Voynich Manuscript partially decoded, text is not a hoax, scholar finds - <AUTHOR> http://www.medievalists.net/2014/02/20/voynich-manuscript-partially-decoded-text-hoax-scholar-finds/ <comment><USER2> I'm not sure why we only consider that this manuscript is either a hoax or a forgotten language. Why can't it be an expression of whimsical fantasy?

When I was 12, as an introvert kid with too much imagination, I started inventing my own language. I would make up words, sometimes based off various other languages, sometime simply based on how they sounded.

It had a couple of different writing systems, one was a slightly modified version of Greek alphabet, another, more complex, was made of dots and small squiggles that were fast to write (I was fascinated with the Arabic writing system at the time and took inspiration from it even though it didn't look anything like that).

I would write pages of nonsense in that writing system, just to see how it would flow or change over time, just to find patterns, just to have fun.

I even invented my own calendar, using the 88 day revolution of Mercury around the Sun as the year.

When I look at the Voynich Manuscript, all I see is the product of a fertile imagination that went a lot farther than my early teenage attempts at building a coherent world for myself.

I believe that these unconvincing attempts at finding meaning elsewhere -or degrading the object by calling it a hoax- are distracting us from the real beauty of this work of love and imagination.

<comment><USER3> Unlike late 20th century, Writing in the 15th century was rare and a costly endeavor. It is possible that it is an expression of whimsical fantasy. But it would be highly unlikely for this reason.

<comment><USER2> Well, it certainly point toward a rich patron in any case, someone who could afford all this manual labour.

But what is more likely? That this is a forgotten language of which only a single mystifying example exists (ignoring the completely unlikely plants being described in the manuscript), or that it is a work of fantasy that has merits of its own?

<comment><USER4> Now _you_ are making a false dichotomy.

<comment><USER5> I just created a user account for the first time to tell you that he is not actually making a false dichotomy. Had he initially presented those two as the only possible options, you would be correct. But in his response what he was in fact doing was asking which of two choices seemed more realistic, in the context of his initial statement being questioned.

Sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The combination of the Voynich Manuscript's history of translation claims, taken together with the origin of this work ([http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/3326436/I...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/3326436/Is- this-the-worst-university-in-Britain.html)), leads me to view this with at least something of an air of caution.

<comment><USER7> I read the paper and found it to be intelligible and interesting, making reasonable attempts to justify sound, plausible hypothesis. Obviously he may not be right, but his explanations are well worth reading.

<comment><USER8> This describes many, many translation attempts of the Voynich Manuscript, though. At this point it's hard for me to consider another one of these attempts worth reading, because they all seem to follow the same pattern.

Try and identify plants/stars/places in the text by their real names, work backwards from those names, find some other semi-intelligible parts of the manuscript based on that, then handwave away the 80% of the manuscript that has to be gibberish because the information density is too low to be some kind of natural language... why is another attempt along these lines interesting?

<comment><USER9> _At this point it 's hard for me to consider another one of these attempts worth reading_

Then your commentary on the subject is utterly worthless.

<comment><USER10> How many papers on perpetual motion machines have you wanted to read in the last year?

Does that make any commentary that you might make on the subject utterly worthless?

<comment><USER11> To dismiss a paper on perpetual motion machines you just need to know the implications of the first or second law of thermodynamics, about which there is, for all intents and purposes, unanimous consensus.

To dismiss attempted translations of the Voynich manuscript, you'd need to read the attempted translation because there is no consensus whatsoever about the manufascript, except for the fact that it is untranslated.

<comment><USER10> That would only be true if every attempted translation were unique.

In other words, once you've dismissed one paper barking up the wrong tree you can confidently dismiss all the others that appear to be barking up the same tree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There is a skeptoid episode about the Voynich manuscript: [http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4252](http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4252)

 _" A famous analysis done in the 1970's by US Navy cryptographer Prescott Currier found that the Voynich manuscript is written in two distinct languages. He used the term languages, but also cautioned that they're also consistent with different subject matter, different encryption schemes, or possibly just different dialects. He called them Voynich-A and Voynich-B. Interestingly, Voynich-A and Voynich-B are in two different handwritings, though both use the same alphabet and script. Every page of the book is written entirely in either A or B. The Biology and Star sections of the book are written in Voynich-B; the others are written in Voynich-A. The exception is the first and largest section, Botanical, which contains some of each. But they're not simply interspersed. The way the book is bound uses bifolios, which are groups of pages folded together, which are then stacked on top of one another to be bound. Each bifolio in the Voynich manuscript is written entirely in one language or the other."_

<comment><USER13> Existance of Voynich-A and Voynich-B dialects supports the theory that the script was invented by a small group of people. Different languages also is consistent with the theory that the script is written in some language that didn't previously have a writing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Here's a PDF for anyone who wants to take a stab :-)

[http://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/pdfgen/exportPDF.php?bibid=2...](http://brbl- dl.library.yale.edu/pdfgen/exportPDF.php?bibid=2002046&solrid=3519597)

<comment><USER15> Hah, on the page 85 that 'P' character got a bit out of hand. :)

It's weird that every paragraph starts with either the 'K' or 'P' characters. Not sure if that could be possible with real languages.

<comment><USER16> > It's weird that every paragraph starts with either the 'K' or 'P' > characters.

It's not like many languages out there end (or wrap, even!) their sentences with a couple of unique symbols.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Well, he's trying to recognize the plants and work out backwards from their known names, but there's a lot of assumptions and glossing over involved in this approach.

1) A figure hints at a sunflower, but the idea is refuted based on the supposed location and date of this manuscript (sunflower is native from the American continent).

2) Another figure was recognized as "coriander", that looks nothing like it, but they went with it anyway because the transcript was possible.

It looks like a botanist is more likely to figure out this manuscript than a linguist. The other theory that this manuscript is about plants from the american continent [1] is less flawed in my opinion. It could also explain why it's in an totally unfamiliar script, as it could be a pre-Spanish language, or an attempt from a foreign to codify it.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7199751](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7199751)

<comment><USER18> Agree, it's hard to look at this [1] and say with a straight face that "coriander" was "convincingly identified". Short googling leads to half a dozen of alternative identifications.

[1] [http://www.edithsherwood.com/voynich_botanical_plants/plant....](http://www.edithsherwood.com/voynich_botanical_plants/plant.php?id=76)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I still seriously consider the xkcd interpretation to be the most likely one.

[https://xkcd.com/593/](https://xkcd.com/593/)

Human nature doesn't change.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is pretty cool, and if it is not a hoax then this is one of the only documents that remains a mystery in the age of us cracking codes, not just ones like the Zimmermann telegram and the Venona project, but even the Vigenère cipher which was eventually broken and deciphered.

So this could be like navajo code talkers ... an organic language that is hard to decipher because it comes from a culture so unconnected to anything, that it developed its own symbolism. This is an intersection of cryptography and history.

</comment><comment><USER21> > _Voynich Manuscript partially decoded, text is not a hoax, scholar finds_

As the author of this work states it himself, this is a "proposed partial decoding" and it is "tentative and provisional".

But anyway, the methodology is interesting and the video is worth watching. Although I'd be surprised all his speculations are correct, it seems to be the way to go.

</comment><comment><USER22> This news led me to finally have a look at the manuscript, there are some very curious details in the text.

First you should get the PDF copy from [http://brbl- dl.library.yale.edu/pdfgen/exportPDF.php?bibid=2...](http://brbl- dl.library.yale.edu/pdfgen/exportPDF.php?bibid=2002046&solrid=3519597)

The page numbering used below is taken from the Yale PDF.

* On page 49v in the left margin, you can clearly read "1 2 3 4 5", suggesting again to me that the writer had previous knowledge of other languages. The same page has more arabic number series in the left margin of the page, "0 2 9" repeats, and "8 9" occurs (read top-down). I may be confused by the apperance of the symbols. However the "1 2 3 4 5" sequence is a extremely unlikely coincidence.

* These numbers in the left margin can be seen on several other pages, such as 54v. Again, i may be confused by the appearance of the symbols. However the more i look at it, it does look like a code.

* On 57v, we can see what appears to be an alphabet sequence in the circles. The sequence is mirrored on the other part of the same circle in the second circle counted from the outside.

* Page 66r again has a left-column top-down list of symbols, what looks like a encryption key of sorts.

Many clues in the document makes me believe it is unlikely to orginate from america, such as crossbowmen, castles and bath houses.

