Fortnite seems to have been removed from the Play Store as well - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.epicgames.fortnite&hl=en_US <comment><USER2> Good. The sooner a big well-funded company hits this duopoly wall, the better. They will have the resources to fight this, and the outcome will hopefully be positive for all other developers.

Apple and Google are gatekeepers to all mobile devices (practically), but the value they add as gatekeepers is questionable. Certainly there is some value in their delivery (and much lesser so, their security) service; but their fees are not market set (since they are effectively monopolies by device type). If there were actual competitors, their rates would be much lower... around 2-5% probably.

<comment><USER3> Android has a plethora of app stores, there have always been tons of them. Some phones have shipped with three or more, one from Google, one from the phone manufacturer and one from the network. Then you could add another one from Amazon, etc, etc.

Google Play Store won out on Android simply because the multitude of stores was a nightmare for customers. They don't want multiple stores, they want one store on this phone, that will also be on their next phone. Any 'monopoly' wasn't seized by Google, it was pushed eagerly on them by customers craving consolidation and simplicity.

Same for me, I don't want 5 blasted stores on my iPhone. I want one store and run by someone I trust. The same goes for my Switch too, I'm quite happy for Nintendo to run the store for it. If I don't like how they run it, I'll get a PS 5 or XBOX. That's where the competition is. I have plenty of choices thanks.

<comment><USER4> This is completely false. The Play Store has "won" by Google chopping the legs off all the alternatives. They have to be sideloaded and you have to enable a scary checkbox to do so, that suggests it's less secure to use any app store but the Play Store.

<comment><USER5> Yeah? you think users love hunting down a particular app store becauase that is the one that has the app you are after???

<comment><USER6> If only there was an example of a platform where you downloaded apps from the web and installed them at your own will!

Oh, wait. It's what we all did and do with computers. This isn't some mystical unknown.

<comment><USER7> And we see how that worked out. Viruses, malware, ransomware, key loggers, 10 toolbars on your browser.

<comment><USER6> Which is where the (existing, robust) system of app permissions comes in. Something the desktop world never had.

(besides, last time I checked my macOS machine is neither virus ridden nor covered in toolbars)

<comment><USER7> Because no one bothered to write viruses for it. There were more viruses for Windows than Classic MacOS and it was a complete shit show compared to Windows between 1995 - 2000. It didn't even have memory protection.

<comment><USER6> I'm talking about the macOS I run on my MacBook today. It is not virus ridden nor covered with unwanted toolbars.

<comment><USER7> And again it's because no one bothered to write toolbars and viruses for the Mac. I never got viruses on a Windows PC but are you going to say they don't exist? You never had to clean up your less tech savvy relatives computer?

<comment><USER6> What I'm saying is that the vast, vast majority of desktop users have an entirely satisfactory computing experience today, using operating systems that let you install whatever you want.

Yes, if you go back in time you find OSes with hideous security models that made things like keyloggers possible. Mobile OSes today do not have those problems, and have strict permission prompts that gatekeep functionality.

Yeah, I'm sure there would be some shitty experiences if people could install whatever they want on their phones, it's the price of giving everyone that freedom. But if desktop OSes in 2020 are anything to go by, it's really not that big of an issue.

<comment><USER7> So the whole ransomware and virus problem is imaginary?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The real reason Epic Games did this... Money - they were forced to hand over more than $500 Million dollars to Apple and Google in the past 12 months alone. That's $1.3 Million dollars per day.

Epic gave Apple over $360 Million dollars in the last twelve months just to list the game in it's app store, and over $150 Million to Google to do the same. By any measure, having to hand over half a billion dollars is just an insane cut of revenue to have to give two companies that had absolutely nothing to do with conceiving, designing or developing such a successful game.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/13/technology/apple- fortnite...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/13/technology/apple-fortnite- ban.html)

<comment><USER9> "...absolutely nothing to do with conceiving, designing or developing such a successful game."

But it has _everything_ to do with _distributing_ the game. Also it has a lot to do with outsourcing the maintenance of the mobile platforms — designing hardware, OS releases, etc. Epic did not design their own hardware, their own silicon, build entire global supply chains, design UX, etc. Apple and Google did. Do they not deserve a cut?

I'm not here arguing the percentage of the revenue, just that that _some_ percentage is clearly warranted here. Their relationship with Apple and Google is clearly a partnership, meaning it has to benefit both sides. Same way it works with consoles.

<comment><USER10> > But it has everything to do with distributing the game.

Because they're the only option. I mean there's no reason why Epic couldn't host the app on their server that people could download. It's not without precedent. But it's just not allowed for mobile.

> designing hardware, OS releases, etc. Epic did not design their own > hardware, their own silicon, build entire global supply chains, design UX, > etc. Apple and Google did. Do they not deserve a cut?

Seriously? You think Epic should have to pay for the hardware that we consumers buy for thousands of dollars? Apple has some of the highest hardware margins in the world. They don't need software developers to pay for the hardware that we've already paid too much for. These aren't consoles sold for a loss.

<comment><USER11> > Because they're the only option. I mean there's no reason why Epic couldn't > host the app on their server that people could download. It's not without > precedent. But it's just not allowed for mobile.

Didn't they move to the Google Play Store (from their own download manager) specifically because sideloading was too hard and scary for customers that it was having an impact on Fortnite installs?

Having the option wouldn't be enough for Epic even if it were available on iOS, because it wasn't enough for them on Android

<comment><USER10> Well Google specifically doesn't make it easy or safe to install apps from other sources. But there's no reason why it couldn't be just as simple and safe as getting it from the app store.

The problems mentioned below are really only possible because Google kind of leaves everyone to the wolves when it comes to sideloading.

<comment><USER11> Epic's quote at the time was the following:

> Google puts software downloadable outside of Google Play at a disadvantage, > through technical and business measures such as scary, repetitive security > pop-ups for downloaded and updated software, restrictive manufacturer and > carrier agreements and dealings, Google public relations characterizing > third party software sources as malware, and new efforts such as Google Play > Protect to outright block software obtained outside the Google Play store.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A lot of people are giving Epic a hard time for this, but I think it takes quite a bit of gusto to disrupt such an insane moneymaker in order to rally its userbase against these anti-competitive practices.

<comment><USER13> Really? I don't think I've seen anyone today with an anti-Epic take. Maybe I just haven't gone down far enough in the comments.

<comment><USER14> Twitter has Apple fans rushing to criticize Epic. I'm absolutely flabbergasted the freedom disruption blinders are so strong.

Why _anyone_ supports Apple is a mystery to me. What if the web forced you to use Apple Payments? What if Microsoft forced all installs to go through the Microsoft Store?

Apple took focus from the web and then extinguished openness. It's tyranny.

<comment><USER15> I'll try and play devil's advocate for you.

Apple recently rolled out "Sign-In With Apple", which creates burner e-mail address that you can seamlessly use with 3rd party services. As a privacy- conscious consumer, this was great! On top of that, Apple forced all of its developers to support "Sign-In With Apple". This is one of the many reasons I continue to use Apple's phone and OS, because it gives me some peace of mind.

Apple Payments, similarly, gives me some financial peace of mind by providing me with one centralized place where I can view and cancel my subscriptions/purchases. I can't tell you how many times I've forgotten to unsubscribe from a service that I don't use. With Apple's in-app payments system, I can keep tabs on _everything_. It's like a user-friendly financial reconciliation layer.

Both of these Apple services place some amount of burden on the developer, and I'd even argue that the first example was pretty broadly celebrated by privacy-minded HN readers. The strongest devil's advocate argument is that the second example provides the same value to Apple customers, and that's a distinguishing feature of its platform that it ought to be able to maintain.

There's a strong argument to be made that one ought to be able to side-load apps and install competing app stores on their iPhones (I tend to agree), but that's somewhat orthogonal to this particular issue, especially considering the Google Play Store action.

<comment><USER16> I think there are basically two ways to look at Apple's App Store policies:

1\. Apple acts like a sort of consumer union, coordinating behavior of a massive and lucrative audience so that apps have to meet certain minimum standards to reach it.

2\. Apple acts like a protection racket, extracting a piece of the consumer surplus because they can.

It seems that you like the benefits of #1, and I agree with you. The problem is that in the Fortnite case, it appears to be a case of #2 posturing as #1. Does anyone truly believe that Fortnite players are _better off_ paying 30% more to Apple?

<comment><USER17> This is a good framework. One way to merge these views is with a graduated take rate. So Apple might take 30% of the first $10mm, 20% of the next $10mm and $10% thereafter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is also bad, but Google still allows Android users to install Epic's game store (which does continue to list Fortnite), so I think it's a bit more defensible than Apple's ban in which it's now just impossible to install the game at all. Removing from the Play Store on Android isn't equivalent to removing from the App Store on iOS; you can install apps from outside of the Play Store on Android, but you can't install apps from outside of the App Store on iOS (at least, not without jailbreaking).

<comment><USER19> Epic already tried to make a run of it outside the Play Store, and gave up, citing Google's efforts to "outright block software obtained outside the Google Play store." I don't think there's a practical difference here.

<comment><USER18> If I go to fortnite.com/android, I can still download and install the Epic Game Store for Android. So it's definitely better than the situation on iOS. In practice, you can still install Fortnite on Android (and it's only a Google search away — when I searched "fortnite android" just now, it was the top hit of the search results, just after the News section that's filled with the news of the Play Store ban); you can't install Fortnite on iOS at all.

