Twitpic Blocks Posterous' Import Tool; Out Come The Lawyers - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/29/twitpic-posterous-lawyers/?utm_source=TweetMeme&utm_medium=widget&utm_campaign=retweetbutton <comment><USER2> Haha, it's just using the RSS feed... trade secrets my ass.

TwitPic should be embarrassed, this is just anticompetitive BS.

<comment><USER3> There is a difference between data portability and, potentially, a denial of service due to a large-scale import. Twitpic probably cares about all its users and given that it does not control Posterous' scraper, it can only block it.

Also, let's not forget Twitpic's terms of service:

 _Data mining, "scraping", and/or unauthorized crawling of Twitpic by any means is prohibited unless explicit permission is given..._

I bring these up because I'm sure when it's convenient for them, Posterous would point to their ToS to block something.

Had Posterous worked with Twitpic and got denied instead of doing an arrogant marketing campaign ("rescue"?), I would be 100% behind Posterous. Right now, it's Posterous posturing for the upper hand when they don't really have a case.

<comment><USER4> > _unauthorized crawling of Twitpic by any means is prohibited_

Twitpic have a publicly accessible http server. Sending it http requests is therefore something they've implicitly allowed.

<comment><USER5> Hypothetically, if I have something web accessible, and you are accessing it, it becomes unauthorized as soon as I (the owner of the service) tell you that you are no longer authorized to use my service.

Analogies rarely work -but it's sort of like how it's trespassing once I tell you to never come on my property again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Do users just not get a say in where their data lives anymore or what? Why in the hell don't these companies stop freaking out over whether or not a user can port his or her data someplace else and focus on WHY a user would want to in the first place.

<comment><USER5> They absolutely get a say - they can choose to put it on posterous, or not. They can also choose to put their data wherever they want.

What they don't get to do is force a business, unless it's part of a paid-for contract, to spend it's own resources and bandwidth to help an unrelated competitor (or anyone else).

<comment><USER7> If a user wants to move from TwitPic to Posterous and TwitPic decides to block the simplest method of doing so, they are clearly in the wrong. Do you really think Posterous-generated traffic is significant compared to their usual traffic?

<comment><USER5> That wasn't really the point I was making - do I think it's a traffic problem? Probably not.

My point was that it's not about user's "rights" about their data - none of those are really being taken away - I don't like the sense of entitlement everyone wants - it's just going to breed gigantic TOS documents and legal hassles. Twitpic may very well be making a very bad PR move here (rather than spending the money innovating and competing)

<comment><USER7> Ok, I see what you're saying. I think the expectation that users will be able to get their data back out of a service if they choose to do so is a good one, and that services that don't meet that expectation should be criticized and avoided.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Looks like they are blocking more than just Posterous.

@jazzychad: " _ARGH. @twitpic is blocking the whole slicehost/rackspace cloud IP block again. /cc @cloudsupport @posterous_ "

<http://twitter.com/jazzychad/status/17381172407>

<comment><USER8> Surely the "scan rss feed and grab all the photos" tool could be re-written as a client side javascript app? Then they could only block it by blocking all their users :-)

<comment><USER9> That came to my mind too, but I don't think it's doable thanks to XSS restrictions.

To prevent nefarious scripts, XSS (cross-site scripting) isn't allowed by browsers. Thus, when you're on a posterous.com page, javascript can only make requests to posterous.com. When you're on a twitpic.com page, javascript can only make requests to twitpic.com. The way sites get around this is by making the request to the external site from their servers, but then the calls would still come from Posterous servers, so it would get blocked.

<comment><USER10> Make it a Chrome extension? Doable in a couple of hours, and might get more people to switch to Chrome. Goodness all around :)

<comment><USER11> Why the hate for firefox? I support firefox more, it started all the improvements in browsers, is done by a small company, and doesn't have so many fingers into my privacy pie.

<comment><USER12> That is not hate for Firefox, it's love for Chrome....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I thought this was a valid point brought up by Anil Dash on Twitter (<http://twitter.com/anildash/status/17380509761>):

"Of course Twitpic should allow export, but Posterous calling others "dying platforms" is an unnecessary dick move. Hence, pettiness."

Here's where they used the term "dying platforms": <http://blog.posterous.com/make-the-switch-to-posterous>

<comment><USER14> Yeah, Posterous are playing a little bit rough, but Twitpic shouldn't respond to that by making it look like they want to make it difficult for users to export their data. If something Posterous have said is untrue (maybe the dying platform part) then call them on it - post growth stats, demand a retraction, whatever. Don't alienate your users to get back at another company.

<comment><USER15> > Yeah, Posterous are playing a little bit rough

A bit rough? They're complete assholes about it.

> but Twitpic shouldn't respond to that by making it look like they want to > make it difficult for users to export their data.

They're not, they haven't blocked anything (not even Posterous's IP block) and clearly said they don't plan on retiring the data export features.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's brilliant marketing. Everyone knows their tool is going to get blocked anyway but like clockwork even small companies send in the lawyers which inevitably leads to great coverage.

By writing the tool they either get users or coverage. Win-win situation.

<comment><USER6> It's like an intentional version of the Streisand Effect

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Twitpic is within its rights to block Posterous, but the threats to bring "trade secrets" laws into play are totally nuts. A technology company like Twitpic should know as well as anyone that if a human can access their content with a computer, a computer can access their content just as well with the proper direction.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, I hope they get slapped with court costs for this ridiculous argument

<comment><USER16> They are threatening legal action at this point. This is more like a C&D than a case. No case, no court costs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Posterous should spend a day creating an easy export from their own service to prove they aren't afraid of competition. Then they would come out of these 2 weeks not looking like jerks.

The blog post to Tumblr users still rankles me.

<comment><USER20> One of the comments from the techcrunch post:

 _there is no hypocrisy here. We have an API that gives users 100% access to all their content on Posterous, including the original media that was uploaded, in it's full size.

This API can be found here: <http://posterous.com/api/reading>

There is nothing stopping people from writing Posterous exporters that go to other services. In fact, Wordpress released a Posterous importer a few months ago.

We support data portability. It's the user's content, not ours. It's our privilege to host it for our users, and we are working hard to be the best service out there._

<comment><USER19> I think it's great you have an open API. That's awesome.

But I think it's also not about what users theoretically could do (if they were able), it's about making it as easy to get data out as you are making it to get data in.

If you did that you'd look awesome. Actively demonstrating that you aren't at all afraid of the competition could be as powerful as all the import functionality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This doesn't do anything for twitpic other than make them look fearful and weak.

</comment><comment><USER22> This also seems to send a signal of "get your TwitPic photos while you still can". What if TwitPic went broke at some point with all your images on it?

I can't see what TwitPic would get out of this. I could see a problem if Posterous deeplinked, but the images are the legal property of the users, so of course they're entitled.

</comment><comment><USER23> This whole thing is seeming more and more like a brilliant PR move by Posterous. Don't the twitpic guys realize that lawyering up is just stoking the fire at this point?

</comment><comment><USER24> How many people use TwitPic as a blog?

</comment><comment><USER25> Because of this move, I will move from twitpic. They have the guts to tell me I have no right to do what I want with my pictures.

Twitpic made a blunder with their service, they decided not to innovate and did not build a community around their service. It may not be too late, but, am out!

</comment><comment><USER26> Its my data. I should decide where to keeo it!

<comment><USER5> You should. Twitpic isn't obligated to help you, though.

<comment><USER26> Correct,but twitpic shouldn't try to stop others that provide tools for the data migration</comment></comment></comment>


Rare Dreamcast-Powered Sega Fish Life Preserved and Released by Musée Bolo - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedreamcastjunkyard.co.uk/2019/05/rare-dreamcast-powered-sega-fish-life.html <comment><USER2> If you like that, then you need to check out SeaMan: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaman_(video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaman_\(video_game\))

"The narration is voiced by Toshiyuki Hosokawa in the original Japanese- language version and by Leonard Nimoy in the English-language version. ...

The 'Seaman' is a form of freshwater fish (the color and shape of the fins suggest that it is a Carp) with a very lifelike human face. It possesses human mannerisms and behavior with which the player interacts. ...

Seaman is considered a unique video game in that it presents limited action. The player's role is to feed and care for Seaman, while providing him with the company that he needs. In fact, the player is required to check on the Seaman every day of real time, or he could die. A portion of Seaman's knowledge is random trivia. When he asks what the player's birthday is (and the player responds via the microphone input), Seaman will then share significant events which happened on that date."

It's like a super weird Tamagochi.

<comment><USER3> If you want to see seaman in action with some humorous commentary: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-IV8hCvsXy0](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-IV8hCvsXy0)

<comment><USER4> oh man I remember the hype around this game in magazines back then! It's AI would "adapt" to your inputs and that was a 'wow' in my mind back then.

all in all Dreamcast, imho, was the perfect console. You could emulate PSX games at higher, smoother res and sharper textures, there are emulators for various games now.

