Declining Student Resilience: A Serious Problem for Colleges - <AUTHOR> https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201509/declining-student-resilience-serious-problem-colleges <comment><USER2> "Students are afraid to fail; they do not take risks; they need to be certain about things. For many of them, failure is seen as catastrophic and unacceptable. External measures of success are more important than learning and autonomous development."

This is in part a consequence of test-based education. Students have been told for a very long time that failing important tests like the SAT/ACT will have irrevocable consequences that are negative. Most of their learning has occurred in the light of this danger, and so, failure is a big deal. Actual learning or autonomous development are pieces to spruce up the resume after the good scores are in the bag.

<comment><USER3> I don't think the "irrevocable" part is the main problem of test-based education. You need the test to know where you are. If you prepare well, most important tests in life can be managed. What is really the problem is the systematic punishment of failure. /This/ indeed can have irrevocable consequences for certain personality types. I grew up in France and this "punishment of failure" teaching system is a major problem of France's education system.

<comment><USER4> Really, it sounds to me as though the main problem might be that these kids are coddled before they reach university and maybe have unrealistic expectations of themselves.

I think they may not have a fair assessment of their own abilities because of prior hand holding.

I haven't seen the emotional catastrophe element that this article talks about. But, I did witness the abuse of the faculty.

I saw the entitlement my generation is often accused of first hand. Many students were hostile, rude and lazy. I gained a reputation for sticking up for professors and calling my fellow students out on their behavior. In part I do blame the staff. Though maybe they couldn't gain control because their hands were tied by policy.

<comment><USER5> Speak for yourself; I saw quite a bit of overt hostility from the faculty at my schools. Things like berating and humiliating students in front of the class, refusing to meet with students or sign necessary paperwork for them to proceed, and a frequent attitude that teaching classes and dealing with students was the absolute worst part of their day, an unnecessary burden that they didn't have the time for. Quite frankly if I should end up having kids of my own, I'm doubtful whether I will even want them to attend college if it's still the same environment by then. Worse yet, I'm afraid all these articles about millennial entitlement just work to reinforce and justify these attitudes among teachers and faculty.

<comment><USER6> Out of curiosity, where did you go to school? I've never seen anything as dramatic as you describe.

<comment><USER5> Ohio State University, Middle Tennessee State University, and Tennessee Tech University. The experiences described were spread across all three. Oddly enough the school where I (mostly) didn't experience those kinds of problems was the local community college I attended for an associates (a better way to get gen ed requirements out of the way, imo).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How about instead of placing the blame on helicoptering, which may in fact be part of the problem, we consider something else: students being realistic about what failure means to their future.

We're in an era of hypercompetition, increased barriers to entry for even menial jobs, massive wealth concentration, vanished upward mobility (and easy downward mobility), stagnant wages, credentialism, offshoring/outsourcing, and vanished company loyalty. Viewed in this light, reactions of students to every negative statement or bad grade is completely rational: with the incredible number of people applying for each job, and the ever-increasing requirements to get one (looking at GPAs, etc.), students know that even minor issues now can mean large issues in the future.

Maybe students aren't hypersensitive; instead they're hyper-attuned to the realities they're facing:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3999248](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3999248)

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

[http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/11/how_elite_firms....](http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/11/how_elite_firms.html)

[http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/ernest-y...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/ernest- young-degree-recruitment-hiring-credentialism/406576/)

Another thing I'd add, which is related, is that grit, while important is far from sufficient for success. It would be great if this was more widely appreciated. I wrote a short post on it: [https://medium.com/@opirmusic/the- character-hypothesis-neces...](https://medium.com/@opirmusic/the-character- hypothesis-necessary-but-insufficient-17c51427dbf4)

Side note: I tried to comment on the article, but the spam filter there is incredibly aggressive.

<comment><USER8> No, the students are indeed hypersensitive and they (and you) have a grossly distorted perception of the impact of objectively minor setbacks.

Getting a C on a paper won't ruin anyone's life, nor for that matter would failing an entire course (which is basically impossible to do these days anyway, unless you willfully refuse to even try).

Such academic hiccups are _not_ catastrophic and the proper response is not for a student to raise holy hell about how unfair the world is and how the professor smells bad and how they should totally be given a special exemption to re-do things until they get the grade they desire.

Failure should be received as a signal that a student needs to work harder or change something in the way they're approaching their education. Nothing more.

(And obviously the state of the economy has nothing to do with why a grown adult would feel the need to seek counseling because someone called them a bad name or they saw a mouse.)

<comment><USER9> Failing a class often has devastating consequences in college. Scholarship programs generally have strict GPA requirements, and once lost cannot be regained. Nursing programs are particularly harsh. Failing a class by a percentage point may trigger the student needing to retake an entire year's worth of classes, regardless of the grades received in the other courses. The cost of an additional full year of tuition is not a hiccup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Articles like this remind me of "old economy steve".

Please, Professor with tenure and a pension, tell us how children facing an increasingly winner-take-all world in which failure _actually is_ catastrophic are too afraid to take risks.

<comment><USER11> That's an argument for why it's reasonable to be wary of taking financial risks. It's not an argument for why it's reasonable to call the police and a psychotherapist because you saw a mouse in your apartment.

<comment><USER12> You'll always find people like that in University.

The interesting thing is the younger generation treating education like a commodity. And given tuition costs, they have a right to. This will inevitably cause tension between the academics and the students.

The most damaging cause it will have is on society long term, as higher learning traditionally has been used for demonstrating the capability of an individual. Instead we're seeing the capability for obtaining ~$30k debt.

<comment><USER13> > You'll always find people like that in University.

The point of the article was that we are finding more people like that, on average, than we were in the past.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Not directly related to the article content, but did anyone notice the odd caption/credit under the top article image? It reads "Source: Google images approved for reuse." which I haven't seen before.

A quick reverse image search reveals that it's by this guy on Flickr ([https://www.flickr.com/photos/topgold/6273248505/](https://www.flickr.com/photos/topgold/6273248505/)) and carries a CC Attribution license, which this article is clearly not in compliance with. It's a publisher owned website an you would think they know a bit about copyright.

</comment><comment><USER15> >"Many students, they said, now view a C, or sometimes even a B, as failure, and they interpret such "failure" as the end of the world."

After 3+ years of university, this has felt like a form of doublethink on the part of some professors and almost all administrators when it comes to grades and grade deflation. On one hand, you hear that "students shouldn't worry so much about the grade" and "what you learned is more important than what grade you got".

On the other, more realistic side of things, they've contributed towards and support a nearly one dimensional system of graduate and professional schools where a high GPA is almost everything for acceptance. Top med schools and graduate schools almost entirely accept students with A or A- GPAs, regardless of the student's other relevant experiences or accomplishments, and often regardless of the quality or rigor of the student's undergraduate institution. Therefore for any student at an elite university with the (honestly modest) goal of becoming a doctor, anything less than an A- (on a curve with the brightest students in the country, no less) is a failure because the same faculty and administrators pushing this kind of study lock them out of achieving their goals for it. Faculty and administrators in education have created an elaborate hoop jumping game of achieving impossibly high and fairly meaningless scores, and then get angry when students (a) are alienated by something they used to enjoy and (b) decide to play the game!

The same professors who have the audacity to feel insulted when students merely ask if certain content will be on the test or how final grades will be distributed then turn around and tell students that their B+ average will hugely limit them from achieving their goals when in an advisory role.

This is why I'm a huge fan of grade inflation- truth is, university grades are a poor metric of future performance, and generally only serve to creatively restrict, alienate, and limit students at the college level. Grade inflation largely eliminates the fairly useless choking pressures of the grading system.

<comment><USER5> I've been explicitly told by professors (who I would obviously prefer not to name) that they considered a C grade to be failing, and that more than one or two B's during your academic career is unacceptable, at least if you're planning on grad school. So I agree it to be somewhat hypocritical to then turn around and wonder why students react to their grades this way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "The modulus of resilience and the modulus of toughness were calculated from the area under the engineering stress versus engineering strain curves, as outlined in Appendix C. Both are useful for determining the amount of energy the students can absorb before yielding and fracture."

</comment><comment><USER17> This is a side effect of a winner-take-all economy. Merely graduating from college just isn't enough any more. If you're not in the 1%, you're a loser and will have crap jobs for the rest of your life, or at least until the college loans are paid off.

<comment><USER18> I think it's a side effect of the expectation of _not_ having a crap job.

For all of human history, 99.9% of people have had crap jobs.

Life gets a lot better if you are OK with that, but young people are not OK with that today.

<comment><USER19> What's worse is that in more recent history, you could get by pretty good with a crap job. You wouldn't have luxury items, but you'd have most of what was needed to live a normal life. But today, if you have a crap job, you don't earn enough to cover even the basics of life. Not because the basics are more expensive (in relation to pay), but for many people there are more basics that are required than previously. For example, either you have a car that constantly needs work done on it, or you have car payments (and often times both). And add in mandatory car insurance (full coverage required if you have a loan). Without the car you can't get to work (unless you are in a major city with good transportation options). In fact, the biggest struggle that I've witnessed people (esp. single parents) having isn't food or housing, but just maintaining a reliable transportation option to get to work and run the kids back and forth to daycare.