It's actually even slightly easier to install APKs on Android than installing non-Mac-App-Store software on macOS — with Android it prompts you right when you open to allow or disallow installs from the source you downloaded from, whereas macOS makes you dig around in Settings the first time. I tried installing the Epic store just now on Android, and it was a fairly seamless experience.

I'm sure it gets fewer sales, since the Play store is bundled with most Android phones and the Epic store isn't. But it's pretty different than an outright ban: the Play store is charging you the 30% Google tax for reach/audience, but you're free to list on an alternative store if you choose to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's important to remember that Epic games isn't a champion of freedom here.

After Epic store launched on the PC in 2018, Epic used their platform's growing popularity to bait and/or strong arm (it's unclear to me) indie developers into exclusivity contracts on Epic's game store. This action caused a massive uproar in the gaming community because with those exclusivity deals, Epic made developers break existing preorders.

This isn't about freedom or choice or walled gardens. It's about cutting off a slightly bigger slice of a billion dollar pie.

<comment><USER21> I happen to know some first-time indie devs that were given this deal. The deal is incredibly generous. Basically, epic offered them a bag of money in exchange for a certain period of partial exclusivity (basically "don't be on Steam"). That's it. This bag of money allowed the developers to:

\- Grow the dev team enough to accelerate time to launch--QA extra engineers, heck, the devs even used the money to pay for _porting the game to other devices!_

\- Guarantee that they could continue to fund development of the game after launch. Bugfixes, DLC, etc.

\- Have enough left over to "try again" and launch a sophomore game regardless of the performance of this one.

You'd think that fans of indie games would _love_ this. Who could possibly be opposed to having an indie dev get funds that would enable them to graduate to managing a small indie game studio instead of a ramen diet & 20 hour work days in the living room.

And yet they got enormous amounts of hate from so-called indie game fans and members of the gaming community. And yes, the devs were aware that the hate was coming from a disproportionately small number of people and that most people don't actually care at all. But still, the psychological toll of having to deal with the harassment was enough to make them strongly consider not taking the money--even though it was the right thing to do both from a financial pov and from a development pov (because it would guarantee they could finish and support the game).

The crazy thing is that _even if you hate epic_ you should love these deals: cheer for your favorite dev, then wait a year and buy the game on Steam, doubly sticking it to the man.

<comment><USER22> Exclusives on consoles suck, but the Epic store has been a huge win for developers and gamers. Bags of money, more choice, and competition and the only downside is needing to install an extra launcher. Yes please!

<comment><USER23> Important distinction: this is choice and competition for the developers but not for the consumers.

It would be choice and competition for the consumer if users could access any game through either platform and choose their favorite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Good for Epic to open this new battle front against Apple (and it seems Google).

As I wrote in the Apple thread: I think Epic are the ideal entity to do this since - so long as Apple or Google won't actively erase apps from people devices - they already have large install base and it's unlikely to grow much more.

Those who managed to install the latest update are already able to use epic "apple/google tax"less payment system so that protects their revenue for a while.

If either of those para-monopolies start erasing apps from people's phone's that would only add to the narrative that Epic, Spotify, EU et al. are already pushing: these two entities have built a global extractive platform that keeps partners and consumers hostage by their fees.

</comment><comment><USER25> It may not just be for a lawsuit. They may provide fuel for a change of law, as Congress bumbles through an attempt at anti-trust enforcement, maybe they can become a test case for lawmakers looking for loss of competition and consumer choice. (Although existing lobbying dollars from Google, Apple, Facebook, & company may be effective in holding back representatives. Money in hand, in election season no less.)

Epic Games can show just how much the on-going appstore tax prevent new business models from taking hold. They shown an incredible ability to entice people to separate from their money, even convinced Disney?! to partner for branded content.

Alongside Epic Games licensing of the Unreal Engine at-or-below cost (12% [1]), I believe Sweeney's commitment to growing a "Metaverse" market at the expense of Epic's short-term profit.

This comes alongside EPIC(.org)'s comparisons about American vs Chinese & emerging markets competitiveness, linked today [2].

[1]: [https://www.matthewball.vc/all/themetaverse](https://www.matthewball.vc/all/themetaverse) [2]: [https://epic.org/foia/epic-v-ai- commission/EPIC-19-09-11-NSC...](https://epic.org/foia/epic-v-ai- commission/EPIC-19-09-11-NSCAI-FOIA-20200331-3rd-Production-pt9.pdf)

<comment><USER26> Isn't Congress on summer vacation and then they'll all be fighting for reelection anyway? I hardly doubt anything will get passed until next year if it's not important enough to get a bipartisan vote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The Google statement really feels like they're subtweeting Apple:

> The open Android ecosystem lets developers distribute apps through multiple > app stores. For game developers who choose to use the Play Store, we have > consistent policies that are fair to developers and keep the store safe for > users. While Fortnite remains available on Android, we can no longer make it > available on Play because it violates our policies. However, we welcome the > opportunity to continue our discussions with Epic and bring Fortnite back to > Google Play.

</comment><comment><USER28> I look forward to putting my game Neptune's Pride in the Epic Games store and using PayPal to collect payments.

<comment><USER29> I had been trying to remember the name of this game for over a year now, my few Google searches for "long term space strategy mmo" never yielded anything. I love that hackernews seems to dredge up the interesting parts of the net.

Anyways, Neptune's Pride is very very fun and I can't wait to play it again!

<comment><USER28> Hello DetroitThrow! Glad to hear my not very subtle plug for the game might get at least one player back!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I won't stop telling this: mobile platforms need not only third party app stores, but third party push notifications services too. Both iOS and Android love to kill apps in the background. This behavior, sans push notifications, cripples a lot of types of applications (chiefly, all messengers).

If there ever would be some legal pressure on Apple& Google to open up their platforms, it is important to make this point known to legislators.

<comment><USER31> Applications have to be paused to save battery, or killed to save memory. You can lookup the Android doc since the first version 10+ years ago, it explains very well the lifecycle of apps. Mobile devices would be unusable if it were not for that.

<comment><USER30> This obvious thing you say doesn't change the fact that there is no a way to wake an app from sleep without FCM push notifications or running a background service with persistent notification (which users hate), which has a lot of restrictions that get tighter with every new version of Android.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I really don't see how Epic has a leg to stand on here, not on a platform which allows sideloading. The Apple case is complicated, but this seems like a straightforward violation of an entirely voluntary contract.

<comment><USER33> Microsoft got pinged for pre-installing Internet Explorer.

Android could potentially get pinged for pre-installing Play Market and not offering a choice.

<comment><USER34> Doubtful. Android can be customized by the OEMs and many do provide alternate stores preloaded. They'd have to go after Pixel phones (not a massive market share) or after the requirement to use Play services to be in the store.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Not commenting on whether Fortnite should or shouldn't have been removed from either app store, but wanted to point out one HUGE difference between Android and iOS here:

Removing Fortnite from the iOS store wholly removes the ability for people to download and play Fortnite on iOS devices, unless they're jailbroken.

Removing Fortnite from Google Play does no such thing. It's still readily available to download and play from other app stores and/or Epic directly. No need to jailbreak or root.

This is a huge difference in paradigms that'll probably go overlooked with headlines of "Apple and Google remove Fortnite from app stores".

I think this is why Epic is so ready to "take on Apple" (see: their Nineteen Eighty-Fortnite ad). This'll be a legal battle that's exciting to see, especially in the current/brewing anti-big-tech political climate.

</comment><comment><USER36> Confirmed by The Verge, who got a statement from Google:

> The open Android ecosystem lets developers distribute apps through multiple > app stores. For game developers who choose to use the Play Store, we have > consistent policies that are fair to developers and keep the store safe for > users. While Fortnite remains available on Android, we can no longer make it > available on Play because it violates our policies. However, we welcome the > opportunity to continue our discussions with Epic and bring Fortnite back to > Google Play.

[https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/13/21368079/fortnite-epic- an...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/13/21368079/fortnite-epic-android- banned-google-play-app-store-rule-violation)

<comment><USER37> It's definitely a statement that's very aware of the situation on iOS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> It's _fascinating_ that Google is deciding to form a unified front with Apple instead of playing the "good guy" and taking an opportunity to paint their competitor in a bad light. It really betrays just how important that 30% fee must be to them. The plot just keeps thickening.

</comment><comment><USER39> If anyone likes to follow app store case law, Oyez has the verbal arguments for Apple v Pepper that follow with text captions: [https://www.oyez.org/cases/2018/17-204](https://www.oyez.org/cases/2018/17-204)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc._v._Pepper](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc._v._Pepper)

</comment><comment><USER40> As I see it this improves their chances of winning the suit. By having Google act in the same manner they have a stronger case that the market is a duopoly that restricts customer's freedom.

Remember that courts tend to be very lenient towards business practices, so it takes egregious behavior to convince them to step in. This bolster's Epic's position.

</comment><comment><USER41> This is a PR move. They would have known they'd get kicked off for adding their own payment system.

They didn't make this in the time it took Apple to reject it. It's all pre- planned

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6B4glqJFz0&feature=emb_rel_...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6B4glqJFz0&feature=emb_rel_end)

<comment><USER42> So? That something is predictable does not make it ethically right. That Epic could predict Apple enforcing its monopoly does not make it right for Apple to have a monopoly.

<comment><USER43> Epic is also not ethically right. They shamelessly make their money on minors and pretend to do good for the gamers.

<comment><USER44> What's wrong with that? Besides, how Epic makes money is irrelevant to this discussion. Your statement is blatant whataboutism.

(FWIW I despise many of Epic's decisions, particularly their hostile attitude towards Linux as a platform, so no, I'm not biased towards them.)

