skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Allowing a tyrant to exert his will may result in less freedom for others. Judging by the technical way you couched your argument, I think you're aware of the subtle way freedom works. It wasn't difficult for me to get what Steve was talking about. Suppose you are a developer. You are being given the option -- one might say the freedom -- to sign a contract that limits your freedom and that of others who sign it, in just such a way as to confer specific advantages on yourself and others, such as a porn-free environment. To claim that to be given that option necessarily limits one's freedom, would certainly be insane.

(Edit: added comma, added clarifications)
Music (unfortunately, listening to it, not playing - at this time). Photography (common hacker hobby, very relaxing yet has a technical component to it). Cars/driving/potentially amateur racing (you don't need a fancy car for this, in fact it's likely not a good idea to use an expensive/luxury car).

Reading (in the sense of fiction literature). History, philosophy, political science (really another form of reading). Travel. Exercise.

Often times it helps to hack on things that _seemingly_ aren't related to your work (even if you like your work).
I've spent good chunk of today writing my own graph library: for learning and scratching a personal itch; if I wanted a real one I'd use Boost (best imo), JGraphT or JUNG. Chances are, however, that it may come in handy e.g., I'll need to find the shortest path in an ad-hoc graph, but the scope I'll have at hand wouldn't justify adding additional dependencies.
Well... and talent and taste and opportunity.
Why can't potential customers or "partners" voice their opinion about what they find crappy about the product they would like to buy or develop for? It's feedback any company would want to get in my opinion. Consumers can't vote with their money but that has far less reach than we would like to assume.
I also recommend it. I love that movie.
Minor nit - I found the upsell when buying an iPhone at the Boston Apple store crass to say the least. My wife got told she HAD to buy Apple Care to have a warranty, HAD to get Mobile Me "to use the phone properly" and HAD to get an SMS plan if she wanted to send texts.

I called to complain and got a fairly hopeless uninterested manager.
That's really cool! This is the car that I did it in too: http://www.photography.edu/Photographers/john/portfolio/port...
Online Journalism Entrepreneurs: Putting a Price on Words
That's sort of like saying anyone but the programmer is superfluous in the creation of a startup. Pretty much all startups I see posted here disagree. Most require other people involved. Sales, support, marketing, and even investors. Than you need people to manage that.

At the same time, publishers can do something others can't: Provide an advance, something a lot of authors need to be able to write their books.
You said that people kept asking for project management features, but your vision was to focus on conversation management. Do you think you will ever add in the project management aspect?

I can imagine that after using this service, people will eventually have to stop talking and actually do something! For example, we use Jira at work, and I find it lacking in the discussion dept. I would love to have your app's conversation tracking about specific revisions of code, QA cycles, production pushes, etc.
Also http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1293119
I tried pinging dropbox.com from the justping site and for China they have

Shanghai, China:	Packets lost (100%)

Looks like good data, no conspiracies.
I'd love to do rock climbing, but I'm overweight (100 kg) so it's not for me...
Ok, use as a "stats tracker" doesn't explain the UA manipulation.

Also I don't know what brand you think I'm worshiping. I am not an Apple Fanboy, I refuse to even use an iPod, not a Google Fanboy, I criticize them fairly often, and as for Adobe, I use their desktop tools, but on the web I don't think of them much. I despise brands, because they promote homogeneity. I prefer products that work the best, and go with what works.
Getting better all the time: forces behind human progress
>A few million creative artists would probably disagree without you, some violently so

There are a lot of creative people, for sure. Discussing whether X is more creative than Y is meaningless. Ultimately it's about how X or Y's work resonates with you.

>Yes, it was nice to have him around, no, he's not that special. Have a look at Alan Kay for an example of someone who is special.

"In my opinion".

Personally, I've seen few things in any field that struck me as comparable in originality to The Poignant Guide, for example. I would never imagine a language tutorial that would be essentially a cartoon, and a pretty brilliant one at that, accompanied by a soundtrack - but also a working online console and eventually a whole new programming language.

Looking at his entire body work, it's impressive this was all done by one person, but it's incredible that this person actually didn't make any attempts to reap financial rewards from it, in the age where everyone with a few blog posts behind him is telling you "you should follow me on Twitter".
_why wrote code, made music, and made visual art, and he seemed to think the three activities had enough similarities to share the name "art".

Incidentally, I also consider engineering to be art, only with more constraints.
Look, I'm a fan of freedom in the sense that you wish the word was used in. I just recognize that there are other common meanings to the word, and that if Steve would like to use one of them, he should...how you say...be free to do so.

