I shouldn't even bother commenting here and this won't be the first time I'm giving up on HN, but seeing the replies you're getting I couldn't leave without at least offering you my support and letting the community know what a sick and twisted bunch of people tech, HN, pg, reddit and the rest of you are. Absolutely disgusting bunch of people. And that's coming from a privileged white male.
The replies that comment is getting are basically "don't be so vitriolic, calm down and you'll get your message across better", and you classify this as 'absolutely disgusting' and 'twisted'?
I can tell you don't know and have never spoken to anyone left-of-center in your life. Your description of Liberals comes straight out of the Libertarian playbook. The image of the "peace-loving, bleeding-heart, hippie Democrat" is a weak attempt to make ANY support for defense look hypocrite. In reality there is support only not as much as you or other Libertarians would like. That's a perfectly normal point of discussion if you're willing to put your lies aside.
There might not be a broad opposition coming from the left but there is an opposition. If it were up to Democrats the bipartisan Amash amendment to defund the NSA would have passed[1]. The problem isn't a Democrat in the White House, it's a non-functioning GOP in Congress.
I still support Obama and I have no problem talking about it.
I do know a couple of those "peace-loving, bleeding-heart, hippies" who don't have really any support for defense. They're not mostly Democrats, though - more typically Green if they have a party affiliation... (and not all Green Party members I know are like that, either). Generalizing is hard.
Reflowing stuff in an baking oven seems to be an increasingly common method of fixing electronics. Hell, my friend reflowed an RF dongle for TI Chronos watch with a heat gun the other day.
If you're watching the Vergecast and posting about it on HN then you're not that much of an outsider as you think you are. No one of my friends or family your age are on Twitter or Pinterest and maybe half are on Facebook. It's easy to think the whole world is into social media when you're reading about it every day, but the majority of people have no idea what any of this means or are even remotely interested in it.
I was really into MySpace and because of that I just sort of naturally transitioned into Facebook probably somewhere around 2007-2008 (I don't remember exactly). Though MySpace served as a typical teen social tool throughout junior high and high school, it became less interesting to me after graduation (strangely enough, right around the time you start seeing less of your friends in-person) as I spent more time with fewer people (family and my girlfriend, mainly).
Right around the time that my girlfriend and I went off to university together, I pretty much just stopped using it. All of the (little) social interaction I felt I needed was satisfied in-person, and so I didn't really need it anymore. I used Facebook a couple of times (quite literally), but at some point I got fed up with hearing everybody talk about it all the time (I think the foregone conclusion that "everybody has one!" really irked me), so I looked at it all, realized that I really didn't use it, and deleted everything.
Though I still get the occasional friend trying to convince me to come back, I haven't, and I've been OK. I really don't need another Internet distraction, and I don't feel like I've missed out on anything substantial because of it.
Wait till you have kids. Facebook works really well as a "sharing photos of the grand-kids" for all of those grandparents and great-aunts around the country/world
could you tell us something about your friends/family situation (geographic location, socioeconomic situation, education, etc). i know three (!) people who are not on facebook.
Define "not on Facebook." I have a Facebook account, but I haven't actually logged into it in over a year and the last post made to it was probably 3 years ago.
You do know what Childline is, right? It's a counselling service run by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children that deals with child abuse, teenage pregnancy, bullying etc.
As a parent, why would you want to block that?! I know I wouldn't.
It's odd that you talk about snake-oil in a thread where it's already mentioned that Google will just as easily ban you even if you follow their rules. Expedia and RapGenius are the two latest examples of how easy it is to cheat the system.
Meanwhile the world commerce is moving towards the Internet and Google controls 70% of that. But you don't want to come off as "spammy" so better to risk your company and follow the rules of an unresponsive search company that might or might not punish you for it.
...it's already mentioned that Google will just as easily ban you even if you follow their rules.
Are there examples of sites that have done no SEO, and can still point to a banning-type event in their search result ranking history? Obviously this wouldn't be a big site; it might just be a random business the marketing of which is mostly offline.
Meanwhile the world commerce is moving towards the Internet and Google controls 70% of that.
...so you gotta do what it takes to get ahead, even if that means abusing the system and everyone else who depends on it? That's been the spammer's argument from Day 1, and it's just as crap now as it was twenty years ago.
No one owes you a successful business. If the only way you can find to make money involves dumping on others, then you shouldn't be surprised when there are consequences - even if you're following the "letter of the law" while doing so.
It's no secret that a lot of Google's reviews are manual[1] and popular websites like Expedia and RapGenius aren't reviewed by bots. This post and the one about RapGenius shows it's too easy for them to influence the algorithm. Like you said RapGenius got a manual penalty because they were openly flaunting their spam and giving Google a bad name in the process. Expedia does it more descretely and spends millions on Adwords so they won't have to worry.
No, it doesn't. It also tends to imply that he didn't do it, so this is just "Look! Lots of money! Surely some of it is going here!" when you really get down to it.
So the workers took on these low wage jobs instead of staying at home and living on welfare. They are using their legal right to strike as a way to increase their compensation and thereby improving the lives of their families.
They applied for these jobs and Amazon hired them. No one forced Amazon to take on these unskilled workers.
Please, remind me why these workers should be blamed for this and not praised?
I shouldn't even bother commenting here and this won't be the first time I'm giving up on HN, but seeing the replies you're getting I couldn't leave without at least offering you my support and letting the community know what a sick and twisted bunch of people tech, HN, pg, reddit and the rest of you are. Absolutely disgusting bunch of people. And that's coming from a privileged white male.