<comment><USER43> It's not irrelevant when you start argueing about being ethical.

Besides that, Epic themselves play Gatekeeper through the Epic Game Store and pay big money to ensure they are the Gatekeeper (excluding retail and other platforms), made on kids by loot boxing them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> the 1984 ad is a little strange TBH. Apple was saying IBM wants to control the future of all information in this country, so come join us instead. Epic is saying, we want more money so standby while we go to court. Where is the epic smart phone alternative which is going to save us from the apple monopoly?

It will be better for all developers if the gatekeepers lower their rates, but epic really doesn't strike me as a white knight here.

<comment><USER46> I agree with the spirit here, what we really want are more phone operating systems and competition that way.

They are of course really hard to make ...

<comment><USER47> The problem is that app stores are charging 30%. More Operating Systems and competition would be good, but it's not going to fix the problem. After all, Steam takes a 30% cut, and they've got a client for multiple desktop operating sytems, as well as numerous stores competing against them (Windows Store, Mac Store, Itch.io, GoG, Humble, Greenman gaming, tons more). Normal people are just not going to install another operating system on their phone, or app store for that matter.

Apple or Google may cave in this particular case because Epic has some leverage with their userbase, but I'd be shocked to see either of them lower the rates for anyone other than Epic. I think it's going to take legislation to fix this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I'm confused, the other story on this is " _Apple_ kicked Fortnite off the app store". Did Google coincidentally do the same thing? Did Epic actually pull their game in both places?

<comment><USER49> Epic pushed a server-side update which gave users on both iOS and Android access to discounted prices that sidestepped the usual 30% cut to Apple or Google. This was a violation of terms of service on both platforms, so Fortnite was removed from both the App Store and the Play Store. Epic already knew this would happen, which is why they prepared their PR and legal teams accordingly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> One reason for the duopoly is that it cost more to have your app on more platforms. Its a disaster that for example government apps like id only works on the latest ios or android. There are also Sailfish, FirefoxOS, bunch of feature phone OS, and likely a lot I dont know of. The duopoly is self inflicted by the software industry.

</comment><comment><USER51> It seems Google is still using the same tactics it used to kill Skyhook (Maps competitor on wifi location), and probably most GApps competitors: they blocked Oneplus from bundling the Epic launcher with system permissions (allows updates in background, like the Play Store):

[https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/08/13/google- reportedly-b...](https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/08/13/google-reportedly- blocked-oneplus-from-pre-installing-the-epic-games-app-on-its-phones/)

</comment><comment><USER52> It's important to remember that Apple and Google only have a Duopoly, because nobody else seems to be able to develop anything that is remotely appealing to customers. Microsoft tried with their own mobile operating system many years ago and they failed at every attempt.

If Apple was told to open its App Store they could literally just shut down their App Store instead the next day and in a few days or weeks consumers all around the world would put too much pressure on any legislator to revert their changes, because not a single consumer cares about Epic, but everyone cares about their iPhone to remain as awesome as it is today, ad part of it is Apple's walled garden.

<comment><USER53> I don't see Apple shutting down App Store even for spite. Not sure their operating expenses on App Store but if they reduce their cut, it won't look bad on the books.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I really don't understand the argument about Apple's store, when Apple has only 20-25% of the installed base and the dominant platform has many stores to choose from.

Customers are plainly choosing the open platform.

<comment><USER55> First off, that's globally, not the US (in the US it's ~50/50.) Secondly, despite Apple not having a "monopoly" on the install base they do essentially have a monopoly on store expenditures and revenue. There is a reason why Apps launch on iOS first (usually), AppStore members are more likely to buy the app and do in-app purchases than Android users. This is BY FAR. I forgot the exact numbers, but I believe it's near double or triple that of Android. The AppStore is a cash register for Apple, 30% is insanity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> What happens to players who refund everything from these stores once the apps are no longer accessible? Does Apple or Google just eat the cost? I presume Epic has already been paid out, it seems like Apple and Google wouldn't be able to claw back that refund money.

</comment><comment><USER57> Will my kid be able to buy new skins with something other than vbucks when this is all said and done?

</comment><comment><USER58> Was fortnite on the play store? A few months ago I decided to try it for android, I had to download the epic games store app from their site and install it from there. This was in like February or something.

</comment><comment><USER59> I can do nothing but laugh - I have precisely zero sympathy for Epic here.

</comment><comment><USER60> Did this decision likely get made before the meeting with congress? Curious the lag time on corporate decision making on something like this.

The fight was bound to happen but I'm fascinated by the timing.

</comment><comment><USER61> Hey does TenCent not own a big chunk of Epic ???.

It would be great for Huawei if this whole closed appstore ecosystem would be broken up and give customers the freedom of choice.

</comment><comment><USER62> I thought they required an install from their Epic Games app store on Android, specifically to get around Google Play fees.

<comment><USER63> They did. Seems like it only changed in April. Maybe they wanted to see the numbers and gather data.

[https://archive.fo/Z0huU](https://archive.fo/Z0huU)

<comment><USER62> Huh. I presume these numbers will look very bad for Google. There are no extra-app store options on iOS.

If lowering the cost of app sales royalties to all 3rd developers is the only result of this, I'd say this will be worth it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Google may have missed a great PR opp here.

<comment><USER65> I'm sure they weighed that against setting a precedent that developers can sidestep their 30% cut. The income was probably considered more valuable than the PR.

<comment><USER66> > I'm sure they weighed that against setting a precedent that developers can > sidestep their 30% cut

That precedent is being set anyway, the Epic Games store still exists on Android, and you can get Fortnite through it, and this dispute can't do anything but bring more attention to that fact.

Of course, that kind of does show a way in which they are better for devs and consumers than Apple, since dispute over store terms with devs are less of a total barrier to delivering/selling (for devs) or getting access to (for consumers) apps on the platform.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> The link leads to nothing? Has been removed? (Sorry if late to the game but seems no one has mentioned this yet)

</comment><comment><USER68> Totally not coordinated at all. That Google and Apple have been completely consistent on demonetization, censorship, and general fuckery is just a coincidence. That the principal people involved all hail from the Bay Area and have similar social circles doesn't matter. Nope, no antitrust problem here, no cartel, no siree.

</comment><comment><USER69> Don't xbox and playstation also take a 30% cut on sales?

</comment><comment><USER70> Apple and Google are totally not acting like a cartel.

</comment><comment><USER71> Any official statements released?

</comment><comment><USER72> I've been very critical of Apple, but Google deserves the same as well. Hope Epic files a lawsuit against Google too.

<comment><USER66> Since there are alternative stores on Android (incluid Epic's own, which, IIRC, they used Fortnite exclusivity to launch), to which developers demonstrably do resort if Google's pricing or other terms become unfavorable, there's a lot weaker antitrust argument with Google Play.

<comment><USER72> I use Android with alternate app stores everyday, so I'm intimately familiar with the issues with them. The most prominent ongoing issue is that they can't auto-update apps the way Google's can. It's not a level playing field.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> baby-yoda the enemy (aapl/goog) of my enemy (antitrust regulators) is my friend?

<comment><USER73> No but you want them to fight at least

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> This is exactly what DHH fought over apple to get their app approved in the play store. If you still think that having to pay 25% of your profit just to list your product that you didn't even use their tools to make, then you're insane.

</comment><comment><USER75> As a Fortnite player, its time to buy an iPhone then

<comment><USER76> You might have missed some steps of this still developing story: [https://twitter.com/markgurman/status/1293984069722636288](https://twitter.com/markgurman/status/1293984069722636288)

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> Crazy number of boot lickers in these threads.

</comment><comment><USER78> This is going to backfire for Epic. I see both sides, however, the App Stores have overhead to support free apps, and they need to be compensated.

If a software developer has an issue with the distribution channel, then they can make their own, including the R&D and operate expense for the hardware. I know, really unpopular take. Bigger question is are Apple and Google (with hardware/software ecosystems) deserving of Bell-style regulation? The US already has a playbook for this.

<comment><USER10> According to another comment here, Epic paid Apple over $360 Million dollars in the last twelve months. I'm pretty sure Apple's overhead isn't so high that they need to charge that much money for just one application.

Epic already has a distribution channel, payment processing, the whole 9 yards, what they don't have is anyway onto the hardware that you own.

<comment><USER78> The amount paid to Apple is not a factor - it's what the agreement was. If that 360 MM is 30%, then we can also say I doubt Epic has over a billion in overhead. I do not believe the point is valid.

Epic does have a way onto the phones: provide an easy way for User's to jailbreak them as part of the ingress to the Epic distribution channel.

"In 2010 and 2012, the U.S. Copyright Office approved exemptions that allowed smartphone users to jailbreak their devices legally,[62] and in 2015 the Copyright Office approved an expanded exemption that also covers other all- purpose mobile computing devices, such as tablets"

So all Epic needs to do is assume the cost and investment of managing the inter-dependencies of the hardware with various other pieces of software, including their distribution channel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> IMO, this was Epic's one misstep—they should have pulled Fortnite from the Google Play Store a week before this stunt. Apple is the big fish (revenue- wise) with the most draconian policy. Provoking two giants at once was not necessary.

Every other aspect of how Epic played this has been brilliant IMO.

<comment><USER10> I disagree. This proves that one can be shut out of the almost the entire mobile software market in a single day.

Apple is not a monopoly but Apple and Google together have just shown the incredible power they wield.

<comment><USER46> Of course you can when you break the terms of services. Try adding some porn to your game and see it gone from both stores in a day as well. Or some other way to obvious break their terms.

