Apple responds: we want a cut of Amazon, Sony e-book sales - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/02/apple-responds-to-app-store-furor-says-it-wants-a-cut-of-e-book-sales.ars <comment><USER2> I can make no possible reading of the App Store guidelines that results in this policy - it's clearly new. I guess if Google can't make the Android App Store attractive to developers, Apple sure can. Surely, this cannot be "official" policy, or if it is, it can't be one that lasts more than a couple of weeks. It's not one of those geek-annoying App restrictions that 99% of the iOS target market wouldn't care about even if they knew it - this one affects every end user, and you can bet will be widely publicised by every non-Apple tablet maker.

Realistically, three things can happen to people with App under this policy. Take, e.g., Kindle.

1) They withdraw the Kindle application 2) The add In-App purchasing 3) The add In-App purchasing, but with a 30% price hike

Frankly, 2 is very unlikely - 30% is probably their entire profit margin on the sale. 3 is possible, but makes every Android tablet look vastly better to new purchasers ("The same apps from iOS, but with content 30% cheaper!). 1 is also quite possible - they just EOL it and say "For future Amazon purchases, please grab a Kindle or Android tablet), thus showing a huge chunk of Apples target market a big banner for the competition.

I suppose there's another alternative: that this becomes one of the annoying "Not for big player" rules that they just have a sub-rosa agreement with B & N/Amazon to never enforce. That in itself is pretty underhand.

Overall, my favoured interpretation is this is a re-run of the "Nothing but Objective C Apps in the Store" debacle. Masses of bad press, a dent in developer confidence, and a rescinded policy within a month or two. Apple really are their own worst enemy with this stuff.

<comment><USER3> Or possibility number 4: Amazon removes any mention of purchasing books from the app. The way I read the statement from Apple, they are not saying that if _developers_ offer purchasing outside the app, then they must offer in-app purchasing. They are saying that if an _app_ offers purchasing options, those have to go through the in-app purchasing model. It's still pretty crappy, but basically, all Amazon would have to do is remove the "buy more books" button if my read of this is correct.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure that's right. Even if Kindle App has no purchasing option but accesses content bought on Amazon.com, it should still allow Apple's in-app purchase. Which essentially means, Kindle app is useless. See the excerpt below.

>> If an app lets users access content that they purchased via Amazon's website, for example, then that same app must also let users buy the same book via Apple's own in-app purchase system. If the app developer doesn't want to use Apple's in-app purchases to sell content, then the app can't access content purchased elsewhere either.

<comment><USER3> That is Ars' interpretation of Apple's position. The actual quote from Apple was ( _emphasis_ is mine):

"We are now requiring that if an _app_ offers customers the ability to purchase books outside of the app, that the same option is also available to customers from within the app with in-app purchase."

<comment><USER5> Doesn't _any app that allows you to query an arbitrary URL or web search_ technically provide customers the ability to purchase books through e.g. Amazon? This way lies madness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What Apple actually said (emphasis mine):

"We are now requiring that if an app offers customers the ability to _purchase_ books outside of the app, that the same option is also available to customers from within the app with in-app purchase."

What ars interprets that to mean (emphasis mine):

"If an app lets users _access_ content that they purchased via Amazon's website, for example, then that same app must also let users buy the same book via Apple's own in-app purchase system"

That's not at all what Apple said. Apple said if the app lets you buy books outside of the app, i.e. you click the buy button inside the app and are then sent to the webpage to purchase the book, then the app must also let you purchase the book without leaving the app by using in-app purchases. Apple says nothing about not letting users access content they paid for from other sources.

<comment><USER7> _Apple said if the app lets you buy books outside of the app, i.e. you click the buy button inside the app and are then sent to the webpage to purchase the book, then the app must also let you purchase the book without leaving the app by using in-app purchases._

Okay. But they also said you cannot buy books inside the app unless Apple gets a cut:

[http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/02/change-in-apple- po...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/02/change-in-apple-policy-has-e- book-fans-worried-about-their-apps.ars)

 _It appears as if Sony's app tried to offer a built-in bookstore as well as the ability to download books purchased on other devices, but that idea was shot down when Apple reportedly told Sony that all in-app purchases must go through Apple._

So that basically means if the Kindle app wants to let you buy books from Amazon it can only go through the Amazon website _and_ it has to allow you to purchase books from Apple. How does that make any sense?

<comment><USER6> "So that basically means if the Kindle app wants to let you buy books from Amazon, it has to go through the Amazon website and it has to allow you to purchase books from Apple? How does that make any sense?"

It doesn't at all and I totally agree with you on that. I was just making it clear what Apple actually said because everyone seems to be latched onto the "Apple won't let you access your own content if you didn't buy it from them" fallacy.

Obviously Apple wants in on the purchasing action, and by forcing both actions to be available (staying in-app to purchase or being sent to a web browser) they are hoping at least some people find in-app purchasing easier/smoother and use it instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think we were all afraid of some move like this. Nobody cares about Sony's ebooks. Everybody (me included) cares about Kindle.

I can sort of understand where Apple is coming from in this. They provide an ecosystem and apps live within their ecosystem.

That being said, I can't see Amazon or any other big player rolling over on a margin of 30%. This is the problem with one fixed margin: it works well for apps and music but not necessarily for other things.

You see the same problem with the Mac App Store: smaller devs love it. Will you see Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop on it? I doubt it. 30% is just too much for those big players to hand over.

I consider Kindle to be a key part of my iPad experience and I can say if the end result of this is that I can't read my Kindle books on my iPad I will be _pissed_. I bought them specifically because I could.

Ultimately though I think Apple needs to give up control here. They should provide a payment infrastructure and if it's comeplling, people will use it. If it's not, they won't. But don't make me a casualty of war in the names of the the consistency of your 30% cut.

<comment><USER9> I too am not happy about losing the ability to read Kindle books on my iPad. But does Amazon allow Apple (and Google and Sony) to sell their ebooks on Kindle? This is shaping up to be a battle of walled gardens. While the gardens battle, Google Books and Android are looking a lot more attractive.

<comment><USER10> Anyone can sell e-books on-line and email them to your kindle. Baen's Webscriptions (<http://www.webscription.net/>) has been doing this for years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> tomh- How long till I have to pay Apple 30% for ordering a pizza using an iPhone? How long till I have 30% premium to pay for shopping online using a mac computer?

<comment><USER11> Yes, but it will be an iPizza and have amazing industrial design.

<comment><USER12> With insanely great UX.

<comment><USER13> Oh, and the _unboxing!_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is it just me, or is this every bit as outrageously greedy as consumer ISP's (Comcast, etc) wanting to charge Netflix, Youtube, etc.?

<comment><USER15> It's not just you, but it is far more reminiscent of being every bit as greedy as console manufacturers demanding licensing fees from cartridge manufacturers (or whatever we call sharecroppers).

Remember that if a developer makes an app and sells it for money, Apple gets 30% of their revenue, period, full stop. That's the App Store deal, if you don't like it, you don't develop an iOS app.

So what happens when a developer builds an app that does _almost nothing_. He givs it away _for free_. But to use the app, you go to the developer's site, pay money, and download a level or something, like my maze app example above. Presto! The developer has just done an end run around the App Store, and Apple doesn't like that.

<comment><USER16> It's a hypothetical problem that doesn't _really_ exist in real-life. Separating people from their money is hard, quadruply so when you expect them to sign up for a new payments account.

This is also why PayPal is the de facto payments platform on the internet - consumers are wary of signing up for ever more payment options. You need to be well established to have enough customer confidence to pull it off - and even then, you're probably taking a large hit in conversion rate.

So sure, you can ship your app for free and try to make an end run around Apple - but it won't work. Even if you're a big, trusted name like EA the number of customers you lose forcing people through yet another payments process is likely not worth the extra sales you get from just giving Apple their cut.

