Apple ignores bug report - <AUTHOR> http://www.phoboslab.org/log/2012/07/what-the-fucking-fuck-apple

<comment><USER3> You're telling me Apple is unresponsive to support requests from their developer ecosystem? Really? _Get out of town!_ I don't believe it.

Despite all of the rightful moaning of iOS developers, for some reason they continue to flock to the Apple platform. Apple will continue to treat their developers like second class citizens until there is a financial incentive to do otherwise. Right now, when one pissed off developer leaves or goes bankrupt because their app was yanked from the store or wasn't approved for some BS reason, 50 developers replace him.

<comment><USER4> The fact that so many of the comments replying to yours are quick to defend Apple says it all really.

Developers will put up with more crap than they should when platform religion gets in the way. Sure, there are arguments against switching platforms to Android or Windows, but most of these mean very little. Those that refuse to ditch iOS aren't doing so because they'll miss out on potential customers, it's because they like the idea of building apps for the most popular phone on the market, despite the crap they have to put up with.

It's the equivalent of dating a bitchy model. You could be a lot happier with the cute girl next door, but you'd rather put up with her shit just because you can say to your mates "I go out with a model".

<comment><USER5> "Platform religion"?

That's a bit rich considering that the iOS app store is where developers can _make money._ I think that's a far, far more powerful motivating factor than "platform religion." The Blackberry had plenty of fervent followers and advocates: look where that got them.

Also, comparing Mac/iOS users to members of a religion is the oldest, saggiest, most lackluster thought-terminating-cliche in the book. Come off it already.

<comment><USER4> Are you from the US? If so, you can make money on the Android market quite easily. The idea that iOS is the only platform that can make money is a very dated idea, and one that never really had any merit in the first place.

There's a reason why the cliche exists, because it is true. The biggest truths in this world are the obvious ones, not the exciting ones. You pick a platform on perceived value and it's likely that your gut feeling (along with the crowd) will lead you to Apple.

If I'm wrong, then why aren't developers ditching Apple? Why is no one boycotting a platform that is happy to litigate, rather than innovate? Why are there so many weak money-related excuses to not developing for Android? It's because of personal belief, and it is your personal belief that iOS is better and will make you more money.

By that logic, we'd all set up shop in silicon valley, otherwise working would just be pointless...

<comment><USER6> We are building LiveLoop's mobile client for iOS, and not Android, for monetary reasons, and I feel that I can justify this easily.

First of all, the cost of developing for Android, for us, would be higher, because our code to render slides is somewhat resolution-dependent and iDevices come in fewer resolution variants than Android devices. One could make the claim that we should be doing everything in a completely resolution- adaptive way, but we haven't.

Second, developing for iPhone gives you the iPad for a negligible development cost, giving you access to the tablet market where Android does not have a meaningful presence yet. The great thing about the tablet market is that people spend more money on similar-functionality apps for iPad than for iPhone.

Third, the fact of the matter is that while you can make money on the Android market, the revenue economics of iOS apps are currently completely dominating Android. Both upfront and recurring revenue is higher on iOS. We don't have any qualms about leaving Android on the table _today_ \-- obviously, changes in any of these three premises, or huge growth in Android marketshare on tabloid and handheld, could change this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Being critical is great. Creating workarounds is even better. Being entitled is not so great.

If you want to talk about how Apple is terrible to developers, fine, talk about the App store double-standards and the developer agreement. But this is hardly an exceptional case of a company being 'anti-developer'.

I can't tell you how many bugs I've filed from OS X, chrome, to various python libraries well the response is pretty much "welp its broke" (if that). If you depend on some sort of functionality that you're not getting, it's time to move on or create your own.

The tone of this post reminds me of 'why I'm not developing for twitter' post ... where the take away for that was be weary of developing on platforms you don't control. I would assume that most of us have learned that the hard way with esoteric libraries with ghost-maintainers. Myself, I'm becoming weary of turning every inconvenience into some sort of political issue. This is _hacker_ news. Can we get back to making clever and disruptive solutions please?

<comment><AUTHOR> I built a lot of workarounds to make my game engine ( <http://impactjs.com/> ) work on iOS, Android and other browsers. But I couldn't find a viable workaround for this multitouch bug. The touchstart/move/end events are the only way to detect multiple touches in Mobile Safari - and they don't work as they should.

This bug is affecting many HTML5 games and as long as I'm not allowed to install another browser (engine) on iOS, I will keep complaining.

<comment><USER8> I think it's great that you're complaining in the way you are. It'll be interesting to see whether Apple responds. MS-Word has retained some of its obvious bugs since 1995.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Whilst I think Apple took too long to look at this bug, the instructions in the given test case are, for me at least, ambiguous:

 _1\. Hold one finger down in the blue area above_

OK, that's easy enough :)

 _2\. Touch straight down with another finger - don't move your fingers on the surface_

And here's where the confusion lies; I thought you wanted the tester to slide their finger down the screen or something like that. From the video it appears that you want to ensure that they "hold another finger on the blue area" or something like that.

Now, I confess that I don't own an iPhone, so couldn't test whether that made much of a difference, but that could be one reason why they rejected your test case. If in doubt blame incompetence, not malice :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not a native speaker, so these instructions may very well be ambiguous. Any suggestions on how to clarify it?

Back then, I built the test case and asked on twitter if anybody else could confirm the bug. I got several answers (e.g. one from mrdoob within the minute: <https://twitter.com/mrdoob/statuses/6896165488427008> ) so I thought the instructions were fine.

<comment><USER10> 1\. Touch the screen in the blue area with one finger and hold the finger there.

2\. Use another finger to touch the screen somewhere below the first finger.

3\. Lift your second finger and repeat step 2.

<comment><USER11> You may want to say "touch (but do not drag)"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have filed dozens of OS X and iOS bugs over the years. Almost all of them were closed with the claim that Apple already knew about that bug. However many of them were really subtle and it was unlikely that anybody else had already reported them, especially if a developer preview introducing the bug had just been released. Furthermore some of them are not fixed even now, years after the first report.

My experience is that Apple will almost never admit they don't know about a bug. The only exception are security bugs where one actually gets real feedback.

<comment><USER13> My experience is that Apple isn't that bad. I have filed several bugs with Apple over the years, and IMO their response is pretty good compared to other vendors, particularly given that I have no paid support relationship with them. The bugs ranged from AD integration issues to PDF rendering problems, to an ActiveSync issue specific to our unusual configuration.

I do have an expensive support relationship with Microsoft, and I've gotten similar results for the same types of problems. We log bug reports, and the serious ones with business impact get fixed. UI glitches or corner-case Outlook problems get fixed more slowly, or only via custom hotfix. Serious bugs get fixed more quickly, and typically get rolled into a future patch.

In the past, I've had similar or even worse results from other large companies like IBM, Oracle, Informix and Sun.

Software has bugs, and low-priority bugs persist for a long time, for reasons that may be good or bad. In any case, posting expletive-laden rants railing against a vendor is unprofessional and unlikely to garner a positive reaction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> With all that swearing you could be forgiven for thinking Apple had been caught skinning kittens for iPhone parts. Save the hyperbole, please.

<comment><USER15> Two year wait and 40 hours of developer time spent on a simple bug is worth a bit of swearing.

<comment><USER16> So let him swear at his wife. Or at Apple. Why should we have to read it?

<comment><USER15> It's not like the title didn't give away the fact that the rant would be full of swearing. Also, you didn't have to read it.

<comment><USER14> My problem with the level of vitriol is that it doesn't leave much room for when things are truly bad - this has caused an inconvenience and lost time to him personally, but it's not like he's really suffered, like so many people do on a daily basis around the world. I'd love to see this passion directed at (for example) issues of social justice.

<comment><USER17> I think you're underestimating the importance of this bug. For the developer of a HTML5 game platform this is a huge roadblock - it can totally ruin gameplay, prevents the use of more complex controls and ultimately hinders adoption.

<comment><USER14> I have to assume this comment was sarcastic...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have so much sympathy for you. (Along with anyone else that tries to produce anything that runs on any iOS device and it's walled garden.)

It's easy to see that when building a platformer game, unimpeded multitouch functionality is pretty essential. Have you been able to identify other games that have the same problem? I would of thought that this would be resolved so much sooner than 2 years. It's a core part of multitouch functionality.

At least you still have your app available on iOS!.. It is total BS how developers are treated. Apple has built up a product which sells hundreds of millions of units per year, largely in part due to the developers who have invested time in their ecosystem, but it's total shit how they return no investment back to the people who have supported this system. (Yes, developers are largely to thank. Look at how RIM and MS are failing, because they don't control nor have the content).

Everyone deserves better.

<comment><USER19> I agree. But, the only reason anyone writes for iOS is money. It's one of the best selling phones on the market. And iPhone uses tend to buy a lot of apps. There's a long list of developers who made fortunes on that platform.

