Apple's famous walled garden is starting to show cracks - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/09/apple-walled-garden-starting-to-show-cracks.html <comment><USER3> This is not about "cracking the walled garden"; we're comparing, well, not apples and oranges as much as Apples and Netflixes.

This is about laying the groundwork for Apple's new video service -- the question was always whether they wanted to use it as a way to sell overpriced TV pucks, like they've traditionally done with their services, or it was going to be its own thing. they wanted to have everywhere. If you're surprised that they're choosing "have it everywhere," it's probably because you haven't been following the mounting tidbits of Hollywood noise about the original content being produced for Apple. We're not talking about Carpool Karaoke anymore. We're talking new shows from J.J. Abrams, Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, Ron Moore, Damien Chazelle. We're talking about new children's programming with Peanuts and Sesame Street. Shows starring Jennifer Aniston, Steve Carrell, Chris Evans, Reese Witherspoon, Aaron Paul, Jason Momoa. A series based on Isaac Asimov's Foundation.

The point is, there is serious firepower happening here, to the point where it's pretty clear this is not "service as adjunct to hardware." This is Apple establishing an actual entertainment division.

<comment><USER4> I'm honestly surprised at how much investment tech giants are pouring into 1st party tv/movie production and also by the consensus that these ventures are virtually guaranteed to succeed. From what I've observed over the past decade, the future of our cultural landscape is going to be that of increasing fragmentation to the point that there will no longer be a single, dominant culture for mass media enterprises to appeal to.

The high production value of traditional HollyWood productions are only sustainable due to their mass cultural appeal. The problem is that mass culture is in fact, losing mass. These tech giants appear to have misread the signs of this pending sea change and interpret behaviors such as cord-cutting among younger generations to mean they are merely moving their consumption online and that their consumption habits remain otherwise unchanged. One only has to look at the popularity of services like YouTube and Twitch with Gen Z to see that this is in fact not the case. Younger millenials and Gen Z as a whole have completely changed their consumption habits to prefer niche content made by individual creators (or at most a small group) on the cheap. While YouTube stars like PewDiePie cannot be said to be "niche" due to the simple fact that his content captures more eyeballs per year than literally anything else by an enormous margin, the content itself isn't exactly something that appeals to a universal audience in the way that a traditional HollyWood Blockbuster or hit TV show might. Ironically, while Google was the tech giant best positioned to capture the future (at least in terms of how I see it developing), they've severly damaged the future potential of YouTube by playing games with the monwtization and promotion of popular channels while also making it impossible for new creators to make money before they've built their channel into a relative behemoth.

While Apple, Amazon, Disney, et al are throwing massive amounts of capital trying to capture a slice of the streaming service market, they appear to have missed signs of cultural change which will likely cause that market to stagnate over the coming decade. I can't say that trying to create a YouTube competitor is a better idea at this point in time either as that market just isn't large or stable enough at this point in time to say there is even space for a second major servicd for small content creators. I can say the future of entertainment is going to look a lot more like YouTube, where the attention of tens of millions of eyeballs are spread over tens of thousands of channels, rather than a handful of sources for traditional mass media productions.

<comment><USER5> I think your analysis is close to correct but missing an important point. Cultures you're talking about strongly push progresivism, to the point that traditional shows look more like hour-long Public Service Announcement than a show. It's overcharged with girls who take the lead (even in action movies that are still mostly watched by boys) as a way to push a cultural change, but also cluttered with constant disparaging of boys. Not even talking about white males because they've been targetted long enough that they probably don't even watch TV/Hollywood anymore, apart from progressist white males who cheer at people who say whiteness ought to be banned.

The reason people rush on small creators is they're politically incorrect, meaning they're non-PSA shows. People are so upset of being told that they're sexist if they don't date a transsexual, that they're able to trade the quality of image/montage/content of traditional TV shows for a content that doesn't constantly give lessons or disparage them.

What you call fragmentation will be instantly reunified if a platform ever succeeds to get rid of the pressure to put PSA-compatible characters under the customers' eye. They're tired of being the product.

<comment><USER6> Er...what?

I have no doubt that this may be the reason that you personally have abandoned mainstream media in favor of more niche sources, but to attribute that motivation to an entire generation is a huge amount of projection. It has everything to do with convenience and shifting habits, not a rebellion against political correctness.

Not everything is about right vs left culture wars.

<comment><USER7> Exactly. For example:

> The reason people rush on small creators is they're politically incorrect, > meaning they're non-PSA shows.

When I think of small creators [1] that I personally enjoy (e.g. Vsauce's Michael Stevens, Veritasium's Derek Muller, Game/Film Theory's Matthew Patrick, Because Science's Kyle Hill), those are all Youtube success stories, and none of them fit this description even a little bit. Grandparent is just mistaking his particular bubble for the average.

[1] Those all have subscribers in the millions, but I still consider them small media startups compared to the scale of traditional media conglomerates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Giving people on other platforms the tools they need to allow them to purchase content directly from Apple has been around since the iTunes Store and iPod first made an appearance for Windows.

It continued with Apple Music on Android, and I don't see any difference in Apple's strategy here today.

Apple is moving into video subscriptions and wants to make sure the broader market can purchase their content.

<comment><USER9> And people who don't have an iDevice, probably won't buy a service from them. Because when you have an iDevice, you are a first-class civilian.

Nobody wants to be a second-class civilian.

My 2 cents, so a personal opinion. Would appreciate disclosing if you have a "iDevice" or not, if commenting :). I don't have one now, did buy the 3GS when it came out.

Edit: as I thought. Downvotes and no comments :). Nobody obviously remembers iTunes on Windows...

<comment><USER10> On the idea of a 2nd class civilian:

Would that include level of support? If something goes wrong in any Google product for me, I am almost certainly SOL. If my scenario doesn't fall under automated support or is something that requires human logic/cognition, there is effectively no support. It's either post on Twitter and hope someone from Google reads it (P = < 0.0000000005) or off to call the credit card company for a chargeback and pray that Google does not decide to ban my entire account for it.

If something goes wrong in any Apple product, the support ranges from stellar to acceptable, regardless of if I'm using Windows or MacOS.

So in that regard, I would rather be a 2nd class Apple civilian than Google's favourite civilian.

<comment><USER9> No, in the products directly. Eg. Bad ux for Windows, not allowing innovation on browsers and force developers creating an app instead of a html site, no usb-c, ... That's what i mean with "second class civilian" when you don't have/want everything from Apple.

I actually love the Chromecast integration ( it works with everything) and Google Docs (any browser), which seems to be more on topic.

There's a big difference between paying the Apple premium and using free/cheap products of Google though. Didn't had any issues with enterprise support in the past. Can't say anything about the Pixel line-up.

Don't take my word for it, here's a comment from someone else in this thread:

> I still think the nicest media player I used on Windows post-iTunes 7 was a > music playing gadget from Google in my Google Desktop sidebar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What drives me crazy is the Jobs idol worship. Assuming that if he were alive that Apple wouldn't still have challenges with its platform roadmap.

He might have come up with some other/better ideas but it's not like he didn't fail and produce plenty of duds too.

I have never been an Apple fan but I'll say this, they generally treat their customers far better than the competition. You'll never go to an Android or Microsoft store (the former doesn't really exist I know) and get the kind of service that Apple offers.

I'll never forget the time I went to the Apple store and returned a used laptop battery I bought off of Amazon. It was painless and immediate. My wife loves Apple and for her and for this level of service, I'm happy to continue supporting her having an iPhone, a Macbook, etc.

<comment><USER12> > I have never been an Apple fan but I'll say this, they generally treat their > customers far better than the competition.

It took a considerable amount of time until Apple admitted design flaws in iDevices (iPhones and Macbooks recently). Antennagate, Bendgate, Batterygate, the list goes on. I'm typing this on a MBP where the coating went kaboom.