I published a longer write up on my blog, at [http://martinlindhe.blogspot.se/2014/02/the-other-day- news-b...](http://martinlindhe.blogspot.se/2014/02/the-other-day-news-broke- about-stephen.html)

<comment><USER13> If I remember correctly from earlier discussions about this script, these numbers were written much later by some other owners to keep track of the ordering.

<comment><USER22> There are page numbering on every 2 pages in the top right/left corner.

But I am not referring to these numbers.

Here is the "12345" sequence on 49v: [http://www.jasondavies.com/voynich/#f49v/0.5/0.5/2.50](http://www.jasondavies.com/voynich/#f49v/0.5/0.5/2.50) (top left corner, read top-to-bottom)

Here is the "alphabet sequence", on 57v: [http://www.jasondavies.com/voynich/#f57v/0.5/0.5/2.50](http://www.jasondavies.com/voynich/#f57v/0.5/0.5/2.50)

at least the second & third from outside circles have repeating patterns of symbols. It looks a bit like a substitiution code key to me.

For reference, the page numbering you mentioned can be seen here, "57" in top right corner: [http://www.jasondavies.com/voynich/#f57r/0.5/0.344/2.50](http://www.jasondavies.com/voynich/#f57r/0.5/0.344/2.50)

However I have not managed to look through much at all of previous research on this document. Just sharing my thougts.

<comment><USER13> Well, since the script seems to be influenced by Arabic writings, authors should have known Arabic numbering too. But it's not clear if these are original writings, as you said, we should look into previous research.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The video offers very interesting view on how he approaches the problem and proceeds to solve the problem. From scientific point of view it just seems like guesswork, but as video goes further it's clear he has a real methodology to it. I was also very impressed how he all the time seemed very objective and used words like "probably", "could" and "possibly" to communicate that his findings still need further review.

</comment><comment><USER24> I wish I knew more about linguistics to understand his this work further.

Though it seems a bit odd to host his work on his own personal site, rather than one hosted by his institution.

<comment><USER25> > Though it seems a bit odd to host his work on his own personal site, rather > than one hosted by his institution.

Anecdotal experience of mine is that there's a trend for some academics (at least in astronomy) to put everything on their personal site. It makes for more consistent "personal branding", as your web presence isn't moved every 2-3 years as you move from postdoc to postdoc to faculty position.

<comment><USER26> It reminds me of attending freshman orientation. It was suggested to us that we use our university e-mail address for all professional communication.

They didn't really have a good answer for whether that e-mail would stick around after I graduated. Or whether access to that account would be available forever, or whether it would be free.

I didn't even bother asking why anyone would want an ugly e-mail address like email@example.com to be their official formal means of communication.

<comment><USER25> > They didn't really have a good answer for whether that e-mail would stick > around after I graduated. Or whether access to that account would be > available forever, or whether it would be free.

Yeah, that can be an issue. It seems to be pretty common now for universities to let folks keep their email addresses (since they often outsource the addresses to google).

> I didn't even bother asking why anyone would want an ugly e-mail address > like firstname.lastname@example.com to be their official formal means of > communication.

Very true. Though, often one can set up an email alias (assuming you don't have a name that's too common!).

<comment><USER27> UCSC wanted to charge me for the "privilege" of retaining an @ucsc.edu address. I think there were options of annual or lifetime payments.

That didn't seem plausible to me, but I guess they must be getting something from some sucker somewhere. :/

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Why can't people just realise humour is not unique to one's own time period and culture.

Jumped the shark here -

"He also speculates that the reason this work is written in a language never seen before was that it was made by a small group of people who belonged to a culture that didn't have a written form."

<comment><USER29> I belong to a culture (North Caucasian) that doesn't / didn't have it's own writing script in that time frame. That also faced havoc due to mongol conquest (so this might have created refugees).

This discovery excites me because the person also mentions that it has Caucasian characters in the manuscript. So maybe it was written by my ancestors.

<comment><USER30> > This discovery excites me because the person also mentions that it has > Caucasian characters in the manuscript.

That actually, to my mind, increases the probability that it is nothing serious. When Westerners 'discovered' the Caucasian alphabets there was a brief mania for them among the small number of people who got excited by that kind of thing. One result was the 'Theban alphabet':

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theban_alphabet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theban_alphabet)

Which looks semi-profound and a little like Georgian, but is only just a bog- simple glyph cipher on top of the Latin alphabet, based partly on the recent publication of Georgian grammar in Latin.

Voynich's Caucasian characters may have just been following the latest trend in cryptography/occultism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Statistics student here. If one of the languages in the manuscript is a Turkic dialect then statistical word analyses won't be helpfull.</comment>


Sweden's unusual response to coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52076293 <comment><USER2> The reports of "business as usual in Sweden" are exaggerated. The end results are pretty similar across Scandinavia despite approaches being officially different. Streets are mostly empty. People do walk outside as there is no lockdown or shelter-in-place, but restaurants are mostly empty or closed, ski resorts are closing, travel is "not recommended" even domestically and so on. The restrictions are based on recommendations and personal responsibility. Trust in authorities is high.

You'll always be able to find people that won't follow recommendations (So taking clickbait pictures of people drinking isn't difficult).

I think the gradual approach might mean we are always "one step behind" since the idea is to introduce measures as they are needed, which you notice two to three weeks after you need them. That's my fear, at least.

On the other hand I think we'll se authorities facing the opposite problem in Italy and elsewhere when lockdown needs to continue for longer than people accept (already reports of this). In the end I think we'll see that differences will be small between countries despite varying policy, and that policy will converge to the successful ones.

I hope authorities will be quick to introduce further restrictions _if_ and when they are needed. More importantly I hope people are doing this _before_ authorities require it, if reports of healthcare overload appear.

Looking at the curves now, I'm pretty satisfied, but again if they start to point north further restrictions need to be introduced two weeks back in time, which is difficult even for our trusted authorities.

<comment><USER3> This is really interesting.

It could be that Swedes are following the norms established everywhere else, even if 'lockdown' orders are not that hard.

In Quebec, restaurants started to empty out long before they were ordered closed.

I can absolutely see information workers working from home without the order.

So it may be the the 'de-facto' situation in Sweden is quite similar to that of other places on soft lock down.

<comment><USER4> _It could be that Swedes are following the norms established everywhere else, even if 'lockdown' orders are not that hard._

Or it could be, as the article noted, that more than 50% of households are just one person.

<comment><USER2> And no households consist of elderly living with younger relatives. That at least helps isolate the old from the rest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sweden is quite different from other countries, that explains the slow spread of the virus.

Many companies allow employees to stay home for minor flu symptoms of the employee or their children. You will be fired in countries like Spain if you remained home so often. (update: I mean that you can do this always, not just now because the new virus)

Stockholm, the "big" city, has 2.5 million habitants in its extended metropolitan area. So, not so big. Swedish are not in love of big gatherings. Cultural behaviour than is the opposite than that of Italy or Spain.

All my friends at companies like Electronic Arts, Epic, King, Klarna... are already working from home. Stockholm is a technological hub. Office work has been moved home fast and eficciently thank to the tradition of "VAB'ing". In any given meeting some one is working from home, anyway. The subway is emptier than ever. Many companies have shut down offices and operations continue from home. But, that is something that you do not read in the news.

The virus growth is exponential, we may not need complete isolation just yet. Probably it is just a matter of time. So, getting to conclusions right now is premature.

<comment><USER6> Denmark is roughly the same, culturally and regarding worker's rights, yet had a very strong response from around 12 March.

<comment><USER7> Finland and Norway have also had much stronger responses than Sweden.

<comment><USER8> What does "strong" mean in this case? The health care department issues statements in Norway that politicians were not acting on their recommendations, but rather that they were making "political decisions". I guess they want their population to look at them as strong leaders. We should not confuse that kind of strong, with measures that elicit a strong decline in cases. We only need the latter right now.

<comment><USER9> Same thing with Denmark. Their Ministry of Health said that closing the borders was a political decision and not based on public health.

Sweden has stayed consistent with what experts have been saying. There's no use in closing the borders when the virus is already in the country.

Same thing with outlawing movement in and out of Stockholm. There's already a very clear recommendation and instruction to avoid travel within the country to avoid spreading the virus. There's no real way of enforcing a full quarantine unless you divert police officers who could be doing other things, or the military which we are reluctant to do (see Ådalen 1931, which is a reason why you don't want armed military to interact with citizens).

