Carmack release open source Wolfenstein for iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://www.joystiq.com/2009/03/24/carmack-releases-open-source-wolfenstein-for-iphone/

<comment><USER2> Development notes: [http://www.idsoftware.com/wolfenstein3dclassic/wolfdevelopme...](http://www.idsoftware.com/wolfenstein3dclassic/wolfdevelopment.htm)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for that link, it was fantastic. It remained mostly non-technical and yet was still a great nerd read. I always thought Carmack wrote fun stuff (and not just in code.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The license situation with this game is interesting. Carmack based this new port on an updated "Redux" version of his original codebase which is under GPL, so the resulting iPhone game is under GPL as well. But the iPhone user cannot benefit from the free license: although the source is available, it's not possible to install a freshly compiled version of the game on the device.

I suppose that someone could submit a free version of the app to the App Store, but Apple would probably reject it as a duplicate. (I'm not sure if Wolf3D includes artwork or other external assets that are not GPL'd. If so, then a free version would have to provide replacements for those assets, which would essentially make it a different game.)

Here's a question which I would love to have answered: does the "anti- tivoization clause" in version 3 of the GPL prevent the distribution of a GPLv3 application on an iPhone-style closed platform? Or is "tivoization" strictly limited to code that's shipped with hardware?

<comment><USER5> According to the FSF, GPLv3 is incompatible with the iPhone: [http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/why-free-software-and- app...](http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/why-free-software-and-apples- iphone-dont-mix)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Open source at it's best:

1\. original developer releases project as open source

2\. 3rd party developer ports to OpenGL

3\. years later original developer ports OpenGL version to iPhone

4\. releases result as open source.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is amazing. I tried to run it in the iPhone Simulator but got a couple errors. Eventually I got it to run by commenting out some lines with functions references in the errors (366 and 405 in opengl_main.c if you have the SDK). I'm not sure what I broke but it works well enough to run when I switched to the 3.0 OS instead of the 2.0 default. It's not that much fun in the simulator since it isn't designed for use with one input.

When I tried to run it on my iPhone I kept on getting a "code signing identity" error with "John Carmack" or "Cass Everitt" mentioned. I spent a while messing around and eventually found Project -> Edit Project Settings, where I changed "Any iPhone OS Device" to the settings for my device, for each configuration setting.

Abra cadabra, I now have Wolfenstein on my iPhone and owe id $0.99 when the app is released.

The frame rate is less than ideal, but the controls are excellent (virtual thumbstick) and the game is very playable. I would actually probably be willing to pay $5 - $10, but a lot of that is for nostalgia and because I owe them for making this open source.

<comment><USER7> Looks like they released it, and at $4.99.

<comment><USER8> Looks like the plan was to release Episode 1 only (what the shareware Wolfenstein was) for $0.99, and Eps 1-6 for $5. I only see the $5 bundle on the app store though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The man is amazingly _unbothered_ by things, and he writes really interesting notes, too.

 _I started to get a sinking feeling. I searched around in the level for a view that would confirm my suspicion, and when I found a clear enough view of some angled geometry I saw the tell-tale mid-polygon affine swim in the texture as I rotated. They were using the software rasterizer on the iPhone. [..] The developers came back and said it [rewriting it for OpenGL] would take two months and exceed their budget.

[..] I told them to just send the project to me and I would do it myself. [..] my off the cuff estimate of "Two days!" was optimistic, but I did get it done in four_

:D

<comment><USER10> To be fair, it's probably 10x harder to repurpose someone else's code than to repurpose your own. So it probably would've taken anywhere from 40-60 days for someone else to do it. Plus, Carmack's code isn't exactly clear. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you ever gone back and looked at your own code that is ~2 years old?

It usually takes some time for me to get familiar with what I was trying to achieve, I should comment more, but what I'm trying to get at is that code that ~18 years old is probably very different from the code you're making today.

<comment><USER11> Yes, however if you wrote the code you can remember "where things come from", why things are the way they are (you have a vague recollection of refactorings) and that helps for perspective. A third-party can't do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For those of us with non-jailbroken iPhones, it's not yet up on the App Store:

<http://www.idsoftware.com/wolfenstein3dclassic/>

Hopefully soon...

<comment><USER13> It's up now. Not free though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Review at iPhone App Ratings.org:

<http://www.iphoneappratings.org/wolfenstein-3d-classic>

They also have a full copy of Carmacks texts on that page...

</comment><comment><USER15> Wonder how it compares with Quake for Pocket PC which I used to play about 4 years ago. Tricky to reproduce all the controls without many buttons but hopefully they'll come up with something. The accelerometer might come in handy.

</comment><comment><USER16> Yep, still has the ability to induce motion sickness. My thumbs are slightly too big for the controls it seems but I'm glad they didn't use tilt controls, that really doesn't work for me.

</comment><comment><USER17> Pretty cool stuff - I remember playing this game non-stop back in the early 90's.

I think he's wrong about tearing open app bundles though - you can just unzip them.

</comment><comment><USER13> You can also get the source code for it at ftp://www.idsoftware.com/idstuff/wolf3d/wolf3d_iphone_v1.0_src.zip if you want to play around with iPhone development.

</comment><comment><USER9> _I'm going back to Rage for a while, but I do expect Classic Doom to come fairly soon for the iPhone._

For those of us with jailbroken iPhones, Classic Doom has been available for it for a while.

<http://code.google.com/p/iphonedoom/></comment>


The Majority of Today's App Businesses Are Not Sustainable - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/21/the-majority-of-todays-app-businesses-are-not-sustainable/ <comment><USER2> I built apps for android, iOS, windows incarnations, and even bb10. In aggregate maybe 25-30 branded apps on the iOS store could make 10k per month. The rest were garbage.

The most I ever made was 1m over a year on 7 BREW apps we made. That's right, those old dead handsets had only 20-30 apps in their store and we owned about 20% of the market.

What made that possible is that the ecosystem was so bad and it was so hard and expensive to get apps reviewed and built for multiple handsets, you could make money as long as you just got on the device.

The relative ease of launching has made a plethora of nice but unprofitable apps on the other ecosystems... And it points to what happens in any work economy when the barrier to entry becomes hobbiest-level easy. Happened to photography, writing/publishing, and others. There are too many people relatively skilled enough to do an average job and give it away for free for anyone but the best marketed and connected to make money.

<comment><USER3> What's "BREW"?

<comment><USER4> Before iPhones the battle was between Java and BREW for the language of mobile apps. This was 2000-2005 when Motorola and Nokia were heavyweights.

<comment><USER3> Thanks. Particularly for spelling it out and not just linking elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is it worth it to be an App developer? How about versus working at Google or Apple?

From their perspective, the purpose of your work is to enrich their platform. The difference is in the distribution of payout and work conditions. Rather than having a stable 100k salary at said company, you have the chance to earn absolutely nothing, or be an outlier and beat the 100k. Is it worth it, by expected value? Well, according to the article numbers,

Expected Monthy Payout = 24% _0 + 23%_ 50 (using half of max of ranges) + 22% _500 + 19%_ 5000 + 9% _50K + 3%_ 200K (using double the greatest lower limit)

Which gives an expected monthly payout of $11,600. Not bad! I think 30% of this goes to the respective platforms, so an expected yearly salary for an app developer might be something like $97,500. And I believe this matches up fairly well with what companies are willing to pay app developers (on average it seems higher, aside from maybe in the Valley).

What's interesting is the distribution of payoffs into the "haves" and "have nots". There are few app developers pulling that $100K or so salary. Instead, two thirds of everyone is below poverty, and a select group are killing it. This seems to be the new modus operandus of the tech economy. The implication is obvious: extreme economic inequality (especially as non-tech jobs become less relevant), which by necessity will increase social inequality.

<comment><USER6> I think you are underestimating what the really big guys are pulling in. I doubt twice is high enough for the tail end, three or four times is likely better.

<comment><USER5> I also think we underestimate just how many apps are being created with the intention or desire of generating revenue that fail to do so.

It's a fairly arbitrary calculation anyways, the point is the expected value is on the same order of magnitude as that of a stable company man. The big question is what implications this new "career salary distribution" will have as it becomes more popular.

<comment><USER7> This 10000x. It is incredibly hard to compete today when there are 10 apps for every idea. Most of them suck - but it is damn near impossible to charge from day one and be successful unless you have a very large platform to advertise or are a prominent figure (something like Vesper from John Gruber). We're in it for the long haul with PaperBox (gopaperbox.com) - we intend to be the best app and continue to iterate for 3 years or so, and then figure out how to make money when we hopefully have a million or so users. Having said that, it is very hard to project out and keep growth going without a significant advertising budget.

<comment><USER8> This looks awesome, but then I saw there was no android support yet. Is there somewhere I can sign up for a notification once android is out?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Doesn't this title conflate "app businesses" with "developers"?

I'd also expect that the majority of app companies aren't sustainable. But from the people I've talked to, it seems like a lot of apps are being done as something between a hobby an a side business.

A lot of the people you see selling art and jewelry at fairs work like that. They don't expect it to be their full-time job; it's a fun way to make a little extra cash. So what looks like a non-living wage can be perfectly sustainable as long as you're doing it to supplement other income.

</comment><comment><USER10> I find this completely unsurprising. Maybe because I'm someone who used to (kinda sorta) make a living as a writer?