I remember when my son went through a similar phase where he fell in love with the "one, true meaning" of various words, and the endless circular debates I enjoyed coming out of it. Good times. But even he, at a tender young age, learned that your freedoms and my freedoms can come in conflict with each other — that a utopia of everybody being infinitely free was not possible to realize.

I believe the common phrase used to resolve such cases is "your freedom to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose".

Companies have a right to make design choices, set licensing terms, and decide what to stock in their stores (whether they be real or virtual). If you don't like their choices, you're free not to do business with them. If you don't want companies to have such freedoms, you and I will have to agree to disagree.
> I would never imagine a language tutorial that would be essentially a cartoon, and a pretty brilliant one at that,

Have a look at the early TRS-80 manuals, they were exactly that, no soundtrack though, it was on 'dead tree' format for want of a bit-mapped display on that particular computer.

That does not diminish what _why did but it is not quite as original as you may think.

> Looking at his entire body work, it's impressive this was all done by one person,

Absolutely.

> but it's incredible that this person actually didn't make any attempts to reap financial rewards from it,

Agreed, but he's hardly alone in that, the open source world is full of people that have given an enormous chunk of their lives without getting much or even anything in return.

> in the age where everyone with a few blog posts behind him is telling you "you should follow me on Twitter".

And on that we also agree.

In fact the whole 'get rich quick' mentality can take a running jump as far as I'm concerned.
The Worst And The Brightest
Agreed. And Henry Rollins has some great quotes about lifting. Here's another:

"The Iron never lies to you ... The Iron will always kick you the real deal. The Iron is the great reference point, the all-knowing perspective giver. Always there like a beacon in the pitch black. I have found the Iron to be my greatest friend. It never freaks out on me, never runs. Friends may come and go. But two hndred pounds is always two hundred pounds."
if facebook is indeed committing fraud, they should be prosecuted.

I don't agree about the "natural monopoly" reasoning. Companies are dominant because they deliver a better value proposition. And if they stop, as they often do, competitors creep in and take away their customers. Except where the government gets involved to establish a legal regulated monopoly. Then the competition is all over and then nothing improves after that.

We went through this with package delivery, phone service, and airlines with monopolies on specific routes. All significantly improved after competition was reintroduced. Competition is the ultimate regulator.

And facebook has plenty of competition.
Bricklaying is actually a really good comparison to programming. It's stacking bricks with glue. But those bricks eventually end up making an entire building. And with that, you have corners, archways, windows, doorways that you have to determine how to cut or turn the bricks so that it will support the bricks you're going to put above it, or the lack of bricks below it. Bricklaying is a craft and an application of sciences that are well understood. That's the reason why so many comparisons fall flat, why there's discussion about "is it science" and "is it art". The only part of software development (I'd like to use the term engineering and have it mean that one day, it'd be nice) that's art should one day be science.

Let's face it, with programming, we're inventing entirely new domains with their own special rules that we create. It can be an artistic process or a scientific process. As an artistic process, it's very hard to judge the outcome from the start. As a scientific process, the result is much easier to judge prior to completion. Until the processes and methods are understood to a sufficient level, programming will be very much like an art. Once they're understood, it's a science, apply the rules and out pops a software.

I have several relatives that are plumbers, electricians, carpenters and architects. Once there's a common set of tools, language (as in, for communication between people) and understanding, programming is no different than any other craft.
Point taken. That was my second attempt. (The first was far less civil.) I am still of the opinion that gdp's comment was far more mean-spirited than my rejoinder. Or if not mean-spirited then lacking in imagination or possessing a real disconnect about what motivates people. But ok, point taken - my bad, I retract that part of my comment.
Taste, above all.
The windows, corners, doorways and arches where exactly what I had in mind, but even a straight wall is already pretty hard. Each building is, when it's done a work of art, and possibly more so than most computer programs, especially your garden variety throw-away web-app.

The 'art' part in programming is exactly that part where it is not yet a science.
(Note that this response isn't an attack on you specifically, it's just my feelings towards this argument in general)

Where is the magical divide between "art" and "science" in the field? Do the adherents of either side even know what they're defending?

If I know what a finite state machine is and how to apply it, does that make me "scientific"?

If I hack together a web application in Scheme, instead of some Mathemagical, Dijkstra-approved language, does that make me an "artist"?

Why can't people just accept that you need some of both to be a good programmer?
There are two kinds of freedom. To bring up a different subject:

There is the freedom to allow you to install Flash.

