I just don't understand responding to someone helping someone else by demonizing them for the all people they're not helping. Amit is a member of our community, he's raised awareness for an important issue, what's the problem here?
And I disagree, the whole point of this drive is that the magic donor most likely will be someone mobilized by this community since there are so few potential matches as it currently stands.
What makes you say the community is ignoring the faceless sufferers? Registering as a marrow donor isn't exclusive to one person, you could potentially save the life of a stranger decades from now. For the awareness he's raised Amit may potentially be saving many lives besides his own.
To me it's incredible that helping one person evokes so much shrieking about how many others that aren't being helped, what about those who never help anyone?
If you were facing death and your best hope at survival was crowdsourcing help on the internet you'd... what, politely decline to bother anyone in the internet community you've been a major part of? Skip the chance to raise awareness for something that could save the lives of many others besides yourself? Die alone knowing you saved someone half a second reading an HN headline that wasn't directly relevant to them?
Whether or not this is true, Apple should add something like File Vault to iOS. Encrypting your backups is redundant if you're already encrypting your whole home directory, but none of that matters if they have access to your unencrypted phone. Check out the police downloader devices the ACLU is investigating: http://www.aclumich.org/issues/privacy-and-technology/2011-0...
here's an archive of the original UI: http://justinouellette.com/muxtape/