Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/business-54100001 <comment><USER2> Tangential, since this article is about the US and China. But if the US has dropped the ball, then Europe (or the EU specifically) didn't even bother to go to the game. The only thing we're innovative at is coming up with regulations. And I say this as someone who thinks the US tech sector should be under much heavier regulatory scrutiny.

<comment><USER3> There was still not that long ago an incredible amount of innovative companies and products in Europe.

But at that time companies were still built for their home markets first and on that regard the USA is big and unified. Since software is mostly winner takes all it means that when the USA companies came to Europe they had already won the USA and could steamroll the local competition

There is for example no way a swedish mapping company could have competed with google maps , which had so much search monopoly money backing it up from the start

The only way Europe could have prevented this is to just ban foreign monopolies, wich is what china did, and why they are now succesfully 'innovating'.

I read often on this website that europe cannot 'take risks' or 'innovate' and is 'riding on american innovation for free' and I find that a bit insulting, because I fell that as things are geopolitically it's just not possible for Europeans to compete fairly with Americans

<comment> 88840-8855 I like your points and agree on your conclusion.

Further, I would like to add a few ideas:

\- innovation in Europe can only scale if we achieve a higher degree of unity in Europe, including one common language, one common jurisdiction and law framework. Localization is just too expensive in Europe and hinders scaling.

\- a certain degree of protectionism is good. I am a big fan of how China made it. They have a really fantastic digital landscape that is superior in so many areas compared to Europe (if you exclude the data privacy issue)

\- reliance on the old economy is bad and this is a political decision.

\- too many people are too scared of new technologies and want things "how they used to be". This is bad and is typical for many Europeans, especially here in Germany. Cultural change must happen but you cannot force it.

<comment><USER4> What could the one common language be? English would seem to be the logical choice, but there is no way France would agree to that.

<comment><USER5> The EU doesn't even agree on which alphabet to use, Latin is the most common one but the Greek and Cyrillic alphabets are also official in the union.

English is my second language, and while I wouldn't mind changing the official language of my country, I can't see that ever happening, there's just so much culture attached to the language, that would be forgotten together with our language.

<comment><USER6> Yep. A common European first language would start a process which would result in a terrible loss of local cultural tradition. Cultural suicude for the common good has been suggested before, but I can't imagine that there would be a lot of people who'd agree with it.

<comment><USER7> I disagree, I live in Denmark where the majority speaks very good English. There's no shortage of Danish media.

On the other hand, economic suicide is assured by insisting on a high standard of living while doing everything possible to prevent innovation.

<comment><USER6> As a Swedish-speaking Finn, I can confirm that a culture can end up on the decline even if there's powerful legal backing to preserving it (including forcing the remaining ~90% of the population to learning Swedish in school). Incidentally, I'd say there's a large correlation with English being more and more accepted in Finnish society, but I suspect the actual root cause simply is that cultural production is mainly taking place in the first language (Finnish) and that it leaves less for the others.

The same would happen if you managed to get the entire EU to agree to switch to one single language (remember, it's likely that it would be French or German instead of English). As a result of pushing adoption of the new first language, it would mean increased cultural output in that language, and a reduced output for the others. After a while, the differences will start showing.

I've lived in Denmark for quite a few years and I agree that people in Copenhagen and the other larger cities wouldn't notice that much of a difference to begin with, but remember that this would mean a cultural shift that will take multiple generations. Ask the German speakers in southern Jutland in another 24 years, and compare how their culture thrives compared to how they did before the war and you will probably have a pretty decent view on how the situation would be for many, many of EU's minorities 100 years after the switch to a single European first language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Schmidt has the typical perspective of someone who knows nothing about China.

For ease, I've singled out this one point:

> For example, Chinese telecoms infrastructure giant Huawei spends as much as > $20bn (£15.6bn) on research and development - one of the highest budgets in > the world.

Any member of Chinese society knows that budgets like this are announced to look impressive, and that the money itself goes through so many layers that siphon off 20% that when the project(s) are finally delivered, it was done on a shoestring and the deliverable _looks_ like a rough approximation of what was in the scope. Just don't look under the hood.

Then there are all the other grand initiatives where the money is quietly put into the stock market and again the deliverable is a "driverless car" etc. that in reality doesn't work.

Obviously, there's a lot more nuance than this, but if I went around refuting all these "China experts", I'd have no time for anything else. The point is: don't believe the hype. Just because a lot of low-hanging tech fruit is highly visible and China has a lack of ethical and legal oversight does not mean the country is innovative.

The US I can't comment on.

<comment><USER9> To be fair, Schmidt's larger point seemed to be about how bad the US has been doing and he used China as a counter example to illustrate that. If his counter example turns out to be exaggerated that doesn't change the fact that US r&d spending is lower than before Sputnik. (I have no idea whether his numbers are right.) Your point to not believe the hype is a very good one though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > _And that 's one of the key reasons why China has been able to catch up... > he thinks the US is still ahead of China in tech innovation, for now. But > that the gap is narrowing fast._

Which is _awesome_.

Because framing it as "ahead" or a "gap" is _completely_ backwards. Innovation isn't a competition or zero-sum game.

Innovation coming out of China benefits the _world_ , just like innovation coming out of the US does. What matters is the _total_.

How about we be _thankful_ that there are now so many more scientists the world over contributing to research and knowledge? How amazing is that for the human race?

Now, if there's an article that actually proves US innovation is slowing _compared to itself in the past_ somehow, that actually measures total _results_ rather than government-funded inputs (e.g. including private funding and taking impact/effectiveness into account, not just # of papers published)... then I'd be _very_ interested in that.

But this article isn't that. This article is just cheap nationalism. Ugh.

<comment><USER11> Whatever you're position happens to be, you can't pretend like we're all in this innovating together for the betterment of humankind. China and the US have very different ideologies and are opposing forces in global geopolitics. There are a lot of people, both inside the US and outside, that would prefer to see the US continue to be the most innovative country, so Schmidt's perspective is relevant and informative, not just cheap nationalism.

<comment><USER10> But what do ideologies/forces have to do with it?

The article uses published scientific papers as an example. That's _open_. That's research results the US is getting _for free, from China_. Which is awesome!

The only way I can interpret your comment as making sense is if we were talking solely about _military_ innovation -- innovation in China's navies, in its air force, in its missiles, or even its ability to hack and disrupt foreign networks.

But Schmidt clearly _isn 't_ talking about that, he's talking about basic scientific and engineering research.

I don't disagree there _are_ people who see it as a competition and want to see the US "win", but that _is_ cheap nationalism to me. Because the fact is, the more research that gets done, the more _everybody_ wins.

Even if it's not the intention, why _don 't_ you think that research is, indeed, ultimately resulting in the betterment of humankind? Isn't that what progress _is_?

Here's another way to think about it: producing research is like producing anything else, like iPhones. The world is better off because China has the manufacturing capacity to churn out iPhones cheaper and better than anyone else. Which benefits us all. Because it's not a competition -- it's progress.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you follow the article around you realize this isn't about money invested but simply based on how many scientific articles are being published [0] and not dollars invested even though they toss in one Chinese based companies number.

Personally I do not find article count a good number to base the claim on. Percentage of GPD might not be a good reference either but then again I am not 100% sure a dollar for dollar comparison works well in all cases.

[0][https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/01/top-ten-countries- lea...](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/01/top-ten-countries-leading- scientific-publications-in-the-world/)

<comment><USER13> There was also this article linked about federal decrease in R&D spending: [https://itif.org/publications/2018/12/14/dwindling- federal-s...](https://itif.org/publications/2018/12/14/dwindling-federal- support-rd-recipe-economic-and-strategic-decline)

Can someone link me historical total R&D spending data for US?

I found [https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44307.pdf](https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44307.pdf) which states:

> The United States became a global leader in R&D in the 20th century, funding > as much as 69% of annual global R&D in the period following World War II. 1 > Figure 1 shows the growth in total U.S. R&D expenditures from 1953 to 2018 > in current dollars. 2 U.S. R&D in 2018 was 112 times higher than it was in > 1953 in current dollars, and more than 15 times higher in constant dollars.3 > By sector, business-funded R&D grew the most during this period. However, > faster growth in total R&D spending of other nations reduced the U.S. share > of global R&D to approximately 27.7% in 2017.

<comment><USER14> > in the period following World War II.

That'd likely tbe because most the rest of the developed world had been reduced to rubble.

27% is still a hugely outsized slice of the pie.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As an employee of Google, it's sad to see it turn into a conventional company. Sure we take certain risks here and there, but by and large we're optimizing for the next quarter's PnL / growth. We would much rather invest in growing our ad revenue by x% than to start a new team doing something novel. Whenever a new idea comes up that's a bit outside the predictable path of OKRs, it's almost scoffed at, and you're implicitly told not to be silly. There's very little left of the "nothing is impossible" attitude.

Google is still a fantastic company to work at as far as compensation and benefits, but it won't be for long (maybe 10 more years?)

<comment><USER16> The fact that "conventional company" was redefined because everyone started to be more like Google (as an operation, not privacy/advertising issues), is a great thing.

Google isn't a startup and there's no reason why it should be or why that would be good. "Innovation" isn't valuable if it isn't scaled up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "This high skills immigration is crucial to American competitiveness, global competitiveness, building these new companies and so forth," he said. "America does not have enough people with those skills."

