skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I like receiving bug reports. I like even more those cases where people say "the problem is in this bit of code". The thing that put me off doing my open source project is that some people don't have the chops to sys admin their own boxes, and try to get free help from me. They try to make out it's my code of course: "I can't get the database to load into MySQL. Can you fix it?" "It's saying something about 'can't load module nnn'. Is it broken?" I try to be civil but after three or four iterations ("OK, it loads but now I get some error in the logs about 'Can't connect to database'. I wonder what that could be?") well, life's too short and I have actual systems to run, actual bills to pay.

So although your counterpoint is good I would nonetheless say the author is spot on, and there are an awful lot of rude bastards out there who don't deserve free code, let alone free support.
I run linux, and I don't have a single ogg file for my music.

Your argument about self contained would be good, except that it's not a case of apple not supporting other things, it's apple deliberately blocking them.
From Boswell's _Life of Johnson_, entry for April 19, 1773 (Courtesy of gutenberg.org):

Mr. Elphinston talked of a new book that was much admired, and asked Dr.
Johnson if he had read it. JOHNSON. 'I have looked into it.' 'What (said
Elphinston,) have you not read it through?' Johnson, offended at being
thus pressed, and so obliged to own his cursory mode of reading,
answered tartly, 'No, Sir, do _you_ read books _through_?
yep, I love watching him on TV... brilliant.
...registration required to read...
Of course not. They're just making sure that you're using their software & brand. This also makes it harder to the music off your ipod, and into someone else's ipod. I'm surprised that Kroes hasn't jumped on this yet.
You're not forced to use Apple products to keep your music--none of it is DRM'd anymore so you can use your non-Apple software to sync it with your non-Apple devices on your non-Apple computer. It's even plainly available in the file system--and Apple doesn't even require you to let it reorganize your music files into its preferred folder hierarchy.

If Apple supports interoperability, they have a mess on their hands and they're dealing with interoperability issues instead of making a better product. If they don't support interoperability, people write angsty blog posts about them breaking whatever hackish unsupported software they were using to interface with their iPod. (As for the Pre, anything that allows arbitrary devices to pretend to be an iPhone and sync jeopardizes email account information--which can be synced to the iPhone--and is a security flaw. So I'm sure Apple did intentionally lock out the Pre. But I don't think they care about gtkpod enough to intentionally lock it out.)

"On that note I'm pretty sure Apple makes way more off iTunes than it does off the hardware at this point"

Why stop at "pretty sure"? They're a publicly traded company. It's not hard to get their financials.

Here's some numbers from their Q3 report a couple days ago:

"Apple sold 5.2 million iPhones during the quarter, producing $1.689 billion in revenue..."

"About 10.215 million iPods were sold this quarter, resulting in $1.492 billion in revenue..."

"Apple's "Other Music Related Products and Services" segment was responsible for $958 million in revenue..."

Cite: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/07/21/notes_of_inter...
how would you rate the quality of work from those you hired at dirt cheap rates?
No ... i don't want a pony ;) I just want to be able to to compile code on Solaris, Linux, one of the BSD without having to make vast adaptions (or hope that someone else made it). It isn't even about libraries. Of course, you need libraries. It's about compliance to standards, and that Linux shouldn't invent it's own standard and instead work with the established standard bodies. Linux isn't the centre of the universe.

Obviously you didn't understand the point of the article. It's not about hating Linux or GNU ... it's just about the ability to use open source software outside the Linux Community without ending to throw out all this Linuxisms and GNUisms

At the end you can see it as the plea, that portability isn't just an afterthought ... and given the state of some makefiles and hard coded things in some open source developments you get the impression that it's a not-thought-about it at all.

PS: I'm from the Opensolaris side of the unix universe.
Well, there's no need. Windows comes with good media sync software. Most Palm data syncs with web services.

