For me, I'm not here or on any other message board to "get shit done"... if I am getting shit done then I'm not surfing the Internet, by definition. I come to sites like this to learn stuff, find cool links, run across things I had never heard of or thought of before, and hopefully have interesting conversations. I really detest the constant pressure of having to self-censor and edit what I say with a view to making sure it's "useful"... whatever the definition of useful is.
It's funny that after a long hiatus I do a drive by here and this thread is on the front page.
Also the point thing sucks, frankly. Whether you want to or not, you start keeping track of your points, wondering what you could do to get more, feeling jealous of others who have way more than you, etc. Human nature I suppose. It also sucks to call it some bullshit euphemistic name like "karma", which obscures what it really is, which is a social ranking system.
I would say that 4chan and YouTube comments are at one extreme, and Hacker News sits squarely at the opposite extreme. Neither appeal.
I agree with the poster 100%. Originally I was very enthusiastic about the site, and happy I had found it, but ultimately I realized that every time I visited or attempted to add my input to a thread, I came away feeling depressed and/or angry.
It's too clubby, it's taken the general disgust that people feel toward the banality of messageboards that deteriorate into meme-ification or juvenile flamewars... and turned that into a kind of snobby elitism that is just as off-putting.
Don't say "thank you" for a useful post because it takes up too much time and space? How utterly ridiculous. Only an antisocial or asocial nerd would come up with such a rule and think it was a great idea, and I say that as an antisocial nerd myself.
The system of ranking people by points, insisting that every single post be some giant revelation of wisdom that advances the fortunes of the tech industry and mankind immeasurably, etc. has only exacerbated people's tendency to self-aggrandize, kiss ass, over-analyze minutiae, and constantly try to one-up each other... all cloaked in a brightly colored cheerful passive-aggressive candy coating, of course.
I still cruise the site from time to time because it does have great links (one of the few things left going for it) but there is no way in hell I would consider myself part of the community or welcome. I certainly wouldn't and don't come here any more to ask questions or try to learn anything by exposing any gaps in my knowledge to general ridicule and sneering.
This must be the only place on the web where saying thank you gets you pissed on. I'm going back to lurking, can't figure this place out. Please downvote my "karma" to zero & adios.
You make a compelling point. But not everyone has such a thick skin or is that relaxed about getting vented on... maybe if downvoting cost karma and there was a karma threshold for being the recipient of a downvote? That could be interesting: battle of the karma titans. Meanwhile, new people could get their feet wet without getting pilloried for their mistakes.
The cool thing about crashing the HN conference is you don't have to go to school for twelve years to pick up some tools and start hacking away (pardon the double entendre).
The other thoughts I had on this subject are a little more radical but I'll say them anyway: why not get rid of downvoting entirely? I'm a new enough user that downvoting isn't even an option for me and I can't say that I miss it.
This site is already radically different from other online communities, why not go full-bore and just make it based purely on a the-cream-rises-to-the-top model?
I would imagine the flag feature is enough to get rid of the spam or junk topics. If someone really likes a topic or wants to see it stay on the front page, they can burn up karma with upvote boosts (to a limit).
It seems the focus here is already on the community finding and upvoting topics of intellectual value and fostering stimulating discussion. Why not just bring that to a laser-like focus and drop all efforts at "punishing" or otherwise disciplining members of the community.
There's a big difference in motivation between thinking "what can I add to the discussion that will be appreciated and upvoted" versus "gee I sure hope I don't get penalized for saying this"... and that thought loop feeds back into the culture of the site. Right now I would (subjectively) say that 85-90% of the effort people put into the site is positive, while maybe 10-15% of it is negative (downvoting, indulging in a bit of flaming, etc.). If the architecture of the site was further refined to reduce channels for negative action, it would seem that positive effort component could get upped to 90-95% and make this place even more of a standout than it already is. HN could be one big proof-of-concept that a large, diverse, open community on the web can still be a highly evolved and civil community.
Hacker News seems to be evolving and becoming many things to many users. Why not leverage that instead of trying to restrict it? Regardless of whether things are "on topic" or not, the site has two things going for it that other communities often strive in vain to build: traffic and a definable culture.
My suggestion: a column down the left with a topic marker: startup advice, network technology, programming tips, hacker culture, VC firm news, economics, politics, military tech.... whatever the topics are that people are actually posting and upvoting.