<comment><USER13> Apple is always graded on a different curve from the competition and there's a lot of manufactured crises by the press.

Other products from other manufacturers have extremely serious flaws and they're routinely ignored because the expectations are simply that much lower. I'm talking faulty bluetooth chips, processors that slow to a crawl, faulty camera software, a camera lens placed right next to a fingerprint reader, shipping a phone with a button that did nothing for 3 months, literally exploding phones from poor battery design....all of those are things that absolutely cripple a product and they're quickly glossed over.

Meanwhile Apple's issues are repeated ad nauseam no matter the magnitude just because Apple is that embedded into pop culture. Even if you don't like Apple, you definitely have an opinion about them. No one gives a shit if some random new HTC phone is completely awful by design...but a completely fixable communications issue like "Batterygate" will get blown out of proportion.

I'm not saying Apple shouldn't be graded on a curve. They should, they're the leaders in the industry in so many ways and the bar is high. But sometimes the curve is just comical. Just look at the outrage over the notch.

<comment><USER12> Because the followers of Apple (the big Android brands) copy Apple's innovations such as the notch, the display to body ratio, the removal of 3.5mm jack, price, capacitive touch, and what have you it is justified that even those who'd never use an iOS device criticize Apple's innovations. Because chances are they will find their way into the Android ecosystem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I feel like apple has definitely matured a bit on the biz side that they're effectively making drastic culture change within a few quarters of sales pace slowdowns, considering the years where they let rot fester the last time the company was in trouble. Maybe they've learned lessons from the past or from Microsoft's journey but in either case, it's promising that they seem to understand what some of the big deals are when committing to services business line.

I also think apple has one of the most compelling digital movie purchase systems so it'll be interesting to see if this follows the iTunes music biz model where they expand to more platforms and take over a lot of the revenue. The system is way more stable at higher quality than competitors like vudu, and they're trying to do the right thing by avoiding this push to charge more than $20 per movie. Also backdating purchases to upgrade 1080p movies to 4K was a very slick move.

<comment><USER15> > also think apple has one of the most compelling digital movie purchase > systems

People don't decide which platform to purchase a movie from based on how compelling the streaming technology is. It needs to be a platform that's accessible on their device firstly.

<comment><USER16> Deleted due to misunderstanding.

<comment><USER17> _> In this case, he didn't say anything about streaming tech_

They did, they commented that iTunes had better streaming than Vudu:

"The system is way more stable at higher quality than competitors like vudu..."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> When the ability to make books for iBooks came out I was excited. I would like to write a math textbook with embedded videos in it. I was about to explore doing this in iBooks but then I realized that I would be limiting my audience to those with Apple devices. I abandoned the idea.

I buy digital books from Amazon and not Apple because I know that Amazon will make its books available on any device. As far as I know iBooks are not available on non-Apple devices. Why would someone lock themselves in? If they made their digital services device agnostic I'd buy from them.

<comment><USER19> Amazon could kill support for any platform at any time if they wish. If I get any eBooks at all I want them to be in an open standard (e.g ePub) with no DRM whatsoever.

<comment><USER20> And they have a history of doing this. Before they had the Kindle, they sold Adobe digital editions content, and after they made the switch they retired the Adobe digital edition license servers. I lost an ebook I desperately wanted when they did this. They didn't send a warning about the upcoming retirement either, despite the books being registered to email addresses which they could easily have sent alerts to.

<comment><USER21> They probably couldn't do this to the kindle stuff now at this scale, if that's any comfort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > As Apple struggles with sluggish iPhone sales

Yeah, iPhone sales are below expectations, but Apple's struggling? Hyperbole remains the tech journalism's go-to, I see. I was hoping tech journalism might've made cutting that nonsense out part of their New Year's resolutions, but apparently not.

<comment><USER23> Apple makes their money from services, not hardware. Declining new iPhone sales would only be a problem if people left the ecosystem to buy Android phones.

<comment><USER24> That's not true. They make less than 20% of their revenue from services. The iPhone accounts for about 60%.

Here are some nice charts you can look at: [https://www.macrumors.com/2018/11/01/apple-4q-2018-results/](https://www.macrumors.com/2018/11/01/apple-4q-2018-results/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Apple really needs to double down on Siri and take voice interaction to the next level. Part of this means that apple really needs to get its own knowledge/sematic web solution.

The new Google interactive radar thing is neat. Apple needs to figure that out.

That the iphone/ipad can be a bigger compute device with external attachments could be a bigger development then we think (like the Samsung dock thing).. People don't buy laptops in the same sense anymore and that will help justify higher prices.

The Apple upgrade rent/lease program is basically a way to get higher prices over time.

Apple should have its own MVNO.

<comment><USER26> The iPhone is so powerful now I don't understand why they don't sell a dock for it that runs a desktop environment. or a laptop enclosure where you drop it in as the trackpad. I'd be back on the upgrade cycle if they did.

<comment><USER27> The last iPad Pro allows you to hook it to external screens...

<comment><USER28> They could do it before too: the difference now is a direct usb c connection. But most apps don't support anything but mirroring. And the resolution only partly fills the monitor.

Iphones can connect to external displays too, with an adapter. But I don't see this being influential until there's a framework for the second dosplay, mouse support etc

<comment><USER27> >*They could do it before too: the difference now is a direct usb c connection

The main difference to me is that now it's officially sanctioned, and even mentioned on Apple's material (shown in the keynote, etc).

<comment><USER28> I agree, I think it's a very interesting change for the future, and we may see why it happened when ios 13 is released.

But as of now, very early days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Won't happen, but an Apple iCloud/Maps/etc enabled AOSP phone to compete on the low end would interesting.

<comment><USER8> Alternately, Microsoft could step in with the various service layers they developed for Windows Phone.

If they were to open source alternatives to Google's Play Services and give developers a low or no cost app distribution method, I could imagine them doing a lot of business hosting instances of those service layers on Azure.

Developers get lower costs and Microsoft picks up more cloud share.

<comment><USER16> They already did started that with their Android launcher; Arrow. ([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft.launcher))

It'a also why they're updating Windows 10 steadily to support integrating with Android deeply as well.

Not to mention they've working on their Linux subsystem for Windows (WSL), cross-platform services and apps like VSC, buying Github, Xamarin, etc), and also porting/improving macOS apps like Visual Studio and Office on macOS.

Microsoft's cash cow is now their services and why they're turning previous Windows and Office cash cows into subscription services. I suspect they plan to do an overall Microsoft service; get Windows, Office, OneDrive, and Surface for a monthly price.

Which is what I suspect Apple will do as well as Google; all of them will do software+hardware bundle subscription service. Imagine paying 100$ a month to get latest hardware and software all the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Apple's resurgence was built moreso on great hardware than software, due to Jobs philosophy and the nature of hardware this naturally led to a more vertical / walled garden approach.

The next "big thing" in tech is trending to be AI powered voice assistants, an assistant is more of a horizontal play as you'd need it to be compatible with many different devices and services. With the PC and phone markets mature, what differentiates Apple from it's competition? Especially when the gulf in quality is getting smaller and smaller?

</comment><comment><USER31> Well, Apple reached $1 Trillion in market cap in 2018. Odds were that the only way was down...you can't keep growing at 20% qtr to qtr forever, or you'd own the world.

Add the fact that today's smartphones do 99% of what people want and new ones are not that much better to justify spending $1000 on them. Add Android competitors from all over the world and you have a very profitable Apple, but not one growing like a "startup."

Cheaper iPhone? Maybe, but the $500 iPhone would way worst than a $500 Android one made by others so...

<comment><USER32> > you can't keep growing at 20% qtr to qtr forever, or you'd own the world.

Yeah, a lot of people don't intuitively get this; but any growth above GDP growth is some part of the pie you're taking away from someone else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> We are a long way from the launch of the iPod and Apple has done just fine. The article reads like you still need an Apple gateway (AirPlay2).