What's missing is a quality experience with iTunes, particularly on OSX. Emulating an iPod seems like a quick and easy way to provide an optimal user experience. Plus, they get publicity when Apple pulls the dickhole move that makes them seem like a big, abusive corporation.
It's more of a meditation than a specific instruction. This works for other kinds of advice: "Do the right thing?" doesn't help much, but saying "Am I doing the right thing?" at the right moment can save you a lot of grief.
I dunno. Reading an article like this certainly gives me pause: http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/949jc/youre_probably_a_...
Apple doesn't have a monopoly in portable music players, in smart phones, or even --- despite practically creating the market --- in online music stores. There are effective market substitutes for all of Apple's products.

Interoperability is good, but it's not a mandate.
I find myself at odds with how I feel about celebrity physicists. On the one hand, I really really enjoy all of the shows that Brian Cox has done, along with Michio Kaku and others from the past like Carl Sagan. Cox is such an engaging speaker, and I have absolutely nothing negative to say about any of them.

On the other hand, way to often the content of these shows is designed towards an assumption of a dumb general audience. I find the incredibly frequent use of flashy graphics to demonstrate ideas glosses over the really interesting truths about the subjects being discussed. That's definitely not to say that the visualizations aren't needed and aren't helpful, but I would love to see more actual data visualizations instead of artists glossy renderings of important and deep topics.

Its just that personally, I want to be mentally challenged. I want to be introduced to new concepts that make me pause and rewind, then pause again to really think about it. 99% of these kinds of shows fail to do that because they don't go deep enough.

The biggest thing is that these kinds of shows are often to generalized, and so they bore the scientifically-inclined minds while having nothing to really grasp the attention and interest of people who don't have normal exposure to scientific concepts.
I've come across technical books which communicate their ideas in ways that don't fit me. Sometimes it's the way they structure examples, sometimes it's just that their notation goes against the way I've learned it, and I have to constantly retranslate what I just read. These things make the books neither easy nor enjoyable, so I look for alternatives which suit me better.
I don't see where "actively block them" comes in. Changing the database format of your product is something you'd want the latitude to do. The fact that it breaks unsupported third party software is hardly something Apple would go out of their way to do.
Is your "current support" the only public TODO list?
I'm amused that Microsoft now needs to defend itself against apple. What's next, a commercial saying you should buy Microsoft instead of Linux?

When you are the underdog, just having the 800lb gorilla notice you exist is a huge victory.
As mentioned in many other comments - there is no good way for a commenting/voting system to determine a user's motivations for voting (in either direction).

...But there are subtle ways to provide incentives for user voting behavior.

For instance, why not attach greater risk/reward to voting?

Incomplete ideas that come to mind:
1)scarcity - finite votes force greater selectivity in voting
2)vote transparency - anonymity permits nastier activity
3)user transparency - highlight ornery vs constructive users

As for doing away with downvotes: Zero is an artificial floor that would simply bundle mediocre comments with comments that are off-topic/spam/in poor taste etc.
I disagree -- someone else could come along and upvote it again.

Since HN reports the final number, not +/-, information is lost.
How to Stop a Hacker - Don't Trust User Input
Yes. Although we're willing to add more providers and more functions to the API (such as "list_images").
I've always thought the browser-based antitrust cases were ridiculous. There was a huge demand for web browsers, and Microsoft included one for free with its OS. It made Windows way more useful right out of the box.
How is this misguided? This behavior looks entirely rational from where I stand. Apple wants to lock people in to iTunes, iTMS, and the iPod/iPhone. They make more money when people use the product suite.

I think people are afflicted with the misapprehension that product bundling is unlawful. It is not. It is unlawful to use bundling as a device to maintain or extend a monopoly. Saying Apple has a monopoly on the iPod is like saying Kimberly-Clark has a monopoly on Huggies.
automobile mechanic. A little bit more physical effort and a little bit less mental, (well, the manuals for repairing cars tend to be a whole lot better than the manuals for repairing computers, anyhow.) but in many ways similar to PC/server repair. (tho a whole lot messier.)
Earliest still active twitter users
The fourth headline down, "Windows 7 so great Microsoft is giving it away for free," was the last straw for me.

