it stood at the time[1] was probably going to require a version 2 at some point, it really wasn't that hard to make things like that very cross-platform. Even now from what I can see, there's a lot of overlap between the various platforms, and with the addition of some ability to upload images and other media into a rich text blog post you could probably catch >99.9% of blog posts made today across all the popular blogging platforms.

I still think the blogging world may yet rise again as the centralization meets the end it always does, but when that happens it will be recapitulating development that has largely already occurred, ten+ years ago. (And if history is any guide, it will be from scratch and with loud acclamations about how innovative it all is.)

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MetaWeblog

I'm not sure how we're currently not in a golden age of self-published content. The idea that we're only there when we have some sort of meta-distributed protocol is a pretty big implicit value judgment.

I didn't say that we're not in a good time. I said centralization will meet its inevitable end. It's inevitable whether it's good or bad. (Usually it's a lot of both.)

Please do elaborate, because I happen to hold the opposite view. Decentralized systems are hard to implement: QoS, reliability, search, security, etc.

They are harder, but they eventually dominate the centralized systems. This is probably due to a combination of the O(n^2) value of the decentralized system dominating even the most valuable centralized system, and also the fact of centralization inevitably produces a whole bunch of people out to get the central player.

But I don't really know. This isn't an normative argument I'm making about what I think should be, it's an observation about history. Centralized email has given way to SMTP, for better and for worse. Centralized document systems gave way to gopher gave way to the web. Centralized newsgroups gave way to distributed forums. Centralized social media will eventually give way to a richer distributed ecosystem. I don't even know exactly how, but it will happen someday. It's just what happens. Eventually, too many people will be gunning for Facebook for them to be the monopoly.

(Probably the best counterexample is IM, which never properly federated. Arguably, this is because IM simply isn't that desirable. It's something people sorta kinda want, but not so much that it's actually monetizable, so possibly it's evidence in favor of the "success produces lots of people gunning for a piece of the pie" being the dominant factor. IM has never had anyone so successful (monetarily) that we had tons of people gunning for that space.)

> They are harder, but they eventually dominate the centralized systems.

Like Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft. All examples of big decentralized systems. Like the gradual consolidation of telecoms?

This is snarky, but only because I'm feeling sassy. Honest question, "Do decentralized systems actually win?" I hear this a lot as an axiom without any real evidence.

Bitter and self-indulgent? That's pretty much Winer every day on his blog. He gets excited, talks up whatever he's working on, gets upset when he's ignored, and hates whenever anyone else is getting attention he believes he deserves.

I'm sorry, Dave has helped create and develop some good things in the past, but it's time people were honest and not 'afraid' of how they might sound.

Dave Winer is a bitter, angry man. Period. He's always been that way, and it's only gotten worse as he's gotten older. He's spent an entire career attacking, and now that there's a new generation of creators and he's been forgotten, he's stomping his feet because I'm sure he feels as if he's being ignored. And in many ways, he is. No one really wants to deal with an egomaniac.

I actually feel sorry for Dave Winer, but we reap what we sow. And he's definitely reaping at this stage of his career.

> but it's time people were honest and not 'afraid' of how they might sound.

On that note, why don't you post this with your real account then? I'm using my real name, Danilo sure is using his, and we're talking (trash) about a real person who, by the way, also has an HN account to his name. You, however, created in2d for the sole purpose of making this inflammatory comment.

Hacker News has always been like this.

What's new at least in my experience is that the jerks are getting some pushback.

I doubt if any of these people know me. I'm working hard on a startup now, with good results.

I don't know who they're describing here, but it ain't me! ;-)

Hey, for what it's worth we're for the most part just doing cheap shots from the peanut gallery (myself included). Keep in mind that this particular thread hasn't necessarily been about content.

Whether I agree with you on particular issues or not, I think your willingness to engage with the community is exemplary - I really wish more influential people would do that.

"Engage": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4216839

Dark chocolate perhaps?