So if you don't want to write for it, then don't. The only force that can change Apple's behavior is the consumer. Apple doesn't care about anything else. And they never will.

So stop complaining. Write your app. And hope it's a hit. Then you can sell it and buy a house on the beach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is there any evidence that Apple wants game developers targeting mobile Safari? It's a classic platform tactic to abuse APIs you don't want used (HTML5) to drive people to the one you do want used (ObjC). Between platform lock in and 30 cents on the dollar it's clear Apple wants developers making native apps.

<comment><USER21> I think this whats really at work here. For the same reason they won't let Mozilla, Opera, or Google make their own web browsers. Apple is affraid of people building their own HTML5 apps and subsequent app stores. This would cut into Apple's app store monopoly and cost them their 30% on every app that is sold.

Apple only cares about what makes it money, not delivering the best experience to consumers.

And you can be damn sure that they don't give a shit about developers, especially if they aren't making native iOS apps which aren't being sold in the app store.

<comment><USER22> > I think this whats really at work here. For the same reason they won't let > Mozilla, Opera, or Google make their own web browsers. Apple is affraid of > people building their own HTML5 apps and subsequent app stores. This would > cut into Apple's app store monopoly and cost them their 30% on every app > that is sold.

> Apple only cares about what makes it money, not delivering the best > experience to consumers.

I disagree here, mainly because the amount of money Apple makes from the App Store is tiny, relative to their overall revenues. This year at WWDC, Tim Cook announced that Apple had paid $5 billion to developers on the App Store, which translates into a little over $7.1 billion in apps sold, or $2.1 billion in revenue for Apple since 2008. That's about $130 million per quarter, against revenue of between $7 billion and $30 billion per quarter. That's without considering hosting costs and credit card fees.

$130 million is certainly no small change. But for Apple, in the big scope, it isn't printing money for them.

<comment><USER23> You're right, it's not directly about money. But it is to reinforce their closed platform and ecosystem.

If a great application can be used instantly off the internet, with no download, no install, no hassles, no App Store, (the way software should be) then the consumer has no particular reason to buy an Apple device over one of their competitors.

By preventing developers from building quality web applications, Apple helps maintain the need for developers to build for their native platform, which means consumers need to buy Apple devices to use those applications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Don't worry man, I have this Nexus One phone where the touchscreen registers touch on the side of the phone, and the advertised multitouch doesn't even work, never mind not receiving updates for the rest of my life (my hardware bugs cost me over $600!!). Your game has no chance to work on my phone, why don't I see a "What the Fucking Fuck, Google" post. All systems are plagued with bugs, and a lot of them get neglected forever. Instead of aggressively attacking a company (Apple hateboy?), expecting them to fix something after some f-bombs were dropped, why not write a meaningful blog post.

<comment><USER25> > why don't I see a "What the Fucking Fuck, Google" post.

Because you haven't written it yet?

<comment><USER26> Why should he have to?

Plenty of Android devs owned Nexus Ones. It was the Android dev phone for a pretty important year. Yet we heard little griping at Google from devs over the fact that they cheaped out on the hardware for their flagship device.

Moreover there are countless ignored bugs in Android, many of the most starred issues have been there for two years or more. This griping about Apple is ridiculous.

They're a massive faceless software & hardware vendor, big surprise a low- priority bug (never once seen someone who isn't a dev or similar play an HTML5 game in my life) slipped through the cracks.

This isn't new, nor is it unique to Apple, so it would be nice if we could can the melodrama and focus on the issue.

<comment><USER25> Except in Android's, and especially the Nexus series of phones case, any random can do whatever fixes to the core code they wish - that's not something you can do in Apple land. I'd be shocked to learn that third party patches don't exist for at least some of the rough edges.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I've only filed a couple of radars, but actually received pretty good response. However, they weren't api-related.

One was about an issue I was having running the Britannica encyclopedia. I don't recall what it was, but Apple even called me about it.

One was about a bug in Lion, where if you pick a large desktop image, and tile it, it gets all corrupted and there are artifacts in the desktop image that respond to movement of windows above the desktop. The corruption of the image looks like what happens when CIAffineClamp is applied to an image: a row of pixels at some place in the image is repeated out to the edge of the screen.

The response was that it was fixed in a point release, but the fix was to disable the Tile option for large images. Except if you have it set to alternate images periodically, with the Tile option selected, a large image can still be tiled and displayed incorrectly.

</comment><comment><USER28> So he let this bug sit in his game for two years without thinking of a work around himself?

The situation where any platform owner has a bug that impacts your software you should try as best you can to work around it because you never know if and when it will get fixed.

<comment><USER29> This doesn't sound like the kind of issue that can be worked around. The OS sends you the wrong touch events. How do you work around that?

<comment><USER28> Change the game design slightly? He claims he wants to walk and jump at the same time, maybe adjust the control scheme to make jumping triggered in a different way.

This bug, in particular is not a an easy thing to work around, I agree and maybe he did try all sorts of things but none of them worked, we don't know.

My point is - in the general case you should not rely on Apple fixing a bug to make your product work correctly.

<comment><USER29> In case you didn't know, the post is by the author of the ImpactJS game engine. The job of engine writers is to make sure everything works - <USER2> around it for one specific game helps only that game, but does not ensure all games using the engine will work. So the next best thing the engine author can do is pressure the OS maker (Apple) in to fixing the bug, which is what this post is about, since there is no feasible way an engine or library can work around problems like this _in general_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Reviewing the test case code the basic bug seem to be that sometimes a touchend event won't fire when a secondary finger is lifted.

You can make your code much more reliable by handling all touch events and looking that the touches or targetTouches respectively instead of incremental a total touch counter on each start and decrementing on each end. This causes even the slightest movement to trigger a touchmove event which and the entire current touch state is in touches within all the events. So changing your test like so gets close and you can at least see the use more clearly:

var i = 0; var numTouches = 0; var out = document.getElementById('out'); var indicator = document.getElementById('indicator');

function handleTouch( ev ) {

    		ev.preventDefault();

    		i++;

    		numTouches = ev.touches.length;

    		out.value += i + ': ' + ev.type + ', ' + numTouches + '\n';

    		indicator.style.backgroundColor
    			= (numTouches == 2) ? '#8e6' : '#fb7';

    		out.scrollTop = out.scrollHeight;

    	}

    	var ta = document.getElementById('ta');
    	ta.addEventListener('touchstart', handleTouch, false);
    	ta.addEventListener('touchend', handleTouch, false);
    	ta.addEventListener('touchmove', handleTouch, false);
    	ta.addEventListener('touchcancel', handleTouch, false);

</comment><comment><USER31> 1) Yes, Apple is closed and lame. This isn't new.

2) I almost fell over laughing when you mentioned a whole "40" hours. I think if I went through that whole process with Apple, I'd be happy if I got it out of the way in 40 hours.

Apple "used to" (as in, they cast a damn good image of) following Dieter Rams type of design philosophy, but that's long gone in the freak show app-orgy that exists within iOS now. It's a mess, it's terribly disorganized, it's not "less, but better" it's "more, and worse".

Personally, I'm surprised that they let iOS get this stale. But apparently as long as the penumbra of Steve's[RIP] reality distortion field exists, they will blindly march on.

What Apple needs is a new visionary. Not someone to try to emulate Steve Jobs. And they need to open the hell out of their products.

If you believe your hardware and OS are best, then open the hardware to letting people install Android on it if they don't agree, and write a version of iOS to run on other hardware.

It's not going to happen (and I hope they prove me wrong). Apple is designed as a coupled HW-SW ship, and I don't see them changing course any time soon.

My advice: Pay attention to your perspective bed partners before you commit and get into bed with them.

<comment><USER32> It's not like Android isn't without it's infuriating problems. Worse, most people are running several versions behind and the uptake on new ones is slowing, so some problems may never be fixed.

<comment><USER33> My phone has ICS and honestly I'm not getting a lot out of it. I could be back on 2.3 or 2.2 and not even notice. I think Android versions don't really have much for the end user unless he or she needs a specialized application that makes use of the newer APIs.

I'd rather go with something thats open-ish and stale than this controlled freakshow that is the iOS ecosystem.

<comment><USER32> Android in its present form is an uncontrolled freakshow. To test an Android app properly requires at least a dozen devices if not more, and even then you're only scratching the surface. You need a veritable museum at hand to be sure you've got it right.

What Apple's doing right is introducing new features and then aggressively pushing these down to the devices. iOS 5 is by far the majority of devices now, and very few are on anything under 4.

Android on the other hand seems perpetually stuck in 2.3 land. As you point out there's not much in the way of advantages if none of the apps are dependent on features introduced in 4.0. This further stalls the upgrade cycle.

To succeed Google is going to have to take a more active role and ensure that there's fewer conflicting interpretations of their standard, well-defined reference devices, and more urgency to get users to upgrade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Apple are way more focussed on UIKit and the rest of the iOS frameworks, than they are in fixing a minor Mobile Safari glitch.