There is also the freedom from the burden of Flash.

My great fear about allowing Adobe to install Flash on the iPhone is that we will, again, be stuck with a buggy de facto standard with rebellion only in designer/developer websites while the big sites still use Flash. Forcing HTML5 forces competition in a much needed area (web video), even when it's competing devices that allows only one or the other.

By all means vote with your wallet and buy something that frees and empowers you. While you might not like it, I personally like Steve's freedoms.
To me the art part in programming is that part which has not yet been 'beaten to death' and formalized.

As soon as something is idiomatic I think it ceases to be art, but that does not diminish the artistry of the person or people that first came up with that.
Two great quotes along this line:

T. Roosevelt

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

Anton Ego from Ratatouille:

"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talents, new creations. The new needs friends. Last night, I experienced something new; an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions about fine cooking, is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau's famous motto, "Anyone can cook". But I realize - only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere. It is difficult to imagine more humble origins than those of the genius now cooking at Gusteau's, who is, in this critic's opinion, nothing less than the finest chef in France. I will be returning to Gusteau's soon, hungry for more."
It's kinda hard to read comments and to what they correspond to when it gets extremely long. For example: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=773106

Scrolling half way down makes it hard to see & read the comments.

Maybe a ajax thing that keeps the current comment scrolling with the page at the top.
objective C, but the JavaScript version was my first substantial JavaScript program.
An electrician is not given absolute exacting directions on what to do and then follows them by wrote. A master electrician is given guidelines (in the form of regulations) and then a list of what the customer wants. They then consolidate the two into a plan for the building (locations of outlets, fuse boxes, etc.). Once the general plan is done (what power is needed where for what) they have to determine where at what type of wires and junction boxes need to be places, working through the design of the building. Once the electrical diagram is completed, it's handed off to a journeyman, who, with other electricians, run the wires as close to the plan as possible, frequently having to deviate slightly due to the differences in reality.

This is the absolute, most common, frequently found, frequently followed process for developing software. There is more "wiggle room" at each step, but it's the same exact process, whether it's one guy doing it and dreaming up the requirements or a team of thousands of developers.
To interfere with foreign citizens' probing of their network?
Fight Club : A bit over the top, but works for me.

Cidade de Deus (City of God) : Overcoming adversity, based on real life story.

Le fabuleux destin d'Amelie Poulain (Amelie) : Beautiful movie about seeing the world in a different way. Love is worth fighting for. Don't be afraid to be eccentric.

Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives Of Others) : Even the harshest repressive regimes cannot re-educate and brainwash all the humanity out of people.

Das Boot : How I feel when I need to finish a project while the management throws "depth charges" (feature requests ;-) ) at me.

Hotel Rwanda : People are capable of both extreme violence and extreme kindness.

Zerkalo (The Mirror) by Tarkovksy : Nostalgia. Reminds me to keep connected to my parents and family. Eventually they'll be gone, with only dreams and memory fragments of them left.
The brain is primed to learn when you really want to know something or to solve a problem.

Excitement about learning is far more important than learning A, then B, then C and then being finished. The truly accomplished are excited.
Minors don't have the same freedoms as adults, that's simply a social reality - they can't vote, can't drink, can't purchase cigarettes, can't enter into contracts, etc. Parental controls help protect a parent's freedom to raise their children as they see fit.

I'm not claiming that the porn app restriction is increasing people's freedom. I'm claiming that when Jobs refers to "freedom from porn", he's referring to blocking the malicious pornographic adware that plagues exploited Windows machines, and providing effective parental controls.
"If you prefer convenience — well, best to stop complaining about your loss of freedom and/or privacy."

Bingo.
Exactly. Now the big difference to me is in the kind of programming.

For instance, the people that write papers on new datastructures, computer vision and other state-of-the-art developments. They're not working with 'requirements' other than 'it would be nice if you found a way to solve 'X', come back in three years'. (well, not quite like that, but closely).

That's basic research and a definite amount of artistry is involved at that level.

But after the paper is written up it has solidified and it becomes applicable science, and for the person calling the API that embodies the concept it has become 'mere' bricklaying.
I found this message by Joe Clark when researching for another reply (guess on which topic):

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2004JulSep/02...

"Actually, no, it is not the responsibility of the critic to solve the problem. Pauline Kael was not expected to rewrite and redirect the films she disliked."

"[N]ot everybody who can spot a mistake can fix it (I know there's a leak in the ceiling; do you expect me to get up there with a ladder and a bucket o' tar?)"

