> when someone comes up with excuses for not making something open source
This is a wild take even coming from HN. Nobody needs an excuse to not make something open source.
This sort of entitlement does, and has done, far more damage to the OSS movement than anyone's "excuses" for not open sourcing their code. Full stop.
You can absolutely prefer open source software and choose not to trust closed-source apps. That’s all fair. But treating closed source itself as evidence of deception or impending betrayal is exactly the kind of ideological purity test that makes these conversations exhausting.
In my experience, there is a thin line between "blameless" cultures and "responsibility-less" cultures. Blameless cultures accept that we are all human, make mistakes, have off periods, etc. "Responsibility-less" cultures are as you describe -- they eschew honest conversations about the actual forces that affect projects. Instead they tend to repeat the same process discussions ad nauseum, typically discussing symptoms rather than the actual causes.
Since we as humans often prefer to avoid conflict (sometimes at all costs), it's not uncommon to see companies tilt towards the latter. This is exacerbated in "scale up" environments when rapid personnel changes make it difficult to build the kind of trust necessary for direct, honest communication.
> One sort of answer would be how people are convinced that their data is not important.
When I'm wandering through my yard watering plants, I like to imagine a world where our personal data, or more precisely access to it, is treated more like mineral rights today.
Companies would be required to pay a small micro-payment royalty anytime your data was used to make them money, and you would be able to transfer/split the rights just as you could mineral rights today. This micro-payment world would supplant the current "your data is the price of admission" world we live in.
While not limited to the Soda industry, this sentiment is expressed pretty vividly (even comparing testimony, marketing etc.) in the documentary Fed Up[1]. Worth a watch if this sort of thing is interesting to you and currently available on Netflix.
In all fairness, it makes it pretty tough to take your comment seriously when you consistently refer to Rails when you mean Ruby.
Also, I have to disagree. Like the author of the post, I found Olsen's book to be a delightful read. It is certainly not a great "first book" on Ruby, however. I think you ought to read it once you've gained a little better understanding - its wonderful for smoothing out edges and cementing some of the more advanced concepts.
According to an Oct 2011 answer by Zach Holman on Quora[1], they only release publicly the number of users. According to the homepage, that number is currently at 1,455,656 (hosting 2,444,052 repos). You could extrapolate from their with an average repo size, but I haven't seen any good information on what that size would be.
It's not impossible to remain a creator while using an iPad (or other tablet) - at least not when it comes to development. There are certainly people who are happily developing on an iPad (albeit with a more powerful remote backend)[1]. I think we are likely to see even more of a shift in this direction as these devices become even more capable.
Snide comments aside, I think you're missing a lot of value in slides 26 through 34, the section on communication. Reducing the 'spin-up' time for new employees and documenting even the one-off conversations seems like a great way to increase productivity.
User westiseast posted a blog post[1] about A/B testing a grid vs. list product displays on his online tea shop, Min River Tea, which lead to a pretty good discussion on the topic[2].
I sleep ~4 hours a night during the week. I find that if I sleep more (~6-8), I am not tired again by the time the remaining hours have passed and it is time for me to sleep again. For instance, when I sleep 6 hours, I am not ready to sleep again 18 hours later. This becomes a real problem after two nights or so, at which point I have a lot of trouble falling asleep.
I do tend to sleep more on the weekends, but I often end up essentially forcing myself to sleep come Sunday night.
Doesn't appear to guess correctly in Chrome 15 on OS X (10.7.2). I'm not sure exactly what the 'whoops' means for google - but I've obviously visited HN and have visited a few of the others as well.
While it's not drag & drop, you should take a look at beets (http://beets.radbox.org/). It's written in Python and has fairly active development. It uses the MusicBrainz database for cataloging music and is pretty customizable as far as directory structure etc.
Exactly. All of the points made about free or semi-free education can just as easily be applied to the 'harder' subjects, and while there are plenty of examples of well-versed, successful, self-trained members of all disciplines, they are generally the exception and not the rule.
I'd say it has at least a bit to due with sampling bias - many of the more prolific content-creators on the internet are more likely to comment on the passing of Jobs than Steinman.
I agree that it does seem a bit vague. I get the idea of wanting to pique interest, but I'm also loathe to give you my e-mail address with so little information about what you mean by delivering internet justice.
My initial impression: I think I "get" what your site is used for, but I'm having trouble really envisioning the "work-flow" of the process.
I would probably remedy this by either: 1) make the three "use" descriptions clickable and lead to a larger explanation of each use or 2) a short screencast video showing how the site's process works.
Overall I think the redesigns were a step in the right direction.
edit: After perusing the site a bit more, I came across the "Take a Tour" link on your "About" page. This tour addresses some of the issues I'm talking about and you'd be better served if it were immediately available (i.e. on the landing page).
More people joining a pool doesn't increase your personal Bitcoin production (in theory), it simply lowers your variance. That is, your payments will become smaller but more steady.
Actually, I'm almost certain that AngelusWebDesign (on Bitcoin.org) and Matthew (on Bitcoin-Board.com) are one-in-the-same. As I understand it, he runs Bitcoin-Board and simply cross-posts all his stuff.
This is a wild take even coming from HN. Nobody needs an excuse to not make something open source.
This sort of entitlement does, and has done, far more damage to the OSS movement than anyone's "excuses" for not open sourcing their code. Full stop.
You can absolutely prefer open source software and choose not to trust closed-source apps. That’s all fair. But treating closed source itself as evidence of deception or impending betrayal is exactly the kind of ideological purity test that makes these conversations exhausting.