The difference here is if the customer _already_ has a payments solution set up - e.g., Amazon, eBay, etc. In this case the friction is minimal, and you'd want to keep your 30% margin. I don't see a problem with allowing this.

<comment><USER17> It depends on your margins. If your margins are 100% then yeah, the resulting drop in conversions will likely overshadow the 30% savings. However, if your profit margin is 31% due to the royalties you have to pay for the content, you're looking at 30x boost in profits. And if your margins are 29% you are looking at a difference between profit and loss.

I'm fairly sure ebooks fall into this latter category, hence the kerfuffle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm hoping there's more to this than meets the eye right now. Sadly, I suspect we won't know until Thursday.

I can think of a couple of scenarios that might fit what we know so far:

1) Apple might simply declare that they want 30% of all in-app purchases. Amazon will likely freak out. This, to me, would seem to be a seriously dangerous move on Apple's part.

2) Apple may drop the 30% cut entirely on in-app purchases. That'd be pretty disruptive but aside from adding a technical hoop to jump through for content providers to link content with Apple's in-app purchasing system, I don't think they would be quite so upset about it since they wouldn't really be losing money on each transaction. Of course this is still pretty harsh on Apple's part, IMO, but it's better than #1.

3) Apple simply requires developers to link purchased digital content with an Apple ID via the in-app purchasing system, but not necessarily requiring that Apple be used for the actual money transfer itself. The purpose of this would likely be to ensure that purchased digital goods are always linked to an Apple ID - even if they were purchased externally. If that's the case, then this is much less of a big deal, IMO, and a huge win for users. For instance, if you restored your device, you could be assured that all your digital content you bought via the Kindle app itself would be restored with a single tap - no need to login to Amazon again or anything like that. Thus Apple can help better ensure that the user will actually get their content back when the device restores which is required of all other in-app purchased content using the in- app purchase API.

<comment><USER19> _Apple may drop the 30% cut entirely on in-app purchases_

I think it'd be great if they had some sliding scale for different types of purchases. 30% for virtual goods, 15% for digital media, %7 for physical goods... that kind of thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> If the issue is that Apple wants 30% of all eBook sales for anything that can be viewed on the platform, that's really scummy and an abuse of standards.

If instead, they just want to make sure that if you can buy it on a Kindle/whatever and read it on the iPhone that you can also BUY it from the iPhone in the first place, not such a big deal.

There seems to be some confusion on this issue.

<comment><USER21> My understanding is that it is in fact Apple wanting their 30% (since kinle app already allows people to purchase books from the iPad through safari). I don't think it's a big deal as long as the additional cost is not spread to all kindle content purchasers. iPad users get the ease of use by being able to do in app purchase vs safari, it's only fair the pay the additional costs.

<comment><USER22> If you ignore the fact that in some cases amazon's cut is 30% of the total sale to begin with (all books priced from 2.99 to 9.99). So in all those cases no amazon would not find the ease of use worth it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It feels like another FTC investigation over App store policies could arise out of this.

<comment><USER24> I think you may be right. But that would be unfortunate, as I don't think the FTC should meddle in Apple's business. I think Apple's management should have the right to set any policy it considers relevant - after all, this is their platform. So, I hope the FTC takes no action.

<comment><USER25> The FTC shouldn't meddle in Apple's business? Apple's management should have the right to set any policy it considers relevant?

What do you see the role of the FTC as being, and why should Apple be able to set any policy, even if it may violate the law?

<comment><USER24> Thanks for bringing up this good point. Let me explain. I think a government agency should not intervene if there is no law violation. I think this case is very clear - Apple is neither physically compelling nor defrauding anyone. It is offering terms of contract - contract between firms engaging in voluntary trade - and its counterparties are free to accept these terms or to walk away. However, if the FTC is not sure about this and needs to investigate to ascertain legality, I would say that the law they would be referring to is not a very objective one. I think that an essential characteristic of a good law is that its definition allows a person to understand, before he/she takes an action, whether that action is forbidden or not, and what the exact consequences would be if the action is actually forbidden. Clearly, Apple's management is sophisticated enough to understand an objective law.

About the role of the FTC: My understanding is that the FTC, together with the Antitrust Division of the DOJ, tries to ensure that companies comply with antitrust laws. Even though this is a different discussion, based on my knowledge of this field, I think that antitrust laws, generally, lack in objectivity. I disagree with many of them. This, however, does not mean that a company should break them. I would certainly not agree with such an action. A serious problem for companies is, however, that even with their hordes of sophisticated lawyers, it is very difficult for them to determine what constitutes a violation. As proof, consider the lengthy battles Microsoft has had with the European Commission. After years of fines and appeals, neither side fully understands the problem and neither side can define the actions that would guarantee compliance with the law in the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This opens up a huge can of worms and will push any company who has a subscription service out of the App Store. How does this work with freemium, for instance? And what if the app is not from the company but from a third- party that uses an API?

We looked at using In App purchase for a large collection of add-ons. Even if Amazon, Sony and B&N wanted to offer in app purchase as well as through their stores, Apple's system is a pain in the neck to do that. Their support structure just isn't designed for a large array of product options.

</comment><comment><USER27> [From other thread] I'm having a tough time believing the spokesperson got it right, because of the Rhapsody, Netflix, and Audible apps. Never mind every PDF viewer.

It just seems like a really, really bad idea that will bring government intervention. The Kindle app kicks over to Safari for purchases, but I really can't imagine them requiring Amazon to add an in app purchase through Apple. I can't imagine the circumstances that would make that acceptable.

</comment><comment><USER28> I love apple and I love apple products. I currently use nothing but apple hardware. If they prevent me from using the kindle app as I do now then I'll get an android phone and tablet. It's really that simple.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'd like to say "Apple, you're already bringing in record revenue quarters, why are you doing this?" But I think the answer would be "because we can," Apple is creating a monopolistic market place for media (look at the battle of record labels providing DRM to Apple and non-DRM to Amazon to lessen-Apple's grip over their digital content) and applications. I think requiring a big player like Sony or Amazon to comply with new policies, will not go over well. I can't see Sony telling Apple "forget it," since I don't know anyone with a Sony eReader... but I could see Amazon and the Kindle, rightly, starting an issue over this. Apple has done a great job of making user friendly (see: locked down) platforms which work well, but the DRM battle and now this could turn public opinion against them.

Apple is just trying to create a new revenue stream early on as iPad sales increase and the tablet market heats up; smart move. It'll take a big ereader player like Amazon to battle them, and if ereader content creates a price hike war due to Apple's insistence on 30% cuts, then negative public sentiment towards pricing or not having access to ebook material that has already been purchased on one platform will hopefully create a retraction in Apple's policy. But then again, the airlines never got rid the baggage fee, and even with negative sentiment we all still pay them.

</comment><comment><USER30> How is opening an externally bought MP3 in-app, different from opening an externally bought e-book in-app?

I think Apple is opening a can of worms.

</comment><comment><USER31> Doesn't the Ars Technica headline sounds too sensationalistic?

I'd like to be the guy from The Neutral Planet and sit this one out until it sorts itself out.

</comment><comment><USER32> It'll be interesting to see how Gruber spins this one.

</comment><comment><USER33> easily solved:

Buy this book for 10$ on amazon.com Buy this book for 13$ with your itunes account*

*explanation

<comment><USER34> This is the first solution I hit upon: show the user the pricing of each option and see what happens.

I wonder what creative solution Apple will come up with. Bah, it won't be creative, it'll be:

* An app will not charge consumers more to purchase content in-app then they would in other locations.

<comment><USER35> Amazon responds. Buy directly from Amazon.com and receive a 30% credit towards your next Amazon purchase!

<comment><USER34> Touche.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> From a user, with an iTunes account, this is a big win for me. I don't particularly like sharing my bank details with all and sundry.

<comment><USER37> I'm glad to hear that's worth a 43% tax to you.