Two years spent building a work-around would be a far better use of OP's time.

</comment><comment><USER35> Going to a WWDC lab is basically the only way to guarantee an acknowledgement of a bug from Apple. Too bad it costs thousands of dollars and you have a 2 hour window in which to seize your chance.

</comment><comment><USER36> There is no need to get emotional. It won't help anything and it just clutters the issue. Just mind you language and stick to the facts, we are all grownups here.

<comment><USER37> This was 100% deliberate. It's just some spin. The post gets more attention this way, which makes it more likely that the underlying problem will be fixed somewhat sooner.

Besides, with a headline like this it will also get automatic upvotes by everyone who dislikes Apple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> phoboslab:

 _I filed all the bug reports in a professional manner, without insults or swearing. I have a lot of respect for the engineers working at Apple, ..._

Why are we excluded?

</comment><comment><USER39> There are more accurate ways of registering the second touch. Have you tried using 'event.targetTouches'?

<comment><AUTHOR> The touchstart event isn't fired. There's no 'event' object to access.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> This is not a only blocking problem for HTML5 gaming. Chrome Canvas latency problem, Firefox canvas performance bug, HTML5 "poor" Audio, HTML5 "poor" video, Canvas "poor" API, SVG never works correctly, underestimated fragmentation cost, poor programming language (why the hell did they abandon ECMAScript 4?), when the hell can we use WebGL? etc...

People was complaining Flash was vendor lock-in. So kicked out Flash and now we are prisoners of fucking browsers. Kicked out poor Adobe, and Apple, Google and MS rules! Yay! Do you enjoy this?

I think plug-ins were clever, liberal and democratic software designing. We were able to choice the best technology we want to use (including Java Applet, Unity Web Player, Silverlight and even Shockwave). We were even able to develop our plug-ins freely. We had a freedom of programming language other than fucking JavaScript.

I feel people's enthusiasm for HTML5 is completely wrong. At least they should stop saying "HTML5 is a cool technology" "HTML5 is an open technology". COMPLETELY WRONG.

</comment><comment><USER41> What the fuck, developer ?

how could you not know that iOS is a closed garden ? Stop being complicit of this dangerous ecosystem. I understand that a lot of people have spent a decade or more in a very good relationship with Apple, swimming in wonderful hardware, nice frameworks and a helpful and friendly community, but it is finished now. This is not the Apple of today anymore.

<comment><USER37> Don't put spaces in front of question marks. If you're French, okay, you're forgiven. However, a regular space is still completely wrong and it will totally break word-wrapping.

<comment><USER41> Sorry, French here indeed. It is strange. I have made that mistake for several years when writing in English fora but recently, in the space of two months, I got several people making me noticed this. I am trying to lose this habit in English but why is it that this mistake is now fought more thoroughly? Has there been a particular event raising the awareness of this?

<comment><USER37> >Has there been a particular event raising the awareness of this?

Not that I know of. You probably just started hanging out with people who tend to complain about this kind of thing. I, for one, complain about this stuff because it's a defect I have to fix if I happen to see it in someone's copy.

It also might be a frequency illusion [1].

[1] The illusion in which a word, a name or other thing that has recently come to one's attention suddenly appears "everywhere" with improbable frequency. Sometimes called "The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I wouldn't be at all surprised if this was intentional in order prevent devs creating HTML5 games on par with those of the AppStore.

<comment><USER23> It absolutely is intentional. And with that same intention Apple forbids other companies from writing web browsers that fix these and other issues with mobile Safari. Auto-playing audio and video in the browser is also forbidden, which prevents any sort of online music, or video app from being created, among other things.

So games, music, and video apps in mobile Safari are all hopelessly hobbled, and if you build a browser that fixes these issues you'll be banned.

Happy developing!

<comment><USER5> _"Auto-playing audio and video in the browser is also forbidden, which prevents any sort of online music, or video app from being created, among other things."_

It also prevents MySpace. I consider that a Good Thing overall - I remember the period of the web where it was trivial to auto-play video and audio, and I remember that the consumer reaction to that was deeply hostile. HTML5 music/video apps certainly are an interesting thought, but you must consider what happens when you let random or malicious developers do those things too!

<comment><USER23> What are you talking about? How exactly is it malicious to build a game or build a music web app?

On desktops with Flash or the HTML5 Audio/Video API you can already do these things. I don't see anyone complaining that things like Youtube and Grooveshark are malicious, so why should iOS be sabotaged? Non-Apple devices like Android, and Playbook work just fine. You can build music, and video, and game web applications on those devices without these limitations, and it is not a problem. Apple simply wants a hobbled platform, to force all content through the iTunes store instead of over the internet.

<comment><USER5> It's not malicious to build a game or a music app. What I'm saying is that before you hand out tools to do that, you have to at least think about what else those tools can do. Microsoft has been repeatedly burned by this, cf Raymond Chen [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2005/06/07/42629...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2005/06/07/426294.aspx) , and it's a very, very basic principle of platform/API design.

I argue that Apple's focus on the user experience, especially in the areas of responsiveness, battery life, and consistency with the general Apple design aesthetic, cause Apple to make choices here that you disagree with, but which aren't necessarily bad decisions.

 _"You can build music, and video, and game web applications on those devices without these limitations, and it is not a problem."_

Actually it is a problem: Android malware exists, and I say that it proves my point: if you hand out capabilities without thinking through the consequences, it will come back and bite you.

The uses that you intend for tools are never the only possible uses of those tools.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I think I was more interested in the iOS game demo in the video than the rant post itself. That was smooth as butter.

</comment><comment><USER44> I think the author is overlooking the likelihood this is deliberate behaviour for various touch UX and lock-in reasons.

Though, I am impressed by the combination of vitriolic text and cool, crystal- clear and calm bug explanation in the video. :)

</comment><comment><USER28> FTA: "On the iPhone, you're as locked in with HTML5 as you were with Flash everywhere else before"

In what way has Flash ever been the only way to display web content? This statement is absurd.

<comment><USER45> The point is: the reason Flash was bad was that the only way to display Flash content was with Adobe's (buggy) implementation.

HTML5 on the iPhone is just as bad: the only way to display HTML5 content is with Apple's (buggy) implementation.

<comment><USER28> That makes sense to me, as I read the article it sounded like he was saying that outside iOS he was locked in to Flash in the same way as he is locked in to HTML5 on iOS.

The iOS restriction is very real and enforced, there is nothing forcing people to use Flash for any popular platform.

However if you put it in terms of "if I want to use Flash, I'm forced into Adobe's implementation" then I can see that argument.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Just playing devil's debugger here: Are you SURE the bug is with Safari, and not related to something else in your code? In BioLab Disaster, for example, while it's true I can't RUN and press the JUMP button multiple times, I can definitely RUN and press the FIRE button multiple times.

Why would the FIRE button be immune to a bug in the browser? Any chance this is a timing issue in your own code, rather than a bug in the browser?

</comment><comment><USER47> HTML5 is definitely not the only way to write a game for iOS. It seems glaringly obvious, but the OP could perhaps try writing their game as a native app.

<comment><USER48> That would be a bit counter-intuitive, as OP's product is an SDK for HTML5 game development on iOS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Who else is affected by this bug. And by who else, I don't mean this one guy's customers / users. If the answer is no one else, or if no one else has reported it, then it's probably so far down the list as to be inconsequential. Which probably means the new guy on work experience gets to deal with it.

Not all bugs are fixed. There's only so many hours in the day, and some bugs are simply not worth fixing.

<comment><USER49> It's true that Apple might decide the bug isn't worth fixing, but then they should say that explicitly, so that devs don't have to file the bug a zillion times and wonder where it is on Apple's priority list. The issue here is really the lack of transparency. Bug reports shouldn't go into a black hole.

It's also not clear to me why you think no one else is affected by this bug. How many duplicates from other reporters have been closed? We have no way to know. Presumably others, though-- not every instance of an issue results in a front-page HN article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Could the issue be that you use an onClick event that has a well-known 400ms delay instead of a touchstart/touchmove event?

<comment><USER51> I'm quite sure that this developer knows the difference. :)

Still, this does smell like it's a "feature", where the event is thrown away in an effort to prevent accidental touches or such. I imagine the bug is being ignored because of the difficulty of fixing it without removing the feature in question.

Alas, I suspect that Apple's secrecy harms their process as well as ours: they probably live in such a bubble that they don't see these bugs as being problems. And I really wish Android was a better HTML5 alternative, but it's been problematic as well, as evidenced by Sencha's HTML5 Scorecards (we'll see with Chrome on Jelly Bean).

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> To tell you the truth, I couldn't really see the bug in the video. It's probably just me. Since the bar every time eventually turned green in the video, I couldn't see the case when it does not turn green. Nor could I see the bug in the video game. I am sure folks at Apple or regular game players will be able to tell.