</comment><comment><USER34> for those that remember 90s tech.. it was a Very Big Issue that Apple created The Apple Store where all software must be purchased (online). Lots of smaller companies made money selling software for Macintosh in various ways.. because they ran their own store, you know, the ones that determine and hold the profit margins on sales? It was not-at-all decided that the one mothership company should run the only store, and to REQUIRE users to purchase software there?

The phone ecosystem has since become FAR more dollars per month than Mac software ever was in its entirety, and the norms of the phone market are not the norms of the desktop market. Massive centralization is ordinary with the phones.. meaning centralized control.

There is nothing ordinary about the way citizens and phones and markets are working .. this is new territory.. without commenting on the article, I take the headline as a comment on the (highly controversial) Apple Store. Evolving past that Apple company store is news.

<comment><USER8> Do you remember what a low percentage of the retail price of software the developers took home in those days?

It was necessary to make a deal to sell through a software distribution company (for example Ingram Micro) because brick and mortar chains would not deal with software developers directly, and they took a cut.

The retailer took another cut and required things like unsold inventory be returnable, cost sharing for newspaper sales circulars in the Sunday paper, and fees for shelf space.

<comment><USER35> It wasn't THAT much lower, compared to today, if you include things like advertising costs you need to pay today, to get your app to sell.

It works differently and you have different middle mans, but it's not that much different for an average joe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I would love to see Apple move towards a truly modular phone. Just broke my screen. If I could walk into a retail store and get the screen module I would have done so right away. Now I have to go on eBay order and wait hoping I can survive with a cracked screen until it arrives. If anyone could do a modular phone it would be apple.

<comment><USER24> The problem with a modular phone (no matter who makes it) is there are big design tradeoffs. To increase the modularity, especially from an end-user perspective, you have to give up some combination of size, cost, power, battery life, water-resistance or other features.

It just probably isn't worth it, especially for the case of a partially damaged device where there are probably better solutions... Like a "loaner" program or 2-hr on-site repair for most repairs. These would increase the cost of repair (or repair insurance like Apple Care)... that's a tradeoff in its own right, but at least it doesn't impact your day-to-day usage of the device.

<comment><USER37> The Novation Apple-Cat II was the last truly modular Apple phone. You could plug in your favorite stylish handset with a standard connector, and easily replace the screen with any TV set or monitor of your choosing.

[https://apple2history.org/history/ah13/#attachment_1622](https://apple2history.org/history/ah13/#attachment_1622)

<comment><USER24> That's beautiful.

I just set up a home office and I'm thinking I need to get one of these and figure out how to set it up as my office phone somehow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> > The famous Apple walled garden may not be crumbling, but the cracks are > starting to show.

Bashing Apple never seems to go out of fashion. Companies change strategies for various reasons, including slowing, stagnating or negative growth, revenues, profits, etc. Apple is doing what any capitalistic company would do.

There are many things Apple is yet to open up and/or bring to other platforms (and in all likelihood it will never become the Microsoft of recent times). Apple didn't just wake up last month and say, "Oh, by the way, our services side doesn't have a defined growth strategy, and now we need all hands on deck to figure it out." It already had a strategy for at least a couple of years, if not longer, to make services a bigger piece of the pie and growing it was a key focus area.

Any arrangements, in relation to other platforms and devices, that we have seen announced in the last few weeks or months have likely been in the works for several months or years.

One can argue how well the services side is picking up...or not. But calling it as "the walled garden is cracking" is just a negative spin to catch eyeballs.

<comment><USER39> >Bashing Apple never seems to go out of fashion.

I keep hearing this and people's memories are funny. It wasn't even a fashion until Steve past away. Apple were the media darling for the during iPhone 2G to 5 era. It started with iPhone 6s when they had a first YoY iPhone Unit drop, mostly because iPhone 6 in previous year were doing far too good. Then the bashing seems to get louder as every iteration after it continues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> When hardware slows to sell you ramp up services ??

better make more interesting phones and laptops and accept the end of growth rather than dilluting your spirit into chasing revenue

</comment><comment><USER41> It started crumbling when Apple joined Alliance for Open Media. Since they were obnoxiously anti free codecs in the past, it was surprising to see Apple there.

</comment><comment><USER42> I sold my Apple stock about 8 months ago. These are the relevant data points:

\- Apple is a superb company but the stock price is still too high.

\- Apple faces increasing competition from its own older phones that still work just fine.

\- The older phones work just fine because Apple was caught crippling the older phones to preserve the life of the $20 battery inside the phone, and ended up having to simply replace batteries rather than sell new phones. This should be considered a scandal on par with the Volkswagen emissions scandal. I suspect the crippling was timed to make the shiny new phone seem all that much more appealing.

Note that Google recently rolled out Android updates that default a lot of battery killing AI features to "on" even on older devices, dramatically reducing their battery life. This may have been an attempt to boost sales of new phones, or it may be that Google thinks the AI features are so compelling that they will drive new purchases.

\- Apple has continued its practice of small, steady improvements to iOS, but has also dramatically increased the price of the phones. I had to chuckle when I realized I spent $1K on my last iPhone. Wow.

I'd argue that the incredible Moore's law-like growth of mobile technology has actually held back a lot of innovation, and now that the platforms are more mature we'll see bigger investment in platform technologies that were risky before when the target devices two years out were largely unknown.

Apple has still shied away from trying to defend its market share by entering the low end market. Like Github's decision (far too late, after Bitbucket nearly caught up) to offer unlimited private repos, Apple will eventually enter the low end market, but only after its lunch starts to be eaten by competitors.

What happens when new big budget production apps don't prioritize iPhone by default as the first platform to launch on? Apple has no strategy to deal with this, and has neglected its development tooling substantially. This is basically the position Microsoft was in (and a nearly identical strategy) right before it took its own nose dive.

Apple should:

\- Release a $199 iPhone as quickly as possible, and a $199 iPad also.

\- Team up with Facebook to make React-Native a first class citizen for iOS development, even if this is a hostile fork and a blessed version released directly by Apple.

\- Institute some programs (battery replacement, etc.) that show that the devices are the only one anyone would ever consider buying.

\- Work with software vendors to create apps that actually do require the latest hardware features and the newest phones. Most apps do not need these.

\- Make the devices fully waterproof so I can throw mine in the dishwasher once in a while to get it clean.

\- Create car radios that are "CarPlay Only" that can be retrofitted into vehicles that didn't ship with one.

\- Release a version of OSX that works (and is supported on) Intel NUC hardware.

<comment><USER43> > Apple has still shied away from trying to defend its market share by > entering the low end market. Like Github's decision (far too late, after > Bitbucket nearly caught up) to offer unlimited private repos, Apple will > eventually enter the low end market, but only after its lunch starts to be > eaten by competitors.

They have rather a serious problem there actually. There are many people who buy an expensive iPhone for reasons that would be entirely satisfied by a less expensive one if it existed. It's hardly worth raising sales by 15% if you would have to lower overall margins by 50%.

They could produce an intentionally crippled one to avoid cannibalizing their high margin products, but that would dilute their brand, and anyway who would buy it over similarly-priced non-crippled Android devices?

There is a place in the market for a luxury brand, but Apple _already_ has more of the market than luxury brands typically have. It's going to be difficult for them to do much better when the main thing they could adjust is the trade off between margins and volumes.

<comment><USER44> _They have rather a serious problem there actually. There are many people who buy an expensive iPhone for reasons that would be entirely satisfied by a less expensive one if it existed. It 's hardly worth raising sales by 15% if you would have to lower overall margins by 50%._

I could have bought a midrange slower phone in 2015 thst would probably never get an update and then by another midrange phone 2 years later and buy yet another midrange phone this year.

Or alternatively, buy a 64 GB iPhone 6s in 2015 for $749 and still be getting updates and have a phone that is more performant than any midrange Android phone that was sold over the next three years and faster than high end Android phones in single core performance.

