It seems that in user-submitted and -voted content, moderation (in both senses of the word) is a problem.
Obama winning a primary is only important (outside of political circles) if a plane doesn't crash on the same day.
I think every non-hacker story should be evaluated by the "plane crash beating" quality. :-)
"We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology. Our unification is a more powerful weapon than any fleet or army on Earth. We are one people. With one will. One resolve. One cause. We shall prevail!"
edit: My point is that the speech was complete demagoguery. It didn't contain a single concrete idea, just hollow bromides and feel-good bullshit.
Just a point: they rest of the world considers that chant the most annoying one ever. Seriously, we do! :-)
"President Obama" (if that happens) is perhaps a transcendent enough event to make it here, but not a caucus victory speech.
FWIW, a better synthesis of politics & technology is Michael Bloomberg's take on the results http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/04/bloomberg-parse... particularly this comment about all the major candidates:
"I don't want to disparage anything, but let me say this: If you have complex problems, there probably are no simple cost-free solutions to them, because if there were, somebody would have solved them ... You know, the people running for office always say: 'I don't want to bring that up now. If I do, I won't get elected. But if I don't mention it and get elected, then I can do the difficult stuff.'"
If he won the presidency, that would possibly be plane crash important.
The people you're worried about are all happily typing away, posting juvenile comments on the story I submitted to politics.reddit.com yesterday. They have no motivation to come here. I think news.yc is safe regardless of what the editors decide about political stories.
P.S. My second sentence is a recursive joke. I didn't mean it.
Obama's race is irrelevant, he is a very charismatic and thoughtful candidate. He seems to have the spark of greatness to him which I think is what makes this good enough to cross to hacker news. A lot of successful entrepreneurs also have great charisma.
The news item was actually interesting for me, because it was the first time I watched a video of Obama. Also, I think he is under special scrutiny, and his speech seems to refer a lot to that, doesn't it? At least I thought the "change" meant that there might be a black president of the US after all?
Not trying to argue that it belongs on news.yc, but so far news.yc did a fine job filtering out the most interesting mainstream news (including the best xkcd cartoons, apparently).
Not sure why, I just kind of like the guy. He seems like a problem solver and not a publicity solver.
Based on his performance in NYC, I think he'd make a great President: he's willing to tackle problems, and he's got a rare combination of intelligence, pragmatism, and competence.
If Obama matters to you, you'd better start thinking about his race, since it's been his obsession for decades.
Edit: and don't forget his scary church: http://www.tucc.org/about.htm . It's as bad as Romney's church was thirty years ago.
If that is the case, he has a whole month after Super Tuesday (Feb 5, 2008, when 20 states have primaries and the winners will most likely become inevitable on both sides) to decide whether to run.
Last night's victories are actually good for him. His dream situation would be any of the top three dems vs Huckabee... since this would leave a very wide middle ground for him to vacuum up.
It's not like he was expected to describe his policies or anything.
I do agree that political theory/philosophy articles are pertinent and good reads... if they offer some insight. But this video is blatant demagogy. Is that really worth wasting your time on?
PS: This is exactly the type of stuff that caused reddit to degenerate so quickly.
If it was some kind of international forum with a delegate of Americans, granted, that would be pretty annoying.
The subtext here is that Republicans have obviously tried to claim that criticism of them is criticism of your country and therefore distasteful. Some liberals, progressives, have responded by taking the bait and basically, saying "Yeah, we do suck. The world should hate us. Etc."
While you in the rest of the world may think that statement is exactly correct, for some reason it has not led to electoral success.
Obama has been clever enough to side step the whole thing. He has been withering in his criticism of the current administration. At the same time, he has made a theme of not running to be president of only the "blue" parts of this country. And he has backed this up with speeches about issues that, while not changing his more or less standard Democratic positions, express respect for people who disagree with him.
So, the spontaneous "U.S.A" chants were directed at both the current administration and its supporters, and whatever parts of the opposition that have given up on this country. It was a way of saying that we can get past partisanship and actually start thinking about doing what we need to do to fix our real problems as a country.
And, I did see your smiley. But I thought an explanation of what this means to someone living in the U.S.A. (speaking only for myself, of course) might be useful.
The fact that a black presidential candidate won with a substantial margin in an almost entirely white state shows that "we still have a problem with racism"?
