Bear in mind that established researchers aren't going to take a "superficial No" for an answer, and maybe the reason pubs stay single-blind is that double-blind would invite havoc; Raj Jain would be getting articles turned down, and everything would bog down in appeals.
Oh, wait. No he wouldn't. ACM SIGCOMM is double-blind. Yeah, I have no idea why everything doesn't work that way.
"Their health had almost nothing to do with what they were eating" -- It's good to be young, isn't it? As you get older, the effects of what you put into your body become more immediate, even when you exercise.
They're all more important than the '10 things every startup should know' link in the grand scheme of things.
The other problem is that it doesn't pass the "make me smarter or inform me of something I didn't know" test. It's a piece of information I already knew, as did anyone else that is in any way connected to TV, radio or other news sites.
The test I'm applying is not whether the stories are more important in the grand scheme of things. I completely agree with you - that test is not the right test to apply. The right test, in my opinion, is how interesting a story is to hackers. And on that criterion, my original judgement was that the news of Castro's resignation merits an upvote.
With that said, your point about how widely distributed a story is elsewhere is an interesting one. I'm not sure I completely agree - the Microsoft offer to buy Yahoo wouldn't have made it onto Hacker News under this criterion, for example.
Part of the reason for wanting stories like this to appear on Hacker News isn't so much to be informed of the existence of the story, but rather for the quality of the discussion provoked by the stories. There are certain commenters whose opinion of Castro's resignation I'd far rather hear than some talking head on CNN.
This is silly. There are hundreds of third-party add-ins for Microsoft Office. There are 677 listed in the Office Marketplace [1], including 20 "inbox management" applications.
Microsoft encourages third-party developers to write add-ins for Office. That doesn't mean they have any interest in acquiring (or copying) all of those add-ins.
Aha! Now we're getting somewhere: I was thinking the same thing about commentary - that's the only valid reason to have a widely visible story here.
However, I think that commentary on MS/Yahoo is far more relevant here than anything about Castro can possibly be. Indeed, Castro commentary is very likely to lead down the reddit road.
HN has a different news focus than other sites, and we're trying to protect its identity by saying that certain topics, while important, should not be discussed here. In short, we're trying to prevent the reddit effect.
I know that feeling well. Like what am I doing here? Why does everyone know everyone here? Where the pain of going up to a group outweighs the possible benefit of networking..
I used to use the advanced wallflower technique - e.g. stand close but not too close to a group to make it seem like you belong - if the group moves on, go to the next group.
Don't get it as much now. Practice. And there are several simple and/or silly techniques that make a huge difference. Silly or simple as they may be. Here's one: talk to people who are standing by themselves, chat and then (this is key) tell them 'i'd like to go meet that group over there. let's go"
I especially like #6. It's only data and it goes a long way.
This reminds me of a business workshop for hackers that I once went to. At exactly 9:00, all 20 of us were at our seats reading the workbook. The teacher entered the room and said, "If you people are interested in building your businesses, you obviously need to be here. Now close those books and get up and meet each other."
See, when I saw the Hacker News title for this, my first thought was "Good to know, I'll simply avoid installing Joe Hewitt." Now that I think about it, maybe a blanket policy of not installing people on my computer is a good one. Better just to stick to programs.
The conditions didn't change (ergo the embargo failed in it's intent) only causing more economic problems for the people you claim to be trying to save, and you want to keep it up?
TipJoy is very cool. It's one of those "far out" ideas that might not work, but it's New Thinking and we don't have enough of that. I wish them success.
Yes those are our goals, but they will not be achieved by maintaining an embargo as the last 40? 50? years have shown... You can't just force or pressure countries into "democracy", that is not the way it works, there are more than enough examples in recent U.S. history that hint at this...
Even if you could, the whole premise of the embargo is flawed I think.. it only makes the cuban government look like a "martyr", in this case to the imperialist whims of the U.S. etc.
The new approach may be okay so long as the book is accurate. All too often school boards default to a more error prone book, due to a connection to a specific marketer.
http://www.weebly.com/
Don't know the guys (like their blog though), don't know their business model, but their app is awesome. Intuitive, looks great and anyone can use it.