291–294 of 294 posts
I'm sure we can all make do without HN for one day, and it would definitely help the protests.
And to everyone who says that if you are not from the US, thers nothing you can do: actually thats not completely right. If the media in your country picks this up it will vastly amplify the message. (Think: "worldwide outcry becaues of SOPA")
(btw, I'm not from the US either)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personally, I think this co-option of "hacker" to mean "semi-technical entrepreneur" is at best silly, and at worst leads to the sort of confusion of which you speak. Personally, I thought the hacker dojo should have been called "The Mountain View Computer Club" - it's got a nice retro feel. I mean, I'm a member, and I like the place, the people, and the organisation, but the name is unfortunate. I think this is a se…
This is kind of off topic but imho "everyone else" coopted hacker away from those of us who consider ourselves hackers. And for the record I don't consider semi-technical entrepreneur to be the definition of hacker I apply to myself. For me it's more about someone who can take two things and make something new with them, regardless if they should be able to or not. In any case, its a form of cultural identity, so its…
Do you see the distinction I am trying to make, though? and how the crowd here, people that are interested in both business and technical problems is different from the sort of person that is only interested in technical problems, and why making that distinction would be useful?
HN should be up. Instead of going dark, a better thing to do will be to declare the day SOPA protest day and post links/discussions related only to SOPA. Or get prominent people to write/live chat/video chat about why SOPA is bad.
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Going dark's is not only about being informative. Is more valuable than that. To the eyes of history, you have symbolic value in participating of a protest. People will talk about what you did or did not in historically important (game changer) times. So is all about how do you want them to talk about you in relation to this?
Personally, I don't think the "eyes of history" will care much what whether or not HN went dark for the purpose of symbolic value. These statements of yours seem to apply better to group demonstrations of the more traditional variety. I agree that HN we ought to be willing to go dark, (insofar as HN is a leader of anything) but still vote no on the grounds that it will be a meaningless gesture. Leaders should be will…
Think it from different points of view.
For example: if HN goes down, it could be a fact noticeable for a journalist's investigation. With luck, it could become a paragraph in a New York Times article about this subject.
You can more influential than you are thinking.