It's a little steep for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This doesn't seem ridiculous to me _as a user_. I read this as saying is that _if_ an app plays content I can purchase elsewhere, _then_ Apple wants to be able to _also_ sell the content in the app.

If I have it correct, I as a developer can make a maze application and sell mazes on my own web site, but I must also give users the option of buying them in the app and fork over 30% to Apple. If I do this, it's up to me to convince users that the experience of buying mazes on my web site is superior to the experience of buying them right in the app.

As long as Apple doesn't prohibit applications from "playing" content purchased elsewhere, as a _user_ I have no problem with this, because it gives me another choice for purchasing new content that offers a smooth and easy purchasing experience.

Amazon, et. al. probably hate the idea, but that comes down to two lords arguing over which one gets to exploit the serfs.

<comment><USER38> "Apple also allegedly told Sony that the app couldn't access content purchased on other Sony Reader devices, which is where most of the outrage was focused" - I think this is a big problem. If I have bought the book from amazon I should be able to read it everywhere isn't it?

<comment><USER6> Apple's official response:

"We are now requiring that if an app offers customers the ability to purchase books outside of the app, that the same option is also available to customers from within the app with in-app purchase."

It's talking about purchasing from inside the app, not access content that you purchased somewhere else.

<comment><USER30> Not quite. Another way of describing this; if the content is available for sale outside of the app .. it can't be accessed within the app, unless it's also available for sale via Apple's store.

<comment><USER6> What? Read their statement again.

"...if an app offers customers the ability to purchase books outside of the app, that the same option is also available to customers from within the app.."

It says if the app lets you purchase books from somewhere that is not the app, the app should also let users purchase through the app. Apple said nothing about "content...can't be accessed within the app, unless it's also available for sale via Apples store." There was nothing said about what content can and can't be accessed.

<comment><USER30> But if you extrapolate:

1) All possible electronic commerce is likely to utilise web-based technologies.

2) In Amazon's case, they used a mobile website to allow sale of their e-books.

3) If Apple is going to state that directing the user to a mobile website to purchase a book, constitutes an 'in-app purchase' - where is the line drawn?

4) Will app developers be able to advertise any alternative methods of purchase, within their apps, without also allowing purchase via the Appstore?

My guess is, no; they'll simply deny the app in question access to the marketplace - which will prevent users from viewing _any_ externally bought content, that can't also be bought via the Appstore.

In-effect Apple are holding these developers over a barrel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This makes sense to me as a general policy. Without this policy, every developer could simply bypass giving Apple a cut of their revenue by offering their app through the app store for free and then charging users through an external payment system to use the application's functionality.

Obviously Apple wouldn't approve such an app, meaning they should have some explicit policy against using external payment systems for any application functionality, such as the ability to read a particular book on the Kindle app.

If you disagree with Apple taking a cut of app developer profits at all, that's another discussion entirely, but assuming that it's okay for Apple to take a cut of developers' profits, I think this policy is reasonable, if not necessary, new or not.

</comment><comment><USER40> IMNAL nor familiar with American Antitrust laws, but wouldn't Apple actions fall under laws against Coercive Monopolies?

Apple are potentially forcing Amazon to price purchases through its iOS application at a higher price to make up on lost margins on sales due to Apples surcharge. Someone is going to pay for that: either Amazon will eat the cost or the consumer will.

What they are effectively creating is a barrier to entry for Amazon conducting business on their platform all the while Apple have a competing offering that is unencumbered by the surcharge.

Now if Apple didn't have there own competing business to Amazons ebook business I wouldn't be as concerned since there is no competitive stake hold in the surcharge. IMO, this issue has Antitrust written all over it.

</comment><comment><USER41> I prefer to see apple.com as the source of any posts titled "Apple Responds". Otherwise it's just accusations, hyperbole, and speculation combined with bad "journalism", with a heavy emphasis on the quotes around journalism.

</comment><comment><USER42> Developers should simply add a 42% "Apple shipping and handling" tax to all in-app purchases, to let end-users know what is going on. That is the only way to attack Apple: to get the end users on your side.

<comment><USER43> Sounds like an excellent way to get your app removed from the App Store.

<comment><USER44> Does Apple have a policy that states you can't charge 43% more for something than you do elsewhere?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I think it will be interesting to see how this dispute will end. In any case the user will loose, take Amazon for example, I see two possibilities: 1\. Amazon will leave App Store. We loose because we can not use our iPads and iPhones to access Kindle books. 2\. Amazon will comply with the Apple demand and they will cut 30% for Apple ... hmmm ... Basically they will be forced to rise the price of their books to allow for some profit. We loose.

<comment><USER34> Mmmyes, but APPLE wins. And really, isn't that what everyone wants? Doesn't Steve DESERVE more money? After all, his shiny things are Oh So Shiny.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> It sounds like Apple wants apps to stop cheating by redirecting to a browser. Personally I do find this annoying about the Kindle App. I would prefer to do my purchasing inside the app.

In my opinion the solution is for apple to not charge the app sale percentage (30%) on in-app sales. An app sale charge is a one time thing, you could have an infinite amount of in-game sales, why would each transaction cost the same as the initial one?

</comment><comment><USER47> This is probably one of the reasons I stayed away from iOS. Too much policing. It is absolutely ridiculous to force Amazon, Sony to offer purchases through the app store and give 30% of their cut to Apple. I hope Amazon and Sony takes off their apps or charge an additional 30% if the purchase is done from the respective iOS apps.

</comment><comment><USER48> I have yet to read anything saying the ability to make in-app purchases via the app store must receive equal billing to the ability to make out-of-app purchases. If this is true, then Amazon, for example, could keep their current UI and bury the option to buy through Apple deep within the app where you won't easily find it.

</comment><comment><USER49> If this article is accurate, this is the problem with "integrated" systems. I love my iPhone and iPad, but if this continues I'll be switching to Android.

This is also a taste of problems to come if the rumors of iPhone 5 NFC payments are true.

</comment><comment><USER17> I would just hike my price to offset the 30% cut exclusively for iOS and be done with it. Or if that's too obnoxious, provide a "limited-time 30% discount" on my own site off the "list price".

</comment><comment><USER50> i still don't get why people allow legal system where producer of the hammer you bought has legal power to limit your applications of the hammer only to a approved set of nails

</comment><comment><USER51> Could they not simply charge 130% for books purchased through Apple's system whilst offering them elsewhere at a normal price?

</comment><comment><USER52> New car from Apple. Its called iCar.

If you use it as a taxi, you pay 30% of the taxi fare.

If you use it to go to a mall, they pay Apple 30% of your spend.

</comment><comment><USER53> jfm3 has responded to the furor over changes in his imaginary App Store and its policies that many believe could affect the popular Kindle, Nook, and Sony Reader apps. The man claims he has not changed any of its guidelines given to developers in his imagination, but he indirectly confirms that accessing content purchased elsewhere could be a no-no if that content isn't also available to be purchased through jfm3's own system.

"I do not actually run an App Store," said jfm3, "but if I did, and I managed to make all you bitches have to use it all the time, I'd totally want a piece of every single drop of hint of money that could possibly pass through there."

"I can't believe you're paying for that crap," he added, in between sips of his excellent tea. "What the hell kind of hackers are you?"

</comment><comment><USER54> So, I can purchase books thru Safari but not thru the Amazon Kindle App? How does this make sense?

Seems like a workaround might be to link to the Amazon mobile site from the Kindle App. But maybe that is too close to "selling" content thru the Kindle App.

<comment><USER26> That is what Amazon does today. If this is correct then Apple is saying you can't do this anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> The evil empire is dictating its power over developers. Will this lead to Apple killing our innovation and creativity? It's time for us developers to revolt and move to an open source platform!

<comment><USER36> The second they start making second rate products, I'll jump ship with you.

<comment><USER56> You sell out cheap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Has everyone forgotten about Books already?