I wonder how much it costs to pick one up now...

<comment><USER5> The Dreamcast had an incredible array of quality software, and ran at a beautiful full 640x480 while other consoles were for the most part stuck at 320.

<comment><USER6> Yeah but SEGA had already lost way too much money by then to be able to recover its hardware branch. The Saturn utter failure hit them very very hard.

<comment><USER4> Yeah I've always thought it was sad. I love SEGA games, they have that signature, clean, fast, simple feel across their characters to game design.

Sega SATURN was a major flop, even though it is an interesting system none the less. See shenmue running on Saturn vs Dreamcast: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-YxOpZ7mDo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-YxOpZ7mDo)

So the SATURN was more than capable of outputting even PSP level graphics for the mid 90s!, but seemed to have poor developer experience overall.

Similarly, they went all in on Dreamcast and the console was perfect and overshadowed by PS2 and entrance of XBOX. Sony had a near monopoly hold on gaming console market with the success of their PSX variants but failed to keep Microsoft out while successfully doing it to other Japanese console manufacturers, testament to the sign of a truly, cutthroat environment, for example Nintendo's "backstabbing" that made Sony lose face and release PlayStation as revenge.

XBOX roughly has 1/4 of the US console market, that's either something that should've gone to Sony had they've been able to keep their market leader position, something that traditionally has been a Japanese dominant one.

Now Google is entering the game industry with a Stream game approach but its already questionable, because I've used it before on PS Now and the experience has been terrible, it would intermittently degrade in visual and audio quality, and with a poor quality Canadian ISP with a capped upload speed, the reaction times were absolutely horrid.

I'd imagine in 20 years when Canadian ISP gets cheaper and faster with 5G (after the world has been running on 6G), this might make sense.

Perhaps its a totally different experience if you live in a country with cheap and super fast internet like South Korea

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's scary to think about all the games we're going to lose because so many games are implemented as SAAS nowadays. As someone interested in gaming history and the preservation of games it's actually quite saddening.

<comment><USER8> The gaming console space up to a couple of generations ago, prior to digital distribution, is pretty well covered (and I've contributed ~75 titles and variations of console-based prototypes myself to the public), but most modern gaming is going to have a much more pronounced preservation issue.

Consider also the download-only releases of console games, usually by indies but not always, nowadays on the big 3 platforms; other than avenues like Limited Run Games that provide for production of limited physical runs of previously download-only titles, they're lost to the aether eventually.

<comment><USER9> > most modern gaming is going to have a much more pronounced preservation > issue.

That's putting it mildly. Gameplay videos is all that's going to be left for plenty of games.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Long time ago, I read somewhere that SEGA, the company, has very little source code and hardware development artifacts saved from their Dreamcast days (and even earlier than that). They either lost or just junked majority of it as time went on.

Do other companies care so little about their own history? If I was running one of these companies, I'd save a copy of every game, console, HW development platform and source codes of every game in a vault somewhere.

<comment><USER11> That's part of the problem; standard practice for Japanese companies until rather recently (as in, within the past decade or so) was to physically print out a copy of the completed game's source code and stick it in a filing cabinet somewhere, never to be seen again. Most remasters of games released ~1995-2005 are based on beta code they happened to find on old workstations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The link to the Sega Fish Life preservation project: [https://segafish.museebolo.ch/en/](https://segafish.museebolo.ch/en/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Wow... I read Dreamcast Junkyard for years, starting back around 2005 or 2006, had a few fishing games for the Dreamcast as well as the fishing controller, and have never even heard of this one!

This one is even more interesting than some of the weird ones I know about, like the Dreamcast in the shape of Sonic's head with the built-in TV.

So glad to see Dreamcast Junkyard is still at it after all these years! :)

Still no English Segagaga though :(

<comment><USER14> Even ignoring Sega's dire financial situation at the time, Segagaga had some uh..."issues" that may have prevented its localization:

>For the most part, once you've assigned your staff, this process is fairly automated. You pretty much just kick back, speed up time, and watch as the numbers pile up. Sometimes different random events will pop up, like an employee getting married (which makes them happy), getting divorced (which makes them depressed), making friends or enemies with other programmers, discovering efficient design tricks or coming across some nasty bugs. You can give specific orders to each person, telling them to work harder, or to take a break to study, or take a rest. You can give various items to alter various stats as well, most of which just refresh their stamina. _(One of the skills, which shows up as a Question Mark, summons an underage girl wearing a gym uniform, who refreshes each staff member with incredible boosts.)_ [0]

[0][https://hg101.kontek.net/segagaga/segagaga.htm](https://hg101.kontek.net/segagaga/segagaga.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> >> It is also at this stage where the player releases the seaman into the wild

Not good. Not something to teach to kids, or anyone. I cannot stand people who think that it is acceptable to raise an animal and then "release" it into the wild once it isn't cute anymore. Setting aside the horror of doing this to a dog, there was also a famous Japanese cartoon where a pet raccoon was released once it became an adult. Raccoons, like many wild animals, start off cute but can become violent as they mature. Raccoons are now an invasive pest in Japan, a problem that started during the years after the cartoon.

The concept of keeping animals in a cage with the intention that one animal will eat the other is also very problematic. There is a very fine line between a "natural behavior" and cage fighting. Zoos may feed the lions meat from a dead Zebra. They don't release live Zebras into the lion enclosure.

</comment><comment><USER13> You'd think somebody could print money with a Dreamcast Classic instead of all the cheap looking Genesis things out there. I think the fact that the Dreamcast had too many arcade-like games would make it better than that Playstation Classic which had a lot of slow games that you can't easily jump in and out of.

<comment><USER16> I've been playing around a lot with RetroPie recently - I built myself a full- size arcade cabinet and everything. I started it running on a RaspberryPi, but recently upgraded to a cheap used Dell OptiPlex.

Right now, Dreamcast seems to be the sweetspot for hardware emulation. A sub-$100 PC (on the used market, anyway) can easily emulate a Dreamcast (for all the games I've tried, anyway - Tony Hawk 2, DOA 2, etc), possibly even with extra cycles to provide extra video smoothing to get rid of jaggies that are pretty obvious at its normal resolution.

So yeah, I think this would be possible. I wouldn't think the IP for the hardware would be an issue since it's all emulated, it's just down to the BIOS and the games themselves.

<comment><USER17> Can you expand on what tutorial or steps you took to build your own arcade cabinet? I'd be curious to see pictures or the actual internals. Did you install standard cabinet joysticks and buttons as well?

<comment><USER16> Here [1] is an album showing the final product, and the build.

I cheated and used a TankStick, but now I wish I hadn't. I think I could have managed the wiring, and it would have gone a long way aesthetically to integrate it all.

I designed the cabinet myself, but that was inspired by the "Vigolix" design [2]. I scaled it up to a full 6', put in a lighted marquee, added a drawer for keyboard and mouse.

The gross assembly took me 4-5 days, but a total of about a month overall because of the time to paint, dry, and sand many coats. Plus, of course, the amount of time to set up the computer hardware and software.

[1] [https://imgur.com/gallery/KpoHLDu](https://imgur.com/gallery/KpoHLDu)

[2] [https://www.instructables.com/id/A-Super-Easy-Arcade- Machine...](https://www.instructables.com/id/A-Super-Easy-Arcade-Machine- from-1-Sheet-of-Plywoo/)

[http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,119533.0.htm...](http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,119533.0.html)

<comment><USER17> Looks great, thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is right-click disabled on this website for anyone else?

</comment><comment><USER19> I love Dreamcast. I'm thinking about upgrading the GDROM drive with the FPGA chip. It's only a matter of time before the laser fails.

<comment><USER20> The GDEMU is great and it looks like there are now tons of clones on Amazon and AliExpress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I realize this may be an unpopular opinion, but this is just not an interesting find to me. A slightly mutated game computer used to display a virtual aquarium? Knock me over with a feather.

I get the obsession w game hardware and that it was Japanese. But this article makes it sound like this was a lost DaVinci sketch book, and these comments liken game design dust to the same.

<comment><USER22> It strikes me as odd that you'd spend the time to read an article on something you don't find interesting, and then go on to write a comment about how uninterested you are. When I come across uninteresting things online I tend to just skip them and carry on with my day.

<comment><USER21> And it is even further strange that you would write a comment about me writing a comment about how uninterested I am about something. A very odd world indeed. How far down the rabbit hole can we go?</comment></comment></comment>


Personality Atlas – How the world views other countries - <AUTHOR> http://personalityatlas.com/

<comment><USER2> "Views expressed are based on survey results of a 27-market study." A bit more detail concerning the source (without having to download the full report) would be nice.