</comment><comment><USER53> An example in how to title a blog

</comment><comment><USER54> I haven't reported bugs to Apple due to such problems, there's simply no incentive. Apple as a quality company has of course always been focused on hardware and third-party developers have traditionally provided high-quality apps.

</comment><comment><USER55> I didn't know that Apple bug tracker is private. They are more secretive than CIA and FBI together.

</comment><comment><USER56> Native applications is the way to go.

</comment><comment><USER57> I can't help but read this and feel that your life priorities and response levels to problems are out of whack

</comment><comment><USER58> A comment from the blog sums it up nicely and keeps the reddit-esque tone:

"boo fucking hoo. I guess their fucking priorities don't line the FUCK up with yours. "

</comment><comment><USER59> You fortunately now have the option of running Chrome on iOS. I'd like to see the side-by-side comparison for compatibility issues.

<comment><AUTHOR> Chrome uses Mobile Safari's "WebView" internally. It's the same browser engine - Apple doesn't allow other browser engines on iOS. So the bug is present in Chrome as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Perhaps they did use your page and perhaps it worked for them? Or perhaps your whiny tone made them disregard you as a serious witness, and so perhaps the problem is you. As other commenters point out you can't write clear instructions, what confidence should we have in your ability to write correct code?

<comment><AUTHOR> I filed all the bug reports in a professional manner, without insults or swearing. I have a lot of respect for the engineers working at Apple, I just hate their company politics.

The blog post on the other hand was written in that manner to get public attention - which seems to have worked.

The code for the test case is about 20 lines of JavaScript. You don't have to trust me to write correct code, you can easily check it yourself.

<comment><USER61> The corporate overlords are not screening your bugs, the engineers are. Your mention that your bug got closed as a dup? And that the dup was closed as not being reproducible? It seems likely that either it wasn't really a dup or that the second bug didnt have steps that allowed it to be reproduced. In your case, I would think re submitting your as a new bug, referencing the other two, would probably bring some traction. Openradar is also an option for making your reports more public, and possibly getting more traction.</comment></comment></comment>


How to Think about EC2 vs. Lambda - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/dvassallo/status/1184870595638353920 <comment><USER2> I don't get why this is different than thinking of it as servers vs serverless. Isn't a "code runner" rather than a complete computer what serverless means?</comment>


Idea Debt (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://jessicaabel.com/idea-debt/ <comment><AUTHOR> I read this article a couple of years ago (via HN) and didn't think much of it at the time. Since then, this "binders of lore" concept popped back in my mind a number of times, and actually pushed me to take some of those jumps.

So I'm reposting, for the benefit of people who missed it last time. Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11027684](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11027684)</comment>


Using Liquid Nitrogen And Tech To Create The World's Best Ice Cream [video] - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/27/foundation-using-liquid-nitrogen-and-tech-to-create-the-world-best-ice-cream/

<comment><USER2> I live right by this place and have had their ice cream a few times. It's very cool to watch them make it. I don't particularly like any of their flavors or their very high prices, so keep that in mind when I say that calling it the "World's Best Ice Cream" is a huge exaggeration. I would never recommend this place to visitors.</comment>


Small Steps Towards Clojure Docstrings - <AUTHOR> https://www.martinklepsch.org/posts/writing-awesome-docstrings.html <comment><USER2> Pretty useful.</comment>


Ask HN: Better duplicate identification - <AUTHOR>

What if each submission caused the HN engine to download the title from the referenced page.  It's exceedingly unlikely that there'll be two different useful pages with the same HTML title, but whenever there's a duplicate submission, the title should be the same.
It's previously been suggested that duplications could/should be detected by looking at the page source, but surely it would be enough 99.9% of the time just to check for duplication of the <title> contents.
Thoughts?  Problems?  Counter-suggestions? <comment><USER2> The NYT, Huff Post, and others do LOTS of experiments with title and click through rate measurements. It is very likely that a submitted page will have a different title later.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't know that. I would hope that by the time the title gets changed the potential contributor would have seen the earlier contribution.

Mind you, the evidence is against me there ...

Still, perhaps _most_ sites have an unchanging title, so perhaps it will still work enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think if you make it an initiative for the submitters to submit the lowest common demoninator, we would rid ourselves of the duplications. I have to believe everyone on Hacker News knows how URLs work and can see that something like this:

        ?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+startup%2Flessons%2Flearned+%28Lessons+Learned%29

is not needed as part of the submission URL.

And to cover all basis, if you don't know if it is needed try it before you submit it to HN. Delete the above portion of the URL, hit enter and if you still get the same webpage you have done your due diligence. Finding a correct algorithim for this might be tough, but if we put the pressure on the submitters themselves we might get something done.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, case in point:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1012670>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1012341>

The lunk to items have the same title, but the URLs are different becuase of the extra, unnecessary parameters. The extra check would have prevented the duplication.

But if you put the onus on the submitter, it won't change. After all, two of the recent duplications were duplicates of items on the front page, not even obscure ones.

There's no penalty for people who don't bother. Automated checking goes a long way. The only way you'll get people to do the checking before they submit is if there's a penalty. Perhaps duplicated items should cause a loss of karma. Pretty draconian when we _want_ good items. People might stop bothering.

Checking the title seems easy to implement, gain a lot, and then we can see if the problem/situation remains.

And I think this _is_ a problem, because sometimes the discussion can get diluted across multiple submissions, leading to duplication, which is a waste of time and effort. As a hacker, I resent that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe borrow a feature from Stack Overflow, which presents similar-sounding stories before posting? Some client-side JS which pulls the page, heuristically picks some "interesting" words, and runs them through search.yc?

</comment><comment><USER5> Makes sense to me. It also seems that a good part of the dupes come from the fact that the full URL is used as the identifier. And often times that URL has a lot of referrer garbage and similar data in it. It would seem there could be some logic to try and pare URLs down somewhat in the comparator code.

<comment><AUTHOR> For some pages the "stuff" that follows the obvious root URL is in fact required. There are no easy rules for paring down the URL - that would need to be done by hand, and most people who submit items don't take the time to do that.

<comment><USER5> Sometimes it _IS_ certainly required, but many times there are extraneous switches tacked on, which follow standard HTML patterns.

Take this URL for example: [http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/12/1223Shockley- Bard...](http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/12/1223Shockley-Bardeen- Brattain- transistor?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher)

The question mark is the demarcation point between the story URL and the "garbage". While some cases may exist, I don't recall recently seeing a URL of the format: [http://mydomain.com/foo/storyFetcherScript?storyID=TheOneAbo...](http://mydomain.com/foo/storyFetcherScript?storyID=TheOneAboutTheDonkey)

Even so, one possibility would be to compare URL's up to the first question mark, or other obvious demarcation characters, and if a dupe is found ask the submitter to verify their submission is unique. Like most other things at HN, I think that for the time being an honor system yes/no question is all that would really be needed to weed out 95% of the dupe submissions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It should also help supplement the spam filtering. Taking a quick look at /noobstories, a bunch of these would die solely from this. Which should in turn make the /newest page somewhat better, which can only be a good thing.

</comment><comment><USER7> Maybe a good way to identify duplicates could be a comparison of word frequencies (or frequencies of 3 word sentences or something like that)? Perhaps that way one could eliminate the "layout" and identify the core text.

I would like to create a library for that, if I could find the time :-/ Maybe then sites like HN would have an easier time to include the functionality.

Not sure if counting frequencies would be enough to identify the duplicates that have been filtered through translation. Interesting stuff.

<comment><USER8> Natural Language Toolkit for Python: <http://www.nltk.org/Home>

It wouldn't be hard to use that to come up with a quick "fingerprint" of a page, consisting of word frequencies. The chances of two different pages having the same fingerprint would be exceedingly small.

<comment><AUTHOR> Given that so many sites use some form of active content I should think that, unless designed very, very carefully, two separate loads of the same page could easily produce different "fingerprints." I've considered that and rejected it as too hard for a five minute trial, whereas the test against the title seems to work very well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hmm. What evil could you wreak with a service for making the HN server connect to whatever website you want?

<comment><AUTHOR> Doing a curl, parsing the return for the <title> field, then saving the string for comparison if the title field exists seems pretty safe. I'd be interested to see an exploit.

And as it stands, allowing the submission endangers us all, rather than writing something designed to be tolerant and preventing any such exploit.

Still, an interesting question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Are dups that big of a problem?

<comment><AUTHOR> They certainly occur a lot, and I personally find them annoying:

<http://searchyc.com/Dup?sort=by_date>

The system already culls many dups, it would be interesting to know how many, by comparing the URL of a new submission with those of earlier. If you try to resubmit something then it counts as an upvote for the original.

Try it. Pick something already submitted, then try to submit the exact same URL. I don't know how often it gets invoked, though, but the simplistic logic misses many dups.