<comment><USER20> Even if you're consider "poor" by American standards, you do not have a problem with earning "enough to cover even the basics of life".

Quoting from [1]

"According to the government's own reports, the typical American defined as poor by the Census Bureau has a car, air conditioning, and cable or satellite TV. Half of the poor have computers, 43 percent have Internet, and 40 percent have a wide-screen plasma or LCD TV.

"Far from being overcrowded, poor Americans have more living space in their home than the average non-poor person in Western Europe. Some 42 percent of all poor households actually own their own homes; on average, this is a well- maintained three-bedroom house with one and a half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio."

And that's just the poor people. In this article, we're talking about people who at least have the resources to attend college.

[1] [http://dailysignal.com/2015/09/16/are-there- really-40-millio...](http://dailysignal.com/2015/09/16/are-there- really-40-million-poor-americans-looking-at-the-census-bureaus-definition-of- poverty/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_content=091815conservatives&utm_campaign=thffacebookad)

EDIT: remove duplicate word in first sentence.

<comment><USER19> Oh, I agree that poor by American standards are still good compared to world wide or historical standards. The problem is that if everyone around you has a car, you really can't get by without one (due to society expectations, such as being able to get from where you live to a job that could be 30 miles away). Whereas if everyone around you didn't have transportation, then jobs, stores, and housing would be closer together. And in the past (and in poorer areas of the world), daycare is provided by family instead of having to pay half your income to cover it. Not to mention that it is more miserable to go from school or work or stores with A/C and then go home to a house without it. Whereas if you aren't exposed to A/C anywhere else in the summer, you can acclimate to the heat better.

<comment><USER20> I see what you mean: we're bidding up the cost of entry into white-collar society, and people feel pressure to keep up with it. But...

1\. The fact that someone has something you don't doesn't make you worse off in an absolute sense. I have trouble making the moral leap that we need to do something that will amount to handicapping those who have earned wealth, based only on feelings of envy in the broader population.

2\. In any case, it kind of proves my main point: it's not true that only 1% is successful, and the rest of us are doomed to desperate drudgery. Your explanation demonstrates that a lot of us - indeed, enough of us to set a standard of sorts - achieve success. So the point that keeps coming up in this thread about it being a winner-take-all world where any failure dooms one to purgatory is clearly false.

<comment><USER21> 1\. If the infrastructure is then built solely for people that have that something you don't, then you are worse off compared to a situation where everyone does not have it and the infrastructure reflects that. This is not just about jealousy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Calling the cops and needing counseling after seeing a mouse... Oh I am soo happy I didn't stay in academia. The professors are the ones who have to deal with the emotional trainwrecks that result from 18 years of overly praised and insulated child raising.

It'll be interesting to see the next gen of parenting advice after this gets sorted out. "Have you let your child fail today?"

<comment><USER23> > "Have you let your child fail today?"

That's something that is being taught in some schools.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-16879336](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-16879336)

(I submitted that four years ago.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The inevitable blowback from helicopter parenting. It will probably take decades for society to fully recover.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_parent

<comment><USER25> I have a friend who has helicopter parents. The parents would take rotating shifts to fly out and live with them while they were at university (and not in residence) to keep an eye on them. To an extent it's robbed them of their independence and they've lost direction in their life.

The parents truly mean well and love their children, but people don't become strong by relying on a crutch their whole life.

<comment><USER26> I have ran into several people who have had parents schedule and come in for (!) job interviews alongside their kids.

<comment><USER20> I vow never to hire someone who comes in for an interview accompanied by their parent (unless it's support for a physical disability).

Can't such helicopter parents see the perception problem that they're creating?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> "There has been an increase in diagnosable mental health problems, but there has also been a decrease in the ability of many young people to manage the everyday bumps in the road of life."

Isn't this the bigger deal than student resilience?

<comment><USER23> Increase in diagnosis may not be increase in incidence, but could be decreased stigma, easier access to diagnosis, wider understanding of when to seek help etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I see here all over the place (only) comments about the grading and in general the current state of education as the root of the issue and what is to do about it, but as the title says the issue is the resilience. Although what I'm going to say may sound like a joke, it isn't meant to be one: Our society does not have enough (or any kind of) psychological resilience testing. Currently all of us are allowed to take any kind of risks regardless of the capacity for risk-bearing and its consequences. All of us want the cherry on the top of the cake and therefore jump at it, even the ones of us that do not feel competitive enough. That is reckless, and the consequences of immature decisions then falls on the rest of society which will have to deal with the broken ones. Yes, the education may be too damaging than it has to be and if so an attention in this regard is welcomed, but there also should be a better selection of candidates. It does not have any sense nor it is moral to let ignorant wannabes to throw themselves at something that may clearly surpass their potential.

</comment><comment><USER29> George Carlin knew what he was talking about.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6wOt2iXdc4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6wOt2iXdc4)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-ryuJDTpEc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-ryuJDTpEc)

Pure wisdom.

<comment><USER30> Although George Carlin certainly had some hilariously entertaining things to say about parenting (and no doubt insightful to some degree), it seems he didn't necessarily have such a stellar parenting record himself:

[http://www.amazon.com/Carlin-Home-Companion-Growing- George/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Carlin-Home-Companion-Growing- George/dp/1250058252)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> good... this is the purpose of going away to college. Helps to trigger independence and self sufficiency. The amount of people I know personally who had a TOTAL change in personality between the ages of 17 and 23... is just about everyone I know...

</comment><comment><USER32> I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I'm glad I'm no longer in academia.</comment>


Why design is too important to be left to designers - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/21/why-design-is-too-important-to-be-left-to-designers <comment><USER2> Someone has a tldl for the answer? Its one hour in length..

<comment><USER3> more appropriate title: Why ideas are too important to be left to videos

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> TLDR: Good ideas can emerge from anyone, including designers. Designers should collaborate with their non designer colleagues.</comment>


10 Billion lines of code before the new F-35 flies - <AUTHOR> http://thediplomat.com/2015/03/oops-us-close-air-support-bomb-doesnt-fit-on-the-f35/

<comment><USER2> I think that's supposed to be 10 million.

[http://www.militaryaerospace.com/articles/2013/10/software-c...](http://www.militaryaerospace.com/articles/2013/10/software- code-f-35.html)</comment>


Know When To CDN - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.telerik.com/kendoui/posts/13-11-07/know-when-to-cdn

<comment><USER2> "Dynamic Content: Nope." \- not strictly true.

Whilst this is true in a lot of cases, especially due to TTLs and slow purge times from edge nodes, services like fastly offer <1 second purge times across all edge nodes, with built in guarantees. This means caching dynamic content is possible in a lot of situations, triggering page cache purges with specific actions on the backend.</comment>


Feds shut down payment network Liberty Reserve. Is Bitcoin next? - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/28/feds-shut-down-payment-network-liberty-reserve-is-bitcoin-next/

<comment><USER2> Interesting and relevant question, but not the right one.

Liberty was a business that built technology for dodging the law; Bitcoin is itself a technology.

If what you're asking is, will Bitcoin exchanges and services face similar prosecution, the answer depends entirely on the exchanges themselves.

I hope other exchanges take steps to comply with the law; my colleagues and I certainly are.

<comment><USER3> This is clearly a shot across Bitcoin's bow. A future takedown of Bitcoin (indirectly, via exchanges) will likewise be illogically blamed on illicit transactions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> No, because Bitcoin is decentralized and cannot be shut down in this manner.

<comment><USER5> If you can't use convert Bitcoin to other currencies it can die.

It's the Little Bighorn strategy.</comment></comment>


Startup Meme Compared to Other Startup Focused blogs - <AUTHOR> http://startupmeme.com/2007/04/25/startup-meme-a-month-later/ <comment><USER2> Blogging about blogging alert.</comment>


We Give a F*** How the Site Loads - <AUTHOR> http://dt.deviantart.com/journal/We-Give-a-F-How-the-Site-Loads-392679726 <comment><USER2> Here at Grooveshark, we ran into a bug once where users in some countries couldn't perform searches. It took a while to figure out, but eventually we discovered that it was a problem with the name of the API call the site makes to get search results.

Originally the call was named 'getSearchResults'. Over time, we made some non- backwards-compatible changes to the search call, and following our usual naming standards, named the new call 'getSearchResultsEx'.

Additionally, for ease of debugging, when we hit the API endpoint, we add the method name as a GET param. Makes it much easier when scrolling through Firebug's network tab to find the API request you need to examine, since they all hit the same php script.

It turns out that in some countries, you can't visit a url that contains the word 'sex'...and the filter is case insensitive.

