Disqus - Latest Comments for benatlas

Re: Book Review: Why Things Bite Back

Ben Atlas — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 21:01:39 -0000

Greg, thank you. This is indeed a nice selection.

Re: A Must-See: Midnight In Paris

Ben Atlas — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 13:15:22 -0000

Didn't see the film but a nice link about walking. So true.

Re: Glamorizing Our Hunter-Gatherer Past

Ben Atlas — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 11:57:07 -0000

Greg, I have been thinking about this. With the agriculture the payoff of taking over a land increased exponentially. If you take over a territory of hunters gathers you might lose the knowledge of the terrain, etc. But the reward of taking over a cultivated land or a live stock is exponentially higher. Next thing you know the insensitive for wars is through the roof.

Re: Predicting the future of the Internet is easy: anything it hasn’t yet dramatically transformed, it will.

Ben Atlas — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 14:23:57 -0000

For a moment I thought it was a serious debate. Back to the echo chamber.(I am gone from here for good)

Re: Predicting the future of the Internet is easy: anything it hasn’t yet dramatically transformed, it will.

Ben Atlas — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 14:00:29 -0000

Aaron, I got an email about this comment via disqus and although I wrote I will no longer comment here, I feel compelled to reply to your valid point. Of course you understand that it is not possible to have a selective legislature. I.e. let's expedite all visas for people who are particularly good with Python. Now what Fred Wilson's of the world advocate is across the board loosening of the immigration standards. This inevitably puts additional pressure on the devastated middle class. Because the immigrants are willing to work here for less, or even more qualified, etc. Thus I maintain the immigration advocacy by the internet barons is self serving and unethical.

Re: Predicting the future of the Internet is easy: anything it hasn’t yet dramatically transformed, it will.

Ben Atlas — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 13:51:58 -0000

Chris, to clarify, I am not left or right wing, in fact it used to be considered 'left wing' to stand up for the less fortunate, that was before the so called 'left wing' internet barons got in the game. Or before the democratic party became a corporate, big business mouthpiece just like the republicans.

Finally my comment about 'maoist jingles' referred to the utopian visions of the future, not your immigration advocacy.

With that I wish you all the best and thank you for an occasional enlightening post. I will no longer read or comment here.

Re: Predicting the future of the Internet is easy: anything it hasn’t yet dramatically transformed, it will.

Ben Atlas — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 12:17:37 -0000

Chris, predictions are a game most people don't take too seriously for the simple reason that no one ever predicted the big unexpected shifts. The dotcom bust or the current great recession is just an example.

But you don't stop with the predictions, you advocate a change in immigration policy (and surely Fred Wilson is not far behind with thumbs up). My take specifically on this advocacy is that in light of the massive job destruction by the internet and millions of lives affected by the outsourcing, the trend that was turbocharged by the internet. In light of all this the immigration advocacy by the VC and the internet entrepreneurs is not only self serving but unethical.

Re: Predicting the future of the Internet is easy: anything it hasn’t yet dramatically transformed, it will.

Ben Atlas — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 07:56:12 -0000

Chris, I used to think that you were one of the more thoughtful entrepreneurs, but I now see that you also have succumbed to the clichés. And one most obvious observation is that every revolution comes at a massive cost to human beings, revolutions always break more than they build. And this very glee by people who benefit from the revolution financially that allows them to close their eyes or not even notice this human suffering.

This post is a Maoist jingle.

Re: Some Tips to Improve the Civility on Hacker News

Ben Atlas — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 06:44:21 -0000

Anonymity activates what Jaron Lanier calls the "mob switch". There is a tendency to gang up on the up-votes and especially on the down-votes. I have personally experienced this on HN. I have been wring about the poison of anonymity in a series of post. A sample here:
http://benatlas.com/2010/01...

Re: Facebook, Zynga, and buyer-supplier hold up

Ben Atlas — Sat, 08 May 2010 13:52:26 -0000

Chris, the Apple certainty you describe is the confidence of having different revenue streams. Facebook and Twitter are unsure and experimenting with their business models and the center of their business plans is morally shaky spy surveillance of people and their "likes".

Re: Internet Freedom

Ben Atlas — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 16:31:51 -0000

I wish it was true instead the internet oligarchy just like the hedge fund industry benefits from the derivatives. I.e. instead of creating value for the creative class they monetize links to the valuable information. Instead off helping the writers they live off the derivative scans of their work.They create culture that rewards the derivative aggregation and linking instead of the original content creation. It kills the jobs as good if not better as the CDSs.

Re: Twitter and third-party Twitter developers

Ben Atlas — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 13:44:22 -0000

Down on the on the Hacker News channel one can find the following comment:http://news.ycombinator.com...

"To be honest I don't see what is wrong with saving $2.99. In fact I think it would be silly to go spend $2.99 on Tweetie when you know it is going to be free soon."