Translation -- US software engineer salaries are still too high for his liking, so he wants to dilute the market with more to lower the overall cost.

<comment><USER18> Bingo

It really annoys me when they bitch about not being able to bring in skilled workers from overseas because they can't find skilled people here... Hey, maybe they should fucking train someone!

Usually when a tech boss is complaining about not having skilled staff locally it's code for "... I want to find someone cheaper overseas". It's like seeing a job ad that wants a wizard at everything but has terrible pay, they just want to import a cheaper worker.

<comment><USER19> Or they don't really care where a skilled worker comes from... we should be able to higher and attract best and brightest across the world. Current immigration system is not setup for that.

<comment><USER20> Why do you feel that smart people from all over the world should serve the American economy?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Late to this thread, sorry.

I have two tangental questions.

#1 In general terms, what's China's commitment (investment) in higher ed? Compared to the USA and other economies?

USA's tuition, loans, student debt is always good for an argument on HN. Almost no one mentions that the USA decided to privatize higher ed some decades back. So I was wondering if China and others made the same mistake.

#2 How does current China think about growing inequity?

One persons's story in "American Factory" resonated with me. Glass furnace technician Hong We [https://www.imdb.com/name/nm10930334/](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm10930334/) works his ass off, making huge personal sacrifices, to further enrich Fuyao Glass America owner Jeff Daochuan Liu.

Shown is gob standard corporate team building meetings where Fuyao uses economic nationalism to motivate their underpaid staff.

What is Hong We's future? When will the feel goods not be enough? When will Hong We demand to be paid fairly?

I assume Labor in China will follow the American trajectory. With all that political and cultural strive that entails. But I'm keen to hear what others think.

Edit: I think Cao Dewang is the founder and owner, not Jeff Daochuan Liu. I regret the error.

<comment><USER22> The problem with making higher ed only a public service is you run into rationing. If all positions have to be government funded there tends to be fewer positions.

There are plenty of people on HN who likely would not have made the cut in a EU country.

<comment><USER23> US higher ed already is a public service. Only 25% of students are in private colleges/universities, and ~every professor who does research is funded mostly by government.

I believe that what's actually happening with US higher ed supply is that we stopped founding large research universities. Many of the great public schools were endowed using federal land[1] and eventually the government ran out of valuable agricultural land.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land- grant_university](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land-grant_university)

<comment><USER22> The institutions themselves are mixed and the student funding is also mixed but can lean towards private, especially if you are not a first pick for higher ed but are still capable. In non-US locations there can be no private funding option.

Student tuition has replaced a lot of government funding. As we can see it has gone to administrative spending. Do you think new unis would fix that?

<comment><USER21> I was staff (vs faculty) for a public uni. It was understood that all state funding would eventually go away, effectively making it a private uni. I'd have to look up the numbers, but state funding went from 80% in the 1970s down to 10% in the 2010s.

Obviously, rising administrative overhead is due to cost disease, and misc adjacent theories, like Graeber's bullshit jobs).

But I haven't seen anyone discuss the corollary of "keeping up appearances". Parents now spending ~$3,000 per credit hour (non-resident) have high expectations. Better housing, better food, better amenities, responsive office staff, etc. All that cruise ship caliber fluff needs that much more bureaucracy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Anyone else find it ironic that Google is the subject of one of the biggest anti-trust cases in recent history, and now Schmidt is blaming the US for not innovating enough?

Maybe if so much of the tech industry's wealth and resources weren't pooled together into a handful of massive monopolists who have nearly complete control over whether any competitor lives or dies, the US (and really, the entire world) would have more opportunity to innovate.

<comment><USER25> Just look at tensorflow. It masquerades as enabling open source ai, while really pushing people to pricey, proprietary google cloud compute. How these ppl can keep a straight face, I have no idea.

<comment><USER26> I currently run a 120 dollar tensorflow device all locally that does real time object detection. I dont understand your criticism.

<comment><USER25> I'm talking about Google sequestering tensor cores and writing the distributed training code for g-cloud pods. Even your nice embedded inference device was designed with the hopes you'd grab some high performance compute to train something high quality. (These embedded devices are useless for training)

<comment><USER26> Fair enough, but with everything google, the free tier good enough for a prototype and personal use. If I need to scale it, there are other options. For me, I appreciate the option of this model, it makes high tech accessible to low capital ventures. And sometimes buying locked in services is the rational decision taking into account the costs of learning other platforms and maintaining a vender unlocked platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> When innovation in the world of bits is no longer sufficient and mass innovation in the physical world is required, what is the western world going to do? Knowledge is not something permanent and mass production was centralized in China decades ago. Nobody around you remembers how to build real things, unlike your competition in China. They call the shots now...

"Almighty Chinese gods, can you please design, prototype and mass produce this device for me. I would like to use it as a platform and run my crappy code on it so I can compete with your own people".

<comment><USER28> You've heard a very exaggerated version of the narrative. Manufacturing output is only twice as high in China as in the US; certainly a large disparity, but hardly consistent with the idea that the Western world has stopped building real things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Why do we persist in this old fashioned notion that Nation States are the axis on which "innovation" turns? The brainpower, resources, and motivation for innovating increasingly lie with huge multinational tech companies, not nation states. And they largely don't care where you live - if you're smart they want to hire you (unlike nation states with their Byzantine immigration policies)

<comment><USER30> Cause Schmidt's new venture is to ask the government for money, and his sales pitch is "US is falling behind China in R&D, you need to spend more money."

<comment><USER31> Big companies asking the government for money is by no means new. And "innovation" sounds so much better than begging or rent-seeking. This whole article is a whirl of hot air.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> A reminder that Google's revenues come almost completely from ad technology that they bought (from Doubleclick, IIRC). Google has stuck its fingers into hundreds of pies since then, to its credit, and has found that innovation is difficult, unpredictable, and expensive.

<comment><USER33> Search, Maps, Ads and Android are Google's most successful product.

Android was bought at well.

<comment><USER34> The serious android work was done well after acquisition

<comment><USER35> I would say the serious work was done before...you know the operating-system. Like with chrome..the serious work was made before...khtml.

<comment><USER36> No, not really. The vast majority of the OS was developed after Android was acquired. It wasn't even a shippable product before then. Source: I have a Sooner, the first ever android phone, abd I wrote software for it.

<comment><USER37> The value of Android to Google is that it enables them to gather vast quantities of data from their users. Google uses this data to enhance the efficacy of its advertising, by predicting what people will click on.

<comment><USER36> I'd be curious to know what hard evidence you have to back this claim up with, otherwise its just hearsay.

<comment><USER35> >curious to know what hard evidence you have to back this claim up with

Wow buddy...that should be absolutely known by now, same with Chrome and every single Google-Service.

[https://about.google/intl/en/how-our-business- works/](https://about.google/intl/en/how-our-business-works/)

> But, when you use our products you trust us with your personal information.

Thanks you very much ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Xenophobia and nationalism sure don't help. We used to import the smartest most capable people from all across the world to develop and market their inventions and ideas and maybe even become rich in the process. Now, not so much.

<comment><USER39> > Xenophobia and nationalism sure don't help.

But somehow China a country with even more Xenophobia and nationalism is catching up to us. And the U.S. used to have more Xenophobia and nationalism in the past and was also substantially more innovative.

Maybe the real problem is that the U.S. (all the way up to the top) has become anti-intellectual. We have completely dumbed down our culture so that children today want to be basketball players instead of astronauts. Our schools and government explicitly oppose meritocracy. There is just too much money in junk media and junk education that its never going to be fixed and instead we have to bring in more immigrants.

<comment><USER40> But Chinese xenophobia is not American style. Sure they lack immigration but so many Chinese travel outside for education and business that they are in fact hyper aware of cultural differences and are upskilling themselves en masse in dealing with various cultures. They bring that skill back home to build companies and sub cultures that ape the best of other countries.

This is very unlike US style xenophobia where Murica number 1 and anything about foreigners sucks.

<comment><USER41> China is an ethnostate that is actively committing a genocide. If that is not xenophobic I don't know what is.

<comment><USER42> And Iraq is taking Kuwaiti babies out of incubators and Libya was... what again? Considering the Uyghur population doubled in the last 50 years and China has 20 times more mosques than the US, China isn't very good at geocoding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Thiel on google not innovating [https://youtu.be/2Q26XIKtwXQ](https://youtu.be/2Q26XIKtwXQ)

</comment><comment><USER44> Those directly involved in innovation, especially scientists and technicians, are more and more traveling, changing employers and above all communicating, in all relevant meaning of this term here, therefore by 'publishing' as well as by leaving information circulate informally among peers.

A high proportion of scientists go through major US universities. This imbues them with certain ideas and creates social (IRL) networks where 'information ought to be free'. Those who then work elsewhere (let's say 'return to China') just cannot completely drop them, and some even broadcast those ideas and associated behaviors.

Moreover the US supremacy on software provides them with increasing means to effectively spy on research conducted in all countries.

Consequently, the US ability to benefit from innovation payed for by other nations keeps growing.

In a way it is similar to the 80's "Strategic Defense Initiative" against the USSR ('let them dissipate resources'), with the added bonus of being able to rack a fair part of the benefits up.

