101–110 of 252 posts
I like the message that replaced 500: "too. much. traffic. Please wait while I install memcache."
I don't get it. Why not serve the original content statically instead of that message? That's bound to be faster than memcache.
"Or am I alone in thinking that helping a stranger find their next caffeine fix is not what we should be worried about in today's world?" sigh This is such a silly, stupid point to make: Buying an iPad? What about world hunger!? Going to the movies? What about the modern slave trade!? Painting a picture? Women in Sudanese refugee camps can't go to the bathroom at night without fear of rape, and here you painting a pi…
I know what you mean, but the original Jonathan's Card thing made it seem like buying someone Starbucks was the height of charity when it's actually quite frivolous. At least this idea is real charity. It's still in the spirit of Jonathan's Card, but actually does some small amount of good for the world.
As I said before if the experiment was really only about the coffee and not about the money on the card then Jonathan should have his tweets update with units of coffee, not quantity of money.
The experiment was set up in a way where money was front and center and coffee was only secondary.Also, if it was just about coffee why have an API?
With this twist Jonathan's experiment is even more brilliant.
You're seriously arguing that a hack that converts money into fat, caffeinated Americans and corporate profit is better than a hack that hacks that hack to feed the poor? We should be finding more ways to prevent the conversion of money into American fat. In fact: as a doctor, there's my challenge to you: please find ways to catch calories before they land in middle-class American bellies and convert them to some better good.
I know the HN crowd is pretty libertarian, but Sam's behavior is, by definition, thoroughly with the scope of acceptable behavior in a libertarian polity. By the way, Sam's fairly successful startup guy. If you're on HN and not your text editor, you should probably be noting this is how successful entrepreneurs behave, and emulate Sam.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whoa, a bit.ly link? Was that really necessary?
Excuse my ignorance, but what's wrong with bit.ly? Or are you simply objecting to the need to shorten the URL?
Another lesson here is to be careful with @font-face styling - http://i55.tinypic.com/1z342ee.png - the whole thing is barely readable on Windows.
"Or am I alone in thinking that helping a stranger find their next caffeine fix is not what we should be worried about in today's world?" sigh This is such a silly, stupid point to make: Buying an iPad? What about world hunger!? Going to the movies? What about the modern slave trade!? Painting a picture? Women in Sudanese refugee camps can't go to the bathroom at night without fear of rape, and here you painting a pi…
Think of all the fresh water the author could have pumped from a well in an impoverished village in the time it took him to write that blog post.
"Or am I alone in thinking that helping a stranger find their next caffeine fix is not what we should be worried about in today's world?" sigh This is such a silly, stupid point to make: Buying an iPad? What about world hunger!? Going to the movies? What about the modern slave trade!? Painting a picture? Women in Sudanese refugee camps can't go to the bathroom at night without fear of rape, and here you painting a pi…
I'm definitely not a yuppie, I like starbucks coffee. Maybe I want to get a coffee every now and then. I would be interested in participating in Jonathan's experiment. But somebody like Sam would ruin it for me. It just doesn't add up to me.
An analogy: You have some clothes, and you build a little covered rack outside your house on the street and put a sign up that says "clothing swap, takes some for yourself or leave some for someone else." Some people take some clothes and drop some off. THEN some guy comes along and says "this is BS, it's just a bunch of yuppies trading clothes" and proceeds to take all the clothes and bring them to the goodwill, where he believes they'll be put to better use. He does this a few times.
Now, if I were the project founder or a clothing donor (or taker), I would be pretty pissed if someone decided to take all the clothes and give them to Goodwill because s/he thinks "they'll be put to better use" there.
1. There's an ulterior goal here (community building) that is scuttled by you taking all the clothes 2. How do you know I don't give to poverty related charities already 3. I have my reasons for not giving to Goodwill 4. Even if you think it's stupid it's not your decision.
On the other hand, if I leave a pile of dollar bills in a bowl on the street with a sign that says "please take only one," would it be reasonable of me to get upset when someone takes more than one? In my opinion it would not be reasonable. Someone abusing the system was the inevitable conclusion of this experiment. That doesn't make what he's doing "right," per se, but it seems silly to rage about something that was predictable with 100% certainty.
EDIT: downvoter: which part didn't you like? I put a couple of different points in one post (I know, my fault) so I can't tell what you're objecting to. :P Just curious.
"Or am I alone in thinking that helping a stranger find their next caffeine fix is not what we should be worried about in today's world?" sigh This is such a silly, stupid point to make: Buying an iPad? What about world hunger!? Going to the movies? What about the modern slave trade!? Painting a picture? Women in Sudanese refugee camps can't go to the bathroom at night without fear of rape, and here you painting a pi…
Eh, I found Jonathan's "Buying yuppies coffee will improve the world!" naivete far more offensive. I didn't see OP as criticizing frivolity, I saw him more criticizing Jonathan's suggestion that this game was meaningfully altruistic. Eye of the beholder I guess.