On Apple. - <AUTHOR> http://mustapha.svbtle.com/apple

<comment><USER2> Based-upon-nothing trolling nonsense, by yet another Grand Vision pontificator. Nothing to see here.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's fair.</comment></comment>


Moment baby girl's new hearing aids are turned on - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-50690345/moment-baby-daughter-s-new-hearing-aids-are-turned-on <comment><USER2> While a vast improvement, hearing aids are only crutches. They improve verbal communication ability from impossible/hard to possible but still tiring (depends on type of hearing loss, of course). With digital aids there was marked improvement but there is only so much "bandwidth" available in the damaged ear.

So, sorry for preaching, any time if you are near person with hearing aids, please take into account that (s)he is only hearing with crutches.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Not _intellectually_ gratifying, but something about the value of a good news story, and the intersection of technology that genuinely produces new value,</comment>


Ask HN: How to teach programming in primary and secondary school? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN! I've just started a job as a project manager for a school in Sweden, with children ages 6-15. I am going to help them develop the use of programming, makerspace and other forms of digital creation in education. My own background is in engineering, but I have no experience in teaching/pedagogics. The school has already purchased a lot of equipment, from bluebots to arduinos and a 3d printer. The project is still in its infancy, so we still don't have any clear plan yet. My hope is that, during the year I will work with this, that we can find some kind of framework that will enable the staff and students to work with programming and related subjects and on their own gradually develop the work.
I have some questions that I would love to get your input on: 1. What are good ways to introduce children and teens to programming? What are the different "pedagogical pathways"?
2. How can we adress that all students will learn at different speeds, with varying levels of interest and require different levels of difficulty to keep them challenged? Now that I think about, I guess this is a general challenge in all fields. 3. Is there a map of different concepts that are basic to learning programming, like logical operations and control flow? Is there any kind of knowledge base available of exercises for these different concepts? 4. Any good tips of good learning tools/platforms? Like bluebot, quirkbot and rpi or pure software tools like lightbot? 5. Are there any reasonable limitations for what should be focused on? I am thinking that there are so many different concepts and tools to introduce and work with and that it may be that we try to do too many things at once. 6. Do you know of any specialized and active forums/communities for programming in education? Also any research communities? Are there any good papers for getting up to speed with the research in the field?
This is my first post, please feedback if I've missed anything. Thank you for your help! <comment><USER3> Hi Torbi! I know some teachers, schools and "programming clubs for kids" in Finland that have done exactly the same thing for many years now. Most of the material I know is, unfortunately, in Finnish but I think I could translate some of it if needed. Being at work now, I can't quite write you answers now, but I try to remember to answer you later! Meantime you can send me mail kma4554 gmail.com, I'm very glad to help, especially with 1, 2, 4, and 5.

</comment><comment><USER4> The PLT Group has studied programming pedagogy for several decades, that would be the *pointer I'd follow first for academic journal type material on programming pedagogy.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'll be as honest as possible with you - teach them BASIC, despite what Dijkstra said and despite what the high priests of computing may say about what Dijkstra has said.

The reasons why -

Children need to see the results of their work instantly, and by results I mean that they can ship their code in an executable format that another kid can click on and run without having to load runtimes or libraries. A lot of BASIC dialects are compilers, like FreeBASIC and QB64.

A child who has learnt BASIC can quickly make games with actual sprites without having to look for the right library and the documentation that goes along with those libraries. A lot of people will tell you that Python comes "with batteries included" but you'll find that you always need something else to actually ship an executable that does everything you want - with python you'll need to learn how to use pygame with it and good luck for shipping an executable - with most versions of BASIC the documentation is complete and accessible and to compile code you just press F5 or F9, depending on the compiler or interpreter. With python it's good luck again to make something run really fast - that genetic algorithm you felt crazy enough to write? The high priests will tell you "Oh you'll have to use CPython for that speed boost". Maybe you're just making a cool plasma effect or fire effect, well good luck again in python - in FreeBASIC when you use the PSET function it runs well enough, using pointers it's really fast.

About that compiler or interpreter thing. Some BASIC dialects compile code to machine code, others turn your code into an intermediate language and run that. Most good dialects will allow you to ship executables.

There's a BASIC for every platform out there and the dialects by the different vendors out there are similar enough that you will be able to port code easily. FreeBASIC and QB64 for Linux, Mac, DOS/FreeDOS and Windows - <USER2> for Linux (which also runs on the Raspbery Pi). BlitzPlus, Blitz3D and BlitzMAX for windows (are now free), RFOBASIC and RCBASIC for Android, Great Cow BASIC for PIC and AVR micro controllers (here's a tutorial for arduino boards [https://sourceforge.net/p/gcbasic/discussion/629990/thread/5...](https://sourceforge.net/p/gcbasic/discussion/629990/thread/583d9bcc/))

Modern BASIC is not what Dijkstra was familiar with in the 1960's. Modern BASIC doesn't need line numbers. Modern BASIC does not look like spaghetti code - you can use structured programming concepts and even object orientation to organize your code. And the best part is that you can be done teaching the basics of BASIC in two weeks max and the kids will be able to learn the rest by themselves and ship code immediately after that - whether they want to sell their work or share freely.

As for documentation and tutorials the forums for these dialects of BASIC are very active and you can easily convert code form one dialect to another, so you will always find new and interesting material to teach.

Some useful sites are:

petesqbsite.com

freebasic.net

[http://forum.retrogamecoding.org/](http://forum.retrogamecoding.org/)

[http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/_index_.php](http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/_index_.php)

[http://games.freebasic.net/](http://games.freebasic.net/)

[https://sourceforge.net/p/gcbasic/discussion/](https://sourceforge.net/p/gcbasic/discussion/)

[http://gambas.8142.n7.nabble.com/](http://gambas.8142.n7.nabble.com/)

[http://www.schoolfreeware.com/QBasic_Tutorials_- _QB64_Tutori...](http://www.schoolfreeware.com/QBasic_Tutorials_- _QB64_Tutorials_-_Programming_And_Code_Examples.html)

[http://www.bettiesart.com/tc/blitz/](http://www.bettiesart.com/tc/blitz/)

For 3D games programming using Blitz 3D- [http://jnoodle.com/Blitz3D/](http://jnoodle.com/Blitz3D/)

Demoscene and graphics coding forums [http://www.dbfinteractive.com/](http://www.dbfinteractive.com/)

Of course, since BASIC has been popular since the 80's microcomputer boom you can always find lots of old magazines to adapt old programs and games from on Archive.org - MSX BASIC, Acorn/BBC BASIC or Amstrad BASIC magazine code listings should be the most readable.

<comment><USER6> Don't be silly, use Smalltalk !

<comment><USER5> I guess you didn't really read anything of what I wrote, just saw BASIC and went in high priest mode.

How do you even ship an executable with smalltalk? With a 30 megabyte (minimum) virtual machine and the whole interpreter? Now that's silly.

<comment><USER4> If I download a 30MB file it will take 8 seconds. If I put it on my thumbdrive, the drive will have 99.9% free space.

30MB is a webpage these days. Not saying it is good. Just saying it is.

<comment><USER5> You'd be wasting a lot of lifetimes if every kid learning a programming language wasted your minimum of 8 seconds to download a runtime to run something as simple as hello world.

A lot of people in developing countries don't have your luxury of bandwidth either. And besides, how many games on Steam are written in smalltalk? How much software running on Linux? So little in the best case scenario that nobody cares

<comment><USER4> I agree a no bandwidth premise challenges a many assumptions -- I actually started with the thumb drive bit (even available in Sweden from whence the question comes) -- particularly assumptions about content delivery.

