Seems like your comment got downvoted, which is a shame because it was one of the few comments that spoke to the heart of the matter. Ignore all the other real injustices around the restaurant business, but go nuts over a small guy and his crap website.
I would say however that his attempt at making the system better is not really doing that. He does come off as a lowly scalper with his implementation.
Actually OpenTable is loathed and I have worked at many restaurants that hated the fees, the crap software, and feeling they are forced to use it otherwise they would see a major dropoff in reservations. It should be noted that many of the hot and trendy places do not even use them because they are fortunate enough to not have to pay the "OpenTable tax" (their words from a number of folks). The only thing worse in the minds of most restaurant owners is Yelp. The "service" they provide truly is extortion.
Truly unfortunate all around. PG getting slammed from every direction. Jessica Lessin's new venture gets a black eye for shoddy journalistic standards. Lots of invective going around for what appears to be liberties of interpretation. And of all of this, I am not sure this really does anything to address the very serious topic on the imbalance of men to women in technology jobs.
That's my biggest problem with this whole thing. I care deeply about trying to fix the gender imbalance, but these sorts of dishonest shenanigans make the whole movement look bad. At the risk of committing the No True Scotsman fallacy, I don't think the people responsible really care about gender equality. If they did then they would have checked their facts, rather than making people doubt them and the views they claim to hold.
I don't think the people responsible really care about gender equality. If they did then they would have checked their facts,
I think that kind of is No True Scotsman, because it's an unreasonable conflation of two attributes ('really caring about x' and 'being careful with sourcing in debate/arguments'). I know lots of people who care deeply about various causes but are terrible about research, sourcing and verification in general. And some people might care deeply about a cause but do damage to it by being involved (deeply unpleasant so that nobody wants to work with them and the volunteer group falls apart, that kind of thing). Level of caring is not, in my opinion, strongly correlated with a person's value as an advocate :)
"Equality" movements are doomed to fail. I don't believe that in a perfectly fair world, men and women would equally participate in every profession. If you focus too much on outcome you are taking on an impossible task.
What's important is fairness and equality of opportunity.
Well, not really. There are plenty of equality movements that have been quite successful.
But the real point is that if we believe that jobs will be more technical in nature and that deeper knowledge of technology and coding will be required, maybe we should be concerned with the current ratio. Thus we not only create a skills divide, but one that grows into an economic divide as the better paying jobs are technology jobs. Maybe this is an "equality" movement worth putting some energy into.
Anyway, not to be "that guy", but this same article was posted over a year ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3577590 and the post itself is over two years old. Would it be too much to ask folks to search before posting?
Plenty of "products" also do not have a business model. So code posted on Github that gets comments would be a product? Really sounds like you are quibbling.
The statement about "existing code" was ambiguous for a reason...
unfortunately, they are also in a bind by stating that only the new work would be judged. @aliciatweet cites that it looks like they webview'd their existing site (would have to be verified). so, that means they judged using a webview as a million dollar contribution? my guess is that the call happened in which partners were allowed in with existing tech. and that information was never passed to the judging team with specific reference as to work accomplished within the hack period. possibly an innocent mistake or specifically designed to pass people through.
Obviously most "people" do not blog regularly. Whether it is CEO's of startups or chefs at top tier restaurants or whatever else you can think of. Does real questions is whether anyone have time for blogging? And the answer for the most part is no.
Yet a few people persist. People laughed at Fred Wilson when he started blogging. VC's mocked him. A decade later, every major VC started blogging and are falling over each other to start their own online entrepreneur magazine.
How is this to turn the question on Keith's head: founder CEO's that blog will in fact be a bigger deal and provide better "cost/benefit" than any other communications channel?
I would say however that his attempt at making the system better is not really doing that. He does come off as a lowly scalper with his implementation.