Writing software is more profitable than writing prose (or poetry), because fewer people can do it, but at the end of the day the economics are the same: the fruits of your labor are easily copied, so making something that 10 million people read or use is not inherently much more expensive than making something 100 people read or use. Under those circumstances, it's easy for everyone to read the best content, and use only the best apps. People's differing tastes, need for variety, and imperfect awareness of their choices means the authors of the "second best" thing aren't _completely_ screwed in either case, but it's still pretty close to winner-take-all.

(Also, social proof—people's tendency to use what other people are doing as a proxy for quality—amplifies winner-take-all tendencies, even when there are no obvious network effects.)

</comment><comment><USER11> I feel like to a large extent this is just techcrunch being techcrunch and writing link-bait articles.

My thoughts on this:

1) Just about everyone is "interested in making money" from their apps. I'm not sure how they're filtering the developers in the survey, but I'm willing to bet the amount of effort put in, and the actual methods used to "make money" differ wildly among those developers. Apples to oranges.

2) 5-10k per app per month for a single developer with a full-time job doing this in his spare time is pretty good. For a 300 employees company, not so much. Similarly, millions a month will sustain a large company and make an individual developer extremely wealthy. What are we comparing?

3) I'll go out on a limb here and say that games make more than any other category on the app store. They also tend to require a higher budget and production value: better graphics, sounds, a storyline, etc... Maybe the 100 flashlight / todolist apps competing for the same spots don't make much money but they also cost nothing besides a weekend of work and the $99 / year ADC membership. I also wouldn't be surprised if most of that "1.6%" were game developers. Lumping every app together and trying to get stats out of it doesn't tell us anything about how much the developers are spending to get those apps out.

4) Obligatory plug: Storm8, the company I work for, is recruiting. We're a mobile games developer (on the App Store we tend to be better known as TeamLava) and have been profitable and fully bootstrapped for over 5 years now through rapid growth. We're all very passionate about creating new games and refining our existing ones and have a lot of interesting projects to work on. We're looking for developers interested in learning more about the mobile games industry, no experience required. Email is in my profile if interested :)

<comment><USER12> Can't see your email mate... Put it in your "about me" field if you want peopleto see it, the email field is private.

<comment><USER11> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There was a good glib observation I saw today:

"Monument Valley costs $6 less than it's own soundtrack. That's how dysfunctional app pricing is."

[https://twitter.com/gregmaletic/status/493430279122350080](https://twitter.com/gregmaletic/status/493430279122350080)

It really can't continue like this. What comes after, who knows.

<comment><USER14> Thats not a fair argument. It appears soundtrack has less than 1K downloads where Game has around Million downloads (Approximation based on number of ratings).

So it appears to me Soundtrack generated 10K where as Game Generated 3M.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> On Windows Phone / Windows 8 this problem is even bigger. No matter how much effort you put in to build the best app in its genre, earning even $100 per month is extremely hard. I know a lot of Windows developers who are serious about building apps for those platforms, and none of them makes $100 per month or more from those apps.

<comment><USER16> Have you more on this - I assumed winphone would be so limp in the market that no one would develop for it, leading to the big wins for the few that bothered.

I am assuming I have been proven wrong by the market. But would like to know

<comment><USER17> There are a handful that seem to get touted as the poster children for viable Windows app developers. Atley Hunter who has 500+ apps in the ecosystem (currently all phone targeted but a recent podcast mentioned he was moving to Universal development so that they can run on Win 8 too), he looks for trends (like "Don't tap the white tile" type stuff) and then implements them in the Windows Phone store.

Then there is Rudy Huyn, another full time Windows Phone dev that targets the "flagship" type apps that MS is dinged for not having on their platform, think Instagram or Vine before they finally released an "official" app and now Tinder. His MO seems to be reverse engineering the HTTP apis and delivering a client app that works with those services.

I'm not aware of any Windows Phone app developers like iOS's Marco, where a single well executed app was enough to sustain a developer over a long cycle. But I could be missing somebody in one of the other markets, Windows Phone does well in GB, France and Italy among other non-North American markets.

<comment><USER16> Sounds very much like the German brothers who go round making French German Spanish language versions of bi popular sites. Nothing particularly wrong but just odd the innovation stays on the iOS / android areas

<comment><USER18> Samwer?

<comment><USER16> Thank you !

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> >As Apps Disappear, Will They Be Seen As Disposable?

Haven't they always been? They're mostly games and toys. The number of actual tools I have installed is really really low, I have a half dozen additional apps because they're currently fashionable for communication. Everything else on the store is either serving a need I don't have, or ephemeral nonsense.

I'd even lump things like pandora in with the ephmeral as disposable. I got a new smartphone a few months ago and haven't even thought of installing it until writing this post. So even if the company pandora will be around for decades, I've reached the point of diminishing returns from installing apps before I get to them.

</comment><comment><USER20> App stores are just download managers now. Still a huge win - remember how hard it was to get your software into a users hands, free or not, 10 years ago?

</comment><comment><USER21> from the PDF (downloadable):

"Game design is a highly creative art that takes a lot of practice. Angry Birds was creator Rovio's 52nd title. It is therefore not surprising to find that those who have shipped a lot of game titles are the most successful. The 3% of mobile game developers who have shipped 50+ titles are nearly 9 times as likely to be earning over $50k per app per month than the 62% who have only shipped between 1 and 3 titles."

I was quite surprised that is was the 52nd game! Wow. That is a lot of persistence!

<comment><USER22> This sounds like the app developer's equivalent to the "10,000 hour" rule of thumb.

Fifty attempts to hit the nail with a hammer is likely to improve your aim.

In addition, anyone willing to try 50 times is likely to be a survivor. Those unwilling to persist will go try their luck elsewhere.

It is oddly inspiring to see the "try 50 times" story and the payoff for the doggedly persistent developer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Am I to understand from those charts that over 25% of iOS apps make more than $5,000 per month?

That sounds like great odds to me! Especially given the amount of garbage in the App Store.

<comment><USER24> Not so great if it took 10 employees to create it.

<comment><USER25> The top 25% of apps did not take 10 employees to create them, unless there are 2.5 million iOS app developers running around.

<comment><USER18> A team isn't always 100% developers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> They analyze the data on a per app basis, which may not be the best way to do it. Let's take the Facebook developers on Android. The Android Facebook app has been downloaded over 500 million times. Facebook's Android Slingshot app has been downloaded less than half a million times. With the way Visionmobile/Techcrunch break down the data, on an average per app basis, the existence of the Slingshot app drags the achievements of the flagship Facebook app way down - it halves it, basically. This doesn't really bear any relation to how much success Facebook has had though.

HN often contemplates the power law, so it's natural a developer might have one app which is very successful (Rovio released 51 apps before releasing Angry Birds), then another app which is half as successful, then a third app half as successful as the second app, and so forth. This analysis doesn't think in those terms though, they are more of the idea that every app released by a company will be more or less as successful as the other ones it releases.

Also the report sets the bar fairly high. It calls people who make $9000 per app per month "strugglers". I'd be happy with one app making $9000 a month, and wouldn't be struggling making the resulting six-figure salary. Even if I had two or three apps making $9000 a month each I'd be considered a struggler. This isn't really struggling. Maybe for a firm with venture capital that was expected to grow quickly it would be considered a failure, but not for a bootstrapped developer, or partnership of developers.

</comment><comment><USER27> An App is often just a tool, and tools aren't a sustainable business on their own.

Ideally you have a profitable business, and the app is just one way for the customer to access your business. Then the app doesn't need to be sustainable in itself.

</comment><comment><USER28> The app store that came with iOS6 totally destroyed the income of developers on iOS. Many developers pointed out the problems, many left the platform. With iOS7 apple plainly ignored the problem. With iOS8 _some_ changes are coming which _might_ help.

Apple did it. They had better undo it if they don't want their iOS devices to be nothing but ad display machines or in app purchase tricks.

<comment><USER29> IMO, if you're relying on the App Store app for all your marketing and discoverability, you're probably doing something wrong.

<comment><USER28> The apps themselves are marketing channels of their own with cross promotion, social network sharing etc and word of mouth.

Paid advertising is not possible when you make 70 cents per sale. It costs more to advertise a copy than you make from a sale.

A way around this is to increase your lifetime income per download, which is where IAP comes in, which is where candy crush etc show the way.

If Apple don't want the store to only be that, they've got some work to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> "However, states the report, only the top 1.6% of developers make more than $500,000 per app per month, but of those who do, some are earning tens of millions per month. The next 2% – those who make between $100,000 and $500,000 per month."

I think these percentages are not low at all. In fact, they're almost pretty good. This is how success is distributed in almost any profession.

<comment><USER18> Are these figures net of both the App Store's cut and paid ads?

<comment><USER30> The language of the article (& the report) suggests that it's what the developers earn.

I may be wrong though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Releasing apps seems increasingly pointless. Unless you get featured, there is pretty much no visibility and almost 0% chance of discovery. At least with web based apps your ranking can improve overtime for a variety of keywords and traffic can begin to find you. I have not had a similar experience with development for the app store.

<comment><USER31> I see that I am getting down voted for my sentiments, so perhaps I should better explain my experience.

I programmed an app that was featured in several publications including the Washington Post and coverage by one of the writers for the Guardian. These favorable reviews led to a handful of sales. If this were a web app, these valuable links would have given my product a real boost.

With the app store, there's almost no way for a third party to influence the discovery of your app. Everything is sold through the app store and Apple holds all the keys to the kingdom. Who knows what mysterious process they use to select their favorites, but if they don't select yours, that's pretty much it. No recourse. The web, on the other hand is much more open and many different people can influence and contribute to a developers success.

<comment><USER32> Did you have a website to promote your app?

Edit to add: no judgment implied; I'm just curious.