<comment><USER10> This is a protest and a law suit against those terms of service. They have to break them to even have a case.

<comment><USER79> But the protest works is they're doing something which ought to be allowed. If Epic got pulled from the App Store for suddenly showing pornography, I don't think they'd get much sympathy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> Epic will lose this fight, because they initiated it the wrong way.

You just don't start a law suite by violating the terms, then go ahead and cry about it.

<comment><USER81> where did you get your law degree?

<comment><USER80> Epic Games, obviously.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> I predicted it one hour ago - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24149151](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24149151)

<comment><USER83> Take it easy Nostradamus.</comment></comment>


Do Polygraph Tests Actually Work? - <AUTHOR> https://priceonomics.com/do-polygraph-tests-actually-work/ <comment><USER2> What's that law of title writing, if your article poses a question in the title it can almost always be answered with "no" and the reader can skip your article?

<comment><USER3> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nah, they're a fuckin' scam.

The FBI still believes in them, though, which should tell you a lot.</comment>


Show HN: Ampercoin – a consumer friendly alternative to Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> http://www.ampercoin.com/

<comment><USER2> I'm skeptical to make a payment to reserve a username for a service that's not yet completely functional. In BTC no less despite being hailed as an alternative?!?

</comment><comment><USER3> Would you mind explaining (as it isn't explained on either github page, nor on the main page)

1)How "Proof of Plant" works. (Both what it is, and why it is secure. What prevents a long range attack?)

2)How is the value tied to the value of a dollar? Is there an exchange between this and dollars in some way? Or is the price supposed to be tied to the dollar because everyone knows the price is supposed to be tied to the dollar? (In a schelling-point-like way?) I don't think that would be sufficient to keep the price approximately a dollar, but I'm not sure.

suppose for some reason, I want the price of Ampercoin to go up beyond a dollar. Lets say I want an Ampercoin to be worth 10 dollars. Further, suppose I am rich. If I say to everyone "hey, I will buy Ampercoins at a price of $10/&1 ." Then people would do better to sell Ampercoin to me than they would to sell it to someone else at a lower price. Of course, just doing this I will eventually run out of money, but if I am sufficiently rich, I don't see why I couldn't affect the price.

Similarly, if I had a lot of Ampercoin, couldn't I sell it for &1/$0.10 ? As long as I was doing this, it would not make sense to buy it at a higher price. If there was always another entity willing to pay $1/&1 , then I suppose that might always keep the value of it at least one dollar? (and people could use that to get all my money)

This is not to say that I don't think a fixed exchange rate is achievable, just to say that I don't think a "its fixed at $1 because everyone knows its supposed to be fixed at $1" is stable against malicious attackers.

So of course, you are probably using some other method.

3)"Addresses come preloaded with 10 Ampercoins each." How does this work? Where do these &10 (supposedly worth $10) come from? Looking at /lee it says "Anonymous sent &10.00 to &lee 10 days ago" I assume this is an initial transaction which is made when the account is made, after the user sends a number of bitcoins to an address in order to buy the account.

This makes me skeptical of the security. How do those Ampercoins get there? It doesn't look like its meant to be proof of burn (if it is, that could be made more clear). If you have access to these bitcoins, and these bitcoins are all that are necessary to create an address with some coins, it seems like you would be able to give yourself very large amounts of Ampercoin. This is of course assuming that the bitcoin transaction are even necessary for the Ampercoins to be created, and that you aren't able to create however many accounts you want each with &10 (i.e. this is assuming that you are not trying to create a system where you have the ability to essentially print Ampercoins whenever you want, and where Ampercoins have a value of $1.)

In conclusion: I am skeptical that this is secure.

edit: I feel that perhaps I have been overly aggressive in this comment. I suppose I should add that if you have accomplished what you say you have accomplished (or if you accomplish what you are setting out to accomplish), then that is(/would be/will be) quite impressive, and congratulations (in advance)</comment>


Heroku Is Down - <AUTHOR> https://status.heroku.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Is anyone else getting timeouts with their heroku postgres instances? My dynos are healthy, but pg isn't. The status page doesn't mention anything about that.

Edit: it seems the postgres instances are running on amazon ec2, so that's probably why they're down. Edit: they're failing over postgres instances now, so we should be back up soon.

</comment><comment><USER2> My app is down, got alerted by my monitoring. (It's a hobby/side project app, so not a big deal, I'd be freaking out if this were a money-making production app. In this case, first thing I did before even checking heroku status was seeing if I had let my domain name expire... nope! phew).

While the heroku outage message that suggests the main problem is "dynos can not be restarted" \-- in fact what happened to me was at 3pm UTC Heroku tried to do an automatic "daily restart" of my app, triggering an outage of my app. I did not do anything else to ask for a restart.

The heroku stats/events page for my app shows ~300 critical errors, starting at 3pm UTC, immediately following "Dyno restart: Daily restart" event. (~1 hour 40 minutes before now). All appear to be "H20 App boot timeout". So perhaps the app has been down since then, although i would have thought my monitoring would alert me before now.

If when a reboot fails, it tries again, and fails again (~150 times an hour), and this is happening to a whole bunch of apps, especially as a consequence of heroku's automated dyno cycling... I can see how it would make a bad problem even worse/hard to recover from in heroku's infrastructure.

To heroku's credit... I'm not sure if I can remember this kind of widespread outage _ever_ happening before. Against heroku's side... I'm not sure what a heroku-deploying customer would be expected, by heroku, to do, to avoid downtime here. "Have your whole thing runnable on some non-heroku stack" kind of detracts from heroku's value proposition, which is you won't have to figure out stuff like that, heroku will do it for you. If I was going to do the work to ensure my app could be switched at any time to be deployed on some other stack... I'd probably just use that some other stack instead of heroku, as it's probably cheaper than heroku. The answer is probably "No matter how much you are doing yourself, outages are possible. By using heroku you put it in their hands, but outages are still possible."

 _update_ possibly related? [https://status.aws.amazon.com/?date=2019-08-31](https://status.aws.amazon.com/?date=2019-08-31) [https://status.aws.amazon.com/?date=2019-08-31](https://status.aws.amazon.com/?date=2019-08-31) (in which case you might have been saved by having multi-region deployment on heroku. But if it's only effecting us-east-1, you'd think heroku would have noticed and said so? Could be unrelated in an odd coincidence. Or perhaps there's effected heroku infrastructure on us-east-1 regardless of what region you choose to deploy on heroku).

<comment><USER3> > To heroku's credit... I'm not sure if I can remember this kind of widespread > outage ever happening before. Against heroku's side... I'm not sure what a > heroku-deploying customer would be expected, by heroku, to do, to avoid > downtime here.

This is the trade-off of lock-in into simple deployments.

It's largely the same, EKS/Beanstalk/maybe lambda + RDS + S3... Azure has similar offerines, GCP has similar offerings, Heroku has similar offerines. You can get your app up, running, hosted for a dime - cost based on usage. And you can do a lot of stuff with very little operational time invested. That's why this is so great for small startups with 5 technical dudes.

However, you can't get out. You're comitted to their abstractions for relational databases, deployments, DNS, loadbalancing, ...

If you go ahead and do the things you need yourself based on simple linux VMs, you can have much more mobility across cloud providers. Give us a terraform endpoint and some kind of centos image and we can probably host there, speaking of work.

However, that's overall an expensive and non-trivial thing. Suddenly, you're having so many problems heroku has a solution to. Suddenly you need someone who knows how to run a postgres cluster and how to handle failovers, or how not to. Suddenly you need someone who knows how drives should be handled.

This is becoming a really big rift I'm overall starting to see. Applications and deployments are becoming more and more trivial, but there aren't many people understanding how to make the stack below it run reliably, with low chances of data loss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reddit also seems to be down

<comment><USER5> Wonder if there's an underlying AWS issue.

Yup:

[https://status.aws.amazon.com/](https://status.aws.amazon.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I just poked one of my really old applications running ruby 1.8.7 and got a bunch of errors about half an hour or so ago. The status page was fine then.

I hope it wasn't me that broke it lol

</comment><comment><USER7> Sling TV is also down, which makes sense given the AWS outage.

</comment><comment><USER8> We make moderate use, 0.5M MAU, of Heroku and AWS-east-1 and appear to be up.

Thank goodness... Last thing I needed on a 3 day weekend was an outage.

</comment><comment><USER9> My dynos and postgres dbs are ok, thank goodness. Hopefully it's been fixed already.

</comment><comment><USER10> reddit is responding for me about 20% of the time.

forum.wordreference.com is also completely down for me.

</comment><comment><USER11> Man I wish literally all of the web ends up on AWS and then we get an outage.</comment>


iPad Keyboards - <AUTHOR> https://www.apple.com/ipad-keyboards/ <comment><USER2> At $300 that's a very expensive part for something that's already attached to every laptop it's trying to immitate.</comment>


'Free Basics' Will Take Away More Than Our Right to the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/12/29/free-basics-will-take-away-more-our-right-internet <comment><USER2> Ignoring the FUD that is the rest of the hilariously unsourced article, how long is it going to be before people finally drop the "but my reclaimed seeds" argument? It's not done in modern farming[1]; it's literally a non issue. Monsanto is certainly no saint, but as far as IP suits go suing the farmer that purposefully stole round-up ready seeds from a neighboring farm (as evident by the fact he turns around and uses the pesticide) is pretty mild as far as things go[2].

At least the issue can remain as a litmus test for the amount of BS present in an article.