Anyway, I'm not advocating Smalltalk even if I think it's a good idea to seriously consider old technologies. My thoughts were more along the lines of '30MB' as of the same logical form as that time I thought, '180 KiloBytes! Why would I ever need two floppy drives?'

<comment><USER5> What the hell am I doing arguing with a high priest? You guys need more than thinking out of the box, you need to think out of the Valley. High priests are the reason why software is bloated and sucks nowadays.

<comment><USER4> If by 'valley' you mean the Chattahoochee valley -- which ain't much of a valley but Valley, Alabama is named after it -- then I'll cop a plea since Valley ain't that far away.

Old habits die hard and a few years ago, my BASIC background showed its head. I was writing a kludgomatic and the example code for the key library call needed to make it work allocated an array[10000] and I was like, that will use up all the memory and be slow. It didn't and it wasn't because of Moore's Law type effects.

Last year I was fooling around with RPi's and I bought a box of ten 16GB microSD's for about $50. That's 160GB of solid state storage for about what I paid for my first box of 3.5" DD DS disks.

Worrying about software bloat is a nice problem to have. It means one has options...and compute and leisure and is willing to give up YouTube and NetFlix</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: All-in-one backend solution for your apps. Feedback? - <AUTHOR> Hi there HN,
I'm working on building an all-in-one backend platform for developers, startups, and agencies called Modelier (https://modelier.io). Our goal is to streamline and automate API development
I love to use Node, Mongo, Express, and Mongoose to build out simple APIs for my clients or for prototyping new projects at work. Right now the initial dev process for that looks something like:
1. create Node project directories/files (many dirs/files)
2. define my Mongoose schemas and initalize models
3. sign up for a hosted Mongo instance somewhere (or deploy my own) and hook up Node app
4. write initial Express endpoints for basic CRUD operations against Mongoose models
5. deploy Node app (either manually or with a tool)
There are a lot of scaffolding tools (create-react-app, Yeoman, etc) solving #1, and there are companies solving #5 (Zeit Now, etc), but no solution yet that solves the complete process out-of-the-box.
With Modelier, this process becomes:
1. define API schema w/ spec file (1 file)
2. run Modelier against spec file, which
- spins up hosted MongoDB instance - auto-generates Node app source, complete w/ basic Express CRUD enpoints, automated tests, ESDoc API documentation, etc
- deploys hosted Node app
We released a (very) basic version of the scaffolding tool if you'd like to try it out (nothing gets deployed, requires existing MongoDB instance): https://www.npmjs.com/package/modelier-cli
Eventually users will be able to customize the backend stack as well as datastore of their choice - SQL via Sequelize is up next on the list.
I am looking for feedback on:
- our basic landing page and delivery at https://modelier.io
- if you will use Modelier, and why or why not?
- if not, what would really want to make you use Modelier?
- what are your biggest concerns regarding execution of this product?
Thanks for your time and consideration! Looking forward to hearing what you have to say. <comment><USER2> Node and especially MongoDB make it a non-starter for me. I work with about 20 small businesses and agencies, they want something simple to setup and deploy and move around, like WordPress (and even that is too complicated for a lot of them). Smaller companies usually don't have IT expertise in-house (unless they are funded startups, and then their expertise is a 20 year old with Linux on their laptop). They and their agencies outsource back-end work, but with their budgets and constraints they can't invest in or take risks with complicated setups and technology that appeals only to programmers.

I know no one wants to hear it, especially on Hacker News, but PHP + MySQL rule in the small business/agency space, and for good reason: easy to deploy, easy to find add-ons and libraries, easy to manage, well-understood, low risk, lots of people who understand the tools.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback!

The plan is to implement additional stacks you can deploy with Modelier. Node/Mongo is our first one, but we're aiming to support PHP, Go, C#/.NET, Python/Django and more, along with support for SQL and other database solutions. Ideally, you'll be able to select which target stack you'd like to use for deployment based on your project needs. External API integrations are part of our future plans, and stack support will be a big piece of that.

<comment><USER2> You'll have to explain how you can make it easier than spinning up a PHP + MySql or Wordpress instance on Digital Ocean for $10/mo. Or a ready to go Rails or node.js image. Maybe you're targeting a different market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hey Asidiali

The landing page looks nice, but I would introduce more "Features" and explain better what problem your product solves.

Maybe introduce a "How it works" like the one you write here, with bullet points "1...,2...,3...". Also if you can get some testimonials, it usually increase the conversions.

Nice work!

Also I'm running a feedback platform in order to get more feedback for websites, products, etc. as well as expert review. Maybe you are interested! We have free plans too. Check here: [https://roastme.xyz](https://roastme.xyz)</comment>


Indian government blocks Typepad, Mobango and Clickatell - <AUTHOR> http://www.medianama.com/2011/03/223-indian-government-blocks-typepad-mobango-clickatell/

<comment><USER2> It opens in my office (Bangalore, India).

<comment><AUTHOR> According to the article, ISPs all over the country are rolling out a block sporadically. Around an hour ago, they weren't opening for me (Airtel, Noida, India). Now typepad is.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best Idea you never followed through on? - <AUTHOR>

Over the years i have had a lot of ideas, as i'm sure many of you have.  So, i pose this question to all of you.
What is the best idea you had that you never followed through on that is now hugely successful?
For me, the year was 1999 and i had an lighting bolt of an idea.  I should put all my music on my computer and share it with all my friends.  Remember Napster, that's where my idea could have gone.  I cant say i'm bitter, because idea's come an go. <comment><USER4> I wrote a system that was basically Terracotta, (automagic distributing of java programs across a network) before Terracotta it existed.

Basically, I had a bet with a friend that it was impossible to at runtime distribute across multiple machines a program that was designed to run on a single machine.

At the time, I was living at home and not working, so I spent a ton of time reading up on the java classloader, how to instrument classes at runtime, dynamically rewriting calls to the "thread" class and mashalling them over the wire to another vm that was running, and executing it on their.

I didn't get very far, because after thinking about if it could become a product, I realized just how many performance issues there were going to be. Years later when I ran into the terracotta engineers and they were telling me the route they went, I was nodding my head realizing they were running into the same issues I did, and still struggling to overcome some of them.

They have quite a nice product now, but they didn't exactly blow up so I don't have too many regrets about not productizing it.

All in all, I learned a lot about java, virtual machines, threading, and how to teach myself new skills.

</comment><comment><USER5> London, 1993: 56k dial-up isn't cutting it any more, and ADSL is hideously expensive. It occurs to me that cable TV is getting more popular, and that this would provide more than enough bandwidth for most people. An evening of technical research seems to support the idea. I call the business development people at the cable company the following day, but am unable to persuade them that spending money on 'an inter net' might be more profitable than catering to the existing demand for sport, porn and light entertainment.

I was right from a technical standpoint...but they were also right from a content standpoint, though it took me a lot longer to appreciate that.

<comment><USER6> What part of London had ADSL in 1993 considering the ADSL spec was ratified in 1998 ;)

<comment><USER5> Duh! Good catch. Maybe it was just DSL, minus the A? I've gotten so used to the current acronym I didn't think about that. More like it was...I...I...godammit. (...wiki...) ISDN! DSL existed back then but I think ISDN was the only affordable consumer alternative to dialup in the UK at the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There can only be one 'first', and if yours isn't it than that's just too bad. The 'I thought of that first' meme is one of the most common and most easily dispatched things that almost all entrepreneurial types have experienced at least several times in their lives.