<comment><USER33> I thought the same thing. The app store page shouldn't be the be-all and the end-all for discovery. Instead, it should be the last step in the marketing process. A promotional website, along with using mailing lists and social media as funnels, would go a long way.

Web apps don't hope that people stumble across them because there happens to be a centralized directory. The same active promotion used for web apps should take place for mobile apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> These numbers are actually quite rosy in my opinion. When I built PaperBox (www.gopaperbox.com), our chief competitor was getting about 50K downloads per day - this compared to maybe 50 a day for us back then. We knew we had a better offering - but we also knew that charging right off the bat would shoot us in the foot. Instead, we've opted to go the free route to build our user base & brand, and figure out the business model later on.

I cannot imagine an app charging and being successful right off the bat unless they have a platform for advertisement (something like Vesper and Daringfireball.com) or it's made by a very prominent figure/company. The reality is there are 10 apps for every idea in the app store (in 2014) and the best app likely won't win market share if they charge from the start.

<comment><USER34> What about Paper? Not only did they charge from the start, they charged a rather high price, and entered a market full of existing competitors, some free.

<comment><USER35> Unless you are talking about a different Paper, Paper was a free app with an in-app purchase of tools (different brushes) available.

I know this because I downloaded it because it was free and then bought the tools. I wouldn't have tried it if they wanted the (I think) $4.99 up-front.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36>
      Half (50%) of iOS developers and
      even more (64%) Android developers
      are operating below the "app poverty line"
      of $500 per app per month.

Maybe it's because there are so many clones and one-off experiments on these stores. For example, how many versions of Piano Tiles / Don't Tap the White Tile are there??? I can't even tell which one is the original at this point.

Also, some people will just write an app as a hobby, or to pad their resume. At least for the App Store, if you make $9 per month, you've already paid off your yearly subscription fee of $99, and can safely leave your apps up forever, even if they are below the "app poverty line."

I would be interested to see what percentage of developers who are actually trying to make a living from their apps are succeeding or failing.

<comment><USER37> > Accounting for 47% of app developers, the "have nothings" include the 24% of > app developers – who are interested in making money, it should be noted - > who make nothing at all.

This kinda implies they're filtering out people releasing apps just for fun, but I'm not sure how "interested" you have to be to qualify as an "interested in making money" developer.

<comment><USER36> Yeah, I sorta feel like "everyone" is interested in making money. Why not? :-)

I'm curious about those who really want to quit their day jobs, or who have already quit their day jobs to start a company, who are still struggling to turn a profit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> A majority of today's small businesses are not sustainable either. Isn't it something in the range of 85% of small businesses fail after a handful of years?

<comment> bjelkeman-again That was an interesting thought. I had to look at the numbers a bit. In Sweden in 2012 69,216 companies where created [1]. In all of 2012 7,471 companies were declared bankrupt [2], about 10%. If 85% fail, then another 75% should have shut down voluntarily. That is out of 1.1 million companies of which 888,000 had some turnover last year [3], Can't find the statistics for the year on year growth though right now.

Edit: found the stats. Seems the number of companies have only grown by 10% in total or so in six years [4]. So maybe you are right then.

(all references in Swedish, sorry)

[1] [http://www.tillvaxtanalys.se/sv/publikationer/statistikserie...](http://www.tillvaxtanalys.se/sv/publikationer/statistikserien/statistikserien/2013-03-19-konkurser- och-offentliga-ackord-2012.html)

[2] [http://www.tillvaxtanalys.se/sv/publikationer/statistikserie...](http://www.tillvaxtanalys.se/sv/publikationer/statistikserien/statistikserien/2014-02-11-nyforetagandet- i-sverige-2012.html)

[3] [http://scb.se/sv_/Vara-tjanster/Foretag--och- myndighetsregis...](http://scb.se/sv_/Vara-tjanster/Foretag--och- myndighetsregister/Foretagsregistret/Aktuell-statistik-ur-Foretagsregistret/)

[4] [http://www.statistikdatabasen.scb.se/pxweb/sv/ssd/START__NV_...](http://www.statistikdatabasen.scb.se/pxweb/sv/ssd/START__NV__NV0101/FDBR07/table/tableViewLayout1/?rxid=44afc400-b603-466a-b0c0-a06ecbcb8e3c)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> The ones making a living are actually the consulting firms selling trainings, mobile developer certifications and doing apps alongside enterprise deployments of the main application,

In gold rush times, the ones selling shovels get the real money.

</comment><comment><USER40> Shame they didn't put more thought into their info graphic to better communicate their point. Different graphs using the same color scheme to represent slightly different sized bins of what may or may not be the same measure. Lower to higher is left to right. But on a different graph it's right to left. No explanation of time period for Revenue Distribution graph. Choice of graph type seems somewhat arbitrary. Donut charts and stacked bar charts become harder to interpret as the number of bins go up and the trend line gets buried. The colors seem to be the dominant feature of the graphic.

Plain old bar charts might be boring, but they would have more clearly communicated the message without all the extra distractions. They would also allow the graphic to use fewer code and require fewer text (legends could be omitted). At least they did specific actual graph values in the graphs. The area graph shows how one color can be effective when the graph contains only one type of data element.

Lesson here is to think carefully and make conscious choices about how you communicate your message. It's true in pitching an investor, pitching a customer, or presenting to an audience. Make sure your message gets through. Otherwise you just have a bunch of graphs dropped on a page and the reader has to search for what you're trying to say.

Also, hire a designer. You'll be happier.

</comment><comment><USER41> Like others have said, it's hard to separate the 'App Businesses' from the 'App Hobbies'. For example, I have published 4 Android apps with about 250k combined downloads. On two of them I did not monetize at all, I just did them for the exercise and because I like to code. The other two I did monetize, but only in ways that kept non-time costs to $0 so it was all profit (aka no marketing, no employees, no paid services).

I've made some decent money off one of the apps, but definitely not enough to live on for any amount of time. Still i consider my efforts a success, because I did it as a supplemental activity to my full-time work. If I was trying to make a living, I'd probably invest in marketing, hire a designer and/or co- developer, and monetize more heavily.

</comment><comment><USER42> This just means "most" businesses are not fully ready yet to run critical functions primarily on mobile and tablets.

Seriously, even email sucks on mobile phone let alone anything else.

</comment><comment><USER43> This seems to go a long way to basically say "90% of new businesses/apps/[insert here]" fail.

Why yes, we've known this forever. It is why it is risky. :/

<comment><USER44> I know right? Life on Earth isn't sustainable. The Sun will eventually blow up and destroy it. The universe isn't sustainable, either. Eventually all the stars will go out and there'll be a lukewarm nothingness...

Sustainability is such a fairy tale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Replace "app business" with "musician."

</comment><comment><USER46> 500$/month for an app that took me a month to develop would be OK. Maybe I could earn more as a freelancer, but you also have to take fun into account. It's valid to trade fun for money, otherwise people should never go on holidays.

</comment><comment><USER6> Well neither are most startups - in the sense that most of them will crash.

That is the nature of those kinds of businesses.

</comment><comment><USER47> I wish they'd split up the revenue percentage by app category...

<comment> T-A Look at pages 22 and 25 of the report: [http://www.developereconomics.com/reports/developer- economic...](http://www.developereconomics.com/reports/developer- economics-q3-2014/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Looks like income inequality is FAR worse in the app store compared to the rest of our economy. Will the Apple loving leftists speak up about this?

<comment><USER49> Most apps are terrible and nobody wants to buy them.

<comment><USER50> When in the future the same happens to workers - when most workers are terrible at the (very few) skills that are still needed and nobody wants to hire them - then we'll have a problem.</comment></comment></comment>


A Dallas-born citizen has been detained by CBP for over three weeks - <AUTHOR> https://www.dallasnews.com/news/immigration/2019/07/22/dallas-born-citizen-picked-border-patrol-detained-three-weeks <comment><USER2> This happens constantly. Davino Watson was held by ICE for over three years.

[https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2017/08/01/540903038...](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2017/08/01/540903038/u-s-citizen-held-by-immigration-for-3-years-denied- compensation-by-appeals-court)

<comment><USER3> Planes crash constantly by that argument as well. Anecdotes are not data. If you're going to make a claim about something "constantly" happening, provide some stats.

<comment><USER4> One is too many. Constantly for something like this, kidnapping a citizen and holding him without charges or due process is pretty much all the time... this is what the troops supposedly die for, freedom.

<comment><USER5> One is too many, but one is also not constantly

<comment><USER6> See other comments: this happens regularly, and these victims are frequently held for weeks at a time without access to attorneys or being charged. That is a consistent pattern of violating the US constitution - it is not possible to enforce immigration policy in the way some people want to without violating the constitution.

<comment><USER7> It's not possible to enforce immigration policy the way some other people want without violating human rights.

<comment><USER6> Ugh wow my grammar there was an absolute train wreck

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Francisco Galicia told his mother, who lives in Edinburg, that he was > detained because he didn't have his U.S. passport. But she said he did > present CBP with his Texas ID.

By this standard, I suspect at least half the US population could be rounded up and held unconstitutionally:

[https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/after/p...](https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/after/passport- statistics.html)

The article doesn't give much to go on regarding details of th case. FWIW, the idea that being born on US soil makes you a citizen (as plainly stated in the 14th amendment) appears to still be controversial:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthright_citizenship_in_th...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthright_citizenship_in_the_United_States)

<comment><USER9> Even a passport isn't necessarily enough anymore:

"A US-born Marine veteran who served in Afghanistan had his US passport, a REAL ID driver's license, a military ID card, and his US Marine Corps dog tags with him when he was arrested by police in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which held him for three days before his lawyer demanded his release, according to the ACLU of Michigan."

