Tim Sweeney: Microsoft wants to monopolise games development on PC - saint-loup http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/04/microsoft-monopolise-pc-games-development-epic-games-gears-of-war <comment><AUTHOR> This is pretty one-sided. UWP is nice for users because it sandboxes apps that are built for it.

Some benefits:

1\. I know the game won't dump save and log files in my Documents folder (that place is mine, GTFO).

2\. I know there won't be garbage files or side effects in the registry when I uninstall the app.

3\. The game can't install rootkit-like spyware to inspect other processes on my system (hello Warden).

It would be nice if there was a way to distribute UWP apps outside the Windows Store, but UWP apps are way easier to trust than Win32 apps.

<comment><USER2> Plus (and while I really dislike app stores in general), it solves the biggest security problem : the user. It prevents it tfrom installing a load of crapwares just because he or she clicks everywhere without reading.

Now, it's logical from those vendors to lock in installation on their plateform. It's theirs. They built it. Like you build a car so it's easier for you to sell your replacement pieces and control what's going to be plug to it.

Bottom line, if you don't like it, don't use windows. Or if you use windows because it has value to you, you have to play by MS rule or hack around. Like with cars.

I dislike these rules, I don't use Window as my main system. I use a system that doesn't lock me in.

If you are using Windows (or any other system locking your in), if you have been using it for the last 10 years, you knew this. You are half responsible for your situation.

Don't tell me "I have to use it because 'work|busines|whatever'". You choose to keep this work/business/whatever. It's more important to you than playing by MS rules. Well, you made a choice. You don't like it. But you did. You never fought it, you never did anything to prevent this from hapening. You had time. And solutions. This didn't happen by surprise or on one week. People warned you about this for 20 years, and provided alternatives, and you didn't use it.

<comment><USER3> > Like with cars.

Except that cars don't work like that. You can take your Ford to Valvoline and they don't have to use Ford-brand motor oil.

<comment><USER4> Lots of cars lock you into using specialized fluids. For example, GM has lots of DEX* fluids that must be used in their vehicles or the owner risks permanent damage. VW brands and Nissan do this too.

Sometimes these things are interchangeable, but sometimes they aren't.

<comment><USER3> Prestone et al make DEX-COOL compatible antifreeze etc. The analogous thing in Windows is programs that use the WIN32 API. To be compatible you have to do something platform-specific but you don't need anybody's permission to do it.

There is nothing about cars that says you can't use aftermarket parts. And to the extent that there is, they got the stupid idea from Apple and Microsoft, not the other way around, and there ought to be a law against it (if it isn't already an antitrust violation).

<comment><USER5> It's illegal to invalidate a warranty for using aftermarket parts for repairs. Even critical emissions and safety components can be replaced with substantially similar aftermarket parts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It seems strange to be so vocal about it with such a weak argument. The three points he says it needs are: 1. Being able to install from the web. 2. Being able to integrate with other stores. 3. Not locking it down in the future.

According to Microsoft, 2 was always possible, 1 was fixed in November (it was previously possible but required bypassing some things), so that leaves only 3, promising to never lock it down in the future.

This idea that Microsoft could lock down its platform in the future is nothing new, and part of the nature of having a proprietary platform. It really isn't up to them to fix this problem. It's up to developers to make their software available on free and open platforms where they know that no future lockdown is possible.

</comment><comment><USER7> Looks like Microsoft finally found a way to eat Valve's lunch - release a windows API that forces you to only publish via their app store.

I'm surprised this is the first they've done this. In a way, Valve has been reaping the same benefits of Apple and Google without supporting an OS.

It's too bad things are headed completely in this direction. Rent seeking app stores have shown that there is little resistance from developers even with ridiculous margins (30% of revenue!).

<comment><USER8> > _Rent seeking app stores_

App stores are _not_ rent seeking. They created a market (and in some cases a platform) for you to sell to. Being able to sell your product with only 30% overhead is something previously unheard of in retail.

If you want to get 100% of the money, then you're welcome to build your own sales system and generate trust with it, deal with bad creditors yourself, deal with maintenance and artefact distribution in a secure, scaled manner... the list goes on and on.

Go and ask some farmers if they'd feel hard done by if they got 70% of the final purchase price of their produce.

<comment><USER9> Physical retail and digital retail are wildly different.

<comment><USER8> My second paragraph was crafted just for you, then!

Really, it's not all that different. You have the same groups - a distributor and a shopfront. Sometimes these are the same (apple's app store) sometimes not (a games publisher managing your game on steam). You generate the primary product, and it goes through a middleman or two on the way to the end-user.

And just like a farmer, you can sell your own product yourself and walk away with 100% of the cash. But like the farmer's shack by the side of the road, you don't get as much market penetration with your product on your own website - people have to come to you or stumble across you, instead of just get your stuff at the supermarket where they usually shop.

Yes, there are differences, but no, they're not wildly different. You make something and want to sell it. People offer services to help you sell it. You give them some of the money in order to sell more product. 30% is really low overhead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Windows 10 Mobile is dead, 1.1% market share of all Windows Phone version in Q4 2015, see IDC: [https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS40980416](https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS40980416) (or a critical non-advertisement article [http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/28/10864034/windows-phone- is-...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/28/10864034/windows-phone-is-dead) )

And what Microsoft does to force Windows 7 users to 10 is shaddy. Welcome to the old new Microsoft, with their evil tactics and nowadays also with software that spy's on you. So mean, shame on them. So sad, I really like Microsoft products from the 1995-2010 timeframe, and now have to replace all the legacy, though I have time until at least 2020.

<comment><USER11> As someone who only uses Windows for gaming, the only potential reason I have to upgrade to 10 is for DirectX 12. But with Vulkan, I don't even need that. I'm hoping that by the time security updates for 7 are ended sometime in the 2020s they'll have released a new OS that is actually worth upgrading to...

<comment><USER12> Will vulkan be able to run games that were coded with DX12?

No. Youll still need windows 10 to run them. So im not sure how Vulkan makes you not need DX12. If youre developing games, sure. But as a gamer you have no way to make DX12 games run on vulkan.

<comment><USER11> I think there's a misunderstanding here. Will OpenGl be able to run games that were coded in DX? No.

Vulkan's existence means I don't need DX12, and I don't need Windows 10, because game devs that care about me (and my 35% brethren) will have a Vulkan port, in the same way that game devs that care about any other non-Windows platforms have an OpenGL port (or are already using an engine that does the porting for them). Technically you're right that Vulkan won't help me run a game that uses only DX12, I doubt there will be many of those games though because of many bad incentives to do that.

<comment><USER13> I guess you missed the part that most AAA studios don't care about APIs just platform vendor support and tooling.

The same things that make them prefer DX and games consoles, when given a choice.

Of course with the amount of nice indie games, you are free to ignore those studios.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Maybe I missed it in reading the article but what, specifically, is not available to developers if they choose to write the application against the typical Win32 APIs?

Are they, for instance, making certain hardware accelerated APIs only available for UWP apps? If so, are these APIs designed in such a way as to prevent someone from creating an API that runs on top of Win32 that exposes the capabilities (i.e. by requiring drivers be locked down in such a way as to disallow interaction outside of UWP)?

I can't see a way outside of driver feature lock-out that the OS could effectively _prevent_ game developers from developing games the way they have been in the past. I'm guessing this has a lot to do with their "Write it for Xbox One and it'll work on Windows 10, too" goals, but that feels more like a _convenience_ than a lock-in -- games are a constant exercise of porting to get them on each platform, so getting them onto a non-UWP target would be another platform (which many developers would simply skip since UWP would be theoretically easier).

<comment><USER15> This is the key question. If Microsoft decides one day to offer the next DirectX version only for UWP then the developers will either have to eat humble pie or leave the platform.

<comment><USER16> Can't they use Vulkan instead of DX12? I would've thought Vulkan would be supported on the Windows platform.

<comment><USER17> It is not clear they would want to though. Developers are heavily invested in DX.

<comment><USER16> My understanding (and this could be false) is that many games are based on externally developed game engines, such as Unreal and Unity. If these game engines make use of Vulkan (which they are almost bound to do so, CryEngine already has early support) then does it make any difference to the developers of the games?

The only thing I could think of where it might matter is if the GPU drivers have better support for DX12 than Vulkan, resulting in better performance, but I have no idea if that's the case.

<comment><USER17> It's not uncommon for people using engines to still need to appeal to the underlying frameworks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't really understand the problem here. Windows is an open plattform. I can install Steam. I can listen to Spotify. Browse the web with Google Chrome.

If you don't like the Universal Windows Platform, well. Don't release your games on it. I have heard Steam is a quite popular alternative...

<comment><USER19> _I don 't really understand the problem here. Windows is an open plattform. I can install Steam. I can listen to Spotify. Browse the web with Google Chrome._

Except you don't get to do all those things through the windows store. You don't install Chrome through the windows store, only the google app with 1 tab. No firefox on the windows store either. Is steam on the windows store? How long before the windows store becomes the principle method to get apps on your desktop? Sweeny's criticism resonates here: _Sweeney then compared UWP to Google 's Android, which is "technically open, but practically closed" thanks to how "comically difficult" it is for general users to sideload apps. "This is not merely a technical issue: it has the market impact of Google Play Store dominating over competing stores, despite not being very good," he says._

<comment><USER20> > Except you don't get to do all those things through the windows store.

It's almost as if there is a War On General Purpose Computation... and the locked down malware "appliances" are winning.

This started with iOS; the people that should have recognized the dangers of a _gatekeeper_ controlling who can develop or install software decided to embrace the shiny iPhone and later Apple's tables. Now, even Microsoft is getting into the "app store" market and stripping away the remnants of their platform that weren't locked down.