</comment><comment><USER45> I am not sure what he is talking about. I work on AI/Machine Learning and I can't think of any major paper that came out of China.

<comment><USER46> I am ignorant on this field so please indulge me with this question:

Isn't in China's best interest not to make public any innovations that they can leverage against other countries?

<comment><USER45> Maybe if it was some kind of military technology. But Schmidt's quote is about publications and the article talks about civilian companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> It is the old military industrial complex thing again, isn't it?

Drumming up a scary vision of global war against China using flying AI-killer robots in outer space while your companies are siphoning billions of dollars out of defense budgets and you get your competition (Huawei, TikTok etc.) banned on national security grounds.

Innovation comes from a functioning global market place of "ideas". It is a 1+1=3 game, not a zero-sum one.

Drop the new cold war and get back to doing business.

<comment><USER48> If you deal with unequal trade "partners" like China that grossly disregard any intellectual property, don't care about labor security and environmental standards and as a result have a massive trade surplus not based on innovation but mostly based on cheap labor you have to draw a line at some point.

The biggest "ball" that was dropped on innovation in the US was to allow companies to outsource their manufacturing to mainland china.

<comment><USER37> China has rapidly become a global leader in automation. From 2018 to 2020, a sales increase between 15 and 20 percent on average per year is possible for industrial robots. Annual sales volume has currently reached the highest level ever recorded for a single country: Within a year, sales in China surged by 27 percent to 87,000 units (2016).

[https://ifr.org/news/robots-china-breaks-historic-records- in...](https://ifr.org/news/robots-china-breaks-historic-records-in- automation)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Eric Schmidt is a household name around here. Doesn't mean I give a damn about what he thinks.

> Dr Schmidt, who is currently the Chair of the US Department of Defense's > innovation board, said he thinks the US is still ahead of China in tech > innovation, for now.

"Invest in my next project now, before it's too late!" is what I read it as.

Edit: let me clarify. Innovation isn't zero-sum. I believe America is the most fascinating experiment – balancing (albeit imperfectly) innovation with ethics. There's a lot of innovation that can happen – and at a cost that's too great.

For example, North Korea has demonstrated an ability to develop nuclear weapons (deep technical advancement), and China can develop datasets on millions (billions?) of people (broad technical advancement). But, the ethical costs are too great. I don't want to celebrate cultures of innovation that do this – foreign or domestic.

Sure, let's always have an eye on _increasing_ our investments against R&D – fundamental and more broadly. But I'm no apologist for falling behind when the truth is that _that view_ of innovation is a zero-sum game where we lose our humanity in the process.

<comment><USER50> The United States balances innovation with ethics ?

The people of Hiroshima or the victims of agent orange might have something to say about that.

<comment><USER51> Do you actually think damages caused in actual wars are somehow comparable to those in peace time technical development? What do you really mean by that?

<comment><USER37> DuPont developed Teflon, then made billions by taking it to market without developing a way to dispose of the toxic waste byproducts of the manufacturing process. They just dumped it into virgin streams in West Virginia.

Then they avoided responsibility for the deaths they caused by spending millions in the us court system to reduce the damages payout to less than one years profits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> The problem starts with culture. In high school, people want to be athletes and pop singers or idk actors. Social skills are over valued. Also the way science is taught in the US discourages exploration and encourages "draw indide the circle". Not to method how hostile academia is.

<comment><USER53> Maybe it's a similar kind of trend where women in western countries prefer non-STEM related fields on average as they have access to an abundance of more attractive possibilities. It's a sign of social progress, as twisted as it seems. Math is hard, people avoid it when they feel they can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Pretty rich coming from a guy who's rule saw one of the most profitable companies in the US sit on 50bn cash instead of investing it into innovation.

</comment><comment><USER55> I am always curious what people think about the following subject: Do you believe patents promote innovation or hamper it? Certainly some business models are dependent on patents and intellectual property restrictions, but do you think it actually promotes innovation?

My own observation has been that with the 3D printer for example, innovation was stagnant for the 20 years that they were under patent. Once the patents expired, innovation in the space boomed and the price of a decent 3D printer dropped by 100x.

So with the US so patent-heavy, are we actually making things more expensive and crippling innovation? What would it do to the price of your washing machine if it was open source hardware? Prusa Research has seemingly had good competitive success even with all open source products and many clones, so I feel like the economics can work. Would we be better off if we learned the economics of open source hardware and pushed the industry in that direction? Have any economists taken this question seriously?

This blog post on innovation from Bunnie Huang talks about the real on the ground experience of innovation without IP restrictions here: [https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=284](https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=284)

Libertarians make a good case against intellectual property restrictions too: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZgLJkj6m0A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZgLJkj6m0A)

<comment><USER56> Historically, from steam engines to 3D printing, innovation has been stifled by patents. The book "Against Intellectual Monopoly" [0] from Boldrin and Levine (two economists, Levine website has more work by other economists) gives an historical perspective on IP and offers answers to common (and less common) rebuttals ("Why would anyone invest in research if another company can just copy their work?").

[0] [http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm](http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm)

<comment><USER55> Wonderful thank you so much!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I remember when Eric was CEO of Novell. When he left Sun someone high up sent an email with the slight joke "short Novell" in it.

Eric is smart, no doubt but Google's success was him getting out of the way and letting him just talk to stroke his own ego

Now he has the government backing him to stroke his massive ego

Does anyone really think Eric does anything for "America'a" interest or your interest?

</comment><comment><USER58> > Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

... yes, by:

* Letting capital become concentrated to an incredible level, especially in the tech sector.

* Degrading public education through under-funding, privatization (and perhaps problematic pedagogical approaches).

* Allowing infrastructure and welfare services to degrade, contributing to many people being saddled with "life overhead" that inhibits their disposition and availability to innovate technologically.

* Encouraging US residents, in particular students, to become saddled with large amounts of debt.

and I could go on.

Now, it's true that federal and state investment in research has dropped, but Schmidt seems to be focused on getting what amounts to indirect government subsidy for R&D.

</comment><comment><USER59> Not the 'US' people and government are to blame for this. It is more that the big tech monopolies in the US certainly lead to less innovation.

<comment><USER60> Yeah this could be titled "Ex-CEO of D-o-D incubated monopoly, that actively stifled innovation through products they later cancelled and anti-competitive search practices complains about lack of innovation"

Not saying that's the whole picture but there's certainly some "pot calling the kettle" going on here.

Edit: Perhaps a real issue would be looking at how big-tech lobbies government and its impact on innovation

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> It might help if researchers had a search engine that returned results for the _actual search terms_ they requested.

</comment><comment><USER62> > "America does not have enough people with those skills."

Seriously, I feel the US has a big education problem, with part of it being cultural I think. Seems being educated, knowledgeable, having expertise, learning about science and technology, medicine and law, just isn't valued anymore, in fact it's almost being denigrated and shamed.

What I see instead is people pushing for anti-intellectualism and valuing the "college dropouts".

There's also just the quality and access to education seems it's getting worse and worse.

I don't know, but it frustrates me that the truth is the US doesn't have the know how that its companies require anymore, and has to either outsource the work or import workers who do from elsewhere.

<comment><USER63> > in fact it's almost being denigrated and shamed.

"Almost" really isn't necessary there anymore. There's a growing group that believes virtually all doctors, scientists, and professionals within certain fields are "in on it" and part of some big conspiracy to do some vague, undefined thing that'll take down America and corrupt their children.

These used to just be a fringe group. Now it feels like about half the people I know are buying into that stuff. Even some college-educated professionals think only their field is valid, and everyone else is part of "them."

<comment><USER64> > There's a growing group that believes ... certain fields are "in on it" ... > some big conspiracy to do some vague, undefined thing

I mean, I won't fault anyone if they are jaded and distrust everything the "experts" have to say these days. Look at what we witnessed in the last 20 or so years:

1\. Iraq war, where our intelligence agencies were sure about WMDs and the senate voted 97-0 to wage a war that ended up wasting thousands of American lives, trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives along with destabilizing the entire region.

2\. Financial crisis, where the so-called masters of the Universe from Wall St crashed the entire economy and the "maestro" Greenspan denied the existence of a housing bubble in 2005.

3\. Recent revelations that scientific studies about the ill effects of sugar were suppressed in 60's / 70's and instead sugar lobby spent money on deflecting blame to fat.

4\. Snowden revelations.

5\. Details uncovered about the Harvard admissions process which show how the elites are favored via legacy or obscure sports admissions.

6\. TPP, especially the way it was conducted where the elected representatives didn't have any access to the details of the negotiations, while the lobbyists from the key industries had full access.

You keep reading that kind of stuff and you start discounting "elite opinions" more and more.

<comment><USER65> > Iraq war, where our intelligence agencies were sure about WMDs and the > senate voted 97-0 to wage a war that ended up wasting thousands of American > lives, trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives along > with destabilizing the entire region.

My impression is that the war was a solution in search of a problem. The administration leaned on the intelligence community until the right conclusion was produced.

<comment><USER66> Since Vietnam the war community has wanted one do over after another. To prove that war has a useful role in foreign policy.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Ex-Google China boss, Kay Fu Lee in AI Powers explained how China made their innovative environmental based on better wilder clones that are just focused on making billions, starting locally now globally aka TikTok

</comment><comment><USER68> Google plus, google glass, google health, google reader, meebo, picasa, google express. The list is long. "dropped the ball on innovation," indeed.