<comment><USER3> Which fucking countries?

<comment><USER2> It was a while ago. I want to say the main one was Egypt, but one of our community reps would probably remember better than I.

<comment><USER3> Can you ask? I'm curious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > But we can promise if you're browsing deviantART at the public library, our > swearing won't stop you from using the site.

If your public library censors profane _words_ , you should fucking riot.

</comment><comment><USER5> > That's right. The almighty F-word was breaking how some stylesheets were > loading for deviants who were accessing the site from computers with overly > sensitive system-wide profanity filters installed. These users' browsers > likely stopped parsing the stylesheet entirely upon reaching the word in the > stylesheet, leading to a fairly ugly and/or broken page.

Wait what? What filters are checking CSS files, and why?

<comment><USER6> Probably overzealous filter that looks at everything going over HTTP and stops passing the connection whenever it encounters a naughty word.

Unsurprisingly these types of filters don't have a lot of understanding of what is going to be displayed to the user vs not, but then again they probably don't need to to satisfy their target audience quite well.

<comment><USER7> There are several ways the user might be exposed to the contents of the CSS file, but the most straightforward is probably the content property - [http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/pr_gen_content.asp](http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/pr_gen_content.asp) .

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Another reason to use https (though I guess IT can install a cert for transparent MITM SSL proxying). Imagine a user whose TCP connection shuts down as soon as the 4 bytes 'fuck' pass it (say, only for port 80). This should happen randomly for high-entropy binary (e.g. compressed text/image) data - about 1 in 4 billion bytes. I guess it's not that likely except for extremely large files.

<comment><USER9> Not can. Will.

And home based filters do the same, or work at the browser level.

So https doesn't help at all.

<comment><USER10> I always wondered how many IT departments and filters actually bother to do this...

<comment><USER11> Search for SSL on this page: [http://www.dsd.gov.au/infosec/top- mitigations/top35mitigatio...](http://www.dsd.gov.au/infosec/top- mitigations/top35mitigation-details.htm)

I imagine DOD requirements are the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In May of this year, my development team went on a 1-month work-cation in Panama.

The internet was fast enough, but we quickly discovered that we couldn't access google analytics (google.com/ANALytics) without a VPN or socks proxy back in the USA.

I suspect text-based web content filters tend to have fairly high false- positive rates in general.

</comment><comment><USER13> I learned LONG time ago to never write profanities in any part of my work. My boss told me a story where some "strong" language showed up on a projected demo of one of his projects and i stuck to me.

<comment><USER14> I coded in an alert with "WTF?!" as the text in an unlikely logic path once. I like having something unique so I know where it came from. Came up in a demo in front of the (govt) client. Luckily they had a chuckle at my expense, but it could have been so much worse. I've got back to either contextual errors or just "foo" for the lazy ones.

<comment><USER15> I built out some webservers with apache on it for a dev team once. I just set it up with an index.html that had "FOO" in it just to prove that you could point a browser at it and you got "FOO" back. Well a week later they configured them behind a load balancer VIP so they wound up on a public IP address. That was fine, but now you could them from the real world. The mistake happened because that IP address had been used as part of a pool for the public website and it was still configured on the networking gear doing dynamic dns for the front end website. As soon as the IP came back up again the DNS appliance decided that cluster was 'back in service' and started handing out its IP address in response to www.<a large internet retailer>.com. This resulted in a sev1 ticket coming back titled "customers reporting 'foo' on the website". Imagine how much worse it could have been if I hadn't kept it professional and used some more controversial text there...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is funny. I've had to 'strongly encourage' our devs and designers to keep it clean/professional when designing mockups, test apps, etc. It's so easy to send a file around internally, give it a quick look over and shoot it off to the client without realising there is a some dodgy paragraph copy or awkward photo staring back at you. The humour isn't worth it!

Although I still find myself typing console.log("WHY THE FFFUUU") on annoying JS bugs...

<comment><USER17> I implemented a policy to only use the most bland test data while testing my apps, and it's saved me a few times when, for whatever reason, there was an accidental leakage of test data through to the client (whether it sneaks into a slideshow, or a test email is accidentally sent to a production email address, or...). I've been around development long enough to know that at some point, this type of leakage WILL occur, and it will be embarrassing when a customer sees a dummy entry for "Dickhead Buttface" or similar.

While it's excruciating and boring to use plain test data, you'll be glad you did it when you have an accidental leak between environments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> On every serious project I've ever worked on, all comments get removed from all exposed front-end code (CSS, JavaScript, HTML) via LESS/minification/etc/etc.

I mean, there's no reason to expose ugly stuff like that... developers WILL swear in comments, so just make sure it doesn't get out the front door...

</comment><comment><USER19> The video in this post is worth the price of admission alone. I love how ASP is the least "badass" of all...

</comment><comment><USER20> First thought: HTTPS sitewide would probably solve this problem. I'm pretty sure most filtering happens on the networking level, not within the browser. And if this browser on a public computer is augmented to read your https traffic, don't use it.

</comment><comment><USER21> One of our clients once complained that one of _their_ web fonts weren't loaded.

The file in question was blocked by their stupid proxy because its name was " _brand_ SansExtended", which happens to contain the substring "sex".

</comment><comment><USER22> all the more reason to compress your css

<comment><USER23> probably won't save you if you set a class-name of 'ass'

<comment><USER24> Clearly the correct answer is encryption. /s</comment></comment></comment>


Epic Games has filed legal papers in response to Apple [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://cdn2.unrealengine.com/apple-complaint-734589783.pdf <comment><USER4> I really don't agree with the idea that "alternative payment processors" are pro-consumer. This only benefits the developer, and I have huge privacy concerns with trusting third-party devs to handle my payment information. There's a 100% certainty that such payment information would be used for advertising purposes in the best-case, and rampant identity theft or mass payment security breaches in the worst-case. I'm certain Apple would also get a share of the blame for these third-party issues, which further tarnishes their platform and user experience.

For all Apple's faults, they've actually put a huge amount of effort to making payment processing seamless for the user, while also making it extremely transparent. I get regular notifications if I have a subscription trial about to expire, and it's super easy to manage ALL subscriptions through a single UI, and cancel them with a single click. This would not be possible through third-party systems, which I can guarantee would put huge effort into tricking users rather than making it easier for them. And yet again, Apple would receive the blame for allowing these Apps.

All that said I also don't agree with Apple taking a huge 30% cut, especially for subscription services that directly complete with them such as Netflix. Though obviously there are costs to run this ecosystem, so Apple also can't just charge nothing. I see both sides of this argument, and I don't see a middle ground that can please all sides. There needs to be a reasonable compromise somewhere in the middle.

<comment><USER5> >I really don't agree with the idea that "alternative payment processors" are pro-consumer. This only benefits the developer

I mean, in this case, the consumer is literally saving 20% for the same purchase. Seems good to me.

> There needs to be a reasonable compromise somewhere in the middle.

Why isn't "let other stores sell software for iOS, and the market will set the rent those stores can extract from software developers" the reasonable compromise?

People who want the ease and security of Apple and are willing to pay their extra fees can do so. Those who don't don't have to.

<comment><USER6> > I mean, in this case, the consumer is literally saving 20% for the same > purchase. Seems good to me.

In this case, you have to let your kid take your credit card and input it into any sketchy gaming company's web form. What happens from there?

<comment><USER7> The 20% is temporary incentive to get away from iOS's 30% it's all about them lineing their own pockets

<comment><USER8> It's permanent.

[https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/news/the- fortnite-m...](https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/news/the-fortnite- mega-drop-permanent-discounts-up-to-20-percent)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This filing is clever on Epic's part. (Or someone at Cravath, more likely.)

What Epic is asking for is an injunction. They may well get a temporary injunction quickly, compelling Apple to put their app back in Apple's store. Then the case gets litigated on the merits, but starting from a de facto win for Epic.

The standard required for a temporary injunction is low:

" _To justify a temporary injunction it is not necessary that the plaintiff 's right to a final decision, after a trial, be absolutely certain, wholly without doubt; if the other elements are present (i.e., the balance of hardships tips decidedly toward plaintiff), it will ordinarily be enough that the plaintiff has raised questions going to the merits so serious, substantial, difficult and doubtful, as to make them a fair ground for litigation and thus for more deliberate investigation."_[1]

Litigation on temporary injunctions is relatively fast. This part will be decided in weeks, not years.

Epic might only win a rollback to the last uncontroverted state, though. That is, apparently, before Epic's payment system went live on Apple platforms. If Apple had allowed third party payments for a while, then removed the app, Epic would be in a stronger position to insist that their own payment system remain live.

[1] [https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article...](https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2013&context=dlj)

[2] [https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wiwd.39930/...](https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wiwd.39930/gov.uscourts.wiwd.39930.191.0.pdf)

<comment><USER10> > Epic might only win a rollback to the last uncontroverted state, though. > That is, apparently, before Epic's payment system went live on Apple > platforms.

