Apple responds to Epic Games lawsuit, says CEO asked for special treatment - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/21/apple-says-epic-games-ceo-wanted-a-side-deal-for-fortnite.html <comment><USER2> Here's the actual email and response from Epic's CEO:

[https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/129691854162779341...](https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/1296918541627793411)

> _Apple 's statement is misleading. You can read my email in Apple's filing, > which is publicly available. I specifically said in Epic's request to the > Apple execs, "We hope that Apple will also make these options equally > available to all iOS developers..."_

<comment><USER3> Note that the bulk of developers would not be in a position to run their own appstores as epic wanted to. Their goal is to pay less revenue to Apple _but also_ get rid of the level playing field of the App Store.

Even if Apple agreed to the demands and made the options available to all developers, Epic would have an advantage.

They also have the advantage of being a trusted brand, whereas the games space is full of scammy apps. There's a reason google specifically requires IAP in that space.

Right now you don't have to trust a game developer on apple or google to pay them. With Epic's change, big brands would get a trust afvamtage they could use to increase their dominance.

So asking to make the changes Epic requested was more self serving than it seems. Lowering apple's commission would benefit all developers. But own IAP and separate app stores would benefit big developers, like epic.

<comment><USER4> Other companies would not be able to _run_ an appstore, but they would be able to list their work on 3rd-party appstores (and maybe have their own direct distribution channel like a website?). The point is to allow competition.

One thing that would enable is narrow appstores with active curation—sort of what Apple promises but, if the store is fully of scammy games, doesn't quite deliver. A company could run a game-specific store with much stricter requirements than Apple's store.

<comment><USER5> So your idea is that the world should revolve around developers.

As a user instead of going to one private, trusted and secure store I now have to visit dozens. All of which are going to be competing on price which means they will look to sell my user data to make money.

And what makes anyone think that the App Stores will simply not be dominated by Amazon, Epic, Valve etc like most gaming is today. In which case this is all about transferring money from one large corporation to another.

<comment><USER3> > All of which are going to be competing on price which means they will look > to sell my user data to make money.

Didn't even occur to me. It's the obvious way app stores can earn money if there was some legislated effort to cut the commission fee and force multiple stores.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Read the emails. "We hope that Apple will also make these options equally available to all iOS developers" [https://cdn.vox- cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/21807251/e...](https://cdn.vox- cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/21807251/epic_apple_emails.pdf)

This was never a "negotiation". It's pretty clear from the beginning that both Epic and Apple were writing their emails for public consumption, not to each other. Epic knew Apple wouldn't give in, and Epic wanted to sue Apple from the beginning.

<comment><USER7> "we will understand that Apple is not willing to make the changes necessary to allow us to provide Android customers with the option of choosing their app store and payment processing system."

Did they intend to write iOS there? That's a pretty big typo in such an important email.

<comment><USER6> It's wild that there were not 20 people proofreading it beforehand.

Ah, to be a billionaire running a private company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is such a genius move by Epic / Tim Sweeney. Apple's case hinges on them being consistent with all developers - no special treatment. Apple even says as much in their filing to the court:

 _" On July 10, Apple responded that "Apple has never allowed this... we strongly believe these rules are vital to the health of the Apple platform and carry enormous benefits for both consumers and developers.""_

Except, Apple _does_ allow it. For the WeChat app from China's Tencent:

CNET (2019): WeChat messaging app brings its own 'instant apps' storefront to iPhones and iPads

 _" This is a big deal because WeChat's catalog contains over one million apps, separately from the iOS App Store. Ordinarily, Apple would strictly prohibit such a practice -- for security reasons at least, if not for platform cohesion -- but if a western company wants to do business in China, concessions must be made."_

[https://download.cnet.com/news/wechat-messaging-app- brings-i...](https://download.cnet.com/news/wechat-messaging-app-brings-its- own-instant-apps-storefront-to-iphones-and-ipads/)

The former head of App Review for Apple, Phillip Shoemaker, even said this week "WeChat's continued presence on iPhones amounts to a special exception":

Apple lets China's WeChat bypass its rules, former app review chief claims [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/08/15/apple- chin...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/08/15/apple-chinas- wechat-bypass-rules-former-app-review-chief-claims/)

If we've reached the point that former Apple executives could be testifying on behalf of Epic... wow, this got really interesting really quickly.

<comment><USER9> Apple's case does not "hinge" on being consistent with all app developers. Every app that Apple distributes could in theory be the result of a one-on-one negotiation.

<comment><USER10> >Apple's case does not "hinge" on being consistent with all app developers.

Maybe not legally. But the court of public opinion is much more fickle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Several other companies have been granted special treatment.

Like Amazon for example. They pay 15% not 30% as everyone else. Way to reinforce their market dominance.

<comment><USER12> If you keep a customer with a recurring subscription for a year, Apple reduces its cut to 15%. This applies to all developers: [https://www.apple.com/ios/app-store/principles- practices/](https://www.apple.com/ios/app-store/principles-practices/)

<comment><USER13> But based on the articles I've read, it sounds like it's 15% for all new subscriptions too, not just recurring subscriptions over a year.

[https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/30/21348108/apple-amazon- pri...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/30/21348108/apple-amazon-prime-video- app-store-special-treatment-fee-subscriptions)

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-29/apple- con...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-29/apple-considered- taking-40-cut-from-subscriptions-emails-show)

<comment><USER14> Yes but Apple has stated that it's a special program for video subscriptions that other developers can and has joined even before Apple (eg: Canal+). The terms are not public but it looks like they're made available as an option to developers that have apps in that market. It looks like the discount is available if your app implements all features in the Apple video ecosystem (AirPlay2, Apple TV native app, etc.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The first part of the filing reads like it was written by Apple's PR people, not their lawyers.

The antitrust issue is tying. Apple may be able to insist on a cut of things you buy via Apple. But products which create their own world in which other non-Apple things can be bought are a separate market. Apple's use of their control over the first class of sales to demand a share of the second is tying a sale in one area to a sale in another. That's not permitted by US or EU antitrust law.

<comment><USER16> If that were the case is bundling any app with the OS illegal? Is Amazon Prime illegal? Are cable/internet bundles illegal?

Could it possibly be that random people on HN don't know the law?

<comment><USER15> _Are cable /internet bundles illegal?_

If the US had an Justice Department that wasn't totally out to lunch on antitrust enforcement, they would be. US antitrust law is far stronger in law than in practice. Wikipedia has a good summary of the history.[1]

In the UK or EU, you usually have several choices for Internet or TV service. Their antitrust authorities didn't let them all merge.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Apple gave Amazon special treatment to get Prime Video into App Store (newsbreak.com)

2 points by dschuetz 1 hour ago

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24238110](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24238110)

Not my submission so I can't vouch for the site. Googling shows sites more well-known are reporting on this as well.

</comment><comment><USER18> It's not about cost.

It's about not being able to run bash on your phone.

<comment><USER19> Maybe it's time we _bash_ our phones

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I find it really surprising that Apple didn't grant the request given the _potential_ outcome, if Apple loses (however unlikely), ranges from Apple's app store fees being capped to Apple losing their store monopoly to even Apple being broken up. Shareholders are going to be coming after Tim Cook with torches and pitchforks if he could have easily avoided that simply by giving Epic special treatment.

<comment><USER21> Special treatment may have exposed Apple to even worse antitrust liability. It is clear from their messaging that it is critical that they maintain the appearance of treating all developers the same. Tim Cook heavily emphasized this point in his recent Congressional testimony.

<comment><USER16> Every company makes deals with other companies. It's called business. It amazes me how many lawyers are on HN.

<comment><USER22> TIL when I buy groceries no business happens.

<comment><USER16> So you're saying that businesses don't make special deals with other large businesses?

I bet you also think that Beyoncé and Taylor Swift get the same record deals as the random up and comer a label found singing at the bar.

<comment><USER22> No, you're saying a business that treats everyone equally is a charity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This doesn't seem like a big deal. I imagine every CEO of such a big company would dare to ask for special treatment from Apple. Not doing so would be a dereliction of duty to their shareholders.

<comment><USER24> I agree, I'm having a hard time understanding why people are defending Apple ... Epic is one of the few companies who could afford this fight, kudos they initiated it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've worked for large food manufacturing companies. It is not unusual for the largest customers like Walmart and Target to ask for and receive better deals than everyone else. It's just like any supply power situation. We had even given a Walmart a "Most favored nation" deal where if anyone were given a better net deal than anyone else, we would be forced to give Walmart the same deal.

I know that calling Epic a customer is a little weird but they really are when you think about it.

</comment><comment><USER26> I thought it was the exact same case with the Basecamp product.

