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kes's comments

kes | 15 years ago | on: Why I design at Google

Long-term, I want my design work to influence the direction of large groups and societies, and to do that I need to learn how to work with and persuade people who aren’t inclined or required to listen to professional designers.

I think that this is the most important bit.

kes | 15 years ago | on: Poll: Should WikiLeaks be targeted or defended?

Disagree: A lot of people are on the fence simply because they have no idea how WL works or why it's important. Explaining the issue to these 'under-informed' people (normals) could have a good amount to do with swaying public opinion.

kes | 15 years ago | on: Hackertopia: Creating a City as a Startup

I disagree with most of his ideas, but I love the beginning idea: starting a new city from the ground up.

EDIT: If we're going to make new and arbitrary rules for this place, wouldn't it be cool if there was a cap on business that only allowed for them to employ 30 people or less? Small businesses that are highly specialized working together instead of large corporations who have huge amounts of divided workforces.

kes | 15 years ago | on: Ask HN: Palantir or Facebook?

I'm going to disagree with the people on this thread and vote for Plantir.

It is cool to say that Facebook is doing 'world-changing' and 'revolutionary' things -- while I believe such is true on some levels and that we can't ignore what it is -- but a company like Plantir has a much better opportunity to do things that are simply mind-boggling.

Finance and the Government are not popular things, especially amongst the hacker crowds, but the US Government is capable of doing incredible things. The power wielded by the State is huge, and directly affects hundreds of millions of people a day. Facebook may have become a staple in some peoples lives but they [as a company] are not responsible for keeping citizens safe, regulating commerce, building infrastructure, waging war or brokering peace.

Facebook is a company that finds better ways to serve up advertising. That's not all they do, but that's how they make money.

Plantir is in a unique position to change an increasingly inefficient/ineffective system. US politics suck right now. We can all agree on that. But a company like Plantir operates on a different level than the fork-tongued politicians.

You say: network with people in the startup industry and create my own startup which tells me (and I might be wrong, please correct if so) that you enjoy the idea of disrupting the status quo. What better place to do this than Big Government and Big Business/Finance? This might seem backwards but as these institutions crumble at their seams there is no better place to be.

kes | 15 years ago | on: Heroku is down for the third time today

I agree with you, but only in theory. I can't think of one thing that runs 100% non-stop.

Even in places like medicine or finance or security. Stuff breaks, things fail. It's sad, but the reality is there.

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