> sideload apps

Is that the new euphemism for "install software"? Once everyone is convinced installing software outside of the "official" app store is deviant or unusual, it will be easy to introduce a meme that 3rd party software is risky/harmful/immoral.

> "This is not merely a technical issue ..."

/sigh/

Even with Tim Sweeny's current explanation of the problem and Cory Doctorow's warnings[1][2] several years ago, I doubt many people - even HN readers in this very thread - will actually fight this trend or even change their behavior in any meaningful way. They will continue to give Microsoft money and market share. Instead, I expect down-votes and complaints from apologists that pretend this is for "security", true-believers that pretend this trend to lock everything down doesn't exist, and willfully-blind nerds that think jailbreaking devices is a long-term solution.

[1] [http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html](http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nypRYpVKc5Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nypRYpVKc5Y)

<comment><USER21> Your belief that people who don't share your opinion are "willfully-blind" is grossly dehumanizing. You are not the keeper of the one correct mindset.

<comment><USER20> > opinion

It's not my _opinion_ that jailbreaking isn't a long-term solution to the lockdown of the General Purpose Computer. Jailbreaking isn't available in all situations, it may involve legal risk, it often requires technical knowledge, and it can impact the relationship with the manufacture such as voiding a warranty.

As for the term "willfully blind", how would you describe someone who denies facts?

You may not like certain facts, but they still exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I have a kind of mixed feeling about this. So if you do a mobile OS its ok to have app walled gardens, but on Windows you can´t?

Won't we always have the "option" of going the Linux way?

I think it's really telling that Valve has been investing heavily in developing it's Linux gaming econsystem, they saw this comming a mile away.

<comment><USER23> Microsoft OS has monopoly power in the PC market. They have been in the court for actions like this before [1].

The difference between mobile and PC is that if hardware maker has their own closed system, what they have is basically an appliance. PC's are generic item build from standards and Microsoft has produced an open operating system with large markets for software running on their OS. They can't just close it on a whim and abuse their monopoly power position [1].

\----

[1.] Findings of Fact in U.S. v. Microsoft Corporation, Civil Action No. 98-1232 (TPJ) and State of New York, ex re. Attorney General Eliot Spitzer et al., v. Microsoft Corporation, Civil Action No. 98-1233 (TPJ), November 5, 1999.

"Monopoly power" is not the same as monopoly. One must always point this out when saying it or discussion is derailed.

<comment><USER24> But surely they're not closing off the pc platform, just potentially restricting what can happen on their OS. You can still use PCs with linux without any lock in. Long gone are the days when Microsoft was a monopoly on client computing devices, these days we have linux, Mac osx, chrome OS, Android, steamOS and iOS.

Several of these other platforms are already closed to one degree on another, with iOS probably being the most restrictive, so I'm not sure I see Microsoft as being dominent enough to warrant a claim of monopoly power any more

<comment><USER25> I needed to buy a computer some years ago.

My favourite OS is Fedora.

First thing, is I find out that all manufacturers only were selling non- Windows machines at a significant markup, the only way this made sense to me is if Microsoft is actively bribing them (ie: "selling" windows for a negative price).

So I thought, I would just buy this cool Windows 8 laptop, and remove Windows 8, since it is crap anyway.

Well... no, I am still using that Windows 8 (now 8.1, after it forcefully upgraded itself), because for some reason (maybe a UEFI bug) I can't make anything that ins't Windows that came installed to boot, not even Windows install discs boot, much less Linux discs, and yes, I did disabled SecureBoot, but it still blocks everything except Windows 8 itself from booting (this mean I can't use Memtestx86 either)

If that ins't closed, I dunno what is.

<comment><USER24> So your pc or fedora has a bug which prevents you changing os and it then follows that Microsoft have a monopoly power in PCs... Sorry I don't quite think that follows

<comment><USER26> Nitpicking, but the problem as they described is definitely not fedora. It is definitely a PC problem.

The main problem here is that Windows is such a monopoly that the PC manufacturer didn't care to make sure anything else worked.

<comment><USER27> Just like mobile developers don't bother making Windows Apps because they consider the % of users is too low.

In other words, this manufacturer probably didn't care because the % of users who would use it for something other than the standard config is too small to justify the time spent outside that standard.

I don't think this specific case can be called monopoly. You can install Linux and other stuff fine in most laptops, this looks like an isolated case. I mean, you can even install Ubuntu on a Surface Pro and Surface Book (proprietary MS hardware).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> BTW, Phil Spencer posted this on twitter

[https://twitter.com/XboxP3/status/705795213709561857](https://twitter.com/XboxP3/status/705795213709561857)

UWP is a fully open ecosystem, available to every developer, and can be supported by any store. Broad range of tools [http://bit.ly/1QIHTf0](http://bit.ly/1QIHTf0)

<comment><USER29> That claim is in no way backed up by anything linked, everything talks about using windows store, and zero mention of third party stores.

<comment><USER28> Next tweet We will discuss our next steps with the Universal Windows Platform at //build later this month.

[https://twitter.com/XboxP3/status/705795341572923392](https://twitter.com/XboxP3/status/705795341572923392)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So Tim Sweeney apparently is fine with Apple, Google, Sony and Nintendo controlling their eco-systems, only Microsoft cannot do it.

<comment><USER30> Apple, Google, Sony and Nintendo started with closed ecosystems. Keeping them closed maintains the status quo. Microsoft presided over a relatively open ecosystem (the PC). Moving that from open to closed could be rightly perceived as a loss of something some people would like to keep.

I don't see the hypocrisy here.

<comment><USER13> If he feels so bad about it, he shouldn't let Epic have console exclusives or even develop for them.

After all Epic is also profiting from them.

Or it is only bad when the size of the pie isn't as big as one wishes for?

<comment><USER31> I get the feeling you didn't fully understand what larsiusprime explained, as you brought another example which isn't similar to the main issue here.

The primary key of the issue here is the loss of something that actually existed. The iOS App Store has never been open. You can dislike the lack of openness but there has never been an event that removed the openness, as it has never existed. The same goes for Epic's games. The console exclusive Gears of War 3 never had a PC version released and then subsequently taken away and buried ATARI style. It has always been console exclusive.

Tim sees Microsoft's actions as a force that will reduce the openness of the Windows platform.

<comment><USER13> Maybe we are talking in circles here, but if he cared so much about openess maybe he shouldn't have supported closed platforms in first place.

If he is such a knight of openess, then Epic should only have targeted open platforms.

Yet they happily took the money those bad closed platforms brought them.

It is not a matter of consoles always being closed, rather a duality of principles when money speaks.

<comment><USER31> He's not fighting against closed systems because they are closed. He's not fighting against closed systems in general for any reason. If he was doing this, then you would have a point. He is angry that the status quo of having an actively supported open Windows platform is being threatened. He is fighting against losing that. The new closed system is just the evil actor that he identified.

This is a classical case of loss aversion. [1] Tim would be at least equally mad if Microsoft decided to redirect all its efforts from win32 to cow milking. Would you then claim that Tim is a hypocrite for having drunk milk instead of actively boycotting the dairy industry?

Yes, you could make the argument that extremely black & white attitude is necessary, and that if you like some open system then thus follows that you need to fight against every closed system. Some people like Richard Stallman do this. However most people, like Tim, belive that a more gray world can exist, and tend to fight when visible threats manifest and otherwise spend their time on other things.

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

<comment><USER12> Hahah I like the cow milking example. spot on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> What we've learned from Steam and Apple's app stores is that users will make a Faustian bargain if they see the terms as favorable enough, especially when it lowers prices. This in turn attracted developers.

However, with the history of PlaysForSure, Zune, Games for Windows, Windows Phone, and the Windows Store, I don't have much confidence that Microsoft will win the hearts and minds of users or developers this time around.

<comment><USER33> Microsoft might _try_ to make an open system. But over the long term, they just won't be able to. Open is not in the Microsoft DNA. "Whatever can be controlled, _must_ be controlled."

It might start open-ish. But then some PM will notice that users can post content that is objectionable, or that there are such things as "porn mods" for Skyrim, or whatever, and then the lid will come down.

Xbox Live Arcade started out as a way for indie developers to get their games into the Xbox market. Over time XBLA reached the point where only deep pockets could successfully navigate the TCRs and multiple verification passes needed to ship. Indies got frozen out.

Let's not even talk about XNA, or Games for Windows Live (shudder).

Whatever hardware Microsoft offers a gaming platform on, it won't be left uncontrolled for long.

<comment><USER34> As a primarily PC gamer, there was a period around 2008-2010 where XBLA seemed to be flourishing and it was seriously making me consider buying an XBox. There seemed to be a lot of really good indie games suddenly popping up which were XBox exclusives. I never quite reached the tipping point though, which is probably for the best because as far as I can tell, the current incarnation of XBLA is a shadow of its former self. As an outsider I'm not really sure why that is, but it certainly hurts my confidence in Microsoft's ability to manage an open video game ecosystem.

Valve and Steam on the other hand (though still not perfect) have only grown and gotten better in the meantime.

<comment><USER28> > which is probably for the best because as far as I can tell, the current > incarnation of XBLA is a shadow of its former self. As an outsider I'm not > really sure why that is, but it certainly hurts my confidence in Microsoft's > ability to manage an open video game ecosystem.

I am not sure why you say that. There is significantly more Indie games being released for Xbox One right now than it was for Xbox 360 and XBLA. There are also early preview releases similar to Steam EAPs, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I really like the initiative of UWP but I agree with the author that you should be able to install UWP-apps from any source. Is it really true that you can't?

Maybe it's time for game developers like Epic to support Linux and make gamers choose linux as their desktop, that would probably create a surge of new users and contributions to the linux desktop development and maybe finally provide a "real" alternative.