But nobody is bringing it up, so there must be some qualitative differences, are there?

</comment><comment><USER27> Why should epic's issues with its own products affect programs that embed the unreal engine? When I see an article (like this one) end with that comment it seems like a copy/paste from an Epic press release.

<comment><USER28> Same Apple Developer tools issued to Unreal Team?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This headline makes it sound like there has been a change of heart, but Tim Sweeney has been a vocal critic of walled gardens like the App Store and the Microsoft Store, well before Fortnite was a success.

The "special deal" here wouldn't have been some sort of fee waiver, it would've been to let Epic _open their own store_ on iOS. In other words, having Apple give up its monopoly on iOS app publishing, just what the current lawsuit intends to achieve. Obviously, they weren't going to get that, but it's worth asking for it before starting a billion dollar lawsuit.

<comment><USER30> Apparently he doesn't have any issues with the walled gardens from game consoles.

<comment><USER31> If they are trying to set a precedent in the courts, it makes sense to go after the most winnable case, and then try to use that ruling to win others. So it would not be Android, where alternative app stores and side loading are permitted, and not the consoles, where the manufacturers will argue they are not providing a general-purpose device. iPhone and even more so iPads are the ideal targets for lawsuits that aim to set precedents.

<comment><USER32> Side note: alternative stores are a pain: installing the F-droid privileged extension for automatic updates requires root access, for instance. Why couldn't that be a setting, like device administrators?

I feel Google is doing the bare minimum to avoid antitrust rulings, which they probably do.

<comment><USER33> Google views sideloading as their inconvenient but necessary antitrust escape valve, in my view. They don't want people using it, they want it as something to point at and say "not guilty".

Interesting however is the wording of an old version of the Android Market (old name before Play Store came about) developer agreement - the title of 4.5 is labelled "Non-Competition".

I think that title (which has unsurprisingly disappeared from more recent versions) says it all. Sideloading was Google's attempt to avoid an antitrust battle in the early days of Android, as they could say "we are new, anyone can make a store". The trouble is the licensing agreements with OEMs contain all sorts of restrictions, some of which have probably become public over time. Perhaps more will emerge through the epic games lawsuit, as it seems they're going after the restrictions on OEMs. There's many of those they can request through disclosure if they don't have them already!

Ref: [https://web.archive.org/web/20150107232223/https://play.goog...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150107232223/https://play.google.com/intl/ALL_uk/about/developer- distribution-agreement/archive.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> you mean just like Amazon?

</comment><comment><USER35> <sarc> Yes. Very much special treatment: "we hope that Apple will also make these options equally available to all iOS developers" </sarc>

Epic seems to be fighting the good fight against a company abusing market power. I hope they win.

<comment><USER36> Are they abusing market power though? 30% seems to be the standard rate for online stores. Google and Apple do it. Steam is 30%. And it's been report that Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo also take a 30% cut. Physical store such as GameStop, Best Buy, and Walmart take 30% too.

Epic only takes 12% which is great, but they're also locking up games in exclusive deals which I think is way worse.

Edit: I pulled these numbers from IGN's article. Although I've seen another report that matches the 30% in most places. [https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/10/07/report- steams-30-cut...](https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/10/07/report- steams-30-cut-is-actually-the-industry-standard)

<comment><USER37> It's a _lot_ for what's basically just payment processing (that's all it is for in app sales).

Looks like price collusion by the major players as well, which is also illegal.

<comment><USER38> That's not true, it's also discovery, trust and an ecosystem to run your apps in.

Calling the app store just payment processing is a ridiculous simplification.

Epic's store charges 12%, but has neither the hardware platform, or software platform - and relatively little market share.

They arguably should be charging ~5% since it's actually closer to just payment processing and delivery.

<comment><USER37> Apple takes 30% for in-app sales. People already have the app, there is no discovery or trust benefit. The App Store is awful for discovery anyway. You think we need the App Store to discover the Facebook app, Amazon app, Epic app? These apps spread by network effects, not discovery in the store.

Users pay for the hardware platform.

I find games for the first time with the Epic Store. Market share isn't really super relevant, they are the newest entry in the market.

<comment> kube-system I think Apple is probably on the wrong side of anti-trust law on this, but there is certainly a trust benefit (and UX benefit) to a unified payment platform.

The history of mobile/online payments is littered with instances of users being confused/defrauded.

> Users pay for the hardware platform.

This isn't really relevant. Not only is an iPhone worthless without software, but subsidization of hardware by services is very common.

<comment><USER37> Isn't Visa/MasterCard the unified payment platform?

Obviously the iPhone is worthless without software, except it comes with a 1k price tag. Part of that is for the OS. The hardware certainly doesn't cost that much (comparable offerings from hardware-only manufacturers cost less). This is not a case where the hardware cost is subsidized. Numbers from various sources suggest the iPhone sells for triple the cost of manufacturing.

<comment><USER39> manufacturing cost != R&D cost

<comment><USER40> Apple's net sales for Q3 were ~$60B and R&D was ~$5B. No matter how you look at it, the cost of an iPhone far exceeds Apple's cost to produce it.

[https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/FY20-Q3_Consolidated_Fin...](https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/FY20-Q3_Consolidated_Financial_Statements.pdf)

<comment> kube-system You're still neglecting ongoing operational costs, which are neither hardware nor R&D.

But it still doesn't matter, Apple is profitable, everyone knows that already. It is legal to be profitable, and it is legal to have parts of your business subsidize other parts.

What might not be legal is using a dominant market position to force out competitors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> "If we're going to extort our customers we have to do it equally"

</comment><comment><USER42> Whoever cut that sweetheart deal to Amazon is in so much trouble right now, career-wise.

This is simply not going to happen for everybody else though. Apple will not forego billions of dollars in revenue for "fairness", "etchics" or whatever. This is the company which makes their product in Chinese sweatshops and benefits from Uyghur slave labor. They couldn't care less about "fairness".

[https://www.aspi.org.au/report/uyghurs- sale](https://www.aspi.org.au/report/uyghurs-sale)

</comment><comment><USER43> Very surprised to see that trillion dollar lawyers addressing judges still use lazy analogies like "it's just like shoplifting."

<comment><USER44> That's because there's jury and in the US in some states you don't even need legal education to be a judge so in general it's a good practice to translate technical terms into laymen and 5th grader language, if you actually want to convince them about your point.

Naturally lawyers exaggerate or manipulate the words ... they're not there to gain justice (although that's their intended purpose) but they're paid to get the decision.

<comment><USER45> You don't need a legal education to be a judge? Very interesting. Could you give some more information about this. Are judges elected or bureaucrats? How does someone become a judge? What parts of the US have this system?

<comment><USER44> Good article: [https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/when- yo...](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/when-your-judge- isnt-a-lawyer/515568/)

Also federal judges don't need to be lawyers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Now I totally understand why Apple have piled up a huge mountain of cash and never spent a dime. They are going to accept anyone's challenge to court if necessary and use their 200M USD financial power to do whatever they can to keep the status quo at any price. I sincerely don't believe we as customers can win this one, fixing Apple (as we talk about here) would be something much bigger than what had been done to Microsoft in the 90s.

<comment><USER3> You need to re-examine how you think about things. Court is expensive, but it doesn't take $200B dollars to go to court.

Further, Apple has spent a lot of cash on buybacks. Plus its own regular spending: Apple is clearly willing to spend on R and D, production, etc

Not every fact in the world has to tie together into a narrative. Falling for this is the first step in the road to conspiratorial thinking.

<comment><USER46> You downvoted me with such condescending tone that borders an ad hominem because you did read too much on what I said and left zero space for debate. You must be proud.

<comment><USER3> If you think I'm wrong, feel free to present an argument that Apple has saved $200 billion in cash to fight court cases, and that they have in some way neglected to spend on priorities to fund this. _Your_ response was ad hominem.

I used a strong tone because you presented a very strong conclusion that I don't believe to be supported by evidence. You linked a fact you don't understand (Apple's cash pile) to the topic de jour (Apple's new court case). I really do think this is a starting point to conspiratorial thinking: grand conclusions on the basis of a couple ideas. Maybe the way I warned you wasn't likely to succeed, but I meant it completely sincerely.

Have a look at Apple's stock buyback history: they spend $385 billion from 2012-2019: [https://www.aboveavalon.com/notes/2020/4/23/apples-460-billi...](https://www.aboveavalon.com/notes/2020/4/23/apples-460-billion- stock-buyback)

Dividends are harder to quickly find, but they seem to pay out about $12-$15 billion by year.

The money paid out to investors dwarfs their cash pile.