<comment><USER3> I'd file this rather in the category 'entertainment' than 'science', but then again, I'm from Uniformany.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> i would suggest having a list of potential stereotypes and having people from the other countries vote on them =) and then choosing the stereotypes</comment>


The Quiet Health-Care Revolution - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/11/the-quiet-health-care-revolution/8667/?single_page=true

<comment><USER2> I get really really excited when I read articles like this. For the elderly, so many causes of hospitalization are completely preventable. And it is hospitalizations which wipe out patients' savings.

So if we can prevent hospitalizations for the elderly, that is a huge win. Bonus points for using everything we know about wireless sensor networks to monitor patients' conditions and predict when something catastrophic is about to happen, rather than relying on a person to physically examine each patient.

I have seen one patient who developed sepsis while in a nursing home. She had an expressive aphasia, so she wasn't able to tell us that she was feeling ill. I wonder if we would have been able to test for it earlier with better monitoring and mining.

I realize it sounds obvious to say "going to the hospital is bad" but they have a bigger impact than you'd think. Upon return to a nursing home from a hospital, patients will have been moved to a different room. Or moved from a single-occupancy to double-occupancy room. Which has a cascade of implications in terms of their care. Often this kind of thing is a function of how much the patient can afford, which is significantly decreased after a hospitalization. So the prospect of having better care (via technology, since nursing homes are chronically understaffed) to prevent preventable hospitalizations is so so cool.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is one of the most interesting articles on HN today.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is an amazing article. Go CareMore!!!</comment>


Billionaire Steyer Wants to Attack Global Warming - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/can-progress-on-climate-change-keep-up-with-its-quickening-pace/2016/08/26/f5934118-68b8-11e6-8225-fbb8a6fc65bc_story.html <comment><USER2> For a guy with a finance and private equity background I expect him to confront the economic realities concerning fossil fuels. Historically, they have offered great returns on investment. This is not a defense of fossil fuels. It just seems silly to tell someone to stop doing something that makes them significant sums of money, is integrated into every level of society, and while it may have a negative connotation, is generally accepted - with few immediate answers.

Strategically, wouldn't it make more sense and perhaps be more productive to devote resources to championing efforts like those of Elon Musk in Tesla and Solar City? These are practical, immediate responses to effect the concerns he is raising.

Maybe he is just a trust fund baby that would rather be the grand marshall for the environmental parade. By the way, I'd like to think I am marching in that environmental parade.

Something doesn't add up when someone with his financial resources goes on parade, inflates his own ego, and adds to the divisiveness, rather than pursuing practical solutions to the problems they are barking about. I will acknowledge that popular awareness is part of the equation to effect climate change and better environmental stewardship on a global level. However, I think real world, commercially viable alternatives is the best way make it relatable and sustainable.</comment>


Where have all the iOS games gone? - <AUTHOR> http://minotaurproject.co.uk/blog/?p=376 <comment><USER3> I hear this myth perpetuated incessantly. (That there's no more middle ground in the app store, only the Clash of Clans and Candy Crushes and the rest with no downloads). People paint the picture that it's the top 0.1% and everyone else with an unsustainable business.

The truth is there's plenty of us in the middle still. My two person iOS dev studio has pulled in 6 figures a year for the past 4 years. The problem is not that there's no middle ground, it's that the everyone used to get guaranteed downloads, and with the removal of new releases and the never ending flood of apps, 90% of apps will get just about zero downloads after launch nowadays.

But there's still plenty of room for small studios like us who know their target audience and what works on the app store to make a sustainable business. So I'd say top 0.1% for the insane successes that can support hundreds of employees, but for a small studio, just getting in the top 5% can work.

If you're curious about numbers, check thinkgaming.com, to see that the top 200 grossing game is still pulling ~$10K a day on iPhone in the US alone. When you add all countries, tablets, and Android devices, you start to see you don't need a top 10 or even top 100 grossing app to make some serious cash.

So while it has gotten a lot tougher in the app store and it's increasingly difficult for newcomers with no experience to hit it big, there's still very much a thriving middle ground between the insane successes and the utter failures. I suspect that it's not well known is due to the fact that those in similar positions to us don't want to dish out the valuable knowledge they've acquired through years of experience that could only increase the competition.

<comment><USER4> Which myth? Did we read the same article?

> That there's no more middle ground in the app store, only the Clash of Clans > and Candy Crushes and the rest with no downloads

Did he say anything like that?

In the version I read he said that his games weren't making enough money to be viable, though he expected the market to be big enough to support their work. No mention of middles, Clash of Clans or anything.

FWIW: I also let my Apple dev license lapse, for similar reasons. Perhaps I could have gained that 'valuable knowledge' through years of experience, to get to a point of making a modest return. Perhaps. But, like Jeff, I found other platforms to be much more financially viable.

<comment><USER3> Sure, and to be fair to author, my point wasn't made to combat his article. I was more responding to the headline which reminded me of the "indieapocalypse" articles that make news all the time.

Sorry to hear it didn't work out for you. If you found more viable platforms of course that makes sense to pursue. I think that's what more developers who complain about the meager app store sales ought to do (explore alternatives), rather than just whine about the apocalypse and hope their downloads magically change.

<comment><USER5> I think it's more interesting that to keep maintaining the games he was forced to keep purchasing an Apple developer license, and that it was cheaper for him to pull the games than to risk reputation all damage with crashing apps, even if they are free.

This genuinely sounds like a problem for Apple. Without a healthy App Store ecosystem there is little reason to purchase an iPad!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Weird, I was a _die hard_ mac developer (since 1984), and I immediately stopped when iOS came out with the app store. Like, stopped /dead/.

The reason I could be a Mac Developer was the small pond; There wasn't a LOT of work, but there was enough for good people, and it paid well. On balance I /never/ developed anything for windows, because of the 'tree vs forest' problem : Even if you are REALLY fantastically good, there are so many people on the market that you can't possibly stand out.

And that's why I never even wrote a single iOS app, even tho i was a wiz at ObjC and OSX (Imagine a Classic MacOS dev thrown together with a UNIX wiz, and that's me); it was guaranteed to bring in the 'forest' to OSX as well, and make any 'edge' more or less pointless.

Also, from what I've seen, if anyone comes out with a nice app/game, there's a dozen or more group of people who will throw their dev team at copying it immediately, diluting any hope of revenue. It's these guys business model after all, you just can't win, and it's not like you can defend your IP anyway.

So, 2016, I wonder what took people so long to realize it was all doomed but for a tiny fraction of apps.

<comment><USER7> Weird - so you were uniquely position to capitalize on the growth period, but because you predicted that it would ebb a decade later, you decided not to take part?

<comment><USER6> Yes, because I'm an engineer, not a gambler or a marketer. In that time, I also saw OSX become more and more iOS like, with fisher-price grade APIs replacing old, working ones, etc.

Quite frankly I still compile my old stuff now and then, but I have no regrets leaving it all for the hipsters to fight over.

<comment><USER7> I'm curious what OSX APIs you saw being replaced?

<comment><USER8> While not the person to whom the question was directed, I'd offer that the move from QuickTime to AVFoundation (taken directly from iOS) & friends (CoreMedia, CMIO) was one such example. Core Media I/O was released a few years ago to replace vdig and/or sequence grabber IIRC. Despite being released a few years back, the only documentation available for CMIO is a sample project. AVFoundation was limited in terms of codec support relative to QuickTime offering only support for built-in codes. Just as an example. Of course QuickTime had no 64-bit future so Apple had to do something but it was and still is a bit of a mess years down the road.

<comment><USER9> Are you kidding?

AVFoundation is in nearly every way superior to QuickTime, minus the fact that you couldn't make ref movies with it until El Capitan.

QuickTime's API sucks in comparison.

Source: I write a video editor for macOS.

<comment><USER8> Not kidding at all. There was a lot of noise during the transition on various mailing lists, as I recall. Even as an end-user the issue presented quite a few problems. While AVFoundation is generally a better API it remains less capable than the QuickTime umbrella was. Again refer to the functionality provided by vDig and Sequencer APIs. A simple case: try to slap together a video mixing app sometime that takes input from the camera or other source, processes some effects on it, and dumps the output back as pseudo device that can be used by other apps. Unless things have changed drastically the last time I looked into the matter, such a thing isn't possible within the constraints of AVFoundation itself. You have to resort to the essentially undocumented CoreMedia IO API. Apple does provide similar functionality for other types of devices at a higher level i.e. scanners, digital cameras via some other API I can't recall off the top of my head at the moment. =]

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I feel it's worth pointing out this isn't just some blog by any old indie development studio. This is a blog by Jeff Minter. The man practically invented home computer gaming. I was buying his games with my allowance 35 years ago, because they were great. And I still buy them today, because they are still great. If Jeff Minter can't make the App Store work then no-one can. (Although he probably could have done if he had been willing to make crappy games with in app purchase rather than make good games. )

<comment><USER11> > If Jeff Minter can't make the App Store work then no-one can.

