Ask HN: How do you keep your eyes in healthy? - <AUTHOR>

Most of the HNers are working in IT related field, after while your eye vision will decrease, how do you keep them in healthy or if you use glasses how are you going to make them more healthy? <comment><USER2> If you have a mac, try Flux [0] for adjusting the color ambience of your screen based on time of day.

In general, keep the lights on, don't code in the dark. High contrast between your desktop and environment is bad. Keep your eyes at least an arm's length away from your monitor.

Source: I have 20/20 vision and have been addicted to computers my whole life.

[0] [https://justgetflux.com/](https://justgetflux.com/)

<comment><USER3> Flux has saved my eyes.

Not using computers/tablets after 8.pm and little/no use of computers during the weekends has reduced/stopped my eye strain I had developed from staring at the monitor too much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My optician told me spending long hours (in dark or sunlight) in front of a television doesn't make your eyesight go bad. It's a common myth. The main reason is simply aging. I heard eye drops are sometimes needed because you blink less when staring at code. Personally I've never used them.

<comment><USER5> While that permanent damage is still contested, its true that your eyes can become strained and sore from focusing on a single distance though, so you should still take regular breaks to avoid discomfort, even if there isn't permanent damage. Also the lens of your eye can become weaker and make focusing on further objects harder. There are eye exercises that are mostly centered around alternating focus on near and far objects you can do to stretch the lens.

A very simple exercise to to take something small that has writing on it like a pencil and find something else that is about 10 meters away and also has writing on it and go through the letters on the smaller object while alternating focusing on the far object between each letter. You can do this a few times, moving the small object closer to your face each time. You will feel your eyes get tired very quickly if they are out of shape.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Eyes are muscles and like with any muscle your eyes can experience fatigue. It's just good to give them periodic rest periods. If you're older, computer glasses can help. Again, don't code using low light, keep the room bright so as to prevent strain.

</comment><comment><USER7> The Pomodoro technique serves me well in this instance. Frequent breaks are good for your eyes, back, circulation and overall health.

My tool of choice [http://pomodoro.trevorlandau.net/](http://pomodoro.trevorlandau.net/)

</comment><comment><USER8> > after while your eye vision will decrease

source? I don't believe this and I'm not experiencing it after 10+ years spent heavily in front of computer screens.

Ask an ophtalmologist.

<comment><AUTHOR> I dont have exact source, but common myth is staring at one point while you are coding, your eyes focus will be adopted to the distance between you and your monitor, muscles inside the eyes will be adopted to less frequent movement and this will cause dropping eyesight. whole body functions in this manner, if you train your muscles they will get bigger, otherwise they will stay as it is and after while you will not be able to muscle power for 100% thats why people are training their brain, muscles and etc,.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I use dark themes wherever possible.

</comment><comment><USER10> <Blink> more</comment>


Social Status and the Malleability of Personality - <AUTHOR> http://www.zacharyburt.com/2010/07/social-status-and-the-malleability-of-personality/ <comment><USER2> _I recall one study in which students who tested as "dumb" were placed into gifted classrooms, and students who tested as "smart" were placed into remedial classes; the teachers were none the wiser and had no resume to assume that something was afoot. After a year of teaching, "dumb" students tested "smart" and "smart" students tested "dumb"._

Anyone know whether this study actually exists? It sounds rather unethical; how did they get permission to do it? If it took place in the US I'm sure you'd have a pretty big lawsuit on your hands.

<comment><USER3> I read about at least one study (different description, illustrating the same principle) where they gave a set of teachers a list of students' names with numbers next to them. Apparently it was implied (or just not stated, which would be similar here) that the numbers were test scores or IQs. Sure enough, there was a strong correlation between the number by the student's name and how well s/he tested after a year.

The numbers were random, of course. Specifically, they were locker numbers.

<comment><USER4> Locker numbers aren't entirely randoom - while it seems unlikely there'd be a correlation, I'm surprised they didn't just use real random numbers to rule that out.

Maybe walking further between classes makes people more likely to be late and less prepared to pay attention?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There was some very interesting discussion about status here previously:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=937541>

I particularly liked nazgulnarsil's post which linked to:

<http://greenlightwiki.com/improv/Status>

which was subsequently posted

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1042624>

and also referenced in the article

(would be nice if HN had some way to link ongoing discussion on subjects - I'm not a huge fan of tags but it could apply here)

</comment><comment><USER6> What really got my attention was that working out increases dopamine levels, and dopamine levels have a direct effect on social status: [http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=11...](http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=113049)

</comment><comment><USER7> "A healthy concept of self-esteem will allow you to switch between high-status and low-status roles as necessary; insecurity should not prevent you from taking on a high or low-status role, whether in the theater or real life. Well, according to the Bard, they're the same thing."

I assume he's talking about Shakespeare? To what is he referring?

<comment><USER5> "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages. "

William Shakespeare

Full reference here:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_world%27s_a_stage>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Might it not be more correct to suggest that statues corresponds to some inate ability rather than believe in some probably unrealistic hypothesis that statues is merely acting? The latter seems to appeal more to such ideals as individuals have unlimited power, so much so that they can rise from a low statues to a high statues by no real effort to change the external world but merely their internal psychological perception.

It is very much ridiculous I suspect. Especially as he begins with a description of personality where he makes it very clear that the traits are not internal but rather respond to external circumstances. I suspect however even here that there are some innate traits which differentiate in some level ones response to a circumstance from another's.

I understand that the article seemed to be reviewing a book or a theatre play, but that seems to be only the springboard as the content focuses more on explaining some very complex phenomena. Needles to say, the article is merely opinions and as such should probably not have been written at all. We live in a scientific age. We all have opinions, but very little of us have facts or the willingness to synthesise facts into a meaningful whole.</comment>


Memory Compression in Windows 10 RTM [video] - <AUTHOR> https://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Seth-Juarez/Memory-Compression-in-Windows-10-RTM?WT.mc_id=dx_MVP5000587 <comment><USER2> Watched the video the other day, enjoyed it. Note that this already exists in OS X since Mavericks and in Linux since 3.11, although it's not enabled by default on any distro AFAIK (more info: [https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/vm/zswap.txt](https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/vm/zswap.txt)).

Related: I wish Apple did more things like this, videos explaining the internals of the system. The OS X kernel source code is open but you need a deep understanding of Mach and OS internals to understand what's going on. And most processes and services running on the background are closed source and who the hell knows what's going on.

<comment><USER3> Apple has been very serious about not wanting you to know what's going on in your machine since around 1984. The first Mac needed an extra-long hex wrench to open, a very uncommon tool at the time. They want good developer communities for good apps, yet they don't give them full control.

<comment><USER4> I don't know about "not wanting you to know what's going on in your machine." It's more like they want you to treat their public OS API as "the machine": a clean black-box abstraction layer you can build on.

What goes on underneath, while interesting, is _not guaranteed to be stable_. They might, say, replace x86 with ARM one day, as they already replaced PPC with x86. If you're targeting "the OSX platform", that doesn't affect you; you just hit rebuild in XCode. If you're targeting _the underlying computer_ , you're screwed. Apple doesn't want you to be screwed (really, they don't!), so they try to _disincentivize_ relying on anything below the public API.

Compare this to Microsoft, where the Windows team deals with cases like these[1] by _inserting compatibility shims_ to keep the behavior of applications using undocumented, non-public-APIs (or munging kernel-shared opaque structs, even) stable between OS releases. While it's great for _end- users_ —their apps don't break—it _incentivizes_ relying on private APIs, because Microsoft will effectively keep your app running for you.

[1] [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/12/23/45481...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/12/23/45481.aspx)

<comment><USER5> How is that relevant to a video like this? It's not something you can leverage directly by tapping into a private API or something. It's just information about how it works, which indirectly can benefit you as a programmer but the technique itself is transparent and could be removed tomorrow without any (other) consequences (unless I missed something, didn't watch the whole thing).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is memory shortage really a problem these days? Frankly, if you have like 12-16GB of RAM, which is realistic even for notebooks, and you don't have 200 browser tabs open or work on very special tasks, you'll never fill that RAM. In fact, I've been running Windows 7 with paging disabled (no pagefile to lessen SSD wear. Turns out that was not necessary since you'd have to page astronomic amounts to wear it noticeably) for years and never had a problem. I mean, yeah, he mentioned 1GB Ram tablets, I see the point there.

Overall very informative and he's good at explaining. At first I thought the concept was stupid but it's actually clever. Also: "If you have enough memory [...] nothing is gonna get compressed either." So it's not like this slows you down if you don't have to worry about memory size (like me).

<comment><USER5> Yes, and it's becoming worse for each year. Ultrabooks has at best 8 GB but 4 GB is the norm (at least last time I looked). And if you look at Surface Pro etc. 4 GB is the norm and 2 GB is mainstream. I might be 6 months out of date or something but regardless the current state is quite appalling. I'm writing this on a computer from 2008, and it has 8 GB of ram (and I've never updated it, I would have done it if the motherboard supported more)...

<comment><USER7> Win10's OEM licensing is forcing the restart of 2GB DDR3 module production: [http://www.dramexchange.com/WeeklyResearch/Post/2/4118.html](http://www.dramexchange.com/WeeklyResearch/Post/2/4118.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My experience on an i4790k machine with 8 GB RAM after "upgrading" to Win 10:

Chrome tabs tend to get swapped out to SSD quite quickly. Re-opening those tabs takes a few seconds now, compared to instantly before. Am pondering adding another 8 GB for a total of 16 to see if it helps...

<comment><USER9> Today 8GB of ram is a minimum for web browsing, unfortunately :(

<comment><USER10> Nonsense. I have a Windows 10 laptop with 2 GB of memory and it browses very happily. Just don't use Chrome.