If history is any guide, the 6s will still be getting updates for two more years.

As a bonus, my phone isn't running an operating system made by a privacy invading ad company.

<comment><USER43> If you're worried about updates you can get an Android One phone for $199 which is guaranteed to get updates for at least three years.

And a $749 phone is faster than a $199 one, sure, but it also costs $550 more, which is the whole issue. That's real money to most people.

> As a bonus, my phone isn't running an operating system made by a privacy > invading ad company.

This is kind of a silly complaint when it's open source and anyone can modify it however they like. Especially with Apple pushing Apple ID and iCloud as if sending all your data to them is completely different.

If you're legitimately concerned about this then rather than Apple your vendor is Purism.

<comment><USER44> _This is kind of a silly complaint when it 's open source and anyone can modify it however they like._

Most of what makes Android what it is are the closed sourced Google Play Services and you still require closed source binary drivers.

 _This is kind of a silly complaint when it 's open source and anyone can modify it however they like. Especially with Apple pushing Apple ID and iCloud as if sending all your data to them is completely different._

iCloud is easily disabled. But I was shocked to find out when I looked at my dad's Google account that Google recorded every time he opened any app on his phone. Apple doesn't make money from my user data.

<comment><USER43> > Most of what makes Android what it is are the closed sourced Google Play > Services and you still require closed source binary drivers.

This trade off is inherent. If you want a map service that lets you bring up a map of your current location without first downloading a map of the entire world, you have to send your location to the place that sends you the relevant portion of the map. But you get to choose -- you can use Google Maps, or you can install one of the OSM apps that actually downloads the whole map and can operate offline. You can install apps from Google Play or you can install them some other way.

You can carve Google out of Android, and then it's worse, in much the same way that iOS is worse without iCloud and the App Store. Except that if you want to use F-Droid or Amazon instead of Google, on Android you can and on iOS you can't.

And closed source drivers are lame, but I don't see Apple providing driver source either, and presumably _the drivers_ are not sending your data to a third party in any case.

<comment><USER44> Without iCloud, you just can't sync between devices and get untethered backups. But you can still backup your device from your computer.

<comment><USER43> And what is the equivalent of F-Droid for iOS? What's the alternative to Apple's App Store?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Starting?

</comment><comment><USER46> I think it is more likely that Apple's strategy is Embrace, Extend , and Extinguish. Does anyone else remember when iTunes could sync with a Motorola phone?

<comment><USER47> Apple's strategy has largely _avoided_ "embrace". Their couple of attempts at it - letting third parties make Mac clones, and the Motorola ROKR - <USER2> spectacularly.

The ROKR was largely a way to build relationships with cell carriers. If you watch Jobs introducing it, his disgust for it is palpable, and they launched the iPod Nano alongside it as an additional "fuck this thing".

<comment><USER48> *and the iPhone was under active development at the time. Jobs additionally played Fadell and the iPod team with this move.</comment></comment></comment>


Wal-Mart boosts ecommerce bid against Amazon, drugstore.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2009/10/wal-mart_boosts_ecommerce_efforts_taking_on_amazon_and_drugstorecom.html?ana=from_rss

<comment><USER2> Good for them. I don't think Wal-Mart is that bad for us. They give us products we consume for better prices. That is the entire foundation of capitalism. Don't get me wrong I love amazon and what they do but if Wal-Mart does better business then they should be the winner. In the end it is all about who wins.</comment>


Startup ideas for the new remote economy? - <AUTHOR> Work is shifting online, and employers and employees now have access to opportunities they've never had access to before. In a way, the new remote work economy is the greatest democratization of economic opportunity in history — no matter where you are, you can access the best jobs (or, if you are an employer, the best talent), and it's now commonly acceptable to have such remote work. What are the best startup opportunities to thrive in this new economy? <comment><USER2> Remote is not the answer, many people cannot handle it. I know of many people now drinking during the workday, others who are trending into depression and PTSD.

Human mental wellness is a good startup to help deal with the fallout from insufficient data and poor policy making</comment>


When the Internet dies, meet the meshnet that survives - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22229653.700-when-the-internet-dies-meet-the-meshnet-that-survives.html#.U1OUR8etvy8 <comment><USER2> Perhaps it's a good idea to have random take downs of the internet in large areas for extended periods of time so that there is more motivation for people to create a second, non-centralized single-point-of-failure single-point-of- control internet.

We have to prepare for the inevitable future reality where many layers of government can terminate the internet connection of any person based on what content they are providing, or what service they are serving.

When an evil agent discovers the power to shut down my internet connection, or the internet connection of an entire area based on what people are doing on it, it is only a matter of days or weeks before that power is wielded to expand their power and create money from thin air through it. If the internet is to become a medium through which people think through, it must be as reliable and un-stoppable as two people talking and listening in a private room.

<comment><USER3> >Perhaps it's a good idea to have random take downs of the internet in large areas for extended periods of time so that there is more motivation for people to create a second, non-centralized single-point-of-failure single-point-of- control internet.

That's not a good idea. That's a very bad idea, considering how much critical infrastructure, globally, depends on the internet working -- what you're suggesting, to even work as "motivation", would be akin to randomly poisoning pharmaceuticals to discourage overdependence on antibiotics.

That said though, if such a change could be pulled off without essentially destroying the economies of whole countries, I would be all for it.

<comment><USER4> >considering how much critical infrastructure, globally, depends on the internet working

This is the very bad idea.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps. But solving one evil with a greater evil can't be a valid solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What on Earth makes people think a finnicky meshnet that requires a high density of nodes will survive a Sandy-like disaster? Doesn't seem like the most obvious use-case for meshnets, wouldn't people be better served getting ham licenses and learning how to improvise antennas in an emergency?

<comment><USER6> That depends on the types of devices you use for creating it. You can get a km out of an ordinary router with a directional can antennae. What distance do you think is required for it to be viable?

<comment><USER5> >You can get a km out of an ordinary router with a directional can antennae

With a line-of-sight and some careful positioning, maybe.

There are numerous examples of people using traditional radios to coordinate disaster response [1] (actually why ham licenses are issued IIRC), this seems like a more complicated, error prone, cool-kid-hackerspace solution. What advantages does a mesh network have over traditional radios (which have bands allocated for this) for disaster response? How well will a mesh network hold up if half (or more) of the nodes fail due to power loss, flooding etc?

Mesh networks are cool, and I'm all for decentralizing communication, but their usefulness for disaster preparedness seems very dubious to me.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_emergency_communi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_emergency_communications)

<comment><USER7> Ongoing innovations in open firmware like OpenWRT allow deployment of reasonably robust routing schemes, such that the mesh nodes themselves compute the routes most efficient for transport (and also repair those routes when nodes go down). Groups like Commotion Wireless, Freifunk, Funkfeuer, and LirbeMesh all deploy firmwares derived from OpenWRT to this purpose. The actual capacity, range, and sensitivity of the radio hardware used, whether unlicensed or not, will still be gating factors. Along with ambient noise levels on whatever bands are used.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not to say that what happens with the military will impact those watching Netflix, but the infrastructure of the Web is vulnerable...

Article from Foreign Policy magazine

The Best Defense The future of war: You better be ready to fight like it's a pre-electronic age

[http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/04/18/the_future_o...](http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/04/18/the_future_of_war_25_you_better_be_ready_to_fight_like_its_a_pre_electronic_age)

"...Major battles in the 21st century will be confusing and disorganized affairs more similar to the clashes of a pre-digital age than the 'network- centric' combat we've become accustomed to. A new generation of offensive technology targeting the electromagnetic spectrum -- systems such as cyberweapons, electronic jammers, anti-satellite missiles, and electromagnetic pulse (EMP) munitions -- will deprive militaries of the sensor and communications links they rely on. Forget 24-hour streaming video from a Predator drone. Armies of the future may struggle just to use their radios.....