As a counterpoint I grew up on no small amount of Jeff Minter games, lost more hours to Tempest 2000 on the godawful Jaguar than one should admit to in polite company, and have downloaded almost all of Llamasoft's iOS games due mostly to the fawning reviews in Toucharcade and played them for not all that long because -- frankly -- they are simply not very good. They aren't _bad games_ but they certainly don't stand out among the hundreds of games I've tried for iOS.

The comparison he makes in this blog post between the income of (a) games he independently released on iOS and (b) a game Sony paid him to make for the PSVita but was shut down from release on other platforms because it too closely copied T2K is beyond disingenuous.

<comment><USER12> So the reality is that even if you're a semi-famous developer who has a practically guaranteed revenue and media coverage from your fans, it still isn't enough. You need to make a game that competes on quality with the studios that spend $millions on their apps.

Thats not a very promising proposition to anyone considering making a game.

<comment><USER13> > You need to make a game that competes on quality with the studios that spend > $millions on their apps.

No, for example Crossy Road or Flappy Bird made some good money with a minimal team and minimal investment.

Not $millions like those studios, but also the creators didn't spend $millions in marketing and assets.

> Thats not a very promising proposition to anyone considering making a game.

Risks.

That's why most people find a job and not make games for the AppStore/Play Store in their room.

<comment><USER14> > No, for example Crossy Road or Flappy Bird made some good money with a > minimal team and minimal investment.

Could describe a lottery ticket win the same way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The amazing thing to me is that at WWDC, Tim Cook (I think that's who announced it) seemed genuinely thrilled that there are over 2,000,000 apps for iOS. So sad and useless. You could hear the barely contained horror of the assembled developers. iOS has become a victim of its own success.

I guess the market will eventually sort it out, but when? 2030?

<comment><USER16> Usually it takes one turn or so of the technology cycle. Basically the market is poisoned as long as it's too competitive for customers to really differentiate between alternatives. Developers realize this, and stop paying attention to the market. Adjacent technologies (eg. iOS platform libraries, hardware capabilities, backend systems, market penetration) continue to improve, but nobody notices their improvement because everybody's given up on the space as unprofitable. Eventually somebody combines 2-3 of these new emerging technologies together in a way that makes a big difference to consumers, their growth rate starts to look like a hockey-stick, and they get bought for a billion dollars or so (if they weren't already in a big company). Then people start paying attention again, you get another gold rush, etc.

We went through this with the web between 2000-2004. All the money-oriented folks gave it up for dead with the dot-com crash, a number of tinkerers started to move in and play with it, and eventually we ended up with the GMail/GoogleMaps/Flickr/Facebook/YouTube/Reddit/AJAX/Rails explosion around 2004-2005. So usually 3-4 years.

<comment><USER17> When do you think those 3-4 years started for this bubble?

<comment><USER16> For iOS, probably last year (2015). Assuming Apple doesn't massively lose consumer marketshare (certainly a possibility in hardware, just ask Motorola), indie development on macOS/iOS/watchOS/tvOS will likely become viable again between 2018-2020.

This is an interesting time in computing history, though, because there are multiple overlapping tech cycles and multiple big companies driving them. During the web interregnum, the dominant tech company was Microsoft, and Microsoft basically completely controlled the channel to the customer. So we just weren't getting fundamental innovations in the browser - there was XmlHttpRequest and hidden iframes that sparked a lot of Web 2.0, and there was Flash from Adobe, but that was largely it. Today, we have innovation in cloud computing from Amazon and Google; we have innovation in programming languages from Mozilla, Jetbrains, and Apple; we have innovation in big-data tools from the Apache foundation and others; we have innovation in machine-learning from Google and a number of startups; and we have innovation in computing devices from Apple, Google, Pebble, Oculus, and a large number of other companies. So while the Apple ecosystem itself may face a dot-com bust, there could easily be a killer app brewing in technologies _outside_ of the pure iOS ecosystem that uses an iOS app to deliver its service to the customer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> As a user who frequently opened the AppStore just to browse, discover new apps, and who used to buy a lot, I've just stopped opening the AppStore over the last three-four years. Browsing and discovery has become too hard for me, and I feel like they're pushing games too hard.

I used to buy a lot of games as well, but often I was just in the mood to look for some neat applications. If I could somehow filter out all games and just browse apps across all categories, I might still browse the AppStore regularly and still buy apps (including games, when I'm in the mood for that). The end result now is that they've lost a customer who used to buy new apps every week.

<comment><USER13> The AppStore has a category listing.

Of course category search is not going to work for everybody with 2 million entries.

If you want to search the games for genre, price, etc. go to toucharcade.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> How is it that Sony PS4/Vita stores can sell these same indie games for $20 a pop? Sony pushes these games hard and gives every one of them a fair amount of free marketing. They also celebrate their game developers by writing about them on their blogs and press-releases.

The Apple App store in its current iteration is just mentally exhausting. Everytime I open it up I'm presented with a new grid of app icons and no context to why I should care.

To further detriment, Apple has trained the market to stay away from 3rd party curation of iOS apps in any kind of useful way. So we're left only with a gateway of lists. That's nice, but not worth my time.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but ultimately an indie game has limited replay value because they're just so small in scope, but they're usually a lot of fun. So a one time upfront payment to enjoy for a few weeks is a great business strategy I think.

Edit: Not to sound like I'm bashing Apple here, as I don't think the Google Play store does it any better.

<comment><USER20> I'm a lifelong gamer who's entered a bit of a rut these past few years. I would _love_ to pay to play great apps on my phone. But I don't have the slightest clue as to how to find them. The top grossing lists are all complete F2P junk, and there's nothing close to the cottage industry that's built up around PC and console gaming. Every time I try to go look up good mobile games I get hit with lots of dodgy top-10 compilation linkfarm spam sites. I don't even know where to go to find the best mobile games, and every so often after investing another ten fruitless minutes of research (into what should be fun!) I'll give up all over again.

Contrast with my recent gaming experiences on the PC -- Civ V, The Witcher 3, Kerbal Space Program, and Faster than Light. All excellent games well worth their price that I was able to find out about easily. I don't know if anything comparable exists on mobile gaming, or if it's all just shit, nor do I even know how to find out. Back in the day Sony and Nintendo owned and published official magazines that were excellent sources of finding out about games, and many other non-official rags filled any potential void left over (I'll forever look back fondly on my afternoons after school spent reading issues of PC Gamer, PSM, and EGM cover-to-cover). Nothing comparable exists for mobile gaming, and Apple and Google could be doing a much better job of curating their gaming content.

<comment><USER21> Actually if that's what you want I'd advise you to buy a windows 10 tablet. They run old (and gog.com) games and come with decent mouse emulation and actually last 4-5 hours on battery. Taking games like Spelunky on a 400 gram tablet with you for on the train/plane is nice.

Even something like Civ 4 is playable.

<comment><USER20> If I were going to get an entire dedicated system for mobile gaming, I think a PS Vita or Nintendo 3DS XL would be a better choice -- they're both way cheaper, have dedicated controls for gaming, and have large libraries of purpose-built games. But I'm just not interested in more devices, especially ones I'd have to remember to charge and bring with me. I already have a smartphone, several desktops, two laptops, a Kindle, and an Android tablet. It's enough already.

<comment><USER21> Some renew your office subscription and get you excel updates etc for another year, and cost like 20-30$ more than just the office subscription itself.

<comment><USER20> I don't use any of that stuff either though. I'm a big GNU/Linux guy (at home and at work), and I exclusively use Windows for gaming. Office 365 subscriptions hold no value for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I recently tried for about 10 minutes to find a game that met my criteria, using the iOS version of the App Store. I wasn't asking for much (at least, so I thought): I wanted a game that could be purchased once (no In-App Purchases), and I wanted a particular category. The search was practically futile; every single match was In-App Purchases. I even decided to stop caring about the category and it was the same.

The browsing experience was almost unbelievably inefficient; I found myself scrolling through handfuls of games when I should have been able to rule out dozens. Apple likes to show you "only the icon" most of the time, which is really quite a terrible way to browse; you keep having to go in, out, in out, to learn anything about what's in the list.

I ended up buying nothing at all because I _couldn't even tell_ if there were games that supported buy-once without any of the usual bullshit gem-buying tactics. Despite having simple goals, the App Store just failed me.

<comment><USER23> There are games like those you're looking for but they use In-app purchases (IAP):

Games with ads and that are incomplete, where you purchase the "complete game with no ads" with a single purchase.

So it's like a demo that you upgrade to full version.

The problem is that because there's no "demo" functionality in the app store, they get labeled as games with IAP which turns many people, me including, away.

Before IAP, there were Free and Full versions of the same game (with and without ads and other perks), like Angry Birds and others.