</comment><comment><USER69> Is no one going to talk about the hypocrisy? Eric Schmidt isn't a beacon of sensible innovation pushing America forward. Peter Thiel called him out eight years ago [1] and I strongly encourage you to watch the 4 min clip.

[1] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q26XIKtwXQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q26XIKtwXQ)

</comment><comment><USER70> If the only companies that can realistically harness the value of academic research are the top 5 tech companies, then Schmidt is essentially advocating billions of dollars of government-backed R&D for them. Would Siri, Alexa, or Google Assistant be where they are today without prior work? Who else has benefitted?

Maybe companies such as OpenAI are the answer to this problem?

</comment><comment><USER71> Main focus is on IT, and sure maybe the US dropped the ball somewhere there, but the US is far beyond the leading biotech innovator in the world. This is harder to oust because of the regulatory standard (maybe a little eroded now, but not much) to sell products in the US market.

</comment><comment><USER72> The Eric Schmidt who presided over the largest web marketing company in the world? The company that spent its innovation capital refining new and interesting ways to sell more shit to people?

</comment><comment><USER73> Google a company that scoops up PhDs and has them figure out which ads to show based on the last thing you looked at is a mighty engine of innovation.

</comment><comment><USER74> Is this to be interpreted as a political message in light of the upcoming elections?

It certainly doesn't sound very insightful and he should know better. China has perfected the schooling system and employee discipline, this gives them a considerable advantage. US schools and colleges are a politicized mess, kids are distracted by "diversity" and other decadent but useless ideas. Perhaps it's hard to see through the eyes of someone who hired only from top universities (though they are messed up too), but I don't believe his statement was actually honest.

</comment><comment><USER75> That's not a US problem. It's a western problem.

</comment><comment><USER76> Ahh yes because you think Eric Schmidt, you definitely think "now this is what the future should look like".

</comment><comment><USER77> I have one sentence that could change that for you and correct US trajectory: all software is prior art.

</comment><comment><USER78> ha! 8 years ago - Peter Thiel: Google has $50B, doesn't innovate. Source: [https://youtu.be/2Q26XIKtwXQ](https://youtu.be/2Q26XIKtwXQ)

</comment><comment><USER79> Maybe Google should stop buying and mothballing smaller companies.

</comment><comment><USER80> Does innovation always depend on state funding spent on RnD?

</comment><comment><USER81> I saw a "Just Have A Think" YouTube channel video recently describing the 1MV HVDC line being built across China. It is part of Belt&Road infrastructure project and will allow them to distribute excess loads to different time zones without skin effect losses of an AC line. This is a part of their COVID stimulus injection.

When American $1.2k per citizen landed in accounts, I remember checking local Walmarts in the weeks that followed and I noticed all the TVs were gone.

With such a system, China could even launch excess solar as far as Germany in their afternoon peak sun angle when German duck curve morning peak begins?

<comment><USER82> Really, you "checked local walmarts" to inventory all their televisions? That's the biggest bunch of horse shit I've ever read, even on HN.

According to the government, only 7% of recipients used any part of their stimulus money to buy household items.

[https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-9/receipt-and-use-of- sti...](https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-9/receipt-and-use-of-stimulus- payments-in-the-time-of-the-covid-19-pandemic.htm)

<comment><USER83> I think it remains a valid question though. What if we had handled the unemployment by creating infrastructure jobs instead of universal handouts?

That has the added benefit of increasing the productive output of our economy.

<comment><USER84> The problem is that bankruptcies, starvation, inability to maintain your car/house/children/job, and businesses collapsing due to the sudden demand shock are all extremely expensive for the economy in the long run. Those types of losses which these universal handouts are intended for are quick to inflict and long to recover from. As an example, if your normally profitable restaurant goes under and forced to permanently close due to insolvency, it'll take years to build back up a similar restaurant with a similar rapport, client base, efficiency and success. The long term economic impact of these handouts would easily outweigh the infrastructure investments you are proposing.

When times are good though, we should be increasing taxation and _investing_ in infrastructure. Instead, the US Republican party sought to create a massive tax cut during economic boom, which means that we are in a worse financial situation when times have become rough.

<comment><USER85> I can get behind most of what you said except the idea that tax policy should match the economic situation of the day. We need stable tax policies that normalize for the booms/busts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> The book Doing Capitalism (2nd edition) does a good job of explaining the innovation process at this national interest level, and how it proceeds down to the private sector where it adapts to business models. Highly recommended.

</comment><comment><USER87> Give me a break. I have been living in China and this man has no idea about what he is talking about. He is talking about pre-bubble China.

People are comparing the official numbers of Governments on the West, like Covid expansion, economy growth, investment on R&D and so on with the Chinese's. But the Chinese numbers are just a lie.

You just can not trust whatever numbers the Chinese give you. You can not trust any government in the West either but those governments have a democracy, journalists that can expose the truth or reality,competition and super super important, rule of Law.

In the West you can expose what your government does bad by law. It is not perfect but orders of magnitude better than on China.

For example journalists or scientists can investigate covid traceability, in China it is just officially forbidden.

Belgium has one of the biggest official numbers on coronavirus deaths just because they lie less than other Governments like Spain that have actually bigger real numbers. And Chinese numbers are in another league.

You just can not compare the numbers given by democratic governments with those of totalitarian regimes, because on paper they are fantastic, but in reality they are not true.

In China everything is controlled by the CCP, including (specially) the statistics.

People that have never lived there just can not comprehend how amazing are the structures that we have in the West(that took centuries to develop).

We take those structures for granted and believe other countries have those and are playing with the same rules as we do, but they do not.

China has lots of problems today, floods and covid had created havoc in the economy, much more than in the West. It is not easy to feed the enormous population they have.

But you don't know about it because giving bad news about China is just forbidden. In fact China had censored Western articles about China(Do you want face masks? We are sorry but until you remove that and that person that criticizes China on your media you will not have face masks.)

The population is growing older fast, they have less women than men because they abort girls and they can not do anything about that because abortion there is super easy.

When the economy was booming everything was great. People lived a tough life but expected their children to life much better. When the bubble burst is completely different.

The US has much brighter future than China. I say that as a European. People on USA have kids and they have much more resources because of the small population density.

</comment><comment><USER35> Funny that he says that, Google is probably the lamest most un-visionary Corp ever...ok maybe second after Facebook. From a Product standpoint they invented Streetview that's it.

<comment><USER88> Didn't they invent Bigtable?

<comment><USER35> Your are right, that was really the only invention i could think of, but since it's not a customer product i didn't listen it (with Customer product i mean Gmail/Maps etc).

Gosh imagine that, even a former online Bookseller (amazon) is more innovative than google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> Google has had no serious innovation in 20 years. Issue the dividend already and stop calling yourself a technology growth company.

<comment><USER90> Automatic translation, alpha go, google maps UI, ...

<comment><USER91> We're talking about paradigm shifts and not just incremental innovation (both are important, but there is a huge difference).

<comment><USER92> Paradigm shift can also happen incrementally. Not every revolution is sudden.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> Allowing skilled workers or students to immigrate is one thing. Turning a blind eye to CCP/PLA espionage and IP theft is another. It is misleading and illogical to conflate the two.

Given that Schmidt is an intelligent person capable of parsing logic, is it fair to ask if he has ulterior motives here?</comment>


Ask HN: Which NoSQL solution should I use for lot of upserts? - <AUTHOR>

I am actually working on a big data project and I am using SSDB. The problem is, it doesn't support clustering and sharding so I might have to implement it by myself; which is not the best solution I think.
I mostly have to deal with floats or integers and the schema change really often so key/value storage is really suitable for my project but I can't store data into RAM because I generate 20GB of data per day (with 100K write/upserts per seconds).
Is there anyone of you who is using a persistent key/value storage in production environment, which can support clustering and sharding? I have tried Redis but I will run out of RAM in few days. <comment><USER2> I haven't used it myself, but yorr description of upserts with ints/floats immediately reminded me of Amazon DynamoDB docs.

<comment><AUTHOR> The fact is I don't want to host my data in amazon because the business is actually in china.</comment></comment>


Show HN: FunctionScript – Turn JavaScript (Node) Functions into Typed HTTP APIs - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/FunctionScript/FunctionScript <comment><USER2> Congrats on the 1.0 release! This is an impressive library and am curious on what the future roadmap looks like for FunctionScript?

Also any plans on releasing more examples that are consumable via stdlib?</comment>


Lines of Action - <AUTHOR> http://www.iggamecenter.com/info/en/loa.html <comment><USER2> I once wrote a self learning AI to play Lines of Action.

Due to an incorrectly placed minus sign it got worse at the game over subsequent generations.

After 1000 generations I couldn't even make a forced win against it so wily was it at avoiding success

</comment><comment><USER3> I love alternate rulesets and obscure games but this doesn't look that interesting to me.

It may be because most games are about dominance or resource building and ownership, or capture; this is about grouping. In such it doesn't appeal to any "real world" experience I have had and I feel disconnected from it.