</comment><comment><USER57> I don't want to seem like I'm overreacting or hating on Apple or anything like that, but this seems to be in a whole new realm of greedy/controlling for Apple. Or is it really reasonable to force apps to use your payment platform?

edit: It seems in other threads on the front page that this is likely Sony blowing things out of proportion. Most of the "news" is all speculation and discussion. I suppose we'll have to wait and see what policies or actions Apple actually takes.

<comment><USER58> The consistent, simple user experience is the key to the platform. I think it's reasonable to require it. I know as a customer I don't want to be hassling with multiple payment accounts.

Presumably it is permissible for Sony to bump the price up on in app purchases to cover the 30% "shipping and handling" charge from Apple. I wonder if they can show it as "Apple™ brand Shipping and Handling" on the screen.

<comment><USER59> You're conflating two different questions — requiring the simple interface for payments, and imposing a fee on purchases. If the goal of this change is to create a consistent, simple user experience, Apple doesn't need to charge a 30% fee to do that. If Apple chooses to force a 30% fee on developers, that is a cash grab, plain and simple. The tax does not improve the UX.

<comment><USER60> Exactly, it's not about "in-app purchasing" in general. They're specifically requiring Apple's In-App Purchase(tm) system:

[http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/Networ...](http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/NetworkingInternet/Conceptual/StoreKitGuide/Introduction/Introduction.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> This reminds me of the "no intermediate code" snafu that was later repealed. Apple keeps testing the boundaries of what we will tolerate because it knows it can get away with it while the competition still lags behind.

This newest development sets a truly frightening precedent, though. Any subscription service that sees significant growth through their iOS app is vulnerable to Apple's tax collectors. As soon as it looks like you're making money, Apple can jump in and extort 30% of your gross revenue or sink your whole business. Granted, maybe you owe some thanks to Apple, but 30% can quickly turn a sustainable business into a bankrupt one.

Considering Amazon already loses money on each Kindle book sold, losing an extra 30% on top of that may not be a financially viable option. Apple is effectively trying to edge Amazon out of its marketplace.

<comment><USER62> > Apple keeps testing the boundaries of what we will tolerate because it knows > it can get away with it while the competition still lags behind.

I'm not convinced the competition will lag forever. If Apple were not the market leader, would consumers or developers continue to give them the same leeway?

<comment><USER61> The point is the competition still lags, so Apple still has a free pass with users and developers. And if the competition suddenly caught up, Apple only needs pull back just enough to make us all forget.

Really, it's stunts like this that shows how much iOS leads the competition. Like electing a convicted murderer to public office because his competition is that incompetent. Android isn't forcing Apple to compete on its terms at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> maybe we'll finally get kindle for the web out of this.

</comment><comment><USER64> It appears Steve Jobs has taken a medical leave of absence.</comment>


Implementing Caching on your RESTful server - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mugunthkumar.com/articles/restful-api-server-doing-it-the-right-way-part-2/ A post on HATEOAS and hypermedia and then show you the role it plays in a native mobile client development. But the crux of this post is going to be centered around how to implement caching (or rather server side support for caching). Target audience include, server developers and to some extent, iOS or any mobile platform developers. <comment><USER2> tl;dr-version: interesting title. pretty much nothing in it about rest (except: do not use it) and only few very basic caching primitives. no mentions of, say, esi (which is very nice and most of the time pretty easy to do for restful webservices).

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not against rest. The click and discover mechanics doesn't really make sense on native clients</comment></comment>


Any sufficiently good quote spawns many ad-hoc imitations - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/search?q=+Any+sufficiently+complicated++contains+an+ad-hoc+-lisp

<comment><USER2> It's called a snowclone.

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

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sigh. HN mangled the quotes out of the query string but it still seems to do the job.

<comment><USER3> The first result is pure gold:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=61020></comment></comment>


Show HN: Skycraft, a creative voxel adventure game in WebGL - <AUTHOR> http://skycraft.io

<comment><USER2> Your game is extremely promising, how do you want to implement multiplayer gaming technically? Does it have to run over your servers or is it in a peer to peer fashion or will users be able to have their own servers?

And very important, how do you think about open source, self hosting and customization?

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you see the potential! :)

I have only done a few tests yet with multiplayer, but as long as WebRTC doesn't stumble on any security hiccups (like Websockets did in its infancy), it will most likely be p2p multiplayer with a framework called peer.js (<http://peerjs.com/>), which uses WebRTC.

So for the actual multiplayer-part, there isn't really any reason to have servers, other than to negotiate the WebRTC connection. But blocks have to be saved somewhere, and thus, at least one (possibly all) of the players have to be connected to a server to send block changes. And of course you need a server to actually load the html, javascript and original blocks from.

So you need some kind of server for each world, as a place to save blocks. Initially, these servers will be on skycraft.io, where you can play with a certain number of friends for free. But in the future it would be really, really cool to allow players to mod the game, and let them host their servers on their own domains as well, to allow for modding. I haven't really thought through how to do this the best way though, there are many, many details that have to done correctly for it to work.

Customization/modding is still a bit into the future though, I have to make more of the actual game first! :) All I can really say is that it's definitely in the back of my head, even though I can't promise anything at this point.

<comment><USER2> That sounds really good! What would be most important to me is that the data of the worlds would be saved on my own server (and I think many others would appreciate this too, espacially as they are used to it from minecraft).

I'll support you and hope that this will be possible. The more backers you have the more you can focus on the game. Make it good! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like the aesthetic of this and the fact that it's based on the open web, though I wish that you invested your time into making more original video games. There aren't enough of those in the world!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the encouragement! :)

But about that originality.. Aren't most games really inspired by previous games, iterating on them, remixing in stuff from other games and making them better? Didn't Transport Tycoon get a lot of inspiration from Railroad Tycoon, but still end up a truly great game?

Just like Minecraft built on Infiniminer and gave a new experience, just like Terraria built on Minecraft and gave a new experience, I hope Skycraft will be able to give yet another experience. But until it gets more distinctive features than the technology itself I guess it feels quite unoriginal, yeah, I totally get what you're saying :)

tl;dr: Just wait, it'll get better!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Made my 2 year old laptop scream and then never could load past a black screen

<comment><AUTHOR> Hum.. Does WebGL stuff otherwise work for you? For instance, does this work? [http://threejs.org/examples/webgl_buffergeometry_particles.h...](http://threejs.org/examples/webgl_buffergeometry_particles.html) And what OS and browser are you using?

<comment><USER4> Yes, that link works at 11fps and I'm using Firefox 21

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you see the cube loading in the beginning? Have you tried restarting your browser? I have seen some random crashes a very few times, where I've had to do that, some times because there has been too many tabs open. There's still a ways to go before WebGL gaming is 100% stable.. but that's also some of the point of doing this project :)

<comment><USER4> I finally did get it running. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks great! So fluid; and my Mac didn't even start a fan running it. cool :)

<comment><AUTHOR> It doesn't? My 13" Macbook certainly fires up the song of its people, but I guess an iMac or 15" / 17" should do a lot better :)

<comment><USER6> My 15" MBP is screaming, but the game is very very fluid, I'm impressed.

<comment><USER7> It runs incredibly smooth on my 13" MBA as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks quite nice. Does this use voxel.js?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! :) If I had started developing Skycraft in 2013, it might have been voxel.js, but it didn't exist at all a year ago. I could have converted to voxel.js, but chose not to, as I have some things voxel.js doesn't yet (lighting, ambient occlusion), and the whole floaty islands thing allows for some special optimizations that would be hard to generalize into voxel.js. So it's just "normal" Three.js., but I really like the voxel.js project!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Accept bitcoins?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hum, I'll think about it if I hear it from a few more people! :)</comment></comment>


Killing the Google Habit - g-garron http://archlinux.me/dusty/2011/11/13/killing-the-google-habit/

<comment><AUTHOR> Using Ghostery, and didn't know about RequestPolicy. Upvote for the tip!</comment>


Business School Rankings Need a "Start-up Upgrade" - <AUTHOR> http://venturefizz.com/blog/business-school-rankings-need-%E2%80%9Cstart-upgrade%E2%80%9D#.UgTtm8yAWJ0.hackernews <comment><USER2> This is one metric of many. Entrepreneurship is just one path out of business school. And it's a tough one considering that most MBA students have a lot of debt, so unless they get traction and funding while in school, they're stuck on the other side. Or they go to already funded startups.

