The age old Dropbox response: "For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software."
"No one" in casual claims is not the absolute quantifier ("absolutely no one").
It just means "very few people".
Else we could never say "no one" in casual conversation for anything, because even the vilest/stupidest/most paranoid idea still has one/some proponents.
(And by "even the" I mean, "most", not "absolutely each and every vile/stupid/paranoid idea has one/some proponents").
Arguing the semantics is a moot point in this instance.
Bitcoin was once transferring about $5bn on-chain daily and hovers over $1bn today. By comparison Western Union moves $80bn in one year.
The original comment was unequivocally wrong. People obviously trust it.
Frequently people cite comments that look foolish in hindsight. But some people are able to gauge things well too.
Github:
> This really is a very cool little community . . . they're going to make a killing when they start charging.
Dropbox:
> This is genius. It's is problem everyone is having, and everyone knew it (http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/lazybackup ). If it really works as well as it looks in that demo then they nailed it. I'm both envious and inspired. I'll be surprised if YC does not fund them.
HN is about as far from representative of the "typical user" as you can get. No reason you should think that the opinion of people here means much with regards to any specific project or idea.
It's basically an RSS feed of people rather than sites. I get a lot of tech and programming info from it, as well as networking with high profile individuals.
I tried logging in the other day. For some reason, the page linked from the reset password email was completely broken. I reached out on Twitter, but it remained like that for days. I’d be surprised if they had even one full time staff for the site.
I’d say Slashdot is sustained purely on inertia. Pretty sure it’s just drifting towards the Sun and destined to blip out of existence eventually.
It’s a shame, but HN has clearly supplanted Slashdot as a place for nerds to congregate.
The comments are less professional, and by a large majority the links are dictated by the editor. HN serves as a model for dialogue which more sites should emulate.
Frankly I think /.s model of moderation is superior to most other sites, eclipsed to my knowledge only by stack exchange (no experience with discourse)
On just a small side note to remind our selves: Projects that didn't receive well in HN doesn't necessarily mean that HN didn't find it promising/useful or ignored it. It could have been posted at times when participation is low (e.g midnight), for example, so nobody actually saw it. Or people simply just forgot to upvote it, and it went unnoticed in the flood of too many other submissions.
I remember that I posted an article that I wrote to HN someday, and it got only 10 votes. Just a day later, some other guy posted MY article and got around 320 votes. I think it's just luck sometimes.
I love DDG but I think it's a bad name for a brand.
Saying "DuckDuckGo" in a conversation takes time and using the acronym "DDG" makes it sound like some kind of arcane product that only tech-savvy people uses. It's a bigger problem with internationalization.
I wonder why they haven't rebranded to "duck" since they purchased "duck.com".
I'd argue most of the most interesting projects I've ever seen are actually not successful. AKA they were received well, but weren't successful.
I'd argue, in most cases, the least well received are actually solving problems and not "cool". Take an enterprise product that automates some process, wont be well received, but may be worth billions.
I'd guess the majority of them weren't initially received well. It seems it's kind of characteristic of truly good & innovative ideas that they at first seem like terrible ideas to the majority of people (as once noted by Paul Graham / Sam Altman or some other famous entrepreneur, can't remember who exactly).
It may have been a reddit thread, but I remember saying that GitHub seemed like a terrible idea and I had no idea how it could be a viable business. Honestly, I'm still not sure why anyone pays them for their enterprise services.
Some of it is negative, though, like the first. Although I think the main reason people bring it up is because the first point of the first comment is pretty funny/infamous:
> For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.
> You know, I'm not a big fan of Facebook, but this site should use it for vetting. You don't know much from a name, picture, and some attributes, but in all honesty I'd be more inclined to trust someone (at least to not be a psycho killer) after looking at their drunk pictures and wall posts than anything any central authority could issue.
The criticism wasn't wrong. Most people on AirBNB aren't using it for couch/extra room rental (because that market is really small). They failed at that and had to pivot to being a platform for vacation rental companies.
Gosh, that’s some awkward phrasing. “Popular projects that weren’t well-received by HN” would sound much less jarring. To see “received” being used in the active voice is far too royal.
Edit: I'm listing projects already talked about in the link of OP for convenience.
Bitcoin first time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=463793
Bitcoin second time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=599852
Redis: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=494649
Summarizing from other comments (yep, I'm bored):
ReactJS: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5789055
AirBnB: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=426120
DuckDuckGo (arguably): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=460877
Dropbox (seems to be received quite well? Hmm...): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
Researched but turned out to have good responses:
Github: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=124553 -- query: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=github&sort=byDate&prefix&page...