FWIW I think the best thing about the existence of blogs is learning from others' successes and mistakes. The stories of the successes sometimes come off as self-indulgent, the stories of the mistakes sometimes come across as bitter. Such is life.

And you know what? Some day I might be fortunate enough to be in the position to negotiate myself the title of "Grand Poo-Bah of Integrating All The Things" at the acquiring company, and I'll remember your article and negotiate for a nicer parking spot instead. Cheers!

EDIT: s/come/sometimes come/g

This is the best comment I've read in this thread.

I just want to say, it was entirely unreasonable of them to have made personal comments about you. There was a comment that compared you to a "whiner", and another that slagged off at you for no particularly good reason that I could see.

Both posts I voted down, and I hope others do also. HN is better than this. I'm sorry you had to read that crap. I wish you the best at your next startup!

You missed the point completely in order to make some stupid personal attack, as did everybody that upvoted you.

The point of the article is about not trusting anything an acquiring company says, because they will say anything in order to get the deal. The other stuff was just some colour.

I know what you're saying, but I dismiss it for two reasons:

First, if Winer wants to get link-baity by piggybacking someone in the news, let's give some scrutiny to the relevance of that case. This is pretty silly-sounding stuff and I'm inclined to come down pretty firmly on Mayer's side by his account.

My job is to be willing to be persuaded – not to be a pushover to any opinion. It's the author's job to persuade – and to decide when name dropping is more trouble than it's worth.

The other reason: I'm not going to clap when someone makes an entirely self-evident point for the sole purpose of attaching their name to someone newsworthy.

If you want to stop something you think is linkbait, be smart, don't link to it.

>You missed the point completely in order to make some stupid personal attack

To be fair, the blog post in question spends the first half of its content avoiding the point completely in order to make some stupid personal attack. When the author misses his own point, it can be hard for readers not to do the same.

Unnecessary ad hominems aside, you're confusing what we know now (BlogThis! didn't become big and important) with what was a realistic concern then (distributing easy-to-use one-click blogging that biased towards one platform would grow that platform substantially, and that this would actually matter).

Worth noting, of course, that some part of Tumblr's growth has come precisely from their equivalent of a BlogThis! button - it just took a few more years.

Unnecessary ad hominems aside

The linked article isn't just saying "Yahoo may change the terms of their deal" (and pray they don't alter it further), which everyone knows they can and almost certainly will. It's saying "I, Dave Winer, will draw from my own personal experience, including my interaction with one of the participants of this deal, to speak with authority on this".

Like bringing up a character witness in a defense trial, such supporting arguments legitimately open up the speaker themselves to critique.

Such as his name?

No, that he is whining. He isn't being questioned because of his name; he is being questioned because he is whining. The quip about his name is not an ad hominem because the quip is immaterial to the argument.

There is no "you should question this because his name is Foo", rather "you should question this because he is acting Fooish, which incidentally sounds similar to his name."

Immature, but not an ad hominem.

Honey, I think you're whining. Just sayin.

Dude, don't engage. You don't need to.

> The quip about his name is not an ad hominem because the quip is immaterial to the argument.

That's backwards: ad hominem attacks are considered bad precisely because they're not relevant to the argument. Note that the GP's argument is exactly the opposite: that the attacks aren't ad hominem because they are material in this case.

If you're saying that the original line wasn't meant as support of their argument and therefore doesn't qualify for examination for materiality, I'm finding that hard to swallow too, e.g. "You're wrong, and also incidentally--totally as aside, seriously--you're an idiot."

An insult that is not being used in a logical argument is not an ad hominem, or a logical fallacy of any sort. It is just an insult. This is what I mean by the admittedly poorly stated "immaterial to the argument".

If I say "You are a doo-doo head, and you are wrong because of X, Y, and Z", then (assuming X, Y, and Z are sound of course) I have not committed a logical fallacy (though I have immaturely insulted you). The insult was not a part of the argument presented. If I say "You are a doo-doo, and therefore wrong.", then I am guilty of fallacious reasoning.