Classifying a topic could be done by a voting algorithm, weighted by karma... the poster thinks the topic is economics, then it gets marked as economics. If enough commenters feel that it falls under politics instead, then their clicks on that topic classification (submitted as part of the comment form) will reclassify it as such. Those users who want to see only certain topics can filter as desired.
The spirit of respectful and collegial debate that pervades the site is a huge draw and could just as easily be applied to the "off-topic" as the "on-topic"... and there is a synergy in having both available. It keeps things fresh and interesting and there is intellectual stimulation available here that you can't get anywhere else, regardless of topic.
I guess I am saying that the pool can be bigger and still be clean, and it can have a shallow and a deep end, fast and slow lanes, and serve a wide range of swimmers... but still be known for its overall high quality.
I guess the message that this sort of moderation (whether done by human or by algorithm) sends is "don't come here unless you already fully understand and appreciate the ethos and mission of this site, and don't post unless your contribution is going to be something of the highest quality possible, according to the standards of the site".
Which is fine as far as it goes, but basically when you boil that down it's "don't screw up, or else."
That isn't what attracted me here. What attracted me here was reading interesting links and thought-provoking discussion, and thinking "man, I need to up my game so I can participate meaningfully".
If the goal is to have a members-only kind of retreat from the mundane, then I suppose the notion of creating an underclass of posters who don't even know they are being ignored makes sense. But in that case, why not take it a step further and just require applications and screen out members in the first place?
If the goal is to grow the site and generate more traffic, then I would submit that encouraging people to emulate quality contributors is a better approach... why not flip this algorithm on its head. Instead of hell-banning those who score poorly, add in a karma boost for those who score optimally... and an indicator on articles that meet the site criteria for quality.
People don't like to do as they're told, but they sure like to do what got somebody else a gold star.
As a new user, I can say that what attracted me to the site is its quality and the number of links that lead me to the edges of my understanding of a given topic... I feel pushed to learn more.
At the same time, I would like to contribute and also feel compelled to express my opinion at times, but don't really feel free to do so unless it is an area where I feel pretty confident that I either know what I am talking about or have something to say that wasn't already said. I've noticed that just saying "wow that's cool" is frowned upon. I've also seen several threads where comments are downvoted to invisibility and I can't figure out why. Sometimes later they are upvoted again, sometimes not. But I feel like I am learning what is and is not acceptable... and as I increase my knowledge on topics that I came here to learn about, I hope to have more insights to offer back to the community (right now I can't say that I do).
I guess my points here are:
A) It's already a great site with quality much higher than a lot of other message boards.
B) It's hard enough to figure out what is ok and not ok to comment on.
C) To keep the community vibrant, presumably there should be some tolerance for and encouragement of growth in posters' ability to contribute.
This talk of "punishing" is discouraging. I suppose if there are already enough people here to understand what the community is supposed to be about, and if that group is self-sustaining, then there is no need to worry about attracting new users and exclusionary tactics are not a problem.
Quality is what you (or we) make of it. I've read thought-provoking comments on topics that are probably a bit off the reservation... and seen interesting segues inside threads that take me places I wouldn't expect.
Another approach might be to seed the front page with articles that are good examples of what the community is striving to focus on. Maybe put a green sprout next to it or something. Add one more voting mechanism for people at whatever karma threshold: a vote for "exemplary" status. I suspect that not every regular upvote would translate into an "exemplary" upvote... the front page would reflect the interests of the community, and if it was bare of exemplary articles, I have no doubt users would soon vote some quality articles onto it. My own preference in dealing with people is to give them an easily accessible mechanism to exceed your expectations instead of finding ways to punish them for not.
The line of reasoning applied here escapes me. In what way are the hardware and consulting business lines distractions to one another? It's like saying a car company's manufacturing business is going to get distracted by the company racing team, because it's possible to draw up different P/E ratios for the two. This overlooks the fundamental and inextricably interlinked business relationships between the two. And it casts aside all kinds of follow-on benefits, such as market & mind share, the halo effect, cross-pollination of new business ideas and seeding of innovation.
With all due respect, "worth more separate" is a destructive business philosophy. Unless your line of business is buying up other companies, building up value, and spinning them off.
Be that as it may, the differences between IBM and HP are stark in this instance. I-B-M: it stands for International Business Machines. Services to industry are their roots, and those roots run deep. Whether in the form of census punchcards in the 1890s, or ballistics calculations for the military, or the creation of the SABRE booking system, or the creation of relational databases... the list goes on and on and on, but the point is that IBM has never strayed from its roots. It is a business services company.
