Well, there's a difference between speaking to vent and speaking to effect change. If you want to change things, speaking (or writing) angrily is usually counterproductive. If you just want to express yourself, then you can write however you please.
I thought his point was mostly about the credibility and influence carried by negative comments on HN - probably thanks to both its link to YC and the presence of highly regarded industry figures in the comments. So a negative comment on HN might have a more tangible effect on the man's professional life compared to a negative comment on, say, reddit.
Disclaimer: I honestly don't know how bad things used to be. By the time I started visiting HN in earnest, dang et al. were in charge, so I'm assuming a fair bit of moderation takes place now.
Well, it's debatable, but I'd argue that exposing serious issues in the presumed robustness of systems turns out to be useful in the long run. In the worst case, it provides another data point for identifying systems that aren't working how they should.
Not that I'm advocating the creation of malware, of course. Don't do that. :)
There's a difference between malware and a 0day. Malware just causes harm to the endpoint. A 0day proves that the potential for a security breakdown is real.
Regardless of the press, a level playing field would in fact be a boon for upcoming businesses. Bad press is inevitable - look at the recent uproar in the US over net neutrality. There are still some people who want to make it look like the FCC is somehow restricting private enterprise which is A Bad Thing.
Funneling people to a restricted number of websites by making them easier to access (and money matters for a large number of Indians, spending ~2.5 USD a month for 500MB 3G internet is considered a luxury) and then profiting off advertising on those websites definitely feels like it skews the balance in favour of these who run said 'approved' websites.
Basic telecommunications infrastructure in India is heavily regulated by a government that once actually proposed banning all VoIP services apart from the ones they offer at premium prices. Thanks to a high degree of corruption and bureaucracy, it is near impossible to enter the ISP game unless you have serious monetary or political clout. Simply starting a competing ISP is not really feasible.
Fair enough. I suppose it is more accurate to claim that entering a business with high infrastructural costs is not possible for most people (where will the money come from?) and my guess is that only a small number of people who are in a position to start such a business would actually know and care about net neutrality.
Reliance Communications Ltd is an arm of one of the largest companies in India, and one of a very very small number of players who can actually not only afford the entry cost, but actually outspend the competition. I understand that they aren't actively preventing people from competing with them, but it's not much of a stretch to imagine the other big players in Indian telecom following suit, resulting not in fast and slow lanes, but toll free and toll collected lanes. I don't think anyone's saying that Reliance is impinging on the freedom of others to compete with them as an ISP, they're objecting to life being more difficult for internet-based businesses that want to get off the ground without paying a fee to ISPs to get them on the toll free lanes.