The easiest way to think of it is to realise that for every idea that 'made it' not just one but probably more likely several 10s and possibly 100s of people had that idea too and they didn't follow up on it either. Chances that you're the first are very small.

Your idea couldn't have gone anywhere, at least, not by itself. You need to get a lot more factors just right in order to create something that really takes off.

The more interesting question to me is what ideas do you have that you are not following through on _right now_ , that you can make a similar post about 10 years from now?

And, what are you going to do about it?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that you have to learn from the past? I will never again not follow through on an idea i think has legs. In the end you have to trust yourself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. When I was around 12 years old, I had an idea of peanut butter slices, like individually wrapped cheese slices.

A couple years ago, I read about: <http://www.pbslices.com/history/index.html>

</comment><comment><USER9> For me it was a Facebook style photo sharing system (2001 - before Friendster and years before Myspace or Facebook). I worked on it full time and turned the code into a CMS to make ends meet.

Though, there are lots of "waves" of technology/change in the market. When they line up you get great opportunities. Napster hit when computers were fast enough to decode mp3 files and people had broadband at home. The key is seeing them with enough lead time and fortitude to paddle and be in the right spot when they hit.

Personally, I want to know what new waves will line up in 3 years.

<comment><USER10> Actually, I think Napster hit when college students had PCs (and ethernet) in their dorms. Kazaa hit when broadband started to get popular. Good point, though.

<comment><USER9> That's great. You've changed the way I think about that.

Napster was peeking in 2001 and I was incredibly inspired by the platform. As a photo geek with broadband (for 3-4 years by then) I figured it was a perfect fit...until I realized that my target market (grandparents, parents, siblings) mostly had dial-up. It really caught me off guard.

I'll start looking for waves that hit specific groups with certain attitudes/goals. For example, the "selfish elites with ipads" rather than just "ipad owners".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have an idea for neural networks that is different from everything else out there. I've been thinking about it for years.

Finally going to start on it in September. Expect the rise of robot legions next January.

<comment><USER12> That's great. Anything you can share?

<comment><USER13> Apparently nothing that will result in time traveling humans coming back to kill him before he can create sentient robots.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> alok-g Am in full agreement with jacquesm.

Here's my partial list:

Application virtualization, <2000\. Submitted invention disclosure in 2003 or so, when prior art search revealed someone had a patent issued a year earlier (so they must have been filed several years before that).

Physics hardware acceleration, 2000, while working on a virtual reality game. Learned about PhysX in about 2006 or so.

RISC and VLIW processor architectures, 1996, junior year undergrad, while not being aware of their prior existence.

Following two were while I was working on Sinclair Spectrum+ at 12-15 years of age, and largely unaware of what already existed at that time:

3D computer graphics/animation, 1990, 13 years of age, after learning coordinate geometry two years ahead of peer students. Tried to come up with a simple mathematical function f(x, y) that that would resemble a human face, with no success. Prototype created frames offline using interpreted BASIC and cycled them on the screen using hand-written machine code.

Compilers, while using slow interpreted BASIC on Sinclair Spectrum, 1992, 15 years of age, when I first learned how to program in machine code manually. My prototype would only convert text code in reverse-polish notation (RPN) to RPN instructions available on the processor (so more like assembler really).

Envisaged zero static power logic with complementary relays (like CMOS), at high school, while not knowing anything about CMOS then.

Lesson learnt: (See jacquesm's comment).

</comment><comment><USER14> Many years ago I had an idea for "emergency help with computers" but didn't do anything with it. A couple years later all of Moscow metro was suddenly covered with leaflets advertising "emergency help with computers".

Once I had an idea about adding georeferencing data to regular photos of landscapes - not just top-down images - to overlay them on the 3D terrain. Later this capability appeared in Google Earth for user photos and it looks great.

</comment><comment><USER15> A couple years before Amazon's Mechanical Turk came out I started thinking about web services (SOAP at the time) with human beings at the end point. To do the things for our software systems that only humans could do.

I had a few long brain storming sessions with friends about it, but other than that I did nothing. Now it's my favorite story to tell people when they ask me if they should execute on their pet idea.

</comment><comment><USER16> The biggest is probably an eBay for services and rentals. Basically non-goods.

This includes renting your neighbours lawnmower or drill, through to renting a holiday apartment, or a floor for a night and was envisioned to be heavily integrated into a calendaring and scheduling solution.

I pretty much went into detail of scenarios like the floor space swapping (AirBNB now is very close to what I had described), went into detail on renting apartments around events (think along the line of apartments in London during the Olympics). I also researched and thought about how this same system could be used by small businesses, for example how you could bid for a slot with a famous hairdresser and the auction market would set the rate... so a skilled person in great demand would earn more than normal rates.

</comment><comment><USER17> I had the exact same idea a few months before Napster became really popular. Instead of a separate client/server, my idea was to use IRC (and a specialized fileserver) for sharing mp3s.

One night while I was working on this project (I got it to a functional level), I turned on the TV and saw a special report on the old TechTV talking about Napster. I gave up on it a week later.

Even if I pursued the idea, I don't know if I would have gotten very far. I had no money for servers/bandwidth and no way to get venture capital. Not to mention that most of the filesharing clients that were around during that time were sued out of existence.

</comment><comment><USER18> In 2001, I had the idea of creating a bookmarking system for saving all my big list of researched url's and named(now called as tags) as personal and official links for my personal use. Few years later I heard of something called Delicious.

</comment><comment><USER19> I came up with what was essentially Jaiku a number of years before it launched (which is funny cos Jyri is a friend now).

I built specs and wireframes and was beginning to plan out the backend but then lost interest after a number of investor-friends couldn't see the market for it.

To be honest, I'm not sure there is a market for it but that also proves that startups don't always need a market on their own to be successful and exit.

</comment><comment><USER20> Definitely a mix between Rhapsody and last.fm - I told everybody that I was going to do this: mp3s in the cloud with sharing capabilities. Now everybody asks me "What happened to that idea, did you hear about last.fm etc.?" - <USER2> bitter, but it would have been a big project + you would need good connections to the music industry to pull that off without getting sued, so no regrets :)

</comment><comment><USER21> The biggest one missed: A way to connect to friends similar to Facebook, Friendster. (there are still somethings in there that I believe can be improved which I won't mention)

What I didn't see: the "Status" which Facebook implemented. The apis which opened up games like Farmville (though I don't play it). This would probably have killed my idea off though

</comment><comment><USER22> I distinctly remember having a _very_ similar idea for Twitter after seeing how much people used their AIM away messages as statuses a couple of years before Twitter launched. Of course, I'm sure tons of others did also - <USER3> wasn't really a lot of magic in the idea, good (enough) execution and network effects is what made Twitter successful.

</comment><comment><USER23> It was during the mid-80's and I was 12. I loved playing computer games. Activision had 2 that I loved - Little Computer People and AlterEgo. I remember wanting so much to have these games combined that I wrote the company to suggest that they do this. I never sent the letter. 15 years later, Sims comes out.

</comment><comment><USER24> in 1998, at age 18, I made my high school's yearbook on CD (with Macromedia Director), along with two friends. I told them the format seemed stale, and that the future of yearbooks was on the internet, where you could keep in touch with your classmates and upload photos of your current life.

Even though we were computer geeks we had almost zero execution capabilities at the time, so I'm not kicking myself on the head.

