Technically, we are apes, you and me. Hominids, Great apes.

The degree of certainty we have about that and about core concepts of evolution is such that there's simply no room left for an honest discussion. If we look for places to explore alternative ideas, there're: sci-fi, comics and religion.

Yes, and they extract that benefit because in the process they add a value to that information for end-user.

> Am I missing some other fundamental right that applies here?

Yes. When it's not prohibited by law, it's allowed.

Frankly, I'm glad I don't live in your community.

I just got back from grocery shopping. Before I went in, I stomped off some mud I had on my feet. As I walked down the aisles, I accidentally knocked a bag of something off a shelf, so I turned around, picked it up, and returned it to its proper spot. When I got to the ice cream coolers, I first looked through the glass to decide what I wanted, and only opened the freezer door when I'd made my selection, sealing the door again once I was done.

There aren't any laws forcing me to do those things. But I'm happy to do them, because (a) when we all cooperate in this manner, it makes life better for all of us; and (b) the additional costs of cleaning and shrinkage would make the groceries more expensive for us if we didn't do it.

Have you ever been to a part of the world that doesn't have the same kind of "high trust" environment that most of us in the West enjoy? For example, in America we can safely assume that at a bus stop, people will of their own accord form up an orderly line when the bus comes, each person waiting their turn. My experience in some other nations is that people will swarm around the bus door, each jockeying to be the next one in. There aren't any laws forcing people to act as they do here, but I think we're all better off with the societal norm that drives people to do it our way.

You assumed that people who don't want their data being scraped are the nice guys and people who want to use that data are the baddies. Nope, my point was that it's the other way around and if you're truly concerned with community wellbeing you actually have to be on my side of this argument.

I support every point in your response expect that I don't get your motivation to fight for folks who either don't understand how internet works or consciously use dirty tricks to block information access just to protect their shaky profits.

Look it up, my first comment in this thread was about making it illegal because I think everybody would benefit from making it so. If you publish your data and it's accessible by browser and not copyrighted, we shouldn't make it hard to collect that data for automated processing.

Look up to the top of this sub-thread, I started it. In that comment I specifically addressed that in the systems I'm responsible for:

- The traffic that (apparently) comes from competitors scraping our prices exceeds the traffic coming from legit customers. We're paying more to supply data to our competitors than to our customers!

- There are sometimes actual reasons beyond wanting "shaky profits" for wanting to limit what site users can do, including development resources to built features and APIs, as well as the actual cost of the computations.

- And I have no idea where your assertion about "dirty tricks" comes from. I'm having trouble finding anything "dirty" in trying to detect people abusing the system, and temporarily blocking their access.

And like I said above, I'm still glad I don't live in your neighborhood. Because not only don't you have any interest in being a positive member of society in commerce (you ignored all my comments on that topic), but I now see that on a personal level (e.g., "You assumed that...") you're also condescending.

Make an API, put your site behind CDN. Couldn't be more simple. And there's more they could do.

> - There are sometimes actual reasons beyond wanting "shaky profits" for wanting to limit what site users can do, including development resources to built features and APIs, as well as the actual cost of the computations.

Already answered that.

> - And I have no idea where your assertion about "dirty tricks" comes from. I'm having trouble finding anything "dirty" in trying to detect people abusing the system, and temporarily blocking their access.

There was an attempt to make a startup to compare prices in local stores, that caused an outrage among shop owners. They too claimed they were "abused". If you dive into how all those standards like html, http and etc were designed in a first place, you'd find that they were made with an idea that data is expected to be easily digestible by machines. Fighting it is futile and postpones us from having nicer things.

You could just export your prices in some CSV form on regular basis if making a proper API is too hard and redirect incoming scraping traffic to some README page instead of fighting a battle you can't possibly win? That's of course only valid if that business doesn't mostly rely on depriving customers and competitors from information about prices. In that case you have my compassion, but it's clear that pro-community-social-bla-bla-bla rhetoric is nothing more that a disguise. That I understand, but oppose.

Or should I finally respond to that lame remark about neighborhood you're trying to push? Meh.

Look, luddism is bad for everybody in a long term. We saw riots against Uber in some country where people turn cars upside down or burn them. It hurts their earnings and they feel it's unfair. And you may say it's immoral for Uber to do so. But what they did is simple. They identified multiple huge inefficiencies in that market: pricing, negotiation, checkout, reputation. Solved it and found a way to profit from it. And that will eventually happen at every corner where huge inefficiency exists due to mere lack of communication and price negotiation. And yes, prices in most cases will have to go down and become less disperse and some won't like it at all. But that's just competition reenabled by technology.

Is it immoral? I don't think so, because net effect is positive. Is that your right to scam tourist 10x more for airport-hotel trip or take 2x longer route just to earn a bit more? Technically yes, but who would indorse such behaviour? You don't like the price? Don't take that client. Platform is systemically lowering prices or violates existing regulations? Vote for better regulations, vote for enforcing those that already exist. Platform is fundamentally broken? Well, make a better one. Technically, it's not that hard, Uber is one of the most replicated business ideas at the moment.

And on that guy complaining that oh those competitors who are scraping their prices. So they're scraping each other and protecting their websites from being scraped by each other? So at the end they all have competitors information, but pumped lots of resources in scraping, protection and trying to serve content to both bots and clients? Wow, what a tragedy. What a horrible person would want it to stop. If that's it, they could just as simply pick up a phone and agree to share that data between them, because in the end outcome will be the same, minus resources wasted on arms race.

Or better, from the beginning make your data machine-friendly. Because eventually, they'll do that. Eventually somebody like Google or Amazon or some other big company will find an incentive to make them gradually and willingly share and structure that data. And somebody will find a way and resources to integrate that data into reusable knowledge graphs and somewhere along the way create a positive feedback loop. And somebody will profit from that huge. Consumers will surely benefit, that somebody will, data-donor companies that adapt will do.