Upon hitting a rough patch in the early nineties, IBM took radical steps to revive its profits; one of these steps was the introduction and promotion of the business-oriented Thinkpad brand, which was a huge success and helped bring the firm back to health. But that did not make IBM into a PC company any more than the success of the XBox makes Microsoft a gaming company.
After nurturing the brand and working gradually over time with a Chinese supplier to offshore production, the last step (at that point almost a formality) was taken and the brand "Thinkpad" was transitioned to Lenovo ownership. IBM continues to be a company providing services to government and industry, as it has since its founding.
HP, on the other hand, is a company whose roots are in technical instrumentation and excellence in test equipment. Over time, this resulted in innovations such as the HP 9100A, the familiar tried-and-true HP calculator line, its superb printers, and so on... all outgrowths of HP's core roots in engineering and instrumentation.
The spinoff of Agilent was like HP cutting off its right arm. To add insult to injury, the company was forced to digest the Compaq acquisition at the same time. Still, the core mission of creating excellent electronic machines survived and HP is in a dominant position when it comes to providing reliable hardware in the form of computers, servers, printers from laserjets to industrial presses, networking, etc.
With that as a basis, the move into consulting services and enterprise software makes sense, but a move as unforgivably idiotic as removing the PC business would cut the very legs out from under the business, regardless of what some P/E number on a spreadsheet says. Why would an enterprise come to HP for consulting when it cannot provide a package of desktops, servers, and software? That is HP's mission as it is configured now, with Agilent gone its separate way. It makes sense to push aggressively into new territory, but not to destroy the foundation of the business at the same time.
Apotheker brought no innovative thinking to HP; he merely sought to remake the company in his image and transform it into the SAP that not even SAP would let him create. Whether or not that vision, taken in the abstract, is one worth pursuing is debatable to begin with-- but hacking HP into bits to force it to fit that vision is madness, and the plummeting stock price that you seem to measure value by reflected the market's view of this insanity.
Why is there any need to "bleed heavily"? The PC division is the foundation of the entire edifice. It may not be sexy and it may not fit your metrics-based notion of company value, but it holds up the business and it is number 1 in the world and profitable. That is a strength to leverage, not a "drag".
Not at all. Setting up trusts like this is what family offices do for wealthy people. The goal is to legally structure everything so that the total tax bill is minimized. High net worth individuals never just have a big fat bank account and a stock portfolio, there is always an array of trusts typically set up as LLC's to minimize tax exposure. It's unfortunate that he's being downvoted into invisibility (presumably due to the irritated tone of his post) but the fact is that he is correct in his assertion.
And while Amazon is stuck with maintaining both computer and physical infrastructure, Google will have effectively offloaded the physical infrastructure to the free market. Not only that, but while Amazon must seek economies of scale and efficiency at every point of the distribution network, Google can leverage the irrationality and inefficiency inherent in a distribution network composed of individual retail outlets. In the same way that eBay doesn't have to worry about packing up and shipping millions of disparate items, it just takes a fee off the top for delivering the sale.
I wonder about the benefits versus the costs to stores. Though you can already walk into a retail store and Google up an item on your phone to see if it's cheaper somewhere else... and you can already search for reviews of an item online, etc. I guess what is interesting here is that Google is delivering the physicality of a store to your screen; so conceivably some walk-ins that might have occurred just to check a place out will now occur online. On the flip side, turning every retail outlet into a 24 hour business has got to have some appeal.
Going really crazy with this, looking ahead to Google's driverless cars getting approval to run without a safety driver on board, you could Store View to your favorite cafe, put in your order for the caffeinated beverage of your choice, have the Google car drop by, the barista puts the drinks in a carrier in the back seat, the car picks up some Chinese food, energy bars, and a pair of earphones for you on the way back, you get a text telling you to go outside to pick everything up, you scan your GoogleID into the car, get your stuff, head back into the office and prepare to code all night. If you are so inclined, you drop a few bucks into the online tip jars of the coffee shop and restaurant. Based on your tip ratio, the star rating of the establishments in question are bumped up ever so slightly.
Google has the computers, cameras, and cars to take over the world of running errands.
This set me to imagining: every item in the store is dropped into a box before being put on the shelf. The box contains cameras on every interior face to snap a set of 360° views of the item. The UPC code is scanned and entered into inventory. The item goes on the shelf. If sold, the sale removes that item from inventory.
Each night after store closing, a Store View bot roams the aisles taking pictures and updating for the next day.