</comment><comment><USER9> Being dependent on large monolithic corporate entities for your mostly private communications is probably not good for your security and privacy. Mesh networks or something similar sounds just fine to me.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is what Internet was supposed to be from the beginning; a reliable network with multiple paths between nodes so that the removal of even a large number of edges would not prevent packets getting through.

</comment><comment><USER10> Actually for low rate communication in a disaster zone store and forward text messaging via mobile telephones would surely work more easily and could be combined with the mesh to enable greater coverage.

</comment><comment><USER11> And yet Google disables ad-hoc wifi on Android mobile devices...</comment>


The New Way to Monetizing OSS by Using Token Economy - <AUTHOR> https://devtoken.rocks/alpha/en <comment><USER2> Wonderful project!

</comment><comment><USER3> How does number of downloads necessarily coorelate to values? What about forks and royalties? Does this necessarily need to be based on blockchain?

<comment><AUTHOR> Large projects can monetize in other ways. It's best for small but technically essential libraries. e.g., like vue-xxx, rollup and moment. By issuing a new token, it is possible to monetize without changing the license while keeping OSS free.( [https://medium.com/devtoken/dev-tokens-for- oss-a63e55c60e6b](https://medium.com/devtoken/dev-tokens-for-oss-a63e55c60e6b) )</comment></comment>


Several women accuse tech pundit Robert Scoble of sexual harassment - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/several-women-accuse-tech-pundit-robert-scoble-of-sexual-harassment <comment><USER2> previously/related:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15511285](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15511285)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15519902](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15519902)

</comment><comment><USER3> Tech pundit... More like Tech commenter/speculator.

Edit: Sorry, I thought pundit was supposed to be knowledgeable. Acc to the Wikipedia link below it could be "or can at least appear to be knowledgeable" as well.

<comment><USER4> That's more or less the definition of pundit: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pundit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pundit)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I did wrong...I got sober blah blah. what about the women? I hope personal apologies are being sent to them. They were robbed of something very precious....

</comment><comment><USER6> Did the mods just delist this post from the front page? I can't find this story anymore in the front page or any of the subsequent pages.

I don't think a story like this should be delisted. This is a major problem in this (and many other) industries and should be discussed!

<comment><USER7> The story has been discussed extensively. HN prefers original sources, as the guidelines state: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).</comment></comment>


Batteriser: How to Measure Battery Cutoff Voltage - <AUTHOR> http://www.eevblog.com/2015/08/12/eevblog-779-batteriser-how-to-measure-battery-cutoff-voltage/

<comment><AUTHOR> Previous discussion of the Batteriser here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9644931](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9644931)

The first debunking:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9677900](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9677900)

</comment><comment><USER2> It's funny to think of the Batteriser in the context of the recent post about "assuming stupidity" in your competition.

IE "Current device manufacturers are stupid! There's all this energy left!"

<comment><USER3> This is a good point. If it's so easy to get longer battery lifetimes, why wouldn't device manufacturers just build the equivalent of the "batteriser" circuit into their devices? After all, longer battery life would give them an edge over their competition. But maybe it isn't really that easy...

For reference, here's a link to the recent "Presumption of Stupidity" post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10034883](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10034883)

<comment> TD-Linux The Batterizer circuit is more widely known as joule thief [1]. It's a boost converter that produces a constant output voltage regardless of the battery voltage. Some sort of similar switching power supply is standard in things like cell phones and laptops. For cheap toys, cost is key and the circuit would be too expensive.

"5 times more battery life" is kind of crazy though. Alkaline batteries start falling off quickly as they become discharged - in fact, this is a prized feature of the chemistry as the voltage stays pretty level through most of the life of the cell [2].

What surprises me is that they can build the Batterizer for $2.50. That seems awfully low for a completed product like that. How many amps can it handle?

Even at the $2.50 price point, you'd be better off buying NiMH cells. That would do much more for the environment than the Batterizer.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joule_thief](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joule_thief) [2] [http://www.powerstream.com/AA-tests.htm](http://www.powerstream.com/AA- tests.htm)

<comment><USER4> I think the idea of a "jule thief" basically is a extremely low power boost converter to run a LED as a nightlight on the remaining few % of an otherwise depleted battery.

A standard switching power converter wouldn't be called that way, even when modern chips used for that purpose obviously try hard to be as power efficient as possible.

In a typical circuit nowadays you'd also avoid the use of a two coil transformer, and just have a "one coil" inductor to save on copper. The second winding is needed to control the.transistor in the simple circuit shown on Wikipedia.

Also the simple circuit doesn't provide for any regulation. The more elaborate gameboy schematicsuses mentioned in the parallel comment to mine uses feedback (look for the 4.7v Zener pulling down the transistor) to accomplish that.

But of course nowadays one would use a simple 4 to 8 pin IC integrating almost everything except the inductor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I highly recommend subscribing to EEVblog he's like the EE version of the Applied Science YouTube channel.

<comment><USER4> I really like watching his videos, but frankly they often lack depth. Take for example the series of videos about the "Batteriser". Three videos, hours of footage, and the same facts repeated all over again. He very often mentions " tricks of the trade", especially when tearing down high quality measurement equipment, and that's something one cannot easily learn from without spending the bucks to buy some yourself. But for actual education about basics, the.information density is much higher in , and time spent more efficiently learning from a good book.

As a physicist I'm much more fascinated by Ben's applied science videos, they explain phenomena covering a much broader field. Also I think Ben chooses his words much more wisely, and therefore in the end is a better educator. The density of information hence is also much higher.

He lacks a Crocodile Dundee's Knife, though... :-)</comment></comment>


Americans didn't intend to elect a Republican majority to the House - <AUTHOR> http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2012/11/republicans-gerrymandering-house-representatives-election-chart

<comment><USER2> Oh, please.

Stop saying "Americans" as if we are each just a part of a collective with nothing but a collective will. That is the core tenet of Fascism: that the individual does not for all political or practical purposes exist, just the collective.

Every person who voted for a Republican intended to elect that Republican. Every person who voted for a Democrat intended to elect that Democrat.

</comment><comment><USER3> It makes little sense to compare total popular vote by party for the House, because each House district has its own slate of candidates. The Democrat candidate in a deeply conservative district might be farther to the right than the Republican candidate in a deeply liberal district.

</comment><comment><USER4> The more suburban/rural party gaining an edge over the more urban party is a natural result of any kind of geographical based representation.

Plus the Dems play the same game when they can: [http://www.propublica.org/article/in-california-democrats- re...](http://www.propublica.org/article/in-california-democrats- redistricting-strategy-paid-off)

Do you have an alternative strategy? Should it matter at all which district you live in?

What would be the consequences of representatives coming straight from population breakdown? Worse schools in districts with smaller populations?

</comment><comment><USER5> Of course, according to the article, gerrymandering only helps the reds. The blues must not have any of their own gerrymandered districts (see Maryland for a case in point).

</comment><comment><USER6> stopped listening when he said NC. NC already has two damn gerrymandered democratic districts, it doesn't need to gerrymander any more.

</comment><comment><USER7> I didnt realize I was following a political blog.

I also like how you failed to mention that this is a constitutional process that democrats exploit just as frequently as republicans.

<comment><AUTHOR> whose blog? you follow motherjones blog? Or you think HN is a blog? And when you say "you", who do you mean? PG? Me? Motherjones?</comment></comment>


MacOS 10.13, thoroughly reviewed - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/macos-10-13-high-sierra-the-ars-technica-review/ <comment><USER2> > "I just wish ... what's here felt even half as adventurous as what's > happening on the iPad."

I don't.

I don't want my desktop to feel adventurous, not even half-adventurous. I want it to be an efficient tool for getting the job done.

Please, desktop OS-manufacturers, resist the lure of adventuring new bells and whistles, and invest that time optimising, smoothing corners and making everything more efficient.