[https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/us-born- ma...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/us-born-marine-ice- detained-passport)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Tl;dr caught at a CBP checkpoint with an underage Mexican immigrant without legal status. Presumed by CBP to also be Mexican immigrant and handed over to ICE.

Seems we need an easier way to prove citizenship at CBP checkpoints. Being expected to carry any ID in-country as a citizen is bullshit (I know that's common in other countries but that's not ok).

<comment><USER10> The other person was another US citizen and they were in the United States and stopped for being tan. After proof of citizenship was provided he still hasn't been released. What about this story is okay with you? U.S. citizens shouldn't be being stopped by customs away from the border, US citizens shouldn't be detained without representation and denied civil liberties, US citizens shouldn't be forced into signing deportation documents in order to get legal representation or talk to their family. They definitely shouldn't continue to be in custody for immigration after their legal documents have been provided.

<comment><USER3> No, the other person was not a US citizen, which is what likely led to this exploding.

>It was about 8 p.m. Marlon, who was born in Mexico and lacked legal status

I agree that he shouldn't be denied representation, regardless of what the scenario looks like.

<comment><USER11> Traveling on the bus with an undocumented/illegal/non-resident person is hardly cause for anything exploding.

Denied representation AND due process.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Dakika – A Minute Taking app - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Madawar/Dakika <comment><AUTHOR> Hi There Please Review my first opensource application. Tell me what I can add, remove and or change and If it would be useful to you.

Am planning to add more features which include

* Browse previous minutes on a web page : would be useful for managers, CEOs and those who missed out on minutes

* LDAP support for Enterprise for above feature

* Export your data to one note, evernote, PDF and word

* Create VSTO Outlook Add-in that automatically loads recepients and Agenda from Emails

</comment><comment><USER2> "Dakika" means "minute" in Turkish. Thumbs up for that!

I couldn't give it a try yet but I'll surely do when I have some time.

</comment><comment><USER3> I looks very nice (and useful) by the shots. Any chance you could release a package for macOS? Would love to try it!

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't have a Mac but you can test with npm run build:darwin</comment></comment>


Manual – Custom exposure for your iPhone camera - <AUTHOR> http://shootmanual.co/

<comment><USER2> Hey this is my app, feel free to ask any questions.

<comment><USER3> The "instructions" at the start of the app are a bit baffling. I spent a good few minutes looking at a screen that told me to tap and drag and a weird orange circle that keys popping up above the capture button. In fact the entire selection with the ISO and shutter speed are a little on the janky side, I'm having a good deal of trouble seeing what I'm actually selecting. It's more completely random than anything with the shutter speed as my thumb obscures the entire view. Weird control usability aside it seems fairly functional, I've wanted something like this for a while.

Do you have a privacy policy somewhere with details about the information you collect from the application? I was unable to find any on your website.

<comment><USER4> I was always under the impression that a link to this was a requirement for approval in the app store, but I see no such link in iTunes. I suppose my impression was incorrect.</comment></comment></comment>


Making music automatically with markov chains and genetic algorithms - <AUTHOR> http://vikparuchuri.com/blog/making-instrumental-music-from-scratch/

<comment><USER2> Steve Engels at the University of Toronto has done some work on exactly this. You can read a bit about the work and listen to some samples here: [http://www.magazine.utoronto.ca/leading-edge/computer- music-...](http://www.magazine.utoronto.ca/leading-edge/computer-music- composition-steve-engels-daniel-eisner/)

It used similar techniques, using a note-by-note Markov Chain on MIDI to generate music similar to an initial piece of training data. The difference with his model is that it's only trained on a single piece at a time. This leads to significantly more coherent music, but at the cost of making it effectively a variation on the original piece.

The biggest challenge in this kind of work is trying to get an overall structure for the entire song. In talks at the university, Engels has described the output of his model as that of a "distracted jazz pianist"—the moment-to-moment melodies are coherent but the song lacks overall form and direction.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link, interesting stuff.

It may actually be easier to model "coherence" by using natural language processing on the midi file pre-render. It is very hard to get coherence features that work across an entire piece. Definitely worth exploring (and I need to learn more music theory).</comment></comment>


Axios-vcr: Record and Replay axios requests - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nettofarah/axios-vcr <comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good "Show HN".

Show HN guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)</comment>


Lessons learned scaling a PostgreSQL database to 1.2bn records/month - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@gajus/lessons-learned-scaling-postgresql-database-to-1-2bn-records-month-edc5449b3067 <comment><USER2> > _The primary reason we migrated away from Google SQL for PostgreSQL is > because we discovered a bug that was causing data corruption. This was a > known bug that is fixed in newer PostgreSQL versions. However, Google SQL > for PostgreSQL is several versions behind. The lack of response from the > support acknowledging the issue was a big enough red-flag to move on. I am > glad we did move on, because it has been 8 months since we have raised the > issue, and the version of PostgreSQL has not been updated to-date_

We have had similar experiences on various DB related issues. AWS are miles ahead on anything to do around storage and databases.

<comment><USER3> Google cloud support is PATHETIC.

We had a production Kubernetes outage caused by a bug in Google Cloud. We were paying for gold level support.

They deescalated and reescelated our ticket 3 times.

In the end they closed the ticket and sent me a link to "Architecting distributed application" docs. I think they were trying to be condescending. That idiot should have been canned.

Eventually I threw a big fit in the Google Cloud slack channel and thockin ended up looking at the issue and finding the bug.

<comment><USER4> LOL. Thanks for the shout out. I am sorry you had a bad experience. Please be assured that we are working on it, and that we take this seriously.

<comment><USER5> If I may be so bold, where should I direct this complaint so that people hear it:

When you delete a CloudSQL instance, it also deletes the back-ups associated with that instance along with it.

There is also no way to mark a CloudSQL instance as "protected" so one bad keypress can lose you your production database and all backups.

This is... cartoonishly dumb. Clownish.

\- Cloudsql instance deletion protection should exist

\- Those backups should be preserved somewhere when I delete the instance.

<comment><USER2> agreed - backups have nothing to do with an instance. i should be able to spin up and down postgresql instances, but backups should be stored (and billed) as per cloud storage rates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So my PostgreSQL deployment processes quite a bit more than 1.2bn records / month (closer to 10bn / month).

What I have to say for AWS (which I use), the back up is why I use AWS. The ease of backing up, rolling back, and connecting additional services, and scaling make it killer.

That being said, I've seen around 5x - 10x speed improvement for the same exact cost utilizing bare metal servers. I've been using online.net/scaleway and similar services. However the real value save is limited as you need to do a lot more work and often pay more for backing up. Overall, real savings might be 50% cost reduction, with some additional risk. Need more space? Launch a new server, copy, check, switch over, pray. With AWS it's one click

The real question is what do you want to manage the database or not and how much time you have.

<comment><USER7> The author mentioned using [https://www.pgbarman.org](https://www.pgbarman.org) for this, with a freelance DBA.

Does anyone else have experience between the two options?

<comment><USER8> I can attest that pgbarman works great. _cough_ I accidentally nuked a production server once. However thanks to barman the downtime was only tens of minutes.

It works by making a full backup at fixed intervals (say weekly) and then "pretending" to be a replica which makes it receive all the changelogs in realtime. (Basically it receives and archives WAL's). This makes point in time recovery possible.

Highly recommended.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The article confirms the fact the best cost to performance ratio is colocated hardware you build.

Next is managed server.

Last: any of the cloud database providers.

The key piece is knowing what you are doing. The clouds don't care about your tiny problems. They won't fix things for you.

You must fix things for you.

<comment><USER10> Exactly my experience. And not only about Databases.

At a previous job I was able to cut our infrastructure expenses by a lot (70%) by essentially have our infra being 1 load-balancer, 2 beefy application servers and 1 (+1 failover) PostgreSQL database. Each of the application server costs 300~ Euros p/m , 24 cores and 256GB of RAM. I have not experienced the same cost to perf ratio anywhere else.

<comment><USER11> What was your salary, and the salary of additional people to increase the bus factor to an acceptable level? There is a lot more than raw perf numbers that go into these calculations for any responsible business owner.

<comment><USER12> FWIW I'm in a similar situation, running a moderately sized site (10 servers, ~2gbps) on leaseweb hosts, costing ~$1,500/mo - every year or so I look at cloud offerings, and see that the bandwidth alone would be something like $40,000/mo.

I also have ~10 smaller hobby projects (<100 monthly active users) which could easily fit inside the smallest cloud services, but the smallest on offer seems to be $5/mo, so $50/mo in total. For $25/mo I can get a pair of bare metal servers which host all of them with failover and a ton of capacity to spare.

Then my actual day-job is at the opposite end of the scale, where we build our own datacenters...

I am very confused by the movement towards using the cloud for everything, because I work at all sorts of scales, and can't find a cloud host who works well for any of my use-cases :S

<comment><USER13> Do you mind if I ask what service you're using to host your hobby projects?

<comment><USER12> Kimsufi - AFAIK they get their low prices by using second-hand hardware, but I've not found that to be an issue (hard drive failures are a little more common than the leaseweb servers, but "more common" is still only "one failure per server per 5 years" \- and that's easily mitigated by setting up a pair of servers with failover)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> And I have built a very similar, perhaps even slightly larger, system, only in MySQL with TokuDB :)

These free old-fashioned RDBMSs really can go fairly big and stay really fast; much bigger and faster than the noSQL stuff I also use.