It's a release candidate. There's nothing new about MS giving their early betas and RCs away for free, and in fact it's one of the few areas where I feel they don't totally bungle the process of making and supporting software. To twist that into "look how bad windows 7 is gonna be lol" is obnoxious and disingenuous.
Let's not be disingenuous; doing that concedes the point that breaking Pre's unlicensed, unauthorized iTunes connector was wrong. Apple is clearly going to keep breaking the Pre, and they're doing it on purpose.
I suggest you download FoldIt (http://fold.it/portal/), it does a pretty good job at modeling the 3d interactions in proteins using your computer, which I'm pretty sure also has that "1 dimensional" memory.

Do you know how nature uses all 3 dimensions to store information, do you even know what you're talking about? DNA, no matter how "ingenious" its structure, ends up just being a series of bases. Each base in DNA will lead to a particular base in the resulting RNA, this is nothing more than a 1-to-1 mapping, a hash. Ever three bases of RNA (a codon) lead to a particular anti-codon which is mapped to an amino acid. Again, nothing complicated conceptually. You use a series of mappings to translate one series of molecules into another. It can be easily done with a computer. It's only complex in nature because it needs to be complex in nature, otherwise it wouldn't work.

And even if 1 dimensional memory is limiting, how long until computers themselves use molecules to read and store data?

Your argument is effectively that of someone in the 19th century saying the flight is impossible because current transportation can only move on land.

Also, electronic systems are much faster than biological ones, compare the speed of an electric signal in a wire to that of a nerve impulse.
nah, just change false.html to true.html and chop off the redirect, like this:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/89c46692-782e-11de-bb06-00144feabd...
Another Schneier recommendation is to write your passwords down, just keep the piece of paper away from people who might misuse it:

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/06/write_down_you...

I have about 30 unique passwords which I keep in an encrypted file, and a password for "everything else". I have about six passwords I can remember off the top of my head and two of these concatenated are used to unlock the encrypted file. I would seriously recommend doing something like this: you'll feel much happier, I promise.
Sounds like the timeless combination of businesses colluding with government to keep competition out, enforced by tourist-hating among the locals.
Dvorak on Microsoft:  Party Over, MSFT distracted by shiny objects
couchsurfing = free; airbnb = some money. some people wont want to host someone in their house without compensation.
I love couchsurfing, and I've used it a lot as a traveler and a host. The biggest advantage I see for AirBNB is that it makes people's expectations more clear by making it a business transaction. With couchsurfing there's always awkwardness to negotiate about sharing the space, how much does each party expect the other one to hang out with them, and stuff like that. Generosity (CS) can come with all these implicit side-effects that paying for the service (ABNB) eliminates.

The UI is also nicer.
Yes, but iPhone syncing has the potential to transfer email account information, including passwords, making it a security hole for untrusted devices to be able to do it.

In either case, while breaking Pre interoperability was likely intentional (and we've discussed this to death in other threads), Apple doesn't give a shit about gtkpod.
Sorry to bother you, I'm also having trouble cloning with git://github.com/polvi/libcloud.git
Could be on my end, but can't think of why off the top of my head.
Wow, I don't get all of this. I use Ubuntu and have an iPod touch, it doesn't sync at all, total brick. But, obviously, I have a windows partition (or, sometimes, virtual machine) which I use to test in IE or play games, etc... So I just use iTunes there. Do people really add music to their libraries every day or something? I sync mine probably once a month, but I can see myself not being upset even if I had to do it once a week. Let's put things like this in perspective, shall we?
The problem of specificity is one of audience.

Broadcast has to reach a massive audience to stand any chance of reaping a return. And there just aren't many topics that _enough_ people want to see deeply explored, to cover the costs of creating 'deeper' programs.