<comment><USER4> I like that it deviates from the "dominance" conflict based game design, which was popularized in times of war and direct political conflict which feels a bit dated today. This is more adversarial problem solving. Being the first to build a superior network is a common mechanic in games like Ticket to Ride, power grid, to some extent Settlers of Catan, and this is a much more elegant streamlined version of that mechanic.</comment></comment>


Why Amazon got out of the Apple App Store tax and other developers won't - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/3/21206400/apple-tax-amazon-tv-prime-30-percent-developers <comment><USER2> We had a paid chat app for social media celebrities/models to earn money chatting with their fans years back. Apple argued that despite a human being doing the work it 'took place in the app' so that makes it a 'digital service'. That means we had to accept IAP and of course pay them 30%. Made it impossible to to pay our influencers fairly.

One of the many silly rejections we had was due to the images on our influencers profiles being too sexy despite being linked through the Instagram API. After explaining they were the same as you can find in the Instagram app we were told we had to actively censor them anyway. Shame on us for not being as big as Instagram, right?

After a year of making less margin from our own business than Apple they concluded paid chat was no longer appropriate for the app store and decided to just put us out of business one morning. Meanwhile, tons of other apps with the same functionality and far more sexualized are alive and doing well.

It can't be easy making every developer happy while curating the tidal wave of apps coming in each day, but it was a really soul crushing experience for us.

<comment><USER3> Your comments about you not being as big as Instagram are the reason I really hate apple. I've noticed their push for only the top of the line apps or their own stuff for years and it has completely soured me of them. They only cater to people with money. Apple crushes innovation worse than government regulation right now. All the apps I see on the app store are major corporations. There is hardly anything by indie or single devs anymore. Android it kinda exists but Google takes the "promote the moneymakers more" approach. I just wish apple would stop being a SAAS model company and return to making great hardware again. The simple fact alone that it took them 5 years to remove butterfly keyboards from the market along with 3 years to even acknowledge they were broken and offer free repairs shows they don't care about their users at all.

<comment><USER4> I was an Apple fanboy for 15 years. But they seem to be doing their level best to alienate pro customers. Over the last five years I've endured a comedic run of Apple Hardware failures (a catastrophic failure at least every 6 months). The response from Apple suggests this is nothing exceptional or that they simply just don't care. I believe it's the latter, I mean they've got billions of other customers. This arrogance that inevitably festers when a company is on top for so long.

But history has shown companies like this fall from grace once a critical mass of once devoted customers go elsewhere. I hope I'm wrong and Apple wakes up before this happens.

I thought there was no alternative to the Apple ecosystem that wouldn't drive me crazy (Windows) or cost me in productivity. But with my 2017 MacBook Pro dead (again) and no access to Apple service due to Pandemic, I took out an old Thinkpad T420 and installed Linux Mint. It installed perfectly, the keyboard is epic compared to MBP and I'm productive.

Now I'm happy because I have an effective alternative to Apple. Once my MBP is fixed I will sell it. And wave goodbye to Apple.

<comment><USER5> Under Cook they've become a miserly penny-pinching company with a bullying arrogant edge and a consistent record of underdelivering on technology and reliability.

I still prefer their products to anything made by MS (and Linux is not an option for pro media reasons), but buying Apple has become less about delight and more about holding my nose while feeling like I'm being gouged for a product that is likely to have at least a few serious issues.

<comment><USER6> Color grading on nearly all blockbuster movies happens on Linux with specialized industry software.

Developers like Adobe just need to put in the effort, because Linux itself is ready for production.

<comment><USER4> "Linux itself is ready for production". I first used Linux back in the early 90s, no x-windows, just shells, which was kind of normal at the time. Then moved to Windows and lived in that ecosystem from 3.x all the way to Windows XP. I switched to Apple after Balmer led Microsoft through a string of puzzling product decisions and seemingly anti-consumer / customer patterns. Which seems a lot like Apple since Jobs (Under Cook).

Linux ready for Production. Sure feels like the perfect time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Generally aside from games , them taking a 30% cut is generally the profit margin for most software companies. So unless of you can survive year 1 with funding of some kind, or are making side hustle apps, you have to wait till next year to get that 15% increase in subscription revenue. So you pay 30% + cost of user acquisition + all other costs and hope that you can profit. Definitely not developer friendly. Then there's the issue of rejecting apps, pulling it when they want, building out the functionality themselves or buying a competitor and pushing their own version. Forgot to include Apples return policy for digital products is very hurtful for developers too, there's been hundreds of articles on it, you literally can get anything digital for free if you contact Apple support and say you want a refund... LinkedIn subscriptions, game products, anything.

<comment><USER8> If Apple didn't spend billions per year over the last 15 years on research & development, marketing, retail, etc to put those devices in hands of your target market, with readily available payment methods and the trust to buy things online, how would most companies even begin to build a business? If you ship bits and bytes, then I think this is fairly owed.

Whenever I hear these gripes it makes me wonder why developers feel so entitled. Is it because we all came from a previous world where the PC was a more open platform for distribution? Apple is just a business. Do business with them or don't.

<comment><USER9> People were building and distributing software for decades without giving apple 30%. It's just a phone. Smartphones existed before the App Store, too. It provides useful services but it's not the virgin mary and it's not some profoundly new invention: They just did a bunch of things previous apps had done, did them well, and slotted them all together.

Things that existed before the app store:

* Store performing payment processing (steam, for example)

* Same storefront for purchase and install

* Automated updates

* User reviews

* Content submission and distribution (steam again, along with basically every other app store)

* Code signing

Things that appeared other places around when the app store got them, if not earlier:

* IAP

* Subscriptions

It's totally reasonable for Apple to put all this stuff together and decide it's a good enough package to charge you for it. It's also totally reasonable to think 30% is too much, and to think it's absurd that everyone is required to put up with their arbitrary rule enforcement.

If you're paying Apple for a service it's not "entitlement" to expect it to actually be good.

<comment><USER10> > People were building and distributing software for decades without giving > apple 30%.

Did you develop on those older platforms? Dev kits and licenses were often crazy expensive.

<comment><USER8> Exactly, the closest approximation to the App Store I can think of in the previous decades were game platforms like Nintendo and Sega. I would be curious to know from someone with experience how much % of revenue would have been allocated to licensing + all costs just to get someone to slam your cartridge into their system and press start.

EDIT: for an addressable market that was much smaller in scale.

<comment><USER9> The cost of licensing, manufacturing, cert etc in those days was quite high, yes. To be fair they were offering many services for that cost that you couldn't get elsewhere at the time. These days publishing on consoles is much cheaper and in some cases they've waived or eliminated many of the fees you used to have to pay for. In the XBox 360 days the certification process to push a build to consoles could itself cost you upwards of a thousand dollars depending on the circumstances, though it's my understanding that the fees would be waived in some cases (for bug fixes, etc). This was largely a necessity to prevent a broken build being shipped to 100k customers (because in those days it wasn't reasonable to expect everyone to download a 1gb patch), not as important now.

Steam is the best 1:1 approximation to the App Store and it predates it somewhat. The comparison isn't exact since they don't lock down your PC but they offer most of the same features.

<comment><USER8> I understand your comparison from how the underlying product is realized but I am looking at it from the value delivered to a software shop.

Whether it's Nintendo, Steam or iOS, the value delivered is the same: I give you docs, guides, etc to construct a program against an abstract target. When you are done and press the "ship it" button, an opportunity now exists, in the real world, for people to buy your thing and for you to keep some money.

Regardless of how the platform achieves this, the value is the same. You get to focus on building your product and collecting money. What I can't wrap my head around is why developer's are judging the affordability or fairness of this when the fractional cost may not have changed since the 80s/90s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There is this widespread assumption that Apple is looking out for the interests of developers on its platform.

However, like all large corporations, Apple is and always has looked out for its own interests only. If you keep this in mind, it's easy to understand why Apple does what they do.

<comment><USER12> If anyone believes a for profit company is looking out for anything but their own interests they are sorely mistaken almost all the time.

The thing with Apple though was there were good reasons to believe that their interests were strongly aligned with their users' and by extension with indie developers.

At a time when the Mac was definitely not the obvious choice, Apple had a very strong interest in promoting high quality indie apps because that was a differentiator for their platform (they were also not as financially strong, so this pushed some of the costs of building differentiators out to Indies).

At a time when Apple made money solely off selling hardware directly to consumers, there was reason to believe their interests once again aligned with those consumers as opposed to MS who largely sold to OEMs and Google, who didn't even sell their OS but made money off the user data.

But as Apple's hardware growth is beginning to stall, it appears they've decided they must continue to grow financially, and the only way they can do so is by wringing more money out of their existing base. As a result it's become more about doing stuff that was earlier being done by 3rd parties themselves. And that means indies are screwed becUse Apple can crush them in a way it couldn't an Amazon or a Netflix, not that it's not trying.

<comment><USER13> _> The thing with Apple though was there were good reasons to believe that their interests were strongly aligned with their users' and by extension with indie developers._

There _were_ good reasons at one time, yes, for the reasons you give.

But there _aren 't_ good reasons _now_ , because circumstances have changed.

Something similar happened in the 1990s with Microsoft and Windows. In the early days of Windows, MS encouraged third-party developers to code to it, because it helped to speed up the expansion of the user base. All kinds of good third-party Windows apps sprung up and thrived for a while.