One thing that pushes people towards noSQL is that it is easier to get started; but I think that I've saved buckets of time in the long run by going with a conventional relational database.

ymmv but its always worth thinking 'is this problem too big for a classic free RDBMS?' and the answer is almost always 'hell, no!'

</comment><comment><USER14> Thanks for the read!, a couple of questions:

> Now we are renting our own hardware and maintain the database. We have a lot > better hardware than any of the cloud service providers could offer

Which provider are you using?

> That 30% we can use to hire a freelance DBA to check in on the servers once > a day.

Where did you find this freelancer?

<comment><USER15> > hire a freelance DBA to check in on the servers once a day

Not sure whether you were just interested in the author's specific freelancer but--

The term for this is "Remote DBA" and there are lots of them. I suppose the difficult part is confirming trustworthiness and skills before giving them direct access to your database.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Great example of a job queue correctly implemented inside a transactional relational database (with SKIP LOCKED and a table dedicated to the job queue), instead of using a specialized tool.

<comment><USER17> When you don't need insane scalability, having a transactional queue is a godsend.

<comment><USER16> For the record, it's possible to have scalability and transactional enqueuing at the same time, with something like Google Cloud Datastore: [https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/python/data...](https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/python/datastore/transactions#transactional_task_enqueuing)

<comment><USER17> Yeah, with sharding. And global transactions. Which are costly. As long as you pass the cost to the customer. But if you're doing a lot, then you can't use them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Very interesting read. Having worked myself on large Postgres databases, I would have loved to know about these tuning opportunities. It's disappointing to see Google providing such poor support for Postgres though in Google Cloud. Even Microsoft provide first class support. They need to up their game.

</comment><comment><USER19> Very interesting read. I'm not convinced that Postgres should be used for every aspect of a data processing pipeline yet but the author has certainly proved it is possible. You also seem to get a lot of features for free that people using Kafka can only dream of.

It will be interesting to see how people will take advantage of new Postgres features in the future.

</comment><comment><USER20> What is Aiven supposed to do about a bug in Timescale that is still open?

Aiven is great if you don't need the superuser access. They will run some bigger plans on local SSDs and allow you to create replicas and migrate across clouds and regions easily. It's a great way to run multi-cloud without shipping the data yourself. True that they could use more alerting features on resource usage.

GCP managed services of open products are highly unrecommended for this exact reason of being very behind or even obsolete with very limited customization and control. Stick with BigTable, BigQuery, Dataflow and run the rest yourselfs on GCE/GKE.

<comment><USER21> Unfortunately we were not able to offer a concrete workaround in this case, but as mentioned to the author of the post, we were and are in contact with our friends at Timescale to resolve this, and an update with the fix will be available in Aiven shortly.

We are not the upstream for any of the engines running in Aiven, so we work with the upstream developers and communities to resolve any issues found. Often our involvement in fixing the issues is through providing logs, stack traces and other debugging information to the original authors of the code, but in some cases we also fix the issues ourselves and always contribute such fixes back upstream, see e.g. this commit for a PostgreSQL bug that was found by our customers and fixed by us: [https://github.com/postgres/postgres/commit/07ef035129586ca2...](https://github.com/postgres/postgres/commit/07ef035129586ca26a713c4cd15e550dfe35e643)

<comment><USER2> > _In general, I didn't understand what added value Aiven.io provides – we > weren't even warned when the database was running out of storage._

We have been considering using Aiven on GCP. Could you comment on the statement above ? cos that's a little worrying.

<comment><USER22> It's impossible to comment the specific circumstances with the report, but we do generally monitor and warn our users on running low on resources - be it storage, CPU or memory. I admit that the alerting is by no means foolproof; we may miss reaction on rapid or sudden changes in the usage patterns, but the alerting works quite well on more steady and common workloads and usage patterns.

Should the worst case scenario happen and the storage run out, there's always an option to upgrade to the next resource tier size. This will restore the DB state to the latest successfully recorded transaction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > _Column order matters. We have tables with 60+ columns. Ordering columns to > avoid padding saved 20%+ storage_

I need to look into this

<comment><USER24> This was an informative read: [https://blog.2ndquadrant.com/on-rocks-and- sand/](https://blog.2ndquadrant.com/on-rocks-and-sand/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I will never complain about my minor pg issues again. The beast that is running here says whatever else, my problems are small.

I'm interested in learning more about sharded design, time series and json data if anyone else reading this or the OP wants to write more.

</comment><comment><USER26> Thanks for writeup. Yes PostgreSQL is an incredible database except for it's Mat Views, IMO this is their biggest weakness vs Oracle, SQL Server mat views are also poor with umpteen restrictions. With PG any view can be a Mat View, problwm is they don't have incremental refresh or auto refresh. So not v useful, I roll my own, using custom tables and transaction id's, not too difficult since all are auto generated but would be nice if Postgres added incremental refresh. I think this their most urgent missing capability that should be top of the list for v12.

</comment><comment><USER27> _> The primary reason we migrated away from Google SQL for PostgreSQL is because we discovered a bug that was causing data corruption_

Is anyone familiar with the details of the data corruption bug? I'm using Cloud SQL and would like to understand the risk.

<comment><USER28> My Cloud SQL instance is currently on 9.6.6, I just got an email from GCP saying they are upgrading to 9.6.11 next week. There is a data corruption bug mentioned in the 9.6.7 release notes, not sure if it's the one the author is referring to.

[https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.6/release-9-6-7.html](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.6/release-9-6-7.html)

"Fix vacuuming of tuples that were updated while key-share locked (Andres Freund, Álvaro Herrera)

In some cases VACUUM would fail to remove such tuples even though they are now dead, leading to assorted data corruption scenarios."

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> > The takeaway here is that Google and Amazon prioritise their proprietary > solutions (Google BigQuery, AWS Redshift)

Except this is nonsense and there is no evidence to back it up.

AWS Redshift is a replacement for an enterprise data warehouse. It is not suitable for a website, OLTP or for many analytics use cases and AWS has never claimed it to be as such. It's why they they offer a suite of different paradigm databases e.g. Aurora, DocumentDB, DynamoDB, Neptune and Redshift. Because no one database fits every use case.

Also using a database as a job queue really is a strange thing to do when you are running on the cloud and there are dedicated services available specifically for this use case.

<comment><USER30> I don't think that's what he's implying. He means I think that the cloud providers are not very friendly to devs who will take the time to customize their RDBMS to squeeze more performance out instead of switching over to a more expensive solution capable of handling the kind of high volume OLAP he had to deal with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> You ended up co-locating your own hardware, saying "We have a lot better hardware than any of the cloud service providers could offer." Can you clarify then what kind of hardware you're using? All SSDs, HDDs, how much capacity, are you going for all in-memory transactions, etc., etc.?

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm confused why hosting PostgreSQL themselves on GCP or AWS was not considered an option?

<comment><USER33> my understanding was that they were trying to outsource as much of the ops & infrastructure side of things as possible. hence trying a third service provider after GCP & AWS before giving up and doing it themselves.

<comment><USER32> I got that. :) But they went from managed-db, managed-host to unmanaged-db, unmanaged-host when the clear middle ground is unmanaged-db, managed host.

Maybe I missed it.

<comment><USER34> Hi, author here scanning through the comments.

There are quite a few things that I had to leave out as the post was getting really long. I am writing a follow up article now titled "How Kubernetes and twelve-factor methodology saved us USD 300k in 24 months" where I am going to touch on this.

The short version is that we never intended to stay with a cloud provider due to the costs of operating a large cluster (we continue to use GCP for critical components of our infrastructure, such as monitoring and alerting). It was convenient while we could afford it thanks to their startup programs, but migrating our data aggregation workers from cloud providers to dedicated servers cut costs by 40% (which adds up to a lot, as we are using ±0.5k vCPUs and _a lot_ of RAM).

<comment><USER35> > Hi, author here scanning through the comments.

Small note, there's a typo in the heading of "Google Cloud SQL for PosetgreSQL". ;)

PosetgreSQL -> PostgreSQL

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Very interesting design. It looks like they are capturing events, and trying to predict things. I wonder why they went with Uber database and didn't use cheaper S3 got storage, some processing for prediction and something simple and cheap for serving.

</comment><comment><USER37> For the large tables, what about using timestamp based table partitioning to split data into smaller units ? And then materialize each of them one by one ?

So you get to keep materialized data and a single logical table.

</comment><comment><USER38> GCP beats out AWS by a factor of 2? Interesting

</comment><comment><USER39> 1.2b/s try that its far moerchallenging

<comment><USER40> thats the kind of problem i work on (millions per sec at peak). everything is a queue and we stream from servers via kafka and into processors into redshift, more or less. Its free once it's moving around in AWS, but redshift and processors get expensive and im interested in reliable ad hoc solutions... but havent seen it.

<comment><USER41> can you elaborate on the process of copying data into Redshift? How often do you run COPY commands? On a continuous basis? Asking since Redshift as an OLAP isn't really optimized for heavy writes, so if you've figured out a way to do it, please bottle that magic!</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Enboard.co - <AUTHOR> http://enboard.co/ <comment><USER2> Neat idea. Not sure if this is intended but your alpha survey thing is expired. Also out of curiosity, how would you say this is different from pinterest? (I have an idea of how it is but I'm curious about what your logic is)

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool. I originally saw this on PH [http://enboard.co/frontend/](http://enboard.co/frontend/) .. was it called 'Beaqn.in' before?</comment>


7 Hidden Truths About WebAssembly: The Next Evolution of Web Development - <AUTHOR> http://developerboards.att.lithium.com/t5/AT-T-Developer-Program-Blogs/7-Hidden-Truths-About-WebAssembly-The-Next-Evolution-of-Web/ba-p/40436

<comment><USER2> > WebGL has certainly enabled browser games by supporting OpenGL ES, but > WebAssembly goes much farther and could support OpenGL 4--creating > opportunity for richer apps.

