The ironic thing in this instance is that in a way the author is clearly negating his point by needing to show the crossed-out text. Imagine you had followed the link, and the only text was "Fewer words create a more powerful message."
We would likely feel cheated at some level, like "That's it? How did one sentence get a whole HN link?" In a way we're conditioned to expect a bunch of garbage filler that we merely skim, and because that's what's in demand right now it's what authors are incentivized to provide.
Some people will skim and get the information. Some people will read and get entertainment. Some people want the details, because they need a deeper understanding. Some people want a high level overview, because they already understand things and just want the information.
Your Second Life article probably has some interesting things to say, I wouldn't know, I didn't read it. Instead I clicked the link, scrolled and scrolled and before I'd even got to the bottom I'd calculated it would take me about half an hour of my life to read the thing.
I don't want to invest half an hour of my life in learning about someone's blow-by-blow account of their Second Life experience (I'd question anybody who does and point them to one of the numerous HN articles on procrastination/wasted time). An article that long devoted only to Second Life (condescension aside, there really are more important things, honestly) seems pretentious and serving the authors Ego more than the readers curiosity.
Richard Feynman however, the secrets of the universe and world around us, yes, I would like to learn more about that.
How exactly did the US feds "Seize" 5 million in bitcoin? I thought the whole point was that it wasn't seizable unless you got the encryption keys, which would be weird since MTGOX is based in Japan, no?
> How exactly did the US feds "Seize" 5 million in bitcoin?
Presumably, if they wanted to seize bitcoin, they'd produce a demand to turn the bitcoin over along with stating the legal authority for the demand and the legal consequences of failing to comply with it; lots of actual seizures work that way.
But if you read the article, the $5+ million seized from Mt.Gox by the US government was US dollars (not bitcoins) ($2.9 million from Mt.Gox's account with Dwolla, and $2.1+ million from two Wells Fargo accounts), so "how can you seize bitcoins" is irrelevant.
When you vote, you get a piece of paper saying your name, your vote, voter-id, and the machine's salt.
Whenever a vote is counted, it is added to a public website of HASHES. Thus anybody can verify the totals.
If anybody's recorded vote on the website (taken by hashing their info) doesn't match their receipt, fraud is caught (thus removing votes or changing votes isn't possible). Also, if I didn't vote or am dead, and my info is entered, we can verify no tally appears for my hash.
If the hashes don't match up with all the registered voters via registration forms, then votes have been added. Thus in order to add fake votes, fake voter registration forms must be filled out manually [leaving a paper trail to catch the perpetrator].
So, despite the title, this is not new at all (2010). On an unrelated note it's very shoddy speculation, not based on life outcomes of alcohol users versus crack users or anything remotely meaningful.
I feel this particular post (as a lot of HN) follows a pattern of the "humblebrag." Are people whose games are featured in windows 8 store really the ones who need advice, or is this just basically a way to post an HN that says "My Game was featured, here's a link" with some facade relevance?
Other example titles of shameless self promotion guised as useful information migth be "What not do with your first million" or "What life is REALLY like once your startup makes it" or anything else which trades a worthless anecdote for attention.
I'd argue that anyone with the technical ability to get a game featured, yet without the experience to capitalize on that exposure needs a whole lot of advice. And frankly, I'm glad that HN is here because this 'worthless anecdote' taught me:
- there are only 43,000 apps in the Windows 8 store. Of those, only ~ 3,600 are games. Despite these numbers, one particular developer only sold nine apps for a total of about twenty pounds.
- how not to advocate for a platform. Or, how to genuinely annoy people while trying to persuade them to do what you want.
However, I also get That username is taken. Please choose another when I try to register the same username. Have I been banned? If so, would you like to start indicating that in the interface somewhere?
For example: "You cannot login because this account was banned" or "The user account you tried to lookup no longer exists because it was banned" ?
We would likely feel cheated at some level, like "That's it? How did one sentence get a whole HN link?" In a way we're conditioned to expect a bunch of garbage filler that we merely skim, and because that's what's in demand right now it's what authors are incentivized to provide.