It feels like we're laughing and shaming them right here in our cozy little tree fort. Or do I misread things and this is all really constructive, healthy analysis designed to help YC Startups do the right thing once they've raised M$40+?
UPDATE: You added a point about skeptism after I replied. Well, simple skepticism would lead to one or two stories. They raised some money, their app doesn't work, their business plan is flawed. Ok, move along, nothing more to see here. The attention they're getting here on HN and the emotional investment people are pouring into this "skeptism" goes above and beyond what one would expect from dispassionate observation.
The tone and disproportionate representation suggests this is not just skepticism, but rather it's a social feeding frenzy. See the comment elsewhere about making fun of Colour for a week or two until it has jumped the shark: I think that author nailed it exactly, we are not expressing skepticism, we did that when it was first mentioned. We are now beating a dead horse for purely social reasons.
First: updated my post to reflect the edit. Sorry for that--didn't think you'd see my response so quickly.
Second, it takes a certain kind of person to repeatedly slam a company that has no effect on their lives. If some hypothetical HN reader is criticizing Color constantly, then no amount of social grace will help them.
The simple truth is that when something like this was going on over Cuil, I looked "raganwald" up in Cuil, thought the result was very funny, and posted it on HN. So... Perhaps I wrote that comment with myself in mind, rather than an appeal to other people to change what they are doing.
(The mind is a funny thing. It is the most powerful computing device we have encountered so far, yet it has a ridiculously primitive and broken tool chain with a debugger that hides or even lies about what's actually going on.)
EDIT: Don't confuse social ridicule with vanilla-flavored skepticism.