<comment><USER10> >Sweden has stayed consistent with what experts have been saying

Letting up to 499 people gather freely is not what experts will tell you is the way to stop this, so clearly they have not. If anything Sweden is among those that have listened least to medical experts. Norway and Denmark is following the advice much closer, closing borders or not.

<comment><USER11> The maximum number of invidivuals allowed in public gatherings has been lowered to 50, after being requested to do so by the Swedish public health agency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> All the Nordic countries underestimated the pandemic. Norway switched their goal from mitigation to suppression a few days ago, Finland is still teetering somewhere in between, and Sweden is solidly in the mitigation camp. Government officials in these countries seemed incapable of accepting just how horrible the situation is, so they only created optimistic models of the pandemic. Finland and Norway have released more and more pessimistic models each week, while Sweden has kept theirs secret for some reason.

I fear Sweden is still basing their approach on those optimistic models, that likely don't apply to this particular pandemic. They seem to be making the same mistake UK did, except they haven't changed paths yet. They say they are only doing what is "scientifically proven", without realizing that peer review and randomized controlled trials alone are not enough for situations where decisions need to be made in short time with imperfect information.

<comment><USER5> > All the Nordic countries underestimated the pandemic.

All countries underestimated the pandemic. From China to the United Kingdom, USA or Italy, every country underestimated it. The main difference is the attitude once lock downs are needed.

Maybe South Korea was the exception. But, South Korea is a high-income country in a permanent war with its north brother. The country is probably prepared for a biological attack similar to a pandemic. And, even South Korea seems to have lowered its standards and cases are growing up.

> I fear Sweden is still basing their approach on those optimistic models

Yes. It is surprising how everybody is blinded by exponential growth. "It is just 10 cases, it is just 50 cases, it is just 125 cases, it is just ... oh shit!"

<comment><USER12> There is at least one country that didn't underestimate the virus - Taiwan, which was way ahead of the WHO at every step: warned about human-to-human transmission at the end of 2019(!), quickly ramped up travel restrictions, immediately mobilized to mass-produce masks.

The vast majority of new cases in Taiwan are imported now, and everyone coming back has to self-quarantine for 14 days.

<comment><USER13> how about Vietnam (174 cases and no death so far)? It shares physical border with China and the country's health system, much less response to the pandemic, threadbare; yet they have fewer cases than Taiwan.

IMO, I think it's very difficult to draw any important lessons from countries that are warmer climate like Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam, or Thailand.

<comment><USER12> The grandparent was talking about taking the risk seriously - you can say that about Taiwan no matter its climate.

My gut feeling is that the culture of wearing masks, not shaking hands etc. is just as important of a factor as the climate. I guess we'll find out by observing cooler Japan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > After a long winter, it's just become warm enough to sit outside in the > Swedish capital

A "long" winter? It's been a record-breakingly mild winter. It felt like we went from autumn, through a weekend of snow, directly to spring.

<comment><USER15> Disregarding Leap Day, it's been the same amount of days since last September as every other year, and while there has been little snow or freezing temperatures, it was still rather too cold to comfortably sit outside all winter (winter Sun intensity plays a role too).

<comment><USER16> Meteorologically, there's a definition of when winter starts and ends. According to that definition it was one of the shortest one in Sweden in a long time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think that in hindsight Sweden's approach will look reasonable. The data we have now, imperfect as it is, shows that the elderly are the main risk group and therefore the ones needing special protection. The South Koreans have very good data and publish it daily. Their recent CFR numbers by age group are:

80+ 17.51%

70-79 6.77%

60-69 1.74%

50-59 0.56%

40-49 0.08%

30-39 0.10%

0-29 0%

The data from other countries matches this distribution. Keep in mind that the CFR is what we have but not the number we want. The one we want is the infection fatality rate (IFR). This is the number of deaths divided the total number of cases (not just the reported ones). The IFR numbers are likely to be lower due to the fact that widespread testing is not in place in many countries.

<comment><USER18> Only if you ignore the overloaded-healthcare-system factor, which is the main reason for lockdowns, not the number of deaths.

<comment><USER17> Not ignored, I just cannot find any good data on hospitalization rates by age group nor the associated stats. These figures also do not take into account pre-existing conditions which greatly influence the CFR.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Looks like Sweden doesn't stand out much in its case growth compared to neighbors:

[https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/?country=Finland&country=Ger...](https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/?country=Finland&country=Germany&country=Norway&country=Sweden)

<comment><USER20> Don't look at case growth. That is limited by testing capacity/policy. Look at deaths.

<comment><USER21> And Sweden is not testing people either.

The way it's being communicated to me is that by testing people they will bring more people together and thus spread the virus.

<comment><USER22> Yes, from what the government agencies communicate they most closely look at the number being admitted to ICUs per day, which has actually been declining.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Honestly, while it's wouldn't be my choice, I am glad someone is running this test

</comment><comment><USER24> When I was in med school you didn't die because of the flu. People died because they had diabetes or HTA which got some complications like low immunity, a failing kidney and so on.

Did these things change in current medicine?

<comment><USER25> Covid-19 seems to hit a population by first of all killing all the people who are pretty ill even without covid-19. Lots of people die from covid-19, but those people would probably have died later that year anyway, so there's not much excess mortality.

Then, like all winter time respiratory illness it kills people who have comorbidities that probably wouldn't have killed them without covid-19. The people with moderate but well controlled asthma or diabetes -- the chronic conditions that we don't think of as life-ending.

Then the ICUs start feeling pretty overwhelmed, and the ages of the people dying gets lower, and they have fewer and less severe comorbidities. Maybe only a small percentage of these people die, but covid-19 infects so many people that this small percentage of a very large number ends up being pretty large.

This is the point healthcare systems start building field hospitals in sports halls or convention centres. It's when they requisition ice rinks to act as temporary morgues. They start locking down movement just to try to reduce this very large number of people getting infected.

ICU doctors and nurses are now overwhelmed, and they're improvising PPE out of binbags. They're reusing PPE using weird new sterilisation techniques. Other HCPs have less access to PPE, because it's all been used up. Where they would have had FPP3 and eye-shields they now have a plastic apron and a loop surgical mask.

And they're faced with something they feel like they should be familiar with (pneumonia is pretty common) but which doesn't act like other types of pneumonia. Here's one example, but there are loads more: [https://twitter.com/iamyourgasman/status/1241267189048578048](https://twitter.com/iamyourgasman/status/1241267189048578048)

> When I was in med school you didn't die because of the flu.

The real situation is a bit more complicated than that, isn't it? Plenty of people die from flu, and it's the flu that kills them, and we have medical statisticians who can tell us what the excess mortality is each year.

<comment><USER3> "Lots of people die from covid-19, but those people would probably have died later that year anyway, so there's not much excess mortality."

This is simply false.

The most extensive research here, posted in HN yesterday indicated that Corona represents about '1 year of living' worth of risk for individuals.

It's killing a lot of people with 'conditions' who would otherwise live a long time.

<comment><USER25> Did you ignore the rest of my post, where I spend a lot of time talking about all the other people who also die from covid-19?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Someone told me old people in Scandinavia not going to the doctor when they are sick (unless it's very bad). It's a cultural thing. I guess it helps when there's a pandemic like this.

</comment><comment> 100-xyz Looks like even Batman is affected :-)

[https://toonclip.com/player?key1=4de7921623](https://toonclip.com/player?key1=4de7921623)

</comment><comment><USER27> UK had the same "unusual" approach, and look at them now after two weeks.

</comment><comment><USER28> Since the travels from abroad are all stopped now, there is less chance for the virus to get there. Maybe they'll be lucky enough to be the last ones without the large outbreak, and all the others being locked down won't bring it there?

<comment><USER29> I think there is little "getting lucky". If they also run an intense detect, test, and trace capability it might be effective. If they rely only on border lockdowns, or lockdown and lackadaisical test/trace then it would likely be insufficient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Everybody's brave until the deaths start to mount. Let's check again in two weeks.

<comment><USER31> We don't need to wait two weeks; Sweden has significantly more deaths (110) than any of it's neighboring countries: Norway (25), Denmark (72), and Finland (11).

[0]: [https://www.corona.cloud/](https://www.corona.cloud/)

<comment><USER32> Swedens population is almost twice of Denmarks, so I am not sure saying 110 is signifcantly more than 72.

<comment><USER31> Denmark is also about 5 times as dense, so one could easily attribute the death number to that.