This comment is voted up 20 times, the highest on the thread. You can see that the cheerleading mob group think have completely taken over the Hacker News and it is especially sad because the presumed start up community is cheering the amputation of the very branch they are sitting on.

This Internet culture is in crisis.

Re: Twitter and third-party Twitter developers

Ben Atlas — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 10:40:51 -0000

This is an evil move by Twitter and it's investors. It's like MSFT killing Netscape with free IE.

Re: Twitter and third-party Twitter developers

Ben Atlas — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 10:30:48 -0000

The particulars of this market are debatable but consistent with my disdain for the advertising model everything that negates direct payment for products is the Internet poison and we all will pay for it eventually, if not at this very moment.

Re: Twitter and third-party Twitter developers

Ben Atlas — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 10:19:42 -0000

Twitter is spending sugar daddy money on making a popular app free. Is there anything that could be more detrimental to the only model so far that made any money for the app developers?

Re: Internet Freedom

Ben Atlas — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 15:57:28 -0000

Mark, I doubt think there is the will and even the guts to address the issues touch upon by Jaron Lanier but at the minimum my objection was to the accuracy of this statement: "society has benefited mightily from Internet Freedom".

Re: Internet Freedom

Ben Atlas — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 14:38:49 -0000

Fred, I made up the statistic but I bet it's not far from truth. The fact of the matter is that I am familiar with the revolutionary lingo circa 95 as good as anyone else. But 15 years later there is a crisis. The Internet has enriched fabulously a few and impoverished many. The crisis was masked buy the good old days of the last decade but was laid bare by the great recession. So the premise that "our society has benefited mightily from Internet Freedom" is far from evident in the current situation.

And the fact that there is some inevitable breakage in any change is not helping the creative class. The outsourced middle class, the blue color workers whose livelihood moved away with the internet speed. And so far the Internet has nothing to show these people even if they tweet about it all day long.

Re: Internet Freedom

Ben Atlas — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 11:50:03 -0000

I didn't know there was an Internet 25 years ago. Indeed lets focus on the new jobs created by the internet. We know it can scale and create a value and wealth for a tiny group of people who control the servers. But for every job that the Internet created it destroyed 10. And naturally you want to focus on the 1/10th of that ratio. And naturally the same people want free internet because it multiplies the scale of the servers. But lets be clear, it doesn't create jobs, at least not so far.

And the worst part is that the internet elite doesn't seem to care about creating the jobs.

Re: Internet Freedom

Ben Atlas — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 11:30:58 -0000

Fred, you say that "our society has benefited mightily from Internet Freedom". May be you are confusing society with your business. Millions of jobs have been lost due to the upheaval brought by the internet and there is not visible answer for the decimated creative class, for the outsourced, etc. So please leave the "society" rhetoric alone and speak for yourself as they say.

With means that you or your partners are simply no authorized to speak on behalf of the "society" till you at least in writing address the job destruction honestly.

Re: AVC Redesign

Ben Atlas — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 08:40:24 -0000

P.S. In the end it is all about reading. These rules are good to follow religiously:
1. Always errs on the minimalist side. Less buttons, ets. The text is the king.
2. Don't make text too small ( Feld's new design). After all work is done you made reading itself worse.
3. Look at the page through the eyes of a usability expert and a graphic designer not a coder.

Re: AVC Redesign

Ben Atlas — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 08:33:43 -0000

Fred, avoid the temptation of increasing the main column larger than 600-700px. Regardless if people read the sidebar it is a usabilty strain to read a very wide text column on the web. You sidebar has too many widgets that slow the load of your page. This is one of the slowest pages I visit and you should be aware of that.

Post Truncating. Don't do it as a rule. Truncate only posts that have a lot of graphics or videos, but putting some of those below the fold (WP 'more' tag) you speed up the main page but don't do it as rule.

Re: News is a lousy business for Google too

Ben Atlas — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 20:41:29 -0000

It just doesn't seem that people are ready to honestly evaluate the role of Google in the direction of the Internet culture. That is a serious conversation not picking on the old man at Fox. There are standards that Google sets indirectly.

Re: News is a lousy business for Google too

Ben Atlas — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 20:12:03 -0000

Murdoch is an old man that doesn't use computer, leave him alone his is the last print guy that is forced to tinker with the net issues, doesn't mean he gets. It's hard to figure out even for people versed in the medium. It will be trial and error for most of us.

Re: News is a lousy business for Google too

Ben Atlas — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 20:03:39 -0000

Jonah, I am aware of the Huff. Post fund. Jay Rosen plays a part in that.

Can you explain why investigative reporting has a brighter future compared to the news. Seems counterintuitive.

Re: News is a lousy business for Google too

Ben Atlas — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 19:35:22 -0000

Peter, once again this presumes that advertising is the only model. And if Google did a real lasting damage is this assumption that you can only monetize via ads.