IIUIC the app itself wasn't updated, only the webview for payments was updated on the server side.

<comment><USER9> Interesting. If that's correct, Epic is in an even stronger position. They can claim that Apple retaliated against them for a competitive move which had no bearing on the activities taking place in the arena Apple claims to control.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Woah - Epic says they would release a competing app store if it weren't for "Apple's illegal restraints".

> But for Apple's illegal restraints, Epic would provide a competing app store > on iOS devices, which would allow iOS users to download apps in an > innovative, curated store and would provide users the choice to use Epic's > or another third-party's in-app payment processing tool."

Part 16, in the Intro.

<comment><USER12> Which holds zero legal weight, because Apple can point to them doing exactly that on Android to avoid paying Google Pay fees. They abandoned the plan about a year later because consumers didn't want to use it.

<comment><USER13> To be fair, if Epic does this I won't want to use it (just like with their desktop client).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Epic is not bringing this case to recover these damages; Epic is not seeking > any monetary damages.

Well, that's interesting.

> But for Apple's illegal restraints, Epic would provide a competing app store > on iOS devices, which would allow iOS users to download apps in an > innovative, curated store and would provide users the choice to use Epic's > or another third-party's in-app payment processing tool

So, Epic doesn't want money, they want the ability to allow users to install an Epic App Store. They must assume there's a lot more money to be made by operating a competing store.

<comment><USER12> Exactly this. At the end of the day, Epic is a publisher. If studios can go directly to the platform they are no longer the gatekeeper and stand to lose money.

Epic wants your choice to be Apple store for non-games, and Epic store for games. Period.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> A little "speculative execution" here by Epic.

They anticipated Apple's action would be to ban them, and they prepared a lawsuit and PR campaign in anticipation.

<comment><USER16> They absolutely baited Apple to do this, I'm actually glad they did it. It's time someone takes a stand. I think this will be more significant than people think. Remember it was Netscape that helped bring about Microsoft's anti- trust.

<comment><USER17> It's kinda hypocritical since Epic has a very similar business model for anything that's built using the Unreal Engine.

<comment><USER18> Unreal Engine costs less and it's not mandatory to use it in order to make games.

<comment><USER19> For those reading along, Unreal Engine fees is 5% after the first million.

<comment><USER20> Or 0% on sales through EGS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Epic appears to have retained Cravath's antitrust team; e.g. [https://www.cravath.com/cvarney/](https://www.cravath.com/cvarney/), who "is the only person to have served as both the U.S. Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust and as a Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission."

</comment><comment><USER22> Going after Apple for antitrust violations has a big hill to climb in the form of the Google Play Store.

More than that, a ruling against Apple here would have huge implications for any company running an app store on their device. Smart TV manufacturers, companies like Roku, Automobile manufacturers, etc... If you can be considered a monopolist because you control your platform then there will be a LOT of monopolies out there.

I'm not expecting Epic to get any real traction on this suit. The best they can hope for is Apple working out some system where they'll reduce their cut in certain circumstances, but given how unlikely this case is to go anywhere I don't think Apple is feeling any pressure.

<comment><USER23> >form of the Google Play Store.

You can get Android apps from many locations other than the Google Play Store.

<comment><USER24> > Smart TV manufacturers, companies like Roku, Automobile manufacturers, > etc...

It's more than just the Google Play Store.

<comment><USER25> Good. Force them too open up as well.

<comment><USER22> What I'd like to happen and what the law supports aren't always in sync.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Apple is about to get bitten hard for being a monopoly.

I hope the government considers the harshest punishment of all: splitting up Apple into hardware and software+services entities.

This is absurd that Apple has built a fiefdom on America's most popular generic computer device. It's a threat to freedom! We can only compute what the overlords allow and can tax? What a crock!

The fact that Apple thinks they can extort more protection money from developers than the government does in taxes is an affront. But the freedom aspect should have everyone out with their pitchforks.

This after Apple created an environment where its users, many of whom have lots of disposable income for buying goods and services, expect apps to be $0.99 and come with free updates for life. Meanwhile Apple's own products are luxury priced. And they still take 30%.

US Government, please force Apple to open up iPhone to any software we want to install. It's a generic computer. It's how we communicate, do banking, do basic shopping, dating, business ... everything. Apple can't be the gatekeepers of 21st century life. It's incredibly damaging to our ability to innovate and succeed as small business owners and entrepreneurs.

Apple, you are the tyrant king. Long have we suffered under your rule. We won't stand for it any longer and we demand our freedom.

<comment><USER27> > US Government, please force Apple to open up iPhone to any software we want > to install. It's a generic computer.

You have bazillion types of generic computers to choose from. People pay huge overhead to apple exactly because apple makes choices for them - <USER2> what settings are reasonable to have, what software they want you to use etc.

Personally I don't understand monopoly arguments. If we are talking about some ISP, something like Nestle or even social network/apps, I can somewhat understand it. But here? Users are people who bought Apple hardware to use it based on rules set up by Apple.

I'm not much fan of Apple, I sincerely want to understand the monopoly argument. It seems to me as if people would want to split BMW because .. I don't know we want to be able to install our own custom AC. Because maintenance of the stock one is too expensive.

<comment><USER24> > People pay huge overhead to apple exactly because apple makes choices for > them...

That's exactly why I use Apple products. I don't have time to mess around with third party stores and risk security issues when I need an app that doesn't want to be on the App Store. I'm ok with paying 30% more as a consumer for the simplicity and peace of mind.

This isn't the consumers getting angry - it's developers. That's why this comment and other dissenting opinions always get downvoted on HN. Not saying devs don't matter, but there is another side to this that people here don't want to consider.

<comment><USER28> The thing is, if Apple alienates developers enough/makes them go bankrupt, the only applications you will be able to use would be the first party Apple ones. That won't be a very enjoyable thing, would be?

That's the entire problem. If a shopping mall was charging every store 30% of their revenue (not profit, revenue!), it would be very quickly going broke and empty. Yet Apple (and to a lesser degree Google, Facebook and a few others) is getting away with this - exactly because unlike the shopping mall, the developers don't have a choice. It is either play by Apple rules - or be excluded from a very sizeable part of the mobile market.

When Microsoft was playing dirty and abusing its market dominance to put a squeeze on companies trying to ship other than Microsoft's software, they got hammered in court pretty bad. The anti-monopoly/abuse of dominant market position laws are there for a reason, even if you, as a consumer, don't see it (yet).

<comment><USER29> >That's the entire problem. If a shopping mall was charging every store 30% of their revenue (not profit, revenue!), it would be very quickly going broke and empty.

If the same were true for Apple, they would reduce the 30% fee to reverse the trend. The fact that the app ecosystem continues to be rich is a signal that either:

1) most developers are ok with this price to access Apple's "marketplace" of users, and/or

2) developers are irrational - you could always instead focus on Google's platform, which has more users.

Revenue or profits is not a good indicator of market share at all, as then parent's BMW argument comes into play: just because you want BMW over Honda, because the owners of the former have more disposable income, does not make BMW a monopoly.

>When Microsoft was playing dirty and abusing its market dominance...

Microsoft's market dominance at the time is MULTIPLES higher than what Apple owns of the mobile OS market.

<comment><USER30> You're discussing mobile apps as if they exist in a robust free market, but it's actually a platform duopoly covering a nearly essential service. As long as Google doesn't decide to compete on price there is very little incentive for Apple to lower prices.

> The fact that the app ecosystem continues to be rich is a signal that either

How do you know it couldn't be vastly better? I know I would be extremely hesitant to develop an iPhone app given Apple's behavior, and would bet many others feel the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Epic has a good argument that Apple is engaging in illegal "tying" \- requiring that to buy B, you must also buy A, where A and B are not inherently tied tightly together

AT&T lost that one decades ago. At one time phone users could only use a rented AT&T phone. (Or modem, and AT&Ts modems were huge, expensive, and included a dial and handset.) See "Carterphone decision".

</comment><comment><USER31> Summary

1) iOS devices are a large market (Over 1.5 BILLION devices)

2) iOS users spend more then Android users

3) Apps must be independently developed for each platform

4) Apple's Monopoly Power in the iOS App Distribution Market. (p20) As it is the sole means by which apps are distributed to consumers in the iOS Market.

5) Non-iOS app distribution platforms do not constrain Apple's monopoly power in the iOS App Distribution Market because they are not compatible with iOS devices, they cannot provide iOS users with apps for their devices, and they do not contain iOS compatible apps.

6) Apple imposes unreasonable restraints and unlawfully maintains a monopoly in the iOS App Distribution Market through several anti-competitive acts, including technical restrictions \- Cannot download alternative app stores

\- App store is preinstalled

\- Contractual restrictions on distributing iOS apps outside the app store

\- Section 3.3.2(b) of the Developer Agreement prohibits "Application[s]" that "create a store or storefront for other code or applications". (p25 C75)

7) Apple's anti-competitive conduct harms all would-be app distributors by foreclosing them from competing in the iOS App Distribution Market. (p26 D88)

8) Apple has a monopoly over the iOS In-App Payment Processing Market and, in the alternative, over the iOS Games Payment Processing Market, as it has a 100% market share.