Things don't have to be fallacies for them to be out of line. We can criticize "You're wrong, and also incidentally--totally as aside, seriously--you're an idiot." without mislabeling it as fallacious.

Calling him a "whiner", in any form with no substance to back it up is indeed arguing the man, not the substance of his argument. It's also mean, petty, immature, unpleasant to read and I would and have strongly chastised my three and five year old children for this sort of speech and behaviour.

> "I, Dave Winer, will draw from my own personal experience, including my interaction with one of the participants of this deal, to speak with authority on this".

I honestly don't understand the problem with that. He has experience, with this type of situation, and with the people involved, and he's using that to back up the more general point (which you agreed with). Why is he not entitled to some authority here?

It just seems like a lot of the commenters have much more of a grudge against Dave Winer the person (I don't follow him that closely) than the actual content of his argument.

There is nothing at all wrong with using your own experience and perspective (that's what we all generally do). Similarly, people have every right to then talk about your experience and perspective.

Winer has fielded a number of seemingly bitter and aggrieved posts lately (about ageism, not getting his due rewards, etc) and it is impossible to read newer entries without that cloud however over them..

To add to that, if Google didn't think BlogThis! would be valuable, why would they build it? And to whatever extent it achieved its goals (i.e. was actually used), it would give Blogger an advantage. That it actually failed is hardly a defense of Google's intentions.

Have you been through an acquisition like this before? I once worked for a small company that was acquired by a much bigger company, and I have to say Dave's thoughts about the acquirers making lots of empty promises to the acquirees to keep them happy sounded very familiar.

I had a similar experience. The CEO even warned the developers to find work elsewhere since the companies products would probably be dissolved since all the bigger company was interested in was some of our technology.

I was smart along with a few others. The rest of the employees rolled the dice and lost. They discontinued the entire line of products and canned any of the employees who came over with the acquisition. Within a year, there were no traces of our startup, just a few new products using our technology.

I'm still bitter about it. . .

Yahoo! has a history with screwing up while trying to integrate acquisitions into their ecosystem (e.g. forcing people to drop their old account for a Yahoo! account, with an email address, etc, etc). Yahoo! will honor these promises for a while if they don't want to drive the Tumblr users away to other microblogging platforms.

My advice is to become part of the larger company as quickly as possible, if that's the kind of thing you would like to do, or quit as soon as the acquisition is announced, especially if you're screwed in the equity department. Whether you stay or go, abandon ship.

Never heard that one before about my last name. Genius. ;-)

I had you labeled as a lush (that's a joke about being a 'wine'-r). A few generations back in my family we had actual whiners, so I empathize with you.

I mean, consider the bright side, you could've gone into politics with a last name like "Weiner"...

Don't push it. There's nothing funny about ad hominem attacks. Really.

Ce la vie. It wasn't intended as an attack, really. I was sympathizing with you as my greatgrandmother actually had the last name whiner, but I understand how my remarks might've appeared as intended to insult you.

My apologies, I was simply trying to inject a bit of wit into the discussion :(.

I empathize with Dave here, people take one look at my last name and assume that I'm punctual and predictable.

I had a teacher in high school call me "stone path" after summer break. So close!

While I didn't find his comment particularly funny, I'm not sure I'm seeing the attack in it - just reads to me as a light-hearted joke about names, in contrast to the top comment which genuinely described you as a "whiner".

Supposedly people named Dennis are somewhat more likely to become dentists...

Hello young man. I assume you are young because you know nothing of the past. Previously the Google Toolbar was actually a big deal. Today it is irrelevant but that was not always the case. And when blogs were considered a cool thing by the tech press (long before TechCrunch) the BlogThis! button on the tool bar was a considerable feature.

I also note on your blog (which 10 years ago you probably would have used the BlogThis! button on your Google Toolbar to write) you feature prominently a technology pioneered by Dave Winer.

I thought the Google Toolbar was only a big deal because it showed a random PageRank number to SEO sleazebags.