Why I am running Windows is mostly because I can't stand all the issues with Linux desktops and that graphic drivers and games barely exist on the platform, I am loving Valves support though.

<comment><USER36> You can install UWP apps from any source, however by default it's not allowed. It is a toggle in the settings though (meant for developers.)

<comment><USER37> And the boogeyman is that Microsoft will automatically patch it out in the future. Microsoft has earned the doubt but I don't think it will happen. Signing every build during development of new products/features would be very onerous, probably even to internal processes at Microsoft.

<comment><USER38> It's enabled to allow local and remote debugging, so I highly doubt it's be disabled since it would directly break that key development feature.

<comment><USER39> They could easily disable it for anyone who doesn't have a copy of Visual Studio and a developer account on the Windows Store, though - and I think they've taken action against use of similar features by non-developers on mobile before now.

<comment><USER37> "Easily"? I thought it was a system level thing? I don't have to sign in to Windows with my developer account(I only use a local account) to use Visual Studio or access the account MSDN/community stuff.

<comment><USER38> Yeah, I wouldn't call it an "easy" fix. It's a system-level toggle and IIRC, since Win10 is in no way tied to your dev center account. I believe in Win8/8.1 you had to sign in to create a local signing cert, but that seems to have been removed in Win10 since I switched to developer mode with no real changes other than a radio button choice.

Plus, it'd be very hard to accurately determine "correct" usage. You don't have to have a dev center account to develop for Windows. You just need it to distribute your apps. I've made plenty of apps without distributing them and haven't needed to touch dev center. I do believe you need VS to create the apps, but only because the tooling is only available there. There's nothing technically limiting that, though, and simply having VS installed does not indicate you are developing Windows apps. You could be writing Python, for example, or even writing stuff for Arduino using 3rd party extensions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> The second Microsoft will try to lock down distribution of software from platforms like Steam and GoG to gain competitive advantage and profits, they will be sued by Steam, EA and other platform owners. Apple with 10 major book publishers tried to do same on eBooks markets with Amazon. Ended up bad for them. "Sue the bastards!" (c) Richard Branson

</comment><comment><USER41> Does anyone know exactly which features you don't get access to unless going through their distribution?

Cause anything short of not getting the latest drivers or something or anything that affects performance or existing feature sets isn't the worst thing ever. Ok it's lame to try to close a system that's been open forever. But this is exactly what Apple is doing with their App Store, minus I believe preventing any serious Platform APIs from being called.

<comment><USER42> I don't know for sure, but my assumption would be that it currently isn't anything particularly interesting... Maybe things like sending updates to Windows 10's 'notification' drawer?

<comment><USER41> That's my impression without Tim Sweeney getting specific. He's more making sure Microsoft doesn't take over distribution and charge a 30% cut or something and do other forms of competitive hampering of other distribution channels like direct to gamers, or alternatives like Steam which MS is super jealous of.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Is the core of this that game purchaser is losing the ability to purchase this type of game from other channels and forced to from the MS store in exchange for this game being able to run on any hardware (Win 10/XBox One/Windows Mobile)that runs UWP. Are they betting that a lot of PC gamers may see value in knowing that an app is vetted and will work with minimal configuration on their PC in exchange for only using this channel for purchase? Is the hardware amalgamation of PC and Xbox Live that bad to the end user or just the game devs or just to 3rd party AAA title devs that have to compete with MS's AAA titles and bargain to get into this new channel?

<comment><USER44> Speaking as an avid PC gamer, if this is Microsoft's angle they do not understand their audience. Half of PC gaming IS the ability to tinker and tweak and configure the games to work the way we want.

Personally, I couldn't give a shit if my games ran on Microsoft's shiny new platform if I tried. As long as we can distribute and run executables I don't really see this having much of an effect, and if Microsoft really starts trying to lock devs out of features they need, well, there's always Ubuntu.

I feel like this is a really bone headed move, when Valve is pushing the bounds of gaming on Linux Microsoft is doubling down on more "exclusive" platforming, because that went so bloody well last time. _cough_ gamesforwindows _cough_

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Polygon podcast [1] where Tim is interviewed about his article:

[1] [http://www.polygon.com/2016/3/4/11159584/tim-sweeney- windows...](http://www.polygon.com/2016/3/4/11159584/tim-sweeney- windows-10-monopoly-interview)

</comment><comment><USER46> The problem with an open distribution system is that it easy to abuse, and that leads to security problems. Most of us all know non-IT literate family members that have clicked through a web advert advertising to "speed up your computer" to end up installing some bad spyware/malware or whatever. I'm happy for Windows to become a walled garden by default, as long there's an easy option to switch it off.

<comment><USER47> I'm not. Every time a family member asks me to make a program to automate something they do regularly it always involves a call about how to disable SmartScreen and _always_ goes something like this:

> _Ok, so run the program. Yeah, I know it says your computer is protecting > you, just ignore that. Look for a little button that says "More info". No, > "More info". No, don't click OK. Ugh. Re-open the file. Ok, under that scary > sentence that you should ignore, there's a button that says "More info". > Click that. Ok, good. Click run anyway. Yes, I know it says it could be > unsafe, click it anyway._

You get the picture. It makes distributing little side projects you make a huge headache, which frankly is not something I see microsoft solving any time soon.

<comment><USER46> Not sure I follow. For distributing apps for friends you can (and I do) distribute using HockeyApp or TestFlight or whatever. There's also a Development->Sideload app feature in Windows 10 already. It's hard to argue that the cost of doing this outweighs the security benefits. Just think how hard it would be to do a DDoS attack without robots installed via malware everywhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Tim Sweeney is pissed at Microsoft for trying to do what Apple and Google already done on mobile devices.

<comment><USER49> and Microsoft on Xbox, and Sony on Playstation and Nintendo, and Sega, and ...

<comment><USER50> Tim has been tolerating crap from a bunch of people. But, being pissed about now getting even more crap from someone who has been a good friend for decades; That makes him a hypocrite?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> So much speculation in the article and in the comments.

I won't pretend I'm across the whole doomsday prophesy implied, but... a lot of the reason (not 100%, but a lot of the reason) why many gamers own a Windows PC is for Steam.

Okay, so I have no data to back that up except... lots of my younger cousins and nephews and their friends who beg their parents (and me) for a new graphics card so they can run this or that game. They are ALL on Steam, it's in their blood. They might do a bit of homework and multimedia stuff on their Windows boxes, but Steam is a major application, not least of because the social integration and features that run very deep within the Steam network.

Microsoft trying to ruin that party will be like Google trying to convince everyone Google Buzz is the social platform of the future. Barely a pebble in the pond rippled from that attempt, and Microsoft are no strangers to the art of pebble-throwing.

</comment><comment><USER52> This post is like Stockholm's Syndrome: "Oh Microsoft please don't close your platform. Because anyway we want to keep using it no matter what". You know, you could have chosen to mention Linux instead or keeping your hands tied. But no, Tim likes to be a prisoner.

</comment><comment><USER53> It seems like the real complaint is that Windows Store lock-in is bad (which might be the case for distributers, jury is out for me whether its bad for gamers).

Universal Windows Platform, however, is an API that is strictly better and safer in many cases. It means an app can run on phone and PC, be sandboxed, offers power and lifecycle management features which the Win32 API does not, and a generally saner API.

</comment><comment><USER54> This image caption struck me:

        Minecraft is developed by Swedish company Mojang.
        Will future games be developed now that Microsoft is closing its borders?

I hope this was added afterwards by the guardian. I'm pretty sure Tim wouldn't have missed the MS acquisition. You can bet anything Minecraft will be in the Windows Store.

<comment><USER55> 'Twould be a very bad bet against: [https://www.microsoft.com/en- US/store/apps/Minecraft-Pocket-...](https://www.microsoft.com/en- US/store/apps/Minecraft-Pocket-Edition/9WZDNCRDZSBB)

(MCPE, based in C++, appears to be intended to eventually take over as "the" Minecraft. It's behind feature-wise the Java version, but advancing relatively quickly lately.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> It looks like this is going to become a tipping point for which Vulkan and DirectX offer competing system calls for accessing a computer's GPU. The UWP being shown here will be essentially locking developers into using the DirectX library and drop future support for Vulkan against what users want to see in gaming as being platform-agnostic. Coming into this console generation, gamers wanted to see games from AAA publishers be able to come out on X1/PS4/PC faster because of similar system calls; such that code for one platform wouldn't require a total re-write to work on the others. MS is now wanting to lock out developers from using an open platform such that their calls will be different and "better" than those made by an open one.

</comment><comment><USER57> The day Microsoft kills Win32 is the day Windows dies.

<comment><USER13> Hence why they are working into packing Win32 apps as UWP ones.

Search for Project Centennial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Epic is just transitioning their Unreal launcher into a storefront. So they need to launch an attack on competitor. Similarly when Windows 8 launched Steam owner (Gabe Newell) also ranted against Windows store.

</comment><comment><USER59> A bit half arsed though..

They could have signing certificates that automatically timeout and force publishers to update often and then charge for the certification. Publishers can always get a little extra by paying for the "editor's pick" feature. Oh, and also, because users despise long downloads why not have a normal and premium download rate for both publishers and end users.

And leaving an off switch in there... I think someone got a chair in the head.

</comment><comment><USER60> Steam has a defacto monopoly for gaming on Windows and there are over 2000 games for Linux on Steam. So Microsoft would be foolish to try and restrict games to their own app store. That would be the end of Windows as a gaming platform. And given Microsoft's past efforts failing miserably it's unlikely whatever they come up with this time can win on its own.