<comment><USER3> Totally agree, I personally feel this has been the case with 10.13, there hasn't been any annoying / over the top 'jazz' that gets in the way of my workflow and it's certainly a lot faster than previous macOS versions welcomed by Metal 2's dramatic latency improvements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Changing filesystems, adding external graphics support, adding support for > new image compression formats, and updating the graphics API to support VR > are all important, and none of them are small tasks. But the UI doesn't > change, apps get only minor updates

I disagree. Recently, I formatted my macbook pro and decided maybe I don't need all these "new features" in Sierra and would be fine with Mavericks.

Turned out it is more complicated than that.

\- The external screen renders better under Sierra than Mavericks. I didn't notice the change since it happened gradually and I don't know which version triggered it. But it was annoying enough to notice.

\- The battery life under Sierra is much better. I noticed a 10-20% extended lifetime.

\- Some apps would not work.

\- I missed the Sync between my iDevices. I didn't know that it didn't exist in Mavericks.

\- Finder is more responsive in Sierra than Mavericks

I really came to appreciate Sierra after that reset to Mavericks. In fact, I couldn't work with it and decided to upgrade. What High Sierra brings to the table is "unnoticeable" UI wise but makes your workflow easier.

These small improvements performance wise makes your work easier and better. On the longterm they accumulate and are making macOs still the best OS I have ever interacted with.

<comment><USER5> Just a clarification, since it isn't clear from your post:

Mavericks is 4 versions old (10.9), Sierra is current version (10.12), High Sierra is the on that adds these features you're talking about (10.13). In between were Yosemite and El Capitan.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS)

<comment><USER6> The following bullet "I missed the Sync between my iDevices. I didn't know that it didn't exist in Mavericks." Holds true for 10.11 at least for Notes. It most likely that other apps don't work either. I have 10.11 & 10.12 installed on my current machine so I have experienced the deprecation(or whatever it is) of the APIs that causes apps to stop working.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I still miss John Siracusa's annual Mac OS Ars Technica reviews, which were _the_ go-to destination to understand the nitty gritty details of every new release. The last one he did was for 10.10 (Yosemite) in 2014. But to his credit Andrew Cunningham has done a great job picking up the reins.

<comment><USER8> I find that Ars has some of the best in depth reviews when it comes to both hardware as well as software, and their intersection. Many other places just seem to do reviews for the clicks, but these are much more informative.

I just wish their site wasn't down right now so I could give it a read before updating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > For "Continuity" features like AirDrop and Handoff, you'll need a Mac with > both Bluetooth 4.0 and a 5GHz 802.11n or 802.11ac Wi-Fi adapter:

      -MacBook (Early 2015 and later)
      -iMac (Late 2012 and later)
      -MacBook Air (Mid 2012 and later)
      -MacBook Pro (Mid 2012 and later)
      -Mac Mini (Late 2012 and later)
      -Mac Pro (Late 2013)

> And Apple Watch unlocking requires 802.11ac because of the way the software > determines the distance between your watch and your Mac. This narrows the > support list further:

      -MacBook (Early 2015 and later)
      -iMac (Late 2012 and later)
      -MacBook Air (Mid 2012 and later)
      -MacBook Pro (Mid 2012 and later)
      -Mac Mini (Late 2012 and later)
      -Mac Pro (Late 2013)

> Finally, support for Metal and Metal 2 requires a relatively modern GPU. > These Macs all include integrated or dedicated GPUs that support the API, > though some earlier Mac Pros can also support it with an upgrade to a more > modern GPU:

      -MacBook (Early 2015 or newer)
      -MacBook Pro (2012 or newer)
      -MacBook Air (2012 or newer)
      -Mac Mini (2012 or newer)
      -iMac (2012 or newer)
      -Mac Pro (Late 2013)

I appreciate the attempt at a specific list of models compatible with each feature. But this appears to be the exact same list twice, followed by a less- specific version of the same list a third time.

<comment><USER10> I know that second list is wrong because I own a Mid 2012 MacBook Pro retina and it has 802.11n (not AC) and doesn't support Apple Watch unlocking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was disappointed that I had to search for how to enable the caching services. That's done via the "Sharing" part of system preferences.

This is one of the features that was only in the Server option but is now available for free. We have a Mac Mini that's an iTunes server and always on. So I expect it will work great going forward for caching apps, music and photos.

[https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/set-up-content- cach...](https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/set-up-content-caching- mchl3b6c3720)

</comment><comment><USER12> Anecdotally, after updating from 10.12.6 to 10.13 on my maxed-out 2017 15" MBP, transitioning between spaces and apps remains silky smooth, even when under heavy CPU load, which wasn't really the case previously.

</comment><comment><USER13> With the news of major windowserver glitches causing crazy flickering in Finder, as well as kernel panics for macs with nvidia cards, I think I'll wait this one out.

<comment><USER14> FWIW, I have a 15-inch Late 2013 MBP with an NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2 GB, and have experienced neither of these issues. Just an anecdote for balance.

<comment><USER15> I'll second that report for that model - no issues.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What usable mobile phone do you recommend for privacy conscious users? - <AUTHOR> I looked into pine64 and purism, they both look impractical for day to day use. I have bad luck in the past picking android phones and finding out the custom ROM route was difficult or impractical. I wanted to know if anyone on HN had any success stories with recent phones. <comment> abc-xyz I've had success with an iPod. It's very cheap, the size is perfect, and it's just as fast as the latest iPhones.

It does everything a normal iPhone does (and I've never encountered an app that didn't work), except you have no SIM so you can't make regular calls, send/receive SMS, or use data. This can of course be a problem at times, so I still have a cheap backup phone that's usually powered off, and often left at home unless I'm meeting someone or need to use Google/Apple maps. From a privacy perspective you also benefit from its lack of SIM card since it doesn't ping cell towers.

</comment><comment><USER2> iPhone SE2, fastest mobile phone CPU in Universe, has all of Apples privacy protection features, and only $399.

</comment><comment><USER3> The fingerprint of an iPhone is very common. If you use a rare privacy friendly Android operating system on a rare device, your device may have a very unique fingerprint.

So if you don't install many apps, I believe an iPhone is the best solution. You will still be tracked of course.

</comment><comment><USER4> Buy a pixel and flash graphene OS.

Tons of guides on YT

<comment><USER5> I like this idea. I might use it for my next upgrade. Probably soon since one of my buttons is loose and there's a discolored spot on the screen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The PinePhone or a Fairphone with LineageOS.

Have a look at the Librem tho, just for shits and giggles if nothing else.

</comment><comment><USER7> An un-jailbroken iPhone with the latest software.</comment>


Photographer sues Getty Images for selling photos she donated to public - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/07/photographer-sues-getty-images-for-selling-photos-she-donated-to-public/ <comment><USER2> _" Sarah Lochting, Getty Images vice president for communications, sent Ars a statement which said that the lawsuit was "the first time Getty Images was made aware of the matter. We are currently looking into these allegations with the aim of addressing these concerns as soon as possible."_

 _Lochting also underscored that LCS and Getty Images are "separate entities and have no operational relationship."_

 _However, DNS records show that LCS ' listed address is 605 5th Avenue South, Suite 400 Seattle, Washington, which is Getty Images' corporate address, a fact that she would not explain to Ars._

 _" It's a no comment in response to your follow up questions," Lochting e-mailed._

See, when you lie about the second thing (and come on, that took Ars about 3 seconds to sniff out) I can't really trust you aren't lying about the first thing.</comment>


Show HN: An app I made to eradicate child begging in my country at a hackathon - <AUTHOR> https://care.gilani.me <comment><AUTHOR> Code and all at [https://github.com/amingilani/project- care](https://github.com/amingilani/project-care)

We didn't win, but my app is fairly polished and feature complete for an MVP so Show HN it is.