<comment><USER22> I think the numbers are within margin if you measure what actually matters; urbanization. The huge swaths of empty forests up north in Sweden makes the 5 times number look ridiculous but doesn't carry any meaning.

Looking at urbanization:

Denmark: 87.5% [0]

Sweden: 87.4% [1]

Another statistic is Copenhagen Metropolitan area compared to Stockholm, which both is about 2.5 million. Though Copenhagen jumps to 4 million if you go by the Öresund region including parts of Sweden. [2]

[0]: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/455812/urbanization- in-d...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/455812/urbanization-in-denmark/)

[1]: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/455935/urbanization- in-s...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/455935/urbanization-in-sweden/)

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%98resund_Region](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%98resund_Region)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Sweden's mortality rate (2.97) is significantly higher than Germany (0.78), South Korea (1.59) and the US (1.75) among others. As of 3/29/2020 [https://www.statista.com/statistics/1105914/coronavirus- deat...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1105914/coronavirus-death-rates- worldwide/)

<comment><USER22> Sweden has since March 13th stopped testing except those who requires hospital care, so the numbers are not comparable in any way.

<comment><USER34> The government announced today they want to increase the testing again, but how much or when is yet undecided.

<comment><USER22> Wasn't the government generally simply approving of more tests as long as it doesn't implicate the care?

The push was launched by the main opposition party to be able to open the economy earlier.

<comment><USER34> As I understood it the government tasked Folkhälsomyndigheten to hurriedly create a plan for how testing could be increased.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Found: A Stash of Mystical Charms and Amulets in Pompeii - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/found-pompeii-magic-treasure <comment><USER2> More photos:

[http://www.ansa.it/sito/photogallery/primopiano/2019/08/11/a...](http://www.ansa.it/sito/photogallery/primopiano/2019/08/11/a-pompei- spunta-il-tesoro-della-fattucchiera_b37d5c1f-d5b0-4675-9e00-9b5942013356.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Which one of those mystical charms do you suppose made the volcano explode?</comment>


Elon Musk Says 'Goal Is to Remain Independent' After IPO - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/06/29/bloomberg1376-L4S4UD6LUTXF01-2RASSOV3MITLLEEJ6KDL5FOKAF.DTL

<comment><USER2> One explanation for a high stock price is that various mutual funds focused on investing in "green" tech, have more money than they have green companies to invest in. Thus money is going into TSLA.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sorry, you are no longer independent once you control less than 51% of the company.

Is anyone else mystified by this run-up in stock price? Tesla seems to have very little innovative technology (anyone can attach laptop batteries to a DC engine) and competitive products like the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt will be out this year that will beat them in price. Their flagship product will not be released until 2012 or later. They don't manufacture their own cars and are attempting to build a new factory and learn about auto manufacturing while they are doing it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad they're doing what they are doing. The auto industry needs someone to show them the way, but I'm just trying to see what the upside of this stock is for an investor. I predict their cars will be nice "proof of concept" vehicles, that will be copied by the Fords, Toyotas, Hondas, and Nissans of the world and made into commodity vehicles.

<comment><USER4> Elon Musk still holds 65% of the company. In fact, it is a pre-requisite of the US Govt. loan that he does so.

On the other hand I wish that making an electric car was as simple as combining a motor and a battery. It isn't. To achieve maximum performance out of a vehicle the motors need to be specially designed and integrated into a powertrain that is suitable for mass reproduction. It is quite easy to make a one off design but tooling a factory that produces your design within tolerances everyday is quite another beast.

In fact, they faced challenges in tooling existing factories to make the Tesla Roadster to their tolerances ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Roadster#History_of_produ...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Roadster#History_of_production)).

I would invest in Tesla Motors in a heartbeat if I had the money, because they have conclusively proven that well designed battery electric vehicles can be mass produced and can work in the real world. Most of the other manufacturers are still in the proto-typing phase and if they ever release their products out then it won't be without significant growing pains.

So, yes they are unique.

<comment><USER5> Is it really wise to invest in companies that depend on loans from the US Govt to operate? I'm not too sure.

I've been pretty impressed with BYD: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Company>

At the very least, with BYD you have the chance to get one of the world's leading manufacturers of batteries as downside protection in case the automobile business does not pan out.

<comment><USER6> Is it really wise to invest in companies that require venture capital to operate?

A loan is merely one way of getting funding.

<comment><USER5> There's a big difference between getting VC funding and getting a loan from the US Govt. The US Govt is going to be more likely to loan to businesses where the underlying economics just aren't there -- which is why the private sector is unwilling to fund the business.

Also, I think it is incorrect to equivocate equity investing with debt funding. When you are making a loan, you are mostly betting on the survival of the business. If they survive long enough to pay back your loan, with interest, it is a win for you (the lender). When you are investing in the equity you are actually owning a piece of that business and the future cash flows that come to it. In that sense, you are betting not only on its survival but also its ability to thrive.

<comment><USER6> > The US Govt is going to be more likely to loan to businesses where the > underlying economics just aren't there

Dot com boom? Something like 30-60% of venture backed businesses outright fail, and only 5-17% are hits. I'd say you're not looking for a much better outcome on venture funding being a predictor of 'how well the economics are there'

Truth is, governement loans + earlier IPO lets them keep tons more equity, and allows more measured growth (both of which are important when creating real world products, as opposed to electronics/software, which have a smaller manufacturing footprint than say, experimental cars). The transmission issues alone would have been hideous to deal with under a VC.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft offers webOS developers free Windows Phones and dev tools - <AUTHOR> http://www.winrumors.com/microsoft-offers-webos-developers-free-windows-phones-and-dev-tools/ <comment><USER2> Throwaway here.

I would take whatever Brandon or other WP7 dev team managers say or promise with a heavy grain of salt.

Recently, I was in discussions with a couple people at Microsoft to swing one of the free developer phones they were offering on Twitter.

They speak of giving one away like it's no big deal. So I had some back and forth with them on an app, and they said something like "Ok, get a MVP and we'll see about getting you some goodies". I got the MVP done and sent off emails and haven't heard back from them in weeks. Not even a "no".

So yeah, I feel a little bitter about it all. It's not like they owe me anything, but just take whatever Brandon, Ben, and gang say with a great big grain of salt.

I see a lot of talk about supporting developers from Microsoft, but not a lot of action.

<comment><USER3> Tell me exactly to whom you have been speaking. I want to make sure we make good on our commitment to you. My email is ThePhone [at] Microsoft...please reference this HN post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Say what you will about MS's blunders, but I've always found their developer support and outreach to be top notch.

Although they've yet to offer me a free phone.

<comment><USER5> I'll consider developing for it as soon as the dev tools run on Linux. I really don't want to run Windows.

edit: burn, karma, burn

<comment><USER6> Why is this guy being downvoted? Mobile development tools don't need to be tied to a desktop OS. Microsoft tauts Mono as a portable alternative. Let them release a WP7 SDK that works on Mono. The Java SDK is much richer & much more sophisticated, yet it has the same experience everywhere. Really, only differences between writing Android apps with Eclipse on Win32 vs Linux vs Mac are the window decorations.

Heck, even Postgres has portable tools. The GUI installer & PgAdminIII look exact everywhere.

<comment><USER7> _Why is this guy being downvoted?_

Probably because he trolls Microsoft story submissions all the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What for? So these guys can get burned twice instead of once?

Sorry for the snark - I like WP7, I think it's a refreshing take on smartphone UI, but adoption is really at a standstill. It's been _how long_ since it launched and I've only ever seen one in the wild that didn't belong to someone affiliated with MSFT.

God knows I'd love to have a viable third player in the mobile platform wars, but as it is it just isn't happening.

<comment><USER9> _> >It's been how long since it launched and I've only ever seen one in the wild that didn't belong to someone affiliated with MSFT._

Not a fair comparison:

WP7 was launched in October 21, 2010[1] [2]

Android was launched 2 years earlier [3]

iOS more than 3 years earlier[4]

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Phone> [2]Assuming that you're talking about WP7 and not Windows Mobile [3]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_%28software%29#Hardware> [4]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_%28Apple%29#History>

edit: Please explain why I'm wrong before downvoting.

<comment><USER10> Maybe I'm wrong, but the circumstances are different for WP7 than it was for the iPhone and Android. I don't think that there was going to be any question that the iPhone was going to be a success with the long lines at launch and devs breaking into the OS to get apps to run. With Android, they were the first true competitor to iOS when it came to touch-based phones.