9) The cost of alternative electronic payment processing tools, which Apple does not permit to be used for the purchase of in-app digital content, can be one tenth of the cost of In-App Purchase.

Electronic Payment Processing Tool, Base U.S. Rate

PayPal 2.9%

Stripe 2.9%

Square 2.6%-3.5%

Braintree 2.9%

</comment><comment><USER32> Saw on reddit and agree 100%

> I will say it's a VERY smart move by Epic to position Apple against > customers by no longer making it "Apple is taking 30% from epic" to "Apple > is taking 20% from you"

</comment><comment><USER33> IMO The key takeaway is that developers are no longer afraid of Apple. Epic Games move would be unthinkable a few years ago. Looks like this will become common practice. Epic Games joins Spotify, what will be joined by X, Y.

Maybe at some point multiple developers will also follow and also file legal actions.

<comment><USER34> >>IMO The key takeaway is that developers are no longer afraid of Apple. Epic Games would be unthinkable a few years ago.

Well yes, Epic Games was a small and relatively unknown studio until they hit jackpot with Fortnite.

<comment><USER35> Is this sarcasm? Epic has been huge since the early 2000s.

<comment><USER34> No, nothing like they are today. Fortnite made them literally billions -- more than all of their previous titles combined.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> > Apple has asserted that blocking third-party app distribution platforms is > necessary to enforce privacy and security safeguards. [...] A simple > comparison to how Apple handles third-party software on its Mac personal > computers illustrates how baseless its justifications are.

Clever. Now Apple will either need to (1) state that Macs are insecure and bad for privacy, or (2) admit that there is no privacy/security benefit from the App Store rules.

</comment><comment><USER37> ok am going to put a highly objectionable comment.

I buy stuff on apple store because its easy and SAFE.

That safety point is more important than ever, if there was no app store or lets say having 10 other app stores , i wont have the same level of confidence and heck i wont even be spending any dollars out there.

Over to Apple's 30 % cut, i dont know whats the call here, to make it 0%? ,10% , 20%? what if the same fortnite (or any other company) increases the bill to $9.99 next week :)

Am saying this purely from a consumer perspective that i dont care how apple and devs split the money as long as it doesnt bite me ...

<comment><USER38> Not all that objectionable IMHO, even if you think Apple should allow other app sources. Of course an app store having clear policies and a good reputation is an important factor for users installing apps from there - <USER3> thus for vendors picking one to sell in. You see that in action on Android to some degree.

EDIT: In some ways the best option IMHO would be a package-manager like design, where the system is responsible for fetching and updating packages, verifying signatures, security prompts, ... and "app stores" just feed information into that, but I doubt we'll see that anywhere.

<comment><USER39> that's roughly how Windows works with MSIX?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Seems like they were prepared to do this all along

<comment><USER41> They knew this will cost them millions until Fortnite is back on the store and they still did it.

<comment><USER42> Sounds like they'll have lots of damages to point to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> A 65 page lawsuit? How long was Epic planning this, and how did they manage to time it right after Apple's antitrust hearing?

<comment><USER44> I mean, they had full control over when to release their update…

<comment><USER43> Right, but timing is especially important with this kind of stunt and there's a lot of variables outside of Epic's control that could have weakened it.

<comment><USER5> Such as?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Go Epicgames! The #freefortnite campaign is bold; it'll require users being proactive for it to maintain its momentum.

I love the the things that both companies make, but I'm not in favor of the App Store's monopoly. I'm excited to see the outcome of this lawsuit but not very excited to wait for a long, drawn out process that the US legal system lends itself to.

</comment><comment><USER46> I have zero interest in replacing one tyrant with another. Epic games doesn't care about what Apple is doing, they just want to do it themselves.

They keep trying to buy the PC gamer market, and it doesn't take much of an imagination to guess what they'd do if they got control of it.

</comment><comment><USER47> It will be funny to read Apple's excuses how they are not a monopoly and how consumers are benefiting from their no competition allowed policy.

<comment><USER48> Xfinity (in my neighborhood) is a monopoly. I literally cannot get any other fast internet service at my apartment.

I can, however, chose to buy a different phone.

<comment><USER49> Why not choose a new home in a location served by your preferred internet provider? What's that - you like your home, but not the service it comes with? /s

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> This is a bit cynical of me but I thought it was interesting: In the PDF their legal says this: > in the years since, Fortnite has topped 350 million players and has become a global cultutral phenomenon. Interestingly, this 350 million players number appears to have been announced back in May [0]. Of course it is somewhat likely that their legal team just Googled this number instead of sourcing an updated figure from Epic, but could it potentially be that Fortnite's growth has stagnated? It definitely feels as though it has left the zeitgeist compared to years gone by, and it could be that Epic has calculated that the payoff of this suit could exceed the amount of V-Bucks they were expecting to sell through the iOS version of Fortnite. Certainly a big gamble, but it's possible that the situation may be dire enough to make it worth it. Of course they attempt to make it look like this isn't what they want by not demanding a cash payoff, but the obvious play is that if they win then a) they will be able to sell V-Bucks again for presumably a higher margin, and b) they will launch their own Epic app/game store and take a small cut of those transactions.

[https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/6/21249497/fortnite-350-mill...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/6/21249497/fortnite-350-million- registered-players-hours-played-april)

<comment><USER10> I think you are reading wayyy too much into this. The most likely explanation is that the document was being worked on for a long time and the figure was added back then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I have zero sympathy for a corporation that thinks everyone should have to pay them a 30% cut of everything, but that they shouldn't have to pay any tax themselves.

</comment><comment><USER52> Looks like this was the plan all long. Now to see whether or not the risk of implementing their own payments system for V-Bucks is worth the potential revenue loss they will incur with the app being removed from the store.

<comment><USER52> Adding to this, Epic/Fortnite are planning a short which goes live in 10mins called Nineteen Eighty-Fortnite. Most likely to be a parody of the 1984 Apple ad. Yup, it's a marketing stunt.

[https://twitter.com/FortniteGame/status/1293984290326433792](https://twitter.com/FortniteGame/status/1293984290326433792)

<comment><USER53> Seems like it's broadcast in-game? I don't know much about Fortnite. But it's been 10mins.

<comment><USER54> It was just an exact copy of the famous Apple 1984 ad, except the guy on the screen had an apple for a head and the person who attacked the screen was a rainbow Fortnite character throwing a Fortnite donkey head staff

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I feel like its only a matter of time until the EU pins something to Apple, if the US won't address this issue, the EU will.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> They've now posted an FAQ site to ask their fans to complain to Apple with the #FreeFortnite hash tag.

[https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en- US/news/freefortnite](https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en- US/news/freefortnite)

(this beef is fascinating to watch)

</comment><comment><USER56> As someone without legal knowledge, it surprised me that the NATURE OF THE ACTION section reads more like a blog post than what I would expect in a legal document.

</comment><comment><USER57> I've reached point 7 and so far I'm seeing a lot of demagoguery. Not that I'm in love with Apple or its business practices, but for example is "tax" the right word for something that isn't a government entity? Or e.g. does a judge care what happened in 1984 or what that ad campaign looked like? That one's in there (point 1, right at the top) for the press, I suppose.

Demonstrate some relevant facts and just let them be what they are, and if they aren't how you want, that's called being "wrong?" I dunno, maybe I'm being naive or maybe my courtroom (if I were a judge) would be a hell of a place to try that horseshit.

</comment><comment><USER58> Most of the focus on the legal position but the damage to Apple's brand shouldn't be underestimated here. Hey was a big deal for a small group but Fortnite will hit a much, much wider audience.

The 1984 video was a clever and calculated move.

</comment><comment><USER59> This is bigger than Apple, it would be a massive precedent if they pull it off. And it gets to my major concern with the possible merging of iOS and MacOS. I don't mind curation on my phone, but it's a deal breaker for my PC

<comment><USER60> The day Apple does this is the day they lose every developer in the MacOS ecosystem to Linux/maybe Windows.

<comment><USER61> I highly doubt they'd do this in the first place, but even if they did, iOS developers would still be using Macs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Epic is trying to sue an near $2 trillion dollar company. It's very dangerous to sue them alone. You need Microsoft and Facebook to back you guys up given that they kicked their apps out too.

Unfortunately, this app store sheriff is unreal.

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure what you're talking about. Netscape sued Microsoft and got its way. Size doesn't often matter, just visibility. Apple was already under the microscope.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> in seeking moderate profits, apple has put themselves into a corner. they literally sold the cow, to pay for the donkey's medicine. apple can't argue that users having alternative means to install apps is insecure, as they allow to that on the mac. they also can't argue about anti-competitive practices and monopoly tendencies e.g 30% cut. only way out was if the 30% was a cut directly to the gvt. whoever is running apple services is one of the most sighted exec's in history.