But with broadcast going away, costs plummeting and every niche flourishing online - i think the paucity of 'challenging' material --in any discipline-- will be soon be remedied.
Bottom line: De Beers spent lots of money on 2 mines in Canada and now has $1.5bn in debt, while demand for diamonds are at an all time low.
I'm also a college student and web designer myself, but have stayed as far away from Rentacoder as possible (except when outsourcing parts of my own projects). Competing on price with people overseas isn't a place you want to be in.

Get the word out about yourself among people you know, put up some Google AdWords targeting your area, put some SEO focus on "[city] web design", and have a decent portfolio online. I always tell potential they can find a much cheaper way to get online, but that your work is of much higher quality (more attractive design, WordPress or ExpressionEngine so they can update it themselves, SEO to bring them business, etc.).
Apple would probably have to go to extreme lengths to guarantee interoperability. Breaking gtkpod is, even in this blog post, described as a side effect. I can't imagine Apple cares about gtkpod enough to purposefully break it.
One of the worst registration process I have had to go through. And you wonder why Newspapers are so f!@#^&ed. Their article is not even well written!

Clever little hack to get by the registration!
I don't want to start any flamewars, but the assumption that the market leader can engage in a kind of mutualism and 'not support' a given device or OS while still leaving them open to interoperability displays the sort of cavalier attitude towards user experience that hobbles Apple's competitors.

How many hacks that muck around in Apple's UX space do you think it would take for Apple to just sort of turn a blind eye to, before users starting accidentally wiping their iTunes libraries or bricking their iPhones? And how many proponents of said hacks do you think would argue that's an acceptable state of affairs?
Trust for sale (rant about SSL authorities and trust seals)
What fascinates me about Warren Buffett... actually it's not him it's everyone else.

He takes 0 and 25 and the 25 only if he makes a profit beyond what a conservative investment would. Something like 8% per anum, not sure, the exact number is not important anyway.

But your typical hedge fund takes 2 and 20, that's even if they do nothing or lose money.

Now here's where it gets interesting. There are literally hundreds of those funds. Doesn't that suggest a massive pent up demand for investment?
when I have spare time, yes.

Even though I can command pretty good wages, it's often worth an afternoon, for example, to swap out the rotors and break pads on my car. I'm almost earning enough to pay for it, but when you consider that the money comes out post tax, it still makes sense for me to do it myself. Besides, it's interesting and almost relaxing. And it means that I make superior decisions as to when I need to replace the thing, too. (it also means I can economically own a much nicer car than otherwise; at one point I had a used bmw 325Is. having a professional swap out the breaks was north of a grand, or maybe 1/4th that in parts to do yourself. Luxury cars cost a lot more to repair, and as far as I can tell, it's a 'because we can' fee- it was actually much easier to work on the BMW than to work on the nissan I currently drive. Assuming you have the right documentation, that is. there was always a 'trick' that made what you were doing really easy on the BMW. Pay extra for the Bentley publishing manual, if you have a BMW. the Chilton brand 'book of lies' is not worth the paper it is printed on.)

On the other hand, I usually pay others to, for instance, change the oil. It's usually cheap, and it's pretty messy to do in the driveway.
At least in Solaris the kernel interfaces doesn't change from minor to minor release rendering existent binary drivers useless ;)

But that aside: At the end the text is not about Linux, about Solaris or AIX, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD. It's about portability. Either we have to accept that there is a lock-in to Linux for many opensource development and stop all this portability stuff.

The article is about saying: Hey, use gmake if you want ... but keep into consideration, that the target system may be something else than Debian Lenny.

The next thing: I would like to see a standard way to install software on Linux. 17 distinct packages for Linux, just one of Mac OS X and 2 for (Open)Solaris. A standard would be nice here ... really.