<comment><USER11> Ironically, my little C720 Chromebook running Chrome OS with 2GB of ram browses pretty decently as well. But it also only has 1366x768 of screen real estate to worry about...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's good that they're putting some work into the memory subsystem. My experience on Windows 7 has been that it occasionally makes really bad memory management decisions; in particular, if left overnight with a backup client running (which will read the whole filesystem once through), I'll come back and find everything has seemingly had its process memory paged out, so each program and each tab will take some time to recover when I start using it again.

</comment><comment><USER13> If it just weren't "the one hand giveth the other hand taketh away."

I don't use Windows 10 but I read that the uncontrollable updates which take long time are very annoying. Is it really that bad?

<comment><USER14> They aren't that annoying in my opinion since Win10 will ask you to schedule a reboot in advance (within 3 days I think).</comment></comment>


U.S. Government Shutdown - <AUTHOR> http://www.usa.gov/shutdown.shtml

<comment><USER2> I'm thinking of the drag-on effects of this shutdown on many communities. Thankfully it isn't during the summer months when many towns surrounding the national parks would be massively affected by the downturn in visitors (assuming by 'closed' they mean you can't actually go in).

The things that stood out to me were that the TSA will continue to operate WITHOUT PAY! Can they force these people to work without pay? How many of them are now out looking for other jobs. Hopefully this is not sustainable, and the TSA won't be able to staff themselves when the shutdown is over.

I found this bit interesting... "Research into life-threatening diseases and other areas will stop, and new patients won't be accepted into clinical trials at the National Institutes of Health."

Shouldn't the drug companies be paying for these things anyway?

"NASA Mission Control will continue supporting astronauts serving on the Space Station." \- couldn't another country easily take over this task? I'm under the impression Americans aren't the only ones in the space station.

Note - I'm not American, these are just my thoughts on these services.</comment>


Google Deal With Luxottica Will Bring Glass to Ray-Ban, Oakley - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303949704579459770701232200

<comment><USER2> So. Post-Snowden, does anyone think Glass is a remotely good idea?

I believe the only kind thing that can be said is that glass is "perhaps not terribly worse than carrying a cellphone".

<comment><USER3> The fact is, outside the echo chambers of HN and reddit--and even within, by a silent minority at least--people simply don't worry about NSA / etc concerns enough to let it affect their day to day life. I'm one of those.

This isn't to say I endorse in any way what's going on (and I've written to my congressional representatives to that extent), but whether rationally or irrationally I am really not concerned about NSA surveillance affecting me personally. Will it negatively affect the nation as a whole, sure, but I honestly don't think wearing Glass (once the price drops enough I'd even consider buying one) will pose an real threat to me.

So yeah, I do think it's a remotely good idea, as long it's useful to me otherwise.

<comment><USER2> I understand your position and I think it's pragmatic.

My concerns are mainly societal, as widespread use would provide unprecedented new surveillance capabilities.

The main difference is that cellphones mostly only compromise your own privacy, whereas Glass users are in a position to enable data collection on everyone around them too.

Data from Glass may _already_ be available to existing collection efforts. It's just an Android device. Glass cloud syncs by default and uses the regular (insecure) Android backup mechanism.

Google have been careful to point out that Glass does not support facial recognition. Sure, but image recognition is much better done in a server farm across bulk collected data anyway.

If glass is widespread, it becomes plausible to track targets (non users, vehicles etc) through "crowd-sourced" surveillance images. This gets really interesting when you have fine-grained location data and the ability to correlate between multiple users (whose path in the world is known). Most of the time the system could just work off passively collected (synced) data. There would be no indication on the device itself that this is going on, but it would not be real-time.

However if a target is sought in a certain area, you could go active. Software could be pushed to nearby Glass units to conduct a high intensity search[1]. In a metropolitan area, you could turn on thousands of eyes at will[2]. Naturally you could also collect audio or other sensor data if you needed it.

What amazes me is that this is not science fiction - it's an obvious extension of existing collection efforts. A lot of the required infrastructure already exists.

Given what we know to date, I view efforts to develop such a system as basically inevitable. The idea is too obvious, too tempting. That's why I'm worried about Glass.

[1] Take lots of pictures. Be willing to drain battery. You might want to do some local processing to minimize load on the cell network.

[1] Google can push software to Android devices. Carriers can push updates. There are probably a bunch of other ways to get software on there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> line-zero Just when I thought those sun-glasses couldn't get any more douche-baggy . . .

</comment><comment><USER4> Interestingly, both Luxottica and local rival Safilo are both from small towns in the middle of the Dolomites:

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

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

Not the first place that would come to mind for precision manufacturing, but there you have it.

<comment><USER5> > Not the first place that would come to mind for precision manufacturing, but > there you have it.

Why not? Aren't Swiss watchmakers in the Alps as well?

And regarding sibling poster saying they have production mainly in China: I remember reading they've actually moved some of the production to Italy after acquiring firms that were making their frames in China. If I find a source in English I'll post it.

Old article stating 85% production in Italy:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/27/style/27iht- rglass.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/27/style/27iht-rglass.html)

Marketing page about manufactoring:

[http://www.luxottica.com/en/company/world/places/manufacturi...](http://www.luxottica.com/en/company/world/places/manufacturing)

<comment><USER4> > Why not? Aren't Swiss watchmakers in the Alps as well?

This says... not really:

[http://www.fhs.ch/en/history.php](http://www.fhs.ch/en/history.php)

At least not compared to someplace like Agordo, which is still not that easy to get to today:

[https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Agordo,+Belluno,+Italy&hl=en&...](https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Agordo,+Belluno,+Italy&hl=en&ll=46.272461,12.057495&spn=0.214533,0.528374&sll=45.406504,11.891245&sspn=0.217898,0.528374&oq=agord&hnear=Agordo,+Belluno,+Veneto,+Italy&t=p&z=12)

Which is probably why Luxottica moved to Milan, and Safilo here to Padova.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is a great 60 minutes episode about Luxottica @ [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDdq2rIqAlM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDdq2rIqAlM)

</comment><comment><USER7> Sad that Google will sink to doing business with Luxottica over some awesome company like Warby Parker. I have no interest anymore.

<comment><USER8> It does seem to make sense to me that Google would partner with a company that can place Google Glass in front of the average consumer. Luxotica owns 7000 retail locations [1] and I am pretty sure most of those locations accept EyeMed insurance (which Luxotica also owns). People would be very happy to put their insurance benefit towards a pair of Google Glasses.

I'm on my second pair of WB frames because I don't like spending a ton on eye- wear. I understand the value that WB provides to consumers. I just think Luxotica currently offers way more to Google than WB could.

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxottica#Retail](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxottica#Retail)

<comment><USER7> True, and your right. It's good for them. I am just so apposed for so many reasons and I rarely feel that way about google products. Oh well.</comment></comment></comment>


Thamugadi, a Roman outpost in Algeria, was saved by the Sahara - <AUTHOR> https://www.nationalgeographic.com/archaeology-and-history/magazine/2019/07-08/thamugadi-roman-outpost-ruins/ <comment><USER2> This article seems to get Numidia screwed up twice — once calling it Mumidia, and once referring to it as Nubia! It was a really important region politically, especially in the lead up to the fall of the republic. Come on, Nat Geo...

</comment><comment><USER3> I am curious how these discoveries are made and excavated. There are some large structures here. Were they sticking out of the sand or completely buried? Hard to imagine 20-30 feet of sand covering it all. Makes you wonder what else is buried in various deserts around the world.

<comment><USER4> > I am curious how these discoveries are made and excavated.

In the case of a Roman fortification such as Thamugadi probably written sources such as maps, lists for military or commercial use, history and so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a Tamil speaker, from southern part of India. The word Thamugadi feels like a Tamil word. Tha + mugam + adi.

Tha(give me) + mugadi (mugam+adi)(faceprint/ witness/ bless).

<comment><USER6> The word is actually Berber - Amazigh. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timgad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timgad) Interesting though to see that the same word means something to someone else in another culture. We're all connected somehow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Exporting grain by wagons to the coast can't have been that viable could it? Am I missing something?

<comment> dan-robertson Why wouldn't that be viable? Eg lots of grain came to Rome from Sicily and it would need to make it to the coast from there somehow.

<comment><USER8> Ostia to Rome was only 30km and they could use barges on the Tiber to send goods up/down

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I still hope there will be opportunities for discovering lost manuscripts in desert climates like this.</comment>


Tim Draper Tells NBC Bay Area That Bitcoin Will Replace Cash in Four Years - <AUTHOR> In this week's episode of NBC Bay Area's podcast Sand Hill Road, business and tech reporter Scott McGrew sits down with billionaire investor Tim Draper who makes more predictions for the cryptocurrency Bitcoin and stands by his defense of Theranos founder and CEO, Elizabeth Holmes.
McGrew and Draper discuss the future of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin. Draper asserts cryptocurrencies will supplant all other forms of payment in four years. He tells McGrew that some businesses "will laugh at you" if other forms of payment are used.
On Holmes, Draper – who invested $1 million in Theranos – reveals why he hasn't paid much attention to all the reports and evidence documenting Holmes' transgressions and defends her. "I thought why would I follow that person?" he says about John Carreyrou's first Wall Street Journal article that raised doubts on Theranos. "I'm going to follow people who do deep research and really understand things, not people who have an agenda and want to take down an entrepreneur." Draper ends his comments on Holmes by saying "this attack and vicious rumor mill to try to take down Elizabeth Holmes has been a real setback for humanity."
Sand Hill Road is a new weekly podcast hosted by NBC Bay Area/KNTV business and tech reporter Scott McGrew, featuring interviews from the heart of Silicon Valley with the venture capitalists, start-ups, and innovators behind the trending technologies of tomorrow.
In next week's episode of Sand Hill Road, Alphabet, Inc. chairman John Hennesey talks with McGrew about possible government regulation, entrepreneurship, and Google's big plans in San Jose.
To listen to past episodes featuring interviews with Elad Gil, Randy Komisar and Maynard Webb among others, subscribe to Sand Hill Road on iTunes and wherever podcasts are available. <comment><USER2> I'm pretty sure that, even within SF/Silicon Valley, Bitcoin (or any Coin) will _not_ replace cash by 2023.