Further reading [1][https://gmoanswers.com/ask/isnt-it-better-farmers-harvest- an...](https://gmoanswers.com/ask/isnt-it-better-farmers-harvest-and-reuse- their-own-seeds) [2] [http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/10/18/163034053/top...](http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/10/18/163034053/top- five-myths-of-genetically-modified-seeds-busted)

</comment><comment><USER3> Without getting into the merits of the argument, here's a heads up on the author www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/25/seeds-of-doubt</comment>


Megaupload 2.0 to Launch with Original Megaupload User Database - e-sushi https://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-2-0-to-launch-with-original-megaupload-user-database-160708/ <comment><AUTHOR> To be clear, I believe that this means that the new service will reinstate the old _user_ database meaning that users who had premium before will regain that status. However, this _does not_ mean that old files that were stored with the original Megaupload will be reinstated.</comment>


Is Marijuana Addictive? - <AUTHOR> https://elemental.medium.com/is-marijuana-addictive-ab3a99b4276e <comment><USER2> from experience yes, not only psychologically but physically too. i say this as someone who has not only sampled 133 unique psychoactives (yes i kept count) ranging from the likes of non addictive stuff like LSD to highly addictive chemicals like Oxycontin, Cocaine, Meth and a whole host of others the only ones i became long term addicted to were cannabis, nicotine and thanks to the NHS Pregabalin (which has some horrendous withdrawals)

youll have chills, sweats, a complete lack of appetite, be irritable and unreasonable, horrendous dreams if/when you can finally sleep. im sure its not the case for everyoe just as it isnt with alcohol for most or any other chems. addiction is in fact quite a personal thing, whether its genetic, social or psychological i cant be sure but its definitely a real thing</comment>


Ask HN: what kind of pages (automated) can I create to make money from Adwords - <AUTHOR>

What kind of pages (automated) can I create to make money from Adwords? Is there a name for this field/domain that I can learn more about ? <comment><USER2> I'd be surprised if this isn't a violation of Adwords's TOS. HN is also probably not the best place to ask about this. We're all about making things, not making money with shady techniques.</comment>


Get Psyched! - Why understanding your right brain will help you succeed. - <AUTHOR> http://www.foundread.com/view/get-psyched <comment><USER2> "Interpreting the feedback you've sought on your idea can be scary. Here is a simple yet totally unknown logic to entrepreneurs: when everyone tells you 'Yes' on your startup idea, you probably shouldn't do it. Your idea is either too late to the market or not unique enough to have an edge. On the other hand, if you hear a 'No' a lot, don't get depressed or defensive, pay more attention. This might be good news."

This excerpt is quite confusing...kindly explain in laymens terms please :-)</comment>


Climate more pressing than Brexit, say 71% of Britons – poll - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/26/climate-more-pressing-than-brexit-say-71-of-britons-poll <comment><USER2> That's because Brexit and climate emergencies are both essentially _gradualist_ [0] topics. They are topics which will be sat on and dragged out for as long as possible because it's something to talk about in parliament. Brexit is something for them to do and make them look busy, but we all know Brexit and the climate emergency has been dragged out for far too long.

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

<comment><USER3> Not really, brexit has been a very difficult discussion that has been taking too much time and not enjoyable for any politician because they have to take a side, which 50% of people will disagree.

Climate is something no one will disagree, so there's only one side, and it looks good to talk about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not a very meaningful poll, if you ask me. It's currently hot in Northern Europe and people are tired of the Brexit discussion, and the two issues do not have much to do with each other. It's like asking whether apples or oranges are more important.

<comment><USER5> It is in regards to the fact that Brexit has been the main priority of the UK government since the referendum and it does feel that everything else has been paused.

<comment><USER6> Forgive my skepticism, but has Brexit _really_ been the dominating priority for over 3 years?

Isn't that the promise primary purpose of the recent PM + Cabinet shakeup after three years: to actually make Brexit happen?

<comment><USER5> After 3 prime ministers and government re-shuffles, i would say yes.

<comment><USER6> Yes, now it is.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Dan Boneh's Crypto II Course Starts Jan. 11 - <AUTHOR> https://www.coursera.org/course/crypto2 <comment><AUTHOR> Pushed back for another six months yet again. So much for the idea somebody here put forth that it always gets cancelled in the middle of the previous month if it's going to get cancelled. This time it's four days before it would have started.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I know there are quite a few readers of HN that have been waiting for Crypto II for a while, so consider this a public service announcement.</comment>


GOLDMAN: The Apple Watch is going to be trouble for old-school watch makers - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/the-apple-watch-is-going-to-be-trouble-for-traditional-watch-companies-says-goldman-sachs-2015-4

<comment><USER2> I think this article title is a bit misleading. When I think "old-school watch makers" I think of something like Rolex or Breitling, the high end painstakingly crafted watches that are as much about art, engineering, style, and "look at how much money I can spend" as they are about telling time. I don't think the Apple Watch poses much of a threat to these companies, at least not in the near future.

The body of the article is more clear, showing that midrange watch makers are likely to suffer, which I think is a reasonable prediction to make.</comment>


How we improved performance on Google Code - <AUTHOR> http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2008/03/how-we-improved-performance-on-google.html

<comment><USER2> These are some pretty basic improvements; this is a more complete list:

<http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html>

You can also use the YSlow plugin to rate your pages based on the 13 suggestions, etc</comment>


If the EU wins against Google, it could change the search engine forever - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2015/4/16/8433153/eu-google-antitrust

<comment><USER2> It's going to be really interesting when Google succeeds in creating a self- improving algorithm that even the developers don't understand - which runs entirely off search data without developer interaction.

If people prefer Google products using an algorithm that decided most people prefer Google products and therefore places Google products above competitor products - is it still trying to use their monopoly power to push their own products?

Who wants to start placing bets on the a piggy-back company being created that searches through Google API's? I don't know... something like "prefergoogle.com"

This is absolutely silly.</comment>


What Does it Mean to "Buy" an E-Book? - <AUTHOR> http://dlewis.net/2009/12/01/what-does-it-mean-to-buy-an-e-book/

<comment><USER2> It means that money has left your bank account. Literally _everything_ else is negotiable.

</comment><comment><USER3> The author seems to analyze only "buy" and "rent" but what we really do is "buy a license".</comment>


IPython 2.0.0 beta Released - <AUTHOR> http://archive.ipython.org/testing/2.0.0/

<comment><USER2> More useful than a raw download page, an example of new features: [http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/ipython/ipython/blob/mast...](http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/ipython/ipython/blob/master/examples/widgets/Lorenz.ipynb)</comment>


Welcome to the Everything Boom, or Maybe the Everything Bubble - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/08/upshot/welcome-to-the-everything-boom-or-maybe-the-everything-bubble.html?src=twr <comment><USER2> This is an aside, but I take exception to their figure, "Nowhere to put your money". I find it manipulative.

Look, I quickly rearranged their figure by just reversing the order of the 6 tranches (which is arbitrary, and not actually connected - though they seem that way). Original:

[http://imgur.com/6my8mqu](http://imgur.com/6my8mqu)

Reversing the order of the 6 charts:

[http://imgur.com/mq61KrL](http://imgur.com/mq61KrL)

Just flip back and forth! It shows a different impression. I haven't changed any of the data.

The original impression only exists because they sorted the six downward (by end-point of each of the 6 charts - they even make those end-points bold dots). That's an awful shifty way to tell a story of something moving down over time.... Plus - how did they select these six? Indonesian Stocks - Manhattan Office buildings? Could it be they selected six that fit well together? (Mine, lacking this preselection, is way more jumpy.)

That said, I enjoyed most of the article and don't like this sleight-of-hand, which calls it into question for me.

<comment><USER3> The point isn't so much the ordering, but that they are all - across different traditional returns - outside of historical norms. It's more about the grey bar - wherever it is, the asset is below it or at about the bottom.

<comment><USER2> And why do the seven years 2004-2011 provide the "historical norms"?

Regardless, it is a rather small point and I will readily agree that all six assets have been falling. But arrange them vertically - or better yet, superimpose them - instead of listing them side-by-side, _sorted in descending order by 2014 value and selected to dovetail together!_ and the story isn't nearly as clear.... Just try it.

The graph is set up to tell a macro story far beyond 2 years. It looks hastily like a 12-year story of rising from 6% to a high of under 8 and falling sharply and steadily down to 3 (briefly under 2).

But that's not what the graph says at all. It just looks that way visually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I do think it is both right to view the problem as a savings glut _and_ a genuine lack of _worthwhile_ opportunities for the entities responsible for the savings glut. Why? Because the entities responsible for the savings glut, the multinationals, are the biggest hegemons the world has ever seen.

There is a plethora of good opportunities to be exploited out in the world, but not if you're holding $180 billion in savings (I'm looking at you Apple). These huge savings gluts are, effectively, liquidity traps, because these entities (besides, perhaps, governments) can't possibly hope to effectively deploy such large amounts of capital effectively. Add to the mix that inflation is so low, and hanging on to vast sums of cash starts to look like one of the least foolish things the Fortune 500 are doing right now. There isn't a shortage of good opportunities, it's just that good opportunities look so tiny to the big boys.

I don't have much hope that targeting a higher inflation rate will do much, but I think it's worth a shot.

<comment><USER5> It's a QE-induced glut. At some point the Federal Reserve will start selling the assets it bought with freshly printed currency, and with the rates going up more interesting opportunities will appear.

Apple's case has been dissected here [http://www.quora.com/Apple-company/What- would-be-a-good-use-...](http://www.quora.com/Apple-company/What-would-be-a- good-use-of-Apples-110-2+-billion-in-cash) \- having a large pile of cash is generally better than not having a large pile of cash if you're in the manufacturing business, and need to convince your partners that you have enough financial strength for them to commit to a factory build-out that could take years to accomplish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> They didn't mention cultural and psychological aspects that probably contribute -- the sustainability orientation and collapse anxiety.