With WP7 there doesn't seem to be the enthusiasm for the product. It's a terrific OS but I get the feeling that they're really late to the game. This could all change but I don't think anyone is willing to bet their money or time on it, especially after the swift demise of WebOS.

<comment><USER11> I think the problem for WP7 is that there are now two "good enough" options out there now so all new contenders are going to have to take things a big step forward to attract any interest. From what I've seen of it WP7 isn't enough of an improvement to be genuinely disruptive.

And Microsoft's indecisive churn on its development stack lately has got to make developers a little wary.

<comment><USER12> They key to WP7 is that it's a competitor to Android. Apple iOS is not available to OEMs, but Android and WP7 is. If handset OEMs do not have a second choice, they'll have a single external dependency on Google and Google will use it to push them around or Google might screw it up really bad. It's in the OEMs best interest for WP7 to at least become somewhat successful so they themselves have a second option.

<comment><USER5> There is no such dependency on Google with Android because it's open source. You don't have to ask them permission or pay them money to build a phone with it. I agree life may be hard if your competitors get the code before you do and that you may want to have a cozy relationship with Google (and cooperate with your competitors on some level) but it's nowhere close to the dependency you get being a WP7 OEM.

If I ran a phone maker, I'd keep a WP7 handset or two in the lineup (because there will be people who'll want it) and because I don't like to be cornered. But I'd also keep a team ready to run with Android without Google support, knowing exactly what I'd have to change if I couldn't use Google brands or software.

But, again, you don't have to depend on Google like you do with Microsoft. And true great devices come from the careful matching of hardware and software and that's hard to do if you don't get the source code.

<comment><USER13> You need a decent relationship with Google to maintain access to the Marketplace, however.

<comment><USER5> You need to work together with Google to gain access to the whole ecosystem, but nothing prevents you from having your own market and it may make sense in some verticals (like B&N does)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> To be honest, I'm rather interested in trying out a WP7 phone. The problem that I have is the fact that it's a huge barrier to entry to dish out hundreds of dollars just to test out a small device. I'm not in a position to be able to just dish money out like that, and I assume there are many people in the same boat as me. I guess that's the greatest burden to anyone trying to break into this market - everyone questions why they should dish out the same amount of money for x phone, when they could just get an iPhone for approximately the same amount of money - they already know everyone loves the iphone.

With that being said, I think Brandon Watson is doing his job extremely well - he is eliminating that barrier to entry and getting hackers using WP7 devices. Perhaps creating evangelists.

On a side note, Windows 7 has got me to switch back to a Windows OS, from Debian, that I had been running as my main OS since Vista came out. I'm just one guy, but Microsoft is doing _some_ things right. Maybe they can make WP7 work?

<comment><USER7> FWIW, you can commonly score an HTC Surround for about $100 on Craigslist, and they are completely capable, albeit unsexy, devices. I never experience the slightest lag or slowdown with Mango on mine, and it feels much faster than my iPhone 4.

<comment><USER14> I currently run an unsexy Android phone, so I could bare with something less than optimal. It runs, makes phone calls and I can play with it, so I am happy and fairly easy to please. With that being said, I just checked ebay and you're right, the surround is listed quite cheap. I'm currently in Canada (for now) so I wonder how easy it is to unlock so I can run it on a Canadian carrier?

<comment><USER7> I paid $25 USD to get mine unlocked from htcimeiunlock.com. I'm told you can get them for half that price. Got an unlock code back about 15 minutes after I paid for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> That's neat and I'm glad to see it's so high-touch. I tried writing an app for my phone, but got stymied... by the sign-up/verification process. Tried using DreamSpark (<https://www.dreamspark.com/default.aspx> ), and unlike the Apple sign-up there's this weird third party verification that you're a real human developer or something and after weeks of trying to figure out how to get them to actually validate me so I could install apps onto my phone, I just gave up.

And mind you, I pretty much know what I'm doing. I was on the Visual Studio team for 7 years, I sold > $100k in iPhone apps, and I do work on compilers towards my PhD right now. A poor undergrad might not even be able to get as far as I did...

</comment><comment><USER16> After seeing this I installed Windows (shocking, I haven't used Windows since Windows 2000) and installed the express SDK to check it out.

I have to admit I'm actually liking what's there. While I didn't quite have my webOS apps ready to be published, so I don't really qualify for this I guess, I might have to consider the platform. The UI itself is fresh and much better than what I saw from CE on PocketPCs years ago. Of course, not having an actual phone hurts so maybe I'll wait and see how things evolve with the mango release first; I'm still feeling pretty burnt on investing in webOS hardware.

</comment><comment><USER17> I tried sending him an email but got no response. Either the demand is too much for them to keep up, or he's just blowing a lot of hot air.

</comment><comment><USER18> I welcome Microsoft into the mobile platform competition.

<comment><USER5> I assume you are being sarcastic.

They have been in this race since the first release of Windows CE in the late 90's. They even dominated the segment for quite some time.

<comment><USER19> What is the deal with companies who have dominated the mobile sector, Palm, Nokia, Microsoft, just losing focus, ignoring it for a while, and then letting someone else come in and start making all this money.

Will Apple and Google head down this path? Unlikely, it seems to be worth more money now than ever.

<comment><USER5> They start thinking the whole world revolves around them. They fail to take competition seriously and fail to employ disruptive innovation to create their next generation products. They forget people are buying usefulness and think their clients want their products. The average user doesn't want a computer/PDA/whatever - the average user wants to do the things they once needed computers/PDAs/whatever for.

Will it happen to Apple and Google? Not sure. Possibly.

When companies get big, they start to abhor change. Change is what keeps companies smart.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So what another 10 people will now have WP7 phone for a total of about 12 people (including Steve Ballmer and one mate of mine)?</comment>


Ruby program implementing Wikipedia's "Back to Philosophy" game - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/fj/philosopher

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's a few example runs in an imgur album if you want to see what it looks like:

[http://imgur.com/a/gx4eV#0](http://imgur.com/a/gx4eV#0)</comment>


Ask HN: Why can't we solve the app store monopoly problem? - <AUTHOR> For the longest time, application distribution has been generally a sport for big companies like Apple and Google. Why hasn't there been enough innovation in terms of creating alternatives despite a healthy improvement of web application distribution like PWAs(Progressive Web Apps). WeChat uses microapps that help users access a lot of other mobile applications. Some interesting innovation might be Dapps inside the Coinbase Wallet or Status IM.   What are some reasons it is futile to take on this marketplace.<p>Most of us here do not want to promote the rhetoric/marketing of DHH but just want to bring attention to important problems that need to be solved. <comment><USER2> > Why hasn't there been enough innovation in terms of creating alternatives > despite a healthy improvement of web application distribution like > PWAs(Progressive Web Apps)

This is because those who think these solutions will change things have no idea where the problem is coming from. Basically they are solving the wrong problem. They must first sit down and think hard about why it is that Apple and Google have so much power. It's because they have built products people can't live without on a daily basis (Android and iPhone)

PWA won't get you anywhere because at the end of the day your success is still at the mercy of those platform providers. Currently Google and Apple just let them be because they're just cute experiments that don't threaten their business model. But when it does become threatening, they may easily shut down access to PWAs overnight and there's nothing we can do about it other than bitching on public forums like HN.

The point is, if you want to beat Google or Apple you need to start from a platform that doesn't rely on them at all. PWA completely fails there.

> Some interesting innovation might be Dapps inside the Coinbase Wallet or > Status IM. What are some reasons it is futile to take on this marketplace.

For the same reason, this "DAPP" is even sillier. Unless these "DAPP" guys are going to build their own device, at the end of the day they still rely on iOS and Android for their users to interact with their "Decentralized" app. What a joke.

The solution is not about building a "decentralized app store" or "fight against Apple and Google". It's about building something that comes out of nowhere and disrupts the current status quo in ways never expected. No other way around it.

<comment><USER3> How do you "shut down" a PWA? At the end of the day, it's just a website?!

<comment><USER4> Many of the functionalities of a true PWA simply aren't available in Safari on iOS. And since all browsers on iOS must use the Safari engine, there is no way to get around this limitation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Google services are a huge drain on the battery. Have ou ever tried to degoogle your phone? Such an amazing increase in battery life [1].

My stock android (samsung) was like having a parasite running on your hardware that eats your battery and maybe also tracks what you're doing all the time.