</comment><comment><USER3> No thanks! Cash and credit will never leave my wallet.

If someone doesn't want to accept those, I will find someone who will.

I can't wait 26 minutes for a tx to confirm

</comment><comment><USER4> Cryptocurrencies will replace cash and eventually most of our financial system. But it won't be Bitcoin. Bitcoin has massive uncertainties in its security model ([https://medium.com/coinmonks/bitcoin-security-a-negative- exp...](https://medium.com/coinmonks/bitcoin-security-a-negative- exponential-95e78b6b575)). Ethereum has a much greater chance of winning.

</comment><comment><USER5> In two years, I'd bet private bank blockchains will be moving more money than all cryptocurrency combined.</comment>


Goo.gl Is A Go. The Most Secure And Fastest URL Shortener On The Web - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/30/googlegoo-gl-is-a-go-the-stablest-most-secure-and-fastest-url-shortener-on-the-web/

<comment><USER2> Yay finally. I have to say I trust google more than bit.ly (how do they make money?)

Here is a shortened link to the article <http://goo.gl/BHTx> \- stats page: <http://goo.gl/info/BHTx>

<comment><USER3> Following bit.ly's convention, you can also just add a plus sign to the end of the URL to get sent to the stats page: <http://goo.gl/BHTx+>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Two things:

a) Always better to copy / paste article titles to HN. Without the quotes it sounds like "most secure, fastest" is TechCrunch's review of the URL shortner. It's not, that line is a quote directly from Google's press release.

b) Regurgitating Google's press release with a half paragraph objective view at the end is content farming - TechCrunch should sell out to AOL! Oh wait.

</comment><comment><USER5> " You also know that when you click a goo.gl shortened URL, you're protected against malware, phishing and spam"

So if I send you a goo.gl link to goat.cx does Google stop that? What if you wanted to see goat.cx ?

<comment><USER6> Hopefully they do like safe.mn: warn user, but let them go to the site if they know what they are doing. <http://safe.mn/NVr>

<comment><USER7> Not clicking that.

<comment><USER8> If you do you just get:

The link may not be safe

Safe.mn Safe.mn is a URL shortener service: we transform long URLs into short ones. Before Safe.mn redirects visitors to the long URL, we ensure the final destination is safe. We have found the following potential problems with the website:

Questionable content: Adult

and then a link to the site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> wow... and I get the stats linked to my Google account. Very nice.

</comment><comment><USER10> Still, the shortest and fanciest name (in my opinion, of course) is bit.ly's <http://j.mp/> :)

</comment><comment><USER11> " _The Most Secure..._ "

Challenge, accepted.

</comment><comment><USER12> To make it even faster, they should get an alternative 3-letter domain to act as an alternative, like how j.mp woks with bit.ly.

</comment><comment><USER13> Google doesn't have API for URL shortner. Do they? Also, I doubt if applications already using bit.ly will switch to Google's one soon.

</comment><comment><USER14> The more Google does, the less I trust them.

<comment><USER15> Yes. Fight The Man because they keep _doing things_. We must stop that kind of reckless behavior.</comment></comment>


An Antarctic state of mind - <AUTHOR> http://scientistatwork.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/13/an-antarctic-state-of-mind/?src=recg

<comment><USER2> I actually looked up what it would take to get a support job in McMurdo years back. The appeal of the type of person who would seek out that desolate place is a fascinating thought. To look at what draws a person to that frontier, both the science aspect and the social one. I thought it'd make a good blog.

Harder than I first assumed. Apparently even dishwashers there have PhDs. And my idea wasn't completely original. There are of course plenty of documentaries about the place. And more than a couple of blogs by specific teams about what they're doing. I just rarely see ones about the people. And I'm curious if it really does take an Antarctic state of mind.

<comment><AUTHOR> _"... I'm curious if it really does take an Antarctic state of mind. ..."_

Great question. I keep a list of these articles as I've have an interest in how ppl perform in unusual or dangerous situations. Here's a couple of articles I can think of:

A) How we decide under difficult circumstances in real time

 _"'...There are no formal guidelines issued to climbers, and we don't know the risk it might have meant for their own lives. But can it ever be right, in the words of mountain leaders Chris and Simon Holloway, for climbers to "carry on to the summit, while there are living people dying behind them"? Ben Yehuda, a former soldier, described his decision to stop as 'automatic' ..."_

Jon Henley, _"Mount Everest: the ethical dilemma facing climbers"_ ~ [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/shortcuts/2012/may/28/mount-...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/shortcuts/2012/may/28/mount- everest-ethical-dilemma)

B) Handling extreme mental & physical challenges

 _"It's important to learn how to function while being fatigued," he explains. ... Without realizing it, Espiritu had taken advantage of some of the major techniques that allow people to maximize their hardiness."_

1) Modify your perspective

2) Lean on your friends

3) Laugh

4) Keep your head down

5) Exercise

Jeff Wise, _"An Ultramarathoner's 5 Secrets of Toughness"_ ~ [http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/extreme- fear/201005/ultr...](http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/extreme- fear/201005/ultramarathoners-5-secrets-toughness)

C) How you slide into trouble in cold remote environments

 _"... In the book, Krakauer alleges that essential safety methods adopted over the years by experienced guides on Everest are sometimes compromised by the competition between rival guiding agencies to get their clients (some with little or no mountaineering experience) to the summit. ..."_

Jon Krakauer, _"Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster"_ ~ <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_Thin_Air#Summary>

D) Special forces selection is a process that maximises the necessary state of mind for multiple unforgiving environments.

 _"... "The Gift of Fear" that if you afraid of something, that's good because it hasn't actually happened yet. Think about it, when a new recruit is standing on the edge of a 40-foot repel tower, he's not afraid of being that high off the ground anymore, he's afraid of falling. If he were to fall off the tower, well then he's certainly not fearful of falling anymore, he's more concerned with landing....you get the idea, right? So when we think about it like that, why is just a thought enough to make us quit and what can we do about it. It is at these time that you have to have some "rules" in place that you can go to immediatley to replace those cancerous thoughts of fear and doubt ..."_

Dr. Dave Ricciuti, _"Surviving the Cut, the Spartan Death Race, and Life!"_ ~ [http://tacticalpsych.com/2/post/2012/06/surviving-the-cut- th...](http://tacticalpsych.com/2/post/2012/06/surviving-the-cut-the-spartan- death-race-and-life.html)</comment></comment>


Beyond Black- and White-Box AI - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexanderlavin/2019/06/17/beyond-black-box-ai <comment><USER2> "Underspecified and misaligned notions of interpretation impede progress towards the rigorous development of understandable, transparent, trusted AI systems."

Powerful thesis. Essentially these are the steps forward:

1\. precise definitions of interpretation, yielding interp-metrics

2\. develop and train models that optimize both prediction accuracy _and_ interp-metrics

3\. voilà, aligned objectives yield trusted AI</comment>


Silicon Valley is one of the most polluted places in the country - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/09/silicon-valley-full-superfund-sites/598531/ <comment><USER2> Article does not even mention the Kaiser Permanente cement plant which has a dedicated train line bringing in coal for burning, is one of the largest sources of mercury pollution in California, and is perched right over Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, and Los Altos, and very close to Palo Alto and San Jose, bathing them in a haze of emissions.

All the highly educated and well connected residents, rich and powerful corporations, and even local governments can't do anything about it, because it is grandfathered in by federal law. It doesn't even appear on many lists of top polluters because many people who compile such lists only include power plants, and it is not a power plant.

It's a real world counterexample for people who say we can just turn off the switch of things we don't like (AI being the usual such thing). Well, good luck with that, if there are laws saying you can't... which there will be.

<comment><USER3> This plant:

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

Which is not owned by Kaiser Permanente?

<comment><USER4> It was founded by Henry Kaiser and named Kaiser Permanente Cement Plant after the Permanente Creek which flowed past it. It has since changed names. Kaiser Permanente the healthcare organization was named after the same creek. So calling it the Kaiser Permanente Cement Plant is outdated, but it's not saying that the healthcare organization owns it.

<comment><USER5> Yes! The KP HMO has history with but is not owned by the Kaiser industrial companies. It was essentially setup by Sidney Garfield at the behest of Henry Kaiser and the help of FDR to treat workers at the Kaiser shipyards, hence the name. It's a not for profit organization completely distinct from other Kaiser organizations. Funny enough I'm pretty sure at $79 billion yearly, it grosses more than it's industrial namesakes.

[https://about.kaiserpermanente.org/our-story/our- history/how...](https://about.kaiserpermanente.org/our-story/our-history/how- it-all-started)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is still the best essay I have read on the topic: [http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/20130404/in-search- of-...](http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/20130404/in-search-of-the- cookie-dough-tree/)

I've left Silicon Valley since I read it. And having read it, I hope to never move back.

<comment><USER7> This is horribly frightening. What can I do at home to detect (or even continuously monitor) the presence of Superfund chemicals?