Or it could just skip to Vulkan?</comment>


Legal spying via the cell phone system - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20002986-245.html

<comment><USER2> Is that actually legal? I thought that any spoofing of information to gain access to information was illegal

<comment><USER3> Not if you're only spoofing yourself. He called himself with the bogus caller ID to get the number associated with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> See also:

[http://events.ccc.de/congress/2009/Fahrplan/events/3654.en.h...](http://events.ccc.de/congress/2009/Fahrplan/events/3654.en.html) <http://hackermedley.org/archives/4> [http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/26C3-GSM-hacking- made...](http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/26C3-GSM-hacking-made- easy-893245.html)

and

[http://events.ccc.de/congress/2008/Fahrplan/events/2997.en.h...](http://events.ccc.de/congress/2008/Fahrplan/events/2997.en.html)

for similar and more advanced attacks on GSM.

</comment><comment><USER5> Most laws against "hacking" have some section that defines hacking with various levels of specificity, but at the end it always some generic statement that allows them to prosecute anyone for anything. Something along the lines of "using a system to gain inappropriate access to information", or even just "usage of a system for purposes other than it's intended use".

Wasn't there a news story recently about a student that accidentally found a file with personal info available from his school's libary computer, and was subsequently arrested when notifying the administration?

</comment><comment><USER6> I love the solution he offers: "people are just going to have to be made aware of the threat."

<comment><USER7> I think that's the disease of security researchers - thinking that Average Joe will give a shit. Average Joe's got more interesting thing to do than some hypothetical threat - unless the threat actually occurs, in which case he'll start shooting the messenger.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _The first part of the operation involves getting a target's cell phone number from a public database that links names to numbers for caller ID purposes. DePetrillo used open-source PBX software to spoof the outgoing caller ID and then automated phone calls to himself, triggering the system to force a name lookup._

Uh, oh. And the rest does not look good either - the attack looks credible (the tracking bit looks legally iffy).

 _the hands of GSM providers in the U.S. are tied._

Just today was talking with a lawyer who's reviewing data protection legislation, vs. mandated (by EU regulations) information disclosure requirements. There may not be a way of reconciling both ...

</comment><comment><USER9> On what planet is hacking into voicemail legal?</comment>


Show HN: Flattest Route - A web app to help you avoid hills in SF - <AUTHOR> http://www.flattestroute.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> The web app was made by my wife while attending Hackbright Academy in SF. I'm really proud of how much she's progressed in such little time, so wanted to share what she made with everyone.

<http://www.hackbrightacademy.com/>

<comment><USER2> Works for Seattle, as well. Thanks!

<comment><USER3> What did you mean? Didn't work for me. I need this to avoid hills when running in Barcelona :)

<comment><USER4> Same problem but in Brazil. Now this one is a great idea.

<comment><USER5> Seems to have problems in 3D Lausanne Switzerland.

<comment><USER6> You know a place is hilly when its name is "3-D".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cool app, just a few points.

Love the elevation charts, really well done.

One route indicated the lane cove tunnel in Sydney, a place where I can't run or cycle, I could get squished.

Would be interesting to use long/lat co-ordinates, could be really great for bushwalkers and their specific location.

Combine this with something like zombie-run, have the zombies attack at the bottom of a hill/vice versa, you could have a hit with the hard core running community.

Would be nice to see the alternative routes, not just the flattest, but maybe challenging ones, best rated.

But what you've done in a few weeks is still awesome. Well done.

</comment><comment><USER8> Hi, I'm a wheelchair user in Australia. Would be very very interested in adapting your app. Please get in touch!

</comment><comment><USER9> Why is "-11%" rendered as "Moderate"? Everything <0 should be "Easiest", shouldn't it? Or maybe even add another category, "Downhill"?

Also, any idea why this doesn't work for Berlin, Germany? You could at least show the ZERO_RESULTS status somehow.

</comment><comment><USER10> In the UK, cyclestreets is useful for this: <http://www.cyclestreets.net/>

...it does route planning, but the speeds aren't just based on distance travelled but also the elevation. So, it's not so much that it avoids the hills, but it'll only send you over them if it's not faster to avoid them.

Cyclestreets has long talked about going open source - I don't know where they are with that - but there's some details of their routing algorithm here: <http://www.cyclestreets.net/journey/help/howitworks/>

That page doesn't mention the elevation part, but they use Naismith's formula, and they give examples here: <http://www.cyclestreets.net/journey/help/routing/>

</comment><comment><USER11> You don't seem to handle bridges correctly; mapping from "North Vancouver, BC" to "Burnaby, BC" reports a 65% slope the moment you come off the Second Narrows bridge -- because you're jumping from sea level up to almost 200' above sea level. I realize this is a problem with your geolocation data, but there are probably ways you can clean up that data.

Another example is going from "nanaimo and 12th, vancouver, BC" to "nanaimo and 15th, vancouver, BC": There's a bridge in the middle of that which crosses a 30' deep chasm, but you're showing it as being "very difficult" because you're calculating for someone cycling down the side of the chasm -- which would indeed be nearly impossible!

<comment><USER12> I noticed this problem as well. I live in Ithaca, and crossing one of our many gorges generates grades of +/- 150% (as an example, try starting at "Arts Quad, Ithaca, NY" and ending at "Bess Brown Center, Ithaca, NY").

Seems like it would be a little bit tricky to try to systematically identify steep ravines like this in Google's elevation data, but it's certainly an interesting problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Somehow this drove me to find out what the steepest street in SF actually is and it led me to this interesting piece of detective work: [http://www.datapointed.net/2009/11/the-steeps-of-san- francis...](http://www.datapointed.net/2009/11/the-steeps-of-san-francisco/)

<comment><USER14> Which in turn made me wonder what the steepest road in the world is (linked below). According to the Wikipedia article, there is a 10 meter section of Bradford St. in SF that averages 39-40% grade.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldwin_Street>

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Most of the complaints I've read so far seem to center around a lack of data: apparently Google doesn't have elevation data for a sloped bridge, nor for whether a particular tunnel is walkable. It's an excellent idea and well- executed given the available data.

I see a routing problem. I had assumed this tool would give longer routes to avoid steep inclines, but that's not always the case. Take the suggested case: Nob Hill to Russian Hill in San Francisco. Drag marker A to the corner of Vallejo and Powell (to the east of that big hill.) Now drag B to Union and Polk (to the west, and one block north of Green.) The resulting route includes some "very difficult" parts along Broadway when it could suggest one block over to Pacific and eliminate those black dots.

</comment><comment><USER16> Request: estimate the route that requires the lowest "work".

This way, you could make tradeoffs between distance and effort.

I'd happily travel an extra flat mile to avoid a .25 mile hill with a 9% grade.

<comment><USER17> Business model: least work routing for truckers, big RVs, people towing trailers, etc. Pitch as a fuel-saver, promote with ad-supported local and special-interest ads. Support click-n-drag re-routing as Google Maps does now.

Note that while many truckers travel recurring routes, some pick up ad-hoc LTL (less-than-truckload) shipments and must replan routing with nearly each shipment. For fun, demo using:

        Tucson, AZ     -> Tucumcari, NM
        Tehachapi, CA  -> Tonopah, NV

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Pretty interesting, looks like Google Elevation API misses some tunnels though (looking at a route that should go through Broadway tunnel right now). Tunnels are key for getting the Flattest Route™.

</comment><comment><USER19> Could I please have the most hilly option for my legs?

<comment><USER20> Yeah I'm the same, I look for the steepest rides, I look at my commute home as part work out. Still, no matter which way I take, I still have to climb ~500ft

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> You might want to remove your Google API key from the Github Repo.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks but no need to worry, it's a browser API key.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've been using Marble ( <http://marble.kde.org/> ) to show me elevation profiles of routes I bicycle. This site is pretty cool too! (This site works everywhere there's map data, not just SF.)

</comment><comment><USER23> For those wanting a hilly work out — check out <http://www.walkscore.com/bike/CA/San_Francisco> and pick your own combination of hills and availability of bike lanes.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'd been thinking about making something like this for a while (I'm in Seattle). Glad that someone with more time and skills than me got it put together.

What's the basic idea behind the optimization algorithm?

</comment><comment><USER25> If you live in europe I recommend this app:

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.bikecitygu...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.bikecityguide)

<https://itunes.apple.com/at/app/bikecityguide/id517332958>

It's a navigation system specially designed for bikes, it takes into account how flat is the rout among many another things like bicycle lanes, speed and safety, it's really quite cool.

Disclaimer:I work for them!

</comment><comment><USER26> If I plot a route from Hyde and Bay to 6th and Mission, it routes me over Nob Hill. If I change it two streets to 4th and Mission, it routes me around the Embarcadero, which is much flatter. Is there a reason it takes the more direct (less flat) route in the first instance?

Having played around, the route given seems to vary slightly as I move an endpoint slightly at either end and then massively recalculate - perhaps it caches certain segments and favours those?

Just curious really, it's a cool idea!