</comment><comment><USER61> It's clear where this is going. Apple did it first, with rigid control of the IOS platform. Then Google gradually tightened the screws on Android apps. Now it's Microsoft's turn.

It's not just about games. It's about control of the app business. Apple won't let you sell an IOS app that competes with an Apple product. In time, neither will Microsoft.

<comment><USER4> Let's be clear: Apple and Google can do things that would be considered illegal if done by MS. Due to anti-trust regulations, these companies are playing by different rules.

<comment><USER61> Microsoft could reasonably claim they no longer have a monopoly position.

One could make a conspiracy in restraint of trade argument that Apple, Google, and Microsoft are acting collectively to control the app industry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Good for him, I hope others speak out as well.

</comment><comment><USER62> Tim has nothing to worry about. Microsoft was never a player in PC gaming and never will be. Steam is PC gaming. Microsoft has tried a couple of times to take on Steam and have failed spectacularly. Microsoft should either try and buy Steam (although Gabe would never sell) or embrace it.

<comment><USER63> Well, that's not entirely true. A decade ago Microsoft was a big player in PC gaming. Microsoft game studios made some big sellers like age of empires, mechwarrior, freelancer, etc, but was dismantled after their xbox initiative took off.

<comment><USER62> Considering the calibre of games that were released during that time frame Microsoft was never a big player in the industry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Isn't most of this because they also want the same apps to run on Xbox, Phone, Hololens, etc?

</comment><comment><USER65> My studio, Agile Perception, will be boycotting UWP. I'm glad Tim brought this to light. I was wondering whether or not our next project should include UWP. [https://agileperception.com](https://agileperception.com)

<comment><USER66> When will your next project be available on Linux and Mac OS X?

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> It's bad news when Tim Sweeney decries the very existence of your platform.

</comment><comment><USER68> Hopefully stronger push for Linux gaming will prevent this kind of thing.

</comment><comment><USER69> Microsoft is trying to monopolize an industry? Stop the presses!

I wish Microsoft never entered the video game industry in the first place. They made it worse for everyone for their own profit.

</comment><comment><USER70> Rings a bit hollow.

Easy solution - don't develop games for Windows or Xbox!

<comment><USER71> That's what sparked the creation of SteamOS. Let's hope developers get onboard and hardware vendors start (seriously) supporting the platform.

<comment> UK-AL Steam is pretty much what windows is trying to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Can't someone come up with an open-source Linux OS fork that is designed mainly for games?

Oh, wait... Valve is trying that. ;)

<comment><USER68> Any regular distro is quite usable for it. Valve just made a console UI. For desktop gaming it isn't useful really.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> I hope game devs remember the train wreck that was games for windows.

</comment><comment><USER66> Maybe the publishers should start publishing exclusively for sane PC platforms like Mac OS X and Linux instead of Windows. I believe that they can do all three via Steam though.

<comment><USER17> What do you mean by "sane?" From a technical standpoint, Windows is competitive and probably superior to Linux for desktop and portable applications. For server side, Windows is probably not the right choice.

And as for OSX... if you express this concern about Microsoft's app platform but not Apple's encroachment on their (poorly managed) app platform? You're being unfair and letting prejudices and populism blind you to the issue.

And all of this ignores that the most important computing platforms, the ones on mobile handsets? They're impossibly locked down and no one seems to care.

<comment><USER74> What does this article have to do with the Mac App Store? You can easily disable gatekeeper by right-clicking on a pkg. I don't see any similar mechanism on Windows 10, and anyway, the article is discussing how UWP would lock down APIs for _developers_ , which leads to an overall adverse selection situation for game consumers.

And it's laughable that you think Windows 10 is even remotely comparable to Linux for "portable applications". How are Win32 executables portable at all? They don't even work between versions of Windows. Win32 API is still a mess and pretty much everything about Windows is not standards compliant.

<comment><USER17> This complaint is that at any moment, Microsoft might add a feature that only UWP gets. It's not like you can't run unsigned apps on Windows either. Hell, you can run unsigned UWP apps too! You just need to enable developer mode.

Apple has this exact same facility in the Mac app store. And has an even tighter lockdown on the iOS store which we all mysteriously pretend is different somehow because reasons and 30somethings nostalgia.

Linux on portable devices such as laptops is a comedy of errors, failed device driver support, excuses, and politics breaking battery life.

If you say otherwise, you have much lower standards than I do for a modern laptop.

> How are Win32 executables portable at all? They don't even work between > versions of Windows

... Wait. Wait... I just read this. What? I have DOS executables that still work in windows, let alone very old win32 api executables. Do Linux executables work somewhere else besides Linux without someone bending over backwards to support them (e.g., FreeBSD?).

<comment><USER66> Those DOS binaries work on Linux with DOSBox. The Linux binaries also work on SmartOS (OpenSolaris).

<comment><USER17> I know that options exist, but uh... I mean Wine doesn't count?

It's more the absurd claim that Win32 as an API hasn't made good nods towards backwards compatibility. It has.

<comment><USER66> DOSBox is a separate project from Wine. It has also been said that DOSBox backward compatibility is better than cmd.exe on recent versions of Windows.

That being said, Linux can run old binaries just fine. You just need the libraries. Windows does not have a stable syscall API, so that cannot as easily be done with Windows. As for win32, Sun tried to standardize the Windows API during the DOS days to ensure backward compatibility, but Microsoft killed it.

<comment><USER17> I'm still not sure how this interjection is relevant to the conversation at hand, but thank you for the interesting information.

From what I can tell, you're executing a playbook based on prejudices and not an actual argument. Is OSX less arbitrary in its UI or less locked down? Could it be that developers HAVE to accept Apple's locked down game environment for iOS because it's the only platform that does a good job of combating game piracy? Is the Android App Store actually any better in this regard?

Maybe. Maybe not. But all I see here is a very biased set of standards. Windows 10's App store is far less important to the industry than the iOS store in the large, as far more software moves through it.

I'm actually hoping for a good discussion of why people are comfortable with the iOS store beyond, "I have historical reasons to hate Microsoft but not Apple." I clearly will not get that from you.

<comment><USER66> The article is about desktop gaming. The reason epic is upset is that Microsoft is making new APIs UWP-exclusive, although I had to read more things to learn that, They feel that Microsoft is pulling the rug out from under them. The reason they are not upset about anything Apple is doing is that Apple does not restrict APIs to its Mac OS X App Store. They really do not care about iOS because it was locked down from the beginning (as were mobile devices in general), so there is no rug to pull out from under them.

Windows has always been a mediocre platform. I was really happy when I got off it because I no longer had to deal with reboots for updates, disk fragmentation, viruses/malware, micro-managing software updates, yearly reinstalls to get cruft off the system, everything I install thinking it is so important it should autostart (which is really a problem of being able to execute code during the installation process), etcetera. Prople who suffer from Stockholm syndrome over the abuse they have from running Windows think such things are a normal part of having a computer, but they are not. Sane platforms do not have such problems and Windows is just not a sane platform.

As for "I have historical reasons to hate Microsoft and not Apple", it is the opposite. By the time that I obtained my first computer (running Windows), Apple's colorful iMacs looked like children's toys and before that time, I had been traumatized by parents who tried to pass off children's toys as computers. Apple's ridiculous hardware designs combined with my experience of my parents' outright lies lead me to believe that Apple was trying to replace actual computers with inferior substitutes that looked pretty. Until Mac OS X, that was not far from the truth, but I did not know that at the time and developed a deep seated hatred of them. Things slowly changed over the years as I began to see the technical merit in what Apple had done, first with iOS after I found Android to be s terrible OS design and then with Mac OS X fr it being a POSIX system like Linux and being Darwin like iOS. That being said, hatred just is not a healthy thing and any dislike I have for any vendor's software is not worth harming my health by doing something as silly as hating them. I already went down that path once with Apple for irrational reasons. There really is no reason for me to go down that path again.

As for iOS, you are trying to get a discussion over iOS from the wrong person. The right person should be yourself, but if you cannot see what is wrong with the other options on the market, then there probably is no one who can explain it to you. iOS design is great (e.g. no garbage collection outside JavaScript, no annoying app drawer, no noticeable UI lag that gives me headaches, consistent UI design, etcetera). It is an excellent stand-in for WebOS until the day that I get a sane Linux distribution (i.e. proper package management, no Java, X Windows, etcetera) running on smartphone hardware that I like. Given that I have my hands full with non-mobile platforms (laptops excluded), that will probably be a very long time.

<comment><USER17> > The article is about desktop gaming. The reason epic is upset is that > Microsoft is making new APIs UWP-exclusive, although I had to read more > things to learn that,

Citation, please. Sweeney's tweets implied this was the hypothetical. So either Tim is under NDA and being coy, or something else.

But the simply fact is: I do not disagree with Apple & Microsoft & Google doing this to their platforms, so long as a reasonably accessible side-loading option exists and there's always the opportunity for a third party store and appropriate facilities for developers.

We're at a point where there are no more options to protect people's computers other than code signing. We've tried a lot of things, and we've reached a point where we must concede that education and simple restrictions on binary execution _cannot overcome the basic difficulties users have_. All the app sandboxing in the world won't help us if users are fooled by sub-optimal UX into running malware.

And Malware exists on every major platform. Even OSX. Even iOS.

> The reason they are not upset about anything Apple is doing is that Apple > does not restrict APIs to its Mac OS X App Store.

This is absolutely false. Apple not only labels several APIs as "private" and non-accessible, but it also creates rules for entire _types_ of software. They even stop arbtirary updating mechanisms because of their review path, which then impacts users! What's more, there _is no untrusted general distribution path for iOS_. I don't know why you said this, as I can't find any way to interpret it.