If they made a "demo" category where the game has ads and fewer levels, or limited play time that you could upgrade to full game without ads, I'd be much happier as a dev and as a consumer.

<comment><USER14> > The problem is that because there's no "demo" functionality in the app > store, they get labeled as games with IAP which turns many people, me > including, away.

This would make no difference, people would just play the demo then move on to the next game. There are 2,000,000 apps in the store.... if your title is any good someone will clone it and put a free version up anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Yeah it's a challenging market.

Just to add another data point, we're small indie (games) developer, we spent over a year on our first title with very little marketing budget and these are our sales figures from our launch: [http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/YacineSalmi/20160519/273030/E...](http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/YacineSalmi/20160519/273030/Ellipsis__Sales_Numbers_for_a_Premium_Game_on_iOS_in_2016.php)

In short, decent sales but not enough to recoup our costs. Still, we never expected that we would hit gold on the first try. I think to be as sustainable on iOS you either have a successful niche product or a collection of product, with each release building a further revenue stream.

<comment><USER25> That game looks pretty neat. You just sold a copy :) But it's a game I've never heard of before, and I'm pretty good about checking the new games lists on the App Store each week. So I think the takeaway from this shouldn't be that premium games (is $2.99 really "premium"?) don't work, but rather that you can't rely on free marketing to sell your game. Once a game falls off the lists, it's pretty hard for people to stumble across it unless they're looking for it specifically.

<comment><USER24> Thank you!

That's another problem, there are so many good games coming out on a weekly basis, it's hard enough to stand out among those, let alone the 800 other games coming out every week.

We've experimented with various marketing ideas. Advertising is very challenging, especially when it costs more to acquire a user than we charge for the game. The F2P user acquisition market insanity has made this a complete non-starter. Press seems to have very little impact unless it's a big publication. So we're focusing on word of mouth and quality and a longer term outlook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's often hard for indie developers without marketing budgets, but in the same vein the whole gaming market on iOS is doing tremendously well. Here's a high level snapshot of iPhone earning by country, month by month:

[https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/993499/16283312/2...](https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/993499/16283312/2ca78050-3881-11e6-9fea-889dbc2e647a.png)

The industry grew a lot - surely driven by the most successful titles, but also for the longer tail of developers. More of the total revenue and earnings are captured by the top 100 publishers -- but still, even compared to 2012 or 2013, the 10000th biggest app is earning more due to the opening of all the new territories.

The game earning model moved from a hits based model, where you launch with lots of hype and reviews and generate a lot of earnings in the initial months to a model where long playing loyal players stick with the game over many months & years and monetize via longer term in app purchases. It's not possible to bring back 2010. We need to be ok with that and learn to engage users over longer timelines.

<comment><USER27> The problem is that games designed to "stick over many months & years and monetize the player" are generally garbage, as far as the quality of the actual game goes.

Of course these things are relative or subjective and what have you, but it's pretty rare for people who have a lot of experience playing games to seek out stuff on iOS because of the great quality of games there.

If you build a system that incentivizes garbage games, that's what you get, and well, that is what we have.

Fortunately if you are someone like me, who wants to make actual good games, there are still platforms where you can do that, and do quite decently money- wise. I am hoping those don't go away.

<comment><USER26> Jonathan, I would disagree about the generality of the games being generally garbage.

The parallel on the PC side of things of games that have recurring revenue sources lies in the spectrum of WoW / Dota 2 / TF2 / League of Legends to little known asian market MMOs where you buy xp boosts.

The top grossing games are played by a lot of users who play a lot. Similarly, the top titles on mobile have very repeatable revenue sources with high retention rates. I can't blame companies and businesses for investing in predictable revenue streams.

Now without a doubt there is a point of conflict between long user retention and addiction, and the drive to maximize LTV can be taken too far, but I don't think this is happening to most games. As an example, Farmville (2) is a well crafted experience in terms of mechanics, art style, pacing and progression for what it is trying to achieve. I can appreciate the work and thought that went into the game.

I can also similarly appreciate The Witness and I was happy to pay $40 for it. I appreciate the game for different reasons and different set of skills in game design and story telling and pacing of challenges. I love games all about gameplay -- heck, I spend time playing a pure maze puzzle game ( [http://www.pathery.com/](http://www.pathery.com/) ) that about 300 other people play. But this does not stop me from appreciating and respecting the game design work and decisions that went into making the mass market IAP driven games.

I might disagree with the long term reward-loop design of some of the titles, but I would not call them garbage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> There are only so many combinations of the words [Lord|War|Clan|Battle|Fight|Clash|Of|Reign|King].

</comment><comment><USER29> Aside some interesting comments here I find very true, my theory is that you should treat your game has a startup product: customers will not come, you have to chase them. And get them talk to their friends about your game. Just launching a game and making some marketing wont work. You need: feedback loop + word of mouth + growth.

<comment><USER13> I just thought I would just need to make a game and pay $99 a year.

Do you mean that's not enough?

(sarcasm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The platform cratered with the dominance of pay to win games and the "freemium" model. This allowed the store to be cluttered with junk. I can't shop there, because I'm not sure what I am buying.

<comment><USER31> This loss of trust amongst consumers is what caused the original video games crash in the 80's. Nintendo's seal of quality is what restored consumer trust. Apple may need to get more aggressive about the App Store.

<comment><USER32> Well, they had a category (maybe still do) called "Pay once games" or something like that. Basically highlighting games that you paid for once, up front, like normal games, and that didn't have a bunch of IAP.

<comment><USER25> They also show on every single app whether or not it has IAP (and you can see what the IAP is with a tap), so you can do your own filtering when looking at the new games list if that's an important criteria.

<comment><USER33> But you often have to play the game for half an hour before you start running into really gross IAPs, though. If you want to find games that don't have those predatory game loops and IAPs, the only way seems to be to go outside of the app stores and find review sites - but no site can keep up with reviewing every game that gets released.

<comment><USER32> I dunno, if you look at the list of IAPs offered, and see that most are for "gems" or "coins" or something like that, you can be pretty sure that they've got something up their sleeve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Well, try your luck at Android or Consoles or PC.

Never noticied the AppStore was some kind of heaven where money rained.

Seriously, so much entitlement. If you want to make money selling games, you have to spend a lot in advertising, how much does Clash of Clans and etc spend? It's the rules, it always has been, what's the surprise? Maybe it worked for a couple of months out of novelity, but it doesn't work any more.

Get real, people.

And yes, it's free games with IAP the rules. Because they are designed for kids without credit cards that at most buy iTunes gift cards. And yes, it's jewel and candy games, because that's what there is for girls, which are 50% of the population that the "mainstream gaming" has abandoned.

<comment><USER34> The first part was a bit harsh, but you make a good point about games for girls. (my now 20 daughter plays a lot of console games, but hates "ugly" scenery)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I saw this article yesterday about how more and more apps have become abandoned:

[https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/21/the-apple-app-store- gravey...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/21/the-apple-app-store-graveyard/)

The App Store will keep growing but it won't be good if half the apps are abandoned.

</comment><comment><USER36> Apple, goddamn. You had a potential major gaming platform on your hands – but almost 10 years later, we're stuck with $5-10 CPIs and store that doesn't even try to do anything with the long tail. Just open up Steam sometimes if you wonder how it should've been done.

<comment><USER37> I was looking for a proper English way to say this, but exactly; the long tail in the Appstore is nearly unrecoverable in the Appstore. And even outside it; I ran a review service (one that actually make enough to live on) for apps years ago and most (all on some sites) reviews are bought so they are skewed towards deep pockets. It stinks and I'm sorry I ever even did that.

<comment><USER36> That's because Apple failed miserably at creating any kind of community - <USER2> thing that helps the most with skewed reviews, lowest-denominator titles, and other trash like that.

Once again, I'm too lazy to explain this in detail; just look at Steam again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I have a game that I made over a 4 day period on iOS and Android. It's not brining in much revenue, but it was a cool challenge. My game isn't really that great, but I haven't touched it in over a year as well as there is no motivation to keep working on it. Once too many bugs start showing up, I'll probably pull it from all 3 app stores.

<comment><USER37> Which one is it? I always find it interesting to see what someone can do in a short time.

<comment><USER38> \- [https://joeblau.com/orb/](https://joeblau.com/orb/) \- The idea was based on bullet time so when you're moving the Orb, time is passing, but when you pick your finger off of the screen, time pauses. The goal is to dodge all of the smaller black orbs as long as possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> It's sad. You don't need to see income metrics to support this, just look at the quality of the games. I'm an avid consumer of iphone games and the quality of them has been getting worse and worse.

Really neat and creative games seems are gone and we're left with 'Qbert' and 'Bejeweled' clones being recommended as 'featured games'. Most of the great iOS shops seems to have left the market or have been drowned out in a sea of 'crapware'.