Two other facts:

* A lot of Apple's cash is overseas. They can't easily repatriate without tax consequences

* Apple has about $100 billion in debt. The cash offsets this

> Now I totally understand why Apple have piled up a huge mountain of cash and > never spent a dime.

Given the fact above, your conclusion doesn't seem very logical.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Coda Notes: a Safari Extension - <AUTHOR> http://www.panic.com/blog/2010/06/coda-notes-previe/

<comment><USER2> I'm sorry for the off-topic but I can't help it with that blog design: is -webkit-transform: rotate() the new <marquee> tag? The Panic team creates great products with fantastic designs, but I find this choice a bit motion- sickness-inducing.

Back on-topic: it's great that Safari is now offering an official way to have extensions. I had tried at one point to write a plug-in for Safari and soon realized that the existing ones (e.g. 1Password, Evernote) relied on "hacks" and work-arounds. Let's just hope the extensions are as easy to develop as for other browsers, like Chrome. (with which I recently dabbled with)

<comment><USER3> I was wondering why the page was giving me a headache. It looks awful on Linux + Chrome.

<comment><USER4> The whole page is jagged and ugly and makes me upset at this design choice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Safari Extensions seems to be basically the same technology that went into their Dashboard widgets. I wonder if Apple has been reaching out to all the Dashboard widget creators to see if they want to develop for Safari too?

I wonder how closely the Safari Extension Gallery will follow the Dashboard Widgets Download page: <http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/>

Mozilla, in addition to their normal extension architecture, has been developing another type of extension, using the same technologies that Apple is using here: Javascript, HTML, and CSS. They call their framework Jetpack: <https://jetpack.mozillalabs.com/>

<comment><USER6> It's the same way Google Chrome extensions are built, isn't it? I just assumed this is Apple blessing what's really just a part of WebKit...</comment></comment>


Grubwithus launches in Boston next week - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/business/technology/innoeco/2011/05/grubwithus_gathering_strangers.html

<comment><USER2> I think this is a great idea, but this is another startup (like yelp, to name another) with a globally good idea only applied to select few US cities. I get that they want to take it slow and get traction, but with all their traction they never get to small places that are in need of such services.

I really hate stealing other people's ides (god knows I can't even act on a 10% of my own), but as Groupon buying Israeli copy-cat "Grouper" showed, maybe opening a local carbon copy will make the original startup step in (especially if you gain traction).

<comment><USER3> I think this is a good idea. I'd even go further and say some startups catering to specific geographic areas could franchise - you take some of the risk, put in some of your own money maybe, they get cut of profits and give you their tech / secret sauce.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Congrats to Eddy and Daschin! Happy to see these guys crushing it with an old fashioned money making business. Novel idea, right?? ;)

</comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone else think the name is terrible? Sure "grub" is food, but "to grub" is to dig about in the earth.

<comment><USER6> No way, I love the name. Original, quick to say (3 syllables), caters to a younger crowd.</comment></comment>


Microsoft Solitaire is 30 today - <AUTHOR> https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-05-22-microsoft-solitaire-is-30-today <comment><USER2> It's unfortunate that the creator of it, Wes Cherry, hasn't earned anything from his creation.

<comment><USER2> It's also linked in the article, but Great Big Story did an short video feature on him and Solitaire: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x5VAg1HJIg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x5VAg1HJIg)</comment></comment>


0x0000007e - <AUTHOR> http://0x0000007e.org/ The stop 0x0000007e error comes to the fore due to a problem with your computer registry. Don't fix this error manually; instead, download an effective tool from 0x0000007e.org & detect and repair this error quickly. Also, prevent it from occurring. <comment><USER2> I can't tell if this is serious or not. My joke filter appears to be broken. :S</comment>


A Math Term Bent to Political Purposes - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-political-turning-point-for-inflection-11549555693 <comment><AUTHOR> [headline from print version]</comment>


Did social games kill Facebook's social graph? - <AUTHOR> http://colinsidoti.com/2011/01/did-social-games-kill-facebooks-social-graph/

<comment><USER2> Doubtful.

Facebook has mechanisms for defining both familial and romantic relationships, as well as usage data in the form of profile visits and wall comments and likes.

It might be a little more work, but I'm sure they can take a large friend list and still figure out who's family, who's a close mutual friend, who's disproportionately interested in who, and who's a fake friend just there for the purposes of social gaming.

Even better, since this true social graph depends largely on usage data, it's available to Facebook but not to scrapers.

<comment><USER3> Is it just me that finds this creepy?

<comment><USER4> Nope. I avoided FB for a long time because of this, before family and career roped me into signing up for dummy accounts about a month ago.

<comment><USER5> what's a dummy account? pseudonym? same name / two accounts?

<comment><USER6> I would imagine that it's an account that has nothing interesting happening on it, but is just there so people can point to it. (Referencing the term "dummied out" — <http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DummiedOut>)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> News Feed is the reason I open facebook so many times a day. Games, apps and pages (some of them) kill the value of content in the news feed with stuff that I have no interst in. for some reason there is no option to hide all posts from all games, apps, etc. I hide horoscope apps in my news feed but there are so many of them thats it is impossible to mute all of them. so basically I do think games and apps killed Facebook's social graph, though if I was Facebook, I would not care at this point either as the valuation is going through the roof and userbase grows so fast.

<comment><USER8> One thing I noticed is that a lot of the app spam came from one of a few apps (e.g. Farmville) or one of a few people (e.g. my aunt who doesn't know any better). Blocking those app-heavy _people_ as well as a few more widespread apps removed the vast majority of the crap from my feed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article had me until:

 _Asking the game makers to remove features that help the games go viral doesn't seem to benefit anyone financially._

Sure it does. It benefits Facebook.

If the best way to get growth (ie, viral) goes away, most companies will fall back on the second best way to get growth: ads.

Guess who controls the most effective ad network on Facebook? Facebook.

Every time a viral channel is removed, a developer ends up buying the installs instead. It ain't pretty, or cheap, but you have to find them somewhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's true, and something I hadn't considered completely. I think you also need to consider that removing these viral channels makes the game less fun, and potentially decreases the amount of credits people will spend on the game. Also, I imagine Zynga would be tempted to jump ship (as they've threatened before) if Facebook starts to govern features they can include at such a ridiculous level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It is actually very easy to create a Friend List just for 'Game Friends.'

When you are adding a fake game friend, you can immediately add them to this list. Facebook makes this step easy.*

And to my surprise, it is also somewhat straightforward to exclude this list from your various privacy setting items. I assumed I would have to explicitly include - piece by piece - sets of friends with whom I do want to share data, but Facebook provides functionality to exclude a friend list. Bingo.

Now if I could only have a way to exclude a friend list from contributing to my News Feed.

* Furthermore, by assigning a fake friend to an appropriate list in the same step that you send a friend request, you can avoid the security gap within which a fake friend would have access to your private data before you were able to manually add them to such a list.

</comment><comment><USER11> The way I'd see it, Social Games just accelerate the "fake friend" problem. The problem itself seems structural.

I have only so many real world, flesh and blood friends.

Once I've added all of my real who are willing to be on Facebook, what do I do?

The fun of Facebook isn't getting the same thing from the same people but getting more new stuff. So I'm tempted to add distant relations, random acquaintances and so-forth. As the trend continues in general, the addition of distant acquaintances become more standard, more socially accepted.

It is a real conundrum for any social networking site wishes to directly reflect real world identities.

<comment><USER12> "Friend" is a very generous term for facebook friends. Many people merely use facebook friend status to keep track of their old schoolmates, acquaintances, work buddies, and here's the ringer---people they have only _heard_ about.

The last category is the 'hidden' value of Facebook in my opinion. It is the set of people that you are connected through via gossip. It's your friends boyfriend that you've never met; it's "that guy who did something funny" and you were told about. In the past, you'd have to actively gossip to find out more information about these people, but now you just facebook friend them and take in the info dump.

Also, having distant relations and old friends on facebook means that if they are ever in town,and announce it on their facebook then you can meet up. Or if you missed them, then you can say "Hey cousin, you came into town and didn't say hi!" which might be the spark to reconnect.

<comment><AUTHOR> "but now you just facebook friend them and take in the info dump"

True, but does this guy I'm sending a friend request to actually want me to see his profile? It seems that Facebook wants me to send him a friend request, and Facebook wants the guy to accept it, but the guy doesn't have much motivation to actually accept.

Facebook's quest for openness is interesting and I think they can do quite a bit with it, but I also think it has left users with a desire for deeper social interaction. I can make my status "girls suck," but I'll never make it "my girlfriend cheated on me and wants me to take her back and I love her but I feel like it's going to be a slippery slope"

I've always thought this is something Facebook would simply fix on their own. But now, as I consider the potential financial impact on the company, I think it might be worth contesting with a new product.