And don't even get me started on how Apple mandates how you transact with users. I'm amazed its legal, but in the US vendors have always had ice water dumped on them by every new technology. It's about our contempt for creatives, a cultural norm Apple has expressed for a long time.

And don't say the desktop OS is a dodge. The situation with Apple's store and Microsoft's store is _absolutely identical_ , except that on OSX, so many developers are unhappy with the store they've decided to take the risk and ask users to disable that protection.

So, Apple locks its _entire_ API set to its store on iOS. Unless you're going to ask customers to jailbreak their phone, you have no options other than setting up a developer environment.

I was going to go through your second two paragraphs of value judgements and fisk them a bit, but honestly I don't see the point. You're dismissing a lot of accomplishments of a lot of people out of what looks to me like pure preference and not an informed assessment of the situation. It doesn't take much research to find out that Apple's iOS is generally considered the worst of the 3 mobile platforms for modern mobile UX, with its only saving grave being a slightly superior accessibility story over Android.

Which is natural and fine, but maybe couching your argument in terms of technical reasoning is not the best way to express your point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> Long live Win32 and Linux!

</comment><comment><USER76> Epic (in the context of Windows and software) is an electronic medical records company in Wisconsin. Might want to specify that this is Epic Games; that was confusing at first.

<comment><USER77> I would guess that if asked about "Epic" in the context of software, _most_ people would guess Epic Games, and not the EMR company.

<comment><USER76> Really? Epic Games has 160 employees according to Wikipedia; Epic Systems has ~10,000.

I do happen to have worked in healthcare IT though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> Nice photo caption fail: "Minecraft is developed by Swedish company Mojang. Will future games be developed now that Microsoft is closing its borders?"

In the light of: [https://mojang.com/2014/09/yes-were-being-bought-by- microsof...](https://mojang.com/2014/09/yes-were-being-bought-by-microsoft/)

</comment><comment><USER79> Url changed from [http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/03/tim-sweeney-to- microso...](http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/03/tim-sweeney-to-microsoft- universal-windows-platform-can-should-must-and-will-die/), which points to this.

</comment><comment><USER80> Meta: HN's title could stand to be less vague. Not everyone knows who Tim Sweeney is. Readers might confuse him with Tim Cook!

<comment><USER31> I am confident that almost nobody on HN will confuse Tim Sweeney for Tim Cook. Also, this is similar to lingo usage, not everyone will know what PHP is, but that doesn't mean we should start adding wikipedia definitions into the titles. People who are unaware can do some research to find out, and the rest of us won't be subjected to annoyingly verbose titles. Additionally in this specific case the first sentence of the article explains who Tim Sweeney is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> I couldn't get past the first paragraph. The FUD is strong with this article.

<comment><USER82> How would you know if you only read the first paragraph?

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> Maybe it wasn't a good idea of them to support the gaming monoculture called Windows for the last 20 years.

<comment><USER84> They haven't. For the past 10+ years, MS hasn't seriously cared about gaming on Windows, because Xbox.

<comment><USER85> DirectX 10, 11, and 12 all came out in the last 10 years. All had significant improvements over each previous one. MS has spent millions on making windows _the_ high end gaming platform.

<comment><USER84> But in the 10 years before that, DirectX went from idea to version 9 (which was pretty good). Their PC game development almost stopped 10 years ago. Ever wonder where Age of Empires and Halo on Windows went? Xbox needed more resources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> At the end of the day, Win10 is a mobile OS with some legacy desktop support. I think once we see it for what it is, we'll be more comfortable with it. Does this guy from Epic have a problem with publishing these games to iphone/ipad? The game changed pretty quickly and Nadella has no interest in re-creating Win7 or going back to Desktop OS's and open-ish platforms. This is the new reality for MS, good or bad. Personally, I'm not happy with it, but I think people should be aware of what it means to upgrade to Win10 and be part of the modern MS ecosystem.

edit: really 4 downvotes? Care to tell me what is wrong in my comment. Are you guys really defending Win10 and Nadella here? This is his vision - iOS-like system on the desktop and that 30% app revenue. Being cognizant of that should be a positive.

<comment><USER87> Why should we be more comfortable because it's a mobile OS? I don't really understand why that suddenly makes locked down proprietary systems OK?

I do agree, the time to complain about this was 7 years ago when Apple did it (as I did at the time). The horse has now long bolted and we might as well consign ourselves to living in a world where making money from software consists of assigning 30% of revenue to a rent seeking landlord. We can expect the opportunities to do otherwise to narrow down to zero over the next 10 years. It's not good, but it's a decision everyone made collectively 7 years ago while drooling over iPads and iPhones.

<comment><USER88> Microsoft isn't rent-seeking with Windows 10. They are attempting to build a secure and trusted platform, just like Apple did with iOS. That platform and the store for the platform are valuable. I applaud them for moving in this direction and applaud them some more for doing it without sacrificing the openness of Win32 on the PC (at least for now).

<comment><USER39> The Windows Store has been stuffed full of fake apps trading off the names of other, genuine big-name apps with various levels of malicious content for years. It's definitely rent-seeking, and not in any way a "secure and trusted platform".

<comment><USER88> Your proving my point. When the store was first launched it did have a problem with misleading apps. But today those problems are far less. MS tweaked their submission policies and tossed the misleading app. That shows continued work on the trust and security of the store, a value add, and thus not rent- seeking.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Raspberry Pi gets a Firefox OS port - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/raspberry-pi-gets-a-firefox-os-port-20120816/

<comment><USER2> With any windowing system running so slow, how will porting all that to JavaScript improve matters?

However let's turn that the other way: One of the Pi's cooler features is its digital I/O's. Will this mean they'll add GPIO support to Firefox OS then? And maybe to Firefox, too?

"This web site wants to control your hand-soldered peripherals. [Allow] [Don't allow]" - Cool!

<comment><USER3> I didn't notice any part of that being "so slow". Sure, the system UI isn't quite as snappy as it could be, but Mozilla has several months to work on it. Usually most of the visible performance optimizations happen near then end, and I bet they'll get it pretty smooth.

<comment><USER4> Indeed, the Android port is actually faster than my phone.

<comment><USER5> The actual Broadcom port of 4.0? I haven't seen anywhere that it's actually available to acquire (which is too bad, because it would be quite useful for the project I'm working on).

<comment><USER4> Well, I meant from the video the developer put up - I'd love to get a hold of it too (would like to try splitting HDMI and putting Android over many).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice. Another nice board to run on is the Panda Board. See [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Mozilla/Boot_to_Gec...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Mozilla/Boot_to_Gecko/Pandaboard)

It is a popular board at Mozilla to do development and testing on.

<comment><USER7> I dunno, you can buy 5 $35 raspberry pis for the price of one $200 pandaboard. $200 approaches the territory of being plausibly enough to build or purchase a full PC.

<comment><USER8> I was quite disappointed in my RPi buying experience, living in the US. I'm still waiting for it to arrive (despite preordering the minute the sites came back online). They notified me that it was being shipped a couple weeks ago, told me that shipping would be about 12 weeks. The exchange rate threw me for a heck of a shock, with my RPi costing about $50 minus shipping.

The RPi might be the soup du jour, but it's an incredibly frustrating device to get your hands on. At least the Pandaboard can be placed in my hands; for all I know the RPi might not even exist at all.

<comment><USER9> Wow, where did you order yours?

I have 2 of them, one each from the 2 places taking preorders on day 1 and I wasn't first in line or anything. I got both of mine about the middle of June and they didn't cost any more than expected.

<comment><USER8> I got mine from RS, preordered the week it went on sale. My cousin ordered his a month later and got it last month. 12 week shipping to the midwest. Crazy.

<comment><USER10> I orderer from RS in the first week and got it months ago for a total cost of $41 including shipping to Israel.

<comment><USER8> The price difference is due to 35GBP = 55USD currently. To quote the email I received: "Delivery Type Desc Standard Delivery (Despatch expected within 12 week(s))"

<comment><USER10> Right, but the theoretical price of a pi is 35USD, not 35GBP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That glass skull demo was pretty damn impressive. I don't think my primary computer 5 years ago could have rendered it that well.</comment>


We need a licence to print our own money - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/20/george-monbiot-recession-currencies <comment><USER2> Lietaer's book contains some economic nonsense, but for the most part it's a very compelling argument. The examples drawn from history are especially powerful.

But perhaps the best argument against the usefulness of alternative currencies is that they exist, but no one uses them. There are some modest successes, such as Ithaca Hours (<http://www.ithacahours.org/>) and there are probably some LETS systems that work, but that's about it.

In an extreme liquidity crisis, such as the Great Depression was, they were great success, but I doubt we'll ever see that kind of crisis again. We have far more tools for preventing extreme liquidity droughts now than we did then.

<comment><USER3> I'm pretty sure that alternative currencies are illegal in the united states -- wasn't their a big fiasco with the FBI raiding the people making liberty dollars?

I think this makes it illegal: <http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/514.html>

Also, there may be tax issues. If you have an alternative currency and the us dollar is inflated do you have to pay capital gains taxes on the growth in value of the alternative currency?

There are also probably issues with money laundering -- in other words I don't think we can say that they exist, without a caveat about the legal limbo in which they exist.

<comment><USER2> They're definitely not illegal, although certain forms are illegal. That law only covers attempts to create currencies that could be mistaken for US dollars. Other systems are illegal because they amount to an unregulated form of banking, or because they are used for laundering.

For tax: it depends on the currency in question. Barter systems that use a currency to settle barter accounts are taxed as normal income. Systems such as Time Dollars are considered tax free because they are used for non-commercial activities (<http://www.timebanks.org/faqs.htm#taxexempt>).

