stroboskop

Scoble doesn't seem to care about that.

Possibly due to a biased sample, the post exaggerates the attractiveness of the US for skilled Europeans founders.

lead with a compelling user experience first and then build an API from there, an API which may be based on open standards, but only if it’s a means to an end.

Although an open standard, RSS is a special case: The DNA of RSS is incompatible with the data-greedy centralization enforced by the Google, Facebook, Twitter and their likes.

The most popular alternatives to Firefox are Google's Chrome and Microsoft's Internet Explorer. I doubt these alternative browsers would exist if they were not useful for Google's and Microsofts main businesses. These companies produce web browsers to support their main products/services. The rationale behind AOL Explorer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_Browser) was similar. In settings like those privacy and other interests of web users are easily sacrificed.

Out of all the big browsers, Mozilla Firefox comes closest to being a web browser for the sake of web browsing.

You say "The Internet works better" without formats like Flash. To my knowledge the Internet does not discriminate between proprietary and non-proprietary data fromats of its content whereas the basic functions of the Web do (URLs, hyperlinks,...).

LibreOffice does not look nice but it is functional. What is its main function? For many people, it has completely replaced Microsoft Office.

Of course MS Office has an even larger feature set, but few people max it out. Likewise, there are people who will prefer LaTeX but that's a small group. The advocates of web based office systems tend to ignore that desktop systems provide much more privacy. LibreOffice sits right in between those groups and is useful to many.

Since I’ve been out of the Silicon-Valley-centred tech industry, I’ve become increasingly convinced that it’s morally bankrupt and essentially toxic to our society. Companies like Google and Facebook — in common with most public companies — have interests that are frequently in conflict with the wellbeing of — I was going to say their customers or their users, but I’ll say “people” in general, since it’s wider than that. People who use their systems directly, people who don’t — we’re all affected by it, and although some of the outcomes are positive a disturbingly high number of them are negative: the erosion of privacy, of consumer rights, of the public domain and fair use, of meaningful connections between people and a sense of true community, of beauty and care taken in craftsmanship, of our very physical wellbeing. No amount of employee benefits or underfunded Google.org projects can counteract that.

In contrast, this post again reminds me that the Usenet-archives are now owned by Google. Are they also available anywhere else? Like the WWW they are part of the world's cultural heritage. It's good that the archives are accessible, but they shouldn't be proprietary.

"I really worry about everything going to the cloud," he said. "I think it's going to be horrendous. I think there are going to be a lot of horrible problems in the next five years."

He added: "With the cloud, you don't own anything. You already signed it away" through the legalistic terms of service with a cloud provider that computer users must agree to.

"I want to feel that I own things," Wozniak said. "A lot of people feel, 'Oh, everything is really on my computer,' but I say the more we transfer everything onto the web, onto the cloud, the less we're going to have control over it."

I wouldn't be surprised if many people around HN do not agree with Woz. After all the cloud is how many here earn their living.

That said, Woz is absolutely right. I wish more people of his standing would speak up.

And if you really need to confirm your IP address with Google: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=!g+ip

(check out the many other '!' features)

My vote is for updating the HN guidelines to discourage submissions behind login walls.

Pages submitted to HN should simply not be behind login walls, which is why I flagged this.

This thread already has multiple references to the fact that you have to log in to see the submitted post. There are many HN users without a FB account. For them, the headline of the submission cannot be verified by clicking on the link.

Although there is a large intersection between the two groups of HN and FB users, you don't have to be signed up with any other webservice in order to use HN. This is not only about FB. As a matter of principle posts to HN should be accessible for all HN users without requiring them to sign up with any other webservice.

However, this is up to PG and the HN community. It would be good if PG provided a guideline whether submissions behind login walls are accepted or not.

Saying that predictably gets you upvotes for sure. But it's not about "bubble" comments being "boring" or not. The question is whether bubble claims have any substance. If they have, the bubble won't simply go away just because some people wish it would.

Is it worth $1.5B? I don't know. I would say it's definitely worth more than...

Comparisons like this are inflationary. It seems you really don't care about bubbles. But a bubble would affect many people here at HN.

It doesn't matter whether bubble comments are boring or not, it's about the importance of a bubble.

But RSS will not die: It's a great standard for decentralized information distribution and a lot of people will keep using it.

I agree that most RSS clients are bad though. So those who are really concerned with the future of RSS should work on better clients and applications.

This thread already has multiple references to the fact that you have to log in to see the submitted post. Some are justifying this by saying the content is only relevant for people/developers who have FB accounts. While this may be true, there are many HN users without a FB account. For them, this submission is nothing better than spam that attracts unverifiable comments.

Although there is a large intersection between the two groups of HN and FB users, you don't have to be signed up with any other webservice in order to use HN. This is not only about FB. As a matter of principle posts to HN should be accessible for all HN users without requiring them to sign up with any other webservice.

As for the Google part, right now it's probably just an alarmist prediction, but it's going to be fun to watch un/fold. Especially if DuckDuckGo and other engines continue to get better while practicing their principles instead of a crude mixture of addictive search quality, addictedness to bucks and PR along the lines of "Don't be evil".

I'm still giving you an upvote because you bring up Worg.

I doubt young age of commenters is the reason for their stance and for many intentions are as good as they pay. Crucially, most people here imagine themselves as (future) bosses and do not empathize with the poor operating mechanical turks. Also consider that many here unconsciously are mechanical turk operators while believing they are entrepreneurs.

There are of course others here as well. But look at the brightness of your comment and you will find out who is the majority.

The quote itself is outside the text body and refers to the text body. For a marketing text like this, I don't think that kind of quoting is difficult to understand or swallow.

As a first step in improving your criteria, look at the argumentum e contrario: Do you think there are no crackpots worthy of obscurity who have a Wikipedia entry?

That said, IRC will never be as popular as Twitter and probably doesn't make for a good business model. But it's all that kruhft said it is.

If you have legal claims, press charges instead of going down this road.

Edit: the first post, an anonymous accusation (by the site's creator?), disappeared shortly after the site showed up on HN. Also, now suddenly submittals are subject to review (by whom?).

* Active Documents with Org-Mode: http://www.cs.unm.edu/~eschulte/data/CISE-13-3-SciProg.pdf

* The Emacs Org-mode - Reproducible Research and Beyond: http://www.warwick.ac.uk/statsdept/user-2011/TalkSlides/Cont...