<comment><USER12> > I can make my status "girls suck," but I'll never make it "my girlfriend > cheated on me and wants me to take her back and I love her but I feel like > it's going to be a slippery slope"

I agree, Facebook has lost its personal touch (if it ever had that), and has become another form of public.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Personality and Platforms: Myers-Briggs Samples Social Types - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20120716/personality-and-platforms-myers-briggs-samples-social-types/ <comment><USER2> Obligatory references on the subject of the unvalidated Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®:

<http://www.skepdic.com/myersb.html>

[http://www.psychometric-success.com/personality- tests/person...](http://www.psychometric-success.com/personality- tests/personality-tests-popular-tests.htm)

"Overall, the review committee concluded that the MBTI has not demonstrated adequate validity although its popularity and use has been steadily increasing. The National Academy of Sciences review committee concluded that: 'at this time, there is not sufficient, well-designed research to justify the use of the MBTI in career counseling programs', the very thing that it is most often used for."

[http://www.indiana.edu/~jobtalk/HRMWebsite/hrm/articles/deve...](http://www.indiana.edu/~jobtalk/HRMWebsite/hrm/articles/develop/mbti.pdf)

[http://www.amazon.com/Cult-Personality-Testing-Annie- Murphy/...](http://www.amazon.com/Cult-Personality-Testing-Annie- Murphy/dp/0743280725)</comment>


Why You Should Use LaTeX - <AUTHOR> http://www.latextemplates.com/why-use-latex

<comment><USER2> Anyone else disagree with the initial assumption that the Word doc looks worse?

I fully support alternatives to proprietary formats used by Pages and Office but this just looks bad.

<comment><USER3> Yep. I do agree that you can get better results out of Latex if you really know your way around it, but that's always been the divider between word processing an desktop publishing software (which is terrible for composition but gives you great control over things like font kerning and other formatting minutiae).

 _What you see in your .tex file is not what you get as the output._

The thing is, we used to have a bunch of word processors that worked that way - Wordstar, word Perfect and so on. MS Word destroyed its competitors because it turns out that most people _do_ want to see what they're going to get. Sure, text-only is less distracting for writing but as soon as you go beyond simple formatting needs or have a need to produce something nice-looking in a limited time frame, markup systems are an utter pain in the ass for anyone but professional users in the publishing industry.</comment></comment>


Parity is the magic ingredient to some complex problems - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160224-solution-the-problem-with-dancing-shapes/ <comment><USER2> reminds me of Sierpinski's triangle.</comment>


C++11 compile-time string hashing - <AUTHOR> http://www.elbeno.com/blog/?p=1254 <comment><USER2> And in C++14 you can do away with the recursion and just use a `for` loop.

Compile-time hashing of strings can be used to create a string-switch:

      constexpr unsigned int hash(const char* string)
      {
        // hash the string
        ...
      }

And then:

      switch(hash(some_string))
      {
         case hash("Hacker News"):
           break;

         case hash("Y-Combinator"):
           break;

         default:
           break;
      }

If there is a collision, you get a compile-time error due to a duplicate `case`.

<comment><USER3> How can you get a compile-time error if some_string has a hash collision?

<comment><USER2> Good point. You only get a compile-time error if the strings in the switch collide with each other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I fear the havoc widespread use of constexpr meta-programming could wreak on compile speed. A few such declarations have no noticeable impact on compile times, but as the project grows and such declarations start to proliferate, you can easily imagine productivity suffering due to slow compiles.

In my opinion, techniques like these fall under the category of "interesting but probably best avoided in production". Kind of like ray-tracers written with template meta-programming.

<comment><USER5> If that becomes a problem, I think it is fairly easy (certainly easier than with template metaprogramming) to move the constexpr code into a separate compilation unit, and let your _make_ handle that problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm looking forward for this type of thing making its way into C++ reflection and serialization libraries.</comment>


Open Source Zigbee Stack - <AUTHOR> http://dev.emcelettronica.com/open-source-zigbee-stack <comment><AUTHOR> The WLAN and Bluetooth have dominated the consumer wireless market. Zigbee is getting hotter in the mesh network application as well. More and more chip vendors have released their new products for Zigbee.</comment>


Opinion: Corporate Morality Is Not a Group Effort  - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2008/10/28/opinion-corporate-morality-is-not-a-group-effort/

<comment><USER2> _Why not take a more individualistic moral stand and stop doing business in China (or any other place that routinely violates human rights) and show the world that your principles demand you to forego current and future profits?_

This joke is attributed to Rodney Dangerfield^W^WWinston Churchill (thanks gojomo):

A man approaches a beautiful woman in a bar, and without any small talk, asks her "If I give you a dollar will you sleep with me?" The woman is instantly angry and tells the man "Absolutely not!" Before she can get away from the man he asks her a second question. "Will you sleep with me for a million dollars?" Now the woman pauses and after some thought says "Yes, I will." The man responds "How about for twenty dollars?" Again the woman looks indignant and says "Of course not. What kind of a woman do you think I am?" The man replies "I thought we just settled that. I was just negotiating the price."

What country isn't guilty of committing _any_ human rights violations? If a nation has committed even one, then it merely comes down to how you choose to define "routinely".

It's easy to shout "Ethics! Purity! Walk away and show them the light!" into your blog from the hollowed ground of your basement, but it's a whole different matter to actually make real changes in the world. There's a very valid case for walking the most moral legal line in a country that is being forced toward moral behavior in order to interact with the rest of the first world. If the "moral first world" all indignantly turn their backs on nations that don't meet some arbitrary self imposed definition of morality, you can expect the abandoned nations to fill the void their own way. Don't be surprised if you don't like the outcome.

<comment><USER3> The "...just negotiating the price" line is more commonly attributed to a drunken Winston Churchill.

<comment><USER2> Now that you mention it, it fits more into Churchill's type of humor -- a little more build up than self deprecating one line zingers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> lol how is google supposed to know that a simple ad for determining the gender of a fetus is connected to gender discriminatory abortion companies in india?

people will say anything to stain a large company's image. i'd award some kind of libel/slander countersuit for such reckless media coverage. ridiculous.</comment>


Tune House – Free Living Space for Women Studying CS - <AUTHOR> http://www.geekwire.com/2015/seattle-startup-tune-opens-an-8-bedroom-house-with-free-rent-for-women-studying-computer-science

<comment><USER2> This is a great idea. Genius, actually. But I shamefully feel obligated to say when I first saw this, I read it as "tuna house".</comment>


If hotels billed like hospitals - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/if-hotels-billed-like-hospitals/2012/02/16/gIQAVH0sHR_blog.html <comment><USER2> We just had a baby and I got a fully itemized bill, down to the total time spent with a head nurse vs the lower down nurses (billed at different rates).

I agree that I would have liked to have known that if my wife buzzed for a refill on her water bottle that we would be billed for the nurses time at $120/hr.

But even if I had known that, the total bill was discounted from 10k to 7k due to an agreement my insurance has with the hospital, and then my 80 | 20 kicked in and our out of pocket expense for a delivery, care and 48 hour stay was $1400 + a $300 copay. So many factors involved would have made estimating my final cost pretty difficult.

And that may be the point. It's not so much about transparency, it's more about how complicated the billing actually is.

<comment><USER3> 10K? Wow. My last child was delivered 4 years ago, standard exit method with no complications, and the tab was $26K (before discounts, of course).

I can't imagine the bill if it was a c-section or if neonatal was involved. It would easily double and go up from there.

The funny thing is that the obstetrician gave us a fixed price for the entire pregnancy. All checkups and the standard delivery was one price. It was the hospital (and the randomly-chosen anesthesiologist) that ran up the price.

<comment><USER2> This was in Provo, UT, a student town where 50% of students and many of those couples have at least one child while attending school (my wife and I are one of those). The city therefore has a significantly higher than average birthrate but since the student population is transitory the population doesn't really grow that much. The effect of all this is that the hospital has an abnormally large amount of childbirths, and has become pretty darn efficient at it.

That probably contributes to a lower cost.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What really troubles me, that I didn't see represented in this video, is not so much the total amount of the bills but the sheer number of them. These days, a hospital visit results in bills from (at the very least)

* The hospital * The doctor (or doctors) who may have spent a total of 10 minutes with you * The lab company that did your blood work (if it was done) * The lab company that did you CT scan / MRI / Ultrasound / X-Ray / other expensive diagnostic exam. * The pharmacy that provided any medications you were given while at the hospital.

What's worse, is that if you look, most triage areas have a sign stating all the services are independently operated and you'll receive these separate bills. Confusing and obnoxious--but ok. The trouble begins when you discover that, though your insurance is accepted by the hospital, it's not accepted by one of the _other_ people or services (of which you had no real choice but to use the service available on-site) isn't. The hospital might assign you a doctor that doesn't take your insurance and then you're screwed.