<comment><USER64> > apple can't argue that users having alternative means to install apps is > insecure, as they allow to that on the mac

I don't agree with this evaluation. They can argue it, as all macs are shipped with only access to the app store. You need to specifically opt out.

macOS does have security issues, perhaps moreso than iOS, and that's an argument they could make: Allowing Epic to run a store would compromise the phones of kids and open them up to tracking, aggressive adware, etc. I think it's a fair argument, even if I think 30% is a steep price to pay for what they provide.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> I choose Apple devices because I believe Apple looks out for my interests. I say that as a consumer and a developer who publishes on the App Store as a business. I've seen the kind of nightmare that Android can be and no thanks. If this requires 30% for Apple to afford to keep the review bar high then so be it. But even if it doesn't, its their platform - their rules. If I didn't like it I'd switch to something else but I am thankful that iOS devices for my family aren't a risky proposition to use because app developer are reasonably restricted in what they can do.

My worry is, if the doors get opened to non-Apple app stores and non-Apple reviewed apps, what happens when enough of the top tier apps like Facebook, IG, etc.. move to a store that has less oversight and restrictions? Users essentially get forced to give up what Apple gives them (and what they may have chosen Apple devices for) in terms of oversight and privacy control to use those apps. You can say, "just don't use those apps or stores" but that doesn't match the reality when your friends and family expect you to be connected because they use those apps. So while this may be about fees now, what's to stop if from being about privacy and other bad behavior that Apple doesn't currently allow?

</comment><comment><USER66> The arguments aren't good ones, and I won't be surprised if Apple knocks this down easily.

Epic is arguing here that Apple is charging them 30% for payment processing. They're not, they're charging them for a return on the billions of dollars they spend developing the OS, developer APIs and tools that Epic builds on.

Most egregious is the fact that is is Epic's very business model! They provide a game engine, SDKs and tools to third parties and draw a % of the sales of those games. How would Epic like it if some of their customers stopped paying them? Their customers can make the same bad arguments: It's too expensive, and it's a monopoly because the switching costs are too high!

Sure, the difference it's the users that are captive on the Apple ecosystem rather than the developer, but it's pretty easy to argue that the users choose the platform because of it's quality, and a large part of that quality is driven by the massive investment Apple makes into the ecosystem, for which it deserves a fair share.

All that said, I really wish Apple would drop their cut to 15% or 20% which would do a lot relieve the bad taste in everyones mouth.

</comment><comment><USER67> It's about time someone is standing up to apples smug anticompetitive behavior. Hopefully more major developers and game platforms will join suit.

</comment><comment><USER68> Does this mean we'll get buying options on the Switch, Xbox, and Playstations?

</comment><comment><USER69> That was fast

<comment><USER42> Almost like it was the plan all along. You don't write a 65 page legal filing in an hour.

<comment><USER70> Right, it looks to me like they violated Apple's policies in order to bring this lawsuit. It isn't the other way around. I don't think this is primarily about the 30% cut in Fortnite — Epic wants to run their own iOS App Store.

<comment><USER42> Epic games store for iOS. Automatically accessible from all games packaged for mobile built on the unreal engine. I imagine that is their goal as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Can you create a platform then have a monopoly over various sub-operations within your own platform (specifically both payment processing and controlling internal app distribution) Or is it just a piece of the wider mobile apps market?

The modern digital economy is so much different than the Oil giants of the late 1800's, for which the Sherman Act was written in 1890. I doubt this will be an easy case for Epic or government lawyers.

This would be a landmark case even it ever goes anywhere (not so much this injunction as a wider anti-trust move).

</comment><comment><USER71> Can't wait to troubleshoot my parents iphones after courts force them to allow arbitrary code installs from any source without apple's curation.

The whole value proposition of iOS is they BLOCK CRAP.

</comment><comment><USER72> What's up with the layout though? For one, the text alternates between serif and sans-serif fonts, like someone came in and edited the prewritten complaint, but didn't care about formatting. Second, they have problems matching the text to the line number template, e.g. on pages 31, 38, 42, etc.

Is that common for complaints, or is this just hastily written? I remember reading others and noticed peculiar layouts there, too.

</comment><comment><USER14> It was never mentioned in the complaint, but I thought Apple also had a policy that required in-app purchases to be priced the same or lower than prices offered outside the store...

I found an article from 2011 saying they tried to do this but backed away. Are apps allowed to price, say subscriptions, higher on iOS than on the web? And if they aren't allowed to advertise the lower price on the web, isn't that anti-competitive, forcing iOS uses to pay more?

</comment><comment><USER73> Maybe I'm missing something, but why can't Epic and other developers just raise the price of the games on the App Store by 30% and pass the cost along to customers. Customers on Apples Ecosystem will just need to pay a premium, just like they do for their devices.

"When you choose to use Epic direct payments, you save up to 20% as Epic passes along payment processing savings to you."

Apparently they already were, they just want to lower the price for consumers.

<comment><USER20> This is correct. Earlier today they pushed a Fortnite update adding the option to use "Epic direct payment" which charged 20% less. In response Apple removed Fortnite from the App Store, which then triggered this law suit to be filed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> [https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition- guidance/guide-a...](https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition- guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/single-firm-conduct/monopolization-defined) I'm reading this and thinking, is just the fact that an iphone do not allow you to install another OS is considered as an infringement of the anti trust law?

</comment><comment><USER75> I don't understand - epic deliberately chooses to avoid the most open platform (Linux) and yet they don't like being wall gardened? Quite ironic

<comment><USER76> Epic's reasons for avoiding Linux are substantially different from their reasons for circumventing Apple's restrictions.

See examples such as: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18845205](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18845205)

I do not think the irony holds in this case.

<comment><USER75> If this was true why would Steam even bother? Secondly, Nvidia and AMD both invested tons of money into fixes for games in their drivers for windows and it just shows. Also epic is spending money left and right, why couldn't they invest into the platform just like steam? And even with that little investment steam put into linux(compared to windows) it shows a really good potential.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> I'm curious how this will shake out.

On one hand Epic (and any developer) is building their business on Apple's property/ecosystem. On the other hand, Apple has demonstrated anti-competitive behavior in numerous instances.

Due to all the political turmoil in the USA with the technology industry, I don't think Apple has enough political capital to prevent a massive/historic prohibitive ruling against Apple.

<comment><USER78> Apple's property?

This computer in my hand is mine, that argument works if you're building your business on top of somebody else's SaaS or social network, even then it has limitations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> So what does epic games do while this is being litigated? Isn't this the cash cow, I know they've got other games but still (as a windows gamer I look forward to all of you who have found in Epic your David; what a bs company). Do you try to force your way back in without the offending thing or what?

This whole thing seems super coordinated but with some real confusing missing pieces, but should be fun to watch!

<comment><USER15> Fortnite is multi-platform. Is Fortnite _for iOS_ their cash cow? Maybe not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> It seems like the better approach here is to go the EU route.

They will be much more likely to act as this is anticompetitive (and plus it is a non-EU company).

</comment><comment><USER81> It is painfully clear that almost nobody, if anybody commenting here, actually read the fairly clearly written complaint. :)

</comment><comment><USER82> Epic is going to lose this case.

<comment><USER83> Seems unlikely. Microsoft lost with a far more open situation than what Apple's got.

<comment><USER84> Given that you have a complete misunderstanding of why Microsoft lost their case I don't think your opinion holds much weight.

There is no law that says a platform must be open.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> It's good to remember that Apple isn't just a potential monopoly, but a monopsony-

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22051915](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22051915)

</comment><comment><USER86> Simple solution. Require Apple to allow alternative stores. That's a basic anti-trust issue. Not that Epic is much better in the sense of doing anti- competitive shenanigans, but Apple is simply infamous in that regard.

</comment><comment><USER7> Epic just want more profits, making things very inconvenient for users but having to sign up for their own payment processing. Once they got enough users on the platform they want to cut Apple out.

</comment><comment><USER87> It looks like the HN moderators have kicked this out of #1, indeed all the way off the front page, and are starting to do the same with related stories too.

Welp, it was fun while it lasted (a few hours).

<comment><USER88> Why are they doing that?

<comment><USER87> "certain stories routinely get tons of upvotes regardless of how good they are for HN—e.g. anything sensational, indignant, or meta. If we didn't have a compensating factor, those stories would dominate the front page every day"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13857086](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13857086)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> So, this is obvious that they knew they were violating terms and conditions.

How can they win? It's so clear that they have been preparing for this. The ad in-game in fortnite makes it too obvious.

