I created a new account, posted legit content, and none of the content appeared until ~5 days later.
> it will not kill you
How do you know it will not kill me?
What if I don't have to pay this month's rent and launching the site today instead of five days later amounts to $500? Both of these are true for me right now. The creators of HN can't possibly know the cost to a user to post something.
How did you estimate that "it will not kill me" also means it will not kill my spirits to not try again? How do you measure this cost?
> Nothing springs to mind that is that important that:
Merely because nothing springs to mind isn't proof that no such thing exists.
> What specifically did you have in mind?
I have different things in mind for different sites.
How do you determine a user is an idiot or not when good ideas look like bad ideas initially? Experts can have blind spots.
The option for reputationless discussion should always remain open in my opinion.
> how high is the cost really?
The cost can be proportional to the proof of work.
Everything has a cost. How about determining the cost and providing means to pay for it? Paying works for many things in the world. It works for ads, for example.
Why must the cost be annoying a human by requiring reputation instead of a monetary cost? How is annoying a human a better solution than letting people pay? Do you really think pissing people off will stop them from expressing what they want? It might be more likely that people will express what they want, nobody will hear them, and they'll leave, taking good ideas with them.
Just as there is a cost to moderation, there is a cost to losing good ideas. How about letting a free market decide?
The point of that tunnel may be to prevent entities that are inside the VPN from sniffing cleartext RDP traffic. If an attacker gets VPN access you want to limit their ability to do damage inside the VPN.
> This seems like a continuation of the never ending quest for people to sacrifice themselves for the betterment of a corporate profit they will never see.
Reading the essay I didn't see a reference to "the betterment of a corporate profit". Doing good work doesn't mean starting a startup, if this is what you meant.
I did and I did.