But once the market was pretty much saturated with Windows, a lot of those third-party developers discovered that they were now basically doing market research for MS: whenever they hit on a killer app or feature, MS would simply duplicate it, ship it as part of Windows, and destroy the third party dev's market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Two years after the developer program began, I wrote a coin-tossing app that did really well. I quit my job and wrote an AR like app that allowed you to simulate shooting through your camera FPS style.

It was very simple, displaying camera output, a cross hair - and when you pressed the button a blood splash appeared along with a gunshot sound. Tasteless, yes, but this was in the era of "More Cowbell" and other low- effort-leads-to-instant-retirement-apps.

Apple rejected the app. It upset me, but I figured - ok fair enough. I knew the risks. However I didn't feel the same when _the next week_ one of the top 10 apps was _EXACTLY THE SAME_ except they called it Paintball.

I had more than one conspiracy theory surrounding this ;-)

<comment><USER15> Framing matters.

<comment><USER14> Yes indeed. In retrospect I shouldn't have folded so quickly, a quick rename and resubmit was probably in order.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I released a small game to iOS once, but never again. It was a massive headache that wasn't worth the users. First of all, you can only build on a Mac, even if you are using a cross platform framework like Unity. So that's like $300 for a used mac mini. Second of all you have to pony up $100 per year. Third of all, Apple will reject your app at their whim and leisure. Like all the games currently being rejected having to do with toilet paper.

<comment><USER17> I'm glad Apple rejects lots apps and I'm glad it costs money to get into the App Store. Every time I look the Google Play store I decide it's not worth engaging with, as a user. Too much garbage and malware.

<comment><USER18> Do you feel the same about the Internet? Just not worth it, cause there's a heap of junk you can access if you go out of your way to access it?

<comment><USER17> Pretty much. I don't really "surf the Internet" like I did when I was younger. The web was ruined by ads long ago, and there's very little content worth engaging in, especially without the curation that sites like HN provide.

<comment><USER18> The difference is you're _choosing_ your curators (e.g. Hacker News) independent of other choices you've made i.e. your hardware provider.

Would you just go along with it happily if Apple (or any other company for that matter) blocked access to Hacker News because it didn't meet _their_ standards? Or vice versa, if Hacker News refused to serve you simply because you're using an Apple device?

<comment><USER17> Apples standards are my standards. If that stops being the case, I'll stop being a customer.

Sure. I'm smart enough to dig through the bargain bin of Google Play apps to find the ones that work with my device, don't have ads, and have the appropriate level of functionality and polish. I just don't want to. I'd rather pay a premium for a company to do it for me.

Same goes for the Internet.

<comment><USER18> > _Apples standards are my standards._

Indeed. If you want to use their hardware, then you've no choice in the matter.

To be clear, I have absolutely zero issue with you choosing to be their customer. They make fantastic hardware, there are an enormous amount of pros to being an Apple customer. It's perfectly reasonable to look at these pros and cons and choose to be an Apple customer.

However, taking one of those cons and trying to sell it as a pro requires a fair bit of doublethink.

You could be using an Apple device and _choosing_ Apple as your app curator. Lack of choice is not a feature.

<comment><USER17> >You could be using an Apple device and choosing Apple as your app curator. Lack of choice is not a feature.

Some people want to make as few choices as possible. That's me. I don't want to look at two or more app stores to find what I want. The lack of choice, for me, is a feature.

I understand that I'm a special type of narrow minded on this point. And I'm glad Android exists — I have a few Android devices myself, for hobbies and such - they're just not what I would use for my daily driver.

<comment><USER19> I think the point is that Apple could still run their own App Store, which meets all of your requirements, without excluding all alternatives, which others might find valuable even if you choose not to use them yourself.

<comment><USER17> I do not agree that Apple can maintain the same high quality App Store while not excluding alternatives. Alternative App Store will invite developers to put in less effort to reach the same audience. I do not want this.

<comment><USER19> Surely that would just mean that application developers unwilling to comply with Apple's standards and pay its price of admission would be excluded from its App Store? Isn't that what you want, by your own arguments?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Please don't editorialize titles. Submitters that do that eventually lose submission rights on HN.

" _Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don 't editorialize._"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

Plenty of explanation here: [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20titles%20editorializ&sort=byDate&type=comment)

(Submitted title was "Apple's treatment of developers is neither fair nor consistent")

</comment><comment><USER21> Occasionally I blow the mind of yet another non-technical person who learns from me that not only does Apple require iStore apps to be developed using their hardware, but also there's an annual fee for the privilege of being able to publish to the app store.

And on top of that a 30% fee from in app purchases during the first year.

<comment><USER22> People complain about 30%. That is kinda standard in most affiliate style relationships. The subscription is also negligible amount IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think large-company actions should be measured by "would this behavior practically bankrupt a small company?", and Apple has quite a few things in this category.

They do things that are only tolerated, frankly, because developers have no choice. 90% of App Review seems _damned_ arbitrary, and since I can regularly find examples of _clear_ scams their "review" isn't even _effective_.

</comment><comment><USER24> There was this idea of breaking "Big Tech" apart floating around a few months ago. It was probably over-zealous as it was proposed, but I now honestly believe that it's a good idea to REQUIRE (by regulations) the major (again defined in such regulations) appstores be operated by a separate entity dedicated to such a role, and subject to extra scrutiny to prevent this kind of anti-competition behavior. Putting it simply, you can't run an appstore and publish apps in it too.

</comment><comment><USER25> If Apple wasn't on the chopping block for antitrust before, they certainly are now. As a developer, I knew that Apple would relax their policies for large companies, but this…wow.

</comment><comment><USER26> Amazon (likely after many years of negotiations) got itself a better deal than individual developers? This looks to me like complaining that corporations can aquire goods and services in bulk cheaper than would be for a single person to get in a generic supermarket. I'm all for equality, but this looks like a good precedent that might open more options eventually. What is the backlash here against?

<comment><USER27> Apple isn't bulk buying oranges. They're forcing developers to pay a non- optional tax if they want to target iOS which in turn hurts the consumer.

<comment><USER28> It's not a tax, it's like a rent. They built and run the ecosystem, you don't have to be part of it if you don't like it, it's completely voluntary, unlike a tax.

<comment><USER29> Rent is normally flat. I've never heard of a landlord taking a percentage

<comment><USER10> It happens all the time with commercial leases.

[https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/clb-percentage- rent....](https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/clb-percentage-rent.html)

<comment><USER30> Absurd, and:

> The percent that's applied is usually an industry standard (7% on every > dollar) and isn't subject to much negotiation.

Which is still much less than the 30% of Apple.

<comment><USER28> It's not about the size of the fee, it's about what you charge for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Now this makes me wonder, if Microsoft products on the App Store also gets special treatment with lower cuts than others.

Aside from this issues, I wish Apple maintain the 30% cut on Games, ( Since Games even has its whole own section in App Store anyway ) and lowered the cuts to 20% for everything else. I think that would be a fairer approach to every body.

30% Cuts for all other Apps is just insanely expensive.

</comment><comment><USER32> Apple charges 30% from newspapers and magazines - an industry that is struggling to make any money. But not Facebook which makes way more money than all the newspapers in the world taken together. Yes Apple built the platform but by charging a 30% margin it is fleecing it's customers who already paid through their noses for the devices and/or skimming the entire profit of some developers. It doesn't even seem like a good business practice from a corporation that makes most of its money through other seemingly legit means. Bottom line, all the virtue signaling aside, Apple is very much a capitalist concern with the morality of a cute crocodile. What's a monopoly without a little price gouging, eh??

</comment><comment><USER33> Imagine if you owned the electricity lines that ran around the city, and anyone who integrated an electrical appliance with 'your electricity' had to give you a 30% cut of their business?

Make a toaster? Apple gets 30% of that.

This is not new stuff. What Apple is doing is essentially anticompetitive.

Similarly, Google uses it's dominance in search to take over other categories.

I don't see a single politician who seems to understand the issue well enough, and 90% of them seem to have no clue. But I think that possibly Elizabeth Warren would actually be useful if she didn't overreach. (FYI this is absolutely not a political point, I'm not supporting left/right/Dem/Rep or any view and not even supporting someone's candidacy - I'm saying she's one of the few candidates that seems to be interested in this, and maybe has a grasp of it).

We have to be really careful with regulation, but I think there are a handful of anticompetitive, labour, and privacy regulations that would make America an even better and more competitive landscape.

By the way - the unspoken elephant is China dumping on tech landscape as well. There is a reason that trade agreements have an issue with government subsidies of businesses. Dumping is more obvious with commodities, but it's the same thing with other companies, i.e. Huawei, and it will creep into others (Zoom?). It needs to be at least looked at.

</comment><comment><USER34> Apple continues exploiting its own users. Nothing new under the sun.

An I supposed to be surprised?

When you start dealing with Apple you should be expecting to be exploited, both as a user and as a developer.

</comment><comment><USER35> I've not read anything yet that actually matches the headline of Amazon "not paying the tax". All I've seen is that users can now purchase content without going through Apple's in-app payment pipeline and instead use Amazons. The agreement with Amazon could still demand that Amazon pay to Apple 30% of the value of anything sold through the in-app channel.

</comment><comment><USER36> Apple is a monopolist for the iOS App Store. The eco-system is controlled by them using their rules and they compete with others in the same app space. The whole thing is rigged to the extent that an anti-competitive investigation should be done into the market place by the Justice dept.

