The ironic thing in this instance is that in a way the author is clearly negating his point by needing to show the crossed-out text. Imagine you had followed the link, and the only text was "Fewer words create a more powerful message."
We would likely feel cheated at some level, like "That's it? How did one sentence get a whole HN link?" In a way we're conditioned to expect a bunch of garbage filler that we merely skim, and because that's what's in demand right now it's what authors are incentivized to provide.
How exactly did the US feds "Seize" 5 million in bitcoin? I thought the whole point was that it wasn't seizable unless you got the encryption keys, which would be weird since MTGOX is based in Japan, no?
When you vote, you get a piece of paper saying your name, your vote, voter-id, and the machine's salt.
Whenever a vote is counted, it is added to a public website of HASHES. Thus anybody can verify the totals.
If anybody's recorded vote on the website (taken by hashing their info) doesn't match their receipt, fraud is caught (thus removing votes or changing votes isn't possible). Also, if I didn't vote or am dead, and my info is entered, we can verify no tally appears for my hash.
If the hashes don't match up with all the registered voters via registration forms, then votes have been added. Thus in order to add fake votes, fake voter registration forms must be filled out manually [leaving a paper trail to catch the perpetrator].
So, despite the title, this is not new at all (2010). On an unrelated note it's very shoddy speculation, not based on life outcomes of alcohol users versus crack users or anything remotely meaningful.
I feel this particular post (as a lot of HN) follows a pattern of the "humblebrag." Are people whose games are featured in windows 8 store really the ones who need advice, or is this just basically a way to post an HN that says "My Game was featured, here's a link" with some facade relevance?
Other example titles of shameless self promotion guised as useful information migth be "What not do with your first million" or "What life is REALLY like once your startup makes it" or anything else which trades a worthless anecdote for attention.
However, I also get That username is taken. Please choose another when I try to register the same username. Have I been banned? If so, would you like to start indicating that in the interface somewhere?
For example: "You cannot login because this account was banned" or "The user account you tried to lookup no longer exists because it was banned" ?
We would likely feel cheated at some level, like "That's it? How did one sentence get a whole HN link?" In a way we're conditioned to expect a bunch of garbage filler that we merely skim, and because that's what's in demand right now it's what authors are incentivized to provide.