nsmartt

I actually complained to a friend, as I posted it, that it's becoming increasingly common for correct English to be misinterpreted as incorrect. +1 for noticing.

This is a decent argument (partially) in favor of the ideas discussed in the OP. I'd love to see a world where browsers are akin to libraries, and hackers roll their own.

> I pretty much hate that you can't remove the battery from an iPhone.

This is why I don't own one. I encourage you to vote with your wallet.

> Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

If it weren't interesting to the users of this site, it wouldn't be on the front page.

Second, I find it difficult to believe that there are countries where driving slightly faster than a number printed on a road sign can result in prison time.

If I've made an error, it's because I drew a reasonable, albeit incorrect, conclusion; it isn't because I'm an ignorant American who doesn't consider the existence of other countries. If you had a correction, you should have posted it rather than a snide comment along these lines.

If a journalist publishes a story titled "Do police investigate crime?", the answer is obviously wouldn't be "no."

I don't think mentioning the law itself adds much to the conversation—certainly not the "can be answered by the word no" part.

I want to be able to read every book on my shelf at home while I'm not there, and I'm loving this move on Amazon's part. I just hope it doesn't spell trouble in the long run.

This absolutely includes NSA/Snowden news and any other news relating the intersection between politics and technology.

I said this because many people have a fundamental misunderstanding of open-source, and insist that open-source software cannot be sold.

Your response makes a lot of sense, but it's not really applicable to smaller scale products, and it's certainly not applicable to web-services, which are significantly easier to rip-off.

I legitimately have no idea how I would prevent legal forks, ensure proper credit, etc.

The real problem is that it's not clear how to charge for FOSS.

Also, a homepage with a pitch, a visually appealing design, etc would likely generate some buzz from people who aren't interested in using it but are interested in the concept. This could very well lead to discovery by developers who would otherwise have never found it.

Investors are in the business of gauging likelihood of success.

As an extreme example, consider the following scenario: You are an investor during WWII. The Japanese are discriminated against by the general public, and you're considering investing in a company with Japanese founders. You're aware that the company will face significant difficulties because of their race in this climate.

It's not unreasonable to forgo investing. The company's chances of success are significantly lower than they would be if the founders were white (in the climate of WWII).

Were you required by law not to discriminate, you would be forced to invest in a company you didn't expect to succeed.

Of course, you could argue that this isn't discrimination because the actual reason is based on likelihood of success rather than prejudice, which is the case for YC. PG argues that strong accents, which are difficult to decipher, are indicative of sub-par communication skills, and are therefore relevant to the success of the company.

For desktops, there's Linux.

edit: clarity