</comment><comment><USER37> Having had an app on App Store for 5 years, finally moving off. React, Flutter, and PWA make it unnecessary. Personally, I rarely use apps as typing a couple characters in URL bar is easier than scrolling through apps.

Lastly, users are much more prone to drop 1 star reviews for little reason other than getting dev attention. Most of my stars are 5 star or 1 star, seems off.

</comment><comment><USER38> I can't imagine how pissed Netflix and Spotify are right now (and a whole host of smaller companies).

<comment><USER25> If only they had agreed to letting their content be integrated into Apple's platform…

<comment><USER39> I would be pretty surprised if Apple let Spotify do this, even if the latter were willing. They're direct competitors to Apple's hopeful cash cow Music service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> For those who are against regulating Amazon because "in a free market someone could overthrow Amazon as the leader at any time so the fact they are on top means they must be providing the best service for consumers", this is a great example of why that's not true.

</comment><comment><USER41> The "App Store" is empty of everyone, but large companies because mobile apps don't pay the bills.

Further, consumer expectations ruined the "App Store" when users began to expect high-quality, continuously updated apps for a one-time spend of $1.

</comment><comment><USER42> Doesn't seem any different than peering agreements between network providers.

</comment><comment><USER43> It would be nice to have app stores that are not run by Apple or Google. It feels like they have a monopoly to publish apps for their os-es.

I kind of like the PC model where you can get the app straight from developer.

<comment><USER44> Plenty of app stores on the Android side.

Amazon's Appstore [https://www.amazon.com/mobile- apps/b?ie=UTF8&node=2350149011](https://www.amazon.com/mobile- apps/b?ie=UTF8&node=2350149011)

Huawei's App Gallery [https://consumer.huawei.com/en/mobileservices/appgallery/](https://consumer.huawei.com/en/mobileservices/appgallery/)

Samsung's Galaxy Store [https://www.samsung.com/global/galaxy/apps/galaxy- store/](https://www.samsung.com/global/galaxy/apps/galaxy-store/)

F-Droid [https://f-droid.org](https://f-droid.org)

If you prefer getting your apps straight from the developer's website, you can have that too. E.g.: [http://www.lonelycatgames.com](http://www.lonelycatgames.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> The Apple Tax is the cost of distribution, Amazon has widespread distribution so they are off the hook, not saying it's fair but that is my reasoning behind it

</comment><comment><USER46> Developers: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhh_GeBPOhs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhh_GeBPOhs)

</comment><comment><USER47> People whine about amazon, but it's apple that are the real monopolists, determined to control the whole market and then abuse that power.

</comment><comment><USER43> If your app doesn't break the law, nobody should tell you if you can publish it or not.

</comment><comment><USER30> I think developers should be more principled and stop supporting the platform.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is why I run whenever I hear the word "platform".

</comment><comment><USER48> Can the submitted title please be changed to match the original title? It should be "Why Amazon got out of the Apple App Store tax, and why other developers won't"

<comment><USER20> Yes, we'll do that now.

More at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22781515](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22781515)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Walled gardens are what we've been telling each they are all along. Film @ 11

</comment><comment><USER50> If you think it's unfair, don't use it.

As long as people keep using Apple's products and platforms, they will do what they do.

<comment><USER25> > If you think it's unfair, don't use it.

This is tired "advice" and does nothing to help developers, who have little control over what their users use.

<comment><USER50> Everyone has complete control over what they do with their own lives. People should focus more on that, and spend less time writing long winded articles about what other people do. Worrying about what other people do is the path to insanity. Just my 2 cents.

<comment><USER25> > Everyone has complete control over what they do with their own lives.

No, as I just mentioned.

<comment><USER51> You are not being forced to use those platforms. There are other ways to be a developer. They may not be convenient for you but that's a different problem. I know pivoting your skillset can be hard but it's an option that is always available to you.

<comment><USER52> It's more than just inconvenience. If Apple can be protectionist about its Apple store than the developers can be protectionist of their skills and careers as developers on the Apple platform.

<comment><USER51> >the developers can be protectionist of their skills and careers as developers on the Apple platform.

Legally, no, they cannot. Apple owns 100% of the platform and the developers own 0%. I would not bank on this changing any time soon.

<comment><USER52> What legal standing is preventing someone from posting "Apples treatment of Developers is neither fair nor consistent"????

<comment><USER51> I agree that it's not fair or consistent but saying that alone means nothing. For any impact, action must be taken on those words: you can use legal means to try and change their behavior like Spotify did, you can negotiate like Amazon did, you can apply pressure by trashing them in the press like Epic did, you can attempt to circumvent the app store fees using various measures, you can leave for a different platform. Or you can apply some combination of any of these. Which one is the least expensive is entirely dependent on your situation. The reason why I spoke of the last option initially is that for the average individual developer your only real immediate action is to leave, everything else is collective in nature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> In other news, if you are a founder who looks like Mark Zuckerburg, you are more likely to get VC funding.

</comment><comment><USER54> Apple's been like this forever, it's only gotten much worse since the late 2000's and the launch of the iTunes App store. Even in the old days, when Mac Classic existed, Apple would change its mind about stuff for developers all the time. Anyone remember OpenDoc and how that was gonna change the world? Apple's favorite thing to do is tell developers it's got the next big thing (Newton), next big language (remember Swift?), or the next big tool (AR). They hand this out to devs, devs eat it up, and like 1 or 2 years later, they either spring said thing like a trap no one can escape from, or they just give up on it and act like it never happened and move on, leaving developers with useless new skills.

<comment><USER55> Where did Swift go? it's still front and center.

<comment><USER54> It's still here, but people were so excited about it when it came out, and some folks actually thought it'd be usable on other platforms. Here were are years later and it's just a niche language for iPhones. Everyone who was excited about it seems to have stopped being excited because it's 100% Apple only. Like all their stuff. I mean, is there anything better than a completely closed source programming language?

<comment><USER28> Are you serious? There is an entire industry around swift, countless blogs, podcasts, books and websites. Interest is growing steadily and people are more excited than ever. It's open source and has a very engaged community around it's development, anyone can propose changes to it.

And of course it's not 100% apple only, apple themselves have invested a lot in swift on linux, and others are working on swift for windows and webassembly. You couldn't be more wrong actually.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Webserver Back End with Orleans Actor System, Dotnet Core and Server-Side Redux - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@MaartenSikkema/using-dotnet-core-orleans-redux-and-websockets-to-build-a-scalable-realtime-back-end-cd0b65ec6b4d <comment><USER2> Neat series. There was another recent post on using a C# version of Redux as well, at [https://spin.atomicobject.com/2017/03/13/adapting-redux-c- sh...](https://spin.atomicobject.com/2017/03/13/adapting-redux-c-sharp- xamarin/) . It's nice to see Redux's concepts spreading outside the Javascript world. I've had similar thoughts regarding some of the Python services I work with.

If anyone is interested in learning Redux (or React), I keep a big list of links to high-quality tutorials and articles on React, Redux, and related topics, at [https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux- links](https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux-links) . Specifically intended to be a great starting point for anyone trying to learn the ecosystem, as well as a solid source of good info on more advanced topics.

I also maintain a catalog of Redux-related addons, utilities, and tools, at [https://github.com/markerikson/redux-ecosystem- links](https://github.com/markerikson/redux-ecosystem-links) .

<comment><USER3> Thanks for creating and maintaining these lists. I've bookmarked them. They look like great resources even for advanced topics.

<comment><USER2> You're welcome! And yes, that's absolutely my intent :) There's lots of "getting started" tutorials for React and Redux, but the official docs for both can only cover so much information. So, I've deliberately tried to collect articles on more advanced topics - stuff like "higher order components" for React, "normalizing state" for Redux, "hot module replacement" for Webpack, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We've been working with Orleans for a few months to build out the next iteration of our infrastructure. I have nothing but good things to say about it. One of my favourite aspects of developing with Orleans is its single- threaded nature. Because a grain can by default only process one call at a time on a single thread, it's easy to make guarantees about data consistency inside that grain regardless of how many processes are reading/writing to it at once.

The idea of a stateful grain is also really powerful and something we're harnessing extensively: if everything is a grain, all of your data is already cached in the activated grain so there's no need for a separate caching system. Additionally, any updates to the data are immediately available to the "cache" _before_ you send it to the database. So transient data can be cached even if you're not sure you eventually want to persist the data. This allows you to do partial application of data to grains, and then eventually commit the data to storage (in the case where writing is expensive.) This of course is totally possible with more traditional architecture, but its impossibly simple in Orleans and it's hard to go back once you get to use it.

I also want to give a big thanks to the folks who are active in the Orleans Gitter channel. Honestly probably the most helpful open source community I've ever encountered. They're extremely thorough and always willing to help.

<comment><USER5> How close are we to getting it on Dotnet core though? It's effectively impossible to ship on Windows in most shops, as it'd take a total reworking on tooling and the introduction of a lot of expertise and the loss of Kubernetes or Mesos for management.

