I don't think the second part of your comment was any more constructive. Even if you don't agree with the basis or the the conclusions, there is value in these kinds of exercises. At the very least, it might give someone new perspective on their own ideas. Someone might stumble upon something useful.
IMO as long as we can't explain one of the most important forces that we experience, I don't think we should so casually dismiss these kinds of pursuits.
As far as I know, the evidence of expansion has everything to do with light. It's the Doppler effect. There is an apparent red shift (expansion of wavelengths) if you are moving away from the source, and a blue shift (compression of wavelengths) if you are moving towards the source. We see everything around us as red shifted, so it looks like we are raisins in a loaf of expanding bread. All raisins are moving away from each other, or the space in between raisins is expanding.
I believe this is not relevant to most hackers, except if they happen to be bio researchers. Worse yet, while being mostly irrelevant, it's also a barely disguised flamebait piece designed to incite a fruitless ethics debate. This should be posted somewhere else.
And I don't care how many downvotes I get either; the guys who where complaining about the increasing lack of focus on HN earlier today were right.
Thanks for the answer. Personally, I don't see it so much as flamebait as an interesting issue. Even so, as long as people remain civil, I think discussions of conflicting viewpoints can be very valuable.
I had the impression that HN was for broad content, as long as it was intellectually stimulating. However, based on this recent post about the decline of HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403696 I get the feeling that there are conflicting communities here.
Perhaps you are right. This is my second post. I am feeling conflicted, actually.
I'm obviously mistaken, otherwise the thread wouldn't have received so many positive votes. In fact, I apologize, it's me who apparently lost the plot. I bow to the majority opinion.
> I get the feeling that there are conflicting communities here.
Maybe, though that matter seems to be resolving itself on its own currently.
> Personally, I don't see it so much as flamebait as an interesting issue
Science research should be held to a higher standard, it shouldn't be compared to household rat catching. This shouldn't be thought-provoking at all. It's a case of apples and oranges. It's also borderline politics.
>> I get the feeling that there are conflicting communities here.
>Maybe, though that matter seems to be resolving itself on its own currently.
Well I think HN grew due to the hacker community. After reading some in the post I linked. I am thinking that it might not be right that it be hijacked. I was a big Redditor and felt driven away somewhat recently. I guess this is all tangential, but no offense taken. Best.
Reading this article made me think "wow, not everything is lost, this is exactly the kind of stuff that HN used to have on it before the decline", so I definitely disagree with Udo
I feel bad hijacking the discussion like this. But I'd really like to know how a blog post on how the government should abolish ethics oversight in research is hacker news? Obviously, you have been here way longer, so what is that I'm not getting?
Very well. From the HN guidelines, what to submit can be summed up in one line: "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
First of all, you view the article in a very narrow view. You just see someone complaining about ethics committees. I see an article that is well-written (on par with PG's essays), and is talking about stuff that I wouldn't usually notice on my regular path on the Internet. Mice brain tumors? Academic research?
Second of all, an average "CS hacker" out there, back in high school/college, could take multiple paths - physics, math, bio, acting (yes, acting), painting, music, etc. - in fact, many of them during really bad coding moments (such as when you need to refactor a 1000-line java method) wish many times over that they stuck to biology, or music, or acting, or anything else back in college.
This article appeals to both wanting to read something well-written, and also to gratifying someone's intellectual curiosity about something that they could've ended up doing, but didn't; and, it explains in great detail what problems they would've encountered if they had actually gone down that route.
Really? I thought it was thought-provoking, even if I'm not entirely sure that I agree with the author. Certainly more intellectually stimulating than the usual "Company X did Thing Y" items.
But then, I've never really been clear on the topic of HN. Seems to me it's "stuff interesting to hackers", which this may well be, even if it isn't interesting to one individual hacker.
The standard for an article's appropriateness is whether it's something "that good hackers would find interesting", not whether it's "relevant to most hackers."
I know why I'm being downvoted, it's always a risk when posting a comment with a certain tone. Though I don't normally post in this style, I just didn't care when I wrote it. I realize this thread may have prompted an inordinate amount of frustration in me which should probably have been directed towards worthier targets.
I don't know if he fails to realize it so much as it just makes him want to rant. Whatever the case may be, what works on a social network might not work for a cross-platform interface.
I miss Disqus at TC. I think they were working on a solution for problems with commenting. I don't get that sense from Facebook comments.
I didn't vote you down, but people are probably considering the difference between design and aesthetics/taste. Design should be a solution to a problem.
In this case, the problem as defined is readability. Having lines of text one after the other with no leading (line-spacing) can be difficult to read.
Having text that's too wide requires you to turn your head which can be uncomfortable.
Text that's too small can be... too small. The article was arguing for an optimal font size which may or may not be correct, but the argument was that 16pt/72dpi font is effectively the same size as most printed books, which are optimized for reading.
Text with poor contrast — light gray on gray is going to be difficult to read no matter the subject matter.
His individual arguments may be wrong (although I don't think they are), but the scope of design, for a given problem can be more absolute than just taste or aesthetics.
Taste is more about liking 10pt fonts even if you're designing for something to be readable.
Thanks. I agree for the most part. But, I think the font choice/spacing here at HN for instance, works for a tech forum, whereas it might not be as optimal for articles or poetry.
I guess I am saying that content and audience can define the problem you you are trying to solve. It could vary for that reason.
>The rate of people who would visit your new product and then immediately leave would be high. Generally, this is called bounce rate.
Would that be a bad thing? Even those that left would then know that your site existed, which isn't without value.
As far as names matching a character in a movie, I think it would be very difficult to make a suit out of this. If anything, you could then change your name slightly, and get some press about it.
They'd have a negative association with it, since the site didn't give them what they wanted. You don't want to start your first impression with a negative.
Possibly the majority of people would know what it was before clicking, because the search engine description would tell them. In that case they're just fulfilling their curiosity, which can only be good.
The 'move on' part doesn't exactly speak well for capturing new customers. Certainly not well enough that you'd sacrifice a better, more appropriate name?
Well, I guess the quality of the name is another point entirely, and the scheme might unravel there. :) I just thought it was an interesting idea. If the quora spike did come from Tron, I think it's at least interesting to consider engineering such an accident. It might be good, bad, or a wash, but IMO I think the bounces would be an overall positive. The name... that is another problem.
> As far as names matching a character in a movie, I think it would be very difficult to make a suit out of this.
You would be very surprised:
'Some controversy has risen in Germany, where Albert Uderzo's own publishing company, Les Éditions Albert René, is claiming in court that certain IT companies whose name end in "ix" (not unnatural in companies who work with Unix) are damaging his brands "Asterix" and "Obelix".'