<comment><USER25> ... even if you were to make Facebook in 1998, it might not have gotten critical mass due to it being simply 'too early' (and also not getting seeded in a college campus environment) ... iirc, Friendster and others were started in the late '90's bubble but all fizzled out

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> this should really be a two part question: which ideas did you have which you saw someone else come out w/later?

and/or which ideas do you wish you had followed through on, that you still haven't seen someone do. (like i dunno, cold fusion).

I had written a business plan for a site to connect students to each other and let them share pictures. wrote this in 2000. yeah so much for that one.

<comment><AUTHOR> To me the question is about not going for it and then later realizing that it could have been huge. Basically regret. The good news is that you can learn from the past and follow through on as many things as possible, at least until that gaping void inside you is filled is dollar bills.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Wanted to buy Google when they went public. Did not have enough money. Argh.

</comment><comment><USER28> didn't buy divx.com when i looked it up and it was still free.

<comment><USER29> and i didn't buy mcdonalds.com and a zillion other domains when they were available. as a starving college student, $50/yr (my memory of the cost) seemed insanely expensive at the time.

<comment><USER28> hehe, yeah i was in the same situation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> All of them, so far.</comment>


Why I Tweetstorm Instead of Blog - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@sarahmei/why-i-tweetstorm-instead-of-blog-dd77621596d9 <comment><USER2> I used to do this, and sometimes still do, but I've started to play with Mastodon. With a colleague I've created our own instance, and we're starting to get our community to realise it's there. Still cross-posting to Twitter, but now just _so_ disappointed that Twitter has broken almost exactly the best thing I used.

I'm also experimenting with other conversation systems, ones that encourage the "tweet storm" idea, and then let people create branching discussions. Here's an example of the sort of thing I'm looking at:

[http://www.solipsys.co.uk/Chitter/BadMathsNotation.html](http://www.solipsys.co.uk/Chitter/BadMathsNotation.html)

Or this:

[http://www.solipsys.co.uk/Chitter/CollectiveNoteTaking.png](http://www.solipsys.co.uk/Chitter/CollectiveNoteTaking.png)

These are extracted from (old format) Twitter, but I'm experimenting with this being the actual interface.</comment>


Xi: China Must Never Adopt Separation of Powers or Judicial Independence - <AUTHOR> https://thediplomat.com/2019/02/xi-china-must-never-adopt-constitutionalism-separation-of-powers-or-judicial-independence/ <comment><USER2> Without them China is never becoming a business center that attracts more money than absolutely necessary to manufacture or sell goods.

There exists recurring news articles about Chinese yuan trying to break US dollar hegemony etc. Or Russians, Iranians, Saudis etc. doing the same. These things never happen in the scale that matters because you need judicial independence and well developed business law to attract business and money.

Chinese businessmen are moving as much of their assets outside China because they know that their assets are theirs only conditionally.

Hong Kong and Singapore and the financial centers of Asia because they kept British common law. As long as Hong Kong law is separate and independent, Chinese can benefit from it.

<comment><USER3> Well they won't after 2047</comment></comment>


The drug revolution that no one can stop - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/matter/19f753fb15e0/#

<comment><USER2> For anybody taking the designer drugs discussed at the beginning of the article, the two Canberra boys could have been safer by making available to the doctors what they had taken. Just like we are supposed to put an ICE number in our phones, is there some way anybody who takes a drug can keep something on them in the case of an emergency?

They were lucky (in theory) that the doctor had seen this drug before. Any user should be giving emergency personnel as much information as they can in order to do their job effectively.

</comment><comment><USER3> Are Portugal and the Netherlands having these problems? No? Oh, looks like having sane drug policies prevents a culture where people stuff unknown potentially dangerous substances into themselves then, doesn't it?</comment>


The Mac App Store's future of irrelevance - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/2012/07/26/mac-app-store-future <comment><USER2> I'm pulling my video editor Shave (<http://shavevideo.com>) out of the Mac App Store for these reasons, though most specifically the lack of paid upgrades. For a $10 video editor that, quite frankly, beats the pants off a lot of crap out there for day to day editing tasks, I can't afford to devote the time and resources it requires to maintain it without it having a baseline level of income. Not having an upgrade path to a major version number bump is ridiculous.

Also, the lack of direct contact with customers is obnoxious at best, crippling at worst. But the sandboxing entitlements kill the best bits of functionality, so I have not much choice but to say "fuck it" and move on.

I doubt Apple will miss me, though I'm the only other worthwhile editor on there other than iMovie and Final Cut in terms of actual editing functionality. The video category is a giant pile of shit save a few select pieces, mine included.

<comment><USER3> Have you tried purchasing the "latest" version of World of Warcraft?

You can't. There is no standalone "latest version". You have to purchase the original, and each version since, and finally the current version.

Correlate those game content / game mechanics updates with In-App Purchases, and it's clear how someone could offer "major upgrades" if they stop thinking in terms of version numbers and start thinking in terms of actual upgrade features. (See "Navigon" for an app that has done this.)

And if the entire app architecture changes, make a new app.

<comment><USER4> Developers could very well re-architect their application so that when you download the update to v2, you have to unlock the new features with an in-app purchase, but to be honest, it's a lot of extra work for the developer, and there is no way to make it less painful for the users, who will feel like they are getting nickel and dimed by the developer.

Also, for those users that are brand new on the v2 version, it's a very bad experience when they have to immediately buy an in-app purchase just to unlock functionality that should be included. If you drop the price of the v2 version to accomodate this, then your original v1 userbase will complain that they paid twice as much.

Here's an example:

v1.0 of App X sells for $9.99 on the app store. Users buy it and are happy.

v2.0 of App X comes out and to unlock the new features, you must pay $4.99 in- app purchase. Developer drops the price of the app to $4.99 so that new users don't have to pay $14.99 to get all the features.

New users now complain that they have to immediately make an in-app purchase just to unlock the software - they don't notice that it's half price now because they never bought it previously.

Existing users complain that they paid $9.99 and are now being nickel and dimed for updates, when the price is cut in half now.

You can't win. Unfortunately, Apple has create a model that makes a lot of profit for them, and makes it relatively painless for the end user, but it's a model where the developers suffer and can't really support the large applications that receive many new features every year.

<comment><USER5> The idea to have new features exist as unlockable extras actually is an advantage to users: if they don't need it, they still get updates for the feature set they bought.

So all that's missing is a way to give customers of "date X or later" unlockable features as part of the baseline sale.

<comment><USER6> Except the developer takes a hit there, too. Given that not everyone needs every feature, users end up subsidizing each other's desired improvements as part of a major upgrade. On top of that, not all features have clear lines that can be drawn around them, technically or marketing-wise.

It's a great model for games and certain specific types of apps (Paper is very clever). But to push all apps onto this model is highly unrealistic.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure if the developer necessarily takes a hit. Say I have $15 to spend on a video editing app. $10 for the initial app and $5 for the only premium feature I want results in me giving $15 to the developer (less Apple's cut etc). However if the developer adds 5 new features to the app and I have to choose between buying features that I mostly don't want and can't afford or not spending the money I'll most likey give $0 to the developer.

Similar situation with luxury features on cars: it makes business sense to sell them individually.

<comment><USER6> If you wanted/needed the feature badly enough (ie, it was a mission-critical tool), you might pay much more for an update that included your desired feature in addition to stuff you don't need (or even stuff you might not yet know that you want). Also, the extra "wasted" revenue helps pay the developer for the thankless but necessary task of under-the-hood improvements, whose costs have to absorbed elsewhere.

