Well, a few things. First off, a lot of people on here probably understand that when you don't have money to pay for bandwidth, banning people who use a lot of

Well, a few things. First off, a lot of people on here probably understand that when you don't have money to pay for bandwidth, banning people who use a lot of it might be reasonable. It's not like you have a whole lot of other options. Passing around the hat isn't likely to work, and if they could get additional funding, they already would have. Second, even if people didn't understand that, the HN crowd is a tiny slice of the good hackers out there. Most of the best people I know do not read it, or even actively disdain it. "Cesspit" and the like are a terms I have heard in person or on newsgroups used to describe the comments section here. Third, I'll bet most HN people don't even know the names of Twitpic's founders. I don't. I wouldn't be able to identify whether another company, down the line, was founded by them. Lastly, I doubt most HN people are so principled that a year or two from now they would turn down an otherwise compelling job offer because the founders of the company were once associated with banning Archive Team's IPs. It's mildly annoying at worst.