This doesn't excuse people who rip on everything they see. However, good, balanced criticism is very valuable, regardless of the critic's Maker™ credentials. Don't let others tell you otherwise.
I never liked how this monologue mischaractarizes the value of critics. The actual criticism itself may not be terribly valuable unto itself (though I argue that a great critic's ability to compare what's new to what's already come is very valuable), but when you combine the criticism with an audience, it becomes very valuable indeed. Ebert didn't just create a body of work, he also created a massive audience for that work that can't be ignored in assessing the value of a critic.
The idea is not bad, but the film itself should have been executed better. For me, in order to deem a movie inspirational it would first have to be a good movie (good cinematography, acting, and story). I feel that Boiler Room was missing on all those criteria.
If it reaches the supreme court you can all but guarantee a 5-4 decision. If it was more obvious than that, it would never reach the supreme court in the first place.
I would guess the parents who want to use parental controls see it as the freedom to raise their children in a certain way. Though in reality it's probably more about satisfying the parents own sense of responsibility to protect their children. Either way it's fairly well established that minors have a different set of freedoms and rights than adults. The US constitution itself grants different freedoms and rights based on age. Minimum ages for elected office for example. Other laws, upheld by the supreme court, restrict access to pornography by age. Are we going to hold a consumer electronics company more accountable than the US government?
MPAA Worries About Pirating U.S. Soldiers in Iraq
Which makes his "freedom from porn" schtick a bit crazy. Freedom - just as long as you don't ever use Safari.

He implies that once you become a parent, porn is a taboo. It isn't in my neck of the woods, and I'd much rather my daughter stumbled across some people banging on the TV in future than most of the bullshit violence that passes for "entertainment" nowadays. But, hey, I'm European.
Good point. It shows you have a good sci-fi movie without astronomical special effects budgets. That's a lesson for lean startups.
Not to mention ergonomic chairs, air conditioning, coffee and messing around on the net all day.

Reddit downtime is the most stressful part of my work really.
It mentions game development. Game development has extremely low pay for the amount of stress it causes.

I mean, everybody wants to be a game developer. Any prospective developer is screwed by supply and demand and a broken development model that allows for insane crunch time.

Or have things changed?
Staying profitable is all well and good, but the argument that this won't translate into profitable returns is, IMO, bull. Sony has recently said that the PS3 hardware will be profitable this year, if it isn't already.
Upvote, I like the movie.

I am wondering though, how does it inspire you?
Yes, but who other than Jobs has the authoritas to convince those engineers to make that 13mm a reality?
The value can be a reference to an object sometimes - that's pretty much it.

No, it's always a reference to an object. It's just that some objects are immutable and so the distinction is not so clear. Otherwise, all-around agreement. +1
Jobs claims that "magazine apps will be far better in the end because they're written native." Does he think magazines will natively code an app for every single issue of their magazine to make all the content features, animations, interactive elements, and fancy indexes work?

Before you say "don't be crazy, the magazines will be creating specially formatted documents that their readers will load", why can't Adobe make a "Flash Player" app that can load "specially formatted documents" (i.e SWF files) too? Is it merely because SWFs often contain ActionScript fun rather than Jobs' preferred JavaScript fun?
haha, wow

nobody wants to challenge me on this?
Makes sense to me. Regardless of if the software if free, you do have the choice to use it.

I love the idea of free software, but in practice it's left a lot to be desired for me. For others, more power to them if it works for them.
FleXRay - Flash Profiler
Early 1900s in Colour
I don't think there's an answer you could give that'd satisfy him, unless you're also a CEO of a multi-billion-dollar company. That's what his value system is, so if you really want to go toe-to-toe with him, it has to be by that measuring stick, which may not be a productive use of your time (unless you agree with it, and think you have a good way to get yourself into such a position).

You can play that game on all sorts of fronts. For example, an elitist-feeling Nobel Prize in Physics winner might pick out some reasonably successful YC company and ask them, "well, you have a website, but what have you really done lately?" And regardless of how useful they think their startup is, they can't compete with the Nobel-prize winner on the prize-winner's terms (unless, perhaps, they actually do invent something field-changing).
Triangle Problem + Solution
In some senses it has ... it's a lot more viable to be an indie game developer and work from home now - flash, facebook, iphone, android etc ... all have readily achievable barriers for entry.
Users do have to use something. Developers make those things.
Web Laureate Insight, "diaspora: so moved"