9to5

Yeah I thought I was clicking on it to read about some sort of lifehacker style discussion regarding not working normal hours. I don't understand this policy.

It seems like admins are "fixing" the titles of every blog post on the front page submitted with a bit of context in the title. This is the kind of thing that is not necessarily a terrible idea, but should be discussed openly rather than silently implemented.

The null hypothesis around here seems to be that HN mods are changing titles because they are title nazis. Instead what might be happening is the algorithim is retitling the posts. Example: if 10 people submit the same link, only the first one creates a post and the others upvote that post. But what if the other 8 still count as title votes: say 8 of them use the same title, then the title in the first story auto-updates to use the common one (which of course is the actual post title). The net result and the whole point of all this would be to strip out anything added which includes both positive context and negative bias/editorializing.

When I submitted the article, I left the title exactly like it is at the source. While I do try to follow the HN submission guidelines, I did wonder if the title would be insufficient to readers. My quick thought process concluded when I felt that HN readers would be sufficiently guided by seeing the instapaper.com domain. That's not to say I assumed reader familiarity with the recent 9to5-Arment issues, just that the Instapaper name would tell readers it had something to do with the app/service rather than a topic Marco Arment was writing on his personal blog (marco.org).

I thought that was a reasonable approach. Not perfect, but ample for what I assume is a thoughtful readership here.

Yeah, it struck me as bizarre that he would be so taken aback when someone suggested he was responsible for the leak, but then he made identical baseless suggestions...

As much as I admire all that Marco has accomplished as a single-man developer and business, I think this incident represents one of the negative aspects. There is no filter for poor decisions especially those that should be treated as personal.

Agreed.

Marco should've demonstrated more patience in the matter and let the truth about the UDID mess come to light (it just did) which is now discrediting 9to5 (without any effort on his part).

The way to get even with news sites that have little to no journalistic standards is to hold them accountable to their claims the way John Gruber does with his "Claim Chowder" posts.

We all make mistakes. I perceive this is a sign that Marco will act more thoughtfully in the future.

I think we can all agree that Marco overreacted: he says as much in his blog post.

But this doesn't affect my confidence in the Instapaper service. I think it says a lot about Marco that he was willing to admit his fault and reverse his decision—much more than the mistake itself said.

"Marco should definitely have known better"

-> Isn't that the whole point of his blog post, admitting that point?

"Regardless of 9to5Mac's actions here, Marco went overboard in censoring their content."

-> And he agrees with you! Which is the point of the article... is there anything he could have written that would not have elicited a negative response from you?

Instapaper also offers a subscription service

http://www.instapaper.com/subscription

Perhaps for some. Others might realize that humans make mistakes. Marco overreacted; there is no question. He made a poor decision. This is not something I am aware of him having done with regards to Instapaper at any other time (I could be wrong; I don't follow Instapaper super-closely, but I would have expected to see it here like this one).

So a first mistake, with a reasonable explanation, a sincere apology and a promise not to repeat (my reading; yours may differ) is "too little, too late"?

Better late than never.

Guess what? Humans aren't perfect.

We're not kids, and we know we're not living in an ideal world. We all make mistakes, we say and do stupid things. Should we be punished for the first lie/mistake we make, or only when we lie/make mistakes most of the time?

In the last two years, I've paid less than 20 or 30 dollars for Instapaper, and every single penny was worth it (I can't emphasize enough). It was the first "mistake" I remember that Marco's made running Instapaper (which was for the longest time, a one-man business). If he makes 5 or 10 more mistakes, I'll move to a competitor. But punishing him for just one tiny overreaction? That's not reasonable IMO (considering that I don't expect to use products made by übermen (super-humans), and would be quite thankful if others didn't expect the same thing from me). I'll accept his apology (and understand his line of reasoning) and move on. He has 50 +'s and on -, that's still 49 +'s!

Yeah, because lord knows that a tiny minuscule slice of the world known as Instapaper users couldn't view a 3rd tier Apple rumors site for a few hours is maybe the worst thing to ever happen to the Internet ever.

Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit? Sure, they can block sites and no one will blink an eye,.

I think the difference is what kind of service it is. the blocking affected Instapaper's users perhaps more than the site itself.

Marco was entitled to do this. And we were entitled to say why the decision was wrong and to encourage people to stop paying for his software.

Agreed, up to a point. When he talks about things he _does_ know a lot about, like programming, I'm an enthusiastic listener.

But when he starts talking about business, mocking MBAs, yet claims raising capital isn't taking on debt (I guess convertible debt isn't a concept to him), my eyes can't stop rolling.

His platform about his profitable company of one being way better than a break-even thousand-employee company is also infuriating.

It's good practice to stick with what you know, especially when you have a large audience of varying expertise.