</comment><comment><USER71> Can someone explain to me why Apple's 30% tax is so different from every B&M retailer providing shelf space? I can't sell stuff in walmart without paying Walmart

"But you can't sell apps on iOS outside the app store"

I can't sell stuff on ANY platform/device without the permission of the platform/device maker. I also can't create my own platform within another platform, without permission of that platform. I can't open an Amazon store and ask Amazon to list or fulfill my goods but not charge me a fee.

Monopoly argument? with like 20-30% global user share? C'mon now

<comment><USER90> I can install anything I want from any platform/device maker on my Windows computer, my Android phone, my Macbook, and my Linux laptop. Apple phones are the outlier here.

<comment><USER84> a) Phone is not considered by most people to be a computer.

b) I can't install anything I want on my PS4, Switch, Tesla, Shopify store etc.

So actually Apple isn't the outlier at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER91> This will prove to be the straw that broke the camel's back. I hereby demand that everyone who read this send me one micro-bitcoin....;)

</comment><comment><USER92> What if Apple already has paperwork prepared too lol

<comment><USER93> This looks pretty similar to a lawsuit that was filed against them last year by individual developers, so they probably already do have paperwork to respond to accusations re: Sherman Antitrust Act and CA competition laws

<comment><USER92> I'm not mad at this though, they really do have a monopoly with their marketplace and it's killing the growth of the mobile app industry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> How did this drop off the front page so fast?

</comment><comment><USER94> that escalated quickly. some prominent names from the Epic side. it will be interesting to follow this

</comment><comment><USER95> Wow, 65 pages in less than an hour. I knew epic was productive, but this must be a new record.

<comment><USER96> They signed up for the GPT-3 beta and made an api call

<comment><USER97> > An amazing games company files suit against an anachronistic monopoly, and > their suit reads:

<comment><USER98> Prompted with the first three paragraphs from the complaint, GPT-3 (Dragon model on AIDungeon) continues:

      4.Apple's anticompetitive conduct harms consumers because it prevents new entrants into these markets from entering them at competitive prices, thereby raising the price of mobile apps and in-app content for consumers. It also harms competitors because it increases their costs of doing business by forcing them to pay higher prices for the same or similar products and services. Finally, it harms other businesses because it reduces their ability to compete by reducing the number of choices available to consumers.

      5.The Plaintiffs in this case seek to restore competition to these markets by challenging Apple's anticompetitive conduct. Plaintiffs bring claims under Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, 15 U.S.C. § 2, and common law unfair competition.

      6.This is a civil lawsuit. The Plaintiffs are not seeking criminal prosecution, nor are they seeking to have Apple break any agreements with other companies. They simply seek the right to compete with Apple on a level playing field.

      7.The Plaintiffs are seven individuals and companies who develop software applications for Apple's iOS operating system, which runs on all of its mobile devices, such as the iPhone and iPad. Apple's iOS is the second most popular mobile operating system in the world, with approximately 1.4 billion devices sold to date.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> It'll be interesting to see how much revenue Forknife has generated in the app store.

</comment><comment><USER99> Let's all go on strike and make our apps unavailable for 24 hrs

</comment><comment><USER100> So they should remove Google drive as they also skip apple payments ...

</comment><comment><USER101> I think apple has the right to make TOS as they want.

The only way for Epic to "win" is to make others join their side and leave App Store. Then, Apple will have to decrease their cut under the pressure.

<comment><USER102> They can likely write whatever they want but (at least in the EU) by law you cannot sign away your rights, so even agreeing to whatever someone write in TOS or EULA doesn't mean it will hold up in court.

<comment><USER101> Of course, but setting up your cut is totally legal everywhere.

So, 30% or 99%. Whatever it is. Apple put it there. It is legal. If you don't like just don't accept. Go distribute your app somewhere else (also, App Store does not qualify for monopoly)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER103> What got banned by apple ?

<comment><USER104> Fortnite for ducking fees

</comment></comment><comment><USER105> What's the context and TLDR?

<comment><USER106> Context is that Apple has two things:

A) Devices, with a large market share, restricted to a particular app store, where Apple takes a pay cut of 30%.

B) Strong restrictions on what is allowed inside this app store and no hesitation to ban anyone from that app store for sometimes the weirdest reason.

Naturally no one likes to pay apple the 30% cut and even more so no one likes to be forced to play by Apple's rules to distribute software to iPhones etc.

Now Epic Games actually tries to fight back. Study law and read the documents if you need more details ;).

My take on this: Apple is obviously acting in a manner that prevents fair competition. They have a point to be paid and they have a point to enact certain policies. But taken together with the outright ban of competing stores, this is obviously a market dominating position. I guess they can have two of the three and they should go for policies, single app store and a self- cost price. But they probably will settle for single app store and high price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER107> Just FYI, Tencent owns a 40% stake in Epic Games.

<comment><USER102> Please take the China bashing aka. racism back to Reddit.

<comment><USER107> How is that racist?</comment></comment></comment>


"The Mess We're In" by Joe Armstrong at Strange Loop [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKXe3HUG2l4 <comment><USER2> So, while in general I've enjoyed other things Joe Armstrong has written, I think this talk is pretty discombobulated and doesn't have a coherent narrative.

Here are some of the problems Joe posed:

      - bugs in software like Open Office, Keynote, grunt
      - code not being commented
      - computers booting slowly
      - computers using too much energy
      - code being written for efficiency rather than readability

He talks about distributed hash tables at the end. An interesting topic, definitely cool, but they have nothing to do with the problems he posed earlier.

This seems more like a disconnected list of gripes, plus a completely unrelated list of things he currently finds neat to think about. Which is totally fine, but I don't think it makes a particularly great talk.

<comment><USER3> Came here to see this. I expected to see a well reasoned argument for functional programming and how entrenched the OO mentality is. What's the mess we're in again?

<comment> dj-wonk Complexity, the Destroyer of Simplicity. (Joe's talk is broad, perhaps intentionally so, and hopefully will promote some big-picture thinking.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "In the middle of the pattern matching algorithm, there was this single comment that read # and now for the tricky bit." (~10:40)

At ~28:00 is he saying that the optimal computing device could operate 27 orders of magnitude more efficiently that what we use today?

At ~36:00, finally something to make me sit up. "content addressable store".

<comment><USER5> He mentions these topics with regards to distributed hash tables:

      * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chord_(peer-to-peer)
      * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kademlia

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great talk. Very light-hearted and entertaining.

Always impressed by Joe. Programming since the 60s and still programming, still writing, giving talks. He is a great role model. I wish I would be programming and be just as excited about it when I am at his age.

<comment><USER7> I wished I would be half that excited about it at my present age!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like his speaking style and appreciate the intro to Kademlia and Chord. This page has some visual representations: [http://tutorials.jenkov.com/p2p/peer- routing-table.html](http://tutorials.jenkov.com/p2p/peer-routing-table.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> I am lucky enough to work in a "internal open source environment" \- I can and do search the whole code base for a major Fortune 500 daily for pieces that fit my needs. And I often find them - but the process of getting it refactored to fit my exact needs (and so improving their code and the overall reduction in entropy) is mostly impossible - because of humans No one is really willing to change someone else's code without talking to them, agreeing, getting past thier "yes I have tests but if you change it then I don't really know ..."

It's a fundamental problem - good well maintained tests help but this is cultural not technical problem.

</comment><comment><USER10> Joe and I are thinking similarly :D I'm going to dump some ideas here.

\---

# JRFC 27 - Hyper Modular Programming System

(moving it over to [https://github.com/jbenet/random- ideas/issues/27](https://github.com/jbenet/random-ideas/issues/27))

Over the last six months I've crossed that dark threshold where the desire of building a programming language has become an appealing idea. Terrifyingly, I _might_ actually build this some day. Well, not a language, a programming _system_. The arguments behind its design are long and will be written up some day, but for now I'll just dump the central tenet and core ideas here.

## > Hyper Modularity - write symbols once

### An Illustration

You open your editor and begin to write a function. The first thing you do is write the ([mandatory]([https://code.google.com/p/go- wiki/wiki/CodeReviewComments#Do...](https://code.google.com/p/go- wiki/wiki/CodeReviewComments#Doc_Comments\))) [doc comment]([http://golang.org/doc/effective_go.html#commentary](http://golang.org/doc/effective_go.html#commentary)) describing what it does, and the type signature (yes, static typing). As you write, [your editor suggests]([http://npmsearch.com/?q=factorial](http://npmsearch.com/?q=factorial)) lists of functions [published to the web](npmjs.org) (public or private) that match what you're typing. One appears promising, you inspect it. The editor loads the code. If it is exactly what you were going to write. You select it, and you're done.

If no result fits what you want, you continue to write the function implementation. You decompose the problem as much as possible, each time attempting to reuse existing functions. When done, you save it. The editor/compiler/system parses the text, analyzes + compresses the resulting ASG to try to find "the one way" to write the function. This representation is then content addressed, and a module consisting of the compresses representation, the source, and function metadata (doc string, author, version, etc) is published to the [(permanent) web]([http://ipfs.io/](http://ipfs.io/)), for everyone else to use.

