Things like this are why I use key commands or gestures for navigating from a page.

Wow, I'm almost diametrically opposed to your views. That's actually fairly cool.

I abhor personal motor vehicles, refused to even get my license at 16 and have managed exceptionally well over the last 7 years. I've put several thousand miles on my bike(s) over the years as my main mode of transportation, though I do also use public transit quite often. Living near SLC, Utah our transit is fair, but stupidly expensive.

I grew up in the suburbs, and felt approximately 0 connection to those around me. Living in an apartment building I have conversations with people sitting on their porch/balcony quite often. I don't even particularly enjoy people either.

I have no opinion on the lawn to be honest, at the moment there is more than enough land for those who want it to enjoy.

I actually enjoy the close proximity of various buildings, which very very rarely can be called loud, ugly, or smelly. I don't live next to a manufacturing plant, so yeah..

Pedestrian infrastructure is necessarily improved due to the greater density of people, but this isn't really an issue that I've found in the suburbs either.

If I have a party there is more than enough parking surrounding my apartment building that it really doesn't matter. Granted I can't have a bonfire or blast music, but I've been there/done that and don't miss it.

I miss basically nothing about the suburbs. Always felt too hostile, too "fuck you, got mine." Maybe it was the people, maybe just the neighborhood, but I'd kneecap myself before I went back.

I scrolled, it yanked my screen position down like it had lagged. Scrolled up to try and compensate. Bounced between the first two sections in annoyance and then clicked off. Yeesh.

This is interesting. I find the idea that people want a grade or rating on their skills intensely fascinating. Actually I find people and data science intensely fascinating, so that probably contributed as well.

However my knee-jerk reaction was more of revulsion. "Who are you to apply any sort of label to my abilities based on a presence!" is probably close to my first thought. That and I totally don't contribute to any of the listed hangouts so I knew I'd "suck" immediately.

Perhaps include more "hangouts"? Project Euler for example.

Hold up, I was under the impression there were international treaties against doing this kind of crap...

You make sweeping claims like > Technologies like Updn and valME are about upending the entire revenue model for news, social media, blogs, forums, and search engines

Yet this site looks only marginally more alive than, say Digg. You've provided a content /aggregation/ site that you now have to pay for in order to actually contribute or effect in any way. It isn't really about the amount or the method in which you pay, it's the fact that you HAVE TO. Reddit is constantly mocking itself and the karma system because people are scamming other to get worthless internet points. Now you want to try and tie a dollar value to that and think that you're innovating?

Granted I think some of your ideas are actually interesting. Creating a micropayment system for content creators (Note: not content gatherer) to allow more independents to thrive is a wonderful goal. You however seem to be creating exactly the opposite, where money can be quite literally thrown at a post in order to force it into visibility. More so Updn (not sure about valME) has a cost associated with down-voting. Enter Company A which drops, say, 20$ to put in hundreds or thousands of upvotes for a press-release. Users would effectively have to pay to get an advertisement off their front page in order to find anything worth a damn.

My final point will relate to your philosophy and as such is totally subjective. I honestly don't understand where your remarks about "something for nothing" actually relate in this post, but I find them borderline absurd. You brush aside those who create for the sake of creation, like I would imagine the tens of thousands of coders and designers who frequent this site do on a daily basis.

You seem to strive to bring together as many soundbyte worthy ideas as possible to entice people into using a product that, it appears, no one wants to. The the space of a few paragraphs you mention: overthrowing advertising, supporting independents, copyright legislation, encouraging youth, Ann Rand-esque philosophy, distribution of wealth away from corporate entities, and copyright lobbying. All in all this sums up to something slightly less than a bad joke.

valME is young, granted. That doesn't discount the idea.

Yes, any content provider can throw money (via fake accounts, advertising, etc.) at their own content to increase visibility. That's why advertising works. On sites like reddit and FB, it costs the content providers effectively nothing to manipulate votes. On sites like valME and Updn, there will be a (minimal) cost. It's a small barrier for manipulation, but a barrier nonetheless. That, alone, should reduce vote manipulation significantly.

valME also has a cost for downvoting. When you downvote on valME, it costs you 2 karma (and your downvote removes 1 karma from the content provider). This should significantly reduce downvote brigades as there's now a barrier to downvote.