I wish there was another OS like what Linux is to Windows and Apple that had atleast the few basic apps like Uber, Youtube, etc. It is really the need of the hour

[1] [https://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-m30s/how-to/guide- de...](https://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-m30s/how-to/guide-degoogle- debloat-m30s-install-t4042883/amp/)

<comment><USER6> Check out /e/ ([https://e.foundation/](https://e.foundation/)). It's an Android rom that is privacy oriented and that removed google services. They also sell devices that have /e/ preinstalled.

<comment><USER7> I use /e/ it and it works great. It is great for privacy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Lack of support for antitrust. People are still enjoying massive corporate profit margins and S&P500 gains. Literally the entire pensions system depends on super high profit margins.

This is by no means unique to our times and tech. Happened many times in the past.

PS. When was the last time that Wilshire 5000 actually had 5000 companies in it? Google tells me it was in Dec 2005.

</comment><comment><USER9> If you're saying why we don't have multiple app stores run by multiple people and even self hosted apps then I can help add an answer.

It was exactly like this before Android and iPhone. I had a Nokia E71 and before that a Sony Walkman phone. They could run J2ME apps and games and you could download from a site called getjar.com and others. Nokia Symbian could run more powerful native apps - I wrote one myself.

They all sucked. Most of the apps were full of malware and you never knew which one would lock up your phone, infect your phone, or upload all your data to somewhere.

AppStore and Playstore exist for the same reason that CA certificates exist - most people are good but some are terrible and they damage the ecosystem. For CA we have LetsEncrypt now. But phones are way more complex than that. Most of the phone stack is thankless but highly specialized work - you won't get that for free in volume anytime soon.

It's more complicated because people expect the latest phones. Older generation mobile technology is worthless right now. Cutting edge technology needs investment and has substantial market. This market is also winner takes all. There is maybe place for 3 players but not anymore in an efficient, commodity market that's also capex heavy.

<comment><USER10> What I remember was enjoying a totally full ecosystem of PalmOS apps that I could install from anywhere on my Samsung sph-i300 6 or 7 years before the first iphone even came out, and they were mostly all great.

As great as the hardware and cell network of 2001 allowed anyway. The worst thing an apl ever was was sucky or stupid, never harmful.

I had apps to do every random thing you could think of from trivial little things like calculating a netmask or decoding resistor color codes, to fully functional clients for ssh, irc, email, web, even vnc, audible.com, several db-app-dev type apps like handbase (like access right on the phone), a phone dialer app that integrated with the contacts db because the built-in dialer didn't even do that yet...

It was like all the good parts about dos & windows where anyone could write an app and anyone could install anyone's app.

It was 100% great with no downside or horror story at all. Certainly dos/win gained malware, and surely some harmful palmos apps must have existed, but somehow from the first Kyocera palmos phone, through the SPH-i300 & 310 or 330 whatever the updated model# after i300, through a few Treos, and finally the Palm Pre, I never once ran into one.

In 2001.

Iphone came out in 2007, with no 3rd party apps at all.

I say this argument is at least questionable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Either government has to intervene and make the marketplace competitive, or we'll have to spend a decade or more routing around the app duopoly.

I used to think we could build a new platform in a sandbox on top of the old platforms (like a browser), but the duopoly has gotten so confidently aggressive that they'll squash out of existence any new platform before it has a chance to grow.

I actually thought Expo (the React Native runtime) had a chance to do this "platform on a platform" thing, but Apple wouldn't even allow their debug tool to exist once they realized you could preview apps by plugging a URL into their runtime client, and that those apps were actually good.

So yeah: government intervention, or a few decades of lost progress and value creation. Thankfully for those of us still living in a democracy, we get some choice in the matter.

</comment><comment><USER12> Because the same people who make the devices also run the app store. Therefore they get to stay 'No other app stores allowed' on our devices and OS.

Isn't this extremely obvious?

<comment><USER13> They don't get to say that due to antitrust laws. Hence why you can use Amazon's appstore on Android, or FDroid etc. I'm not really familiar with the Apple ecosystem.

<comment><USER14> They do get to say that. Apple has a minority of the market and wouldn't run into legally-justifiable antitrust problems.

<comment><USER15> Apple certainly has a monopoly in the iPhone app market.

<comment><USER14> Sure, and Frigidaire has a monopoly on Frigidaire refrigerators.

I said legally-justifiable antitrust claims. Apple has a minority of the smartphone market. You can make anything into a "monopoly" if you define it narrowly enough but that's not legally justifiable in any way.

<comment><USER16> But that's not what the discussion is about. Frigidaire doesn't try to limit you to only putting stuff you bought at Walmart into their fridges.

<comment><USER14> Nor does Apple: you can have as many PWAs as you want. As JS is Turing complete, you can then have every sort of app. They've always encouraged PWAs.

Unless you want to legally force every company to surrender their source code (which I enthusiastically would support), there's no legal basis for Apple not being able to have their proprietary feature phone locked down.

Though if you'd like, you can look at Keurig, which does limit what you can put into it to "only Keurig products" or one of the _millions_ of other things that limit what you can put into it.

<comment><USER17> > Though if you'd like, you can look at Keurig, which does limit what you can > put into it to "only Keurig products" or one of the millions of other things > that limit what you can put into it.

Whatabout...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Ironically it was Steve Jobs who announced No SDK web apps as primary model for app delivery in iPhone and later when he realised it could mint money; native apps via App store became de facto.

Initial set of iPhone app developers made a whole lot of money from App store, if not money they scaled their business to new heights - Whatsapp, Instagram, Snapchat etc. Since android was late to catch up in the developed economy, Apple got away with its ridiculous monopolistic practices with Appstore.

But now times have changed, people care more about apps than the platform they run on e.g. Spotify. WhatsApp on KaiOS on a single device in a single country(albeit large population) made that OS a significant player in the smartphone ecosystem - a feat which even Microsoft failed to achieve; that explains the importance of apps over the platform currently.

I think Apple might showcase the support for PWA in Safari as a way to defend its anti-trust litigations in the future. Although I personally want the PWA to succeed as it's the only way pure Linux smartphone ecosystem could capture market i.e. it's more important to break the smartphone duopoly than to break the app store monopoly (IMO), for security and sanity of mobile computing.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_web_application#Ba...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_web_application#Background)

<comment><USER19> I would bet money that Steve Jobs never intended to actually have web apps as the only type of apps on the iPhone.

Their native SDK was probably just not ready yet for the release and they knew about Android which they wanted to beat to market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The App-Store was a huge improvement over existing distribution at the time.

30% wasn't super generous but it was much better than anything else, and Apple was a kind of underdog in the mobile market, at first.

Today, things are different, we have a duopoly, in practice that's the same as a litteral monopoly.

Antitrust laws should apply, but it will take time, a lot of time, big corporations have huge lobbying power.

</comment><comment><USER21> Because it's expensive and difficult to directly compete with trillion dollar companies?

That's why we have a government, because when companies get big enough, that's the only entity left that can restore the balance of power.

Since we're living in a corporatocracy, it has become unclear which corporate abuse gets a slap on the wrist and when, because there are so many. It's become profitable to do what you want now, ask for forgiveness later. It turns out you can even ruin the world's economy and instead of getting punished, receive a bail-out and your usual hefty bonuses!

I can only assume these decisions get made behind closed doors by groups of politicians and multi-national corporations. When a consensus gets reached, they announce it to the public, not unlike when crime syndicates get together with the police and give them a few sacrificial lambs, to continue business as usual.

</comment><comment><USER22> The only real solution to this problem is to completely reverse-engineer the iPhone and iPad down to the level of the ISA and device drivers and load a free operating system.

And no the ISA is not ARM. It resembles ARM but it contains secret Apple sauce. And there's lots of crypto chip voodoo going on; we'd also have to figure out how to disable all that.

In any case the requisite reverse engineering could be done with enough money. It's not a technical problem. But it definitely is a money problem: I don't know how to make a good enough business case for offering IOS device owners a completely alternative OS because most of the muggles just don't care.

</comment><comment><USER23> Because we keep buying devices locked into app stores, and we tell ourselves that is A Good Thing for security.

I have an android device and never considered a third party app store. It is hard enough to trust most apps in the approved store, let alone a stranger's. At best, I go straight to the content owner and use their website.

Sandstorm tried something like this, but never took off because most people- producers and consumers alike- don't find them more helpful than what already exists.