I'm not saying the model can never work, but it's not a good fit for every product. The developer should be able to create the relationship with their customers that they think fits best; sometimes that will be IAP, sometimes subscriptions, sometimes upgrades. There will never be "one business model to rule them all", or else we'd see all marketplaces naturally converge in that direction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The iOS App Store does the same thing with changing the rules in the middle of the game, but it is not subject to potential irrelevance because it is the only place to get software for iOS devices. So the obvious solution for Apple is to make the Mac App Store the only place to get software for MacOS.

I'm actually a little surprised this didn't happen in 10.8.

<comment><USER9> That will be the day I go back to Linux.

<comment><USER10> I thought the same thing as I was reading John Siracusa's review of Mountain Lion. My stomach sunk when I saw the default 'gatekeeper' options.

        [ ] Mac App Store
        [x] Mac App store and identified developers
        [ ] Anywhere

Seems likely at some point down the road the third option will no longer exist. My next project is getting Linux to run on an old MBP. I still love their hardware, but OSX is getting fuckin' uppity. I realize that this is just an attribute on a binary that you can set and unset, but still, the direction this is going seems clear to me. The further iOSification of OSX is driving me back to Linux on the desktop.

<comment><USER11> what's wrong with "identified developers" only? You don't want to pay the $100 a year to be in the mac dev program?

<comment><USER10> What's wrong with Apple trying to control which binaries it will and won't let you run on its OS? Doesn't Apple always have your best interests at heart?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As a Mac developer who's also affected by the mandatory sandboxing requirement, I fully agree. One of our applications, Trickster, doesn't work sandboxed (being a system utility) as is and we're in this situation where we have customers on the Mac App Store who can't receive updates anymore. Needless to say, neither us nor our customers (who'll mostly blame us) are happy about this.

<comment><USER13> Consider inspecting the MAS receipt and issuing them a license in your own scheme if you are leaving. At least then you get to keep your customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The accounting software I develop [1] is a year out of date on the Mac App Store because of the restrictions that Apple have introduced.

And yet I disagree with Marco: This is a one-time problem as Apple tighten requirements for publishing on the Mac App Store. In a few years users will have forgotten this problem (if they ever noticed in the first place) and the benefits of the Mac App Store will make it the dominant distribution platform. Those benefits are: easy to make a purchase, easy to see reviews for a product, easy to find a product, easy to install on multiple machines.

Eventually I'll have to change the software to meet Apple's stricter requirements so it can be published on the Mac App Store again.

[1] <http://www.solaraccounts.co.uk>

</comment><comment><USER15> Really think he's missing the part where laypeople will see the Mac App Store as their main portal for software. Sure us geeks will always know what the best option is, but what about from a common majority consumer's perspective?

<comment><USER16> They'll find out about software the same way that the "majority consumer" used to; reading magazines like Macworld, seeing advertisements in various places, and talking to friends. If anything, the App Store is the one trying to break into the old model of buying software (find something, pay for it, buy it).

In fact, the two conveniences offered by the App Store (visible to users) is ease of finding stuff and security. Security isn't much of an issue with the old model because, historically, there hasn't been many security concerns. If the "finding stuff" benefit goes away too, then the App Store will be completely irrelevant.

<comment><USER17> >> They'll find out about software the same way that the "majority consumer" used to; reading magazines like Macworld, seeing advertisements in various places, and talking to friends.

I don't know many "consumerish" Mac users who read Mac magazines, Daring Fireball, etc. Hell, I know a lot of more sophisticated Mac users who don't read any Mac related content except when they have problems. Many of the consumer Mac users I know don't pay attention to ads for Mac software either.

On your third point (word of mouth), that one has a lot of validity, assuming that a consumer mac user has a mac nerd or two in his/her circle of friends.

If I look at what most of my consumer Mac friends and acquaintances use, most of their time is spent in Safari, iTunes, iLife, iWork and maybe something like Parallels or VMWare to run "work stuff". A few might install some apps here and there, but few would even know that there was anything outside the App Store that was worthwhile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've nightmares about endless apps having their own updaters. Adobe/Microsoft updaters really are the culprits here. Its this that makes me wish the app store would drop these product-killing restrictions. I don't trust every app developer to do updaters.

<comment><USER19> Many (most?) indie mac apps use Sparkle (<http://sparkle.andymatuschak.org>) to autoupdate. It's generally easy to use, so most people don't need to go the microsoft/adobe route.

<comment><USER20> Sparkle is amazing. For years and years, I thought it was actually part of the OS, as almost every app I had used it. That's how ubiquitous it is on the Mac!

Edit: Very interesting! The guy behind Sparkle (Andy Matuschak) is actually an Apple employee, working on UIKit! <http://andymatuschak.org/>

> _By day, I work on UIKit to help other people make things._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> this whole article goes over my head, because it assumes the reader is already familiar with the sandboxing issue. I'm not a desktop OS X developer; I'm not familiar with the topic. I searched around and the only articles I could find are blog posts about how the sky is falling, with no sources from Apple that plainly state the app sandboxing requirements.

If you're going to write an article about how some upcoming thing is a doomsday event, please explain the event clearly and link to the proper sources, especially if your article is a criticism of a technical specification. That one or a few applications are backing out of the app store is not, in itself, evidence that they are justified in doing so.

This article has taught me nothing, but it has made me more afraid.

<comment><USER7> I'd like to understand the implications of sandboxing too. It must have some large negative impact on Instapaper for Marco to care this much. What is it?

<comment><USER22> Here's a document that goes in-depth about app sandboxing:

[http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Securi...](http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Security/Conceptual/AppSandboxDesignGuide/AppSandboxInDepth/AppSandboxInDepth.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40011183-CH3-SW4)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Future of irrelevance to who exactly? The 1-in-10000 users who like to play with root level access and scripts and stuff perhaps, but do the other 9999 even notice the change? I'm thinking not.

Granted it's a big change from earlier times, the strategy of sandboxing works really well for security and general OS integrity (as iOS has proved) in a world that has no patience for fragmented and exploitative software. Perhaps we lose a little something in the process, but it's in the service of a better overall integrated service and experience.

Oh and by the way: Microsoft is going the same way too with Metro.

<comment><USER24> _"Microsoft is going the same way too with Metro."_

Not exactly. Metro and its app store are only "half" of Windows 8. The other half isn't sandboxed in the walled garden style. To put it another way, Microsoft isn't building the Windows App Store on the back of existing software, but from the ground up using only sandboxed apps.

Microsoft isn't likely to create the sort of moving target for developers that Apple has recently because doing so would not be consistent with the B2B model that underpins their corporate culture.

<comment><USER25> FYI, this is not true for Windows RT (the ARM version). That version will only support applications purchased through MS's store. Given that MS is clearly pushing for Metro to be the future of Windows, I think this is somewhat concerning.

<comment><USER24> On the other hand, Windows on ARM is an extension of the Windows franchise in the same way that WP7 with it's app store is. In a sense it is like talking about the iPad when discussion the Mac App store...or would be if iOS applications ran on the Mac.

Metro is a future of Windows, just as Server Console mode is (though admittedly on a potentially different scale).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Again, Apple doesn't really care what developers feel. What matters are the masses. Which don't care about these issues. The App Store is easy to use, accessible and allows them to download their apps on multiple Macs. It's a win win from their point of view.

Apple's thinking is simple: You (us developer) don't like it, PayPal is that way". Just that simple. And since The App Store is where most non-developer mac users get their apps from.. we have a simple choice.