Of course, just because it happens a lot (for some value of "a lot") that doesn't automatically make it a problem.</comment></comment>


If Alphabet makes a move, it might as well be Blue - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/alphabet-makes-move-might-well-blue-joseph-ziskin/ <comment><USER2> Different corporate cultures would most destroy any value that IBM creates as part of Alphabet.

> The level of understanding and ability at speed to move and impact > operations has delivered enormous value

What enormous value? What move? IBM has been dropping the ball year after year. Ability to manage decline is not speed.

> A Google Brain and Watson combination may be the straightest path to AI > leadership in the market.

Watson is not produce value for the IBM. The platform is behind the new rivals and the gap grows constantly. At this point it's well marketed PR riding on AI hype. Their research for AI is lagging. I don't see Watson providing any value to Google. Watson would be first thing Google would drop.</comment>


Mozilla may treat Aussie staff as 'insider threats' to code base - <AUTHOR> https://www.itnews.com.au/news/mozilla-may-treat-aussie-staff-as-insider-threats-to-code-base-519793 <comment><AUTHOR> Related: FastMail loses customers, faces calls to move over anti-encryption laws

[https://www.itnews.com.au/news/fastmail-loses-customers- face...](https://www.itnews.com.au/news/fastmail-loses-customers-faces-calls- to-move-over-anti-encryption-laws-519783)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19242698](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19242698)

</comment><comment><USER2> >... that individual employees could be targeted by law enforcement to make secret changes to systems

So with the TOLA act, who is under the Australian government's jurisdiction and can be compelled to do this? Only those residing in Australia? Any citizen anywhere in the world? Anyone with assets or interests that could be leveraged?

What does this mean for Australians seeking employment in other countries?

[https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislat...](https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=r6195)

<comment><USER3> it means if the PR was submitted by an Aussie (or resident) you better make sure your code review has a non-Aussie on it.

<comment><USER2> Do you think the presence of a code review practices alone will be enough of a deterrent against agencies using devs for this purpose?

Even if you pressure someone to make a backdoor and they get caught, you've just exposed your intentions when it could have been easier to go straight to the company.

<comment><USER4> I don't think A PR is the only attack vector. I would be suspect of the entire CI/CD pipeline and any production systems or distribution systems in employed

<comment><USER5> Also, if I were an Aussie and I'd gotten a request like this, I'd feel pretty incentivized to make the backdoor as blatant and suspicious-looking as possible. The government ordered you to do it; it did not order you to do a _good job_.

So "evil PR" would probably be the easiest thing to catch, and it definitely seems like other compromise vectors are where the real danger is.

<comment><USER6>
        public function rot13_GbgnyylAbgNOnpxqbbe()

Something subtle like that?

Fwiw the UK has near identical legislation and I'm pretty sure the Aussie gov looked at ours first.

We lead the world in subtly corrupting democracy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The NSA has been putting back doors into various tech for decades. The NSA, and many other covert orgs, cares little for what is legal or illegal. Australians are minuscule part of the total threat.

<comment><USER8> This matters to those of us who are Aussie citizens and developers.

Also NSA has been doing this surreptitiously while TOLA allows the government to compel a private citizen to take action.

But yes, we know we're a small country -- not much larger than a 1/2 California. :-/</comment></comment>


Learn Vim for the Last Time: A Tutorial and Primer - <AUTHOR> https://danielmiessler.com/study/vim/ <comment><USER3> As I grew up working with both Linux and a bunch of legacy UNIX systems as well (Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, Tru64), over the years I've ended up using only a subset of vi commands that work with both SVR3/SVR4 style systems (tradional vi) and Linux (vim). A similar thing happened with my shell scripting style; I'm prone to writing shell scripts that exclude bash-isms and conform more to standard Bourne shell syntax, since I know that they will work pretty much anywhere.

Its a trade-off; I'm less efficient with vim than I could be, since it has so many more powerful features over standard vi. The flip side is that I can go back to those older systems and feel comfortable within a couple of minutes, without getting frustrated at the installed vi editor missing the vim features that I otherwise would have come to depend upon. I traded off using powerful features that could speed coding (if I would just memorize them all), for the flexibility to be able to jump between (similar, but different) systems much more easily.

Of course, those systems are not as in as much common use anymore due to the end of the UNIX wars, so the value of that style of working is now resulting in diminishing returns.

I'd like to be able to change, but like many older programmers, we often like to stick to what we know, as long as we can get the job done quickly and with minimum fuss.

<comment><USER4> As a long time "expert" vim user, I have found that that fear you expressed - the inability to use vi comfortably after using vim more completely - is ill- founded.

I can use vi as comfortably as vi can be used. I wish that vim's features were there, but that doesn't make me any _less_ adept at using even the most minimal build of vi.

Really, this is because vim itself is generally stuck under the ceiling if vi's keymap. Apart from a very slim amount of additions, there isn't any difference between the interface of vi and vim.

Vim makes a point to keep that backwards compatibility. In fact, most vi implementations you use are simply a heavily stripped down certain of vim.

<comment><USER3> > In fact, most vi implementations you use are simply a heavily stripped down > certain of vim

This may be true today, but certainly was not on the aforementioned systems back in the 1990's, when I learned UNIX. Even in the early days of Linux, I don't believe vim was as popular, and frequently the distribution shipped with an alternative (nvi, elvis etc). In fact, I probably learned most of my limited vi subset back in the late 1980's on XENIX come to think of it - <USER2> that was extremely limited from memory.

Unfortunately I am also relatively lazy and dumb compared to the average HN user. The only real concession I have made to vim is to use the cursor keys for movement instead of the traditional vi cursor control commands, because it helps when switching between desktop based editors (eg. Notepad on Windows, the equivalent Gnome editor, Visual Studio etc). And also because I am unlikely to go back to those old UNIX systems again.

Of course, I am half expecting someone to come along in a moment and tell us we are both wrong anyway, and that we should be using Emacs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I believe to remember that a few decades ago on some Unix variant I was able to use some kind of vi with some settings where I was able to configure it for not having to do Esc at all for the movements through the text when using all the arrow keys of the terminal I've used and also not having to press any key to start typing the text after these movements and only had to do Esc to type in the non-trivial (i.e. non-movement) commands.

Effectively: as soon as the file is opened, I'd remain in the text entering mode (however it is called in vim terminology) pressing any arrow key (or maybe even the pg up, pg down etc) would exit that mode (implicit Esc) perform the expected movement and at the end automatically return to the starting mode.

I believe I was able to achieve it then by assigning the whole sequences (e.g. Esc, movement, i) to be played as I pressed only one of these keys, and automatic i after the file open, and I don't know if all this is possible now with vim, the little I've tried to find I haven't found that functionality. I'd even claim that having something like this would make vim much less frustrating for the casual users. What I'm sure is that I don't have any written record what I've did then -- it was "works for me" then and for that environment.

Maybe somebody knows more about this? I'd like to be able to achieve such a behavior in Vim even if it's the opposite of what people in these tutorials try to teach people to do, as an example, I haven't understood what this does (it is not clearly explained here except claiming "the <Esc> key for leaving insert mode is, in my opinion, rather antiquated. Vim is about efficiency, and it's hardly efficient to leave the home keys if you don't have to. So don't.") but it seems to me, nothing I'd like:

> inoremap jk <ESC>

I'd argue that not having to even change the modes explicitly at all is more efficient than optimizing the key with which you permanently change the modes. Somebody would say "but then you can't do these nice number-movement to move number of times" \-- I don't care, it takes more time to count or to try, err and undo when the number is wrong, than to just use the plain keys. It was not so when editing from the terminal over 300 baud lines, which was the original use case for these commands, but nobody edits over them today.

<comment><USER6> On Linux you can use the evim command to start up in insert mode, or to stay in insert mode in gvim, :set im

<comment><USER5> It seems that startinsert added to the .vimrc is also a possible start.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [https://laymanclass.com/vim-essential-setup-to-boost-your- pr...](https://laymanclass.com/vim-essential-setup-to-boost-your- productivity/)</comment>


Twitter "grows up," even has business plan - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2010/04/16/technology/twitter/index.htm

<comment><USER2> "mircroblogging" (in the first paragraph). Could he really not be bothered to proofread even just two sentences?</comment>


Architects and engineers are turning old shipping containers into mobile ICUs - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbc.ca/radio/day6/architects-and-engineers-are-turning-old-shipping-containers-into-mobile-intensive-care-units-1.5527523 <comment><USER2> Maybe add an ICU nurse on that design team. You're going to have room for two patients and flipping their beds for ventilation?

"Ratti hopes that his project will help shift a popular view — both among outsiders and some in the profession — that architecture is concerned first and foremost with aesthetics and beauty over form and function."

Staring out at modern skylines, have no idea where these aestheticians are operating.</comment>


After The Regretsy and Diaspora Account Freezes, We've Lost Confidence In PayPal - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/06/paypal-account-freeze/

<comment><USER2> I haven't trusted Paypal for a long time, since they repeatedly froze my account just for accessing it from a foreign IP. That wouldn't be so bad, except for their demands of things like faxes of utility bills and bank account statements just to get it unfrozen. Ridiculous.