<comment><USER6> .NET Core support is in the 2.0 Technical Preview builds, which you can access using this MyGet feed: [https://dotnet.myget.org/gallery/orleans- prerelease](https://dotnet.myget.org/gallery/orleans-prerelease) (see blog: [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/orleans/2017/03/02/orleans-...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/orleans/2017/03/02/orleans-1-4-and-2-0-tech- preview-2-for-net-core-released/))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This was an interesting read! The stack is out of the ordinary and intriguing. I'd love to see numbers, performance number: request per second and whatnot compared to a traditional architecture to back up the conclusion :

> This architecture is highly efficient, almost infinitely scalable, yet very > light on infrastructure.

I'm curious on how scalable such fine-grain grains (pun intented) (i.e. one grain per user?) are. Wouldn't communication across all those grains yield to poor performance?

Another big question I'd be interested in is testing and debugging: Redux tree/reducers model let's you easily test things. How's the testing/debugging experience in orleans? The author mentions the "time travel", I'd be curious to know his experience so far.

> An Actor system makes sure that every data element / actor object lives in > only one place (one machine in the cluster), so there is no duplication of > data, which simplifies things dramatically.

What happens when that machine goes down? My understanding of Orleans is that it'll be fault tolerant and handle this, but what are the impact on performance? And is there any guarantees the data will be stored without corruption in the external storage (azure table in the author's case)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, blog author here.

> I'd love to see numbers

This was an experiment, and I didn't do a performance test. The Orleans people will tell you that the current production version will process something on the order of a couple hundred thousand of messages per server per second. If your actors are modelled well, this scales to hundreds of servers, so it would be possible to have on the order of tens of millions of messages per second between actors, including persistence. I expect the upcoming Dotnet Core version to do even better.

> How's the testing/debugging experience

I normally test with xunit, standard dotnet stuff that works very well. Orleans provides a TestingHost that lets you spin up silos for testing grain code in a 'real' environment. This costs some time for startup.

The time travel idea needs some devtools ui, which I didn't build. I'm sure this would be possible though, with the limitation that the "edit and continue" feature of dotnet is not as capable as in javascript: often visual studio will tell you that your change requires a full application restart. You can change code and data while paused in the debugger.

> What happens when the machine goes down?

Orleans would respawn the Grain on another server (using the last-known state) and retry the operation up to two times by default. If you follow a safe implementation pattern (call WriteStateAsync after a state change), your state will be correct. In my blog code, I await successful completion of the message on the client. If something went wrong in Orleans and the state isn't persisted, that promise would be rejected, and it could be shown to the user.

<comment><USER8> > often visual studio will tell you that your change requires a full > application restart

I suspect this is due a .NET runtime limitation.

When you edit your code, as long as you only make modifications inside a method which does not alter the method's declaration and method-signature, you should be fine. Basically, editing compiled code is fine, as long as you are just altering the methods internal IR-code.

If you however end up doing something which alters a method's name, or signature in any way, you end up effectively mutating a class-definition. And there's no part of the .NET runtime which allows that.

As a workaround, you could generate a new class on the fly, but then you would have to update all the existing references to this class in the code... And that probably means invalidating some type-signatures across the line, causing new class-level mutations.

And when all that is resolved, then you would have to port and preserve state for your mutated classes, fake a new stack, etc etc. And then you have turtles all the way down.

Basically at this point, a full recompile is probably the only sane option.

It's a by-product of the static nature of the languages and runtime. I suspect the same applies to JVM based edit-and-go features in Java IDEs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Very excited to see this. I built a large Actor-based architecture (homebrew originally, now ported to Orleans) and while spinning myself up on React/Redux recently I started realizing how closely our data flow architecture mimics Redux.

My plan had been to work to make the parallels more explicit so it's easier for other devs to wrap their head around the architecture ("it's just Redux" is a lot easier to explain than "it's this custom homebrew thing", just like "it's just Orleans" helps significantly with detailing the Actor model).

The idea of an actual server-side .NET Redux implementation is really exciting, particularly coming out of the Orleans community.

</comment><comment><USER10> I built a fairly large backend system using event sourcing ideas and am now using Redux for another backend tool I'm building. Redux and event sourcing are very similar. One big advantage of using Redux is there's tons of documentation and blog posts and plugins so you get a lot of power out of the box. E.g. it took me 5 minutes to add in support for the Redux devtools [https://github.com/zalmoxisus/remote-redux- devtools](https://github.com/zalmoxisus/remote-redux-devtools).

</comment><comment><USER5> I created an architecture nearly exactly like this named "Fuzed" quite some time ago: [https://github.com/KirinDave/fuzed](https://github.com/KirinDave/fuzed)

Our findings in production were very much inline with this without the additional wrinkle of Redux server-side (which I decline to comment on), and of course Erlang doesn't virtualize Actors.

Sadly the SPOF-mitigation I did was never really released integrated with Fuzed.

But this kind of system offers FANTASTIC flexibility when done correctly, and allows you to do what many AWS-based folks also enjoy doing: allowing new and development resources to run peered to production resources for limited trials and easy experimentation.

<comment><USER11> Oh man this brings back memories! Some years ago I needed to provide http access to an old code base in a fringe programming language and decided to write a language agnostic web server.

This was when I was just getting started with Erlang so I decided ports were the way to go; I could write a small adapter in the target language and it would just work. After a few days prototyping I found fuzed (it also used Yaws, if I'm not mistaken). I spent many nights reading the source code, so thanks!

The project never saw the light of day because Zed Shaw released Mongrel2, which is based on the same concept, around the same time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I skimmed through the paper and one possible problem is when actors communicate with each others it might create a lot of network traffic, especially if one node goes down, it has to sync and might create a load loop as the load of the other nodes increases. A better way is to let the client do the orchestrating of talking to different nodes, so that no server-to-server communication is needed.

</comment><comment><USER13> Does it mean it would be possible to use redux with either squeak or pharo?

</comment><comment><USER14> What Orleans like systems are there in other languages?

<comment><USER15> Erlang and other languages running on Beam VM (Elixir, LFE, etc.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is this the same problem space that meteor solves ? Does anyone have a perspective on what's unique to each ?

</comment><comment><USER17> Does the throwaway line

> The Redux reducer that processes the action server-side in C# is almost the > same as the one in typescript working client-side

... bother anyone else? Surely this is the worst-of-the-worst kind of non-DRY code you can write, where you have to have two identical implementations in two different languages, but they also have to have other responsibilities? Even if you did write tests for both, you would have to make sure that the tests were testing the same things.

Having thought about this a bit since I started typing, I think your server- side redux has to be different in some fundamental ways. It won't be an in- memory representation like the client has. It will have to actually perform the DB operations. The server will care about different state than the client. The server often won't care about in-memory representations, so won't need to produce a new state upon every action. If it does, it might be in a different form - a cache that keeps (f)recent data, for instance, rather than an entire state tree that evolves.

I'd like to hear from someone with experience on this, who has written two reducers for the same dataset, perhaps in different languages. Did you find yourself with subtle re-implementation bugs? Was it actually more productive than providing a regular REST API and having your client-side Redux store persist itself?

I personally have to wrangle lots of highly structured, partly denormalised data, with a quite a few layers of SQL indirection. Moving one part of the nested data to another branch, for example, is tricky to get right, so I test it thoroughly. And then I have to deal with the fact that my requirements include undo and save buttons – there is a constant distinction between previously-persisted and newly-added objects. I could not imagine having to write this kind of code twice and keep the two implementations in sync. But here's a shot:

\- The server would act like a side-effect hook à la @ngrx/effects.

\- Make a redux reducer tree out of multiple grains. Each one gets dispatched all the different actions received by the root, so you can have both a `Parent` grain and a `Child` grain react to a `ChildMovedToOtherParent` action. This is only necessary for me because of an over-denormalised schema, but I can imagine other uses.

\- Handling undos is tricky. On the client, it's easy, because everything's in-memory and immutable; just store previous states. On the server, it's much harder. Event Sourcing would have you just pick a point in time and rebuild from there. I can see that kinda working: instead of writing to the DB immediately, queue up the actions in-memory and execute them when the server hears a Save action, creating a point you can't rewind past.

\- All of this sounds a bit unstable, however. When you queue up DB calls, you have to execute them all sequentially, even if it's just modifying the same record over and over again. The most efficient way to do this, without running a hundred useless DB calls on save, would be simply to hold all your objects in memory, using a reducer to compute their appropriate final to-be-persisted state. This is way too complicated.

Has anyone got any experience working with an architecture like this? Or is everybody that's using Redux for state management only as ambitious as a counter or a one-way data funnel and not one bit more?

<comment><USER18> «Surely this is the worst-of-the-worst kind of non-DRY code you can write, where you have to have two identical implementations in two different languages, but they also have to have other responsibilities? Even if you did write tests for both, you would have to make sure that the tests were testing the same things.»

It's always been somewhat common in client-server programming since the dawn of time. Even sometimes in the same language on both sides like many classic C/C++ game models where the client and server are intentionally kept at a remove and use different codebases. In the classic game architecture paradigm, the client can't be trusted, but you also want to make sure that the client responds as quickly as possible.

It's interesting to see some of those game architecture approaches returning to web development: things like "optimistic updates" in the Redux world are a very similar pattern to classic game state client/server management. Client reducers act as if the server-side action was carried out in advance of server response and server response corrects only if necessary.

I don't think I can comment that deeply on the rest of your post, but maybe the above digression helps a bit?</comment></comment>