And don't forget there's some progress in ML, automated decision making and all that. I personally as a customer would love to have best prices, objective products comparison with zero interaction with multiple whacky small vendors websites. I'd better have smth like Siri do that for me.

One way or another, it's happening. Small businesses have little to say here if anything. My unpopular opinion was to recognise that process, do something to stop wasting resources on war between scrapers and anti-scrapers and hopefully avoid appearance of another single monopolist from solving the problem if we don't. Because if we don't we'll just have another few years of HN headlines about how bad that X unicorn company is to somebody.

Now what's wrong with that?

I get it, really. World's change quick, people don't. They have life, it hurts, they're sad. We're empathetic, we're sad too. We don't want to be sad, so we don't want them to be sad. See? Easy. Except the fact that it doesn't help anybody other than mild therapeutic effect. And is completely irrelevant to this thread.

If anybody cares to explain and expand what is that moral issue I'm missing here or how is it relevant, I'm all ears.

I feel like I've put much more effort in making that social interaction fruitful and got only lazy "I'm sorry for you" in return. Ouch.

That was the whole purpose of putting it in a bottom. The thing works several months on a single charge and it takes just a couple of hours to recharge. And it starts giving notification at least a day before battery's depleted.

It's not aesthetics over function mantra, but realisation that they can't be decoupled or developed by separate divisions.

That's what concerns me about Ive leaving. He and Jobs evidently had enough courage to ignore public opinion to make things the right way and in most cases it turned to be excellent decisions. With no successor I'm seriously afraid they'll eventually resort to safe decisions and become another Samsung/MS/Android/whatever..

But... why? Logitech managed to build a significantly more comfortable mouse that can still be plugged in while charging. It's a nicer, more usable and practical product.

Aren't you really going out there on a severely stretched limb to defend this mouse design?

idk exact reasoning, but it seems like they've decided to maximise design focus on primary user experience from device sacrificing almost nothing.

> Logitech managed to build a significantly more comfortable mouse

Can you please prove it by a link? I had to build a specific PC for a work-related project about a year ago, wasn't a pleasure.

> Aren't you really going out there on a severely stretched limb to defend this mouse design?

I honestly don't understand the popular kind of critics that Apple receives. Those details and choices are what hooked me into their products. When I see somebody complains about no CD-ROM in laptop or that mouse charging thing or that monitor stand, it feels more like trolling.

I mean really, more comfortable mouse? Which one is that?

But if you want more concrete models - Logitech's MX Master 2 is incredibly comfortable once you put your hand on it and it's significantly better than anything Apple ever did in mouse area. I can't understate how good it felt to switch away from the Apple's mouse to the Master. And it can even charge while in use and remain connected via both USB receiver and Bluetooth to three devices (which is very useful because you can just leave the USB receiver in the monitor hub and avoid the BT pairing process everytime someone else sits down on a workplace).

If you want a smaller, laptop portable, alternative, MX Anywhere 2 is again a rather comfortable mouse (although nowhere near the Master due to its smaller size) and can still charge while being used.

> I honestly don't understand the popular kind of critics that Apple receives. Those details and choices are what hooked me into their products. When I see somebody complains about no CD-ROM in laptop or that mouse charging thing or that monitor stand, it feels more like trolling.

I don't understand what kind of details are there in the Magic Mouse? It's not comfortable, it doesn't give very clear click feedback, the gestures are finnicky even on macOS... Which mouse are you comparing it to?

After that I'll contact you in this thread and share the results if you're interested. I don't expect your or mine opinion changed, but I guess it'll be stupid not to test.

Strain problems with the originally expensive Lightning cables.

That's the easiest thing to do, yes. But you can bring it to apple care, they do battery replacement for smth like $35 I guess. And if it's factory problem they just replace it, afaik.

> Remember this was a wireless mouse at a time when wireless was definitely not the preferred choice

At the time it had regular batteries you could replace by yourself and we were talking about latest versions. But anyway, I don't see how it can be relevant.

I always find it disturbing. As every native Russian speaker, I tend to feel it perceive as beautiful and melodic. Just as any other Russian, Ukranian, Greek or whoever else. Sounds like a joke and not a good one. Makes me skip the whole title.

Why are they doing it? Does it really help anybody with immersion?

In any case, I think American evening comedy peaked before I was born.

https://www.npr.org/2018/11/18/669088658/serving-time-and-fi...

In a link from this quote: "You have expressed concern that corporations have ‘stolen’ talent from academia. Is this still an issue?" https://www.nature.com/news/ai-talent-grab-sparks-excitement... I can't find a word "stolen" or anything similar being used at all.

Seems like it was introduced by a journalist who wrote final article. And considering that, it's not hard to believe that this journalist may have some opinions on economics that are far from reality, that (probably unconsciously) triggered his word-twisting reflex.

> "It’s continuing. ..."

So he's not objecting to the phrasing, eh?

The linked article has this:

> The loss of expertise in academia concerns Yoshua Bengio, a computer scientist at the University of Montreal in Canada, which has also seen a surge in graduate-student applications. If industry-hired faculty members do retain university roles — as Hinton has at the University of Toronto and Ng has at Stanford University in California — they are usually only minor, says Bengio.

So it's obvious he's not concerned about corporations literally "stealing" students and faculty somehow, like unmarked vans and burly men in black turtlenecks, eh?

> And considering that, it's not hard to believe that this journalist may have some opinions on economics that are far from reality, that (probably unconsciously) triggered his word-twisting reflex.

The word "stealing" is in quotes in TFA.