There is not really much disagreement about what the important issues are. Get out of Iraq. Stop using fossil fuels. Get everyone affordable health insurance. Inflation and stagnant wages. There is a general consensus now that these are the U.S.'s big problems and we need pragmatic solutions to them. (The other consensus is that the Republican party has collapsed and needs to be removed from power as soon as possible.)
What Obama is offering is a way out of the broken record of baby boomer liberal vs. conservative rhetoric. If Hillary wins, we're in for 4 to 8 more years of the same old partisan story line that has played out since her husband was elected. Many Americans are more than sick of that and that is what Obama is appealing to and that is why he won.
And I think his attitude is basically right. More than specific policy proposals at this moment, Americans need a new mindset.
And for people who enjoy the news of early-primary-results, and the rhetoric of candidates, the mass media is already inundated with it. Does it add value here? Can't YC-News specialize and focus where it has an advantage?
If you think about it, the only people that deserve to be buried are true trolls posting viagra ads and those terrible scat porn stories on slashdot... and those people don't care about their karma anyway, so you might as well just delete their accounts.
Why don't we just have some kind of floor on comments. Really -1 is enough to say "this comment is crap" without resulting in a situation where someone is dogpiled.
Given how well Oprah has handled her personal business, I for one would have no problem with her running the most powerful nation on the planet.
Meanwhile, intelligent black people have to think about their race in no small part because some douchebags (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=88082) still hold discriminatory viewpoints against people due to their race. It's a shame it's that way, but there's documentary evidence that this sort of discrimination still exists.
Have you ever been a minority anywhere? I only lived in Japan for about a year, but I was very aware of how differently I was perceived as the tall white guy. I don't see how you can grow up black in the U.S.A. and not have that be a fundamental part of shaping your experience, especially when you consider the racial history here. Add to that his white mother and time living outside the U.S., that is a lot of influences to assimilate.
I'm not sure what your point about the church is. Yes, it is very pro-black and pro-African, but I don't see anything that is explicitly "anti" anyone else.
Would be interested to see the welcome for a white person walking in on Sunday, though. :) Having said that, I did go to a church once where ours was the only white family among black Haitian immigrants. And that was a pretty cool experience.
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/technology/
I'll venture to say: President Obama would be very good for hackers. It's one reason I'll be trudging through the snow tomorrow in NH to knock on doors.
I nominate Bruce Schneier.
Well it's not alright.
These are the politics that got us the Iraq war. These are the politics that got us illegal wiretapping. These are the politics that make it legal for the government to kidnap you in the middle of the night and torture you until you're nothing but a shell of a man.
This isn't truth, it isn't change, it's bullshit demagoguery and it's more of the same.
He has a town hall meeting on Sunday in Exeter,NH. Ask him yourself. Failing that, wait for him to come to your state. All else fails, assume he doesn't care. :)
I understand him that in pushing more transparency in government, accountability becomes more obvious. The real problem with the wiretapping is that no one was accountable because no one knew it was happening. As soon as it became public there was an extensive push to correct things.
Any case, I was simply responding to the claims that a candidate is "hiding their agenda". There are promises being made. The extent to which any politician gains or loses trust is the extent to which they're consistent with their promises - previously and in the future. All these things should absolutely influence your vote. But I think folks lose the right to complain if they don't participate in the process.
I don't have a problem with most of Obama's opinions, but I realize that that's mostly what they are. Opinions. Not plans.
The section on fiscal responsibility basically says increase taxes on the wealthy and reduce wasteful spending. That's not a plan, it's a talking point. It tells me next to nothing about whether he even wants to balance the budget and pay off the debt, let alone how he is going to accomplish it.
Even the detailed PDFs available in some sections are rather tenuous. I just read through the one on education. It talks a lot about making improvements in certain areas and increasing funding in certain programs, but it doesn't really go into what those improvements would be or what that funding would buy. It seems to be strongly influenced by the KIP program for educating low-income minorities, but other than that I'm having trouble picking out any specific pedagogy.
I come here for intelligent analysis of news which I take notice of. Although I'm very curious about software, I still take notice of political current events in the US... as, I think, do most intelligent people.
Although it's questionable that some universities have departments dedicated to it (http://rhetoric.berkeley.edu/), I think political rhetoric like this speech is very interesting for hackers, especially so from mass psychology and CogSci perspectives.
