If this guy thinks the fact that so many Americans believe Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11 is evidence that a new news site is needed, he's off to a bad start. They believe that because they want to, not because there are no reliable news sources available.
Thoof (were all the names in the World taken or what?!) was started by this guy: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21863" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21863</a><p>Anyway, I looked at Thoof when it was posted on TC and I got an invite. It's a waste of time. It just requires way too much work from the regular user to be worthwhile and viable. Only redeeming quality was the endless scroll :).
Ian Clarke is such an arrogant guy. Back in the day when he was nothing but a developer, he was arrogant as hell, I can only imagine how he is now.<p>And he's arrogant, and produces nothing but commercial flops. He's a typical close minded geek type, he thinks he knows everything, yet is unable to see the big picture.<p>Moral of the story: It's not difficult to be polite. There is no excuse for rudeness, but it will come back to bite your ass, even 8 years later!
Btw oknotizie ( <a href="http://oknotizie.alice.it" rel="nofollow">http://oknotizie.alice.it</a> ), a reddit alike system my startup developed for the Italian market, already has the ability for users called "power users" (having enough total rank and enough rank accumulated in the last month) to replace the URL with one better suited (for example not linkjacked).
So how does a recommendation algorithm get around the fact that interesting doesn't equate to accurate? Oh wait it doesn't. Although I do enjoy the irony of the first publicity for this site that will find the TRUTH is complete bullshit. <p>Also the implication "we could win netflix we just don't want to" is not very credible.
the fact that this system uses bayes inference means it is doomed for failure. bayes requires large amount of training data. Most users want instant satisfaction. That could only mean failure.