### Important Ideas

\- exporting a symbol (functions, classes, constants, ...) is the unit of modularity (node)

\- system centered around writing _functions_ and writing them once (node)

\- stress interfaces, decomposition, abstraction, types (haskell)

\- use doc string + function signatures to suggest already published implementations (node, Go)

\- content address functions based on compressed representations

\- track version history of functions + dependents (in case there are bug fixes, etc). (node)

\- if a function has a bug, can crawl the code importing it and notify dependents of bugfix. (node, Go)

\- use static analysis to infer version numbers: `<interface>.<implementation>` (semver inspired)

\- when importing, you always bind to a version, but can choose to bind to `<interface>/<implementation>` or just `<interface>`

\- e.g. `factorial = import QmZGhvJiYdp9Q/QmZGhvJiYdp9Q` (though editors can soften the ugly hashes) (node + ipfs)

\- all modules (functions) are written and published to the (permanent) web (public or private)

\- when importing a function, you import using its content address, and bind it to an explicit local name (`foo = import <function path>` type of thing)

\- the registry of all functions is mounted locally and accessible in the filesystem (ipfs style)

\- _hyper modular_ means both to "very modular" and "modules are linked and on the web"

Note: this system is not about the language, it is about the machinery and process around producing, publishing, finding, reusing, running, testing, maintaining, auditing, bugfixing, republishing, and understanding code. (It's more about _the process of programming_, than _expressing programs_). This means that the system only expresses constraints on language properties, and might work with modified versions of existing languages.

<comment><USER11> _" The first thing you do is write the (mandatory) doc comment describing what it does, and the type signature. As you write, your editor suggests lists of functions published to the web that match what you're typing."_

As a concrete example, if I say (picking a syntax at random; underscore denotes where my cursor is):

      add :: int -> int -> int
      def add(a, b)
        """add two numbers"""
        _

and if the permanent web contains two functions:

      proj1_add :: int -> int -> int
      def proj1_add(a, b)
        """returns sum of arguments"""
        a+b

      proj2_sub :: int -> int -> int
      def proj2_sub(a, b)
        """returns difference between a and b"""
        a-b

Would you envision your system "matching" both or just the first? If just the first, on what basis do you imagine figuring this out?

<comment><USER10> Just the first. on the strings "sum", "add", and potentially on the symbolic operation `args[0]+args[1]`.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It is a very interesting talk. Though it might take a while for some one to connect the dots Joe has sprayed all over.

Somewhat related to this, I have been annoyed by the way apps scatter information and have been working to find a way of managing the mess.

[http://productionjava.blogspot.in/2014/07/the-broken- web.htm...](http://productionjava.blogspot.in/2014/07/the-broken-web.html)

and

[http://productionjava.blogspot.in/2014/08/coding-can-be- puni...](http://productionjava.blogspot.in/2014/08/coding-can-be-punishing-at- timeswith.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> This talk attempts to provide a strategy for reducing complexity within software. The whole talk is really valuable, but if you're short of time.. skip to 36:00. In a real hurry? Start at 44:17.

</comment><comment><USER14> During the last minute of the talk, he says:

"Computers are becoming a big environmental threat. They're using more energy than air traffic."

Is this actually true? Sure, the average person spends a lot more time on a computer than in a plane, but still it seems crazy that they'd be comparable. Or at least the comparison isn't very relevant, because the Internet can significantly reduce people's need to travel.

<comment><USER15> "Save the environment, code in C."

<comment><USER16> You are getting downvotes, but energy efficient computation has been a large driver in the recent upsurge in interest in C++.

<comment><USER15> Wait C++ is has been getting more popular? I'm not complaining (I mostly like C++), I guess I just didn't get the memo.

<comment><USER17> Lets see.

\- Symbiam was coded in C++

\- GCC moved to C++

\- Clang and LLVM are done in C++

\- Mac OS X drivers are written in Embedded C++ subset

\- Windows team is moving the kernel code to be C++ compilable

\- JPL is moving to C++

\- AAA game studios have dropped C around PS3/XBox 360 timeframe

\- It is the only common language available in all major mobile OS SDKs

<comment><USER15> I mean I was confused by the word 'recent', which to me means the last 2-3 years.

<comment><USER17> A few items on my list cover your 'recent'.

Decision to move Windows to C++ was announced by Herb Sutter in one of his Microsoft talks and the Windows 8 DDK was the first to support C++ in kernel code.

JPL going C++ was covered at their CppCon 2014 talk.

GCC switched to C++ as implementation language in 2012.

In any case, I would say, all languages with native code compilers can be used in relation to energy efficient computation.

It is just that C and C++ are the only ones on the radar of developers (and managers) looking for mainstream languages with native compilers.

<comment><USER15> True. Facebook has also been doubling down on C++ development it seems.

<comment><USER17> There is a talk from Andrei Alexandrescu at Going Native 2013 where he mentions one of Facebook KPIs is request per watt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This was definitely not one of the better talks of the conference (though I was embarrassed to say so given the way people [rightly] idolize Armstrong), so I highly recommend checking out the rest: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_QIfHvN9auy2CoOdSfMWDw/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_QIfHvN9auy2CoOdSfMWDw/videos)

</comment><comment><USER19> While I agree that his talk is a little bit "disconnected", I think that it served its purpose when I am reading some "think big" discussion that is going on here. While his talk doesn't have one clear topic, it does deliver huge and interesting thoughts.

</comment><comment><USER20> I totally agree with the "abolish names and places". Why can't I just write:

        $ cp hash://<somehash> .

and have my computer do whatever it takes to retrieve a file with this hash and copy it on my disk?

<comment><USER21> How would you remember the hash? I guess one could have some sort of directory-like system for mapping human-memorable names to hashes...

<comment><USER20> > How would you remember the hash?

I wouldn't. I'd make a symbolic link.

Basically the current directory/names structure would be an abstract layer _above_ the hash-based system.

<comment><USER22> Plan 9 already did that in its file system...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm guessing this is about what a disaster it is to use software, still to this day, but I just can't deal with his storytelling style. Takes forever to say "OpenOffice has a shitty bug".

</comment><comment><USER24> What is this about?

Edit: Strange Loop is a multi-disciplinary conference that aims to bring together the developers and thinkers building tomorrow's technology in fields such as emerging languages, alternative databases, concurrency, distributed systems, mobile development, and the web.

Strange Loop was created in 2009 by software developer Alex Miller and is now run by a team of St. Louis-based friends and developers under Strange Loop LLC, a for-profit but not particularly profitable venture.

<comment><USER25> new to coding, and volunteered for a couple shifts in exchange for entry. first conference ever. this was AWESOME! incredibly well run, and obv not about the $$ - but they freaking deserve all the success they get, financial and otherwise!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> this is so true.. we already spend a lot more time fixing and tweaking code than actually creating.

</comment><comment><USER27> Wow this guy doesn't know what he is talking about. Just a bunch of numbers without any arguments.

I had to stop watching when a laptop was compared to a black hole.

I'm sure the laymen are impressed though.

<comment><USER28> I think you missed the point, that slide was about the theoretical limits of computation, it is a very weak upper bound that won't be achieved.</comment></comment>


The totally legitimate reasons toddlers throw tantrums - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/the_kids/2013/02/why_does_my_kid_freak_out_the_science_behind_toddler_tantrums.html

<comment><USER2> > As five experts on child psychology recently explained to me, toddlers' > irrational behaviors are a totally understandable reflection of their inner > turmoil and frustrations.

"... totally understandable"? Not any more. The new DSM (DSM-V) will list childhood tantrums as a mental illness:

Source: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM-5>

Quote: "A proposed new diagnostic category, temper dysregulation with dysphoria (TDD), within the Mood Disorders section of the manual. The new criteria are based on a decade of research on severe mood dysregulation, and may help clinicians better differentiate children with these symptoms from those with bipolar disorder or oppositional defiant disorder."

Footnote: "16. ^ Proposed Revision - APA DSM-5 - Temper Dysregulation Disorder with Dysphoria"

The fotnote's link: [http://www.dsm5.org/ProposedRevisions/Pages/proposedrevision...](http://www.dsm5.org/ProposedRevisions/Pages/proposedrevision.aspx?rid=397)

But if you click the above American Psychological Association link, you will be asked for a username and a password.

Why? Because you're not on the DSM-V committee, and ordinary mortals (and the press) can't monitor the activities of the committee -- by policy, DSM-V is being created for the most part in secret.

The reason? The DSM has been deemed too controversial to allow the process to be carried out in public. One reason for that are new diagnostic categories that (for exaple) turn temper tantrums into mental illnesses. There are many more:

Proposed new diagnoses: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM-5#Proposed_new_diagnoses>

Conditions proposed by outside sources: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM-5#Conditions_proposed_by_ou...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM-5#Conditions_proposed_by_outside_sources)</comment>