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Comment by dwightgunning | Hacker News Reader

If, like me, you find these quirks and oddities fascinating, you must keep an eye on Raymond Chen's blog, The Old New Thing[1].

[1] https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/

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One of my favorite posts was [1], specifically this bit:

> Note: I actually don't know who ordered first. I just made up that part of the story to make it funnier. (Note that I make up parts of other stories, too. I'm not a historian. I'm a storyteller.)

It really made me rethink the value everyone places in the accuracy (or lack thereof) of storytelling.

[1] https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20130205-00/?p=...

For another classic example of taking some liberties with the truth for the sake of a good story, see: https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html

And especially the FAQ about it: https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html

Ah! This is probably the third time I'm reading this, and it's still just as entertaining as it always was. :-)

> "You waited a few DAYS?" I interrupted, a tremor tinging my voice. "And you couldn't send email this whole time?"

> "We could send email. Just not more than--"

> "--500 miles, yes," I finished for him, "I got that. But why didn't you call earlier?"

> "Well, we hadn't collected enough data to be sure of what was going on until just now." Right. This is the chairman of statistics.

I hadn't read the FAQ before though! Thanks for posting these. This guy definitely has a lot of patience for putting up with all those FAQs about inconsistencies in his story...

That's why they call them stories and not facts.

I've been in the "movie industry" for decades and it still astounds me that people come out of the theater thinking what they saw, in most cases, is reality--even when the disclaimer "based on" is clearly shown ahead of time.

> even when the disclaimer "based on"

I can't exactly fault them as "based on" seems to be more of a marketing gimmick used to imply some form of authenticity rather than an actual disclaimer. For the longest time I fell for the fallacy that "based on" implied some semblance of factual accuracy.

I used to think that based on basically meant the whole thing was true except they maybe changed some names and cut out the non-interesting parts.

That's intentionally misleading. If it's not largely accurate the disclaimer should be "inspired by".

There’s literally no difference in meaning there.

Something that is inspired by something is also based on that thing.

> Something that is inspired by something is also based on that thing.

This seems false? If iPhone was inspired by Blackberry (no idea if it was) that doesn't imply iPhone was based on Blackberry.

> Something that is inspired by something is also based on that thing.

Inspire -- give rise to -- stimulate, motivate, spawn, engender.

Based on -- rooted in -- built upon, be founded on/upon, be anchored in something, rooted in.

A hamburger inspired the design of the Millenium Falcon, the ship is not based on hamburgers. A comic book inspired the movie 300, which is only loosely based on the comic and historical fact.

A story that is based on specific events it must build upon those events. A story that is inspired by something has no presumption of content, only that some facet of it motivated the storyteller somehow.

In both those examples the thing is “rooted in” the item/thing you mention.

So while, yes there is nuance, they still broadly mean the same thing: you actually just gave two examples agreeing with me.

Nope.

And directly conflicting definitions are not "nuance". You are missing a qualifier in order to make the point you think you're making (ie "the design of X is rooted in..."). You've also wilfully read past both examples in order to stretch this point.

Inspiration can not be understood as "rooted in". That is not how words or sentences work. The millenium falcon is not rooted in Hamburgers. "Imagine" is not rooted in Yoko Ono.

I used to love reading his pieces. Then Google killed Reader, I never found a replacement I liked, and blogs just died for me. Not 'rational', I know, but I'm sure I'm not alone.

i kept using The Old Reader. works like a charm, and I have a huge feed of blogs :)

Feedly is pretty good imo.

Newsblur works great for me. It has some slick machine learning features to help manage complicated feeds.

Feedbin is worth the couple of bucks it costs per month: https://feedbin.com

I went to using local aggregators for a while but then went on to using bazqux.com which handles really nice.

> Not 'rational', I know, but I'm sure I'm not alone.

But in fact what you did was rational in its own way. You enjoyed blogs in the beginning, as long as they were easily accessible by an aggregator. When the user friendly aggregator went away, you decided the blogs didn't offer enough good content to justify the increased management and use of your time.

Lots of interesting things out there. But sometimes you need a flyer pushed through your letterbox to discover them.

Inoreader.

I loved Google Reader. But now Inoreader is better than Google Reader ever was.

Link to the last time I posted this comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16285449

(Seriously - if you liked RSS try Inoreader)

Also, I have no connection with Inoreader whatsoever. I wish I did. Great product.

QuiteRSS. This is a simple Qt application with good usability that does the job.

Advantages: It's neither a web service that will disappaer tomorrow, nor a browser extension that ties you to a specific browser.

https://quiterss.org/en/about

Off-Topic: As with most websites, I had to visit an "About" sub page to get to the description what it does. Why?! Shouldn't this information be the first you read when you open the main site? It's almost the same nonsense as with so-called "landing pages". If a company's main site doesn't qualify as landing page, why do they create a separate sub page instead of just improving their main site? And some websites don't have any newcomer-friendly sub page at all - then there's Wikipedia to the rescue.

Single apps might be good replacement for greader app but not really for greader as a service. For example: i have multiple devices with different OS’s, some of they had native apps some didn’t but no matter where and how I used reader, I was always in same state from where I had previously been (read items and tags).

I’ve personally settled with feedly now but even now after all these years, it’s not up to par with google reader.

At the time, after going through anger, denial, etc I switched to Feedly, and today I can't even remember what Google Reader looked like anymore.

I've installed CommaFeed on my server (was easy), wrote some little hack-patches to make it behave just exactly like I want it to and it works very well :)

I think that blog is worth reading even to people who do not use or code for Windows.

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