Do I like it, hell no. Will I play by Apple's rules, yes.

<comment><USER27> Sure developers will play ball as long as Apple is where the money is. There's no doubt that iOS's amazing run of exponential growth and the creation of a distribution platform as frictionless as the App Store have been irresistible to developers.

However I think it's also fair to say that early adopters and developers were key to Apple's recent success. For instance, OS X lured me back to Macs from Windows in 2000 largely on the promise of unix under the hood. Many early iPhone users were jail breakers either to develop apps or to use them. Developers were on the forefront of Apple success, and I think it's impossible to quantify the impact that we had, and thus extremely easy to underestimate it.

It's true that Apple is very mass market and could not achieve it's design excellence by listening to geek feature requests, but I think they'd better tread lightly on the larger issues. If they turn OS X into a toy OS that doesn't allow serious development and pushing the technological envelope, and all future innovation comes exclusively in the form of Apple new APIs, then I think that will be a harbinger of Apple decline as the geeks and early adopters look for the next frontier. Apple without the hacker community is not nearly as strong as it is today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> All these problems could be solved if there were a way for companies to transfer your existing non-App-store licenses to the App Store, allow for paid upgrades on the App Store, and allow App Store licenses to be associated with real serial numbers (or something else) that could be used to "take" your license with you, in the event the App Store suddenly becomes too restrictive.

Basically make it seamless, monetarily and "upgradily", to go to/from the app store.

Of course, Apple will never let this happen.

<comment><USER29> Who would pay the Apple tax in case of license transfers? I can't imagine Apple simply letting go of their cut.

<comment><USER28> Well I imagine you'd only ever need to move _to_ the App Store because of an upgrade which required it (because certain features are only available to App Store-distributed applications). So Apple would get their cut of the upgrade fee, and future upgrade fees as well. Obviously it's not as much as the full app immediately, but ideally over time it would add up for them with paid upgrades.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I think I agree with everything Marco says in this article except for

 _Apple can never require an App-Store-only future_

I think they can, and will, regardless of their sandboxing or other policies.

</comment><comment><USER31> As a customer I totally agree. I wouldn't care about simple 5$ tools being removed. But if more expensive tools like PDFPen Pro (which I bought) get removed then I will certainly be very upset. And just because this danger is present I'm very careful and not buying any expensive software anymore from the Mac App Store whenever given the choice (except Apple software of course). That's a pity for both developers and customers.

<comment><USER32> One would assume you could email the developer and get setup with a non App Store version / license in that scenario.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Somewhat related anecdote in light of 10.8: I never properly upgraded from OS 10.5. I pirated 10.6 and skipped 10.7, partially because I'm a cheap college student and partially because the changes between versions never seemed that dramatic to me.

I had to re-install my OS and thus downgraded from 10.6 to 10.5. All of a sudden, none of my iLife apps are working, plus a host of others, and I can't download Apple ones designed for 10.5. I lose momentum scrolling, and realize that, hey, an upgrade once every three years is a good idea. I wait for 10.8 to come out, so I can buy it like a good, normal consumer, and soon discover I need 10.6 to install it.

So I'm buying two upgrades? Alright...wait, I can't buy 10.6 anymore. 10.8 is the only OS available, and I don't have 10.6 on a disc. So it looks like I'm pirating again.

</comment><comment><USER34> The neckbeards will buy from the developer. The ordinary customers Apple has been relentlessly targeting for a decade will buy from the Mac App Store. Which group is bigger?

<comment><USER35> It's not about where we buy our apps, it's about where we sell them.

If the App Store doesn't work for developers, it won't work for users. The users can't buy stuff that isn't there just because they outnumber the developers.

<comment><USER34> Other developers will happily come along, work within Apple's guidelines, and sell to the giant slice of the pie chart. It's obviously a radically different model of software development, and one that's probably far less appealing to current developers, but that's what happens when industries change. The incumbents never like it.

The same thing's coming to Windows, too, thanks to the Windows Store. The whole industry's headed toward appliance computing. Maybe you can sell software to Linux users.

<comment><USER35> That makes it sound like sandboxing is a matter of personal taste, and that if I as a developer consider my self "too good to sandbox" someone else will eat my lunch.

I fully agree with your line of reasoning in many other debates about the App Store, and I'm not against appliance computing. Take the 30% cut, for instance. If Smile had discontinued TextExpander's App Store presence because they didn't like the 30-70 split, I would be the first to point out that this leaves money on the table for someone who runs a lower-margin business, and that everything is in order as per the free market.

Sandboxing is different in that many features can't be done; not because of price point or some rms-esque FOSS principle, but because policy is holding the technology back. Developers are not given a choice.

It's not about "a different model" where incumbents refuse to compete and lose their foothold because of stubbornness. It's about limiting what any developer can do; they're not given a choice.

We will have perfect competition in the realm of distraction-free writing environments, but we will have no third-party backup tools. Nobody can happily come along and write one, because nobody is allowed, incumbent or otherwise.

TL;DR: No, I'm not speaking out of fear of competition. Sandboxing doesn't just hurt incumbents. It limits products, not development models.

<comment><USER34> I don't disagree with you at all; I just think that in the appliance-computing future where your computer is basically a toaster, the vast majority of users (ie, potential software customers) won't care about the "missing" apps at all. It's not a coincidence that most of the apps running up against sandboxing are tools aimed at power users -- third-party email clients, application launchers, BBEdit, backup tools, etc. These are specialized apps for users on the thin end of the bell curve. I don't think Apple cares much if they lose all the people who care about third-party text editors if they're able to start selling computers to millions of other ordinary people who have heretofore been terrified of installing software on their computers.

I'm not happy about it either; I guess I just understand what Apple's trying to do, and why Microsoft seems so eager to follow suit by setting up its own store. The "you have to be a computer guy to use computers" era is almost over.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> There are two issues that are coming up here: sandboxing and paid upgrades. They are quite different.

As a consumer I am completely for sandboxing for myself and for other consumers. In a world where malware is increasingly a problem sandboxed apps will become the norm. That's the reality we live in. Sandboxing being a _requirement_ means that I can fairly safely install anything from the (future) Mac App Store.

The OP correctly points out that certain system utilities cannot be sold this way. He is correct but consider the alternative: to not require sandboxing means no one will bother implementing it. Of course Apple could make effort to promote apps that do (or hide apps that don't) but this puts a considerable education burden on the consumer. I'm with Apple on this one: it's simpler and better this way.

Now paid upgrades I have mixed feelings about.

On the one hand paid upgrades can produce the wrong incentive on the developer: I've seen good apps go from 18 month major version upgrades, to 12 months to 6 months with no reduction in upgrade price. I've also seen old versions abandoned for pretty lame reasons.

IMHO having all users on the same version is better for the developer and the consumer. It makes support easier. It creates a consistent experience.

But on the other hand I do feel like there is a place for paid upgrades.

Are in-app purchases a possibility here? I honestly don't know what's possible with the Mac App Store here.

I think developers do get too concerned with turning a user into a perpetual revenue stream however. This is really an old business model that is somewhat outdated.

Steam provided the first evidence of this that I can recall. Some years ago they started selling older games for $5 and under. In some cases IIRC the revenue for discounted sales exceeded release date sales at the premium price. More: [1]

The iOS App Store produced and continues to produce further evidence that lower prices and a higher volume can often be a better result than selling the "old" way (higher price, fewer units, which typically also involves paid upgrades).