It seems that to be successful in this market you need to go back to advertising. Apple makes it very very hard to sort crap from quality, so you have to get your brand/name out there.

</comment><comment><USER40> Wait a second:

" the first non-iOS game I did after spending two years on iOS, released on a Sony handheld that many describe as being "obscure", generated literally _thousands_ of times more income for us than two years and ten games on iOS with its potential billions of users."

What was the platform? I wonder if there is a strategy to be carved out making games for Windows 10, Linux mobile, etc.

<comment><USER41> The Vita. A "dying" console. It's actually the best handheld gaming device I've ever owned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> You know the situation is bleak when even the legendary Jeff "llama" Minter says he can't make money on the app store.

</comment><comment><USER43> These lists in no way take account of ad revenue. For the average indie game ad revenue now makes up at least 50% of the gross daily revenue or if well integrated can make up 70 or even 90% if the game is an advergame like the Ketchapps one finger frustration games.

There is still quite a lot of revenue in the market place, just like there is on web. You need to be shrewd and think more about business than just creating and releasing a fun game.

</comment><comment><USER44> Same reason I stopped making games for iOS years ago. I too did truly enjoy making them though. I created original games and the effort all outside working hours overnight and weekends did at least teach me skills I still utilize today.

</comment><comment><USER45> If you're looking for "the free .apks that we have put up for our Android ports of five of the iOS games on this site", they're at [http://minotaurproject.co.uk/Minotaur/donate.php](http://minotaurproject.co.uk/Minotaur/donate.php). The five games are Super Ox Wars, Five a Day, Caverns of Minos, Goat Up, and Gridrunner.

</comment><comment><USER46> Someday, we'll realize that games on a tiny, fiddly touchscreen with no tactile response, is kind of a stupid idea. I would much rather play games on my dusty old Gameboy Color than struggle with a phone.

</comment><comment><USER47> Toucharcade is a great site / resource to find and learn about iOS games.

</comment><comment><USER48> > _To give some idea of just how awful iOS was for us, the first non-iOS game > I did after spending two years on iOS, released on a Sony handheld that many > describe as being "obscure", generated literally_ thousands* of times more > income for us than two years and ten games on iOS with its potential > billions of users.*

Yeah, but the Sony handled has like N titles, whereas the iOS has 1000xN.

</comment><comment><USER49> As someone who enjoyed Tempest, isn't Minter a bit of an industry grump now? Albeit someone who's shipped games unlike Chris Crawford.

</comment><comment><USER50> history will look back on this iphone era we are living as the second dark age.

<comment><USER51> Agreed, I do feel there could've been much better games made on the phone. For example, I remember Nintendo was about to make a push to bring its old classic Gameboy Era games /Gameboy Color games to the phone to no avail

<comment><USER14> Would you have been happy to pay $5-$8 per gameboy/gbc title?

Yeah didn't think so, but Nintendo DS owners are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Apple needs to move the "standard price" from 0.99 one time download -> 0.99 per year

Delete app to unsubscribe

Remove 0.99 one time pricing

$5.00 minimum one time download price

<comment><USER53> That is unaffordable to most consumers in the world. You will end up limiting urself to a market of few rich communities in rich countries.

<comment><USER54> that is not true. again, we aren't talking about a coursera course and paywalling information and vital self-learning here. We are talking about a dollar for a luxury game on a device that costs nearly $1000 and $100 a month for service. This is leaving aside that the economics of $4-5 a game would be better than a free game that is unwinnable unless you spend > $10.

I believe the parent, and if not then certainly I, am talking about games that are subsciption based and promote full releases that get upgrades and create community. not a 0.99 clone. this market is largely rich communities anyway if you use the world income scale, but we aren't using that scale, we are talking about iphone owners with discretionary income already willing to spend 1-30 a year on games...

<comment><USER55> > a device that costs nearly $1000 and $100 a month for service

If you're going to make a fiscal argument then don't exaggerate your numbers by 60-120%.

They start at $400 and top out at $750.

If you pay $100/month for service that's your own fault, I don't know anybody paying over $60/month.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> The site seems to be down.

Link to the Google cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:-8QtKz9...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:-8QtKz9Lo2oJ:minotaurproject.co.uk/blog/%3Fp%3D376+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

</comment><comment><USER57> One iOS game I enjoyed and recently rediscovered is GeoDefense. I highly recommend it (at $3.99 I think) and it is definitely a middle-ground app. I estimate they made between 500K - 5M lifetime sales over 4 years with both games.

<comment><USER58> The geoDefense games (regular and swarm) were huge favorites of mine at the time. I wish they were still making games but haven't seen anything new from those developers since that game came out.

<comment><USER59> Man, those games were fantastic. Best tower defense games ever made by a long shot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Oh well. I'm about to finish up a tiny game that I've been working on, and it will be fun to see what happens. At the very least, I've enjoyed learning SceneKit and practicing Swift.

</comment><comment><USER61> So much conversation and not a single reference to App Annie? Look at the data yourselves.</comment>


Nokia purchases 67% of Trolltech's stock for $103 million. - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/prnewswire/UKM00728012008-1.htm

<comment><USER2> I wonder if this will affect nokia's support of maemo (uses gtk+ toolkit)... I had the idea/wish they would eventually integrate maemo into their line of smart phones.

</comment><comment><USER3> For sure Qtopia has something to do with this, and at $103 million it's a bargain.

<comment><USER4> It's $153 million. The headline is incorrect, since they want to buy the entire company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hed: "Nokia purchases 67% of Trolltech's stock for $103 million"

Misleading submission headline. Nokia plans to buy all of Trolltech. The release just mentions that 66.43% (not 67%) of shares have already irrevocably accepted the offer, making it essentially a done deal. The full price is reported elsewhere as $153 million.

<comment><AUTHOR> And that's misleading? Do I have to put the whole article in the headline? God I hate social news sites sometimes.

<comment><USER5> Yes, it's misleading. It made it look like some stock in Trolltech is not part of the deal, like it's something other than an outright acquisition. Out of curiosity, I clicked, only to read that the real story is that (pending small details) Nokia is acquiring ALL of Trolltech for $153 million.

There's no "67%", no fractional stock purchase, no "$103 million".

The bad headline wasted my time.

Why not just keep the original article headline unless you're improving the accuracy?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not great, but there is both a 67% and a $103 million. 67% of people have agreed to sell their shares to nokia for a total of 103 million, so far.

<comment><USER5> No, there's not even a 67%. There's a 66.43%, which is (1) an irrelevant detail; and (2) rounds down to 66% if you feel like rounding.

Search Google News for 'Trolltech'. There are dozens of examples of good, accurate headlines for this event from dozens of publications. None have the inaccurate figures or misleading implication of your headline.

Accurate headlines are about the nicest thing you can do for fellow readers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't be a pedant.

<comment><USER6> Don't be so inaccurate.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Anyone use brain drugs such as piracetam here? - <AUTHOR>

If you have ever used these kind of drugs, what's your experience? <comment><USER2> I too am curious after hearing numerous people rave about this "drug" (seems more like a supplement to me)

<comment><USER3> Supplement is a word invented by the government.

There are three types of things that people consume. Food. Medicine. Supplements. The government has a list of every object encompassing those categories. If it is not one of those things, you are not allowed to discuss consumption of it because it is not on the list.

Supplements, like piracetam, are blessed to be on the approved list. It's not a drug, it's not a food, but you buy it at the grocery store and eat it so it must be a supplement. Wikipedia does classify it as a drug but it is not treated as a drug in the USA.

Herbal medicine is something of a different category but just about everything recognized from Eastern medicine is on the Supplements list anyways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Do a majority taking neutrotransmitters feel there has been some improvement in mental condition? I suspect most people do not. If it is not unhealthy to take one neurotransmitter, how many in combination become unhealthy? I would expect the benefits of these drugs to become more apparent when they were in combination with each other but any potential negative effects could also be magnified in combination.

You could fund research into what cognitive enhancement drugs did in healthy populations. Undergraduates would line up to be paid to take these drugs.

There's also the underlying ethical question of dosing people with combinations of neurotransmitters. We haven't studied it yet so we don't know what the side effects are. Is animal research appropriate? Do any of these drugs work on other primates? Has anyone ever tried to teach monkeys mathematics? <http://www.scribd.com/doc/13134612/Naturrecom456702a> argues for more study into the area, though they use as examples drugs of much more proven ability for cognitive enhancement than piracetam.

</comment><comment><USER4> I haven't personally tried piracetam, but erowid has a good section on piracetam and other nootropics. It generally seemed from Erowid that nobody had any bad experiences unless they were also on hard drugs.

Piracetem:<http://www.erowid.org/smarts/piracetam>

Nootropic Vault:<http://www.erowid.org/smarts/smarts.shtml>

</comment><comment><USER5> I take doses of Greens+ from time to time. I like it. I tried Piracetam and others but didn't put the effort in to identify how they affected me.