In China, there exists at least one system that is considered tax-exempt, except when the currency is exchanged for real currency, in which case it is subject to tax.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This point isn't anything new. I sent this over to my economist girlfriend and here was her response:

<http://www.econgirl.com/1/post/2009/01/first-post.html>

The question of local currencies is interesting, but no matter what happens the consumer will have to pay for it in the form of increased inflation.

<comment><USER2> Actually, she said it would cause inflation only if the central bank also successfully increases the money supply at the same time. I think Monbiot is suggesting this as an alternative to that, rather than something to occur simultaneously.

It's also worth pointing out that although central banks will always be able to produce the necessary liquidity, they have to take ever greater risks to do so. At the extreme, they could purchase each and every public and private bond in the economy, but then they expose themselves to the risk of default on those loans, which could result in severe future inflation. If they are unwilling to do this, then they will not be able to stop deflation. So although they _can_ stop deflation, it's not clear that they will.

Perhaps the most unfortunate thing about Monbiot's article is that he sees alternative currencies simply as a means to fight deflation, but Lietaer saw them as a way to create social capital. The benefit of a negative interest rate mutual credit currency is that it encourages a gift economy, rather than a competitive economy, and therefore builds social ties as well as financial wealth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> He forgot the most important reason that governments and central banks don't allow these things to exist. They can't be reliably and universally taxed.

<comment><USER2> Generally speaking, these schemes are not illegal.

<comment><USER5> While not technically illegal, (here and now) the article mentions several historical instances of the creations of such systems and their subsequent abolitions by central banks and governments.

In any case, the tax issue is a hairy problem that has to be dealt with whenever these systems are set up. They will not be allowed to exist tax free.

<comment><USER2> They exist here and now and are generally counted either as income from a tax perspective, or tax free, depending on the system and the country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This exists already to some degree already - it's called a gift card, although gift cards are missing an important element of being able to be traded at multiple places.

This is interesting to read, but I don't think it will work. First, forcing people to spend seems immoral, second his "negative interest" is called inflation, and it already exists in ordinary currency.

Presumably stores will be able to redeem the scrip for regular money right? So I can just imagine a store allowing currency exchanges, pay a small fee (less than the monthly fee) and get real money.

The whole thing doesn't seem right to me. And I think the examples don't prove anything - I bet those recoveries would have worked if they used regular money, and on top of that cities can issue IOU's right now, which effectively do the same thing.

And finally the economic problems are global, not local, fixing things locally might not do enough.

<comment><USER2> Variations on these schemes are already successful. Examples include:

Time Dollars: <http://www.timebanks.org/>

Ithaca Hours: <http://ithacahours.org/>

Tlaloc: <http://www.vidadigna.info/index.htm>

The difference between negative interest and inflation is that the interest rate can be set by fiat (whereas inflation can be uncontrollable) and the value of one unit of the currency stays stable, so contracts written now are still meaningful in the future.

Also, no one is forced to spend, you are simply taxed for holding a non-zero balance, just as you are with a normal loan (or normal inflation, if you are in credit).

As for the examples from history: all the examples Monbiot cites are those where the normal currency has collapsed or is suffering severe deflation. So regular money was clearly not a solution in those edge cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> PayPal, SecondLife, and other online payment startups have all at one time dreamed about printing a government-free independent virtual currency. The problems are that 1) the existing government really doesn't like that and 2) it's been too easy to abuse and devalue the virtual currency when it's exchangeable for any other recognized currency, destroying your internal economy (and business) to benefit aggressive virtual currency traders.

</comment><comment><USER8> My 10 year old self would have had no objections at all about working for arcade token wages. I think the author is onto something.</comment>


Ask HN: How to run a rails web crawler on aws - <AUTHOR>

Could someone be nice enough to point me in the right direction? I've got my web crawler working locally but now I want to put it onto an ec2 instance; however, I have no idea where to start.<p>Thanks! <comment><USER2> Setting up Rails projects to run in production is my specialty. :-) Some people love it, some hate it, but it's a good chance to learn some Linux and sysadmin skills.

I'd advise you to do it sloppy the first time. Don't worry about configuration management, containers, and all that stuff, just learn how to set up the system. So things you'll have to do:

\- Set up a `deployer` user account. (Actually I like to name these after the application they're responsible for.)

\- Install rbenv and your Ruby of choice.

\- Install nginx or Apache.

\- Install a Rails app server. I like Unicorn, but if you go with Phusion Passenger there's not a separate process to manage---it just launches via your web server.

\- Install your database and give it some initial contents.

\- Add Capistrano to your Gemfile, write a cap script, get it working.

\- Since you say this is a web crawler I assume background jobs are important. So if you're using Resque or Sidekiq you'll need to install Redis.

For bonus points:

\- If you have cron jobs, use `whenever` so they get configured every time you run `cap`.

\- Install SSL.

\- Install fail2ban.

\- Use unicorn instead of passenger.

\- Use a process manager like god (which is ruby-based) to control unicorn and your background jobs. Btw if you do this, your cap tasks for restarting unicorn, delayed_job, etc. should change to just `sudo god restart myapp- unicorn`, not the direct commands.

\- Use chef-solo (also ruby-based) so you don't have to do it all by hand next time. :-) Tip: to save time, run this against a vagrant VM until you get the bugs out.

\- Start playing with more bits of the AWS ecosystem, e.g. add an ELB. Run everything in a VPC instead of "EC2 Classic". Use CloudFormation to launch instances and kick off Chef automatically (using chef-server instead of chef- solo)---or try out OpsWorks, but IMO it's a bit beta. Use RDS.

Good luck, and have fun!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much :)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Solitext. Send yourself text message reminders throughout the day - <AUTHOR> https://www.solitext.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Last night I finished a project I've been working on in my spare time. It's a web app where you can set up a group of messages, and get one of those messages texted to you at scheduled times. I use it to remind myself of things that are important but I tend to forget throughout the day.

While at work, I might get "Writes lots of tests" or "Go for short walks". Every night at 11, my phone buzzes with "Get lots of sleep". I wrote it as a script about a month ago, and have found it surprisingly valuable. Now I've finished a web app so other people can use it too.

Lessons learned:

I'm finally decent at estimating time for projects. I can do that by breaking it into the smallest pieces I can, remembering the longest it's taken me to do that sort of task (not the shortest) and then doubling it (to account for missed stuff). That seems to be about right.

Writing an MVP script for myself was huge. I did that in about 3 hours and this project has taken more like 50. Having something useful already was very motivating and I learned a lot over the month. I hardcoded everything (the schedule, the text, my phone number) into that first script just to get something working. I was able to reuse the shuffling code, so it wasn't totally scrapped.

 __Stack __

Python 3 (Used pipenv for the first time and I'd highly recommend it)

Django 1.11

Postgres

Bootstrap

jQuery

 __Providers __

Hosting: Heroku

Code: GitHub

DNS: EasyDNS

Bug Reporting: Sentry

Texting: Twilio

Bootstrap Theme: Lumen by Bootswatch

Home image: MockuPhone

So, give it a try and let me know how you like it!

[https://www.solitext.com/](https://www.solitext.com/)</comment>


Are we raising a generation which doesn't care about privacy? - <AUTHOR> Are we raising a generation which doesn't care about privacy? <comment><USER2> I find that there is a certain casual helplessness in the tone of most people - not just youngsters - when they talk about how much governments and corporations actually know about them. I would say there are primarily two camps/ schools of thought on the topic: the first believing that privacy does not matter, and the second - while assigning privacy a certain value - thinking it a lost cause.</comment>


Startups, Role Models, Risk, and Y Combinator - <AUTHOR> http://blog.samaltman.com/startups-role-models-risk-and-y-combinator <comment><USER3> Call me cynical, but I tripped over this paragraph:

> _For example, when Adora Cheung was starting Homejoy, she would work all day > as a cleaner to learn the business, drive an hour back to Mountain View, > stay up as late as she could coding, then drive back to San Francisco at > ~3am to beat traffic, sleep in her car, and do it again. She also gave both > her apartment and her car to early cleaners so that they could partner up > with Homejoy. We don't want to delude anyone about what running a startup is > like—it's a rational decision to decide you don't want to start a startup._

What I read here is the idea that the only way to do a startup is no sleep (except a few hours in a car) and no life. 100% of your time is startup, startup, startup.

Who profits most from cultivating this image? The startup founder or the VC?

I seldomly see current founders / executives say that this is how they lead their lives, but somehow, VCs (like Altman) keep squeezing this image into their blog posts somehow.

I don't think it's some kind of evil plot, and I like the rest of the post: it's good to be reminded that everybody started somewhere and nobody's great from the start. But I just don't believe that you can't be a successful founder and still have a life/family/healthy lifestyle.

<comment><USER4> _But I just don 't believe that you can't be a successful founder and still have a life/family/healthy lifestyle._

You _can_ be successful in any number of odd scenarios but that is not the norm. It is not hard to prove: if you talked to any founder that led the creation of a billion dollar enterprise from nothing, you will find an endless stream of stories such as Adora's.

One of the things people fail to understand is that when you are embarking on an ambitious venture, the goal post keeps moving _all the time_. When you start out, you think that at a million dollar revenue, you'll be golden. Then you hit the million and now the goal post has moved to ten million dollars. And then something happens that completely threatens your whole business. Now you find yourself not just trying to grow revenue but save the entire business.

In this situation, how much time you find for life/family/health will vary from founder to founder but as a rule, it is good to go in assuming the answer is "not much".

<comment><USER5> > You can be successful in any number of odd scenarios but that is not the > norm. It is not hard to prove: if you talked to any founder that led the > creation of a billion dollar enterprise from nothing, you will find an > endless stream of stories such as Adora's.