Often content producers (and I include developers who sell software in this) don't always know what's best for them. This all sounds remarkably like Netflix in many ways. Netflix has provided a means of monetizing old and less popular content yet Hollywood seems to view them as the enemy.

Perhaps another model worth considering is to start the price of your app low and as it improves and gains popularity, steadily (and predictably) raise the price.

Has anyone tried this? Did it work?

EDIT: sandboxing goes beyond "malware". I increasingly don't want apps making arbitrary changes to my system. Some may be what I want but most won't. This includes things like forgetting to untick the checkbox that installs some browser toolbar to (on Windows anyway) apps making arbitrary (and sometimes wrong) changes to local policies, registry entries, etc (so the Mac equivalent of that).

EDIT2: as a consumer, I want to buy through the App Store. Apple has my payment details. I have a common place to get updates. When I buy from a third-party site I have to deal with:

1\. Registration;

2\. A payment gateway that may or may not work;

3\. Despite an automatic payment a human may need to email me a license file and/or download link that in some cases has taken days;

4\. Whether or not to trust your site with my information; and

5\. A completely separate process for updating.

So anecdotally as one consumer, if your app can be on the Mac App Store and isn't I'm simply not buying it with very few exceptions (eg I'd still buy Photoshop even if I don't want to).

[1]: [http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/174587/Steam_sales_How_de...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/174587/Steam_sales_How_deep_discounts_really_affect_your_games.php)

<comment><USER37> > In a world where malware is increasingly a problem

I don't see that as the case. There is malware out there in torrent land, sure. But if you acquire software from reputable sources (like a paid app store, referral from a friend, heard about it on a forum like HN, package repository), malware just isn't a concern.

If you put malware on an app store, the world will notice, its rating will tank, and people will stop downloading it. Reputation is the sandbox.

<comment><USER38> It's funny , for years Apple were all like "Macs can't get viruses!" now they're saying "we need app store lock in too prevent malware!".

I guess there's a distinction to be made between actual malware and software that co-installs crap (Ask toolbar etc) but often end users do not see that difference.

Besides, if something has passed app store verification then surely Apple are happy that it is not malware? Therefor they can be somewhat more lenient with sandboxing restrictions?

<comment><USER39> >Besides, if something has passed app store verification then surely Apple are happy that it is not malware?

I'm not so sure. What is their process for verifying that an app is not or does not contain malware? If it's simply to run the software and see what it does then they can really only verify that apps aren't immediately misbehaving. What if the app is set to do its misdeeds after the 100th time it is run, or after being installed for a month? There is really only so much a reviewer can do in order to push an app out within a reasonable time frame.

Sandboxing in a way is just as much protection from liability for Apple as it is protection from malware for its users.

<comment><USER40> I'm pretty sure Apple has some form on introspection they run on binaries - that's how they find out who is using non-public APIs for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Marco's follow-up post to this one is only technically correct because he uses words like "most", "many", "probably", and "nearly". In fact, do a Google search for "most many probably nearly" and his post is #6!

He should have just stood by his words. Instead of taking criticism, he reverts to treating readers as idiots who didn't understand his post. We understood. And many disagreed. It happens. From his follow-up post (quotes from original post):

I've gotten a lot of feedback on my Mac App Store post this morning, and I'd like to clarify some points and respond. I did not say or intend to suggest any of these:

1\. I will not buy anything from the Mac App Store again.

"But now, I've lost all confidence that the apps I buy in the App Store today will still be there next month or next year. The advantages of buying from the App Store are mostly gone now. My confidence in the App Store, as a customer, has evaporated.

Next time I buy an app that's available both in and out of the Store, I'll probably choose to buy it directly from the vendor."

2\. Most Mac users will stop shopping in the Mac App Store.

"And nearly everyone who's been burned by sandboxing exclusions — not just the affected apps' developers, but all of their customers — will make the same choice with their future purchases. To most of these customers, the App Store is no longer a reliable place to buy software."

3\. Most developers will stop putting apps in the Mac App Store.

"And with reduced buyer confidence, fewer developers can afford to make their software App Store-only.

This even may reduce the long-term success of iCloud and the platform lock-in it could bring for Apple. Only App Store apps can use iCloud, but many Mac developers can't or won't use it because of the App Store's political instability."

</comment><comment><USER42> I'm going to put this comment here even though it doesn't belong because I wanted to make people aware and there's nowhere else to put it. Some HN moderator is censoring stories about Twitter being down, probably the biggest tech story of the morning.

First, this story was on the front page and it got killed <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4296416>

Then this other story, <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4296811>, appeared briefly on the front page. But interestingly it wasn't killed it just doesn't show up on the front page.

If you scroll through the new story submissions you'll find a bunch of dead Twitter stories.

<comment><USER43> yeah. the outages.org mailing list is also whining about it. Google talk is also having problems.

I suspect, though, that instead of getting 'censored' here, that hacker news readers are flagging it as not very interesting.

Come back with a story once they have a 'lessons learned' type document; something telling us what happened.

<comment><USER42> This is one of the top 10 sites world wide being down for over an hour now.

Why is Google Talk down, which affects a fraction of the users, on the front page but Twitter is being actively censored?

Besides, HN comments are a lot of times more insightful and interesting than the link. We might have gotten a Twitter engineer commenting on what was going on or something else interesting.

<comment><USER43> > This is one of the top 10 sites world wide being down for over an hour now.

sure, and it's big news on email@example.com. (which used to be just fiber cuts but has evolved into 'major webapp down' notices, too.) - the idea behind email@example.com is to notify network operators when services that may impact them are down. The idea is that if my customer is complaining about things being slow to boston, well, if I read outages that morning, I might remember a fiber cut that would explain it. I guess the same could be true if my customers were complaining about not being able to get to twitter.

(personally, I'm in the camp that gets irritated when "random webapp is down" messages are posted to firstname.lastname@example.com. _I_ don't care that twitter is down. I've chosen my customers well enough that they don't complain to me when something that is obviously not my fault like that happens. But, I am only one person, and the majority have spoken; I won't fight it. I will whine a little, though.)

News.ycombinator is not about outages, and really not about network and systems operators. Most of you use IAAS or PAAS. Though so far, I've seen a lot of tolerance for interesting network and systems operator stories.

But yeah, "x is down" is... not an interesting story. "X went down earlier today; here is what happened" sometimes is.

>Besides, HN comments are a lot of times more insightful and interesting than the link. We might have gotten a Twitter engineer commenting on what was going on or something else interesting.

I think uninteresting articles ought to be voted down or flagged or otherwise gotten rid of. If the comments are more interesting than the article, then it's an uninteresting article, unworthy of the front page link.

>Why is Google Talk down, which affects a fraction of the users, on the front page but Twitter is being actively censored?

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> How about a content rating system? People are familiar with this from movies, television and music. A developer could declare their un-sandboxed application the equivalent of NC17 while most users live happily in their equivalent of a PG13 universe.

</comment><comment><USER45> I'd like to believe Marco is right, but let's not kid ourselves. There's been large, high-profile, five-year experiment on exactly this and the disappointing results are in: [almost] nobody gives a sh*t about Freedom 0.

</comment><comment><USER46> I'm wondering how soon until we see OSX being jailbroken.

I suspect system level choices like this are bound to continue in order to push users in the direction of iCloud and AppStore usage (ie. vendor lock-in).

Though such moves appear draconian from our perspective, I believe Apple times such moves around when some internal metrics indicate a tipping point has happened, namely the developer backlash won't be substantial enough to affect Apple's bottom line.