<comment><USER6> Do your perceived effects of Greens+ match the (somewhat inconclusive) results of this study? [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15217524?dopt=Abstract...](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15217524?dopt=Abstract&holding=f1000,f1000m,isrctn)

I'm interested in trying it and would appreciate any extra information.

<comment><USER5> In terms of energy yes I perceive positive effects and personally think it's powerful stuff and am try to dose it when I'm sluggish.

I know you didn't ask but I like sharing :) I also love eggs, especially pasteurized egg whites, and place them in the same category. To me pasteurized egg whites are equally as powerful. I would liken it to caffeine with no negatives but I don't like the sensation all the time.

Veggies like broccoli and spinach to a much less immediate effect. I would place berries higher than veggies. I take fish oil. Mayo Clinic recommends it.

And of course exercise. I weight lift like you see in the olympics, albeit with much less weight. It's a very efficient weight lifting related exercise. There's also sprinting, akin to spinning but fuller body, and swimming.

So that's my core physical body and mind well being philosophy :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My mom takes piracetam like aspirin. She's 61 and still learning new stuff to keep up with the advancements in her professional field.

</comment><comment><USER8> Didn't seem to work particularly well for me.

Do read this, though: <http://yarchive.net/med/nootropics.html>

</comment><comment><USER9> I've tried piracetam, and didn't really notice any difference greater than eating breakfast and/or getting a good night's sleep would give me.</comment>


AsteroidOS: An open-source operating system for smartwatches - <AUTHOR> http://asteroidos.org/ <comment><USER2> I've been following this since day 1. It's a really nice project, but it has little manpower.

I'm hoping it ends up serving as a drop-in replacement for Android Wear that provides more standalone features. I know hardware is the limiting factor too, but it seems we are getting there.

As a really casual smartphone user, I think I'd be much better served by a smartwatch. Most of the time, I'm next to a computer. So I never use phone browsing capabilities. Also I never make calls out of my office. Thus, I'd love to have a standalone smartwatch that tracks my heartrate & activity, offers some maps & navigation and allows for emergency calls and SMS without the need for a smartphone. I don't want to carry one, and I think I'm not alone. They distract me.

<comment><USER3> This seems to be a growing sentiment, perhaps in response to the enormity of modern smartphones. They're no longer a convenience but a payload.

Check out the variety of standalone smart watches coming out of China now, some even run full Android 5. I'm thinking of one which could act as a 3G-to- wifi hotspot for a tablet for when I do need to work on the go. That also gives much more flexibility in selecting a tablet without a SIM.

<comment><USER4> This is exactly what I've wanted for years, seems like we're finally getting there! Do you know of one with Wi-Fi hotspot capability?

<comment><USER5> Continuously running the 3G/4G connection and sharing it over wifi would run down the batter pretty quickly. Watches need small batteries so they can fit on your wrist.

<comment><USER4> Sure, I wouldn't want to use it all the time. Just occasionally when I need to pull out my tablet or laptop or whatever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I fail to understand a reason why someone would use this... right now it seems to only work on a few LG watches, and isn't Android open source as well? Why would someone choose to implement this when they can implement Android?

<comment><USER7> Working at a company that ships an embedded Android product, I know Android sometimes costs us far more than it helps us. It took us months to figure out how to route some audio from incoming A2DP Sink Bluetooth profile to the speakers, for example. Fighting with patches, and Android app Java code, and Bluetooth app Java code, and JNI glue, and CPP Android services, and C Bluedroid stack. Meanwhile anyone on the team could have gotten it working in a day on Linux running BlueZ.

Then we constantly have the same issues working with the display. We output ARGB for an augmented reality product, but Android is not designed to output anything but RGB to the final LCD. So similarly, if we were just dealing with a Linux frame buffer, we'd have had a much easier time doing the customization than fighting all of Android's various SurfaceFlinger and other layers between the app and the display.

<comment><USER8> Try Tizen? It's a real Linux, and much more than its popular reputation as Samsung's also-ran Android clone.

<comment><USER9> Well Tizen's openness is a lie too, at least in wearables. Both Gear S & Gear 2 are already depreciated by Samsung, and the wearable image you can build yourself from source is missing most key components you would use on a watch (for example, you won't have S Health is closed source, Nokia maps -included in Gear S- is closed source too), and even the sensor framework is unusable in an opensource form, since half of the apis are closed and undocumented (you can check all this by taking a look at the srpms from build.tizen.org)

Even if you could overcome that, you would still need to make your own companion app for the phone and framework, since all that is Samsung proprietary too.

That's exactly why I'm the sole mantainer of Gear 2 & Gear S Android Wear ports...

IMHO it would be easier to clean up AOSP and make an open variant of Android Wear, rather than reimplement it all from scratch, but who doesn't like a challenge! At least they can use some parts of Nemo/Sailfish OS

<comment><USER10> Tizen's openness is also a lie for phones. Just like AOSP, community involvement is not welcome in the Tizen development process and doesn't have any role in deciding what ships on phones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sad to see that only the G Watch and the G Watch Urbane are supported. My Moto 360 Gen 1 won't get the Android Wear 2 update, so it's becoming a mantlepiece quickly... :/

</comment><comment><USER12> Very cool, but will it run MAME?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLTjba8EM6A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLTjba8EM6A)

</comment><comment><USER13> Since my LG G Watch is awful and I stopped using it, this might actually be fun! Thanks OP.

</comment><comment><USER14> Looks a lot like Sailfish OS/Meego in those screenshots.

</comment><comment><USER15> I would rather stay with MM...</comment>


GoPin – Tool-less version pinning for Go - <AUTHOR> http://gopin.org/ <comment><USER2> does this support tags, as well as specific commit hashes?

<comment><USER3> Neither tags nor branch references can guarantee that you are working with the exact same code. Only commit hashes can guarantee that the code hasn't changed. That being said, if it does work with tags or branch references, then it is no longer version pinning.</comment></comment>


Intel's 6th Generation Skylake Processors Scheduled for 2H 2015 - <AUTHOR> http://wccftech.com/intels-6th-generation-skylake-processors-scheduled-2h-2015-5th-generation-broadwell-spring-15-updates-2015-2016-mobility-roadmap/ <comment><USER4> Some interesting numbers:

In 1971, the 4004 microprocessor had 2300 transistors fabricated with a 10um process. If the 4004 was fabricated with the same 14nm process as the Skylake, over two hundred 4004s would fit in the area that a single transistor occupied in the original 4004.

"Breakeven" occurred with the 68000:

In 1979, the 68000 microprocessor had 68000 transistors fabricated with a 3.5um process. If the 68000 was fabricated with the same 14nm process as the Skylake, an entire 68000 would fit in the area that a single transistor occupied in the original 68000.

Today's transistors are _really_ small compared to what they used to be! The mind boggles at how many simple processor cores could be crammed into a current die.

The numbers came from:

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

<comment><USER5> What blows my mind is that Intel continues to do it with what seems like really only one real competitor.

<comment><USER6> ARM chip makers _are_ competitors to Intel now. Whether you believe it or not, is less important. Intel, however, does believe it. Their entire chip strategy over the past few years has been a _response_ to ARM - with each new generation they barely increase the performance of _mainstream_ chips or even _drop_ it, like they did with Core-M, as they try to lower their power consumption, to put them closer to ARM's range. I'm not talking about IPC here, but about the overall performance of the mainstream chips they're pushing in the market.

First it was -M chips in laptops (30W-level performance), then it was -U chips (15W-level performance), and now it's -Y chips (5W - or so they say - <USER2> performance). Yes, a good chunk of that difference is from moving to new nodes and optimization, but not all of it. Another big part comes from lowering the performance and/or throttling their chips a lot more aggressively than before in order to achieve that drastic drop in power consumption.

They don't care what AMD is doing these days, but they do care what ARM chip makers are doing. They even bought a 4G modem company, so they can integrate modems into chips the way Qualcomm does it. Speaking of Qualcomm, I believe it has just announced it's going into server chips now.

Intel feels so threatened by ARM now, that it's losing _$1 billion per quarter_ , to essentially give away its Atom chips for free to no-name tablet makers, or less important OEMs (who are the only ones desperate enough to take Intel's deal, because others know that as soon as Intel becomes a big player, they'll charge a much higher rate even than other ARM competition - <USER3> likes big profits on its chips and it's the only way for them to sustain the company).

They even went into the business of IP licensing for crying out loud, just like ARM (they're licensing Atom IP to Rockchip and Spreadtrum). Intel has essentially admitted that it can't be competitive _building its own mobile chips_. They have to license the IP to others so other companies can build them - on TSMC's foundry, on an old process node, even by current ARM standards.

