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Not really sure why you're getting downvoted, I agree completely.

• dang 9y ago
  Perhaps because it breaks the site guidelines about shallow dismissals and responding to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Obviously the app is just a part of what they're doing, and the bulk of it involves working with people and institutions.
  • symlinkk 9y ago
    It still doesn't sound that innovative to me. Are we not allowed to criticize things anymore?
    • dang 9y ago
      Of course you are! But snarky internet dismissals are sort of a lazy substitute for real criticism, which (a) engages with the actual core of a thing and (b) adds information, so the readers can learn something and decide for themselves. I understand the temptation to post snarky internet dismissals. It's a quick way to vent annoyance about something where it can take a lot of energy to react substantively. Nonetheless we don't want them here—not because we want HN to be criticism-free (on the contrary, there is plenty of good criticism in this thread) but because they make us all dumber and the site lamer. On HN, people need to do the work of processing their annoyance, figuring out what the underlying substantive point is, expressing it in words—and then post that. Or, alternatively, just don't comment. That takes even less energy than snarking. This isn't something we arrived at a priori, by the way, or some moral sentiment about snark. It's a pragmatic assessment of what works and doesn't work on HN.