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Balls

daringfireball.net

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Re: Balls

#111

Post by tptacek »

Semiapies wrote: post #110
tptacek wrote: post #96

I would be just fine with banning Daring Fireball from HN, if it meant we could avoid the biweekly DDoS on HN's intellectual capacity sparked by tens-deep threads arguing about Gruber's pro-Apple bias. Only on HN or Reddit is Gruber's pro-Apple stance not the most boring conceivable topic. It's embarrassing to see ostensibly smart people pick it apart , as if it was faceted and nuanced. I myself love Daring Fireball,…

Might be nice to advise anyone willing to blanket-flag posts from a site that they do so at their own risk. Soon after I started flagging posts from sources I didn't like, my flag links vanished .

I'm sure I flag more than you do, and that never happened to me. Maybe you flagged a bunch of stuff all at once. Don't do that.

Re: Balls

#112

Post by Semiapies »

tptacek wrote: post #111
Semiapies wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might be nice to advise anyone willing to blanket-flag posts from a site that they do so at their own risk. Soon after I started flagging posts from sources I didn't like, my flag links vanished .

I'm sure I flag more than you do, and that never happened to me. Maybe you flagged a bunch of stuff all at once. Don't do that.

I'd go into the front page and New and flag any instances (often duplicate ones) I saw. I saw at most 2-3 a page that way. Considering how slow those load during lunchtime for me, I wasn't flagging any unreasonable amount.

Maybe there's only so many flags a day you can make (and I didn't just flag for sources) maybe it's the sources I flagged, maybe it's something I can't even guess that was mentioned at some post at 8am in the morning one day.

"Don't do that"? I can't do that.

Re: Balls

#113

Post by cpeterso »

xefer wrote: post #74
divtxt wrote: post #26

The problem with Gruber is that he'll write a fair analysis only as long as the fair analysis favors Apple. This means we won't get a fair analysis from him on things like the patent war and app store high-handedness. Sometimes he'll do a great piece. Sometimes you have to sift carefully for the bias. Then there are articles like this - insults, lies and condescension: - Lyons has always been an ass, but when did he…

Gruber is part of an interesting phenomenon that has emerged over the past few years: supporting companies (and reviling their 'opponents') with the same passion that people normally reserve for sports teams.

Sports teams are companies, too.

Re: Balls

#114

Post by tptacek »

jimmymcn1 wrote: post #108
tptacek wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And again, case in point.

I think I have a better solution for stories from Gruber, Asymco and Marco. Have a checkbox in the user profile indicating if you're a Apple fan and only those people see the stories from the above sites. Instead of trees of discussions and accusations of downvoting, we could have just a flat discussion and mutual upvoting undisturbed by counter arguments. Won't that work fabulously and prevent this nonsense of peopl…

Filter Marco Arment? Yes, let's definitely hide stories from a sole proprietor of a mobile software company who's making enough money on one app to afford an NYC mortgage because he makes you feel bad about your choice of mobile operating systems. It's not like anyone on HN might want insight into that kind of person. Solo founder? Nah. Apple fanboy.

Criminy. Do I need better evidence for why we should avoid discussing Daring Fireball posts than a comment like this?

Re: Balls

#115

Post by amazingman »

tptacek wrote: post #114
jimmymcn1 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I have a better solution for stories from Gruber, Asymco and Marco. Have a checkbox in the user profile indicating if you're a Apple fan and only those people see the stories from the above sites. Instead of trees of discussions and accusations of downvoting, we could have just a flat discussion and mutual upvoting undisturbed by counter arguments. Won't that work fabulously and prevent this nonsense of peopl…

Filter Marco Arment? Yes, let's definitely hide stories from a sole proprietor of a mobile software company who's making enough money on one app to afford an NYC mortgage because he makes you feel bad about your choice of mobile operating systems. It's not like anyone on HN might want insight into that kind of person. Solo founder? Nah. Apple fanboy . Criminy. Do I need better evidence for why we should avoid discuss…

You finally fell into it :/

This Apple whining reminds me of every other tech site. "Let me turn off all Apple news!" Come on now...

Re: Balls

#116

Post by cma »

amazingman wrote: post #86
recoiledsnake wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example, he took a lot of flack here for defending Apple's move to leave flash out of mobile safari It's been much more than a year since Steve's blog post about how Flash is unneeded because of HTML5, and I am still waiting for the improvements in Safari so that Flash like functionality can be used in web pages. http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ I am not holding my breath though, Apple wants to p…

Why can't I put a web app in the app drawer on my Android phone and run it as an app without the browser chrome? For a vendor who allegedly does not care about the web and only cares about platform lock-in, Apple sure does spend a lot of resources on Webkit and making mobile Safari a best-in-class experience.