I would like to see entrepreneurship positioned as an alternative career path to consulting, banking and marketing, but to call it the primary metric is just as silly as counting how many alums go into any other individual field.</comment>


What is life like for PhDs in computer science who go into industry? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.vivekhaldar.com/post/29296581613/what-is-life-like-for-phds-in-computer-science-who-go <comment><USER2> I can sum up this article:

A PhD is roughly the same as a Masters for getting a job, except that you get paid a bit more if it's a big company with an HR department. You haven't really developed any skills that are useful, and now you are going to be paired up with some 25 year old that has 3 years of experience more than you do at 30. Well, you might be able to do well, or maybe not, some PhD's are great and some are suck, and the same is true for people without degrees. You have to prove you are valuable. This is all going to make you very depressed since you are facing 50 hour weeks doing work you don't really care about, instead of 9 hour weeks doing only what interests you in Academia, but you have to eat so you might as well get on with it.

Well, that's my summary :) (I'm a bit biased being a dropout)

<comment><USER3> Your "summary" is bullshit and has completely distorted the article. You're not just biased, you're also completely misinformed.

> You haven't really developed any skills that are useful, and now you are > going to be paired up with some 25 year old that has 3 years of experience > more than you do at 30.

More likely, you've spent 3-6 years coding, learning to communicate, and work well in a team.

> This is all going to make you very depressed since you are facing 50 hour > weeks doing work you don't really care about, instead of 9 hour weeks doing > only what interests you in Academia.

Most recently hired academics on a tenure track work 80 hour weeks. You've got to teach course, mentor research students, write grant proposals, and produce research. If you don't, you're out the door.

Imagine I were to suggest that because you're a dropout, all you're good for is saying "do you want fries with that?" That's about the level of what you've done with your comment.

<comment><USER2> Tenure track profs work 80 hours per week? Really? They work from 8AM to 8PM, _7_ days per week (taking only a 15 minute break each day to eat)???

This doesn't seem likely, since they would be completely burned out after only a few months, and you would have diminishing returns after the first week. If you are really working 80 hour weeks then you are being incredibly foolish and wasting a lot of time being completely unproductive due to exhaustion.

But, of course, you don't really mean 80 hours, you were just exaggerating a bit to make your point. Fair enough, lets say profs are putting in (I'm assuming a proper research university where tenure track professors teach 3-4 classes at most) 12 hours lecturing each week, for 30 weeks per year. That's (at most) 360 hours of teaching, per year.

Lets say you spend 2 hours per week preparing for lectures (you should know this stuff already, but lets say you just need time to get organized). That's 60 hours, yearly.

Now, lets say you spend 4 hours every day working on research. Everybody probably would like to spend more, but some days you have to see friends or your wife/husband or kids or get your car fixed or whatever. That's 4 * 365, which is probably a huge overestimate for most people, but that's 1460 hours per year.

Now, as for writing grant proposals, or mentoring students, or whatever else, nobody believes you are spending any serious time (more than 5 hours a week) on that. I don't know how long you really spend on it, but I'm going to assume that you aren't writing more than 1 grant proposal per month, so I'm going to just say that I gave very optimistic and too-high estimates for everything else, so this will get rolled in as overhead.

So you're doing (drumroll) 360 + 60 + 1460 = 1880 hours of work per year, all but 420 of which is just thinking about the problems that interest you most.

If you work in industry, you are spending 220 * 9 = 1980 hours per year working on stuff that are not the things that most interest you, and almost none of it is blue-sky thinking of any kind.

Want fries with that?

Edit: With my really crazy overestimates on how tenure track profs spend time, averaged over a regular work schedule it is 42.72 hours per week, of which 9.5 is anything at all besides pure 'research'. Odd that, it's within .5 hours per week of my original guess, and I swear I didn't cook the numbers to come to that.

<comment><USER4> Wow, your hours on preparing lectures, grant proposal writing, dealing with students, etc. are all way underestimated. A solid grant proposal that is likely to get funded (often in a super competitive field with maybe 8% acceptance rate) can take well over 2 months of solid preparation. Of course we don't actually get 2 months of solid preparation time, what with all the other stuff we have to do. My workload as an early career academic is roughly 10% on a funded project, 20% "research", i.e. grant/paper writing, 5% on a couple of committees I am on, and the rest teaching, with roughly half of that supervisions of PhD/Masters students.

For my masters students that equates to about 6 hours of meetings and reviewing their stuff over 3 months of their project. Most of my colleagues and I burn through that in the first month. So what do we do for the other 2 months? Well it's not like we can shut up shop and say "welp, sorry, but you've used all your allotted time" because that'd be terrible. So we continue to give whatever amount of time we feel is necessary (within reason).

Anyway it's not as simple as you've broken it down to be. Things ebb and flow over the year too, students need more mentoring at certain times of the year than others. Grant proposals, conferences, special issues journals all have deadlines and calls. My week is extremely varied and I'm still working on juggling all the different hats and priorities I have. I have a full load right now over summer even without teaching; when teaching starts up again I'll have to do all the stuff I'm doing now (bar masters student supervision) while doing roughly 25% of my allotted time teaching undergraduates.

Anyway, just another perspective.

<comment><USER5> Your numbers are in line with what I see from my advisor.

The original also failed to break down paper writing. For a top-tier conference, you're going to spend several weeks worth of full days working on a paper, and you're probably going to do it twice per paper because, as they say, even Simon Peyton-Jones has papers rejected occasionally. This time is on top of work you already did to get your system working! (well, unless the paper is the result, as in some areas of theory)

You really, really have to want to live it. I enjoy it, and as a PhD student I don't mind spending all my waking hours that aren't devoted to my wife or a little bit of exercise doing research. But just to be competitive, that's sort of the baseline. I'm not sure, though, whether it's truly a demand of the job or just the default because academic research attracts people who work like that (I also worked like that when I was a developer at MSFT).

<comment><USER4> The thing is you can kinda coast if you want to. But in the UK at least you have to churn out at least 4 high quality papers every 6 years to be included in the "Research Excellence Framework", the assessment of the research quality of the university. Although you don't _have_ to be included in the REF, it was used as a weeding point for redundancies at one of my previous universities (i.e. those who had been in the previous REF were exempt from being included in the redundancy pool; everyone else had to reapply for their jobs). So it does tend to hang over you, even if it's not a direct reason you might get fired.

My university is an ex-polytechnic, so it focuses a lot on teaching as well. You can quite easily get by just teaching - we have a few "just teachers", though they tend to be the older employees. New fulltime employees are expected to do a bit of everything, which is actually a lot better, IMO. If teachers are doing research and contributing to their field, they're reading current stuff and can incorporate that into their teaching. etc. etc. Lots of good reasons for it to happen.

Interdisciplinarians are also rewarded - one of the reasons I got my job in a tough environment (I do computer ethics) was because I had a strong background in computer science vs. most comp ethicists who come from philosophy. So it helps to be able to cover a few different things rather than just one very niche specialty subject as well.

Ultimately though I love my job. It's highly flexible, stimulating, varied work, I have great benefits, especially holidays, and the university is very supportive of family life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The only exception I take with this is the part about coding in an interview. My complaints there are not specific to having a PhD though.

I understand the need for practical tests like these, but whiteboard coding is not a good way to do it. People dont' typically program on white boards, they do it alone with a compiler, reference manual, and the ability to test. Put them in a room with a terminal and ask them to write a straight forward program in 30 minutes. If you have to practice for the interview, what exactly are you determining in the interview? Their ability to program? Or their ability to practice interview tricks?