<comment><USER8> There's a pretty good map here:

[https://www.nbcbayarea.com/brchannel/Map-The-Chemical- Legacy...](https://www.nbcbayarea.com/brchannel/Map-The-Chemical-Legacy-of- Silicon-Valley-258950021.html)

TCE has a distinctive smell - sweet, like cookie dough or donuts. You'll know if you're in an area contaminated by it - I've smelled it at the Google Quad campus and some of the residential areas around it. (The area around Evandale is particularly bad, I've smelled it just driving through some of the residential streets there.) Some of the other chemicals used in semicoductor manufacture are odorless, though.

Most of the contamination is in industrial or office park zones, so I'd be more worried about your workplace than your home, and many of the spills are plain old gasoline (from service stations) which you can have anywhere.

<comment><USER9> Slightly OT: Meanwhile in Hamburg, Germany, at the construction site of the eastern Hafencity

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafencity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafencity) [https://osm.org/go/0HoGuvP~t--?m=](https://osm.org/go/0HoGuvP~t--?m=)

they inject something into the compacted sand of the former quays/piers which makes you think you are getting high. At least it smells like electrical insulating paint i had to work with a long time ago. Open the drum and hold your breath, or get dizzy.

Was a few weeks ago, in the middle of the night while i was on S/Nightseeing tour. Two large tractors with large liquid trailers which had centipede-like appendages on each side, maybe 10 to 12 "legs" and fully automated. Stop, ram the legs into the ground and loudly squirt a minute or so, move on, repeat. The whole area _stank_! Never seen or heard of something like this before. Apparently it's called _Geo Injection_ to stabilize the ground, or impregnate against water. Nothing about this in the local media at all.

I'm suspicious. Why in the middle of the night at 2 to 3 AM?

A few days ago i've been on tour again, also during the night, maybe 7km/4.35miles downstream while the Elbe was at low tide. Same intense smell, though no construction site in sight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A related example from last year, near Page Mill Road: [https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2018/03/01/stanford- sues...](https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2018/03/01/stanford-sues-hp- companies-agilent-over-toxic-contamination)

And an entertaining rant by a UC Berkeley Health Physicist, on D&D (Decontamination & Demolition): [http://www.funraniumlabs.com/2019/05/a-stream-of- consciousne...](http://www.funraniumlabs.com/2019/05/a-stream-of- consciousness-rant-on-dd-projects/)

<comment><USER11> FYI, the location near Page Mill Road is where Facebook used to have their headquarters. Stanford did took various remediation measures when they converted the property into faculty housing, but IDK if the FB buildings were adequately protected/ventilated. My understanding is that the vapors are only harmful if they get into buildings and are not adequately ventilated. Stanford put vapor guards under each home they built, among other things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Fun fact: Facebook's old headquarters (between Page Mill Rd and California Ave) was located on top of a superfund site. After FB moved to Menlo Park, Stanford built a faculty housing development there. They claim that they have done adequate retrofitting so that it poses no risk to residents, but I know some professors in the sciences who decided against living there after reading the environmental disclosures.

Also, if Stanford did this retrofitting, that implies that maybe FB did not do enough when they were there?

The housing disclosures have more info on the contamination and retrofitting: [https://universityterrace.stanford.edu/disclosures](https://universityterrace.stanford.edu/disclosures)

</comment><comment><USER12> One of the worst was right across 10th St. from Solar4America Ice (formerly the San Jose Ice Center, home training facility of the Sharks).

</comment><comment><USER13> I wonder how many such Superfund sites we already have in mainland China (I mean from a factual standpoint, not from a government reporting standpoint). The Chinese government is so out of control over the situation that, nominally, environmental pollution can be punished with death.

<comment><USER14> I'm sure the residents of Santa Clara and the workers in various campuses will rest more easily knowing that _actually, there are much more polluted places globally._

Its not a competition. The article is saying SV is badly polluted. Pointing out that China might be worse just means there's another problem; that's redundant information in the context of talking about SV.

<comment><USER15> > Its not a competition.

No one said it was, and nothing said detracts from SV. I think it's an interesting question I wouldn't have otherwise thought about. Fifty years from now will China be talking about the same environmental issues we're talking about now? Will it be better or worse?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Nobody remembers the Commodore Semiconductor Group? Commodore was a pioneer in personal computing, semiconductor and environmental accidents. In 1974, there was a massive leak of the 250-gallon underground concrete storage tank full of TCE, and today the site is still monitored by the EPA. Bill Herd, the chief engineering of Commodore 128, mentioned in his interview that the day he went to work, he didn't know the tank leaked and parked at the wrong side of the company, and his car was completely contaminated.

[https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/cursites/csitinfo.cfm?id=0...](https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/cursites/csitinfo.cfm?id=0301146&msspp=med)

</comment><comment><USER17> Oh no, I worked in two different offices located on superfund sites. Probably a third too but I haven't found supporting evidence yet.

</comment><comment><USER18> So, a story about SV being polluted has 156 points right now, and sits nicely in the middle of the front page. It's an important story, apparently.

Meanwhile, Nature's story about climate change (The hard truths of climate change — by the numbers) got flagged and disappeared quickly: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21042101](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21042101)

There is no better way to show what "tech bubble" means.

<comment><USER19> Eh, I don't think "tech bubble" is appropriate to nail down the problems. Egotism and hubris, along with thinking being above the rest of society is the problem. And to be fair, it shows up here in HN too. There's a weird mentality of "Well I'm smart in _computers and programming_ , that automatically makes me an expert in civil infrastructure, economic theory, social support programs, agriculture, etc". I mean, seriously, it's really weird and it's happening constantly. It's like a lot of this "revolutionary SV agriculture startups". They're bunk and retarded. They're just 1940s-1970s research projects without ever citing or learning from trails already blazed. They act like "No one has ever researched how to grow food, here I come to rescue with my power of programming and social media posts! Venture capital firms, I'm ready for money!" Not a single one realizes that a lot of large scale, efficient and affordable farming practices were pioneered by people like Norman Borlaug. But they "draw inspiration" from a random SV ceo. Just pisses me off.

Plus, "The people's voice matters. We must democratize everything... as long as they only agree with me."

Reality is, silicon valley is not really different from the old titans of industry. One difference, the old assholes were upfront "You need something, I hire people to make it, and I'm in it for the money." The valley, "I'm here for you. You giving me your money is the best way to make the world a better place through [insert _disruptive_ product]. You'll be happy with a lighter wallet. We're going to save the world together."

<comment><USER20> I agree with your overall perception of SV as an outsider myself. There are very smart people doing big things alongside starry-eyed naive people doing silly things. Sometimes it's a blurry line between the two and sometimes I can't help but facepalm at some of the stories I hear coming out of SV...

<comment><USER19> Well, let's be honest about the "intelligent" part. Sure, there are some brilliant computer engineers out in SV. But would you say they're necessarily smart financial planners? The cost of living in a lot of parts of Cali in generally are ridiculous and some of the most expensive in the country. A lot of SV companies complain that there are not enough capable programmers in the area. Well, if a 50k-70k salary in other parts of the country gets you a decent sized house, a car, cheaper food and cheaper well... everything. While a 120k in SV gets you a studio apartment and reliant on public transpo... I mean, what makes more sense? God have mercy if you have kids.

So if you have a segment of engineers who believe living in SV is "smart" financially... do you really want them to make opinions on government spending? I'm not saying that "people not living in Cali" are instantly money smart. But, you don't quickly take financial advice from a friend that's gone bankrupt twice, is always in crippling debt due to overspending and throws money at ideas largely based on keywords.

I guess my long drawn out rant is just the problem where lots of folks consider SV "smart". Thus they're allowed to have an affecting opinion on things they're truly not "smart" about.

<comment><USER21> > The cost of living in a lot of parts of Cali in generally are ridiculous and > some of the most expensive in the country.

A lot of these arguments could be made about New York, specifically Manhattan. There are people there that can genuinely afford it, and there are people that struggle financially because they want to be there (for whatever reason).

There are obviously lots of people in the Bay Area struggling to make ends meet, including some software engineers. But the reality is most talented people here are so well-paid it's not an issue. You're talking about $120k salaries, I'm talking about $100k _signing bonuses_. Of course the average engineer here isn't swimming in money, but there are plenty of people who make so much more money here that it's a wise financial decision to stay. Personally I ran the numbers and I put more money in my savings every year here than I would anywhere else.

I completely agree with the general sentiment that software engineers in particular suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect and I regularly have to explain to engineers that the world outside of software is not so neatly contained. But the notion that most software engineers here are not smart because they choose to live somewhere expensive is irrelevant if you aren't also talking about how much more money they make to live here.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Google Works: A Google Ranking Engineer's Story - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJPu4vHETXw <comment><USER2> "A Google ranking engineer" is really understating it. Paul Haahr is probably one of the most knowledgeable and respected persons within Search.</comment>


Startup School 9: Alex Schultz, How to Grow - <AUTHOR> https://www.startupschool.org/videos/9 <comment><USER2> Really appreciated this one. He obviously repeated some of the key things from his talk in the last one, but still had very valuable new insights. Can't say that about all of them, Aaron Levie's talk even had the same joke about college dropouts in it.

<comment><USER3> If Levie or Altman end up reading this thread, I have some constructive criticism: I really think the first 30 minutes of Levie's talk were too much of a pitch for Box. I don't need to be sold on the company or technology when I'm learning. Simply stating what it is and how successful it has been grabs my attention and validates it's worth listening to. I found myself skipping forward over and over to get to the meat.

I enjoyed the latter half more. I think cutting the pitch down to 5 minutes and diving deeper into the lessons learned along the way could bring that talk up a level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've watched a number of Schultz's presentations - but this one felt rushed to me. Really wish he'd clarify a number of the points he made in a followup blog post instead of suggesting the listener figure out what he meant.