<comment><USER5> A family member recently received minor surgery at a hospital. After the procedure was complete, she received a bill for surgeon's assistant, who didn't accept the family member's insurance (the surgeon did). This was a man she never met before entering the operating room, had no idea would be in the operating room, and never saw again.

<comment><USER3> Every surgical procedure I've had or seen so far, including my wife's two baby deliveries, has been performed in a hospital or outpatient surgical facility where the anesthesiologists are independent contractors.

You have no idea who will be there and no idea if they will take your insurance. But their bill will be the first one that shows up in your mailbox, _guaranteed_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here in the Netherlands every medical procedure has a standardized declaration code. On the site of the NZa (Netherlands Healthcare Authority) you can check the current and historical cost of a procedure for each hospital.

For example go to <http://dbc-tarieven.nza.nl/Nzatarieven/zoekSnel.do> and fill in declaration code 085090, the code for a MRI. The NZa determines a maximum tariff for many procedures. For other procedures the cost is negotiable between healthcare insurers and providers.

</comment><comment><USER7> The primary difference, health care is other people's money. We shop where the government policies hide the true cost of our care by minimizing or eliminating out of pocket expenses.

Being on a HSA program now at work really brings home the costs of health care. It shows quite quickly that there is no free ride.

Long term health care will never be free, there will have to be minimum payments/co-pays and the like. Otherwise people will simply abuse it, showing up for every real and perceived problem. I am not saying we do not offer free care to people who cannot pay, but damn, I see people claiming a need for other to pay all the while having eight dollar a month cell phone plans, high speed internet, and car payments that are in some cases what my rent used to be.

<comment><USER8> _Long term health care will never be free, there will have to be minimum payments/co-pays and the like. Otherwise people will simply abuse it,_

People never value what they don't pay for: it's just the way folk are.

One can see this on a micro level: buy your teenager a laptop. Make sure you buy the extended warranty: you'll need it.

<comment><USER9> _Long term health care will never be free, there will have to be minimum payments/co-pays and the like. Otherwise people will simply abuse it,_

 _People never value what they don't pay for: it's just the way folk are._

That is completely ridiculous in view of the example of the little-known country called the United Kingdom. People don't pay for healthcare directly, and they don't abuse it. This thread is ridiculous.

<comment><USER10> _People don't pay for healthcare directly, and they don't abuse it_

You know, when Aneurin Bevan was setting up the NHS, he said the cost of operating it would go down over time as the population got healthier...

<comment><USER8> I wonder if he was deliberately lying, or if he sincerely believed that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In summary there's no force to drive down health care costs if prices are not made public. If I need an x-ray, I want to be able to shop around with quality and price information made public.

</comment><comment><USER12> $200 = ($50 space per night to put self + 20 cleaning + 0.2 mint + 1.80 water + 3 air conditioning + other low-tech things)(1+percentage profit)

$20,000 = ($2,000 for 50 years of training for 5 docs + $3,000(1 + percentage unnecessary to prevent lawsuit) state of art chemicals & tests + 2,000 admin + whatev other stuff)(1+ percentage profit)

if the hotel industry was run like the hospital industry it would still cost $200-400 or so for an ok room. The price size is the big attention grabber in the video. preventing potentially imminent death, and legal responsibility for it, is EXPENSIVE.

also, in a hotel you decide whether to eat chocolate. in a hospital, you might be unconscious or have no clue wtf 'vancomycin' is. so doctors decide. video misses this consumption-decision aspect.

wishing for a free, transparent market in medicine is naive, at least now. healthcare can't be 'disrupted' as easily as javascript library trends. but we might at least wish for a standardized 'economy' emergency set of options that uses off-patent stuff and restricts procedures. ER docs would hate binding rules but it does make a difference in unexpected ER cost, even choosing cheap vs expensive antibiotics.

if you plan 3 months ahead to pay 10k for plastics penis enlargement, that's a somewhat different issue.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why aren't hospitals and doctors REQUIRED to post prices?

<comment><USER14> Probably for the same reasons that programmers don't - for all but the simplest of procedures there may be unforseen complications, particularly since they mostly deal with legacy "applications"

<comment><USER15> Should we[1] be shopping around for doctors? Hire a doctor like you would a Web Developer, what are your prices, experience, show me some of the stuff you've done before, etc. This is typically done with cosmetic surgery but should be we doing it with required but not emergency situations?

[1] when i say "we" i mean you Americans, i'm in the UK and have the NHS

<comment><USER8> _Should we[1] be shopping around for doctors?_

My wife did this with

* Her cardiologist. He did a _great_ job of heart surgery after her heart attack, but she wasn't thrilled about the way he ran his clinic on her follow-up visits. So she got another guy. That this guy was closer to the house is an unexpected bonus.

* Her orthopedic surgeon. Visited several guys when it came time to replace her knees. Picked one she liked who is also uber-competent.

Digression: Ten years ago when this guy was a middle-aged doctor knee replacements were a hand-crafted affair. Now the doctor runs the operation but a kind of CNC machine does the actual cutting, uses lasers to measure things and customize the new knees.

CNC machines cutting new knees: it's an awesome century so far.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The terrible acting aside, this is a good way of pointing out how pricing models are totally different and specific to certain industries.

Some people can really take the piss because its standard in the industry but totally adhear to normal payment standards in another industry.

</comment><comment><USER16> What law allows hospitals to do this? If they don't tell you the price beforehand, and they don't publicly post the prices, legally, how do you ever owe them any money?

How do hospitals collect these bills? Can the hospital sue you to collect on these bills?

<comment><USER17> The law that allows them to do this is the body of laws around contracts. You sign a contract of treatment that says you'll pay what they decide you owe. If you don't sign it, they won't treat you.

>If they don't tell you the price beforehand, and they don't publicly post the prices, legally, how do you ever owe them any money?

If you ever go to an actual hospital, you'll see how absurd this question is. First, there are never any prices posted. Second, good luck even getting an answer about how much anything costs. A friend had to try three different facilities (thankfully a non-urgent matter) before he could even find a facility where they could quote a price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It points to the absurdity of those who claim US healthcare is a "free market". It's a cartel whose hooks are WAY deeper in the political system than just about any other industry, including oil, agriculture, or telecom.

Don't like it? Then your choices are either go elsewhere or die.

It's tempting to advocate a UK-style system, but I'll need more proof that NHS is not a political tool to depopulate the opposition.

Yes, some of us septics/savages watch the PM Q-time and never a session goes by without someone in the opposition complaining about hospitals and clinics in their district closing...

<comment><USER19> A government-run system has the same problem. When the government is running the system, if it's terrible, you have nowhere to go. Private care most likely won't be available to you either, unless you are extremely rich.

I also have a problem with the government getting even more involved in my life.

<comment><USER20> I'm not so sure this is completely the fault of Gov'ts. Healthcare services have less that -1 (1) price elasticity (2). That is to say, regardless of the price, the demand for those services go relatively unaffected. Would this be any different without Gov't intervention? Unlikely IMHO.

With Big Tobacco, "elasticity of demand for cigarettes is quite low. The amount of cigarettes purchased will remain reasonably unchanged..." (3)

(1) <http://oheschools.org/ohech2pg7a.html> (2) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_demand> (3)[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette_taxes_in_the_United_S...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette_taxes_in_the_United_States)

<comment><USER19> "Would this be any different without Gov't intervention? "

When the government gets involved in any industry, they are allowed to play by different rules (because they make the rules) making it very difficult for private companies to compete.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The one item missing here is a hot-topic of mine: emergency care. Not only are emergency services as expensive as the rest of medicine, but worse than that is the providers have a legal responsibility to care for the individual, who in turn has zero responsibility to actually pay the bill.

The other missing factor is that in a lot of cases, medicare/medicaid don't actually cover the actual cost of the procedure/service being provided; this leads providers and practitioners to charge more for those with better insurance in order to keep their businesses afloat.

<comment><USER22> _worse than that_

Are you saying poor people should just die when they are injured?

The emergency situation is the only time it should be reasonable for Dr.s to not have to provide webbased standard billing.

<comment><USER21> Not at all. I'm just pointing out how screwed up the system is that the government requires practitioners to treat people but doesn't provide the financial resources to pay for it. I've worked in systems that basically were bankrupt repeatedly because they kept providing the services they couldn't afford.

My point isn't that the providers shouldn't be legally required to provide the care (the truth is we would and do anyway); rather, something needs to be done about how costs are distributed in order to prevent hospitals, clinics, urgent cares and 911 services from going out of business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The initial bill is written KNOWING that it will be discounted. Prices are obviously jacked up so they get negotiated down to something reasonable, just like any scenario where haggling is normal.

