I don't think this applies for this comment, I mean, the title suggests teaching something to an AI, which in the case of Siri would open a lot of very interesting options, I'm sure I'm not the only one who expected something along those lines and was disappointed. "RTM Siri setup instructions" is a less attractive title though.
I've seen the word "teach" used to talk about setting up or programming a computer on many occasions before. It's completely appropriate. I can see why you'd be disappointed but that's not a reason to complain.
The headline would be fine in a magazine article or a tech-light site like Lifehacker.
But, because of Siri's architecture, telling a forum of hackers that you've "taught it" to do something is a wildly different thing.
Hackers click that headline because they're interested in the possibility space where you can integrate arbitrary third party apps.
And when they discover that your headline is a semantic game --that the implicit promise of the headline is a lie-- I don't know how you could expect anything other than complaints.
When I saw the headline my first reaction was: What? Unbelievable, this sounds too good to be true, but maybe the guys from RTM really found a way to do that.
When I clicked on the link I realized it has not much to do with Siri and is just about synching other iPhone apps.
Last time I checked, there was nothing sticking up my ass, but I do come to HN because it is different from Lifehacker, BusinessInsider or HuffPo. Nevertheless I do have to admit that it is a brilliant marketing move. They even started a heated discussion on HN :-)
So to extend my comment from a hacker perspective I felt tricked.
From the perspective of an online marketer I have to admit it is a brilliant move.
Maybe you just need to be more cynical. :) I saw the headline, thought, yeah, they figured out some way to connect it, and got pretty much what I expected.