<comment><USER5> Well maybe other people on HN have something provoking to contribute, so why not ask your questions here?

<comment><USER4> Around 19:25 is one time he makes the request for the listener to figure out what he meant, related material appears to start around 18:15.

<comment><USER5> Here Alex is specifically talking about retention and not growth. He uses ad sales as an example and talks about the first 250 days as a snapshot of what retention looks like. Recall earlier he mentions that if you have a social network and your retention is 5% it probably isn't going to work out, but if you have a high end apparel business 5% retention could mean a good business.

The graph he presents has a blue line which demonstrates number of people in the system (100% today, 0% 250 days ago).

The pink line is the total revenue of everyone using the ad service on the 30/31st day divided by the number of signups 30/31 days ago. If the curve starts declining, why is it declining? Does the advertiser need to be pinged with email every week? Etc. So the goal is to make sure the curve asymptotes early on so you know it is a viable business. You could imagine Facebook trying to sell apparel with "FACEBOOK" on it and the retention curve would decline; not a good business.

After this he begins to talk about growth. You can't have growth without first identifying product/market fit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Anyone know where I can find the Slideshare?

</comment><comment><USER7> I'll take Google's growth lessons over facebooks, snapchat, myspace any day of the week.

<comment><USER8> Why? Facebook has been a crazy positive growth story for so long now, and has > 1.9Bn people on the platform (monthly active users I believe?)

Not saying that FB's growth approach is better than Google's - I'm just not sure why the dismissal.</comment></comment>


Sitting, Standing, and Bouncing - <AUTHOR> http://hivelogic.com/articles/sitting-standing-balance-ball/ <comment><AUTHOR> According to Marco Arment and Dan, the Steelcase Details Series 7 is the way to go if you can afford one: <http://5by5.tv/buildanalyze/21> . But they're insanely expensive.

I think the desk discussion starts around minute 50.</comment>


Things Software Developers and Marketers Have in Common - <AUTHOR> https://linearb.io/blog/23-things-software-developers-and-marketers-have-in-common/ <comment><AUTHOR> The first line was my favorite: "It is harder to make new connections right now but it is possible and we have to try for the sake of each other."

</comment><comment><USER2> I don't know if "dozens" of developers constitutes the right sample size. Otherwise, good article.</comment>


Why You Don't Make a Mindlessly Beautiful Visualization of a Horrific Event - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcodesign.com/3049586/why-you-dont-make-a-mindlessly-beautiful-visualization-of-a-horrific-event <comment><USER2> I believe this is a trait of the American mind : "we are the good guys so we can't do bad things, therefore everything we do is good".

But when you consider it, atomic bombs on civilian pops, military presence (to not say occupation) around the world, invasions of countries (but it's for democracy - yeah, right), dirty coups, financing of terrorists orgs, you got to wonder what kind of loose standards you need to be called the good guys.

In conclusion, no, Americans are not bad guys, but their government certainly is.</comment>


I built a progressive web app and published it in three app stores - <AUTHOR> http://debuggerdotbreak.judahgabriel.com/2018/04/13/i-built-a-pwa-and-published-it-in-3-app-stores-heres-what-i-learned/ <comment> rolha-capoeira > From minor things like "iOS Safari won't let you play audio without first > interacting with the page" to major, show-stopping things like, "iOS Safari > won't let you play the next song if your app is in the background or if your > screen is off."

I disagree that these things are purely because Apple wants your $99/year. Maybe that's part of the story, but not all.

I am glad that websites cannot play audio without the user first interacting with the page. I am also glad that websites can't play audio in the background — as a user, I would find it too "buried" behind Safari and I wouldn't appreciate the feeling that a website was running in the background. (Yes I know you can control audio via the Notifications Center and Control Center.)

I appreciate that these permissions are reserved for apps that Apple has vetted, even if this is a pain for developers and they are not a perfect institution, as a user I appreciate that they are trying to maintain quality and encourage good app behavior.

I'm glad your app had to jump through these hurdles to gain the functionality your users wanted. Like you said, it's where the users are they were asking you directly for it. These are higher-level permissions and should not be free for the taking.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed that apps (web or native) shouldn't have free access to e.g. your contacts without permission.

But Apple goes beyond security and actually makes it impossible to build first-class experiences for iOS without paying $99/year + 33% in-app purchases. I think that's unfortunate.

The free and opened web presents a challenge to Apple's app business. They have a perverse incentive to keep web apps second-class citizens on iOS. And this is a major reason why iOS Safari has become the new Internet Explorer 6.

<comment><USER2> Lemme get this straight: you're mad that a company you don't want to pay $99/yr to won't build APIs so you can make money on their platform.

So sad, lemme find my tiny violin.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. I'm not making any money on their platform. I'm a non-profit, building a free app; this isn't about money.

I mentioned money in the post as a list of all barriers to moving a PWA to app store. $99/year + 33% in-app purchases (plus a $1000+ Mac to build, and probably one or more Mac minis for CI) _is_ a barrier.

The bigger concern is Apple is lagging behind on web standards. I suspect the reason for that is because web apps undermine their app business; this is a replay of the 1990s when Microsoft lagged their browser behind web standards, knowing it undermined their business.

So, keep your violin, brother. :-) My post wasn't a complaint, but a documenting of the hurdles involved in moving a PWA to the app stores.

<comment><USER3> > I'm a non-profit

So the only thing that applies to you is the price to have access to a Mac. Since you're a nonprofit, Apple will waive your developer fee, and you wouldn't need in-app purchases anyways. Also, IIRC the cut Apple takes is 30%, not 33%, in line with the rest of their App Store policies.

<comment><USER4> "non-profit" doesn't mean "not selling things"

<comment><USER5> And it certainly doesn't mean it's not about money. Depends on the business, of course, but I've seen non-profits that pay million dollar salaries to employees and put millions in the bank as reserves. Fine with me but business is often about money; non-profit or otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Mobile platform vendors, like Apple, are totally cool with apps that use > your phone to its fullest. Access your location, play background audio, get > your GPS coordinates, read all your contacts, play videos or audio without > app interaction, read your email, intercept your typing, play more than one > thing at a time, use your microphone and camera, access your pictures, and > more. Apple's totally cool with that.

Apple is certainly not "totally cool with that:" each of these features comes with strings attached. For example, apps are forbidden from attempting to de- anonymize users via facial recognition.

On the app store, abusive apps can be removed; there is no equivalent enforcement mechanism on the web. This IMO is the primary reason for restricting these capabilities to reviewed apps. Though the fee may be a secondary reason.

99% of websites do user-hostile things, like track users. What will prevent PWAs from extending this to e.g. ultrasonic beacon tracking? Honest question, it's important that it gets solved.

<comment><AUTHOR> Partially agree. I understand security concerns; we shouldn't allow random web apps to freely access privileged operations, for example. (Should we allow web apps to _ask_ for permission? That is another question.)

But stopping web apps from working? For example, breaking open standards like "you can't play more than one stream of audio", or "you're not allowed to play audio if your app isn't in the fore"? Nah, that's nasty. It gets worse. iOS's new PWA support actually reloads your whole page - losing all context and execution - every time you bring it to the fore. It kills all execution when putting the app into the background.

This is beyond security; it is actually hostile to users and developers.

<comment><USER7> Mobile Safari's support for modern web standards has made IE look good for some time now. It seems very clear that Apple doesn't want a good experience for web users on its devices.

It's very frustrating, because we keep getting requests from users for features we're happy to look into or even already working on... but then discover the user has an iPhone, where the necessary web technologies are supported poorly if at all.

Unfortunately, since Apple also won't let anyone else supply a real browser to run on its devices, there's also no meaningful competition to force them to do better. Maybe monopoly/anti-competition regulations should be adapted so the same principles apply to platforms in this sort of controlling position.

<comment><USER8> This is absolute nonsense.

Most web technologies are supported by Safari.it has lagged behind other browsers for a while - not terribly so, but enough that it can be a little annoying at times. But the comparison with IE (or rather Edge now) is just wrong by an order of magnitude.

<comment><USER7> _This is absolute nonsense._

Really? Let's look at some specifics around PWAs and media content.

Mobile Safari has historically set relatively low and hard limits when storing data for offline use through the various relevant APIs. This is a much more significant limitation in a world of offline-friendly PWAs.

HTML video elements have had so many problems it's hard to keep track, from relying on a broken plugin that didn't do things like sending cookies properly with requests, through to refusing to play videos in-page on iPhones.

Mobile Safari has stuck with only playing H.264 videos even as every other major browser supported open standards.

Obviously IE is no longer developed and doesn't support modern PWA APIs, but even IE had better support and more compatibility with some of the other modern web APIs than Mobile Safari.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Author here. Thanks all for bringing this to the HN front page.

The jist of the article is getting a PWA into the app stores is harder than it needs to be, especially on iOS. Between Google, Apple, and Microsoft, I found Google's Play Store to be the simplest and quickest store to get a PWA published in.

Another interesting bit is that web technologies haven't caught up to native. My PWA isn't super complex -- it's a glorified music player -- and yet integrating into the OS (now playing song on the lock screen, for example) was painful and non-standard, particularly on iOS.

All that said, I'm quite excited about PWAs. I think they will win in the long run, and will eventually (~5 years) become the dominant type of app in mobile and desktop app stores.

<comment><USER9> [Removed by user]

<comment><AUTHOR> Why build an app and not just live on the web? I answered that in the article, 2nd paragraph. The answer is two-fold:

1\. That's where users are. We've trained a generation of users to find apps in app stores.