I recently had to receive a significant payment from a client of mine. It would have been convenient--and worth the fees--for me to use Paypal to receive that money. But after all the stories of frozen accounts and my own experiences, I'm scared to use Paypal for more than a few hundred dollars. I had the client send a check instead.

<comment><USER3> I had the same experience, but even more ridiculous. When I was trying to fill the form for the verification, I always had an error on the page that said "please try again later". I tried to get in touch with support, and at all my emails they were replying with the same copy and paste with the steps, which I could not follow. I tried to get someone on the phone, with no luck. After weeks I gave up, because the money on the account were not worth the hassle (they were around 300€).

But I will never use PayPal again, that's for sure.

<comment><USER4> I wonder how much Paypal has stolen from their former customers this way over the years. It might even account for a sizable portion of their total revenue.

<comment><USER5> Do you really think they will count money they steal as part of their revenue? I'd be willing to bet it goes straight into some sort of bonus pool.

<comment><USER6> It will be held in non-interest generating accounts until it can be released. Srsly, this is financial services and there's the odd regulation or two that everyone - including PayPal - have to follow.

They can't 'steal' the money - when accounts are locked they either hold onto it for six months or require you to keep a minimum balance. This is how they mitigate their massive risk profile.

Their customer services are entirely worthless, it's true, but I suspect that anyone coming to 'disrupt' PayPal will struggle with many of the same issues because they're caused by fundamental risk issues with online payments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The fundamental problem here: PayPal doesn't really care about how merchants feel about it. PayPal cares about making people who spend money really happy, and they succeed at that. They have a huge captive audience with eBay, which _requires_ the use of PayPal. They have thus created a huge base of clients who want to spend money using PayPal, because they find it convenient, because in many cases because it doesn't require a credit card, and because the customers know that they can always complain to PayPal and PayPal will make them happy.

Thus, PayPal doesn't particularly care if merchants despise them, because the merchants have little choice; you can't easily convince people to use a new service, and on eBay you have no choice at all. PayPal will quickly provide a refund to customers because PayPal want to keep customers happy, and because they know merchants will eat a refund now and then. And PayPal doesn't particularly care about understanding merchants who don't ship physical objects to customers in boxes, because they don't want to think too hard about that case when it doesn't matter to most of their customers; they'd rather err on the side of "you haven't shipped a product, so we'll issue a refund".

No amount of bad PR among people like us, who actually care about merchant woes, will overcome the incredibly positive impression PayPal makes on people who spend money.

</comment><comment><USER8> I lost trust in PayPal a LONG time ago.

Once upon a time, I was ordering a shiny new processor from eBay. The processor was located in Italy and the seller was Italian (obviously). I think nothing of what PayPal would do and send the money. Mere hours later: "Your account has been frozen." They wanted my utility bill, SSN card, drivers' license, and a copy of my birth certificate (I still live with my parents because I'm in high school, so my name wasn't even on the utility bill). To pay for one fucking $200 processor.

Luckily, I contacted the seller and we did the transaction through Escrow. He was pretty understanding of it and claimed that his account had been suspended numerous times. He used the exact words "piece of shit scammers" to describe PayPal.

WePay all the way. Someone needs to start a rival auction site that uses these other payment services. I'd use that nonstop as I have a ton of stuff to sell but my eBay account is banned (and my name is blacklisted from both PayPal and eBay, hilariously).

<comment><USER9> _WePay all the way._

Good point, with WePay you wouldn't have this problem. No Italians would be able to take your money [https://www.wepay.com/Does-WePay-allow-international- non-US-...](https://www.wepay.com/Does-WePay-allow-international-non-US- payments)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Well done TechCrunch for finally jumping on the bandwagon.

The first line about people no longer trusting Paypal. People haven't trusted Paypal for many years, but used them anyway.

<comment><USER11> Why is it praise-worthy to jump the band wagon?

<comment><USER12> Techcrunch jumped the shark a long time ago. I'm assuming a band wagon is much larger than a shark, so it seems like the extra effort deserves some praise?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Paypal is the shadiest of mainstream internet companies. You're better of doing business with organized crime.

The whole business of freezing legit accounts and consequently stonewalling the owners, _often for months_ has all the hallmarks of a scam.

I would not be surprised to see Paypal execs end up in jail.

<comment><USER12> _I would not be surprised to see Paypal execs end up in jail._

I would be incredibly surprised to see bankers/paypal execs go to jail. It would almost restore faith in our system. The only bankers I've heard about going to jail in my life were a handful of scapegoats involved with the SNL scandal, a couple of "rogue traders", and Bernie Madoff.

To quote Anti-Heros, "Don't pass go. Don't post bail. Rich people don't go to jail."

<comment><USER14> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Stewart#Stock_trading_ca...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Stewart#Stock_trading_case_and_conviction)

<comment><USER15> Right. Not a banker -> went to jail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Google could've really capitalized on this now if they didn't sit on their asses for _years_ with Google Checkout. They will probably focus more on it now that they've renamed it to Google Wallet and they need it for Android, but it will take a while before it can even touch Paypal.

<comment><USER17> I don't believe Google could do it right. Nope, not with their track record of (automatically) blocking ad publishers' accounts and later stonewalling said publishers. All in the name of click fraud prevention, of course.

I think they realize this and it might be the reason they drag their feet on Google Checkout.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It really took you this long to lose confidence in PayPal? The Regretsy & Diaspora account freezes are just the tip of an iceberg of consumer abuse whose girth spans over a decade now. The real question is this: Why is it that all consumer banks become incredibly anti-consumer once they reach a certain scale? Paypal's business practices are no less abusive and invasive from that of Chase, Wells Fargo or Bank Of America.

</comment><comment><USER18> A friend of mine recently had some money stolen from his Paypal account. The long and short is that someone was sat outside his house connected to his wireless and were monitoring keystrokes somehow. I don't know the detailed story as they were telling me over a series of months and I lost track.

Paypal would not release where his money had gone or even how to get it back and even went as far as suggesting his parents had stolen it from his account before finally releasing the money back into his account. This went on for months, it was all over a nominal £200 theft.

<comment><USER9> _connected to his wireless and were monitoring keystrokes somehow_

I highly doubt this story. That sort of technology _per se_ is not possible.

More likely someone used the same password on the email and or paypal account and it got out.

<comment><USER19> How is that sort of technology not possible? Is it not possible to connect to a secured wireless network with enough effort, and then maybe perform a MITM attack? Maybe the user used the same password on sites not protected with SSL. Or the hacker maybe manipulated traffic at router-level etc. A far fetched scenario indeed, but not impossible.

However I do agree with you that the most likely scenario was him being phished or exposed to a trojan.

<comment><USER9> All this effort to steal money from someone who (I think) lives with their parents?!

A lot of the things you say "far fetched, but not impossible"/"enough effort" are misleading. These things are about as likely as winning the lottery several weeks in a row. Possible. But be realistic.

What is realistic and happens a lot is (a) bad computers security (b) password reuse (c) simple passwords ("password1" and friends) (d) one site someone gets hacked and people know that password (e) some malware on the machine. These things are much more likely than someone sitting outside their house.

<comment><USER19> Haha, how is my statement of it being far fetched misleading? The scenario is far fetched, but possible, didn't say it was likely. The only reason I replied to your comment was that you said "That sort of technology per se is not possible.".

That's not only misleading, but also wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> But that Paypal does this shit has been a hardy perennial new story for years now. Competitors are coming, slowly, from different directions, but it's not clear that Paypal is actually much damaged by these stories.

<comment><USER21> Blockbuster wasn't _damaged_ by all the ill-will they created by charging absurd, usurious late fees. They were the king of their realm, as PayPal is now.

But, making your customers loathe you turns out to be a bad idea in the long term. The very _moment_ reasonable alternatives present themselves, those customers are gone for good.

PayPal has done a lot of legwork, especially for international commerce. But this legwork can and will be done again one day – or, someone will discover an interesting workaround that makes this legwork unnecessary for some specific but perhaps very common cases. Human ingenuity is inevitable, especially with such rich rewards waiting.

Either way, PayPal won't enjoy its position forever. Unless they turn these perceptions around, it'll be hard fall.

<comment><USER22> Hasn't PayPal been screwing people for ten years? I suspect there's some reason why no better competitor exists.

<comment><USER23> Paypal was the first to rise to the top, and has since benefited from the network effect. It's only been about 5 years since the average American started to be comfortable buying products online.

<comment><USER24> There _were_ real competitors when PayPal was a younger company, but a lot of them went out of business because they didn't solve the fraud problem. It wasn't just a matter of adoption. PayPal hemorrhaged millions to fraud before they created the technical and people systems to make it manageable.