The central banks' actions seem to be providing more and more reasons for people to take a sustainable (defensive) view.

It looks like a self-fulfilling prophecy unless you manipulate it fundamentally. There is plenty of manipulation built-in to the system already -- its just mainly opportunistic or used to preserve the existing structures.

What is needed from the financial system is an institutional honesty and willingness to grow into an optimistic structure that incorporates more hard science and technology, focused on human and environmental well-being.

Integrate more physical and social science, better utilization of technology, and a greater degree of holism, into the field of economics, while still preserving the values of freedom and appreciation of complexity that will allow for diversity and evolution of systems.

</comment><comment><USER7> Interest earned on asset investments may be getting smaller and smaller but with inflation at 2% or less, investors are still coming out on top aren't they? So, doesn't this only become a real problem if inflation goes up markedly? Also, if it is a bubble and it pops, wont that mean that for many of those asset classes, investing will subsequently be viewed as more risky and the interest offered increased accordingly? And if inflation does go up, making current returns on asset investment unattractive wont that choke investor demand and force asset owners to offer better interest rates?

Apologies for my economics 101 questions. I like finance but don't pretend to know much about it or understand any of it :)

*Note: when I say assets I'm thinking more bonds, treasuries etc. than physical real estate.

</comment><comment><USER8> inflation - economics; a general increase in prices and fall in the purchasing value of money.

[https://www.google.com/webhp?espv=2&es_th=1&ie=UTF-8#q=defin...](https://www.google.com/webhp?espv=2&es_th=1&ie=UTF-8#q=define+inflation)

So is the "Everything Boom" going to be the new polite way of saying inflation is happening? I mean that is the expected outcome of the economic policies of the past several years is it not?

<comment><USER9> correct. Demand-siders have insisted that we all need to start spending more money to kick the economy into gear. Broadly, the only tool to do this is to "print money"; read: lower interest rates, twiddle with the reserve ratio requirement, directly pay off banks for certain types of activities.

Supposedly this will make people want to buy things now (instead of later). There is this odd effect though, that increasing prices also can make people insecure, as in: _Worldwide, more money is piling into savings than businesses believe they can use to make productive investments_. In other words, the people WANT deflation.

The net effect though is we will be transferring wealth from the poor to the rich; and then the bubble will pop, the rich will cash out of their assets early, and people with slower investment classes (401ks, pension funds, etc.) will get screwed. And some of these other people will even get fired, putting them into even greater risk.

I'm not going to defend "supply-side" economics, either, because that's got it's own brand of stupid going on.

There is a modest distinction between bubbles and inflation. While inflation guns bubbles and aggregates small, local bubbles into bigger, systemic bubbles, there can be bubbles during deflationary periods, and systemic inflation doesn't necessarily end in a bubble. Bubbles are characterized by a specific set of price dynamics that are guided by human psychology; the most characteristic, but hardest to notice, is when the asset price collapses, typically around twice the speed that it rose.

<comment><USER10> >Demand-siders have insisted that we all need to start spending more money to kick the economy into gear.

Pretty much.

>Broadly, the only tool to do this is to "print money"; read: lower interest rates, twiddle with the reserve ratio requirement, directly pay off banks for certain types of activities.

Well, those are the only tools _central banks_ have available to them, but there are much better options. Unfortunately those tools are only available to legislatures, who have decided not to use them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The subtext of this article is that people should be able to just put their money anywhere and make returns.

Infinite growth is finally being revealed as the financial dogma it is.

</comment><comment><USER12> Relevant: [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-06/bond-anxiety- grows-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-06/bond-anxiety-grows- in-1-6-trillion-repo-market-as-failures-soar.html)

tl;dr there's a severe shortage of treasury bonds, leading to a worrying lack of liquidity in the interbank market.

</comment><comment><USER13> Not sure if the world has a glut of real savings. It does have a glut of liquidity and a huge steaming pile of IOUs that virtually ensures there will be no end to printing of new money for years to come.

So markets are thinking "central banks will never allow another 2008 to happen. What could possybli go wrong!!" and throw billions at Snapchat and Somali pirate bonds.

There are cheap financial assets. Basically any tail hedge that would benefit if it ever turns out that it's simply not up to central banks to fully decide what happens and when.

Death may have taken a holiday but his return to work won't be announced much in advance.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm-a cut through all of this. There's an incredibly simple explanation for what looks like an pan-asset bubble.

 _"If you ask me to give you the one big bargain out there, I'm not sure there is one."_

There is one. Human labor.

"Everything" being expensive means that currencies are losing value, which means that wages are declining in terms of what the money buys. Ever look at the S&P in houses? Or in oil? Or in (though I don't find it as useful) gold? That alone makes our 21st-century look like Japan's lost decade (1990s). No, that's not something we could fix by moving to the gold standard. Human labor is just worth less, and capital is worth more.

Like most bubbles, the process is actually faster-than-exponential. (Normal economic growth is already exponential.) The meltdown of the middle class is, for example, driving up college tuitions, creating demand for expensive high schools (now that it's extremely difficult to go to Harvard from a public high school, when it wasn't that rare 15 years ago) and, in the few urban areas where unconnected or semi-connected people can find good jobs, pushing rents into the ionosphere (and prices to 40-50x annual rent, which one hopes is due to various money-laundering shenanigan but may be in anticipation of further rent increases). The disintegration of middle-class America is a self-fueling feedback loop as talented people strive to get away from the old order into the new (expensive urban centers, elite universities). The goal (in this forceful middle-class in-pressure toward expensive, elite places) is to get enough connections to people who can keep their own lights on, before things start going out. Some of these changes are good (such as the movement away from environmentally unsustainable suburbs) but most are bad.

Our society has stopped valuing labor, whether it's the skilled kind or unskilled. That's why a talentless dickhead with connections gets to be a "founder" and take 40%, doing nothing but monetizing his own social position, while you write all the code and get 1%.

Is this a bubble? It sure is. The "crash" will probably be a revolution. It will be global, and it may not be violent here but it will probably be violent in many places. The funny thing about bubbles is that their ends are impossible to predict. This one, especially because it is political and social as well as economic, and a bit unprecedented (the large middle class of the US was unprecedented, much less its destruction) is impossible to time. It could happen next week, or it could be 100 years from now.

<comment><USER15> I agree labour is undervalued. Particularly in developing parts of the world, compared to equivalent labour in developed parts of the world. I think with remote work and access to education online, globalisation is only getting started in many industries. At the moment it can be arbitraged but I guess the opportunities will disappear as differences even out over the next 10 years.

Some labour is also overvalued - where a small group can basically push the price of their labour upwards by manipulating the system. For instance, executive pay with share buybacks.

As far as revolutions, pressure will definitely mount but it won't spark, not within the middle class, unless things get really bad. By bad I mean bad enough not to being able to afford things like food. That's how the arab spring started - food prices spiked beyond affordability. If you have responsibilities like family, people value their (relative) comfort, even if it's dwindling, over the risk of physical injury and chance of losing everything.

<comment><USER14> _By bad I mean bad enough not to being able to afford things like food. That 's how the arab spring started - food prices spiked beyond affordability. If you have responsibilities like family, people value their (relative) comfort, even if it's dwindling, over the risk of physical injury and chance of losing everything._

Healthcare. 45,000 people die per year of health insurance (or lack thereof) in the U.S. This number may improve under the PPACA ("Obamacare") but insurers will fight and struggle against it, and as soon as Republicans regain control (which is inevitable) we'll see new laws that allow health insurance companies to kill even more people.

The one thing that makes it not revolution-provoking is that it's mostly old, sick people who are affected. Also, people think they're better off than they actually are, that because they "have insurance" they're not going to get fucked over.

"Obamacare" improved the situation, but he had to fight hard to get very little progress, and I think that his work will be undone in the next 5 years since it didn't change the underlying problems. This situation requires a complete overhaul (single-payer system, or public-option at the least).

What I'm saying, however, is that things legitimately _are_ that bad. Dying of health insurance is the 21st century's version of dying of starvation. It is, nonetheless, completely unpredictable when and how these things will come to a head, and there's still a possibility that society will reverse its own decline in another way.</comment></comment></comment>


Activity Streams - a format for syndicating social activities around the web - <AUTHOR> http://activitystrea.ms/ <comment><AUTHOR> Wondering why there is no read-ad or clicked-ad verbs?</comment>


A Brief History of Dwarfism - <AUTHOR> http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/a-brief-history-of-dwarfism-and-the-little-people-of-america/ <comment><USER2> On the topic of understanding marginalized groups who build their own culture (including LPs, the Deaf community, and others) and how "cures" are often perceived as attempts at elimination, I can't recommend highly enough Andrew Solomon's book "Far from the Tree"[1], a work 11 years in the making written with immense empathy that tells the varying stories of dozens of people in each of these communities and the differing ways they react to mainstream culture, to the "horizontal" cultures of people like them, and to "cures" for their condition, specifically told from the angle of the parent-child relationship. It's utterly fascinating, deeply informative, and often heartbreakingly personal. It's a huge book, but you can take it chapter by chapter or I can also highly recommend the audiobook version, read by the author.