</comment><comment><USER24> It would help to look at the situation of the Android marketplace in China. As we all know Google Play Store isn't available in China, so has app distribution been decentralized and innovative in China? Is there a benefit?

The answer is of course no. You have the same Chinese Big Tech dominating, like Tencent or Qihoo. You have tech companies that have nothing to do with apps, but make app stores nonetheless just because they can. You _still_ have app stores operated by carriers (China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom). And then you have small app stores that struggle to survive, and even then usually resorting to unscrupulous measures that would be utterly unacceptable elsewhere.

Does this approach of multiple app stores benefit app developers? I don't think so. Developers would rather have one single store and their rules and requirements to deal with. So much so that there are now intermediaries in China whose job is to get apps distributed on multiple stores so that developers don't have to worry about it. It's just become another middleman that eats into the profits. Or they decide app distribution is so difficult that they make their app a simple web view wrapper, and lose many benefits of a native app like tighter integration with the rest of the system.

Does this help consumers? I'm afraid not either. Do you really want consumers to remember which store they downloaded an app from? Not to mention app stores overwriting apps downloaded by other app stores, a dark pattern to boost their own numbers, or an app store forcibly silencing the update notification from a competing app store, etc.

So what are the innovations you are expecting?

</comment><comment><USER25> This is the point of view of a marketer that thinks that the solution should be to regulate ALL MARKETPLACES, or to require an independent entity to be the referee/regulator.

I think most people disregard what conditioning does to human behavior.

Conditioning takes a long time and consistency, and you have OS's that funneled users during YEARS of usage to use what they provided as a way to find and install applications.

Apple is an extreme of enforcing the App store, but for Android you could install other appstores/distributors, hell manufacturers tried this (Samsung, Huawei, and many others) to bring their proprietary solutions. Yet it didn't scratch the Playstore marketshare. Why is that? I think it's because for a long time, the Playstore was the only solution and that was just enough time to be established for users as well as developers.

Why, on the other hand, for Windows people don't gravitate towards windows store?

Here I think it's because windows had apps for their OS being sold from shelves on shops, given away as demos on magazines, to .exe files you could download from the web, or that could be transfered by your neighbor via Floppy/CD/USB Stick. People are used to look for Windows Apps in a plethora of distribution channels. Hell people still factored the possibility of having virus on the apps according to the distribution channel.

If you look at MacOS, people are conditioned to look at one place - and it doesn't take too long of usage to achieve this.

People are lazy, in a good way. We want the most effective way to achieve our goals, with the right conditioning it becomes extremely hard to shift.

</comment><comment><USER26> We need to build our own phones, and run whatever OS we want on them. Why isn't it easier to build your own smartphone?

<comment><USER27> no common drivers, hardware, or software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I do NOT want to go back to the chaos of pre-App Store world where you had to visit NN different websites to get your software, multiplied for every machine, then revisiting them regularly for updates or putting up with noise from N different update mechanisms.

<comment><USER17> Okay. Let's only ban making app stores mandatory then, not app stores themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> PWAs still have a long way to go before they're fully viable replacements for apps. Even on Android, which supports them vastly better than iOS, they're still lackluster. This is partially on the shoulders of mobile OS/browser vendors, but I think there's also an unavoidable ceiling to what current web architecture can do in terms of UX.

Front end web architecture is going to have to undergo a more radical evolution before native apps can reasonably be displaced. React and family were the first step of that, and I would guess the next step is building something like it into browsers themselves.

</comment><comment><USER30> The app stores work incredibly well for the overwhelming majority of users.

</comment><comment><USER31> A political answer would be for governments to take action.

Since the Euro zone is lucky enough not to have an app store in it, they might be able to force Apple to open up the app store, maybe even publish the information and tools to develop iOS software without a Mac.

Another answer is to develop web applications instead of apps. Almost always we get pestered to first use the app, second use the mobile web site, third use the desktop web site, but usually the quality of the user experience is the other way around.

</comment><comment><USER32> Everyone is free to innovate and create alternatives. Go ahead -- go out and build something that people want and is a platform that people are willing to / want to develop on, and can be charged fewer fees (or no fees at all).

An app store is not a public utility or place of public accommodation that entitles people to a certain kind or level of access. Or a right to sue, claiming that a certain price is fair.

Feel free to make something newer and better.

</comment><comment><USER33> It's the fundamental economics of platforms. At the same time that they are very democratic, they are also very monopolistic. It's weird and not something you should analyse without undoing your intuition about companies. The economics is very different.

Book recommendation: Modern Monopolies by Alex Moazed

</comment><comment><USER34> Everyone seems upset (publicly, though I suspect it has been kept private for a long time) right now about the App Store's commissions on sales. How does this differ From, and why isn't there an equal level of outrage over, the "service fees" that AirBNB or Uber charge?

</comment><comment><USER35> You literally can't sideload any app on an iPhone and Apple will never relent on that unless they're compelled by law. So either you get people to stop buying iPhones or lawmakers to admit that's a problem, and neither is likely to happen nowadays.

</comment><comment><USER36> There's an easy way to solve the monopoly problem. Redefine app stores as utilities.

</comment><comment><USER37> The problem is cost of entry into the market with diminishing returns.

What we have is not a technology problem. The problem is that what you build is worthless unless you get people to adopt it. And right now, that requires:

* Building a phone/piece of hardware that can run apps and replace the iPhone/android phones * Investing in a marketing campaign to get your hardware into the mainstream, so people will buy your phone instead of an android or iphone. * Convincing companies and app makes to build for your new hardware.

That breaks down to a tremendous amount of R&D, building a cloud network that can rival Google's and Apple's cloud systems, convincing app makers to build for a platform despite it not having any users, and convincing users to buy into your platform despite not having any apps.

It's tremendously expensive.

It was a worthwhile expense for Apple: they literally invented the new ecosystem and were the only option at the start. Their return was guaranteed.

It was a worthwhile expense for Google: they already had the cloud services, were a household name, operated arguably the largest ad network to market their new platform, and had plenty of cash on hand to get things moving fast. They may not have been able to match Apple's competition-less returns, but had a low cost to entry and even half of the pie is great value.

For any new competitor, having to share the pie with Apple and Google limits the potential return. Couple that limit with having huge expenses to build out a competing product and getting people to use it, and it's not a very appealing investment. At best, you get what's left after Google's and Apple's shares. At worst, you spend millions (billions?) for nothing. We've already seen the Windows Phone and the Fire Phone fail to enter, and if giants like Microsoft and Amazon deemed it not worth their while, who will?

So that's where we are now. So long as the masses use Apple and Google products, they will continue to default to those app stores. And it doesn't make financial sense for anyone to enter the market and compete with them (with any significance, at least _).

_ I could see some very niche phones/tools coming into play, but with very limited functionality and only a narrow user base that actively seeks that niche. Eg. security-seeking engineers. Someone could make a phone with very limited features (at least, "native" functionality ala gmail) and see success with an audience seeking that subset, but it wouldn't be a mainstream option.

</comment><comment><USER38> Why did Ubuntu for mobile fail? Feels like that's the kind of thing we need

</comment><comment><USER39> Noticed toady, you cant even download firefox on android without a app store.

<comment><USER40> I was able to find an apk in 5 minutes by googling "Firefox apk download" and it installed just fine

<comment><USER39> Its an older device, all those links give https certificate errors</comment></comment></comment>


Issue 1748 in chromium: noscript-like javascript filtering desired - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1748

<comment><AUTHOR> Last comment (right now): _Since version 5.0.317.2 dev for windows (not tested on linux or mac) google chrome has now built-in javascript, cookies and plugins blocking, based on a blacklist (block javascript on this site and allow all the others) or a whitelist (block every javascript except from 'www.yt.com' in this case it allows all embedded js, probably including syndication ;) 'in www.yt.com').

The settings are in the new "content" button into "under the hood" tab._

All I need now is faster access to the whitelist and ability to add temporary permissions, then I'm about ready to switch to Chrome.</comment>


Show HN: Track and share all of your investments in one place - <AUTHOR> https://www.holfolio.com <comment><AUTHOR> I want people to be more open about their investments, as it's something that we're all left to do on our own or pay far too much for financial advisors to tell us things a friend probably already knows.

I first made this because I had investments across equities, crypto, and equity crowdfunding campaigns, and it was a pain to log into each different platform to see how they were doing. Excel is bad at tracking the values over time, so as a software developer and a chartered financial analyst, I decided to make it myself.