And you have to take the following into consideration: Outside of the enthusiasts group something like binary compatibility guarantees something important for the admins. Improvements are good, features are good. But not at the price of breaking every bridge behind. At the end this hurts the Unix franchise, as the Microsoft franchise is simply a much larger market. We can't afford to fragmentize the Unix business by being to GNU/Linux centric. Deal with it. Solaris won't disappear, the *BSD won't disappear. But we should be able to ensure, that all can participate from open source development. And one factor is further development of the Unix standards to keep them current with the technological development, and not just cooking it's own soup.
Sure, these sites look nice -- a major achievement when Drupal has HTML sprinkled throughout the source -- but is there anything interesting from a coding, interface or interactivity perspective? These sites could be static HTML. (And probably are since you need a cache in from of Drupal for any amount of traffic).

The only Drupal site I've seen which actually did something interesting was a site from the last canadian election:

http://www.voteforenvironment.ca/
It's quick, but what about the Pre owners who don't follow Gizmodo daily and don't know what's going on when their phone suddenly stops syncing after an iTunes upgrade?

This episode is reminiscent of what I went through working as the 'integration guy' at an educational web startup in the early 2000s. We were in Palm's position, trying to pull data out of systems created by companies that were either indifferent or hostile to our product, so the integration tended to break frequently and without warning. It's not a good way to satisfy your customers. They don't care that you're striking a blow against the establishment - all your customers care about is that your product broke without warning.
Yes, but we are speaking of a world without computers; without computers (and the 'net) used bookstores would be quite viable.
And little use without some kind of category browsing.
N.B. The Hacker News Guidelines:

Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
As long as the Pre is capable of syncing with iTunes, you have a situation where an unsupported device is capable of affecting (through fraudulent means) the user's music, contacts, settings, and god knows what else -- all of which live in Apple's operating system, inside Apple's software.

If Palm fucks anything up and some fraction of Pre users manage to corrupt their data or their software (because Pre-iTunes interoperability is an ugly hack!), then those users are not—at least not all of them—going to shrug and say, 'Oh, well. I was using unsupported software and hardware, and I got burnt.' Enough of them are going to say, 'What the fuck!? iTunes/Apple/Mail/OS X sucks!' or they're going to call Applecare support and sit on the phone for half an hour while the poor schmuck tries to get their iTunes library back. That is what we call a bad experience, and Apple doesn't like that. If they control both sides of the equation, then they can make sure that doesn't happen.
I wonder why is Apple is not treated the same as MS. In other words why no noise over Apple bundling Safari with MacOS or iPhone etc. EU should ask Apple to do the same with Mac OS also. A smaller marketshare should not be an excuse for implementation (or not) of law and policies.

What MS did was evil back when it killed Netscape, I cannot even dream of defending them for that, but let's get over it and treat all OS vendors equally.
Do you want your TV manufacturer to build a steel cage around your TV because they're afraid that users will complain if they mess up their own TV. That would be ridiculous.
This reminds me of a joke I heard a (scarily) long time ago: "You bring De Beers, let's have apartheid."

Apart from their unparalleled success in protecting an artificially scarce market for so many years, did you know that De Beers were the early geniuses in product placement? Diamonds didn't use to be such a big deal. The romantic association of diamonds with love and commitment (primarily for women) was a marketing invention of De Beers. One way they did it was by paying to insert scenes involving diamonds into Hollywood movies (in the 1940s, IIRC), such as the heroine's friends telling her: "He gave you a ring without a diamond? The cad!" Diamonds started popping up in climactic scenes of reconciliation and inevitable marriage proposals.

I can't remember how I know this... it might have been in an old episode of This American Life. The other thing that surprised me was that they were a British company, not a South African one.
Not supporting interoperability is one thing. Going out of your way to prevent it is another.
No, I go to the discount places too (I was just in a Ross the other day). But I hate clothes shopping, and the discount stores do take more effort. Sometimes I feel it's worth it to not go discount just to be in and out of there faster.

Incidentally, I don't have the same "bargain bin" problem in the discount stores...because it all looks pretty bad.