[1]: [http://www.farfromthetree.com/](http://www.farfromthetree.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Interestingly, one variant of hereditary dwarfism that is present in a small group of people, Laron syndrome [1], is a good illustration to show that methods of altering the operation of metabolism to extend healthy life in short-lived mammals should not be expected to produce anywhere near the same gains in long-lived humans. The longest lived engineered mice are those with disruptions to growth hormone or its receptor, and Laron syndrome is much the same thing. The mice live as much as 70% longer, but people with Laron syndrome don't seem to be any longer lived than the rest of us, though it is possible based on the data gathered to date that they are somewhat more resistant to cancer and diabetes.

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

</comment><comment><USER4> Who knew there were over 400 different medical conditions that can cause dwarfism?

<comment><USER5> When you define dwarfism as "adult height <= 147 cm", I'm not surprised.

Animal biology is complex, and a lot of competing factors come into play when determining the dimensions of an adult.

Cross-species hybrids have reciprocal crosses, like the hinny is to the mule, or the tigon is to the liger. The gestation environment produces different results from (theoretically) the same genetic mix. Hinnies are smaller than mules, and tigons smaller than ligers.

Any deficiency of several single dietary factors prior to maturity could cause retarded or stunted growth. The drugs typically used in the parents' household could have an effect, like tobacco smoke. Biological colonies in the home might have an effect. Cockroaches, dust mites, or mold spores could be prompting some epigenetic response. Then there's autoimmune disorders, endocrine feedback disruption, unethical human experimentation, physical traumas, contagious disease during a critical growth period, etc.

That's really a testament to the adaptability of animal species. A huge variety of environmental stresses result in a smaller, but still-viable, organism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You can almost hear the headline writer flirting with a very bad pun.

</comment><comment><USER7> From TFA:

>Mengele is remembered as the angel of death—a cruel doctor who _performed unscientific and often deadly experiments_

From Wikipedia [1]:

>He was notorious for the selection of victims to be killed in the gas chambers and for _performing unscientific and often deadly human experiments_ on prisoners.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Mengele](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Mengele)</comment>


From almost shutting down Fathom Analytics to tripling our MRR - <AUTHOR> https://usefathom.com/news/v2 <comment><USER2> Love reading stories like this about what it's like in the early days of a new business. Those early decisions about what to do when you're struggling to get traction are so critical, but no one talks about them. Thanks for writing this.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're most welcome!</comment></comment>


iPhone 7 Modem Performance Tested in a Lab - <AUTHOR> http://cellularinsights.com/iphone7/ <comment><USER2> I'm an iPhone 7+ / Verizon owner in Manhattan. The phone works really well once the 10.03 update with the 1.00.05 Firmware upgrade for the Qualcomm Baseband Modem. I've gotten download speeds of over 100 MBits/sec.

For those interested, the iPhone has a Test Mode which displays relevant signal information by calling _3001#12345#_ .

Usually the phone starts with Band 13 and then switches to Band 4 or Band 2.

I do wish that Apple sold the phone using the full feature set of the Qualcomm X12 MDM 9645 modem. Especially places with high population density and very large building that block signal it would be nice to have better signal that the use of 4x4 MIMO 256 QAM would provide.

<comment><USER2> The Test Mode is supposed to have an '*' before the number and after the number.</comment></comment>


U.S. Radically Changes Its Story of the Boats in Iranian Waters - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2016/01/15/the-u-s-radically-changes-its-story-of-the-boats-in-iranian-waters-to-an-even-more-suspicious-version/ <comment><USER2> Ok: let the challenges to a reasonable series of factual statements begin!</comment>


Eating mushrooms may reduce the risk of cognitive decline - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190312103702.htm <comment><USER2> Wow, interesting possibilities. Great find.

As life expectancy grows, and an aging Baby Boomer population in the US, these studies become more urgent. Either to find new solutions, or to rule out avenues that dead end.

This article has actually great info on the study, the team's previous work and next steps. It answered my initial questions as well. (many of these research articles have little to none information outside the official published study)

My initial questions:

* Cooked or raw mushrooms?

\-- The photo caption says 3/4 cup of cooked mushrooms.

* Did the type of mushroom matter?

\-- "Six commonly consumed mushrooms in Singapore were referenced in the study. They were golden, oyster, shiitake and white button mushrooms, as well as dried and canned mushrooms. "

* How did they collect data? (maybe this should have been my first question)

\-- "The six-year study, which was conducted from 2011 to 2017, collected data from more than 600 Chinese seniors over the age of 60 living in Singapore. The research was carried out with support from the Life Sciences Institute and the Mind Science Centre at NUS, as well as the Singapore Ministry of Health's National Medical Research Council. The results were published online in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease on 12 March 2019."</comment>


What the iPad is Missing: Good Typography - <AUTHOR> http://fontfeed.com/archives/ipad-typography

<comment><AUTHOR> I submitted this because I found it an interesting and informative article about a topic that many developers neglect: Typography.

I am trying to learn as much about it as possible to make up for since in the past: using default font faces in web applications where better options are available so that it looks better and is more accessible. As seen here, even Apple is guilty of transgressions at times.

With Typekit, the free Google Font Directory and excellent browser support, there is no excuse anymore to use standard and/or ugly fonts. There are a lot of good articles and resources linked to from this article so I hope someone finds it useful.</comment>


Scientists discover way to make quantum states last 10k times longer - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2020-08-scientists-quantum-states-longer.html <comment><USER2> >Universal coherence protection in a solid-state spin qubit

[https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/08/12/scie...](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/08/12/science.abc5186)</comment>


Show HN: Find Local Hackathons - <AUTHOR>

Site: http://localhackathons.com/ (currently bay area only)<p>Done very raw, super basic MVP. Would love your feedback whether this is useful or not to some and if you'd find a further developed version would be of good use. Thanks <comment><USER2> This is incredibly valuable. I'd love to see this in my city (San Diego). Are you thinking about monetizing it? I know this is obvious, but I've seen some successful (similar) sites do featured listings, and at scale, I think this could be quite popular.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Eventually I will. I'll add SD to the list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's a good idea. Maybe you could do a homepage similar to craigslist so people can select their city once you get enough events. Have you checked out the competition? I found hackathon.io doing something similar.

</comment><comment><USER4> A little too minimal, it looks like one of those scam sites. You might want to give it a redesign. Other than that, I think this is an awesome idea, can't wait for it to come to my area (Toronto).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I agree. It was just done quickly to throw something out for testing. Definitely needs a redesign.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: <http://localhackathons.com/>

<comment><USER5> The MVP is already useful to me...actually, I can't think of what more you could add (except a favicon). Can you do an NYC version?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll add it to the list =]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is awesome! I've already registered for a few events found via the site.

</comment><comment><USER7> Nice, that's quite useful.

</comment><comment><USER7> Very useful, thanks!</comment>


What can I say? Sometimes our newsbots make mistakes. - <AUTHOR> http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2008/06/what-can-i-say-sometimes-our-newsbots.html

<comment><AUTHOR> FSJ satire, but some insightful commentary on what effect plummeting CPM will have on the news business.</comment>


Ask HN: I'm a "successful," uneducated programmer. What next? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN, I'm unsure what the next move is in my career. I'm in the US and have been in the industry for the past decade. I took classes at one point and did terribly, lacking motivation and being eager to return to the workforce. I spent my time there freelancing and left in the middle of the second semester, failing every class. My cumulative GPA is 2.0 at best. I can't stand school.
After that I worked my way up from low-paying "grunt" positions to high-paying senior/informal lead positions, delivering great results at every job. I've taught myself a broad range of technologies and techniques in that time.
Now it feels like I've hit my ceiling, and at 28 that's disappointing. I'd like to be a principal, architect, or even CTO. And I don't want to wait another ten years for the skepticism I meet at the workplace (due to the combination of a lack of education, and my youth) to evaporate. It makes it difficult to get the job done, especially when that requires the latitude to make sweeping technical decisions.
Places like Google and LinkedIn have recruited me in the past, only to fall silent before so much as a phone screen due to the lack of a degree. But vets whose work I respect, from BigCorps like Google and Intel, have told me I'm one of the best they've worked with.
How do I break this paper ceiling? Is it in my mind alone? Are there credible CS degrees that factor in work experience, so I could limit my laughable anguish in classroom learning? Would it even be worthwhile to pursue a degree, given my awful transcript?
The other paths to the jobs I want seem to require fortune (work at a very successful startup and either get acquihired into a leadership role, or get the reputation so it's a foregone conclusion) or serious sacrifice (heavy OSS development outside of work, but I already give 100% to my day job). I already dismissed one such gift-horse, unable to relocate overseas when a BigCorp was going to hire me as a senior during an acquisition. <comment><USER2> I've found that the kind of company that cultivates a culture in which degrees are paramount is not the kind of company I want to work for. I skipped college because I was alone in NYC and had to make ends meet. In that I'm wholly a self-made man, yet I choose to look forward to my future achievements instead of past ones. Anyone who is incapable of accepting my approach to life has nothing to offer me which I could learn.

A word of caution: don't fall prey to the Peter principle. You seem to have marketable hard skills, which brought you some success to date. You're better off capitalizing on those hard skills instead of moving up the management ladder. Think of it this way: at 28 you still have 30-ish years of professional work to look forward to. Assuming you can make the jump to CTO right now, will you be able to sustain movement along a continuum of CTO-level employment until your retirement? That sounds unlikely because it is. You're better off pacing yourself by building out a technical base of unassailable solidity. You will reap rewards for this in the long term.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is excellent advice, thank you. I think that after rising through the ranks quickly, I'm worried that my advancement (and earnings) are now capped for a while. Meanwhile I see less skilled developers fresh out of school making near what I make, getting signing bonuses, etc. and no doubt on their way to better pay at more interesting jobs. So there is an element of envy. Often it feels like I'm on the outside looking in on the tech industry because of all of the opportunities that seem unattainable (described here in another comment).

