akikuchi

It is interesting to see the different reactions to this article. Byrne is clearly sympathetic to Aaron’s cause, and to the fact that civil disobedience and other sometimes subversive methods can be effective in dealing with injustice.

There seem to be many comments attacking him for various minor gripes, choice of language, his incomplete understanding of the situation, etc. But that seems to miss the point. He’s ultimately asking how did this end up so wrong, and what can we learn from this tragic situation. How far should someone need to be prepared to go when taking a stand? How might more effective publicity/messaging have furthered the cause or helped prevent the judicial process from spiraling out of hand.

Technical advancement and the proliferation of data create scenarios that are clearly not intuitive to the average person. There seems to be a tendency to sometimes attack/lecture less technically proficient observers, rather than try to more meaningfully communicate and get to the heart of the issue.

Byrne connects the JSTOR situation to the very different realms of wikileaks, manning, music publishing, etc. For those who care about the rules governing information sharing, IP, etc, this begs the critical question of “how do we differentiate among these ideas, so they are not all muddled together in the public’s eye.”

I believe he's referring more to the fact that the real world price per unit of game currency is not a round number. If dragon eggs were worth exactly $1 each, people would be slightly more careful about the value/cost of in-game purchases.

I agree with you, and more generally I find the "life isn't fair/no excuses" mindset to be a strange phenomenon. The idea that being prepared for adversity, planning ahead, etc. is a good thing is totally sensible. And sometimes you get some bad breaks, and you have to take your lumps and move on. But I can't help but feel that sometimes those that take the "no matter what" position are doing so less in response to the specific situation, and more because they have been conditioned/hardened against the many people that do look for shortcuts or are too quick to make excuses.

It seems like many in the no-excuses camp often frame the hard line as teaching a lesson for "the real world." But I would argue that a main reason deadlines are important in the real world is because other stakeholders need to have clear expectations to use for their own planning. It's unreasonable to expect them to adjust their plans do to one party's shifting schedule, and it's generally a bad idea to treat deadlines lightly.

But if there's a sensible reason and it doesn't cause a big problem for anyone, I don't see why the "principle" of a deadline should trump empathy and business judgement.

Especially since YC can always use the timing and circumstances of the application as additional pieces of information in their process.

Creative thinking, but I'd have to disagree with your conclusion. The present value of the additional years of copyright would be very low, especially taking into account 1. the probability that the work will still be a source of value 100 years (not the exact number, but for the sake of argument) in the future and 2.The possibility of changes in the local jurisdiction or US law over that time.

Your idea would mean paying 100k for the possibility of receiving some additional value 100 years in the future. The first 100 years of value are already protected under US law.

I search HN a lot, so am excited by this native implementation. I would be curious to know more about how the "relevance" sorting algorithm works though. When I did a test search for "domain registrar," for example, the top result was a comment with a score of -4. It seems like there are many ways to implement that feature, so would would be quite interested to hear more if the creators were able to share some thoughts on the general "relevance" problem.

The article's bullet points are great, but I would emphasize one thing:

Don't be afraid to ask, but only AFTER YOU'VE DONE YOUR HOMEWORK. People can be surprisingly helpful, but especially if it's clear you're working hard to make each request count. They're much less likely to think you're wasting their time if it's clear you've been hustling and see their help as a catalyst for you working EVEN HARDER.

As a starting point, I think there is not much downside in showing full integer comment scores for comments over n (n=2?) days old.

In addition, I think there are a variety of ways of improving the "ease of consumption" (ie scanning for good comments) without re-introducing the gaming-type issues with integer comment scores. For example:

1. Use a log(karma) function or some other simple obfuscation method 2. Highlight/mark comments by a small number of point thresholds or quantiles 3. Highlight/mark only the top x% of comments on a thread

I do think there is value in seeing some signals of comment quality, but I don't think these need to be particularly granular at all (even just one or two "good comment tiers" could be sufficient).

That is a reasonable possibility, and I think we probably agree on many aspects of the problem. The general observation still holds though, that the current compensation reality does not attract a broad enough pool.

The challenges of professional recognition, accountability and performance measurement which you aptly highlight are very real. I may be interpreting you incorrectly, but you seem to blame teachers for those issues. My thought is that teachers recognize that the broad challenges facing the industry, and recognize that a comprehensive solution will probably require some significant reforms. But I imagine they also believe that just giving up some of their current rights will not be a sufficient solution without more comprehensive reform. So in the meantime their better off with the status quo.

I think your assertion about the "rhetorical sleight of hand" is pretty far off-base, and is an (admittedly subtle) strawman. The main points of the article, from my perspective were 1. The issues with education in the US are complex, and blanket vilification of teachers is neither warranted nor productive. 2. The pool of high-quality new teaching candidates seems limited (and quite possibly shrinking); current compensation levels for teachers, relative to other job opportunities, is almost certainly a contributing factor.

Your argument is effectively responding to the idea that "we don't find that pay package attractive enough to make us want to be teachers" by saying "but you're using the wrong word- you should look at compensation." Okay, then "we don't find that compensation package attractive enough."

I certainly don't think that just paying teachers more is going to fix anything. But the vilification of the profession, which the article laments and you effectively condone, is in my opinion a big distraction. I agree that tenure is not a perfect system, but neither is it entirely without its benefits. Until more progress is made on a more comprehensive response to education reform, attacking the teachers for not giving up their long-held rights seems a bit unrealistic.