You browse to the store on Google Street View, go inside with Store View, and if you see an item you like, you draw a box around it and ask the image search algorithm to look for a match based on appearance. It finds the item, tells you how much it costs, and gives you the option to buy it.
Stores would get some basic frequency (annual?) of scan free, more frequent scans or keeping a bot on premises to scan every night would cost more. Integration of the online store would have a fee attached to every purchase. Prices and discounts could be updated daily and there could be different incentives for online vs. in-store purchases.
As data storage and computational power get cheaper and cheaper, and image recognition algorithms get more sophisticated, this would seem to be a potential outcome. A package of algorithms could even be marketed as a store manager: moving stock that has sat on the shelf too long with discounts, predicting what will require reorders soonest, integration with price comparison engines to analyze competitiveness, etc. Once imagery is dissectable and searchable in the same way that language is, things could get very interesting very fast.
I recall working at a growing company that suddenly stopped blowing its forecasts out of the water and sales began to tank (part of an overall market downturn). C-level executives were slaughtered and we were soon treated to a blustery, military-metaphor-laced "hardass" speech to rally the troops, courtesy of the new VP who was keen to let us know that business was war and we were in it to win it, etc. It was lead bullet time.
Fast forward some quarters later, after three rounds of layoffs, a refocusing of the product line on the core brands, and a general slow rebound of the market, and the company was back in the black... but: the blustery VP in question had nothing to do with any of this and had been shown the door (with a nice golden parachute).
Additionally, opportunities to take advantage of new market directions were missed. The company's strategy was to bundle sales around the best-selling products and continue incremental development around those. Ancillary, low-selling products were cut. Which is all well and good, but the company is now vulnerable to several new competitors who took advantage of new directions in client demand that the VP of War Metaphors missed... and now the company is finding itself making acquisitions of technology and (more importantly) cultures that are completely foreign and incompatible. (Windows-centric old-school company trying to absorb open-source Linux-based startups.) So far the solution has been to leave the acquired companies relatively intact... "synergy" is non-existent and culture clash is evident, with top brass from the acquired startups fleeing as soon as their contracts permit.
Additionally, the company is now facing the looming threat of cloud services and large-scale computing becoming cheaper and more commoditized. Unfortunately, nothing is being done to innovate or reinvent where reinvention is necessary; the current leadership does not perceive the threat (yet). (Disclaimer: I no longer work there, so they may have some stealth project to address this; but based on my contacts I doubt it.)
After reading the other recent HN post by the same author entitled "Nobody Cares" and now this latest little bit of bullet-based sophistry, I must say flatly that I do not find these observations helpful. First of all, the war metaphor and language is distracting and obfuscates issues. But if we must stick with this metaphor, there are times when what hulks in the door must be brought down in a hail of lead, and times when the monster in the door is wearing a bulletproof vest-- so you better hope you have a silver bullet and the ability to accurately aim between the eyes.
What strikes me most about the subtext of the OP's commentary is how lonely and unnecessarily self-limiting it is. I would not like to be running one of his portfolio companies and be faced with a challenge. It seems the likely response would be "you're on your own, nobody cares about your excuses, it's lead bullet time, not silver bullet time" etc. In other words, get me my return, I don't need to hear about anything else.
Real insight is knowing who cares and who doesn't, and maximizing your connections to the former, disconnecting from the latter. Real understanding of when to use lead and when to use silver and when not to fire bullets at all is what guides a company through tough times, but more importantly, allows it to seize opportunities for growth. Simply spouting "tough"-sounding platitudes and militaristic mantras about winning wars does nothing to help, and is distraction more than anything else.
For me, I'm not here or on any other message board to "get shit done"... if I am getting shit done then I'm not surfing the Internet, by definition. I come to sites like this to learn stuff, find cool links, run across things I had never heard of or thought of before, and hopefully have interesting conversations. I really detest the constant pressure of having to self-censor and edit what I say with a view to making sure it's "useful"... whatever the definition of useful is.
It's funny that after a long hiatus I do a drive by here and this thread is on the front page.
Also the point thing sucks, frankly. Whether you want to or not, you start keeping track of your points, wondering what you could do to get more, feeling jealous of others who have way more than you, etc. Human nature I suppose. It also sucks to call it some bullshit euphemistic name like "karma", which obscures what it really is, which is a social ranking system.
I would say that 4chan and YouTube comments are at one extreme, and Hacker News sits squarely at the opposite extreme. Neither appeal.