Starting with the exceptions, and not the rule, can lead to distorted perceptions. Building a billion dollar enterprise _is not the normal outcome_ for most founders. It _is_ the "odd" scenario.

There's nothing wrong with modeling your entrepreneurial journey after those of billion-dollar founders, but the "go big or go home" path is not the only option for entrepreneurs starting a business.

It is entirely possible to start a multi-million dollar business and still have a life, and I'd encourage more entrepreneurs to talk to self-employed millionaires (there are a lot of them) than read Forbes articles about tech's most visible billionaires.

<comment><USER4> _It is entirely possible to start a multi-million dollar business and still have a life_

Yes, but anyone that knows the author and his business should also know that his post isn't addressed to those looking to make nice profitable businesses. The author has a very specific audience of people seeking funding and wanting to build large companies. His post appropriately addresses them; it isn't written that much for people whose ultimate motivation is to build a self- sufficient profitable million dollar business.

 _Building a billion dollar enterprise is not the normal outcome for most founders. It is the "odd" scenario._

Being _successful_ at building the billion dollar business is the odd scenario in this case; attempting to build it is the norm. That most fail is just proof of how hard it is.

<comment><USER5> > The writer has a very specific audience of people seeking funding and > wanting to build large companies.

First, every "large" company was once a "small" company. You don't get to $100 million in revenue without first getting to $1 million in revenue. Focusing on the former milestone before the latter is silly.

Second, while I respect your point, it's important to look at actions, not words. Early-stage investors in Silicon Valley talk a lot about the type of businesses they want to fund, but spend half an hour browsing Crunchbase, AngelList, etc. A ton of the companies with seed funding (perhaps the majority) have very little chance of growing into the types of businesses their investors say they're looking to be involved with.

Finally, in response to your edit that attempting to build billion-dollar businesses is the norm: you can only come to such a belief if you have firmly ensconced yourself in the Silicon Valley startup scene. Countless new businesses are formed around the country each year and the people who create them, most of whom don't have billion-dollar delusions, are just as much "founders" as the broke 20-something making the rounds on Sand Hill Road.

<comment><USER4> _Focusing on the former milestone before the latter is silly._

Just because a company has billion dollar ambitions does not mean it isn't focused on the first million dollars. What remains true is that the first million can be just as hard(if not harder) as the other big jumps.

It is easy to play armchair VC and think we know what will and won't turn into a billion dollar business. If you have seen the Bessemer anti-portfolio, even Apple, Google and Intel were far from no-brainer investments([http://www.bvp.com/portfolio/antiportfolio](http://www.bvp.com/portfolio/antiportfolio)).

So what matters is not so much that AngelList is full of companies that will never be billion dollar businesses. What matters is that among those companies are billion dollar companies and every investment represents a bet by a group of folks.

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately you're focused too much on the investor, and not on the entrepreneur.

Investors have the luxury of spraying and praying because they primarily invest capital; founders, whose investment consists of time and opportunity cost, don't have this luxury. In simple terms, your investors have _n_ lottery tickets, and you have one.

Statistically, as a founder, you are not likely to build a billion dollar business. That is worth repeating, often. Pretending that your odds are better than they really are and working yourself into the ground because Silicon Valley culture has convinced you that it's the only way is foolish.

Which leads to my final point: if you're an entrepreneur, it's worth thinking long and hard about the path you take. If you're convinced that your ambitions should be measured in 9 and 10 figures and you are enticed by the funding game, you're often not just unnecessarily sacrificing your quality of life, you may be sacrificing the potential to build a successful 7 or 8 figure business.

<comment><USER4> _Finally, in response to your edit that attempting to build billion-dollar businesses is the norm: you can only come to such a belief if you have firmly ensconced yourself in the Silicon Valley startup scene._

You misunderstood me. I never said shooting for billion dollar businesses is the norm _across the country_ but rather in the context of startups, particularly those that YC is most interested in funding.

I'm not debating or necessarily even disagree with what you are saying about founders and their chances of success. But that is not what we are debating here.

The primary debate here is whether Sam Altman's post to _his audience_ makes the right point about _his message_. I think it does.

<comment><USER5> I think I get it. What you're saying is that YCombinator's target audience is highly intelligent individuals, savvy enough to spot untapped market opportunities and capable enough to have a chance at exploiting them, but who are either too lazy to look at the IPO and M&A data or aren't very good at statistics?

Personally, I find it hard to believe that every YCombinator-backed founder believes he's chasing a billion-dollar opportunity, but maybe I'm delusional.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My experience at repeatedly starting companies is not that taking risk for yourself is hard -- if you have simple taste, enjoy coding and are articulate enough to identify a problem and conceive a solution… There is no reason to be, really. I mean: sitting on your ass wondering what to do is pretty much what anyone looking for a job does after _that_ phone-call, and no one has described job seekers as heroes, certainly not developers.

What still scares the be-jeezus out of me, and anyone I've met is getting someone else involved, pretending that you know your thing and making them, innocent travel companions, crash with you, unaware that it's all shadows and illusion. I'm assuming that's why psychopaths are so good at that stage: they can hire ten people that they can't pay, and not care for the life of them that their baby won't have formula to eat in two months. (I've seen that with my own eyes. Spoiler alert: it cries.)

I am not surprised that HomeJoy founder gave her home to those first helpers: with an ounce of human decency, that must have felt like a tenth of the bare minimum she was asking from them. That discomfort must have been less that the inhumane hours. Good on her, and great for her.

The fact that Sam Altman fails to see that the problem is generally others scares me.

<comment><USER7> this is one of the many reasons we advise startups not to hire during YC. most startups we work with wait to hire until they have raised enough money to make it reasonably safe to join them.

and employees should always ask a startup how much runway they have. if they won't tell you, it's a big red flag.

<comment><USER6> Thank you so much for answering. Employees are the big point, but I have seen that fear even towards non-employees: dependent family members, partners…

As someone who's been burned (hard) by asking that question and trusting the answer many times (Fool me once…), I see as a huge opportunity an audit company that could answer that question accurately, and reasonably well for early start-up: before and after hiring you and the all the profiles being considered.

<comment><USER8> Ask to talk to one of the company's investors if you aren't sure the founder is being upfront about runway. They should have a good handle on the company's cash position (and if they don't, that might be a yellow flag).

<comment><USER6> Not sure how the relation with investors is in the US, but I can't imagine them even considering that in any company that I joined. In hindsight, it was a red flag, but I assume there is a cultural gap there.

<comment><USER8> Depends on stage of company, but for my company (Series A, Bay Area, ~25 employees), we'd be happy to connect anyone with a job offer with our lead investor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > The only thing you have to know how to do is build something people want.

"Build something people want" is a popular mantra, but notwithstanding the fact that many entrepreneurs overestimate the potential demand for their product or service, it oversimplifies what's actually required to build a company that's likely to be successful.

In the consumer market, translating popularity into dollars sufficient to support a sustainable business can be very hard. It's easy to look at companies like Snapchat, but most startups will not become so popular that they can obtain the type of funding that allows them to significantly delay the implementation of a revenue strategy. Monetizing a modestly popular consumer property that can support more than a handful of employees is still very, very difficult.

In the B2B market, creating a successful business requires that you build something people want (or, more preferably, need), that you can sell and sell at a profit, and in sufficient volume. B2B sales can be difficult and slow, even if you have a great sales team and a great product, and the cost of sale can be much higher than you anticipate. If you do crack the sales puzzle in a profitable manner, scaling sales to the point at which you actually have a real business is a hurdle many startups never get past.

If you look beyond the top 1% startups, you'll quickly find that Silicon Valley is littered with stagnant startups that are based on seemingly good ideas and that might even elicit comments like "I would use that!" But they're not "wanted" enough to get from _great idea_ to _great business_.

None of this means creating a company is a bad idea, but starting the journey with the "build something people want" mantra in mind, and little else, is more often than not a path to disappointment than success.

</comment><comment><USER9> "The only thing you have to know how to do is build something people want."

I have actually found this to be the most difficult thing - a lack of ideas that turn out to be wanted by other people.

<comment><USER10> The most difficult thing in a startup is whatever your next big hurdle is.

Ultimately, yes, you need to build something people want - a lot.

But there are a series of hurdles along the way ranging from finding a co- founder/team, building the product, raising investment, acquiring users, monetization, etc.

I always used to think that future problems are _good to have_. It's true that they're good to have since it means you've crossed the previous hurdle. But they're just as difficult, if not more difficult, than prior hurdles.

This is why the mental model for startups is so important. You really do have to be relentless despite the numerous hurdles which will be placed in front of you.

<comment><USER9> Yes, you are correct. I wasn't clear in that I was talking about my current hurdle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Long time back I had posed a question on "Ask PG" \- that how come PG does not go out and do a startup(after his initial one)? My aim was to ask if doing startup is such a "must to do" thing for certain kind of folks, then he should be doing it again, and again (and not stop after the first one and then start advising only). While I never got a direct answer to that one, he did answer this in another forum the same thing - which basically boiled down to - <USER2> doing startup is too much work, and he does not want spend his time doing that. I really do think, that doing startup is not such a sexy thing as it is portrayed it to be. I feel it is another of those things in life, where primary reason for most folks for doing a startup is that you will seem more "important" a person, after you have a successful startup. Otherwise you are just an ordinary dude with 9-5 job. I truly wonder how many folks actually do it because it is more fun and adventure, than pain and stress(most of the time). Or if the real reasons for doing startup are ever examined.