<comment><USER7> Intel's big problem is the fact that they invest so heavily in fabs (which is how they're basically constantly a process ahead of everyone else!) that their costs are so much higher than most other manufacturers — and that's why they charge so much more for their chips than most of the generic ARM SoCs. Yes, some of it is profit margin, but they've been pushing the development so much that much of it is just recouping their massive investments that give them their competitive advantage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Warning: link auto-plays video with sound.

Edit/addition:

AVX-512 in Skylake is pretty exciting. 32 FLOPS per clock cycle per core is amazing. Also good to see 64 or 128 MB of eDRAM being included in more configurations. It should also somewhat help with algorithms with larger working sets, not just with graphics. Integration is also interesting, latency between GPU and CPU should be low. This may open chances for better integration and sharing of work between those units.

1 Gbps ethernet starts to be a limitation, it's barely enough for current internet connections in some parts of the world. Nearly any SSD can do sustained 5 Gbps, most new mechanical disks push 2 Gbps. It's time for 10GBASE-T to be a standard, with power saving option to function at lower speeds. Nowadays even low end hardware such as $80 Asus etc. wifi-router with USB 3.0 can push 500 Mbps+ at file serving.

<comment><USER9> It is hard to get mainstream usage of CPU extensions until they are on the large majority of chips because creating multiple code paths is a pain. Thus while AVX-512 is nice, I do not expect to see usage of it outside video codecs until at least 3 years from now, and it likely won't be widely used until 5-7 years from now. This problem is compounded by the slow upgrade cycles of PCs now that their performance doesn't drastically increase per generation.

<comment><USER8> It's worse than that. It's still problematic to even assume SSE4.2, not to mention AVX2, which would help significantly. Virtualization is making the problem worse, because hypervisors set CPUID bits to lowest common denominator within a vMotion / teleportation domain.

I think (specialized) JITting is the answer for that. Generate code on the fly. I've been lately playing around with JITted [de]serializers, etc. I think it might be possible to have an order of magnitude gains in JSON, XML, msgpack, etc. processing.

Even *printf can be much, much faster. If the format specifier is static, first run just generates code just for that specifier. Subsequent invocations can be about 10-20x faster versus normal style format string scanner.

Edit: When I say JIT, I'm not talking about JVM or any other mainstream implementation specifically, but the concept in general. Which means just-in- time generation of (optimal) machine specific code.

<comment><USER10> JIT and AOT on-device is the future, I agree. How good are the JVMs at taking advantage of new instructions?

<comment><USER9> My understanding is that JVMs do not generate any advanced instructions from standard Java code. The only time they use these instructions is if they link in hand coded C++ libraries that make use of them.

Edit: Stackoverflow answer says that in rare cases the JVM can vectorize simple loops: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10784951/do-any-jvms- jit-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10784951/do-any-jvms-jit- compilers-generate-code-that-uses-vectorized-floating-point-ins)

<comment><USER8> Just take a look at the code they generate, it's easy. In short, they do generate SIMD code, but very rarely take advantage of vectorized execution.

<comment><USER10> Why aren't the processor manufacturers making their own JITs and AOT compilers? Surely that would be a competitive advantage.

<comment><USER8> Intel makes a famous AOT compiler, ICC. [https://software.intel.com/en- us/intel-compilers](https://software.intel.com/en-us/intel-compilers)

<comment><USER10> Yes, but it's for developer-compiled languages. It's not like I switch from an AMD to an Intel processor and suddenly all C code on my machine has new instructions in them. Compiled code remains the way it is.

This is not what I want. What I want is either JIT or AOT-on-end-device.

<comment><USER8> Binary (compiled code) JIT compilation could very well be faster than direct execution.

I'm not aware of anyone currently using these techniques for running native code faster. Yet.

You can also call these techniques binary translation if you like.

At simplest level, one could for example dynamically replace relevant static library calls with higher performance versions. Perform function signature based optimization - when a certain known common function is found, simply replace it with a faster version.

More advanced ones could for example inline functions, even those pointed by function pointers given a guard condition. It could also vectorize suitable serial code.

Superoptimization techniques could also be applied to the instruction stream. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superoptimization](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superoptimization)

Even complex optimizations are possible. Like memory access pattern translation. The JIT compiler could perform cache simulation and find a mapping between memory accesses that would increase true hardware level locality of reference. Performance could be improved by generating access transformation code when target binary tries to access memory. Like map image processing memory access code from row major to Z-order curve to increase cache hit probability. Unless memory mapped (either to other processes or physical hardware) the buffer resides the data would need to be translated back row-major only for system calls. A lazy page fault mechanism could also work in some cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It is hard to get excited about this update if the core count stays the same (2/4) in the low end chips.

The CPU throughput per core does not change that much per generation now:

2010-era Intel Core i7 980X (6 cores with HT) has a performance rating of ~9000: [https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7+X+980...](https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7+X+980+%40+3.33GHz&id=866)

2014-era Intel Core i7 5930K (6 cores with HT) has a performance rating of ~13500: [https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-5930K...](https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-5930K+%40+3.50GHz&id=2336)

That works out to an CPU performance increase of ~1000/10% per year/generation. I guess that is impressive given no clock speed increase, and reduced power consumption, but that doesn't turn into more powerful results for consumers in terms of raw performance. If Intel does not increase the general core count available to consumers, we are basically stuck at the same level of performance we were 4 years ago -- this isn't the case with GPUs nor with mobile CPUs, which are increasing rapidly.

<comment><USER11> Isn't the 2010-era Intel Core i7 980X about twice the price of the 2014-era Intel Core i7 5930K?

In other words, aren't you comparing a high end CPU from 2010 to a medium range CPU from 2014?

<comment><USER9> The Intel Core i7 5930K is the fastest 6 core Intel Core i7 5xxx CPU. It is the second faster Intel Core i7 5xxx CPU available. To call that mid-range is not correct.

<comment><USER11> Fair enough, but the 5960X is still a better comparison, surely?

<comment><USER9> I was trying to make the point that per core speed hasn't increased. Both the 980X and the 5960K are the top of the line 6 core consumer grade CPUs.

This ties in with my point that the consumer grade CPUs from Skylake are all 2 and 4 core CPUs, which isn't that different from low-end consumer grade CPUs from 2010/2011, because per core performance hasn't increased significantly.

My solution was for Intel to increase core count for consumer grade CPUs. Because you can get real performance increases this way, as you proved by comparing a 6 core CPU with an 8 core CPU.

<comment><USER12> At the high end, per-core performance hasn't increased significantly. However, at the 2-4 core level, it has. For example, the i3-4360t is 72% faster than the i3 550, even though the 4360t uses half the power of the 550. Plus, you need to keep in mind other things that will affect perceptions of performance, like the pci-e lanes being on-die with the most recent generations of chips. While the high end has plateaued to some extent with recent generations, Intel's pumped a significant amount of work making their other lines considerably more performant.

<comment><USER8> > At the high end, per-core performance hasn't increased significantly.

When comparing aforementioned CPUs (Intel Core i7 980X and Intel Core i7 5930K), I'd call 4->16 FLOPS per clock and 25.6 GB/s -> 68 GB/s memory bandwidth significant. I think integer rate has also at least quadrupled.

Of course, because of high latencies, when running pointer chasing or branchy code, there's little improvement. The software just can't take advantage of hardware capabilities.

What kind of software are you considering when making that statement?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just like Broadwell was scheduled for the first half of 2014?

<comment><USER13> I dont know why you are being downvoted, but it is a valid questions. Broadwell was delayed for half a year and is still not widely available. Macbooks (which are a pretty important predictor of demand) are not going to have Broadwells till 2015 [1], so the question is if Intel is going to have Broadwell at all or skip directly to SkyLake.

Plus, Broadwell was delayed because of manufacturing yield issues... so unless that is cleared up, SkyLake will be similarly affected.

[1] [http://www.macrumors.com/2014/07/09/broadwell-early-to- mid-2...](http://www.macrumors.com/2014/07/09/broadwell-early-to-mid-2015/)

<comment><USER7> As I understand it, the issues are fundamental to the 14nm process — and one might expect once they can manufacture 14nm Broadwell parts with reasonable yields, they will be able to manufacture 14nm Skylake parts with reasonable yields. Last I heard the plan was for Broadwell to be available for something like six months only.</comment></comment></comment>


Coding Horror: A Visit With Alan Kay - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/01/a-visit-with-alan-kay.html <comment><USER2> >Computer scientist Kay was the leader of the group that invented object- oriented programming, the graphical user interface, 3D computer graphics, and ARPANET, the predecessor of the Internet

Overstating a bit? I don't think PARC had a hand in inventing ARPANET, although Bob Taylor did, who was later a manager at PARC. Likewise inventing the graphical user interface? Maybe you are thinking of Ivan Sutherland, another name associated with ARPANET.

Not to diminish the great things achieved at PARC, in the way of modern bitmapped GUI, networked workstations, laser printer, etc.</comment>