Because moderators (and everyone else) can now see who is voting and in what direction they are voting, users who manipulate voting will be more obvious to everyone. Mods can then change permissions (both for domains and users) or use the modqueue to remove posts. (If mods remove posts and comments, like Upde, there's a public trail and a reason required. Additionally, the posts are taken out of the community's queue but still are accessible in the "graveyard" to prevent censorship.)

You're correct - many coders and designers do create for the sake of creation. More power to them. But you can't live off that. There is great content out there on various blogs and, if they don't have a donation button, the most I can do to really reward them when I like something is clicking on some random ad so they get the credit. Technologies like this, with the cost of a penny or two, don't put up a large barrier for content creators, and it gives them an alternative to advertising. It also gives them the potential for a huge upside when people really value their content.

The market here isn't for content providers of memes or 140-character comments. It's for higher quality content providers. I'm not sure why you're scared of the idea to find alternatives for rewarding people who give us value.

> On sites like reddit and FB, it costs the content providers effectively nothing to manipulate votes.

But that's offset by the sheer volume of people who can freely vote. If you have a system where a vote is a payment, you'll likely have a >95% reduction of legitimate voters, and likely a much higher amount of "gamed" voters as a result. Remember, corporations and governments have more money to spend than the average person. I.e. All governments/corporations can afford to spend money + some individuals can spend money. Compare that with: All governments/corporations can freely upvote + all individuals can freely upvote. Requiring money actually skews voting in the wrong direction.

That's why I think Reddit made a smart decision when they implemented Reddit guilding for top-level comments. They did it in such a way that guilding doesn't affect voting, and guilded comments can't even be seen from the homepage--otherwise it would skew the results.

I do totally agree about other ways to support creators, though. I think it's crucial for sites like StackOverflow to implement direct tipping for users' efforts.

You might be right - that, ultimately, we find that the system can be gamed more. That's not our hunch, and it's way too early to tell at this point, but we won't ignore the results if that's how it turns out.

StackOverflow really needs to implement this functionality, though. The hours upon hours we've saved by some of the answers there really deserved a real reward.

While there are definitely certain points in the article the I find myself agreeing with, the overall piece is remarkably bad. The ideas of a generalist perspective and enforcing of "common sense" are most definitely good things, but pointing to their lack of knowledge on a subject as the reason behind their utilization of common sense seems silly.

>The justices' lack of technology savvy may have been an asset in resolving the Grokster case...

That single "may" is a fairly huge assumption to be making for this article, and one which is just kinda carried along.

>The court refused to set a numerical threshold for liability, perhaps recognizing that a line that makes sense for file-sharing networks might not work for the next technology that comes along.

See, this seems (to me at least) like that decision is coming from their expertise with regards to the Law rather than any real or perceived ignorance of technology.

>So maybe we should be happy that Justice Sotomayor has no clue how a Roku box works. It probably makes her a better justice.

I'm sorry, but anyone touting the idea that ignorance somehow leads to better decision making is delusional.

So...why? "Because we can" is a totally acceptable answer, and I can see it as an interesting idea...possibly even fun. I certainly have gotten more than a few giggles out of the schadenfredue that plays out daily in the coin ecosystem. However, it seems like this is now bottoming out the coin bubble. It isn't even a reward, and I use that term loosely, for proof of work...it's just achievements for dicking around...hurray?

Am I off base here? Am I looking at this with to serious of an eye? I'm genuinely confused.

So...Where is the Pandora integration? Building playlists is fun when you're bored or want a new set of tracks to work-out/drive/[insert bland activity here] but I hate doing that.

Radio features are sweet and I may explore it more but... With the thousands of hours of listening pleasure I've gotten out of my years of Pandora subscription, why the hell would I want to switch? Building new stations is an investment of time and effort in teaching it what style of music I want, being able to import this would be sweet. I might even build playlists out of the songs I like.

To be frank without Pandora integration this just strikes me yet-another-playlist-streaming service, among the dozen others that I don't use.