It's only a matter of time before the iPhone dev team puts some effort towards serving the OSX crowd that wants to jump ship but not give up "OSX" completely.

<comment><USER35> It's bad enough that apps are leaving the App Store because of sandboxing. You don't have to make shit up. The owner of a Mac can enable root access through the Directory Utility, completely legit, and can install and run code from any source without even doing so. Jailbreaking OS X makes no sense; there's no jail.

<comment><USER46> True enough, and I'm probably abusing terminology here, sorry for that.

It's more me wondering out loud if there will be some alternative to OSX, largely built off of OSX in order to get around limitations like sandboxing.

<comment><USER35> That's quite another story. If I have to write Sci-Fi: Perhaps an underground scene that use and code for older versions of OS X, patching the system themselves to get only the good parts of system updates, while staying out of Apple's redefinitions of the computing experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Contrast this end-user experience with that of Steam's. These are essentially the exact same applications except that Steam has 1) carefully cultivated a huge, multi-platform ecosystem of apps and 2) has never willingly broken the application's environment.

Steam is arguably the only game distribution platform of significance (yes, yes, battle.net and its limited selection of widely played titles) and will continue to dominate because of the careful thought they've put into distribution.

Seems like Apple should take a lesson, no?

</comment><comment><USER9> What software besides Postbox has pulled out? The author makes it sound like there is a mass exodus.

I've bought most of my software outside the App Store, so I'm not tuned in.

<comment><USER48> I'm not positive about this, but it sounds like lots of the applications/utilities made by Many Tricks are going to be pulled, or will at least see slower/limited updates if any: <http://manytricks.com/blog/?page_id=2208>

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> _This even may reduce the long-term success of iCloud and the platform lock-in it could bring for Apple._

Apple is never going to have the kind of platform dominance that would make iCloud really compelling. At least the other vendors realize that they need to operate in a polyglot world.

As much as I like my MBA and iPad I refuse to lock my essential data into a system I can only really access with hardware from a single vendor.

</comment><comment><USER50> I think PG highlighted that Apple doesn't get software back in 2009: <http://www.paulgraham.com/apple.html>

In that particular case he was lamenting the App Store approval process and how much it alienated developers. Here we are 3 years later with no change to that policy and no slowing down the App Store juggernaut.

</comment><comment><USER51> I hope they will weaken this restriction, and will just not have non-sandboxed apps show up without searching for them, or without switching some "power user" option on.

Some types of applications simply cannot exist with these types of restrictions. They are removing entire classes (e.g. window managers, system utilities) of applications from the App Store with this.

<comment><USER52> But what's the real market size for window utilities? Not something your average user buys. I use size up and cinch, but I'm a developer. My dad doesn't care about fairly obscure system utilities. Besides, it isn't like those tools can't be used on ML-- just not through the MAS. MAS is a shopping mail, not a specialty shop. I don't by rock climbin gear from Target, but I'll gladly by an espresso machine from Target.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> It seems like there's a market opening here for a third party App Store equivalent, that offers the single-point-of-payment / ease of upgrades advantages for the consumer, but eliminates the developer pain points (sandboxing and paid upgrades).

This is viable for as long as third party applications can still be downloaded and installed outside of the Apple App Store.

</comment><comment><USER54> I don't know if it's been said or discussed before, but why don't Developers just make yearly revisions to sell on the Mac App Store, or even the iPhone iOS app store. You could have a Genericproductname'2012 or '12, and next year release a 2013 ('13) that has the new features, then remove the prior versions.

</comment><comment><USER55> Several of my apps won't receive any new updates because they use the Accessibility API, which isn't sandbox-compatible. It's a real shame, because developing for the Mac App Store for the past year has been awesome. Unfortunately the money/discovery isn't there for sole devs to go outside the Store.

</comment><comment><USER56> I think the first sign that App Store wasn't trustworthy was Apple leaving gcc out of the free version of XCode. I never trusted App Store. I think without Steve Jobs Apple has lost it's ability to pretend it's a decent company. Why doesn't someone do what RedHat did except for for consumers.

</comment><comment><USER57> Seriously? Do you remember what company this is? Apple does this every time and then corrects it down the road. Why? Because they receive more press that way. Come on guys, they are not stupid.

</comment><comment><USER58> The lack of paid upgrades is irrelevant. I never understood what people are missing here. Apple has shown how to do it: Phase out the old version and offer the new version as a new product.

<comment><USER59> And lose any app store rankings in the process. A bit similar to launching a new site every time you release a new version of your product.

<comment><USER58> I see your point. I haven't thought about that.

On a second thought: If your customers are satisfied, they will give good reviews on the the new version and it will regain its rankings. That's a great risk for the developer, I have to admit.

<comment><USER60> This approach also forces the developer to build in a notification system to tell people the new app is out and how to find it.

I guess you could can make a small update to the 'old' app that will pop up a window notifying of the new one when the old app first starts, but that seems rather kludgy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> The thing that kept me from installing even free apps from the mac app store is the same that keeps me away from Market/Play on Android: it requires Apple ID.

</comment><comment><USER62> I have an incorrect understanding of the word sandbox in this context. So to clarify, what does the author of this blog mean by "the sandbox is restricted"?

</comment><comment><USER63> It seems to me that there's an opportunity for someone to create a knock-off of the Mac App Store _without the restrictions_. I'd be a customer.

<comment><USER64> With Mountain Lion and the iCloud feature only allowed on apps from the Mac App Store, this is a lot harder to do than it previously was.

<comment><USER63> There are a lot of cases where iCloud isn't relevant (at the moment) -- many types of apps are not document-centric and I believe that, going forward, fewer will be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> for those looking for an alternative app store for mac, look at <http://appbodega.com/> I think it is great. It looks good. It is easy to interface with and they appear to be quite responsive.

</comment><comment><USER50> Can anyone give a 101 explanation specifically around what the "sandbox" issue is?

<comment><USER66> Pages 14 and 15 of John Siracusa's review of Mountain Lion tell it pretty well:

[http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/07/os-x-10-8/14/#gatekeepe...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/07/os-x-10-8/14/#gatekeeper)

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> I think the idea that Apple can't require MAS is wrong. Maybe they can't for _everyone_ but I would bet they can for a lot of people and probably plan to. At some point developers will be buying the developer version of the OS that gets them around the sandbox.

<comment><USER52> There's no sandbox on the OS. RTFM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Marco is accusing Apple of having made a critical strategic error. Where are all the people who call him a member of the Apple cult and all that crap? Funny how they disappear when it comes time to talk about what Apple is doing wrong.

<comment><USER69> To me the tone of the article is that he is worried that Apple is missing chances of further enhancing lock-in to the Apple brand, specifically on the Mac OS desktop platform. The guy re-purchased apps he already had so that he could help with that lock-in. I see the rationale for doing that but when you start throwing free cash on duplicate app purchases to enhance lock-in I don't know what could be more cult-like.

<comment><USER70> Picking which operating system to use enhances lock in by itself already. I've bought software both inside and outside of the mac app store and since I have that software I'm locked in to the program. If I could move all my applications to the app store I would do it in a heartbeat because it gives me one place to go for updates. Apple is certainly missing out on opportunities, but not only for "locking people in" but also for making their user experience better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> I tend to buy small utility apps in the range of $10 on the app store. But I would never buy "serious" software on the Mac app store.

The MAS already has this flea market feeling to me and so I'd rather have a real license from the original vendor than this app store receipt thingy.</comment>