<comment><USER25> Anyone interested with the fraud problem story can read more in Jessica Livingstone's book, Founders at Work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> People are complaining about PayPal "hiding behind antifraud", but real banks do this too - at least in the UK. My bank has phoned me up multiple times to check transactions. On one occasion they simply "black-holed" a credit card transaction and didn't bother to tell me, nor did the merchant contact me. On another, they made a simple purchase take 45 minutes of phone-tag because buying a bed is an "unusual" purchase. Well, DUH. Moving house is pretty fucking unusual, too.

I now try to remember to phone them before buying computer bits or large "unusual" purchases, but that has a 50% chance of a dropped call as they try to transfer my request.

So, no, PayPal aren't really any different to any other payment processor in my experience.

</comment><comment><USER27> One solution I rarely see mentioned in these discussions is Amazon payments. Does anyone use them?

<comment><USER28> Kickstarter uses them for donations:

<http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/amazon-payments-and-us-only>

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> yep, Paypal is awful. They hide behind 'fraud protection' as an excuse for absolutely awful and opaque customer services, yet... how many people here have had their bank account hacked/defrauded? And, at least for me, I can usually get my bank on the phone and most problems resolved within 5 minutes (and that's living in China dealing with a UK bank account).

I have a business account with my bank and I'm a valued customer and they offer me extra services and discounts. Yet with Paypal, if you run a business through them, you're almost automatically treated like a hassle, a criminal, a 'suspect'.

<comment><USER30> As a counterpoint, when Paypal detected suspicious activity on my account ("Egads, someone just accessed your account from a novel IP in Japan and then received a payment of about a month of your normal turnover and then spent it really really quickly!!1"), it took a one-minute phone call to resolve. ("Hiya Paypal, it's me. _does recognition dance_ I just moved apartments." "Oh, OK. We just wanted to make sure no hanky panky was happening. I've unlimited the account for you.")

<comment><USER29> Wow! That is positive. So far I've had really poor customer service from them, and not once spoken to a real person. I've never had the account frozen, just payments reversed and no explanation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Wishful thinking. PayPal simply does not give a fuck what noise the silicon valley crowd makes. The startups that choose not to do business with PayPal are a drop in the bucket.

</comment><comment><USER32> "Hey PayPal, do you realize people no longer trust you?"

The truth is they couldn't care less; they're a preferred point for e-transactions on eBay and elsewhere.

It's back when you wanted an iPhone but hated AT&T, they knew you couldn't get an iPhone with another provider, so they didn't give two shits about their crappy service and customer care.

</comment><comment><USER33> PayPal lost my trust and my business a long time ago, this is just further demonstration of why.

</comment><comment><USER34> So what is the alternative for subscription-based software services? Is WePay a viable option here? I'm currently in the market, and, while not afraid of PayPal, I'm not fully enamored of them, either.

<comment><USER30> If I were picking new for today, I'd use Stripe + Spreedly if I were a US developer. (I've used both separately.)

That said, I have no major complaints with Paypal. (Nor do most merchants who use the service. You just don't read blog posts like "Day 1,349: Paypal continues to provide very cheap services without requiring a merchant account. Details pretty much same as Day 1,348."

<comment><USER35> Why not Samurai? I looked at both stripe and samurai in conjunction w/ Spreedly and came out on the Samurai end (lower prices being the motivating factor)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I was done with them as soon as I read about the passing of Ilya Zhitomirskiy because I can't imagine the additional stresses put upon him because of how Paypal treated Diaspora. I stopped using them years ago but we need to organize a massive snub of the service until they revise their policies, make them fully transparent and stop constantly screwing people. Remember that we, as a country, were able to get the banks to scrap the $5 debit card fee. What are we waiting for with Paypal?

</comment><comment><USER37> It seems like everyone wants less security precautions. If a new company does just this and your account gets hacked, are you going to blame the service provider or expect them to take the hit for your lost money?

Paypal does need to make some changes, but many of the people that get their accounts frozen are either transferring lots of money in a short amount of time or are running suspicious businesses (even though they may not be illegal or even unethical).

<comment><USER38> >It seems like everyone wants less security precautions.

People want better customer service, not less security precautions. (Who would want less security precautions with their money? Is this just a really argumentative way to push a position?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I've seen this happen time and time again. And working with their security department is difficult. They need a strong competitor.

</comment><comment><USER24> The article implies there have been problems with _withdrawing_ your own money. I've _never_ seen that come up in any of the stories over the years. Has anyone experienced that issue?

I never withdraw less than $5000 at a time...

<comment><USER40> I am not clear on what you mean. Most of the time when a PayPal account is frozen, you can not get any money out. My PayPal account was frozen for almost 2 months, back in 2002. I had about $1,200 in the account, and I could not get at any of it. It was a painful episode for me, as I was broke and had been planning to use some of the money to pay my rent. PayPal asked for a lot of documentation from me. They wanted me to prove my address, but as I rented and moved around a lot, it was difficult to do so. I had to get a friend to put me on the electricity bill over at their house (the friend's house) so I could get some paper documentation that PayPal would accept. They hung onto my money for a long time.

<comment><USER24> The TechCrunch article warns that withdrawing too much money from your account can trigger having the account frozen, and recommends withdrawing less at a time. That's what I've not heard of before.

Of course once it's frozen you can't get at the money, that's the whole point of locking down the account. I've experienced it myself, but not with PayPal -- I had over $13,000 held for 6 months.

<comment><USER41> I don't have any experience withdrawing money from paypal, but perhaps there is a way to make small automated withdrawals constantly? Though who knows, they may flag that behavior as fraudulent as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> So do PayPal have a competitor that works internationally like they do?

<comment><USER43> Moneybookers, payoneer.

EDIT:also, Wepay.

<comment><USER42> > However, only US-based customers can use WePay to accept payments.

<comment><USER43> I just found a reference shortly after mentioning Moneybookers and Payoneer, I have never used Wepay. Actually, I have only used Moneybookers (soon to be renamed "Skrill"). I'm based in Europe myself.

Could also be worth noting that bitcoin is a real possibility, some business do it without any issues (except higher-than-normal volatility, but if you exchange your bitcoins quickly this won't ever be a problem).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Took you long enough.

</comment><comment><USER45> "Startups are gunning" for PayPal? Since when? No one else has gone beyond the US. No one is creating any alternatives for international ecommerce. And how many years has it been that PayPal has had complete domination?

Is it that hard for startups to provide international support?

Until there is a viable alternative, most of the world will be compelled to use PayPal.</comment>


Google's de-radicalization program for extremists - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2016/09/07/google-program-to-deradicalize-jihadis-will-be-used-for-right-wing-american-extremists-next/ <comment><USER2> Google's propaganda program. It's OK because they're terrorists, and if you don't agree you're the terrorist.

I imagine that this has always been part of the roadmap of Google's cosy relationship with the us gov

<comment><USER3> Well put mate. It's just too convenient to experiment/develop manipulation of people's perception of reality in such a context (ISIS). Who can complain about it without risking being called a which, oops, a terrorist?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very interesting. I was wondering when the internet would get some smart propaganda. Never thought it'd come through third-party cookies but it makes sense given the pervasive networks. Their identifiers are as powerful as SSNs at this point.

Screw ISIS and abortion-center bombers obviously, but how far will this be taken? How great would it be if a climate group changed all the ads on a republican website to point to facts? What if the opposite occurred? =/ In the end this is a worrisome capability. Luckily, Google promises to do no evil! (/s)

We've officially reached the point that if I check out some crazy conspiracy theories I'm on an (advertising) targeting list.

<comment><USER3> Yep! Now they have an excuse to target you for the crime of... curiosity.

<comment><USER4> Satiate your curiosity while you still can!

www.chemtrailsaredemonic.org

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Horrible idea.

The last thing I want is a bunch of SV SJW's having an official capacity to manipulate people.

<comment><USER6> > The last thing I want is a bunch of SV SJW's having an official capacity to > manipulate people.

The "official capacity" here is called freedom of speech. Is that really what you object to when it is extended to people you don't agree with, or do you object to them having the resources to make effective use of that freedom?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> So instead of showing recommended videos to try and increase their profit they are trying to show videos to influence other's political/social opinions.

I'd argue that one of these is rather unexpected and is yet another case of a tech company acting in the media/journalism space and not as a telecom/service provider.

<comment><USER8> If their products are used for recruiting violent extremists, that could hurt profits in a number of ways (bad PR, government regulation, etc). Sounds like a win-win.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> In other words, Google's censorship program. For the 21st century. Behold!

<comment><USER4> Censorship? Not really. You were close though, it's targeted propaganda.

<comment><USER9> The quantity of propaganda will be so large that it will drown out all other content. This is already happening with CTR shills being paid to spam Twitter, Reddit, and 4chan with anti-Trump propaganda. What is this if not censorship via non-traditional means?