By sharing what you are buying or selling publicly (but you don't have to share the amounts), it also allows you to peek over the fence and look at the portfolios of other people - a curiosity many of us have but are too polite to ask in real life.

I've just implemented automatic dividend tracking of US stocks, and in the future want to integrate with investment platforms to automatically add all transactions.

Once you're signed up, we can add your existing investments to the platform to make it as easy as possible to get set up.

Any and all feedback is welcome!</comment>


Did your GMail password get leaked? Find out here. - <AUTHOR> https://isleaked.com/en

<comment><AUTHOR> For the record, I don't believe this impacts custom domains. I did a few searches on some of my custom domains and they return things like the following response message:

        We haven't information about @yourdomain.com

</comment><comment><USER2> Quite useful, thanks! It looks like custom domains are in fact not affected. That's a relief. However, with the vast amount of accounts GMail must have, 5 million accounts seems like a small number. Lucky I wasn't in there.

</comment><comment><USER3> Link to the leak source wasn't working for me. Anyone know the source?

</comment><comment><USER4> is this a trojan collecting targets for bots to crack?</comment>


Speed Dating Online. Meet 10 people online in 1 hour. - <AUTHOR> https://roundhop.com

<comment><USER2> Some feedback if you're the creator:

Don't put an upper limit on password length. Also, if you're going to have password requirements tell me what they are before I try to submit.

> No upcoming events right now.

Thanks

If you don't have a critical mass yet, why not offer a single entry on the homepage that asks for location and if there is an event near me, tell me to signup, if not ask for an email address, then send me an email when there is actually an event near me instead of making me go though the signup process to find that out. I'd bet you'd get a lot more email addresses that way, and a lot less ill will.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Azdle: Thanks for your feedback. I've changed the password requirements. Your other comment about single entry is also great. I'll try to implement it asap. Thanks!</comment>


Hey Microsoft: The "Apple Tax" doesn't just apply to Apple, and isn't a tax. - <AUTHOR> http://technologizer.com/2009/01/06/two-things-about-the-apple-tax-it-doesnt-just-apply-to-apples-and-it-isnt-a-tax/

<comment><USER2> The irony is, you've got a choice whether to pay the Apple tax or not (i.e don't buy a Mac). On the rest of computers out there (especially laptops), you're forced to pay a Microsoft tax _, whether you want to use the operating system or not.

_ \- excluding maybe Dell's Linux offers and low-end netbooks.

<comment><USER3> I, too, found it funny that the article avoids mentioning the well-known "Microsoft tax". In relation to that term, however, the term "Apple tax" might be valid: While it's hard to buy a PC without having to pay for Windows, it's impossible to legally use Mac OSX without having to pay for Apple hardware.

<comment><USER4> actually the same extends to the iPhone SDK, which is virtually unusable without a mac.. i use the word virtually since you COULD run OSX on a PC by doing all hacks yourself but not really a headache free process...

sure apple is not forcing anyone to pay a tax, but then what IS a tax? technically apple's antiques are causing a reduction to the consumer surplus... is that better?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "The idea is based on the undeniably-true proposition that you can buy Windows PCs with better specs than Macs for a lot less money."

That was true a decade and more ago, but hasn't been true for a long time. Match a Mac with a Dell spec-for-spec and the Mac is the same price or a bit cheaper, but the reputation still lingers.

<comment><USER6> Only if you're inside one of the Mac product ranges.

e.g. I want a desktop Mac without an integrated LCD (i.e. not an iMac), and without putting up with laptop class components which compromise performance (i.e. not a Mac mini or laptop).

So my choice is a Mac Pro: starting at $2799(!)

Fair enough, it's an awesome machine (8 cores, great case design, etc), but it's still nearly 3 thousand dollars.

(Aside: I own PCs and Macs, I just feel there's a bit of a gap in Apple's product range there. It's quite possible Apple are right though, and that most people will want to buy a laptop or iMac).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to learn LLVM and why? - <AUTHOR> In the 500+ comments discussion yesterday[1] about the blog post "Being a Developer After 40"[2]. The author suggests ignore all the hype and learn all you can about LLVM. How do I get started and will learning LLVM benefit me? Can anyone share your experience? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11569726 [2] https://medium.com/@akosma/being-a-developer-after-40-3c5dd112210c <comment><USER2> I tried to write a C/C++ checker using LLVM/clang's libTooling, while solving a real problem we've encountered maintaining HPC code [1]. I found that I learned a lot about it that way. I wrote a brief article about the process [2]. Since then I've also participated in producing the official binaries for the linux distro I use at work. It's old enough that making it work requires lots of annoying bootstrapping. Getting used to the build process makes it a lot easier to start out new LLVM-based projects IMO.

[1] [https://github.com/androm3da/sample- checker](https://github.com/androm3da/sample-checker)

[2] [https://androm3da.github.io/#clang](https://androm3da.github.io/#clang)

<comment><USER3> I wanted to write something similar, but was turned off by the way you have to compile LLVM projects: your project mixed with LLVM sources. Also, its not that easy to get started.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You may find this link helpful for both the _why_ and _how_ : [http://adriansampson.net/blog/llvm.html](http://adriansampson.net/blog/llvm.html)

( HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9998140](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9998140) )</comment>


Ask HN: Ideal setup when sharing Gmail? - <AUTHOR> I'm working with a startup where we all share "inbox duty" on Gmail. What's the ideal way I can access the inbox, respond to email, and have everything remain on the server while I use Outlook 2016 as my email client app from my Win10 laptop? Extra points if I can apply Gmail labels from within Outlook as well.
Basically, I want to use the email app of my choice without damaging the experience for everyone else.
Yes, I really like Outlook. Don't judge It's what I'm comfortable with, my fingers have muscle memory from years of using the same keyboard shortcuts, and I customize the hell out of it so it practically doesn't resemble the factory-installed version. <comment><USER2> Accessing the Gmail account with IMAP should do what you want:

[https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7126229?hl=en](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7126229?hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER3> Generally shared email accounts are problematic. Have you guys considered a mailing list or a delegated mailbox?

<comment><AUTHOR> Truth be told, I'm being generous when I say "inbox duty." It's basically me. I flag things for my boss's attention with a label, but apart from that, I'm the guy responding to most things.</comment></comment>


People will be Sharing 1,000x Sooner than 10 years - <AUTHOR> http://www.kloustin.com/people-will-be-sharing-1000x-sooner-than-10-years/

<comment><USER2> > _"When you have a camera that automatically takes pictures every 30 seconds > with GPS location data..."_

Who would honestly ever want a device that does something like this? Do these types of cameras already exist?

I understand the idea of the article is probably more to promote imagination of the ideas of how to share, but at the same time I just can't imagine a world where everyone is sharing that much quantum aspects of their lives.

Personally, I imagine it going towards that direction then seeing some sort of "privacy disaster events" that shake up how people see privacy. Then, after those events, people really rethink their usage and change how/what they share. I'm not sure what those events would be, but I imagine them being even bigger than some of the privacy issues we have already seen as of late.

I also hope that IS what happens (it doesn't get to that much sharing), because at the end of the day, I honestly don't care what everyone is doing (literally) every second of the day. Or as _Sambdala_ said in another comment, who has time to go through all of that?

<comment><USER3> Could you imagine a time when everyone you'd basically ever met could passively browse a catalog of over 1000 pictures of you? I couldn't particularly imagine that day 7 years ago, but here we (or at least I) are/am.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Just think about the original concept for Loopt: constant location sharing to your friends. It's pretty difficult to quantify how much of an increase in sharing that is over a status or two a day, but it's probably much more than 1000x any way you cut it.

It's understandable that people think Zuck is saying people will share 1000x more on Facebook using Facebook the way Facebook currently exists, but that's not it at all.

</comment><comment><USER4> There is a limit to how much people are willing to share; this is one of the reasons we still wear clothes.

</comment><comment><USER5> How are people going to consume all this shared content? It seems like automatic curation of your friend's shared content is going to become a very necessary feature.

I don't have time enough to live my own life let alone comb through 1920 photos a day from every one of my friends.

<comment><USER3> That's addressed in the article: this is going to be an opportunity, things that help us do that.

I think your question shows you're missing the point, but I could very likely be wrong: the way this sharing is going to happen isn't in ways we currently see or understand. It's going to be different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can't think of anyone I'd want to know that much about. It's more likely that a pervasive sharing "thing" will propel many of us to re-embrace privacy to avoid the boredom.</comment>