When you run a safari app that way Apple disables the fast javascript engine so that it can't compete with real apps:

http://www.mobilexweb.com/blog/apple-phonegap-html5-nitro

Re: Balls

#117

Post by ZeroGravitas »

sunchild wrote: post #80
divtxt wrote: post #26

The problem with Gruber is that he'll write a fair analysis only as long as the fair analysis favors Apple. This means we won't get a fair analysis from him on things like the patent war and app store high-handedness. Sometimes he'll do a great piece. Sometimes you have to sift carefully for the bias. Then there are articles like this - insults, lies and condescension: - Lyons has always been an ass, but when did he…

The point of the article (which is secondarily a hit on Dan Lyons) is that Motorola had Google over a $13B barrel – the exact opposite conclusion to Dan Lyons' piece. As a kind of aside, Gruber is defending M.G. Seigler against ad hominem attack by going ad hominem on Dan Lyons.

I have to say that part surprised me. I thought everyone hated MG Seigler.

Re: Balls

#118

Post by bane »

raganwald wrote: post #92
bane wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's better to treat Gruber like a tool and stop giving him attention. Don't submit his posts to HN, don't upvote them, don't discuss them (here I am doing just that so make of that what you will) In other words, the only reason some people are well known is that they're well known. That kind of fame burns out quickly once people stop paying attention. don't feed the troll!

calling the author a troll without addressing his arguments is either plain abuse or ad hominem abuse. Take your pick, either way it isn't contributing to the discussion, is it?

Fair enough. I was actually trying to (rather inarticulately I'll admit) pose a more meta-comment that wasn't directed specifically at Gruber, but rather at HN writ large. Stop posting (or at least upvoting) his dreadfully predictable blog posts where we'll spend the next couple days complaining about how he's an overbiased Apple fanboy.

Allow me to elaborate then -- while a rather good writer, Gruber is not interesting because Gruber is predictable:

1) If it's a subject that favors Apple, he'll write about favoring Apple.

2) If it's a subject that doesn't favor Apple, 99% of the time he'll spin it to death such that it favors Apple.

The formula then to a Gruber post is to take recent news, whatever it's about, make Apple looks good by the end of it.

The only time Gruber is interesting is when he actually does criticize Apple -- and Apple virtually has to start a program of using orphans to power their new office building for him to do it.

The meta-comment is that this is all known ahead of time. Yet every time Gruber makes a blog post 2 things happen on HN.

a) It makes the front page

b) Everybody spends 100 or so comments articulating #1 and #2 above. I mean seriously, are there any comment threads here that aren't in some way about this?

Let's look:

The top rated comment (and thread) is: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2891450

The second one is also: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2890090

The 4th one is: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2890032

So if the 5th thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2889984

And the 7th: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2890017

And the 8th: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2890071

And the 9th: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2890586

and on and on and on.

Out of 15 threads (and I'm being charitable with what I'm calling a thread, there's really only 4 or 5 with any significant actual discussion) fully 10 of the threads are about #1 and #2 above.

This isn't a signal to noise problem, this is just noise. And worse yet, it's uninteresting noise because this is literally every set of comment threads for every Gruber post.

It's dreadfully dull stuff. So I'm adding my 2 cents into the "let's just stop feeding Gruber by relegating him to not the front page of HN and we don't have to suffer through another front page post with ~70% complaints about his bias" bucket. If people want to read his writing, and know when he posts something new, they can subscribe to his RSS feed.

Re: Balls

#119

Post by bane »

watty wrote: post #79
roc wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If by 'past few years' you mean 'past 20-30 years', then I agree.

I'm too young to refute your point but can you give examples of pre-internet companies that had fan bases as rabid as Apple and Android?

Apple (been around pre-Internet), Ford, Chevy, Coke, etc.

Re: Balls

#120

Post by bane »

tptacek wrote: post #96

I would be just fine with banning Daring Fireball from HN, if it meant we could avoid the biweekly DDoS on HN's intellectual capacity sparked by tens-deep threads arguing about Gruber's pro-Apple bias. Only on HN or Reddit is Gruber's pro-Apple stance not the most boring conceivable topic. It's embarrassing to see ostensibly smart people pick it apart , as if it was faceted and nuanced. I myself love Daring Fireball,…

I flagged it, this constant noise about Gruber's Apple religion drowns out any conceivable signal of interest. Better to just link to a Reuters article or something and have a better discussion here.
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