Feedback and questions appreciated. Hopefully you'll help me understand how I lost to apps that weren't as polished or as practical.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there any P2P compute protocol? - <AUTHOR>

Is there any P2P compute protocol which tit for tat rewards users for donating CPU power? For example you donate 5% background gpu/cpu so that you can use lots of other users gpu/cpu when you render? How would such a system work? Would it use IPFS or similar global file system? <comment><USER2> There were some attempts in the early 2000s at "SETI@Home but commercial" type systems based on distributing work packets and scavenging unused desktop CPU time. DataSynapse was one (they later became a more standard cloud-computing company, and are now part of TIBCO): [http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,102871,00.asp](http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,102871,00.asp). However, I don't believe any such systems have become successful.

A more recent variant is renting out VMs, a more cloud-computing take on the idea rather than the utility-computing one: [https://secure.slicify.com/](https://secure.slicify.com/). But it remains to be seen whether something like this will catch on either.</comment>


Webcam2favicon - exercise in literate coffeescript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/franzenzenhofer/webcam2favicon

<comment><AUTHOR> hi, i coded/wrote this for my latest <http://www.viennajs.org/> meetup talk. basically a midnight experiment in literate programming. the experimental point is, the README.md you see the github repo is the actual source.</comment>


MIT almost produces an optoelectronic computer chip - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/118485-mit-almost-produces-an-optoelectronic-computer-chip

<comment><USER2> FYI: I first saw this headline in the late 80s.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't see a real advantage to a optical link between the CPU and RAM. The copper only adds a quarter of a nanosecond to the latency anyway. The rest of the applications sound cool though.

<comment><USER4> It only adds a quarter of a nanosecond at the current distance from the CPU, but using it you could place more RAM at greater distance on the motherboard without significantly increasing delays. For applications where you want to store large data structures entirely in RAM this would be ideal.

Also, optical signals are less susceptible to RF interference from noisy components.</comment></comment>


Checkboxes that kill your product - <AUTHOR> http://limi.net/checkboxes-that-kill/

<comment><USER3> Yeah because those who are aware how those things work can totally waste their time downloading addons to do basic things.

Common sense: you don't know what this control is for? DON'T touch it. Or touch it and face the consequences (learning's got to start somewhere, right?).

This article seems to encourage apple's way of thinking ('simple', 'just works') and this is one of the main reasons for me (and many other people, I reckon) to ignore all their products completely. You want to go this way? fine. Don't expect anyone technically-literate to use your thingie though (because it becomes harder to use for debugging and all those things than, say, Chrome). Also:

> _Is it really worth having a preference panel that benefits fewer than 2% of > users overall?_

and then

> _Even 1% of a few hundred million isn't a trivial number of people._

Decide on it already :)

<comment><USER4> I think there's a bit of nuance here - the point isn't entirely that you shouldn't have these options, it's more that it's extremely user unfriendly to have options in a primary preferences panel or menu that can be selected and will completely break the user experience, _without any clear path to resolution_.

I would say that since the code already exists to do these things, maybe the right way to deal with this is to move dangerous preferences to a sub-menu with warning signs, and then some sort of icon or notification to warn you that you've got a setting enabled that will break big swaths of the Internet.

<comment><USER5> > _will completely break the user experience, without any clear path to > resolution._ //

Checkboxes have a clear path to resolution, you [un]check the box to return it to it's original state.

To prevent the user forgetting then perhaps configuration changes could be added to the history (or a different "undo-history") so the user can easily back-track.

<comment><USER4> I agree in theory, but remember that many of these options have unintended consequences that may not be clear. So, for example, the navigation bar disappears - how do you get it back? Where did it go?

Or disabling image loading, maybe it works fine on the first few sites you visit, but then you go to the google homepage and it stops working - what do you do then? What broke that functionality? What if you're not the person who [un]checked the box?

The perspective of the post is about how regular users might easily find themselves in a situation where "basic" settings broke core functionality in the browser unintentionally, without guidance on how to fix it.

I do like the "config change history" idea, though that might be Yet Another Panel(tm) that's too complicated for the regular user. But maybe there's a "Big Red Button" that firefox could have that sets things back to a "standard" or "known good" config. These types of things are great for novice users because you can tell someone, "Look, if you get into trouble, don't know what's going on, hit the big red button".

I've used stuff like this for certain family members who are not great with cmoputers - rather than trying to teach them all of the different knobs to twiddle, spend a lot of time teaching them how to get to a known good state ("Close all fo the windows and restart", etc.).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really don't understand how it is a problem, these options are surely useful for a portion of the userbase otherwise they would not be displayed. I'm pretty sure people browsing with a 33k modem connection would enjoy disabling images so everything could be faster and you can find examples for any item of this list.

All these options are under the configuration menu anyway so no inexperienced user are not going to go in this menu anyway... I don't really see the point this article is trying to make.

<comment><USER7> > I really don't understand how it is a problem,

It's a problem if you're an armchair "usability engineer" who needs to write a blog post.

<comment><USER8> "Previously head of Firefox ux & Product Design Strategy at Mozilla "

I'm guessing the word previously wasn't there back when the post was written.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "That's right, you can't even see the text box you're supposed to type your search into. Congratulations, we just broke the Internet."

No, _Google_ broke the Internet. If they've introduced a dependency between text boxes and images (?!), that's down to them. Web interface should work via progressive enhancement such that it's perfectly possible to browse and use a site without javascript, css, or even images.

<comment><USER10> If you want a website which works perfectly without Javascript, CSS or images feel free to pay for it. The rest of us will continue ignoring that tiny minority of people in the interest of getting real work done.

<comment><USER9> It's not just the "tiny minority" (whatever that means — I'm guessing neither of us have actual figures) of people with any of those technologies disabled that benefit from a progressive approach. I'm not 100% idealistic on this one, but at least apportion the blame where it's due.

<comment><USER11> Four years ago it was around 1% of users worldwide; I doubt that number has gone up: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9478737/browser- statistic...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9478737/browser-statistics- on-javascript-disabled)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Google is forcing its browser, Apple has its own, and Microsoft has one as well. I don't see "regular users" using Firefox unless it is recommended to them by the "2%". So don't annoy the 2%.

</comment><comment><USER13> My problem with the argument of moving everything into an addon is that I don't care for installing 13 addons with no permissions list (in firefox at least) and no way to keep them away from my browsing activity.

</comment><comment><USER14> Can anyone explain to me the problem? They basically created an OPTION, i.e., optional, that breaks when people who don't get it use it.

Now I've got plenty of tech illiterate friends, and they've asked me many questions over the years, but never did it have anything to do with browser settings not loading pictures or javascript.

In fact, it's the one thing people tend not to mess with. They'll do tons of weird software, they'll even do regedits from a misinformed guide, but touching browser settings? I don't know about you, but none of my friends ever did.

So what's the problem here? Don't see one. What's the solution if there was a problem? Create a 'dev-mode' button, give the user a warning they shouldn't use it unless they're software developers, and put your tricky settings behind that wall.

The solution doesn't seem to me to require people to install add-ons for what is basic functionality to a decent amount of people, especially not in an addon store with lots of third-party crap that might work now, but doesn't work in combo with another add-on, or stops working after the browser updates and the add-on dev moved on to other things.

<comment><USER15> > What's the solution if there was a problem? Create a 'dev-mode' button, give > the user a warning they shouldn't use it unless they're software developers, > and put your tricky settings behind that wall.

That's my preferred solution. On both Android (tap the build version 7 times) and Chrome (chrome://flags) it works extremely well, allowing you access to settings you wouldn't dream of giving the general public.

They could also move some of this from the general settings panel into the Developer Bar. Chrome allows you to disable JavaScript for your current page from there (although it still has the global setting too).

I'm all for Firefox reducing the complexity/gotchas within the general public's settings panel. Just allow advanced users to continue to access them via some means and everyone is happy. It wouldn't be a big deal to e.g. have to type in About:DeveloperSettings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So how many of these things have been changed since the article was published 1,5 years ago?