Immediately discounting a candidate because they are annoyed at your question to whiteboard code also seems rash. Asking someone experienced to write the "print a string in reverse" algorithm will naturally insult them. Especially so if the candidate has a CS PhD and spent time grading students on more complicated programs, or especially if their CV includes links to public repositories containing thousands of lines of code they wrote. On the other hand, asking a candidate to sketch a genuinely complicated algorithm on the board is a reasonable question.

<comment><USER7> > Asking someone experienced to write the "print a string in reverse" > algorithm will naturally insult them.

Why? It's a trivial question that any programmer should be able to answer easily. An interview is a test. An interviewee should be happy if the test starts so simply. It's a chance to warm up and get in the groove.

When you took tests in school were you insulted if the first question on the page was too simple? No, you just answered it and were happy that you earned your first points so easily.

<comment><USER6> The reason it is annoying for people who are experienced is that generally they are looking for jobs where they get to work on difficult and interesting problems. Being asked such a simple question might indicate that you are interviewing for a position you won't want.

I'd personally be very tempted to answer the whiteboard question and immediately explain that I'm not interested in a job that consists only of writing trivial implementations and ask if they can give examples of real problems they face which are non-trivial.

I have actually had one interviewee ask me such a question, although not in response to a simple test or question of my own. This impressed me, although I get the impression that most interviewers would not appreciate this in a similar way to how they do not appreciate candidates that find their fizz-buzz test annoying.

An interview is not a one way test. It is a two way test where the employer can also fail.

<comment><USER8> Your answer implies you have a high ego as you consider the questions below you and only interested in satisfying your own intellect/ego instead of working in a team that gets shit done... read shipping products.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In my experience, the degree has not been a factor at all when it comes to value in industry. I have seen people that didn't have a degree produce more maintainable code in a more productive manner. I also have seen coworkers with bachelors outshine others with masters. I have climbed the corporate ladder at my company and now with my power to influence hires, I rarely take the level of degree in consideration.

Strangely, I have seen the attitude problem with new grads that possess a masters or doctorate. I even had one tell my manager that he had a masters and that meant he shouldn't ever have to do support work, and that he was smarter than my manager. He was a fresh 23 year old grad and eventually left for a larger company because he believed they would appreciate his masters. To add salt to the wound, we found that almost every bit of his code either broke our current projects or just flat out wasn't done correctly because he knew better than everybody so there was no reason for him to ask a senior dev or even a BA any questions about what he was doing.

All that to say, no matter the shop, no matter the degree, business is about money, and we, as coders, produce value which is why our salaries are high. A coder that is seen as valuable will always do better in there career and most of the time his coworkers will see his value and respect him for that.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have a Bachelors in Engineering (BEng) in Computing from Imperial College, not a PhD, but I work in a group at Google where a significant percentage of my peers do, but only know this because from time to time people mention the kind of research they did because either it is relevant to what we are doing, or comes up naturally in discussion.

I don't see any difference between what I do, and what others in my group do, we are all in it together, but took different paths to get there. Our group is more research focused (though we are Software Engineers) than many at Google, and this has given me a great opportunity to learn from those with an (even) more academic background.

TL;DR - I don't see any differences between PhDs and otherwise at Google, even in 'researchy' teams.

</comment><comment><USER11> At my previous employer, we hired on a guy who was very close to earning his PhD in CS from a midwestern university known for a prestigious engineering program. I was excited because I thought that at the very least he would be able to learn quickly and start tackling problems relatively quickly.

I was not disappointed. He was very assertive about not having his hand held wrt figuring out problems, and was proactive in learning new things. When I left to take another position, I felt comfortable that I was leaving the codebase in good hands.

</comment><comment><USER12> > there is no job in the modern tech industry that involves working alone.

Positions with aspects of management or sales typically involve actually working with people, but this can be hard to achieve for many others. The high tech field can be great for people who want to work in isolation, and fairly lonely for people who do not. I have never worked in a place that effectively implemented things like mentoring programs, for PhDs or anyone else. I am on the East Coast, I suspect that this trend is less prevalent out West. You may form bonds with people through a work environment, but the majority of your daily (and weekly, and monthly) effort is a solitary endeavor. I have heard this complaint from people working on PhD-level industrial research, to coding, to website design. Getting in with a company that recognizes and values real teamwork, assuming you are able to communicate effectively with others, will make nearly any job a much more pleasant experience.

<comment><USER10> I think this is really interesting.

What "working alone" means is complex. For example, at Hashable, I was effectively working alone, despite there being a wider notion of collaboration. More over, when other people came in to contact with parts of the code I was actively working on, instead of trying to work through those components together (not neccsarily in a pairing way, but just a more general collaboration), the standard was to make you change and not care about the consequences.

In a code base without tests this was a nightmare.

If / when I am next looking for a job, really understanding how a company collaborates is high up on my agenda of questions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> One very good point this article brings to light is the emphasis academia places on the tenure-track job as the end-all be-all of getting a Ph.D. I can't even begin to count how many times I've heard how getting a professorship is the only worthy job, and how there's no point to a Ph.D. if you don't get such a job.

It's nearly to the point of brainwashing (a sweeping generalization, of course, which likely varies greatly from department to department). As a soon- to-be Ph.D. graduate, it's refreshing to know that industry is not only a viable option, but doesn't have the same [superhuman][1] expectations.

[1]: [http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/Pap...](http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/Papers/Mythpap.html)

<comment><USER14> I'm 3 years into a PhD at a "second-tier" department (i.e. not MIT or Stanford, but still a pretty good place), and I've never felt any pressure at all to go into academia over industry. So there's one more data point for you.

Professors can make a huge "real-world contribution" via their students that go into industry. So they _should_ be proud of those students and feel that the effort of educating them was highly worthwhile.

<comment><USER13> It's good to know there are still realistic perspectives in academia. To be fair, the "anti-industry" attitude is probably adviser rather than department dependent, as I have heard a few first-hand data points regarding advisers that align much more with your experience than mine.

Given the 1/10 statistic, sooner or later professors will have to satisfy themselves with student's "real-world" contributions, whether they like it or not. I'm just worried how often I see real skill sets (e.g. proper software engineering) being devalued among graduate students because it's not directly relevant to a hypothetical future job as a professor. I feel lucky that I've been able to make extra time to write "real" code from my dissertation work, but it's rather unfortunate that this isn't always the norm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Good points, as a PhD in the industry this all aligns pretty well with my experience as well.

The only comment I have is regarding

>> Do people usually work alone, or with others?

> Again, the answer to this question does not depend on what degree you have. > The simple truth is there is no job in the modern tech industry that > involves working alone.

Agreed that this probably does not depend on what degree you have. But there is a lot of variability in terms of how many people you work with. I worked almost alone for a while, and in large teams at other times.

I suppose there is no job where you work 100% alone, with no contact at all with anyone, ever, but I doubt that was the original question.

</comment><comment><USER16> I have a PhD and I worked for several by industry research labs. So when the OP mentions " he went "oh well, if you must make me code…" That pretty much made me go "no hire." He clearly is being either dishonest or taking shortcuts, PhD's want to have a job that is interesting if it's to piss code all day I would have stopped at my Master degree. Pissing code, as much as many would like to think is not exactly challenging if you have a PhD (I'm not saying that having highly optimized, readable code isn't but having something that works is not that hard) so if the whole interview process is centered around how well you can write something in A/B/C/D language yes I understand the interviewee.

One funny thing: "Most places will actually pair you up with a mentor who is not your boss" this has to be a joke, I worked for HP-Labs and other big labs never ever had a mentor, usually if you have a issue you are pretty much welcome to discuss it with your colleague, have them review your proposed solution but boy you are on your own when it comes to do implement it.

