al1x

Nice. I had quite a thrift-store clothing collection in high school. Wish I hadn't given them back to good will. My favorite was an official Waste Management t-shirt, worn by some WM employee. That and a shirt that said "hugs not drugs". I'll make a fun hour or two of it tomorrow with my iPhone, seeing if I can spot any 10x arbitrages.

Being text-only helps immensely.

What's wrong with Buzzfeed?

I think what he's suggesting is that a topic-based filtering system would be more ideal than a key work based one. I don't want to have to spell out "block yankee's, tigers, indians, pirates, and giants". I just want to say "block all baseball", or "block all sports", and have the system know that posts about the yankee's, tigeers, indians, pirates, or giants are inclusive in these categories.

There are social consequences of unfriending someone, regardless of how annoying their posts are. De-friending someone is the digital equivalent of saying "I don't want to be your friend anymore". If you don't want to come off as abrasive, simply block the user from your feed.

It has nothing to do with being "edgy". It has everything to do with not wanting to be flooded with Bible verses, prayer requests, and mindless proselytizing. It's obnoxious.

If you really are an atheist you've taken this whole idea of "open-mindedness" way too far and let a slough of nonsense overwhelm your rational sensibilities. Stop trying to be "ok" with everyone and everything. It's foolishness. There are truly fucked up people in this world with truly fucked up beliefs. You don't need to be "ok" with them. You need to confront them and help educate them. Fight ignorance, don't condone it. Help make the world a better place. If you have nothing to say in response to divinedefault, fine. But there's no reason to storm off in a huff and refuse further dialogue because he questions the authenticity of some of your claims. I doubted them too. Be a man. Deal with it. Get over it. Continue the dialogue if you can. If you can't, keep processing what he's said. He took a lot of time and spent a lot of effort replying to your blog post. You owe him more than this "I'M NOT TALKING TO YOU ANYMORE" nonsense.

> 1) You say "religion is a dangerous evil whose existence threatens the very future of humanity." This seems, at best, blowing something way out of proportion.

You must not live in the US, must not be aware of how religion influences scientific research, and must not pay much attention to the news.

> In fact, you make a whole shitload of biased, uncited claims in your first paragraph. ...fearmongering.

This is so typical of HN. Disagree? No problem. Dismiss everything said with a "citation needed". Your entire blog post was an uncited claim. But I'm not going to even bother making that a point of contention. This game is juvenile, especially on matters of common knowledge. Only a jackass walks around saying "citation needed" to every claim someone makes. Re: fearmongering, is this some kind of joke? Are you really questioning that the religious majority controls politically the United States? Are you really questioning that religion shapes public policy in ways detrimental to scientific advancement and societal progress? Do you really think the ideas behind the second coming of Christ encourage self reliance as opposed to say extreme apathy, since their Lord and Savior will soon descend from heaven to judge, condemn, and then magically fix all the problems of the world for us, creating an eternal paradise for all believers? Are you really unaware of the common objection to climate change among Christians in America that climate change is bogus because "God wouldn't let that happen"? Do you really contest my assertion that religion lacks empirical evidence? Have you yourself seen signs, wonders, and miracles on the order of Biblical proportions? Do you often see water turned to wine, great waters parted on command, the sick healed and the dead raised? Because those are the claims of Christianity.

> If you don't see the power of a community, I cannot help you

I never said community wasn't a great thing, I only said, in so many words, that a community based on ignorance and nonsense is not a net "good". Do you argue that the "community" created around Hitler's ideologies was a net "good"? That's absurd. Not everything that unites is good.

> I would argue that it was another war fought for the same reason that every war has ever been fought: for power

Right. Except, of course, that you're wrong.

> How many people died during the crusades? Was it less than 40 million? I did a little bit of googling, and it seems to be way less than 40 million, so it still pales in comparison to Mao or Genghis Kahn.

Do you really think it somehow makes what happened during the Crusades any better? Your point is completely irrelevant. If religion did not exist those tens of millions of people would not have been killed. That's the only thing that matters.

What do you do to mitigate DDoS attacks? Prolexic? Cloudflare? Other?

This post is absurd. People attack religion "to feel superior than others and therefore feel better about themselves"? What about the fact that religion is a dangerous evil whose existence threatens the very future of humanity? What about the "minor" fact that the religious majority control politically the largest superpower in the world? What about the fact that religion shapes public policy in ways detrimental to scientific advancement and societal progress? What about the fact that religion encourages ignorance and complacency and opposes the idea of self reliance? What about the fact that it lacks any form of empirical evidence despite making claims to?

But I'm supposed to forget about all of that because of "community". It's somehow a GOOD thing that ignorant birds of a feather flock together? It's somehow a GOOD thing that the scientifically illiterate majority control the public policy of the largest superpower in the world?

But I'm supposed to forget all of that because it "makes them happy"? That their ignorance is bliss? That simpleminded people don't suffer existential angst? That having a book that makes up answers to all of life's questions instead of providing anything remotely approaching anything empirical is somehow "comforting"?

But I'm supposed to forget all of that because religion has been around since all of recorded human history.. and that that is somehow significant?

Go ahead max, dismiss the critics by forgetting that the Crusades was entirely motivated by religion, dismiss the philosophical problem of evil because you think you've found a satisfactory answer to it, dismiss the fact that the Bible is riddled with factual and historical inaccuracies, dismiss religion's blatant disregard for Science Fact because "people are inconsistent about their beliefs all the time" (because that's such a good reason). ...and by all means, continue making spectacularly ignorant blog posts and don't both enabling comments because, heaven forbid, someone might call you out on your nonsense and set you straight.

Stay in school, Max, and keep thinking through these things. You've got a ways to go.

It's really annoying that 25% of the page is taken up by the "Join Now" "Learn More" banner at the top and that there's no way of hiding it. Why ruin the user experience for people just because they don't want to sign up for your site? As someone else mentioned below: having to click through twice to get to the article is obnoxious as well. Other than that nice job.

Uber is a startup, and HN is a site about startups. FTFY.