  "This is how you squander your capital"

Actually you squander your capital by resulting to pointless name-calling and dismissing the arguments of someone who actually has an interesting perspective to offer beyond the slavish, wide-eyed, youth-obsessed tech press.

Winer writes "Back then Google cared a little about what I thought."

Suggesting that today they don't. Why? Perhaps because trivialities like a button on the Google toolbar were made to occupy the time of someone whose hourly value would eventually be measured in four or more figures.

So while I get what you're saying – honest, public eye-rolling about the petulance of this writing may one day come at some cost to me – the situations aren't remotely the same. That said, I hold the greatest respect for people who can offer valid criticism, no matter how colorful, and I welcome it from anyone, regardless of my perceptions of their "contributions." I suspect that anyone who wouldn't share those values would be doing me a favor by not working with me anyway.

I suspect we share the same contempt for the tech "press," feckless and craven as they are, but the headline story for this post is about someone kind of wasting someone else's time and that's not an interesting perspective at all, except as a cautionary tale.

Dave Winer needs to let go of the past. He did good work for the developer community in the past but hey, move on. This is a gentleman who is still bitter because "I am no longer invited to join the boards of startups. To you young programmers, if you think Javascript is that different from C, think again [and, please, invite me to join your boards, sob, sob, sob]" :)

Interesting. If I thought Dave Winer was interested in that sort of thing, I'd probably invite him to be on our board. I mean, he's not exactly some Joe Schmoo who just fell of the tomato truck. He has done some incredibly important work for the Web over the years[1].

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Winer

I'm programming in JavaScript these days, and I don't think it's like C. Who are you arguing with??

I think you probably need to know him a little more?

Uh, Javascript may have similar syntactical structure, but it is entirely unlike C in every way that counts that I can think of.

Grade school level name calling is not appropriate for HN. We expect better discussion here.

Making fun of a man's name is not called for - lets be better than that.

I'm not familiar with your great work. Please elaborate.

This is a great comment for perspective. I rarely comment on anything. The reason is that HN is full of folks who spend all day posting about issues that they've yet to contribute even something small, let alone something of significance in the topic area they pretend to be an "expert".

I'll share a personal example. I've not been a fan of your approach to RSS in the past. I was especially frustrated when developing a parser and having a fragmented landscape because of RSS 2.0, and other developers lack of understanding that your blog didn't represent a standards body. However, I never publicly complained about it because I understand why it happened, so I just shut my mouth and get back to making my parser work. At the time, even now, publicly complaining about your contributions would be incredibly disrespectful to your body of work.

The only way I would ever be in any position of criticism is if I had a similar body of work to compare. I didn't then, and I sure don't now, so I just respectfully keep my mouth shut and work on what I can contribute.

Writing a RSS parser is horrible - been there, done that. Everyone who had to go through that hell has my deepest compassion!

Making fun of some guy's name?

Pretending to not understand the importance of blogthis! in a world where Yahoo just bought Tumblr, or where the subscribe to rss buttons mostly work to allow the user to choose an rss feed reader of their own choice, or where Microsoft was told to make sure users could pick their favorite email apps, firewall apps, etc.?

This danilo is how you squander your capital.

I am glad David pointed this out. It may seem like a small thing, however what he brought up can be seen as an Out-of-integrity behavior as a positive phenomenal. And I am not talking about morality, good vs. bad. Think for a moment about the Law of Gravity: there is no such thing as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ gravity;

As economist Michael Jensen pointed out

Integrity as “what it takes for a person to be whole and complete....And an individual is whole and complete when their word is whole and complete, and their word is whole and complete when they honour their word."

And this law seems work just gravity for all human-beings (not just Google executive).

Out-of-integrity behavior has been pervasive, both on an organizational and an individual basis, and that attributed to the unworkabilities in the world.

More about Integrity a positive phenomenal can be read here:

http://ssrn.com/abstract=1511274

Reply on news.ycombinator.com