Again the OP has no clue clue of what he is talking and it's sad because his research interests are security related: "You are much more likely to land an interesting job at the coasts. West more than East." I can prove easily that if you have a PhD in a security or somehow related (formal methods) you have more chances to land a job on the east coast: DARPA,IARPA, MITRE, DoD all these agencies are funding 80% of the security research of the country ! Easier if you are a citizen indeed, but I'm a foreigner on H1B and I still work on a DARPA funded project ... One more joke: "Most industrial positions will not care about your publications" seriously this guy is ridiculous or just unable to think outside his google circle, most labs are indeed more than interested in your publications because it means for them potential patent application, more contacts in conferences and the end goal a better reputation and more easier to build a consortium to respond to call for proposals or BAA(<http://www.arl.army.mil/www/default.cfm?page=8>). But coming from someone who has not many publication I understand, for information here is his publication list [http://www.informatik.uni- trier.de/~ley/db/indices/a-tree/h/...](http://www.informatik.uni- trier.de/~ley/db/indices/a-tree/h/Haldar:Vivek.html)

Anyway I'll stop commenting the rest of his post, his post is not all bad but it's based on his personal experience and he does a generalization out of his limited experience.

<comment><USER17> I've seen approximately zero correlation between degree status and ability to write code. The best programmer I've ever worked with has a PhD... but so have at least two of the terrible ones.

I also submit that if programming is "not exactly challenging" then you are working on the wrong products and/or at the wrong level of abstraction.

There are legitimate reasons to prefer research, or management, or marketing, or sales over development, but lack of challenge is not one of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The incentive system in academia is to produce people who cite their mentors in formal research. That's it. Because universities are non-profits, they go to the indirect incentives. This trumps any altruistic ideals. In their defense, most Phds in computer science are fully funded, so it's not transactional like an undergrad degree.

I've worked with several Phds with background in Stats and Computer Science. I found all to have "Good Background" - they knew a lot about their fields. Some were great at working with others, but some not so much. It wasn't a magical degree. Many regretted not getting the 5 years of work experience instead. Relative to the All But Dissertation crowd, they were a little better at Getting Things Done, versus just talking about things. (Very small sample size, so don't read too much into it)

<comment><USER19> I don't think your analysis of the incentives is accurate at all. If I were to oversimplify similarly, I'd say instead that modern incentives in CS academia, for non-tenured faculty at top research universities, heavily favor money, wherever it comes from (in large part because with budget cuts, professors have no choice). Grants are good, industrial partnerships are good, basically anything that brings in money is good. Citations are secondary, and used mainly as a stepping stone to bring in money. From that perspective, students going to a big company are good, especially a big company like Microsoft, IBM, or Intel that funds research. Students going into academia to write papers that cite the advisor are also good, but not as good as students who go somewhere that has money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> _Do you work 9 to 5, or do you take your work home with you? This, again, is completely independent of what degree you have. How you structure your priorities and your work to get it done within sane hours, and while maintaining some sort of "work/life balance" (I hate that term, but that is a whole other story) is entirely up to you._

This is indeed independent of degree but highly dependent of company you are working for. There are developers working 10-12 hours a day who cannot _structure their work_ because they are just expected to stay in the office for said time period.

</comment><comment><USER3> The major distinction I've found from having a PhD is that you come with built-in "social proof". If you're going for a job, you're very likely to get an interview. If you're talking to investors, you're very likely to get past the first triage. After that it's up to you of course, but that's pretty useful.

</comment><comment><USER21> The submitted article contains a key fact, "The problem with this picture is that there are 10 PhD graduates for every tenure-track position. And, while I don't have figures, the industrial labs don't hire at a much faster rate either. And that left regular industry jobs as the only viable option for the vast majority of PhDs," which actually applies to a lot of academic major subjects. For the most part, sooner or later a Ph.D. holder may have to consider working for an organization in the for-profit private sector rather than for academia, simply because the private sector is where the majority of the jobs are.

I see that the top few comments in this thread as I read the submitted article are mostly about coding tests as a hiring procedure. If the coding test is a reasonably accurate simulation of actual work on the job, it is a very good idea for a company to use a coding test in hiring. From participants in earlier discussions here on Hacker News I have learned about many useful references on the subject of company hiring procedures, which I have gathered here in a FAQ file. The review article by Frank L. Schmidt and John E. Hunter, "The Validity and Utility of Selection Models in Personnel Psychology: Practical and Theoretical Implications of 85 Years of Research Findings," Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 124, No. 2, 262-274

[http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%...](http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%20Validity%20and%20Utility%20Psychological%20Bulletin.pdf)

sums up, current to 1998, a meta-analysis of much of the HUGE peer-reviewed professional literature on the industrial and organizational psychology devoted to business hiring procedures. There are many kinds of hiring criteria, such as in-person interviews, telephone interviews, resume reviews for job experience, checks for academic credentials, personality tests, and so on. There is much published study research on how job applicants perform after they are hired in a wide variety of occupations.

[http://www.siop.org/workplace/employment%20testing/testtypes...](http://www.siop.org/workplace/employment%20testing/testtypes.aspx)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: If you are hiring for any kind of job in the United States, prefer a work-sample test as your hiring procedure. If you are hiring in most other parts of the world, use a work-sample test in combination with a general mental ability test.

The overall summary of the industrial psychology research in reliable secondary sources is that two kinds of job screening procedures work reasonably well. One is a general mental ability (GMA) test (an IQ-like test, such as the Wonderlic personnel screening test). Another is a work-sample test, where the applicant does an actual task or group of tasks like what the applicant will do on the job if hired. (But the calculated validity of each of the two best kinds of procedures, standing alone is only 0.54 for work sample tests and 0.51 for general mental ability tests.) Each of these kinds of tests has about the same validity in screening applicants for jobs, with the general mental ability test better predicting success for applicants who will be trained into a new job. Neither is perfect (both miss some good performers on the job, and select some bad performers on the job), but both are better than any other single-factor hiring procedure that has been tested in rigorous research, across a wide variety of occupations. So if you are hiring for your company, it's a good idea to think about how to build a work-sample test into all of your hiring processes.

Because of a Supreme Court decision in the United States (the decision does not apply in other countries, which have different statutes about employment), it is legally risky to give job applicants general mental ability tests such as a straight-up IQ test (as was commonplace in my parents' generation) as a routine part of hiring procedures. The Griggs v. Duke Power, 401 U.S. 424 (1971) case

[http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=8655598674229196...](http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=8655598674229196978&q=Griggs+Duke+Power&hl=en&as_sdt=2,24)

interpreted a federal statute about employment discrimination and held that a general intelligence test used in hiring that could have a "disparate impact" on applicants of some protected classes must "bear a demonstrable relationship to successful performance of the jobs for which it was used." In other words, a company that wants to use a test like the Wonderlic, or like the SAT, or like the current WAIS or Stanford-Binet IQ tests, in a hiring procedure had best conduct a specific validation study of the test related to performance on the job in question. Some companies do the validation study, and use IQ-like tests in hiring. Other companies use IQ-like tests in hiring and hope that no one sues (which is not what I would advise any company). Note that a brain- teaser-type test used in a hiring procedure could be challenged as illegal if it can be shown to have disparate impact on some job applicants. A company defending a brain-teaser test for hiring would have to defend it by showing it is supported by a validation study demonstrating that the test is related to successful performance on the job. Such validation studies can be quite expensive. (Companies outside the United States are regulated by different laws. One other big difference between the United States and other countries is the relative ease with which workers may be fired in the United States, allowing companies to correct hiring mistakes by terminating the employment of the workers they hired mistakenly. The more legal protections a worker has from being fired, the more reluctant companies will be about hiring in the first place.)