2\. Some mobile platforms (read: iOS) are hostile to web apps. For example, Apple doesn't let you play audio in the background on iOS. (Or rather, they suspend JS execution if the web app is in the background, or if the screen is off. Thus, you can play exactly a single MP3, then my media player app will stop playing music unless it's still in the fore, which is a show-stopper.) This is just one of dozens of issues with web audio in iOS Safari; I've documented more here[0].

Native apps have no such restriction. Thus, packaging my PWA as an app got around all these restrictions. Plus it lets me integrate with the OS, for example, by showing the currently-playing song name, artist, album, art, etc. on the lock screen.

[0]: [http://debuggerdotbreak.judahgabriel.com/2016/12/13/its- almo...](http://debuggerdotbreak.judahgabriel.com/2016/12/13/its- almost-2017-and-html5-audio-is-still-broken-on-ios/)

<comment><USER10> > Some mobile platforms (read: iOS) are hostile to web apps.

I'm OK with that. Web apps are clunkier and provide a worse experience. That Google makes this easier speaks to the sort of UX you get with Android.

<comment><USER11> > I'm OK with that. Web apps are clunkier and provide a worse experience. That > Google makes this easier speaks to the sort of UX you get with Android.

Chicken and eggs argument here: web apps are clunkier and provide a worse experience because they are not well supported by the OS or the OS does not provide better support for web apps because they provide a worse experience?

Hybrid app frameworks exist because phone operational systems lack proper support for web applications.

<comment><USER12> > web apps are clunkier and provide a worse experience because they are not > well supported by the OS

No, they are clunkier and provide a worse experience, because most "web apps" are ported version of desktop bloatware, targeting devices, permanently plugged into wall-mounted electric outlet.

What are "web applications" anyway? Something, that requires permanent internet connectivity? Something with DOM APIs? Something with built-in Javascript interpreter? Something with CSS support? The defining qualities of "web" have absolutely nothing to do with mobile devices. If anything, "web" has bad supported for OS. This is why all hybrid frameworks are about exposing additional OS functionality to browser, not the other way around.

Just accept, that you are looking at wrong tool for the job.

<comment><USER11> I will not debate whether "web apps" are ported version of desktop bloatware but I don't see why you can't write offline-first, mobile-first progressive web applications using Javascript and HTML (except Apple's lack of enthusiasm supporting anything outside their walled garden)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> We're definitely at the point in history where we _have to get out of these app stores_. I get it if you're doing a game or something that's fine, stay in the app store. But I don't know how many times I've been extremely frustrated with a website telling me to get their app.

* They break my in-browser password store

* They introduce extremely complicated "app-only" device links for Oauth

* Updating your UI for most apps shouldn't require an app-store push (don't talk to me about ionic)

This is the same fight but different players that we're currently facing in getting away from Social Platforms.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, I hear you. Unfortunately, the status quo today is, that's where the users are.

I love the free and opened web. I want it to win. I think it will win and eat native apps (PWAs are already making that happen.)

But the barriers to this right now are 1) app stores are where users are and 2) some mobile platforms (read: Apple) have a perverse incentive to cripple web apps so that submitting native apps to their store (and thus, paying them $99/year + 30% in-app purchases) is required to have a first-class experience.

<comment><USER14> > 2) some mobile platforms (read: Apple)

You mean Google. Android webviews are VERY slow. Tha comnpound with the overall bad android OS (terrible privacy and security, terrible overal performance).

<comment><USER15> > Android webviews are VERY slow

Huh?

Since KitKat I think, WebView is updatable (and is on the App Store), plus browsers like Chrome and Firefox can provide their own WebView implementation. Most people with non-ancient phones are probably using Chrome's engine in all WebViews.

And also, _old_ engine doesn't even mean "slow".

Only Apple used to an actual problem here, because for a long long time there was no JS JIT in WebViews.

<comment><USER14> That is the theory. Hold a iPhone and and android and run the same web-browser apps and look for yourself.

I have tested several demos by ionic, framework7, etc... is amazing how slow are androids...

<comment><USER16> My guess is that the difference in speed is mostly due to hardware, not the browser.

Apple hardware benchmarks well beats Android hardware: [http://browser.geekbench.com/mobile- benchmarks](http://browser.geekbench.com/mobile-benchmarks)

Given Safari can optimise for a single GPU target (which is also probably faster), it is likely the speed differences are not due to the browsers per se.

<comment><USER14> And that is the reality for a large section of users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> From a user perspective, this is why I love iOS.

* Barrier to entry. If your project is more than a hobby, you can jump through a couple hoops to reach the iOS userbase. If the difference between $99 and $25 is make-or-break, you're probably trying to publish a hobby/low quality app anyways. There is a reason the Microsoft Store and Google Play are absolutely filled with trash, and this is part of it.

* Forcing you to use native controls. Thank god. I hate webapps. The only people who like webapps and their encroachment on good, native apps are webapp developers because it allows them to use their skillset to build something they don't know how to build. Everyone else wants native apps back, even if they don't know it. Case and point: the hatred for all the apps moving to Electron and the ridiculous amount of resources they consume. Most people don't know what Electron is, but they can tell you how much they hate the new Skype.

* Requiring a Mac. This is similar to the "barrier to entry" one above, but seriously. I've never met a developer who complained about needing a Mac to develop for iOS that has put forth an even halfway decent iOS app.

Software development is already very, very easy. The barrier to wide distribution is almost nothing. This is an extremely developer-centric perspective, which is fair, but at the end of the day, your users pay the bills and it's hard to be developer-first without also being user-hostile.

This strikes me as the analysis of a developer I would never support, because they care far more about making everything as easy as possible for them rather than making the experience good for me. It's important to remember that while you are doing some consuming, you aren't the customer in this equation. The users are.

<comment><USER18> >If the difference between $99 and $25 is make-or-break, you're probably trying to publish a hobby/low quality app anyways.

Or maybe you live in a situation where $74 USD is a meaningful barrier to accessing a market.

>The only people who like webapps and their encroachment on good, native apps are webapp developers because it allows them to use their skillset to build something they don't know how to build.

You're excluding people and organizations who want to maintain a single codebase.

>I've never met a developer who complained about needing a Mac to develop for iOS that has put forth an even halfway decent iOS app.

My takeaway from this is that you've not met a lot of developers outside the U.S. or who have ethical concerns about mandatory hardware / software purchases as prerequisite to market access.

<comment><USER19> > You're excluding people and organizations who want to maintain a single > codebase.

Not my problem. Don't shit on my user experience because what YOU want. Remember, I don't need your product, but you need customers.

As far as ethical concerns about mandatory software purchases as a prerequisite— it's not mandatory: you don't have to develop for iOS. Make a website instead.

<comment><USER20> Is the person's app going to automatically end up on your device or did I miss something here?

If Apple's review board feels the app is trash, it will be rejected as such. And the original poster wanted to just do a website instead, but they also wanted audio to be playable in the background (which makes sense when you're making a for all intents and purposes radio app).

<comment><USER3> > If Apple's review board feels the app is trash, it will be rejected as such

Apple is not as strict here as you're supposing. While Apple's review guidelines do say that they reserve the right to reject apps during the review process if they're ugly or don't work well, in reality this is almost never the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> As a user I am glad Apple is the "loser" in this article and it's the reason I love iOS and hope Apple doesn't change anything in their attitude towards the "free and open" web. I do not trust the web, at all. Access the camera? Nope. The microphone? Are you kidding me. Notifications, GPS, background processing? Fuck no.

I am very happy to have Apple as a quality, security and privacy gatekeeper, because I do not have the time anymore to do that all by myself (and related to that, I'm so happy we've left the Windows era behind and I'm not bothered by friends and family anymore with all the crap and problems on their devices thanks to all the "free and open" stuff they'd download and install).

PWA's? Screw that, I hope they never become a first class citizen on Apple's platforms. It's good for Apple's business and their users to keep it that way.

<comment><USER22> Why would you trust someone on the app store more? Just because they invested $99 to spy on you?

<comment><USER23> Their app also passed the review process.

Of course, that doesn't stop all bad actors [0]. But it's much more process- based security than the web permits.

[0][https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/24/uber- brok...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/24/uber-broke-apple- ios-privacy-rules-tim-cook-travis-kalanick)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > _From minor things like "iOS Safari won't let you play audio without first > interacting with the page" to major, show-stopping things like, "iOS Safari > won't let you play the next song if your app is in the background or if your > screen is off."_

As a user, I'm _very_ happy Apple prevents a random website from doing this. I'm sorry this complicates your specific use-case, but the benefit for me is that I don't get audio ads just from opening a webpage (ads), nor will a page I opened a while ago unexpectedly start playing sound at me (ads!)

Furthermore, the latter restriction lets the scheduler/power manager make better decisions about what runs (and thus can consume power).

The broken HTML input though, that sucks and I'm sorry.

</comment><comment><USER25> "Final thoughts: The web always wins. It defeated Flash. It killed Silverlight. It destroyed native apps on desktop. The browser is the rich client platform. The OS is merely a browser-launcher and hardware- communicator.

The web will win, too, on mobile. Developers don't want to build 3 separate apps for the major platforms. Companies don't want to pay for development of 3 apps.

The answer to all this is the web. We can build rich web apps – Progressive Web Apps – and package them for all the app stores.

Apple in particular has a perverse incentive to stop the progress of the web. It's the same incentive that Microsoft had in the late '90s and early 2000s: it wants to be the platform for good apps. PWAs undermine that; they run everywhere.