I was just in the ER and got the claim forms. Price paid was about 1/10th the initial bill.

If hotels billed like hospitals, they'd offer rooms for $1000/night and settle for $100 when you flashed a Hotels Club card, which everyone would have, pay a flat rate for + deductible, and would use to the max to squeeze every penny of value out of that flat rate.

<comment><USER24> What are the ways to negotiate the hospital bill down? What leverages the patient can apply after the service has been delivered?

<comment><USER23> Step #1: call hospital billing.

Thing is, almost nobody bothers with even that first simple step.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Well it seems to me we are all in the wrong industry!

I'm sure none of these healthcare guys have to deal with fierce competition from all over the world, exponentially increasing automation, the constant threat of outsourcing, etc...

Someone mentioned how the hospital charged him $125/hour for a nurse and all she did was bring a glass of water to the patient. Try to extrapolate that situation to IT and see what kinds of crazy numbers you get.

</comment><comment><USER26> So, why is it again that we don't just run hospitals like any other civil service (police, fire, defense), fund them with taxes, and treat the care as something that a civilized government should provide?

Having given government a monopoly on force, it would seem that we should expect it to heal as well. This is absurd.

<comment><USER27> The fire department turns up when your house is on fire, sprays water on the house, and goes home when the fire is out. Their work is well defined and self-contained.

Medicine is a completely different situation: As people get sicker, you can dump practically unlimited amounts of money on them to extend their lives by a few more days. If you're not willing or not capable of deciding who is worth treating (aka "government death panels") and don't want unsustainable government spending, the only solution is to not get into the business at all (and let insurance companies take the blame for saying that little Johnny's cancer is too expensive to treat).

<comment><USER26> Then we probably need to come to terms with losing our loved ones, because this is intractable. I'd rather have "death panels" than the current situation.

<comment><USER27> I agree. I just hope we can have panels which weigh diseases impartially. The UK did this for a while via their National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, measuring the cost per QALY, but now the politicians have stepped in and decided that cancer treatments are "special" and should be funded up to a higher limit -- which is really saying that they're willing to kill two people who don't have cancer to save the life of one person who has cancer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Downvote for problems only Americans have.

<comment><USER26> Downvote for being a shithead.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Cool Android app to discover places, meet explorers and inspire friends - <AUTHOR> http://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.uggozi <comment><AUTHOR> Hi fellow hackers!

I am the maker of Uggozi. In Uggozi you can discover new places, meet explorers and spread the wanderlust to your friends by composing and sending them short inspiring picture postcards. Set a photo as wallpaper and be inspired the moment you open your phone.

The mission is to create a community where people can inspire and also help each other to be explorers.

This is just the beginning, we're working on new features and we hope to make it the best community of travellers, explorers and dreamers.

Would love to hear feedbacks :)

<comment><USER2> It looks interesting.

Is there a story about why you made it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :)

I have always loved discovering new places, travelling, taking photos, meeting people and experiencing different cultures. This has always helped me in becoming a better human being. Once when I was travelling I felt that except for sharing a photo on existing social networks (and adding a caption) or sending it as a message on messaging apps there isn't a place online where I can go to specifically inspire my friends to travel to the place where I was. And that's when the idea of Uggozi started taking shape. In Uggozi we bring the joyful experience of sending and receiving picture postcards to mobile. To create a postcard one can upload a photo or select an existing gorgeous photo of a place, add an inspirational quote to its back and send it to friends.

It's been often said that we're 'born too late to explore earth, born too early to explore space' but what if we could rekindle our innate desire to be explorers. At Uggozi we hope to do just that. One can become the 'Uggozi explorer' of a geographical location by taking the first popular photo from anywhere in that geographical location.

Uggozi derives its name from the isiZulu word ugq!ozi which means collective inspiration and aptly defines our mission of making a community where travellers, explorers and dreamers can collectively inspire each other to explore this beautiful planet. In the first step of this journey we are focused on making it the most visually appealing and inspiring place to be at when you get those wanderlust pangs :)

We moderate the photos uploaded so that their subject is the place they have been marked with and not an individual. The photos should somehow define the place, it's culture or people. And also to deliver the best experience on a device, Uggozi shows only the photos that will look good on that specific device.

<comment><USER2> Thanks. That is an interesting story.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Comments now cost 99 cents and your name. - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/63730

<comment><USER2> Notably and non-obviously, the 99 cents is a one-time fee, so once you've paid it you're entitled to make as many comments as you want.

But what sort of person is willing to pay to make comments on a local newspaper? My prediction: the comments section of the Attleboro Sun-Chronicle will henceforth be limited to a very small number of retired cranks with too much time on their hands and very large bees in their bonnet about something or other. Expect to see the same damn thread under every article as the four usual suspects duke it out over whether the problems of the world are all due to (a) George Bush, (b) Barack Obama, (c) the Federal Reserve or (d) the aliens.

<comment><USER3> That is no different from the comments on most local papers now.

I'm amazed that a company that wants to be taken as a professional source for journalism allows those kinds of comments on their site. It just looks terrible to their image and adds nothing to the story.

<comment><USER4> _> It just looks terrible to their image_

Comments are from "ordinary people", so why would anyone measure the quality of an article by the quality of the comments? Does an article become less true or less readable just because it is followed by some bad comments?

In contrast, not publishing comments would lead to the impression of being unable to take criticism.

By publishing even the dumbest comments, they show that they _are_ able to handle criticism, and that they don't suppress anyone's opinion.

 _> and adds nothing to the story_

Comments serve a completely different purpose. While the article reflects the facts, the comments reflect the sentiment of the people. That's what they add to the story.

In some rare cases comments even add some interesting facts.

<comment><USER2> _Comments serve a completely different purpose. While the article reflects the facts, the comments reflect the sentiment of the people. That's what they add to the story_

Except they don't reflect the sentiment of "the people", only the small subset with the time and inclination to comment. This usually winds up being folks with some kind of extreme opinion or other kind of bonnet-dwelling bee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> MetaFilter has a similar system (their onetime fee is $5), and they're one of the most consistent, stable, noisefree online communities I've ever seen.

<comment><USER6> Notably, they also moderate comments and close threads fairly aggressively.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think this will work out great for them. Somethingawful.com is one example of a site which has a pay-barrier to it's forums primarily for the reason to keeping out trolls. Now you may have mixed opinions over the nature of things discussed in the forums there, but the maturity of the discourse is pretty impressive for the size of the audience. The fact that so much of the topic matter is 'immature' only helps exemplify how effective the system is.

<comment><USER8> I hope you are joking. SomethingAwful is a troll-generating machine. They didn't make it premium to keep the troll out they made it premium to make it profitable.

Unless you are just trolling.

<comment><USER9> Somethingawful has 100s of forums, all with wildly different rules. Some have virtually no rules, and are of course filled with trolls.

But of the forums meant for serious discussion, there is far less trolling than anywhere else on the internet. Not that many people are willing to pay $10 per troll comment- though they ban people very regularly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I predict that working out not-so-great with shared credit cards, which are an extraordinarily common financial arrangement in many American families. (Perhaps less so among twenty-something techies than the population at large -- I deal with many, many customers who on their husband's card.)

Worth mentioning: not everyone has a credit card. A requirement that you have to own a credit card will, in effect if not in design, essentially redline your service. Reasonable people can disagree about how much that matters, but I would predict that many newsrooms would go nuclear if you connected the dots for them on the inability of, e.g., 60% of blacks in Chicago from being barred from civic participation on $PICK_AN_ISSUE because they don't have a bank account. (There are prepaid cards to circumvent that restriction. Of course, the riffraff who are the _intended_ targets of the policy are _also_ capable of buying prepaid cards.)

<comment><USER2> 60% of black people in Chicago don't have bank accounts?

<comment><USER11> s/bank account/credit card/ is probably what patio11 meant. No idea how correct that is, but it's somewhat more plausible.

<comment><USER2> Still sounds pretty damn implausible to me.

<comment><USER10> The last time I researched the issue the government quoted the national number at 20%. It skews higher for minorities and low-income people. You're welcome to your intuitions -- it might only be 40%. Either way, it isn't a small number or one which is evenly distributed across all demographics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So here's a startup idea:

Work out a solution to verify the name. Allow anybody to sign up for 99 cent.

Now allow trusted sites (newspapers, Amazon.com etc.) where the feedback is important access to your authentication.

Let people use alias with the caveat that if there's enough "bad behavior" report / warning, their true name will be revealed.

