4 ms·

Also, "free": "If you're not paying for it, you're the product being sold" HN is "free" too. :)

mentalgear 8mo ago
At least free to data mine by everyone (as far as I know).
stephenr 8mo ago
that isn't the gotcha you think it is. Y combinator absolutely profits from encouraging group think and positive attitudes about things they're involved in. How else would you get a large part of the tech world to somehow believe that suckling on the teat of Venture capital until that elusive "exit" is the holy grail of business models?
- aurareturn 8mo ago
  Regardless of how you think HN makes the service free, I'm pointing out to the OP that he is using a service that is free and he is the product. It seems like he is ok with this concept. So why wouldn't he be ok with he Mozilla free VPN concept.
  - stephenr 8mo ago
    How you are "valuable" as the product is absolutely a relevant distinction to make. When the valuable part is data collection, you don't get a choice in how your user data is sold. When the valuable part is influencing opinions, you do get a choice in what you believe.
aleph_minus_one 8mo ago
> > Also, "free": "If you're not paying for it, you're the product being sold" > HN is "free" too. :) Indeed: you deliver valuable information about market trends, market sentiments, technology, ... to SV startups and investors. Additionally, Hacker News is basically a marketing expense of YC.
- Xunjin 8mo ago
  Well pointed. Sometimes being the "product" is not a bad thing.
  - aleph_minus_one 8mo ago
    It's all about: do you derive an appropriate value for yourself from being the product? For example, when you use the Google search engine, you are the product (Google's customers are advertisers). I hope you derive sufficient (average) value from each Google search so that you consider this to be worth it.
    - ranger_danger 8mo ago
      For a lot of people I think it's increasingly not worth it. Not only do we never click on ads, but results are getting worse, and often a (local) LLM can answer a large percentage of our questions faster and more privately.
- Bender 8mo ago
  And crowd sourced think tank.
  - bigfishrunning 8mo ago
    Eh, a think tank usually has some kind of minimum requirements, such as education or industry experience. The usefulness of hackernews lies in "farming the opinions of the kind of dork that hangs out on hackernews" -- this is useful data, but "crowd sourced think tank" is trumping it up a bit i think
    - Bender 8mo ago
      Eh, a think tank usually has some kind of minimum requirements When paid for, I agree that is absolutely true. When nearly free, thanks to team Daniel it's an input that can be weighted against paid options. The free but large crowd may have thought of things that paid think tank members members holding doctorates may not have. Great ideas are missed all the time and most often until it is too late. There may only be a few golden eggs and many bad eggs but there are quicker ways to sort that out nowadays without an Eggdicator and Oompa Loompas though I do miss the songs. One golden egg could pay for the entire cost of the staff running HN for a decade.

At least free to data mine by everyone (as far as I know).

that isn't the gotcha you think it is. Y combinator absolutely profits from encouraging group think and positive attitudes about things they're involved in. How else would you get a large part of the tech world to somehow believe that suckling on the teat of Venture capital until that elusive "exit" is the holy grail of business models?

aurareturn 8mo ago
Regardless of how you think HN makes the service free, I'm pointing out to the OP that he is using a service that is free and he is the product. It seems like he is ok with this concept. So why wouldn't he be ok with he Mozilla free VPN concept.
- stephenr 8mo ago
  How you are "valuable" as the product is absolutely a relevant distinction to make. When the valuable part is data collection, you don't get a choice in how your user data is sold. When the valuable part is influencing opinions, you do get a choice in what you believe.

aleph_minus_one 8mo ago

> > Also, "free": "If you're not paying for it, you're the product being sold" > HN is "free" too. :) Indeed: you deliver valuable information about market trends, market sentiments, technology, ... to SV startups and investors. Additionally, Hacker News is basically a marketing expense of YC.

Xunjin 8mo ago
Well pointed. Sometimes being the "product" is not a bad thing.
- aleph_minus_one 8mo ago
  It's all about: do you derive an appropriate value for yourself from being the product? For example, when you use the Google search engine, you are the product (Google's customers are advertisers). I hope you derive sufficient (average) value from each Google search so that you consider this to be worth it.
  - ranger_danger 8mo ago
    For a lot of people I think it's increasingly not worth it. Not only do we never click on ads, but results are getting worse, and often a (local) LLM can answer a large percentage of our questions faster and more privately.
Bender 8mo ago
And crowd sourced think tank.
- bigfishrunning 8mo ago
  Eh, a think tank usually has some kind of minimum requirements, such as education or industry experience. The usefulness of hackernews lies in "farming the opinions of the kind of dork that hangs out on hackernews" -- this is useful data, but "crowd sourced think tank" is trumping it up a bit i think
  - Bender 8mo ago
    Eh, a think tank usually has some kind of minimum requirements When paid for, I agree that is absolutely true. When nearly free, thanks to team Daniel it's an input that can be weighted against paid options. The free but large crowd may have thought of things that paid think tank members members holding doctorates may not have. Great ideas are missed all the time and most often until it is too late. There may only be a few golden eggs and many bad eggs but there are quicker ways to sort that out nowadays without an Eggdicator and Oompa Loompas though I do miss the songs. One golden egg could pay for the entire cost of the staff running HN for a decade.