Anyone interested in making an open version of reddit? One where people can write their own "favorites" algorithm, and/or one where user's votes are available via API?
It's called rhetoric, and judging by who is getting elected, it must mean that's what someone has to do to win elections. Would it change if everyone in the country had a higher education? I doubt it. Actually, it's pretty hard to say what would have to change...
http://www.johnedwards.com/media/video/iowa-caucuses-thank-y...
Nothing like "corporate greed", "corporate democrats", and "an epic fight for the future of the middle class". His dad worked at a mill, you know... ;)
Yum.
It's a shame, yes, but apparently that's what wins elections. What needs to change for that not to be the case? Is better education (better funding people's access to higher education?) the solution? Although it may have some impact if people are generally more knowledgeable, I don't think it'll be a solution.
I think it's a broad enough to be safe to say that what is required is a change in our culture - but what kind of change, and how can it come about?
That really depends on the community. I hate sounding un-democratic, but I sense there is a very clear division between people consumed by nationalism or screaming over rhetoric, and the people who want to understand the political process with the same motivation as understanding any complex system.
I have a sense news.YC has much more of the latter.
How Obama turns out remains to be seen, but it's undeniable that he can sure play an audience. I thought that the "this is the moment..." part was particularly rousing, like a nod to Shakespeare's St Crispin's day speech in Henry V.
I was about to say that, myself. I'm glad you didn't actually fall into that hypocritical trap. Nice joke, though :-)
I wouldn't vote me up that much either, but there is a difference between voting up and voting someone way down.
These are things about which Obama has been pretty specific about. He was, from the start, unequivocally against the Iraq war. He has said simply that the U.S. must stop torturing people. I'm honestly not sure about the exact details of his stance towards wiretapping, however.
So my point is that Obama has been very clear and forthright about a lot of things.
Another thing that impresses me is his ability to avoid pandering. There was a woman who asked him if Social Security could be expanded to cover some specific problem her brother had (sorry for not remembering more specifics) and he simply told her "No, I don't think we can afford to cover that for everyone." Sounds like a simple thing, but politicians almost never give a straight answer to that kind of question.
Furthermore, do you think more detailed policy proposals would have done anything about the current abuses of power we are seeing? Do you think torture and wiretapping would have been in a pdf somewhere if we just demanded more policy details from Bush on his website in 2000? You can give lots of specifics, and that's not bad. But it's not realistic to expect the details of a candidate's campaign proposals will be enacted intact as legislation someday. There will be negotiation and compromise along the way.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01...
"Barack Obama believes we need a business and regulatory landscape in which entrepreneurs and small businesses can thrive, start-ups can launch, and all enterprises can compete effectively while investors and consumers are protected against bad actors that cross the line."
See! Obama wants your start-up to launch! :)
It's the sole constant. When he was a lawyer, he was a race lawyer. When he was a writer, he was a race-writer. When he was an activist, he was a race-activist.
I think it would be fair to say that Obama's ethnic background means a lot to him -- look at his senate race against Alan Keyes. Keyes seems to define himself as a rhetorically brilliant ultra-conservative, not as a black man. Even though he's ethnically and culturally much blacker than Obama, and his political career has been with the Republican party, which is notoriously clumsy about racial issues.
Have you ever been a minority anywhere?
I lived in Bedford-Stuyvessant for a while. It wasn't exactly pleasant, but I don't plan on spending my entire professional career getting over strangers referring to me as "White boy!" or jumping me for my iPod.
Yes, it is very pro-black and pro-African, but I don't see anything that is explicitly "anti" anyone else.
Many hate groups are not explicitly 'anti' anyone. You don't have to hear much about how someone "Favors preserving the White culture, and the White people as a race..." to know that you're hearing about the Klan.
Would be interested to see the welcome for a white person walking in on Sunday, though. :) Having said that, I did go to a church once where ours was the only white family among black Haitian immigrants.
I've attended the "Rock Church" in St. Louis (http://www.stalphonsusrock.org/), which is quite an experience. But they don't have to push a black power message to follow a Christian message as blacks.
Those 'douchebags' have been pretty well marginalized. Nobody talks about those data when creating race-sensitive laws or corporate policies. I mean, a Nobel Prize-winning geneticist got fired over mentioning that information offhand. It's hardly mainstream if one of the preeminent scientists of the last century can't even afford to speculate about whether or not it might be true.