[http://archive.is/IxsAt](http://archive.is/IxsAt)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Typo in your title...you mean ext _r_ emists (missing the _r_ )

</comment><comment><USER11> The more you tighten your grip, the more rare pepes will slip through your fingers.

</comment><comment><USER12> The only way I can think that this can backfire, is that this in itself is the type of conspiracy that the far-right talks about.</comment>


Joey Hess: git-annex for managing large files with git - <AUTHOR> http://git-annex.branchable.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> It's written in Haskell which some may find interesting.</comment>


Minimalism in life, web design and business - <AUTHOR> http://alexsblog.org/2014/04/11/minimalism-in-life-web-design-and-business/

<comment><USER2> Simple is beautiful. Well said! I'm sick of the recent trend in website design where it takes up the whole width, has huge images everywhere with maybe 1 line of useful text visible. And you have to scroll down all the way to get any decent amount of information. Looks pretty, but functionally it drives me crazy. Then again, it's ultra popular, so I guess I'm mostly alone. By the way, I like the site design. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I agree with you. Simplicity is beautiful and focused on functionality. It's natural and we understand how it works. Every use is pleasure not a strugle with phone or monitor. Design should focus on the important and not some cheap decoration.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How important is it to be able to write jQuery free JavaScript? - <AUTHOR> This is with the context that you're hiring a front end engineer.<p>I would assume that it'd be very important, but many people who I talk to tell me what jQuery or libraries that provide a similar API to it are everywhere, so there's not point in really learning how to do things natively. <comment><USER2> \- If they know jQuery AND vanilla - This person is awesome. Hire the guy.

\- If they know a bit of jQuery and a whole lot of vanilla - This is your average JS developer. Hire this guy too.

\- If they know jQuery but not vanilla - This person probably can get things done, but doesn't know how it works. Not optimal, but still a good guy.

\- If they don't know jQuery but know vanilla - They probably use another framework. Ask first before it becomes...

\- If they rejects jQuery but know vanilla - This person must be retarded, sticking to some stupid idea like "native is better than library.

\- If they don't know jQuery and vanilla - This guy probably isn't a JS developer.

Your question is also backwards. You should get JS developers _with jQuery /[other library here] knowledge as bonus_. Just watch out for idiots who aren't open to other technologies though (like the fifth bullet up there). Just so you know, jQuery isn't the only library of its kind. There's Zepto, Mootools (and a few older ones). The guy you want is the one with enough JS and framework knowledge (one cannot really master everything) to move across frameworks.

</comment><comment><USER3> Let's put it this way: I think every good webdev should more or less know what the jQuery functions are in native JS otherwise they won't be able to code effiently. If you know what you are doing, go ahead, otherwise I would be careful when building "scalable" web apps and using jQuery w/o any experience in the underlying javascript.</comment>


Uber plans for suburbs - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeed.com/priya/how-uber-plans-to-conquer-the-suburbs?utm_term=.mljL5ZeX0#.wpg1BKrR9 <comment><AUTHOR> This is pretty neat and a good logical step to Transportation as a service</comment>


Interrogation of an Alleged CIA Agent 1983 [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/DOC_0000619182.pdf

<comment><USER2> It's nuts to me that this was 32 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER3> Geez, I immediately thought this was ELIZA too or a really bad IRC bot. :)

<comment><USER4> After I was a few lines in I also thought "yep, this is a chat bot."

I could see how a chat bot's repetitive and probing nature could wear down an interrogation subject though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> by association reminded about 2 things:

1\. transcript of Gary Powers trial - couldn't find in English unfortunately.

2\. FBI complaint for Russian spies caught few days ago

[http://www.scribd.com/doc/253796263/US-v-Evgeny-Buryakov- Et-...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/253796263/US-v-Evgeny-Buryakov-Et-Al- Complaint)

how the Russian agents used Internet search to gather "intelligence" (paragraph 44, 45...) and their audio transcripts - it made my day yesterday - if these morons are the best my old country can send here, the Cold War II has been lost by Russia without even really starting :)

</comment><comment><USER6> About half a page in, i wondered, a foreign government has hired ELIZA, really? Ha, yep.

<comment><USER7> I'm listening... why do you think the government has hired ELIZA?

<comment><USER8> To make us think A.I. like 'doctor' is going to train agents or extract secrets. Need big budget for research.

<comment><USER9> The parent was actually reply in the style of the AI program

<comment><USER7> Perhaps we really do have cause to worry about ELIZA, after all.

<comment><USER10> Do you really think, we do have cause to worry about ELIZA after all?

<comment><USER11> Tell me more about do you really think we have cause to worry do about have ELIZA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's probably worth skipping to page 6 before reading the transcript for some context.

<comment><USER13> That was the best plot twist I've read in a long time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Welp... It will be the end of secrets when real AI comes to be. They'll be able to get any information out of us that they want if they have enough time and we keep talking.

<comment><USER5> >They'll be able to get any information out of us that they want if they have enough time and we keep talking.

NSA having recordings of all your conversations in presence of your (even visually turned off) smartphone or any other electronic connected device, recordings of all your movements, all your computer activity, emails, internet browsing, video recordings of you in many locations... correlated with such recordings of other people - what else they are to know about you? They will be able to predict your tomorrow's behavior better than you, like the girl you meet and how it will go :)

<comment><USER15> >what else they are (sic) to know about you?

I would not be at all surprised if Strong AI was able to read our minds via functional neuroimaging. This is significantly more than the NSA & friends would be able to acquire, even with "advanced" interrogation techniques and global surveillance.

<comment><USER5> one can wonder what happens when the Strong AI discovers the "advanced" interrogation techniques...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> ANALIZA is quite the funny name. An allusion, a pun, even a bow to a famous ancestor — maybe some of those guys do have a sense of humour.

</comment><comment> V-2 Funny how this strategy seems pretty clever if you read it thinking it's a transcript of an actual interrogation :)

</comment><comment><USER17> I was going to comment, this is like talking to SmarterChild.

</comment><comment><USER18> Is this april fools? what is this?

</comment><comment><USER19> Anyone have the source code to ANALIZA? It's on github, right?</comment>


Host Apple Software Updates on the hardware and OS of your choice. - robert-boehnke https://github.com/wdas/reposado <comment><AUTHOR> This is exciting! Thanks for sharing. I wish I'd had this last week when I had 25 new Macbooks unboxed in my office, downloading updates from the web for each one.</comment>


Ask HN: Which is better tmux or screen? - <AUTHOR> Before you go on pointing me to archives or asking me to google understand that I have done that.
The reason for asking is all the comparisons are by now old. I ask now because both might have progressed a long way.
I personally use tmux but am not a pro user. I want to know if there is something that tmux has that screen doesn't have or vice versa. I would also like to know which is more light weight, more configurable.
Also I would really like to know the scenario of how you use either.
Thanks,
AM <comment><USER2> I use screen, but there's no real reason for it but inertia. I don't know of anything it does better than tmux (except, perhaps, being available more places).

I use it, plus some scripts, to keep my work separated into various contexts. See [https://github.com/dlthomas/config- files/blob/master/bin/ses...](https://github.com/dlthomas/config- files/blob/master/bin/session) and [https://github.com/dlthomas/config- files/blob/master/.bash.d...](https://github.com/dlthomas/config- files/blob/master/.bash.d/session.bashrc)

The single biggest win is keeping a separate bash history per context. But it's also very handy to define context specific functions and aliases, cd at start to a relevant directory, etc.

Putting it all inside screen means that I can trivially start a new shell in the same context and gives a nice grouping.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting I didn't know that in screen you could isolate bash history per context.

<comment><USER2> It's not screen doing the work.

Screen is just a process that spawns other processes, and like always those inherit environment variables. The script I have that starts screen defines a variable called "SESSION" beforehand, and that's used in my bashrc to set HISTFILE (and other things). Screen is just how I organize it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't think tmux can talk to serial ports. I am primarily a tmux user, but use screen if I need a serial console. e.g.

       screen /dev/ttyUSB0 115200

</comment><comment><USER4> I've never used screen, but I love tmux.

I particularly love tmuxinator and using it to set up complex environments, like sourcing a virtualenv in python on all my windows/panes.

I use tmux for my main development environment, which usually has:

Window 1 (2 panes): vim and tests Window 2: bash console, used for git or one- off tasks Window 3: console (python/ruby REPL, usually) Window 4: localhost server (running whatever webapp I'm working on)

</comment><comment><USER5> Use screen mostly, reason is simple, its the one i started using first and it's installed by default on most servers.

Objectively, I really don't know.

<comment><USER6> Same here. I use screen mostly because it's generally available, whereas tmux usually has to be installed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've used both. I kinda like how tmux has a bottom bar by default. Both are super stable and I haven't had either crash on me ever.

Configuring both are kinda of a pain. I can never seem to get scroll to work properly in mac os x. I don't think I ever tried in screen. tmux is shorter character wise :)</comment>