The social background to the legal environment in the United States is explained in many books about hiring procedures

[http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=SRv- GZkw6...](http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=SRv- GZkw6TEC&oi=fnd&pg=PA271&dq=Validity+and+Utility+of+Selection+Models+in+Personnel+Psychology&ots=iCXkgXrlOV&sig=ctblj9SW2Dth7TceaFSNIdVMoEw#v=onepage&q=Validity%20and%20Utility%20of%20Selection%20Models%20in%20Personnel%20Psychology&f=false)

[http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=SRv- GZkw6...](http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=SRv- GZkw6TEC&oi=fnd&pg=PA95&dq=Validity+and+Utility+of+Selection+Models+in+Personnel+Psychology&ots=iCXkgXrnMW&sig=LKLi- deKtnP20VYZo9x0jfvqzLI#v=onepage&q=Validity%20and%20Utility%20of%20Selection%20Models%20in%20Personnel%20Psychology&f=false)

Some of the social background appears to be changing in the most recent few decades, with the prospect for further changes.

<http://intl-pss.sagepub.com/content/17/10/913.full>

[http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/files/Fryer_R...](http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/files/Fryer_Racial_Inequality.pdf)

[http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=frfUB3GWl...](http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=frfUB3GWlMYC&oi=fnd&pg=PA9&dq=Validity+and+Utility+of+Selection+Models+in+Personnel+Psychology+%22predictive+validity%22+Duke+Power&ots=5O9Hx_E1vY&sig=g-zERWztBWq3h4guEuv9VVkTh8I#v=onepage&q=Validity%20and%20Utility%20of%20Selection%20Models%20in%20Personnel%20Psychology%20%22predictive%20validity%22%20Duke%20Power&f=false)

Previous discussion on HN pointed out that the Schmidt & Hunter (1998) article showed that multi-factor procedures work better than single-factor procedures, a summary of that article we can find in the current professional literature, for example "Reasons for being selective when choosing personnel selection procedures" (2010) by Cornelius J. König, Ute-Christine Klehe, Matthias Berchtold, and Martin Kleinmann:

"Choosing personnel selection procedures could be so simple: Grab your copy of Schmidt and Hunter (1998) and read their Table 1 (again). This should remind you to use a general mental ability (GMA) test in combination with an integrity test, a structured interview, a work sample test, and/or a conscientiousness measure."

[http://geb.uni- giessen.de/geb/volltexte/2012/8532/pdf/prepri...](http://geb.uni- giessen.de/geb/volltexte/2012/8532/pdf/preprint_j.1468_2389.2010.00485.x.pdf)

But the 2010 article notes, looking at actual practice of companies around the world, "However, this idea does not seem to capture what is actually happening in organizations, as practitioners worldwide often use procedures with low predictive validity and regularly ignore procedures that are more valid (e.g., Di Milia, 2004; Lievens & De Paepe, 2004; Ryan, McFarland, Baron, & Page, 1999; Scholarios & Lockyer, 1999; Schuler, Hell, Trapmann, Schaar, & Boramir, 2007; Taylor, Keelty, & McDonnell, 2002). For example, the highly valid work sample tests are hardly used in the US, and the potentially rather useless procedure of graphology (Dean, 1992; Neter & Ben-Shakhar, 1989) is applied somewhere between occasionally and often in France (Ryan et al., 1999). In Germany, the use of GMA tests is reported to be low and to be decreasing (i.e., only 30% of the companies surveyed by Schuler et al., 2007, now use them)."

Integrity tests have limited validity standing alone, but appear to have significant incremental validity when added to a general mental ability test or work-sample test.

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

[http://apps.opm.gov/ADT/Content.aspx?page=3-06&JScript=1](http://apps.opm.gov/ADT/Content.aspx?page=3-06&JScript=1)

<http://www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk2/1990/9042/9042.PDF>

[http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/chr/pubs/reports...](http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/chr/pubs/reports/abstract-14602.html)

Bottom line: if you are someone with a Ph.D. degree in an academic subject, congratulations. If you seek a job outside academia with good management that understands research, be prepared to do a work sample test to get the job. Companies that hire on the basis of resume biographical qualifications (what degree you have) do demonstrably worse in hiring than companies that make sure that all job applicants can do the actual work of the job. Wouldn't you rather work somewhere where the company focus is on hiring the capable, rather than on hiring the possessors of school credentials?

<comment><USER22> _The submitted article contains a key fact, "The problem with this picture is that there are 10 PhD graduates for every tenure-track position. And, while I don't have figures, the industrial labs don't hire at a much faster rate either. And that left regular industry jobs as the only viable option for the vast majority of PhDs," which actually applies to a lot of academic major subjects._

The humanities are worse: [http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/what-you- should-kno...](http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/what-you-should-know- before-you-start-grad-school-in-english-literature-the-economic-financial-and- opportunity-costs/) .

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Here in Ukraine people write their PhD thesis and work in IT industry because scientist salary is extra low (300$) and average salary in industry is about 1500$+

I found the same situation with PhD status as this article highlights. Degree means nothing here. Really nothing. The only thing which matters are results of your work. PhD should be better in analysis, problem solving etc.

</comment><comment><USER24> One thing to add: when we interview PhD's we make sure they want to be in industry. There is nothing more off putting when you talk to someone and it becomes immediately clear they much rather would've been in academia but they were not the right person at the right time.

</comment><comment><USER25> I think in Europe (at least in Austria) a PhD is a pretty huge factor for a job in industry. In my opinion this is a bad thing, but academic degrees are very important here. This does not especially consider the computer science industry, but it happens there as well. There are some positions that are always taken by academics, for the sake of publicity and reputation. No matter what they can do, the only important thing is the PR-effect of a academic degree.

<comment> barry-cotter Nowhere on Earth has a higher opinion of academic degrees and higher education than the German speaking world. And if anyplace equals it I don't know where it is.

<comment><USER26> Even within the German speaking world, Austria has a reputation of being obsessed with titles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> XKCD's perspective: <http://xkcd.com/664/></comment>


10 Modern Software Over-Engineering Mistakes - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@rdsubhas/10-modern-software-engineering-mistakes-bc67fbef4fc8#.h9j6eosbq <comment><USER2> I have really made this transition in the last few years:

> Either you completely dumb down your data layer (and struggle with > delivering functionality), or acknowledge the database as part of your > solution (e.g. postgres geo/json features) and throw away configurability > guilt. Your stack is as much part of your solution as your code.

Once I have embraced the database as pet of the solution, I can actually start to use its features as part of the solution as well.</comment>


Numba - A NumPy aware (LLVM-based) optimizing compiler for Python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ContinuumIO/numba

<comment><USER2> These are the guys who left Enthought (<http://www.enthought.com/>) to start Continuum Analytics:

[http://technicaldiscovery.blogspot.com/2012/01/transition- to...](http://technicaldiscovery.blogspot.com/2012/01/transition-to- continuum.html)

<http://continuum.io/>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> An email thread started by the author gives some more information on targets and characteristics: <https://groups.google.com/group/numpy/t/ad48cbce6002da9e>

<comment><USER3> Note that the author says: "It is proof of concept stage only at this point (use it only if you are interested in helping develop the code at this point)."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I noticed the very first lightning talk here seems to be on Numba and gives a good general overview: [http://pyvideo.org/video/654/saturday-morning- lightning-talk...](http://pyvideo.org/video/654/saturday-morning-lightning- talks)

</comment><comment><USER5> Kudos for forking and working on an alternative version of llvm-py.

</comment><comment><USER6> Any relation to continuum.com ?</comment>


The Farewell Address - <AUTHOR> https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/research/online-documents/farewell-address <comment><USER2> Some previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10045261](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10045261)</comment>


Firefox to go with native UI on Android - <AUTHOR> http://mozillalinks.org/2011/10/firefox-to-go-with-native-ui-on-android/

<comment><USER2> The original announcement - [http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.platforms.mobile/...](http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.platforms.mobile/browse_thread/thread/ff8d89bfa28383bb?pli=1)</comment>