<comment><USER12> A similar story may be having kids. I'm pretty sure that most parents, of 18 year olds in college, if asked "why don't you have some more kids" would answer: "its too much work! (now)". But that is a different comment and context than asking someone who has never had kids. Some people are "serial entrepreneurs", but many aren't and that's OK. It's actually probably a good thing. Creativity (for new biz ideas) is a bit spiky and non-linear. Many serial entreprenuers are merely trend-spotters, not (0,1) type innovators. The number of the people with multiple ideas of great calibre is very, very small. Even when considered in relation to the number of founders with successful exits (already small). So you should not expect in any way for this to be the norm, IMHO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Although I understand this is a post by sama & for YC, I don't think that YC should be the reason you do a startup. That's what the article seemed to be insinuating to me. The hustle needed is just as impressive, if not more so, than the successful results we see.

</comment><comment><USER14> One thing I like about YC is that you'll are honest about a lot of things and invest to help the founders and company grow . However I've found out that people are the least optimistic about success in the valley . Then why the compulsion of having to move there.

P.S - I'm not a YC graduate but a startup aficionado

</comment><comment><USER15> "We fund companies at all stages, from just the faintest idea to post-Series B"

Does this mean that (i) YC will continue to invest in it companies up through their later rounds, or (ii) that YC will actually participate in a Series B for a company that it had no prior connection with?

<comment><USER16> I think what he meant to say is that YC accepts applications from companies at all stages. Once accepted to YC, all companies are given the exact same funding deal.

<comment><USER17> If that's the case, I think that limits YC to reasonably early stage (pre- series A) or near-death companies. It's perfectly rational to give 6% to YC of a very early company. It's almost surely plus-EV to do that.

A successful company about to close a series-B? Much, much harder to imagine how YC would be plus-EV at that point.</comment></comment></comment>


Modules Matter Most (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://existentialtype.wordpress.com/2011/04/16/modules-matter-most/ <comment><USER2> What a lovely post! Still true.

Another great post that he links to is Persistence of Memory ([https://existentialtype.wordpress.com/2011/04/09/persistence...](https://existentialtype.wordpress.com/2011/04/09/persistence- of-memory/)) where he talks about persistent and ephemeral data structures, and gives a convincing argument for the former.

</comment><comment><USER3> Written by Robert Harper, a major contributor to Standard ML.</comment>


Huawei is about to unveil the Mate 30 without Google services - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/19/tech/huawei-mate-30-pro-launch/index.html <comment><USER2> The biggest issue this highlights is that all the power is concentrated at the Google Play Store, which turns out to be a state-controlled monopoly.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you believe is true even though you can't prove it? - <AUTHOR>

In the last ~week we've have a number of religion/belief/lack-thereof posts, this question is simple extrapolation.
As said in the title, the question is: "What do you believe is true even though you can't prove it?"
Maybe you can explain with an answer as to why?
(Let's not debate with each other, but rather sit back and listen to each other.)
Thanks to michael_dorfman for the tip on the exact question. :) <comment><USER2> I don't believe in discussing Religious Beliefs in HN, because I'm already spending enough time on here instead of working on my start-up, learned from time spent reading threads that do not have to do with entrepreneurship or technology.

<comment><AUTHOR> HN is for anything interesting to "hackers." From the sheer number of comments on the previous posts, it seem it _is_ interesting to them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't believe in any sort of anthropomorphic "God" that actively manipulates human affairs and is responsible for creating the universe, etc. Now if you want to use "God" as a sort of label for some vague concept of "whatever we don't know, and will probably never know, about how the universe came to be, and why the laws of physics are what they are" etc., then sure, talk about "God" all you want. Personally it's not something I find to be particularly relevant to my day to day life.

Why do I believe this? Because incredible claims require incredible proof, and I haven't seen any proof for any of the claims about deities that various religions make, that don't have a better answer rooted in scientific knowledge. And while I don't hold science to be perfect, I find it more credible because science makes testable predictions, whose results have allowed us to manipulate the world we live in, in tangible ways. See: electricity, automobiles, jet airplanes, cruise ships, etc., etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> Rebirth (at least from daily perception, I ultimately believe that consciousness does not cease with death, but 'attaches' to new organisms with perception), and enlightenment (the cessation of clinging to phenomena).

Very hard, if not impossible, to prove scientifically, although there has been interesting research into this very topic (<http://tinyurl.com/36avxgq>). But, I have no idea how memories from 'previous lives' would fit into this.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think your example undercuts the concept.

"Belief" is usually contrasted with "knowledge". If science has proven something, there's no need to believe it-- you simply know it.

So, a more focused question might be: "What do you believe is true even though you can't prove it?"

EDGE asked precisely this question of some interesting people, with interesting results: <http://www.edge.org/q2005/q05_print.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. My mistake. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I believe humans will eventually be able to live forever.

Why? I believe our knowledge of biological systems will advance to the point that they can be accurately simulated on a computer within 10-15 years. That will greatly reduce the time it takes to perform experiments (e.g., from months to hours) and take advantage of the knowledge they provide.

At that rate, it's highly probable that a method to prevent--and reverse-- biological aging will be discovered.

</comment><comment><USER7> I believe there are "aliens" of some sort out there. At least some kind of life. What kind of life, I'm not too sure, but there's just too many possibilities for there NOT to be any life. Who knows really how big our galaxy is? How many galaxies there are? And what's beyond that? If we exist somehow, there's gotta be more.

</comment><comment><USER8> I believe in causality, even though I can't prove it. I believe in it for the same reason I have religious beliefs; I want to believe it. My life as a scientist would be pointless if causality were not true.

</comment><comment><USER9> I believe I'm a p-zombie, but I don't have the consciousness to prove it.</comment>


Show HN: Isomorƒ, an experimental software development paradigm - <AUTHOR> Hi HN! We're the founders of isomorƒ (https://isomorf.io), an experimental software development paradigm. isomorƒ is a structured cloud IDE designed around the ideas of functional programming and serverless architecture and built to reduce barriers to entry and increase developer efficiency.
We wanted to see if we could reimagine the software development process in a way that would be more automated and assistive, less redundant, and more flexible. Drawing heavily on the concepts of functional purity, static typing, and statelessness, our premise was to design a simple, "low power" representation (i.e., AST) that serves as an easily manipulated backbone for storage/analysis, and then build a structured editor on top of it that allows for very flexible syntax and syntactic sugars. The simplified central storage allows us to offer refactoring, debugging, optimization, and reuse assistance that is often limited by traditional text-file-based editing.
Here is a tour of the concept that ends in a sandbox where you can play around: https://isomorf.io/#!/tour
A few things to note:
- Editing. The editing is structured, so there are no syntax errors (e.g., no mismatched braces). The editing is also propagational (i.e., if you rename or delete something, that change is propagated everywhere that applies). We have built distinct mouse vs keyboard paradigms. You can double-click to see menus, or you can use keyboard shortcuts. (Look for the keyboard legend button for details).
- Deployment. Current focus is on microservices as this was the most universal, easiest to implement deployment. But native apps and HTTP servers are in the works.
- Progress. What we have is very much a work-in-progress, but it's enough that we wanted to share and get some feedback.
email: feedback <at> isomorf.io
beta release signup: http://eepurl.com/c0CaeX
blog: https://medium.com/isomorf-blog
Thanks! <comment><USER3> Great to see Isomorf here. I have commented multiple times about it before in the context of the next generation of programming languages (or more generally, moving away from plaintext).

Here's a relevant one just 5 days ago under "What next?":

> The elephant in the room is graduating beyond plaintext (projectional > editor, model-based editor).

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15053260](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15053260)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We've seen your mentions, and we appreciate your enthusiasm. We clearly have similar visions for next generation development stacks.

We'd love to get your feedback and discuss in more detail! We think that even beyond the non-plaintext representation, an IDE married with storage can enable a lot of powerful analytical features and services.

Do you have any recommendations for where else we can find a good audience for this? Any other communities talking about this direction for dev tools?

<comment> iso-8859-1 Come on Lamdu Gitter, the Lamdu team also wanted to set up a community site for non-plaintext programming.

<comment><AUTHOR> FYI, this led to the creation of [https://www.reddit.com/r/nosyntax/](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosyntax/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This seems like a novel approach to development. Really moving away from a traditional IDE toward one that considers the modern development and deployment stack. Will be cool to see how a growing community can better support intelligent code sharing

</comment><comment><USER5> Wow that's a really impressive and well put together demo and overview. Really easy to follow and I'm glad I went through the whole tour. Question - <USER2> mentioned optimizations but I didn't see that in the tour. How would that work?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

As far as the optimizations: we transpile the code to different target runtime languages where we can automatically instrument different optimizations. Currently our microservice runtime is Scala code and we can add a cache layer around any function application or a parallelization queue around any map-like operations on iterable types (e.g., List).

The application deployment UI let's you pick the points of optimization (a top level function for a cache, or map-like application for a parallelization). Then you can pick the tier of optimization implementation you want (e.g., local in-memory map vs remote Redis instance; local thread-based parallelization vs remote actor-based cluster parallelization)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cool concept -- it does seem like the future is in functional coding approaches.

I'm excited to play with it, but I am not the most comfortable with any of your current language choices. Any plans for PHP or JS syntax wrappers?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

While we customized syntax in the tour & sandbox to closely match familiar languages, the way code is rendered is totally configurable: the underlying ASTs are passed through a rendering layer with keywords/symbols/etc populated. So adding new syntaxes is pretty easy. We will add those to the list!

Also worth mentioning is that right now renderers are defined by us as part of the webapp, but ultimately they will be loaded as isomorƒ code, allowing users of the platform to design and share new ways to interact with code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting idea. How do you think about language-specific libraries? E.g., is there a scikit-learn coming to isomorƒ soon?

</comment><comment><USER8> Looks really interesting

</comment><comment><USER9> Truly a fascinating concept with dynamic applications!</comment>