This would make the startup the Equifax or BBB of the public forums. "Public credibility FICO score" and similar services would be next.

It's good for consumers too, soon the 99 c will add up.

When true anonymous comment is required, just send it to a journalist, they will make sure the person's identity is protected.

</comment><comment><USER13> IntenseDebate or Disqus should go with this model and then let me relax commenting moderation on my blog for paid commenters. It could possibly save me a ton of moderating effort.

</comment><comment><USER14> from what i understand of the credit card system, the name featured on the card is not checked at all -- at least that's the way it works with our Authorize.net install.

if this is true for everyone, that means that the person who decided to implement the system to "check your name" is in for a big surprise when they realize any name will work with a valid credit card.

someone please correct me if i'm wrong...

<comment><USER15> You might be right about that. The only information check I've encountered that consistently seems to matter is the zip code.

<comment><USER14> Looks like I'm right: [http://www.thesunchronicle.com/articles/2010/07/04/news/7630...](http://www.thesunchronicle.com/articles/2010/07/04/news/7630031.txt)

AVS checks zip code and/or the number portion of your street address depending on how you interpret the response.

CVV2 check obviously works as intended. And our experience has been that when CVV2 is checked, sometimes the expiration date will be checked (although w/o CVV2 check expiration date is similarly meaningless).

I'm far from an expert here, so somebody else can probably clarify a bit more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wouldn't give a site my credit card just to comment, but I'd be ok with SMS verification. eg. Provide your mobile number when you sign up and they text you an unlock code before it works. Alternatively you could text them first to get the unlock code. The advantage of using SMS verification is it continues to allow anonymous comments, but it's non-trivial to create multiple accounts and losing karma/being banned would be effectively permanent.

<comment><USER6> How is my cell phone number more anonymous than my credit card number?

<comment><USER16> You can't automatically retrieve someone's name with their cellphone/mobile number in the way you can with a credit card check, but admittedly it's not very hard. Removing the risk of being ripped off is the major benefit over a cc check.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think this is a great idea, and I wish sfgate.com would do the same thing! As timmaah says, I, too, am amazed that newspapers allow comments on their stories, as it just devolves into left vs. right for almost every story on the site!

</comment><comment><USER18> They should have made it the cost of a stamp and they would have won more favor. "Instead of buying a stamp, buy the right to post on our site and you will be able to write back to the author and editor immediately." Instead they are charging $0.99 (just to say it's under a dollar?) - basically asking someone for money that could be spent on more important things.

</comment><comment><USER19> I used to receive the Sun-Chronicle. Pretty decent paper from what I remember, although it's been some years. I'll be interested to see if it works.

An idea: what about using Hashcash instead?

</comment><comment><USER20> I was hoping that was for networkworld.com since the comments on there are useless. Great idea though, especially for the context of a paper.

</comment><comment><USER21> If every newspaper did this, would that not stifle free speech and lower the quality of democracy? Aren't the pirates primarley motivated to further freedom of information when they publish ways to overcome pay walls and such things.

I think the internet is loosing its way. This site has no pay wall, yet the quality of discussion is great. Maybe it is not anonymity but the general atmosphere which encourages trolling.

<comment><USER22> > would that not stifle free speech

No. Free speech is guaranteed, but that does't mean a company has to support and promote your speech on its private platform.

Considering that commenting on stories is only a recent addition. Might be surprised to find out that it was kind of difficult to comment on stories to the public when it was an actual newsPAPER. =)

You still have letters to the editor. You still have options to create a blog and post your thoughts.

> This site has no pay wall, yet the quality of discussion is great.

Yet it can still get pretty heated at times, and the moderation is pretty heavy. Also, the audience it attracts is a certain mindset. Invite the same audience a newspaper gets and it will suddenly get less civil.</comment></comment>


Brain structure generates pockets of sleep within the brain - <AUTHOR> http://news.mit.edu/2015/brain-controls-sleep-1013 <comment><USER2> The more I learn about the brain, the more unlikely it seems that proponents of extreme polyphasic sleep are correct.

<comment><USER3> Brains are good at habits and patterns. If you start to nap every day at 2pm, you will begin to crave that nap every day until you de-condition yourself from it. Not necessarily damaging or wrong or broken, just different patterns.

<comment><USER2> Specifically, the claim that you can get all the sleep you need if you just get your 15 min of REM each session. There's so much more going on than just REM. Really, there's no good evidence for the claim that only REM is required. Meanwhile sleep problems can have a huge impact on health.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very interesting, the silicon equivalent is a power saving measure, the brain seems to have other uses for local reduction of activity.

</comment><comment><USER5> Neat, brain waves seem like the brain's global dispatch system.

<comment><USER6> Is there any suggestion that regions of brain communicate wirelessly (or "chemicallessly")?

I always thought brain waves are only artifacts of the flow of electrons within the brain - a moving charge creates an EM field. In the same way one could talk about "CPU waves" \- EM emissions generated by electricity flowing through the processor.

<comment><USER7> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_field_potential](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_field_potential)

One of the most important ways the brain communicates is actually not just ionically through chemo-ionic channels but through summed wave activity. This is especially important in sleep and also during long term potentiation of circuits.

<comment><USER6> I don't see anything in this article implying that the brain actually reads the "summed wave activity" somehow; as far as I understand, everything here is just a description of how we measure and interpret EM fields generated by charges flying around in the brain. Is there any study that shows that some parts of the brain treat EM waves generated elsewhere as _input_?

<comment><USER8> Buzsaki argues, in this book, that brain waves are the method that the brain uses to coordinate activity in different regions of the brain. (High-frequency waves coordinate the activity of small areas, low-frequency waves coordinate the activity of large areas.)

[http://www.amazon.com/Rhythms-Brain-Gyorgy- Buzsaki/dp/019982...](http://www.amazon.com/Rhythms-Brain-Gyorgy- Buzsaki/dp/0199828237)

If you're curious about brain waves, I highly recommend this book. It is fascinating.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple facing huge chip patent bill after losing case - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-34524785 <comment><USER2> Looks like the "idea" of the patent in the description is to use a predictor to predict when a STORE and LOAD alias and not speculate the LOAD and any instruction depending on the load (although the claims generalize this to any non-static dependency).

As it generally happens in software/hardware patents, the claimed solution seems quite obvious whenever one wants to solve that particular problem, and the hard part is the "execution", i.e. implementing it efficiently and figuring out whether the tradeoffs are worth it.

So assigning patents to things like this seems really dumb.

<comment><USER3> Luckily, patents aren't granted for ideas, but for specific executions. Granted, the execution is generally defined at a higher level than, say, "this exact chunk of silicon". But it's at a much lower level than the "idea".

<comment><USER4> When it comes to digital technology patents are often granted for ideas or concepts so general as to be ridiculous. Whether those patents stand up in court is another thing but even there -- as in this case -- there are no guarantees of sanity. I hope Apple will appeal.

<comment><USER5> The more general and broad the patent the more valuable it is. The system rewards big general patents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This PDF explains what I discuss below in more detail: [http://moodle.technion.ac.il/pluginfile.php/315285/mod_resou...](http://moodle.technion.ac.il/pluginfile.php/315285/mod_resource/content/1/tutorial3_winter_2013.pdf). Prediction of aliasing is discussed on slide 25.

The patent in question pertains to an optimization of what these days you'd call "memory disambiguation." In a processor executing instructions out of order, data dependencies can be known or ambiguous. A known data dependency is, for example, summing the results of two previous instructions that themselves each compute the product of two values. An ambiguous data dependency is usually a memory read after a memory write. The processor usually does not know the address of the store until it executes the store. So it can't tell whether a subsequent load must wait behind the store (if it reads from the same address), or can safely be moved ahead of it (if it reads from a different address).

If you have the appropriate machinery, you can speculatively execute that later load instruction. But you need some mechanism to ensure that if you guess wrong--that subsequent load really does read from the same address as the earlier store--you can roll back the pipeline and re execute things in the correct order.

But flushing that work and replaying is slow. If you've got a dependent store- load pair, you want to avoid the situation where misspeculation causes you to have to flush and reply every time. The insight of the patent is that these dependent store-load pairs have temporal locality. Using a small table, you can avoid most misspeculations by tracking these pairs in the table and not speculating the subsequent load if you get a table hit. That specific use of a prediction table is what is claimed by the patent.

Maybe this is worth a patent, or maybe not. For what it's worth, I don't think anybody was doing memory disambiguation at all in 1996. Intel was one of the first (maybe the first) to do so commercially in the mid-2000's. Apple's Cyclone architecture also does it, and I think it was the first in the low- power SoC space to do it.

