4 ms·

I think you misunderstand me. What the Government does with your data, and what it doesn't do, is big news, of great interest, to everyone. And that's my poin

I think you misunderstand me. What the Government does with your data, and what it doesn't do, is big news, of great interest, to everyone. And that's my point. It should be of interest to everyone, and it's got nothing specifically related to being a hacker, being a founder, running a project, or other technical issues that are the point, purpose and focus of this community. Or once were. And before someone trots out the "satisfies intellectual curiosity" line from the guidelines let me just say no, it doesn't, and if you think it does then you have a very different concept of "intellectual" from mine. So I'm not saying it's uninteresting in general, I'm saying it's uninteresting to this community as I understand it ought to be. And in consequence it's clear that you have a different understanding about with this community ought to be. Maybe I'm now out-of-date, and it's changed into something with which I don't share significant overlap.

knowtheory 16y ago
Well, i note that we joined hacker news within 40 days of each other. Given that, i'd hazard to say we at least have some similar sense of what the community is (although obviously there's an element of self selection in terms of what we read and contribute to). At the same time, if you don't find the generalist argument persuasive, i'd fall back on the point i skipped previously, which is that this is of direct interest to data geeks. One of the major information brokers, which is interesting both as an individual instance, and as a representative of all large information brokers is fundamentally broken internally. This is a data processing and scaling issue laid out in a way that should make us ask what's wrong, and what it is that can be done to fix these sorts of problems. Put more succinctly, this is a problem in our domain.

knowtheory 16y ago

Well, i note that we joined hacker news within 40 days of each other. Given that, i'd hazard to say we at least have some similar sense of what the community is (although obviously there's an element of self selection in terms of what we read and contribute to). At the same time, if you don't find the generalist argument persuasive, i'd fall back on the point i skipped previously, which is that this is of direct interest to data geeks. One of the major information brokers, which is interesting both as an individual instance, and as a representative of all large information brokers is fundamentally broken internally. This is a data processing and scaling issue laid out in a way that should make us ask what's wrong, and what it is that can be done to fix these sorts of problems. Put more succinctly, this is a problem in our domain.