My software wisdom is this: PWAs will eventually win and overtake native mobile apps. In 5-10 years, native iOS apps will be as common as Win32 C apps."

iOS developers made $27B last year writing apps for the App Store. It ain't going away, it's still growing.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2018/01/06/apples- ap...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2018/01/06/apples-app-store- generated-over-11-billion-in-revenue-for-the-company-last-year/#4bed48766613)

Web apps are fine for quick and dirty apps where the user experience doesn't have to be great. Choosing HTML and Javascript for UX always means you're going to have a compromised user experience compared to native. Again that's fine in segments where it's not as important, but ultimately the best experiences are native and that's where the market is going.

</comment><comment><USER26> I feel you, every time i have to work with anything apple it's painful. Even their dev tools, i wasn't expecting much from XCode and i was still let down.

In this regard Microsoft is way superior.

<comment><AUTHOR> The dev experience was better with MS's tools, of course. They created PWABuilder, and it *actually generates a Windows Store package (.appx) that can be submitted to the store. No other steps required. Pretty amazing.

Google wasn't bad; PWABuilder generated an Android Studio project. You open in Android Studio, build, and it generates the package to be submitted to the store.

iOS was sadly the most painful. Not least of which is because it requires a Mac, with XCode and dev frameworks, to build.

<comment><USER27> It's a lot to do with what you're used to. As an Apple user bought into their ecosystem and tools, I find developing for their platforms dramatically easier and more straightforward than for other targets. I can basically do Android development with some pain and confusion, but on Windows I'm totally stumped/useless.

<comment><USER28> I was trying to learn native iOS and Android app design been a mainly reactnative developer.

Android was very easy to start. I learnt kotlin as I was writing the code. Java I remembered some from college days decade ago. The UI builder was very easy to use. I even went far as using the dagger Di.

iOS I was kind of frustrated. I had gone over swift Lang some time back. But I found its syntax estoric. UI builder had its own issues for some row column the constraint layout kept on failing. Its not user friendly as in android. And in the strange name/ structure of routes, the dragging of ui elements to code.Considering that I would need to write business code for both platforms I just gave it up. Now trying out flutter.

<comment><USER3> So, you found iOS development hard because you had very little experience with the tools?

<comment><USER28> I found android development easier when I had little experience with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > Don't make me pay you to make my app available to your users. My app > enriches your platform.

In the 90's Microsoft won market over Apple by, among other things, being a more developer-friendly company. It seems Apple didn't learn any lesson from it: crappy tools (XCode), disregard for standards (Safari), creating barriers...

<comment><USER30> iOS users spend more money and are more affluent. Developers won't migrate away because there're lots of money on that platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> > Don't make me pay you to make my app available to your users. My app > enriches your platform.

It helps to prevent spammed low quality apps. If there is a monetary barrier to entry, it helps curb that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I recognize that. I mentioned that Google's one-time $25 fee is quite reasonable to have an app in the app store.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> PWA == "Progressive Web App"

<comment><USER33> Not Programs With Attitude?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I just love this part about D&B.

Problem: "I go to D&B to update my business profile. Surprise! They have a JavaScript bug in their validation logic that prevents me from updating my profile."

Solution: "Thankfully, I'm a proficient developer. I click put a breakpoint in their JavaScript, click submit, change the isValid flag to true, and voila! I've updated my D&B profile."

<comment><AUTHOR> I "loved" that too. Excepting having to find out that the problem really was a JS validation bug. To have to discover this in 3rd party obfuscated JS was not fun. :-) But hooray, I got it working.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Another developer whining that they don't have free range to do whatever they want.

There are a multitude of reasons why Apple doesn't allow Safari sites to do whatever, namely security, power management, feature duplication/user confusion, etc. When you pay to deploy a native app, you are paying for hosting, the reviewers, payments, availability, etc.

There is no control over when a website may change and at any time your server can be hijacked to distribute malicious content vs an app, which is much more protected by layers of security and process.

Your priorities are definitely not priorities of the end user, where Apple, a company that has millions of customers is. If they were irresponsible and distributed iOS in the way you want, it would be Windows XP all over again. Viruses, security holes daily, etc.

<comment><USER36> Partially true, but knowing that google is making it easier to publish web applications just makes me more attracted to that ecosystem as a web developer. Apple has for long been a closed ecosystem and they have their reasons, they try to control everything in it to maintain a quality standard, so it only makes sense that trying to build something as open as a PWA would not be of interest to them, or beneficial for that matter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Are there any technical reasons you're aware of why pwabuilder.com couldn't also emit Electron wrappers for platforms like Linux and OSX where native support for PWA apps is lacking? (and yes, I do hear you, angry young man, about how much you hate Electron apps and wish they would go away)

UPDATE: it seems to be pretty lightly documented and I wasn't able to confirm the status, but pwabuilder does appear to have options to generate electron- prebuilt "PWA" wrappers for Linux, MacOS, and win32 platforms. Pretty excited to give it a try.

</comment><comment><USER38> Developed solely for the IOS appstore for a year in IOS Swift, my app ([http://lucid.fyi](http://lucid.fyi) \- shameless plug):

Hated developing for IOS because came from web background and everything is restricted and you need payments to do anything. I'm also a sole developer and so every step that requires money I hate because I don't have a lot of money.

</comment><comment><USER39> Correct link to pwabuilder is [https://www.pwabuilder.com/](https://www.pwabuilder.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I'll fix that in the article.

Yeah, PWABuilder is amazing. A web page that analyzes your PWA, tells you any additional things you need to do to your PWA before submission, then generates packages for iOS, Google Play, and Windows Store. Awesome. More web devs need to know about this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> If developers that want their free apps to be uploaded to iTunes don't want to pay the fee I can try to propose a solution.

A collective of similar individuals can pay for one iTunes account and share it between all involved. There can be a entry process for others willing to join as well. Of course, there are a few negatives:

\- the account agent account has the keys to this. It would have to be someone highly trusted, but perhaps it can be down to a vote to determine the role. At first, it can simply be whoever starts this.

\- if iTunes decides to shut down the account, the all eggs in one basket approach would shutdown all of the apps

\- maintenance of distribution keys/provisionings may be a hassle depending on the roles regular members have in this (non-admins can't create iTunes Distribution provisionings)

\- The "see all apps created by this dev" feature may show seemingly unrelated apps

I'm sure there's more I can't think of, but I still think it's doable.

</comment><comment> n-gauge This is why I favor Android in these situations. It's far easier and cheaper platform to get a (web) app out there.

I have created a scratch to apk service (requires no permissions either) using javascript and then an apk signer (which can then be side loaded) - Job Done as they say.

</comment><comment><USER41> Thank you for putting this together. Really detailed write-up, and I learned a lot from reading it.

</comment><comment><USER42> The article mentions that the author was worried that the fast processing time for Google Play meant that it hadn't actually been check, but according to Google they do:

[https://android- developers.googleblog.com/2015/03/creating-b...](https://android- developers.googleblog.com/2015/03/creating-better-user-experiences-on.html)

I believe the way it works is they run the app through an automated test suite (virus scan and monkey testing) and if it flags anything up then it goes to a human to review.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. Yeah, I suspected precisely this. They run it through an automated test, and a human reviews only if the automated test raises a flag.

I guess that's OK. I did like the fact that my app went from submitted to in the Google Play store in all of 5 minutes. (Compared to 48 hours for iOS, and 72 hours for Windows.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I found it interesting that he counts having to buy a Mac to do iOS development as a negative, but doesn't make the same case about having to buy a Windows PC to do Windows development. I currently own only Macs. If I want to develop for Windows, I can just buy a Windows license and use it on my existing Mac. And of course, I can install Linux on it, as well. Seems like a stupid thing to call a negative, since no matter what you use, you'll need to buy a machine to do any development.

<comment><USER44> Requiring a computer to make an app is hardly a fair comparison. The point the author is making is that you need a Mac to build an iOS app. It's impossible to make an iOS app on any other platform.

Meanwhile, you're perfectly capable of building both Windows and Android apps on either Mac, Linux or PC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> > Don't make me pay you to make my app available to your users. My app > enriches your platform. Without good apps, your platform will be abandoned.

> Google asked for a token $25 one-time fee. Probably to avoid spammers and > decrease truly junk apps from entering the store

So he found an excuse for google to do it, but somehow Apple is evil when they do the same?

<comment><USER46> There's a big difference between $25 one-off and $99 per year. I make a niche app that gets about $20-$50 per year in sales. I'm not interested in making money on it, but it would not be worth my while developing such an app for iOS. OTOH, I've made back my $25 Play store fees and can now make my app free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> We are building an app store for PWAs to solve the exact issues you're describing over at [https://appsco.pe](https://appsco.pe). We won't be able to solve the native capabilities issue though but we don't think Apple can cripple Safari forever either.

</comment><comment><USER48> > Don't make me pay you to make my app available to your users. My app > enriches your platform. Without good apps, your platform will be abandoned.

I don't know much about the guy or his app but this sounds supremely entitled. I don't think Apple is in want of developers to make apps for iOS.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. Every platform needs developers. One needs only to look to Windows Phone to see that an excellent OS without an app ecosystem is doomed.

<comment><USER48> Beyond a certain point, the marginal utility of an additional app on the platform doesn't add that much. Even within your very narrowly defined niche, it wouldn't surprise me if there was an alternative app.

Apple is long past the point where marginal utility of adding an app really matters, whereas Windows Phone was missing apps for Instagram and Snapchat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> In this article, I read that you not only need a registered company to publish iOS app, you also need it to be registered with third party (DnB) provider? Is it true? You can't publish on Apple store without having DnB-approved company?

<comment><USER50> Not True.

As I'm not in the US getting an approved DnB profile turned out to be painful. Even once I got one, apple still did not consider my profile valid (yes, I did wait a few days)

As I was on a dead line and fed up with the whole DnB crap after a couple of weeks I ended up registering the iOS developer license on my personal name instead of my company name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> The function of this service appears to stream audio in the form of music in brief recorded performances. Is this not the purpose of podcast and met by an existing iOS app from Apple titled "Podcasts"?