<comment><USER7> Alpha 21264 (also from '96) had load store buffers that would notice the dependence violations and flush the pipeline during speculative execution. Sparc and power also had this to some extent with write buffers. I can't think of any that used a predictor though to decide whether to execute speculatively or not back then, they all just either did or stalled on the first potential violation. The patent appears novel for the time to me, thank you for digging it up and explaining.

<comment><USER6> DEC was working on it, allegedly for EV8: [https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~cis501/papers/store- sets.pdf](https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~cis501/papers/store-sets.pdf). They cite to the inventor of the patent in question: "Independently, Moshovos et al. published a comprehensive description of memory dependence prediction. This is the first published work identifying that memory dependencies are problematic for out-of-order machines."

<comment><USER7> That's a great paper and insight, thanks again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> UWisc has always been very aggressive with its patents. I recall sometime during 2002 or thereabouts, while working for a reasonably big semiconductor company with DSP/ARM processors, one of the guys in our team with an interest in computer architecture, used the company network to download and play with a simulator or something (might have been simplescalar). A few weeks later the head of our group gets contacted by the company lawyers saying that UWisc was asking for licensing costs for using their tools (they provided the ip address that was used to download the tools). I'm not sure how it was resolved finally, but I don't think the company paid.

</comment><comment><USER9> In general, I welcome the day when universities get what is coming to them for this kind of stuff (see also: Marvell vs CMU for 300+ million, reduced from 1.5 billion on appeal, etc).

In particular, given how much industry funds them, collaborates with their professors, etc, what is going on now is a _remarkably stupid_ approach mostly driven by tech transfer offices that want to prove their value.

Which will be "zero", once the tech industry starts cutting them off.

<comment><USER10> You think they're funding researchers at market rates?

<comment><USER9> Do you think the universities would really be getting _anywhere_ without the help of the industries they are now pissing on?

Take away the faculty awards, industry collaborations, donated labs, donated computing time, hiring of interns, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university

So it's a university [mainly] funded by the tax-payer. How can it be that the research of this university isn't in the public domain? The public paid for it, the public should reap the benefits without paying again.

Sure, Apple tries their hardest not to pay taxes, but the patent isn't limited to them.

<comment><USER12> > So it's a university [mainly] funded by the tax-payer

This is not true, at least for most states. For example, the UW system got 1.2 Billion from the state out of a 6 Billion dollar budget: [https://www.wisconsin.edu/about-the-uw- system/](https://www.wisconsin.edu/about-the-uw-system/)

The large majority of most state university funding comes through tuition, research grants, and donations.

<comment><USER13> Well the majority of tuition funding is on loan from the federal government and I'm sure a big chunk of that grant money comes from DARPA, NSF, NIH, etc.

That's not necessarily to say their work should be in the public domain but it would still be nice to see them focus on more productive uses of their IP rather than just license fee extraction.

<comment><USER12> The federal government generally makes a profit on student loans -- (most of them) get paid back eventually.

<comment><USER13> True. My point was more that their budget would look very different if not for federal guarantees on those (relatively risky) loans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Patent in question: [http://www.google.co.uk/patents/US5781752](http://www.google.co.uk/patents/US5781752)

<comment><USER15> "Table based data speculation" \- so a lookup table?? Would be interested in knowing how innovative the patent is from someone with more knowledge in this field.

<comment><USER16> Bear in mind the patent was filed in 1996 when considering the level of innovation.

<comment><USER17> There were branch-predicting mainframes back in the 80s, though it really came to the fore with the advent of superscalar microprocessors in the early 90s (MIPS R8000 and DEC Alpha 21064), what is the paper's innovations above these?

<comment><USER18> It's pretty clear from even a cursory look – the patent covers a second level of branch prediction, where the processor determines whether or not it should bother speculatively executing an instruction based on the previous outcome of that speculative execution.

Whether or not there was a prior implementation of this, I don't know – but it's also obviously more than a simple saturating counter branch predictor or whatever.

<comment><USER19> [http://www.theonion.com/blogpost/fuck-everything-were- doing-...](http://www.theonion.com/blogpost/fuck-everything-were-doing-five- blades-11056)

So inductive patent expansion. Take previous innovation, add 1, profit.

What about L0 and L4 caches? Or Renaming sets of renamed registers? The problem as others have outlined, that patents are not concrete enough. Simply describing a problem is enough to be granted a patent. The value of the description of most patents is zero, which afaik this opposite of their intended effect as a record and transfer of technology.

<comment><USER20> The blithe dismissal of the value incremental improvement doesn't make you look smarter.

<comment><USER19> Thanks for the bespoke advice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm curious how the university could discover that Apple was using its patent. The internal characteristics of the processor must be secret, right? Do they examine die photos and reconstruct the gate netlist?

<comment><USER22> [IANAL]

There's a discovery process for civil cases.

<comment><USER21> So the university goes through this process with all semiconductor companies that are developing processors, just to be sure that they're not infringing?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> $862m isn't that huge in the grand scheme of things. Not to mention, it's most likely _not_ going to be $862m, my guess is it'll be less.

<comment><USER24> If it's $862m, last I checked, it will take them about 30 hours to bring in the necessary revenue--if they want to pay out of profits (I'm totally guessing here, what are real net margins on their hardware? 15-20%?), it'll take a couple days.

<comment><USER25> Man, that's such a humbling stat. Many of us here don't even earn that in a _year_!

<comment><USER26> $862 million?

> Man, that's such a humbling stat. Many of us here don't even earn that in a > _lifetime_!

FTFY

Unless I missed the /s ;)

<comment><USER27> Even more exaggerated than that. Many families don't earn that across several generations. That's about 17,000 years at $50,000/year. At 40 years of working life, you'd need over 400 people.

<comment><USER28> The combined income earned by anyone in the entirety of history who is the least bit related to me, adjusted for PPP, probably does not equal $800MM+.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> $862m? Isn't that little bit less than what Samsung paid to Apple?

I tell ya, this tech news stuff is sometimes more entertaining than infotainment on TV.

</comment><comment><USER30> Awesome, maybe the Brewers need a new stadium too.

</comment><comment><USER31> How is this journalism? It doesn't even tell you the damn patent number.

<comment><USER32> At the top of the gray bar there's a "Contact BBC News" link. (Not the "contact us" link at the very bottom of the page.)

For this article it's here: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/20039682](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/20039682)

Please do let them know that they need to start linking, or at least naming, documents that they're talking about. They do it all the time and I agree it's annoying. They'll discuss a medical study and not have any links to it. Sometimes they don't even name the report nor where it appeared.

<comment><USER33> When I see examples of that my nature is to immediately question the validity of the story.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I have one question: Do the professors teach this technique in classes?

I mean, that'd be funny, right? Teaching students something that you patented, waiting a few years for them to go into industry and apply what they learned, then suing them for it.

</comment><comment><USER35> I have no sympathy for Apple in this matter. Considering the worthless, prior art ridden patents they used against their competitors they deserve the blowback. And in keeping with their modus operandi they ignored the University of Wisconsin and wilfully infringed the patent.

<comment><USER36> UW should take the money and use it to endow a chair of processor engineering.

Or maybe a table of processor engineering. That could work too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> You know what they say: Live by the patent sword...

Why doesn't Apple start lobbying for real patent reform?

<comment><USER38> Because it makes no sense for them to do so. Large companies join in cross- licensing agreements, keeping smaller competitors out. Occasionally some small player comes along with an important patent, and they refuse to be bought off and win in court. That makes the news like today because it happens so rarely. But it's a price worth paying to keep competition out of the market.

Competition is so tedious.

<comment><USER39> This isn't a small company with a new idea that doesn't want to be bought out, this is an university.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> What if patents could only be held by individuals and not corporations?

<comment><USER41> And then the individuals would grant use licenses to the corporations, so they can implement the process/manufacture the good/etc?

<comment><USER42> That is essentially how it works now actually. The patent has to be awarded to an inventor (or more than one) who is a natural person. But they initially assign it to a company, when it's done by someone working for that company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I don't get how they settled out of court and then did it again, that seems really bizare.

<comment><USER39> Settled with a different company.

<comment><USER31> Article says it was UW in both cases.

edit: disregard, I don't read good

<comment><USER44> UW holds the patent.

UW sued Intel. This lawsuit was settled.

UW then sued Apple. A different company.

Why would the fact that the suit with Intel was settled impact their ability to sue Apple? What's the source of confusion here?

<comment><USER31> Whoops, I can't read this morning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> This is sort of a depressing precedent. Do we really want to turn our universities into patent trolls?

<comment><USER46> If they are trolling other patent trolls, then why not?

<comment><USER47> Two wrongs don't make a right.

<comment><USER48> A self-destructive spiral might spur legislative action.</comment></comment></comment></comment>