After looking through my settings, more or less all of them, with the exception of cache management, it seems.

<comment><USER17> Yes. And there was - on HN - much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is from 2013. Previous comments on this article: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5394494](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5394494)

<comment><USER3> Perfect comment about FF becoming the next IE. Same thought crossed my mind as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> In the case of Hipmunk and other javascript-required sites, I would say that's their problem, not the browser. Obviously, Hipmunk made a choice, and that's well within their rights, to not deal with browsers that don't have JS enabled. _I 've_ done the same thing.

But never once did I, or would I, blame the user.

These are just the decisions we have to make to get things done some days.

</comment><comment><USER20> Firefox can even break itself. If you deselect "View -> Toolbars -> Menu Bar" with the menu bar then the menu bar disappears. How do you get it back? You can't repeat the same procedure because the menu bar is not there any more!

It turns out you can right-click on an empty space on the tab bar to reenable the menu bar, but this is far from obvious.

<comment><USER21> Press Alt, which is the standard menu shortcut in Windows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I find it amusing that one of his examples is disabling SSL 3.0.

</comment><comment><USER23> Personally I _hate_ when they hide or turn off entirely every possible option. They are there for a reason if someone wants to use them - if not - <USER2> don't use them. After such options have disappeared peoples that were using it are pissed and those who have not - don't even notice.

</comment><comment><USER24> Wait, what he's saying is that it's not obvious that View -> Toolbars -> Navigation Toolbar toggles the visibility of the navigation toolbar? I still have nothing but pure distaste for the current "I can look like Chrome, too!" UI decision of Firefox, and I'm just going to get more peeved as they kill off more features for pure stylistic sake.

So in the future I'll have to browse through another 6 dozen 'classic options' add-ons until I find one that is maintained, compatible, does what it claims, and hopefully doesn't break my privacy?

Sounds great that the company that puts "Your Privacy First" finds that untrusted third parties are the best providers of core functionality that should have been in the browser to begin with.

</comment><comment><USER25> The thing that so many of the usability challenged folks in this thread are missing is that this is an argument about checkboxes in the standard application preferences.

For complicated products like Firefox, there can be a range of options based on how in your face they are:

      1. wizard that demands a decision when you first install the app (last resort)
      2. main pane of preferences (common decisions)
      3. about:config (obscure use-cases, dangerous use cases)
      4. only within the dev-tools (common case for a specific group of people)
      5. recompiling (the other last resort)

The customization/safety tradeoff is real, but it's not zero-sum.

</comment><comment><USER26> Seems a nerve was struck with this one over the time since this was originally posted.

Most of the options he's complaining about are not easily changed in my current Windows version of Firefox.

Only the certificates (which is a multi-click process to get to) and the cache management are located as described.

Although, looking around I found an option I never bothered to notice before. View -> Page Style seems to provide the ability to disable all CSS quite easily. What purpose does that serve for an everyday user?

</comment><comment><USER27> Except most of those checkboxes don't exist anymore, the encryption tab is gone, etc. ([http://imgur.com/YX4KyQL](http://imgur.com/YX4KyQL))

</comment><comment><USER28> If Firefox would just add DOCUMENTATION (text and perhaps a URL to more text) to the options in the about:config page, _many_ aspects of using it would improve enormously.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is related to a question I was just pondering. I'm developing a web application that relies heavily on JavaScript for a lot of the interactivity. I was planning on devoting a decent amount of time to implementing JavaScript disabled functionality as well, but realized for my target market (small to medium business), that might not be very important, and could just be a big time waste. Anyone have any experience/insight?

<comment><USER30> I find that a useful way to look at this is to compare the time you would spend on that to the growth you would get by spending time elsewhere.

For example if it takes 1 week to add support for JS disabled clients and they are 1% of your target market but you could spend a week on a feature that would likely add 2% growth, it's a pretty easy decision. The exact numbers are sometimes hard to work out, but the thought process can make the decision easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Well, how about the option that per default DOES NOT ALLOW FIREFOX TO AUTOMATICALLY SWITCH BETWEEN ONLINE AND OFFLINE MODE!

Instead you have to explicitly hit Work Offline to get into offline mode. That's totally bad for a modern application that can work both offline and online.

</comment><comment><USER32> I like Firefox with options - better yet Firefox + noscript.

If your website needs with js, flash and need to load js plugins from 10 other ad domains to see, that's fine. I don't want to see it anyway.

I love to have choices.

</comment><comment><USER5> The "load images" argument uses images from an alternate domain that is blocked where I am (porn hosting) ... so I can't see his screenshots arguing for not allowing images to show ... oh, the irony.

</comment><comment><USER33> In that rather technical article, I was glad to see that the author thinks readers need help (in the form of a hover tooltip) that explains the "&" symbol. It means "and"! Who knew?!

<comment><USER9> It _is_ quite a stylised ampersand - maybe some people won't recognise it? :-)</comment></comment>


Should you care if the government spies on you? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sfgate.com/techchron/2013/06/06/should-you-care-if-the-government-spies-on-you/

<comment><USER2> Evidently only if it's a Republican administration doing the spying. Funny how the outrage at the last administration's privacy atrocities evaporates when the opposing party is in power. Especially egregious given that the previous administration never promised to be transparent.</comment>


What the Pyra Linux Handheld Should Look Like: Final Renders - <AUTHOR> http://pandoralive.info/?p=5257..

<comment><USER2> As a long time user of the Pandora, I can't wait to have a Pyra in my hands. The Pandora has been such an amazing machine - as a games system, as a hacking workstation, and as a general-purpose computer ..

I think that the guys behind the Pandora/Pyra have learned a lot about how you build a community-driven device and still stay alive - they've faced every single challenge that a startup can go through, and then some (volcano) .. and have still managed to stay alive. If you're in the business of making a new hardware product, you should do your research and see what these guys have gone through - it may help a great deal.</comment>


Hulu Labs: Face Match - <AUTHOR> http://www.hulu.com/labs/tagging

<comment><AUTHOR> This link might be better:

<http://blog.hulu.com/2011/12/08/from-hulu-labs-face-match/>

It lists some shows that allow identifying actors by clicking on their face. I tried it with the Glee episode "Choke" and it worked for me.</comment>


Jury deliberating UNIX ownership in ongoing SCO trial - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/03/jury-deliberating-unix-ownership-in-ongoing-sco-trial.ars <comment><USER2> Could someone explain the implications of both possible outcomes?

<comment><USER3> I believe that if they lose, they're pretty much dead, and if they win, they can resurrect their longshot lawsuits against IBM and others.</comment></comment>


Tricky Meebo bar uses your Google+ profile via iframe - <AUTHOR> https://www.meebo.com/support/article/174/

<comment><USER2> How is that "tricky"? It is a standard pattern for preventing XSS/XSRF

<comment><AUTHOR> I just realised this works just like interactive tweet or share buttons, but it was the first time I saw profile elements and activity log used like that, visible on some other page I never logged into using Google+. Hence it felt "tricky", especially since Meebo's implementation is non-standard, I can't find these elements in widgets or API.</comment></comment>


Indian Renewable Energy Sector's Expectations from the Union Budget 2018-19 - <AUTHOR> https://mycleanenergy.blog/2018/01/22/mnres-expectations-from-the-union-budget-2018-19/ <comment><USER2> With the dropping tariffs, it will be interesting to see how the sector remains sustainable over the next few years

<comment><USER3> The manufacturing costs have fallen in the last few years paving the way for decrease in tariifs. At the end of the day, grid parity is the way to go if the govt wants this sector be more than just a charitable initiative. The focus so far has been on capacity addition. As this sector matures every year, the way forward would be to introduce schemes that reward good performance of power plants and penalize poor efficiencies.

<comment><USER2> The increased duty on Chinese manufactured equipments will also be a factor to be watched out for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What chances does India stand of reaching the 175 GW goal by 2022? Are there any clear cut plans for the same?</comment>