</comment><comment><USER52> Apple might be a pain, but I'm curious about where your most downloads came from...

<comment><USER53> In the comments below the post he said they came from the Play Store.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Apple decided many years ago that they were going to make it rich by controlling as much of their product/software as they could. In the past, when I guess they put out unique and well crafted products it worked. Today, not so much. Their stuff is garbage. Apple has continuous problems with production and have used strong-arm tactics to control what people can find out and fix on their own.

You hit the nail on the head with "In 5-10 years, native iOS apps will be as common as Win32 C apps. Apple will go kicking and screaming, keeping iOS Safari behind the curve, blocking PWA progress where they can. " Personally, I don't think (hope?) that it will take 5-10 years. Right now they have less than 80% of the market. As more and more people figure out that their products are not what they used to be that market share will become less and less. At some point it will no longer matter.

To the argument that the "sales are there" all I can say is look at the statistics. I believe it's less than 1% of all app store products (regardless of which one) make money. And, the average user goes to five apps on their phones all the time. The chances you're going to write an app that actually makes anything is between slim and none. If the user can't install your app for free you're never even going to get it installed on their phone/tablet at all.

Further, the vast number of apps in the future will be PWAs and many of those will be business oriented. As you said, programmers don't want to have to write three different sets of code (realistically only two: JS and Apple - whatever they're pushing recently). And, most of those apps will be "installed" from the web page for that SaaS or your own enterprise.

Apple is done. Stick it with a fork and take it out of the oven. Obviously, with all the dumb money they've collected over the last 10+ years they could do well without ever shipping another product. And, without a doubt, they will continue to get people to buy their products for sometime in the future. But, they will either come to the realization that they have no choice but work with MS and Google in allowing PWAs or they will become irrelevant. It will take them some time to understand that since they no longer have forward thinking management and just surround themselves with "protect our business" types. Eventually, those turkeys will be replaced (hopefully sooner rather than later - we still need competition) or Apple will become the next Oracle. No longer a player in today's world.

And for those doubters out there, don't forget, Apple was going down when they brought Jobs back the last time. Unfortunately, they have no one to go back to this time. It can, and will, happen again.

</comment><comment><USER55> So we call links PWAs now?

</comment><comment><USER56> He complains about buying a Mac but what about Mac people who want to develop Windows DirectX games? They have to buy a PC (realistically you don't want to emulate a PC).

<comment><USER44> The article is about PWAs which have no native code. The restriction for DirectX is a technical one, not a business one. Cross-compiling is possible, but difficult as the ABI has to perfectly match.

Not being able to push a bundle of JS+HTML to the Apple store without a Mac is a completely artificial barrier. Even in regards to the full XCode suite (which I could understand why they wouldn't release for other platforms), the unbelievable lengths that Apple go to to ensure that OS X can't run in a virtual environment is quite frankly ridiculous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> So by this author's estimation, the Apple App Store is the worst and the Microsoft App Store is the best. I can tell him that from the user's perspective, it's the exact opposite, and I have exactly one app from Microsoft and hundreds from Apple.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, that wasn't my conclusion. If you read the article, I offer a summary at the end, where I give a winner. (Winner, meaning best/easiest/simplest/fewest barriers to entry from a developer perspective.)

The winner is Google.

One of the main reasons for that is, Google tries to make everything in the OS available from standard JavaScript. Their platform is web friendly. For example, want to display the currently playing song info and album art on the lock screen? They submitted a new web standard for that.

<comment><USER35> Really this is all about your aversion to paying the fee and to learning how to develop for the respective platforms. JavaScript does not offer performance or optimization near the same levels of native code, etc. On top of that, there are guidelines, accessibility features, and carefully crafted UI components for a respective OS (that have thousands of hours of user research).

The amount of standard APIs developed in JS are nowhere near native APIs, also JS has barely gotten to the point of good enough for native development, whereas, mobile platforms have had 10 years of mature development.

It's quite the fantasy to pretend that PWAs can offer the user anything better than a native experience at this point.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, I wrote the post to document how an existing web app can be moved into the app store, the reasons for that, and the hurdles in doing so.

APIs: Yes, Google is improving the situation -- making more and more common OS APIs exposed to standard web interfaces. Meanwhile, Cordova is letting web devs access native functionality that the platform vendors don't expose. The story isn't perfect, but it's actually quite impressive even now.

Web apps: they offer all kinds of things native apps can't. Native apps require install. Native apps must go through approval process for every update. Native apps are restricted in what they can publish on the app store. Native apps are subject to the censorial whims of a single corporation (or government forcing that single corporation). Native apps only work on a single platform; the web works everywhere.

There are lots of wins for web apps. And I think PWAs only increase those wins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I know your pain about the D&B issue. That was a huge slap in the face when I saw that. Apple, one of the largest companies in the world, has presented some random company as the face of their Developer portal? "Couldn't be... No way... wait a sec they are that stupid... goddammit".

Then, at the end of the day, all it ended up being was a phone call that verified the information I entered on the D&B webpage. Stupid waste of time. I am tempted to think someone on Apple's board partially owns D&B and is forcing it down everyone's throat to make a quick buck, there's no other reason for this kind of experience otherwise.

<comment><USER59> D&B isn't some "random" company. If you've ever been faced with a project that requires you to have a reasonably complete set of information on most businesses in the country, you quickly learn about D&B. Almost every large company is licensing D&B data in some form or another. Cataloging every business in the US isn't an easy problem to get right, even for a company as large as Apple.

<comment><USER60> It is a random garbage company that is stuck in early nineties. It preys on stupid first time company owners whom it sells its credit builder for business services. That's the entire business model.

Edit: Can't respond due to rate limit - 40k/year from 1000 companies is nothing compared to $199/mo and more from credit builder from every Jack and Jill with a DBA, LLC or Inc.

<comment><USER59> > That's the entire business model.

Umm...that's comically wrong. The fortune-500 company I worked for paid more than $40k/yr to license their data and update it monthly. Given the description of how Apple is using it, they're probably paying six figures per year. Neither of our companies were buying credit builder services.

<comment><USER61> Old-n-busted companies pay through the nose for old-n-busted services. Film at 11.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Pepsi Plans to Project a Giant Ad in the Night Sky Using Cubesats - <AUTHOR> https://futurism.com/pepsi-orbital-billboard-night-sky <comment><USER2> If they do, every major shareholder and member of the board of directors of Pepsi should have a permanent array of drones following them, with projectors beaming ads wherever they look. At minimum.

<comment><USER3> They probably already use smart phones. _ba dum tiss_

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Light pollution and advertisements are two of my least-favorite things, and to combine them is just too much for me to tolerate.

I will be boycotting any company that advertises in this manner.

<comment><USER5> Indeed - I consider most advertisement to be visual and mental pollution. It's a shame how our living environment has been allowed to be colonized by ads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Living in one of those hyper virtual/augmented reality distopian societies you see in TV shows and movies where everything around you is an ad becomes much more real if they start using the sky to project ads....

</comment><comment><USER7> Remember the time Pepsi wanted to project their logo onto the moon using ground-based lasers? They hadn't bothered to check if it was feasible. Sounds like the same story repeating itself again.

<comment><USER8> It's like they didn't even read the recent article on all the lost cubesats in orbit. :) [https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/2/18277344/space- situational...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/2/18277344/space-situational- awareness-air-force-tracking-sso-a-spaceflight-cubesats)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The corporation that will do this, will become the most hated brand in the universe.

If pepsi had the idea to push sales and just grow, then this action is the last idea, that should be spent a second on.

In the past week i read about a russian corp. that tries the same.

It's strange to even comment on this. Is this really real reality? Some time ago, these ideas would have been pipe dreams, but in our times everything seems possible to be executed. Why? Because we can. So why not?

<comment><USER10> F this

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is madness. Few years back Airbus was experimenting with electroluminescent paint on planes for similar reasons - [https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170627006378/en/Wor...](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170627006378/en/World%E2%80%99s-Electroluminescent- Paint-Light-Skies-Airbus-Jets)

<comment><AUTHOR> That can actually be beautiful.

A bit TRON like, but I'd say it'd be insanely cool to board a plane that does that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> How's that even supposed to work?

I call bullshit.

<comment><AUTHOR> I call it a nice way to make a lot of money disappear without actually delivering a useful thing.

You'd need to fly a huge fleet of precisely controlled cubesats in tight formation without the control jets of one interfering with the others while they are close enough to provide adequate pixel density from the surface. Their orbit should be high enough that they cross the sky in a pace slow enough to be seen. At 400 Km it's already quick.

I once did the math that a Mylar balloon with 1 degree (the same apparent size of the moon) would need to be about one kilometer wide at a 110 km orbit. It'd weight ~30 tons at launch, without any added vehicle (an ion drive could keep it up for a longer time, until it gets punctured enough to deflate). That was about the maximum payload to LEO that the largest launcher of the time could handle.</comment></comment>


One-python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/geekan/one-python <comment><USER2> _" We don't need a lot of libraries. We just need the best ones."_

Doesn't "the best library" depend a lot on what you're doing (your domain, workload, stack, etc.)?

Lots of libraries get written because people are dissatisfied with the existing ones (features, performance, etc.).</comment>


The Story of XPilot (1997) - <AUTHOR> https://web.archive.org/web/19970626144925/http://www.acm.org/crossroads/xrds3-2/xpilot.html <comment><USER2> I played it a lot in the 1990s.

Is it dead now?

www.xpilot.org hasn't been updated in 10 years, which is also when it's Facebook page was created and last touched.</comment>