</comment><comment><USER27> Haha, we could really use this sort of custom routing in NJ for finding the route using the fewest roads. If I use Google Maps to go to the local mall, Costco, etc. it ends up using about 16 small side roads, alternating left and right turns every block. Takes forever. Meanwhile, if you know what you are doing you can make it there in 3 roads, one a major highway, which is much faster than any of the side roads Google Maps loves so much. Just getting rid of all the turns helps immensely.

</comment><comment><USER28> Thanks for this! Cycling is my preferred way to commute, so I expect this to come in handy. I just confirmed that my usual work->home route is in fact the flattest.

</comment><comment><USER29> Awesome! Boy, this graph highlights why my evening commute (SoMa to Noe) is killer in comparison to the morning commute.

PS My wife is in Hackbright as well, it is an exciting time in the program (for other HNers, it's the last week of the current cohort). I heard about FlattestRoute a few weeks back, it looks really great!

</comment><comment><USER21> The length of the route is affecting the slope of each segment.

For example, Bolinas, CA to Vacaville, CA has steeper segments than the Bolinas, CA to Dixon, CA even though they take the exact same route out of Marin and Sonoma.

The extreme example, Bolinas, CA to Boston, MA never gets above a four percent slope.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's due to limits of the Google Elevation API, it only allows a certain number of samples to be fetched at a time. The app's only meant for use over short distances, like around a city.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Hey it would be great if you allowed some GET parameters as well as POST, that way people could bookmark pages, etc

<comment><USER31> I too would like bookmarks

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> It might be interesting to see this mashed up on top of [http://www.opencyclemap.org/?zoom=13&lat=37.75187&lo...](http://www.opencyclemap.org/?zoom=13&lat=37.75187&lon=-122.43666&layers=B00) which has some good data for a lot of cities.

<comment><USER33> Cyclestreets do that in the UK:

<http://www.cyclestreets.net>

</comment></comment><comment> Pirate-of-SV Something doing the opposite would be cool. I'm training on my bike in SF and the hills are the best.

<comment><USER34> And if you monetise the hills option you could quote Jens Voight: "I get paid to hurt other people - how cool is that?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is great. Nice work and excellent visualization.

There's a pre-existing tool I like to use, which is not nearly as nice looking but does allow you to specify your maximum grade: <http://amarpai.com/bikemap/>

</comment><comment><USER36> So cool! I've been waiting for a bunch of bike-apps-in-progress to come to fruition (415bike, I'm looking at you: <https://github.com/415bike>) but now the wait is made much easier with this!

</comment><comment><USER37> It would be cool to integrate route choice (suggest a variety of routes from short/hillier to longer/flatter) using the API at <http://bikesy.com>

</comment><comment><USER38> Would be nice for Lisbon, too. It's called the city of 7 hills (plus it's got trolley cars and a Golden Gate of sorts, the latter made by the same company as the GGB).

<comment><USER6> Lots of cities are theoretically built on seven hills:

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> The dots used for showing the difficulty can be dragged when altering the route. Other than minor finicky things like that, it seems to be a neat idea. Cool work!

</comment><comment><USER40> You can check out something similar in 3D here (needs WebGL):

<http://bdon.org/bicycle.html>

</comment><comment><USER41> This is great. I bike to work and I had kind of intuitively figured this out after a month, but pretty cool nonetheless!

</comment><comment><USER42> Very cool! Have always thought that Google Maps needs this feature!

<comment><AUTHOR> My wife (the creator of this app) happened to showed it to someone from Google Maps today. It was demo day at the school she's attending and they were there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Looks interesting - wouldn't it lead to congestion though?

</comment><comment><USER44> I love how the default starting point is Nob Hill.

</comment><comment><USER45> Would be useful for the rest of the world.

</comment><comment><USER46> cool app. The elevation data over the gg bridge seems to be a bit off. Out of curiosity what data set is it from?

<comment><AUTHOR> Google Elevation API: <https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/elevation/>

<comment><USER47> Now that is cool. Thanks for the link!

<comment><USER48> perfect i would say!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> this really is absolutely awesome. will be putting it to good use very soon :)

</comment><comment><USER50> It's all about the wiggle.</comment>


Microsoft takes aim at Gmail - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXqrTfOWx60

<comment><USER2> Posted several times, some with relevant comments:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2818407> : 3 comments

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2819411> : 2 comments

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2820611> : 0 comments

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2821072> : 2 comments

</comment><comment>==

ADDED IN EDIT: I've started a poll about this:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2822041>

</comment><comment><USER3> Already posted at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2821072> .</comment>


Why I am still using web.py in 2016 – and you should be too - <AUTHOR> http://blog.taveo.net/go/webpy <comment><USER2> I don't do most of my development in Python anymore (Go enthusiast now). Can anyone talk to how this compares to Flask?

<comment><AUTHOR> (Author Here)

I haven't use Flask a whole lot lately, but I believe Flask is somewhat similar.

The biggest difference is probably Flask embeds the jinja2 html tempting system by default. While you can use jinja2 with web.py, all of the tutorials show you how to use it's own built in tempting engine, which in my opinion is the biggest downside.

In web.py all of your URL's usually end up in same spot in the code (defined at the top), where Flask has you do a decorator on top of the function which will be handling the request. Web.py has you write "get()" and "post()" functions, while Flask wants you to do a "if request == post/get"

Web.py forces you to "unescape" your html by default, Flask asks you to escape it. So by default web.py will convert html tags to &lt &gt, Flask will not. I prefer the safer default myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Bad link. It should be [http://blog.taveo.net/2016/11/still-using-web- py-2016/](http://blog.taveo.net/2016/11/still-using-web-py-2016/). Yet, it still had upvotes...</comment>


Reddit bans 2000 communities including The_Donald - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/hi3oht/update_to_our_content_policy/ <comment><USER3> Earlier today: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23679425](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23679425)

<comment><USER4> It's the same topic but a different article. The reddit anouncement is the official source and it's not paywalled so this submission still has some value in my opinion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've never heard of Chapo Trap House before, apparently it's a "dirtbag left" podcast:

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

Am I being too cynical to assume it was singled out in the comms so Reddit can pretend to be fair and balanced, when the actual target was r/The_Donald?

<comment><USER6> I regularly check the comment history of reddit users when I come across a particularly egregious trolling comment on subreddits like /r/news and /r/politics. Users who frequented /r/ChapoTrapHouse are a real problem, and lately I'd been seeing that subreddit in people's comment history more often than /r/The_Donald (which had withered considerably from its peak). This isn't a case of Reddit simply picking an obscure target for the sake of "balance"; they were going after a real problem.

<comment><USER7> With the subreddit(s) gone there will be no comment history. You've now lost signal, some added context. We all have.

The subreddit(s) isn't the problem. It's a symptom. Extremists feed on marginalization. It's a rallying cry.

Reddit has served its community. Fair enough. But it's ultimately a balloon grab. There will be unintended consequences. Further marginalizing the frustrated won't stop those feelings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > While the rule on hate protects such groups, it does not protect all groups > or all forms of identity. For example, the rule does not protect groups of > people who are in the majority or who promote such attacks of hate.

Some are more equal than others.

<comment><USER9> The left is currently redefining racism. Hate against Whites is defined as not being racist. And being White is means that you are always racist. I wish, I was kidding.

<comment><USER10> Sad that this truth has been downvoted.

<comment><USER9> Better only being downvoted than being Canceled, like so many others are for daring to question the new "truths".

So many people's economic and social lives have already been destroyed.

<comment><USER10> The silent majority needs to be able to stand up to the authoritarian and vocal minority. The problem is that you can loose your job over questioning them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Reddit's not just banning the subreddits, it's banning mentions of the websites where these communities are moving.

Reddit does not want to host these groups anymore. But it doesn't want them to organize and find another host.

It's a lot of power for a free forum hoster.

<comment><USER12> Interesting. I do know about thedonald.win - any news about the ChapoTrapHouse community?

<comment><USER13> The chapo crew met on twitter so that is where their main community is, the relationship with /r/cth was never great I think.

Chapo members Will Menaker (@willmenaker) and Matt Christman (@cushbomb) seem to be glad it is gone.

\- [https://twitter.com/cushbomb/status/1277649588019699716](https://twitter.com/cushbomb/status/1277649588019699716)

\- [https://twitter.com/willmenaker/status/1277649915041153025](https://twitter.com/willmenaker/status/1277649915041153025)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Just after I read about [Lemmy] on [hn post], and kinda moved to it.

[Lemmy]: [https://dev.lemmy.ml](https://dev.lemmy.ml)

[hn post]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23664067](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23664067)

</comment><comment><USER15> One of the values I believe in the most is the right to free speech.

Free speech is a powerful thing, which means it can be used for good and for bad. Sometimes what appears to us today as bad can actually turn out to be good in the future.

The general rule of free speech is that it does not permit threats of violence or obvious incitement to violence.

Hate speech, on the other hand, is MUCH more subjective. What may appear to me to be a well-reasoned argument may to you appear to be hate speech.

With these complex issues in mind, I'd say that unless the groups that Reddit banned were advocating or threatening violence, banning them was counter- productive and hurtful to having an open and free discourse on the internet.

Of course, there is the go-to argument that Reddit is a private company, and as such they can do whatever they like, but because they provide a public service that is used by billions of people, they have an obligation to uphold the values and laws of our society - most notably the first amendment - <USER2> protects free speech.

<comment><USER16> You speak as if there is an objective definition of "threats of violence or obvious incitement to violence" but I've seen people argue that as no less subjective (and therefore no less a slippery slope) as defining hate speech.

<comment><USER15> I think there is a much more objective definition of "threats of violence or obvious incitement to violence" than there is for hate speech.