<comment><USER3> Relax. You are young and have a lot of time ahead of you. Look not at what your neighbour has, for his gain is not your loss.

I'm 30 and I have just decided on transiting from application support positions to linux and coding. All with an unfinished English BA, haha. What do I care for the young who figured their paths earlier and did well in school? All the better for them.

<comment><USER4> I'd be interested in talking with you more about how you're getting this done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >Places like Google and LinkedIn have recruited me in the past, only to fall silent before so much as a phone screen due to the lack of a degree. But vets whose work I respect, from BigCorps like Google and Intel, have told me I'm one of the best they've worked with.

No... this has nothing to with lack of degree. You are probably missing a skill they value. Find out what it is and fix that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I never applied to these places, so take this with a grain of salt. But when I was recruited by Google several years ago, the recruiter was enthusiastic but got back to me several days later saying that she simply could not sell the hiring manager on me because of lack of degree. In LinkedIn's case, they mistook me for a recent grad due to creating a new profile on their website, and after setting up an initial phone call that revealed this error, I never heard back from them (truthfully, the latter opportunity was probably not what I'd want anyway).

You're right that I'm lacking in some skills, but it seems like the skill bar is set much higher for a person without a degree. You have to be truly exceptional to warrant consideration.

<comment><USER5> Oh, that's true. It may be different without a referral. If you get a referral, even just because you met someone at a meetup/conference and came off as a somewhat intelligent person, you should be able to bypass that filter step for sure.

You'll still need an academic _understanding_ of software, but we're talking maybe a year of part time self study at max if you have no clue about this sort of thing. Just my opinion. I haven't worked at Goog/Amzn but was scheduled to interview before I took another job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't believe Google or Facebook would care if you have a degree. All that matters is how good of a coder you are.

Case in point, Google has hired high school graduates, and Facebook's founder dropped out of college. I wouldn't be surprised if Facebook also hired high school grads or dropouts even.

</comment><comment><USER7> One reason some companies want to see a college degree is for the exact reason you're not finishing it - because for many people, working four years without reward is to hard to get motivated for. They want the kind of people who will spend four years to get a reward at the end.

I am also puzzled by you dropping out halfway through a semester and failing multiple classes. Why were you taking more than one class if such a thing were a possibility? You made two mistakes, not one. First, you heavily overburdened yourself with many classes. Then you did not drop one or some but all of them half-way.

Sometimes schools will let you retake a course, and go from an F to the new grade. So all may not be lost in that respect. It ultimately doesn't matter anyhow, a 3.0 GPA and diploma trumps a 2.0 dropout.

If I was you, I would, if I could commit myself to finishing a class, and really start out aiming for an A in the class, take one class a semester. For myself, due to business outside of class and/or a very hard class I sometimes let that slip to A-, then B+ etc.

Start small (one class a semester - maybe at night or on the weekend), aim high and make an effort (try for an A). If circumstances show an A- is more likely, slowly settle on that. If needed, slowly back into a B+.

Your big mistake was wildly overburdening yourself, then dramatically throwing in the towel on everything. Then having remorse and dread in revisiting school, whereas you may be able to retake those classes and turn an F into an A, and even if you can't you are better finishing school any how.

You have to chop this down to what can be managed - one class a semester. Then aim high. If you get 100 every test (or 95) it will motivate you. You will also have the time to learn the subject - algorithms, databases, complexity theory - well.

I don't think you'll break that wall you talk about until you go back and finish. Some outliers can, but most can not. You have to change how you approach it. Don't sign up for 3 classes then drop all of them. Sign up for one, and aim high. If circumstances force a B, fine, you did the best you could.

Also try to avoid hardcore math and science classes for your first class back. Do a required easy course like 20th century American literature to get back in the swing of things.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the academic advice.

> I am also puzzled by you dropping out halfway through a semester and failing > multiple classes.

OK, I omitted something (not deliberately. It's interesting how we unconsciously cut out the more painful parts of our lives). Being a young fool, I got into some legal trouble at the time and had to make money to hire a lawyer. I also had a court date set for the summertime, which ruled out my Spanish teacher's generous offer for me to stay with her family overseas that summer. This meant that I was about to be homeless, not to mention lacking any way to afford the legal fees.

I was very lucky to get a good job offer as soon as I started looking. It meant that I had a three hour commute from my dorm, but I was able to save up enough money to land on my feet in two months. Otherwise, I would've been homeless.

I did everything I could to complete the courses at first (studying and writing essays on my stolen two-hour commuter rail ride, for instance), but I simply lacked the energy and perseverance to make things work. After a month of trying this, I had to stop so that I could at least do well at the job. Most of my teachers were devastated when I told them that I could not continue with the coursework because I'd done very well to that point and was more engaged than most other students (it was well past the deadline to drop a course).

Looking back on it, I'm amazed things went as well as they did. I do believe that this story would have gone quite differently for a person from a more privileged background than my own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is an easy way to break the paper ceiling: get a degree from an accredited school for 'money'; there are many such schools out there, who will take your money happily and hand out degree in 3 years of course work completion. PM me to get more details.

Follow maxaf's advice as well: Unless you can get a golden parachute when you are let go, don't think about the career progression on the management ladder.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, and I hope the post didn't come across as aiming to be a manager, indeed that's the opposite of my goal. I'm mostly interested in becoming a principal/architect at some point and am worried that path is blocked. The sort of school you described doesn't sound very reputable... wouldn't that be a waste of money?

<comment><USER8> Only the people go to such schools know what is going on; for outsiders, not so much. They are not "for profit" schools. They are not "Devry/ITU/Univ of Phoenix".

<comment><USER9> Can you share a few of these schools?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Read the book "As A Man Thinketh" by James Allen. It's a very small book and it'll take you an afternoon.

If it doesn't turn things around for you, drop me an email and I'll send you whatever you paid the book (it's a safe bet on my part -- in 20 years nobody has ever asked for the refund).

<comment><USER11> It's available for free on Project Gutenberg--I demand you give me my nothing back!

<comment><USER10> That's awesome!

Oh, and here is your refund:

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you want to work at Google/Facebook, you should try to find someone inside to refer you. Otherwise there really is no cost to aggressively following up with recruiters if they fall silent.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you're right. I've avoided networking so far in my career but I have to overcome that silly sense of pride, because if anything is going to help, it's the personal references of those who do have the trust/pedigree. Honestly, I'm amazed I've even gotten this far purely on the strength of technical skills and moderate charisma.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Do you WANT to work for a bigcorp? Then maybe a degree makes sense.

Do you want to work for a startup it yourself? Then I doubt they care.

I have degrees but not sure they buy me much. Helped for my first job or two for sure.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know if a degree is the solution, I'm open to anything. Right now, it feels like the lack of education excludes me from the following opportunities: Engineer at a BigCorp, funded cofounder/first hire (investors seem to want that pedigree), and tech lead/architect at a non-tech company that relies on the degree heuristic for leadership hires. I frequently see exciting job postings that require a bachelor's/master's CS degree, no exceptions.

<comment><USER13> Ya and that may all be true, but I just don't feel it because I have a stamp.

I did get my masters going part-time at night, some colleges support part time for bachelors as well. You COULD keep working and pick it up on the side... I know when I KNEW I needed a degree to do the job I wanted, I got much better grades because I cared. When I was just going to school to check a box, I had a hard time caring.</comment></comment></comment>


GMail adds automatic translation - <AUTHOR> http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/new-in-labs-automatic-message.html

<comment><USER2> My first thought was that great, now I can get spam in all kinds of languages

<comment><USER3> When was the last time you had spam in your gmail _inbox_?

<comment><USER4> Actually, my wife and I both got one yesterday.</comment></comment></comment>


Start something with reasonable pace and massive scale - <AUTHOR> http://2above.com/entrepreneurship/start-something-with-reasonable-pace-and-massive-scale/ <comment><USER2> I'm sorry but what is the author rambling about here? Facebook was an overnight success? I don't understand what the 20 people who voted this up got from this post.

<comment><USER3> Probably, those 20 people think the author is making three good points. The actual phrasing of said points is not fantastic; particularly #2 has some grammatical and possibly logical issues. ("The bottom line is: If you are finding yourself admire other people and try to copy how they succeed, then you are at a pace that is NOT reasonable for you.")

However, the ideas stand: To have a large success, you need to a) be doing something, b) avoid rushing things _too much_ [1], and c) pay attention to how small or insulated your market is. (You can't be "the next Facebook" by writing a landscape company search, even if it's the best _ever_.)

[1] This is tough to get right -- you need to launch before you're satisfied, but take longer than you really want to. The optimization of time spent really depends on the situation. For instance, if you're rehashing an old idea and selling based on the UI, it's worth going over with members of your target market before you release, to make sure what they _use_ is easy for them to find. But if your idea is new, you need to release ASAP to get market validation while you can still pivot if you're a bit off the mark.</comment></comment>


The Failure of Agile - <AUTHOR> http://blog.toolshed.com/2015/05/the-failure-of-agile.html

<comment><USER2> Is it me, or does it seem that the only two development styles people talk about is Strict Waterfall, or Agile, where the latter covers practically everything else?

What development approach does, say, the CPython development use? If it's "agile", when did it become agile? Did the introduction of written Python Enhancement Proposals (PEPs) make it less agile?

<comment><USER3> Agile is just a jargon. Today everything is agile.</comment></comment>