Some people could interpret a sentence like: "I don't like the taste of curry" to be hate speech, since it targets the ethnic food of a difference race. (For the record, I love curry...)

So yes, banning "hate speech" that does not threaten violence is a slippery slope, because it is simply too open to interpretation.

<comment><USER16> A "much more objective" definition is still subjective. Some people consider the fourteen words "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children" to be a threat of violence, others consider it to simply a neutral statement. Some people consider wearing MAGA hats to be a threat of violence, others simply a form of patriotism. Was Trump making a racist, violent threat when he said "when the looting starts, the shooting starts," or just prosaically supporting law and order?

If it can be argued that one can apply a test of reasonableness as to whether or not a statement constitutes a threat of violence, then it should be the case such a test can be applied to hate speech. There's a risk of abuse involved in both cases, yes, but there is always a risk where the interpretation of language for political ends is involved.

<comment><USER15> No. If everything is subjective, then we must err on the side of being permissive, not restrictive, because if we choose restrictive, then everything is a threat of violence and illegal, and what you just said above is against the law and you need to go to jail for it (it isn't, and you don't - I'm just trying to illustrate a point).

Here's why you're wrong about your approach: if everything is subjective and the answer to everything is repression, then the law is no longer valid, and the only possible outcome is civil war.

If you do not want bloody, horrific, monstrous civil war with giant swarths of the population who don't agree with you, then you should err on the side of being permissive of questionable speech.

As you've seen from the mass riots recently in the USA, a massive violent response is only a single sensationalist news story away.

We need to support and encourage free speech.

<comment><USER16> > if everything is subjective and the answer to everything is repression, then > the law is no longer valid, and the only possible outcome is civil war.

We already live in a world in which limits on speech exist, including the limit against threats of violence being discussed. We also already live in a world in which every law besides the laws of physics is subjective and open to interpretation.

If it is the case that subjective reality must render law invalid, then the law is and has always been invalid. Given that the law does not appear to be invalid, and civilization appears to remain intact, it cannot be stated as a certainty that the existence of laws themselves (restrictions) in a subjective reality must inevitably lead to anarchy.

Your error is the fallacy of the excluded middle, assuming the only possible paths to take here are towards unrestricted free speech or arbitrary repression.

>If you do not want bloody, horrific, monstrous civil war with giant swarths of the population who don't agree with you, then you should err on the side of being permissive of questionable speech.

Arguments of the type "x or blood will be on your hands" appear more extortionate than appealing to reason. I don't believe that Reddit banning these communities will lead to that outcome, and if you consider that a likely possibility, maybe you should reexamine your assumptions.

>As you've seen from the mass riots recently in the USA, a massive violent response is only a single sensationalist news story away.

There was a _lot_ more behind that then a single sensationalist news story.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Suppose they'll move to voat.co now, a lot of the too extreme for the_donald had moved there already.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> > _Alongside the change to the content policy, we are initially banning about > 2000 subreddits, the vast majority of which are inactive. Of these > communities, about 200 have more than 10 daily users. Both r /The_Donald and > r/ChapoTrapHouse were included._

</comment><comment><USER18> We're a long way from the halcyon days of Usenet. Couldn't have imagined in the 1980s the embrace of censorship by the tech world. It almost makes me physically ill.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is just another small piece in the big puzzle of social changes that are currently happening. The "Big Nap" is over. And it won't be fun.

</comment><comment><USER19> I am ok with Reddit choosing what content is publicly available on their platform. It should go without saying Reddit should also be responsible for the content it chooses to serve.

If anything it's unfair competition against traditional media which doesn't enjoy "platform" protections.

</comment><comment><USER20> "Communities and people that incite violence or that promote hate based on identity or vulnerability will be banned.

[...]

While the rule on hate protects such groups, it does not protect all groups or all forms of identity. For example, the rule does not protect groups of people who are in the majority or who promote such attacks of hate."

So as long as you hate or incite violence towards whatever groups Reddit define as "in the majority", you are welcome? Mind blowing...</comment>


Everybody Let's Stop the TPP: Share These Videos and Spread the Word - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/10/everybody-lets-stop-tpp-share-these-videos-and-spread-word

<comment><USER2> There seems to be a lot of scare mongering in that video which doesn't help put the point across.."franken-foods"...really? GM foods are and will continue to be a great leap forward in sustainable, scalable agriculture.

I still have no idea what the "TPP" thing is...when I look at the other sources I just get things like "you will be banned from being able to modify the save file on your game"...huh really? What if I only support indie developers and publishers who don't enforce arbitrary restrictions? Vote with your purse etc.

And then there are a lot of the "it could", "it might", "possibly"...reeks of the same politics where "death panels" and other bullcrap comes from...following the sources and reading the actual proposals it is much less sinister.

[http://whytheheckshouldicareaboutthetpp.com/?f=10&q=6](http://whytheheckshouldicareaboutthetpp.com/?f=10&q=6) \- The words "unauthorized" should be in there...which has a much less powerful point.

Present a reasonable, scientifically backed argument...then maybe I will listen.

<comment><USER3> As Elizabeth Warren said:

"I have heard the argument that transparency would undermine the Trade Representative's policy to complete the trade agreement because public opposition would be significant," Warren explained. "In other words, if people knew what was going on, they would stop it. This argument is exactly backwards. If transparency would lead to widespread public opposition to a trade agreement, then that trade agreement should not be the policy of the United States."

watch her here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=kAgJaIwdXLI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=kAgJaIwdXLI)

democracynow has more info out yesterday: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS-x5SlcPPM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS-x5SlcPPM)

<comment><USER4> This is a pretty silly argument from Sen. Warren. Put aside the fact that she can't even be bothered to ascribe the argument to any named individual, nobody's arguing that the agreements themselves shouldn't be public and "transparent".

A modern trade agreement represents a balancing of a huge number of private interests. Some will benefit and some will be harmed, but the overall outcome is expected to be positive for all sides. Achieving that balance will require concessions from both sides. It is an extraordinary restraint on the capabilities of the USTR if they must worry about every concession they offer (which may never even make it into the deal) being trumpeted to the rooftops by domestic political opposition.

This is really common sense. It's the same reason the military base closure commission deliberates in private, or, for that matter, why the U.S. Supreme Court does, even with no direct electoral politics at issue.

<comment><USER5> Closed proceedings are the exception in the American system. Generally, there are two justifications, deriving from constitutional missions: security, and the inherently counter-democratic function of the judiciary. Even then, oral arguments in front of the Supreme Court are public and recorded.

The USTR cannot avail itself of such justifications.

<comment><USER4> Am I misunderstanding, or are you suggesting that it would be exceptional for the U.S. to keep diplomatic negotiations private? ISTM that it's just the opposite: International discussions are almost always held in private. Why should what the USTR does be any different from, say, negotiation with an ally over a Status of Forces agreement?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Where are the facts in this video? it's all chorus.

<comment><USER7> It's hard to know the facts because much of the TPP negotiations and data are being kept secret:

"Lack of transparency: The entire process has shut out multi-stakeholder participation and is shrouded in secrecy."

\- [https://www.eff.org/issues/tpp](https://www.eff.org/issues/tpp)

<comment><USER8> The TPP is a multilateral trade agreement, all of which are negotiated in private by national representatives, then presented to their respective national governments for ratification. In the U.S. the TPP will require Congressional approval, which will be a very public and long process.

Basically: the stuff about "secrecy" is pure scaremongering. There's nothing special about the way TPP is being out together.

<comment><USER9> It's going to be on put to a vote under so called "fast-track" rules; where it's not available for mark up or public comment and will have to get an up or down vote within 24 hours. If the text of a complex multi-lateral and "modular" trade agreement is public for less than 48 hours before a binding yes/no vote; that hardly seems like it's in good faith. And it certainly strikes this observer as an attempt to bypass the legislative functions of the American government by private interests. When the ITR can claim with a straight face that keeping treaty negotiations that will result in laws that are binding on every American citizen secret because failure to do so would mean it could not be concluded; you have to assume that the deal is rotten from the ground up.

At the very least the full-text of the agreement should be available publicly for a 90 day comment period before congress votes on it.

<comment><USER8> > It's going to be on put to a vote under so called "fast-track" rules; where > it's not available for mark up or public comment and will have to get an up > or down vote within 24 hours.

Also not true. I'd be interested to see your source for this.

Trade Promotion Authority (TPA, also known as fast track) has expired. It could be renewed before TPP is submitted to Congress, but that is very unlikely. Without TPA, the TPP will be treated like any other bill in Congress.

Even if TPA is renewed, the committees have 45 days each to report the bill, then each house has 15 days to vote up or down. Hardly 24 hours. [1]

If you're looking for a precedent, review the timelines for the Colombia and South Korea free trade agreements. Each was submitted to the Congress under TPA rules...nevertheless the negotiations and debate and revisions took another 3 years before they were passed.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> USA and Europe will have the same kind of "agreement",it's called something like the trans atlantic partnership => bad for EU workers and bad for USA workers , especially since nobody asked us ( Europeans ) if we agreed on this or not. It will only be good for big corps and banks. And nobody's talking about it.

<comment><USER11> Excuse my ignorance, but I don't understand why this kind of agreement is necessarily "bad for EU workers and bad for USA workers"?

Can you explain?

<comment><USER12> While there can be good and bad things in a new deal, we also have to look at what we have now. Tariffs reducing trade to shield groups with political clout from competition aren't exactly a good thing...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why are the bad guys always white? And what do top hats have to do with it?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=p3Kl...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=p3KlrfjcjV4)</comment>