A Report from the AMP Advisory Committee Meeting - <AUTHOR> https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2019/05/a-report-from-the-amp-advisory-committee-meeting/ <comment><USER2> I see this more and more recently where a webpage takes ~5 seconds to load if it's an AMP page if I have some sort of ad blocking (cookie restriction) in place. What's interesting is that the page content is already loaded but my browser (Safari) is waiting for something to render everything. So, if I have the Reader Mode pre-activated on the same page, I can read the page before the ~5 seconds is over and I can _actually_ see the page!

<comment><USER3> That's because to create a valid AMP page you need to add an 8 seconds delay of blank page for users that disable Google's third-party js.

<comment><USER4> You actually have to make it deliberately slow if Google's js is disabled? that seems a little malicious...

<comment><USER3> Yup. This snippet adds a css animation to make the page white for 8s, and it's stopped by Google's JS or the browser's noscript (which you don't enable if you only block Google's JS and not the domain JS):

[https://amp.dev/fr/documentation/guides-and- tutorials/learn/...](https://amp.dev/fr/documentation/guides-and- tutorials/learn/spec/amp-boilerplate)

<comment><USER2> So, is there a way that I can block this tag somehow and drop it during the load time?

<comment><USER3> You can add a Stylus stylesheet enabled for the regex _.[star]amp.[star]_ (replace [star] with the star symbol) that contains _body{animation:none}_ , but I don't know if that's good for performance.

Edit: Developers can also add that css in their amp style, and it seems to be accepted by the amp validator. AMP devs, you know what to do! ;)

<comment><USER5> Go for this on all pages instead:

      html[\26a1] body, html[amp] body {
        animation: none;
      }

(I wrote \26a1 because HN doesn't allow the literal U+26A1 character.)

That way it applies to all AMP pages, regardless of their URL, and doesn't clobber any other pages (though I can't actually imagine any genuine animation on a body element).

<comment><USER3> Works perfectly, thank you!

I took the liberty to put it on userstyles.org for one-click install: [https://userstyles.org/styles/171953/disable-amp-blank- loadi...](https://userstyles.org/styles/171953/disable-amp-blank-loading)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Major appreciation to Terence Eden for putting his own time and expense into representing the interests of the Internet here. I'm extremely comforted that there are people out there that care enough to take our words here on the Internet and bring them forward in person, and I think if you look at the meeting notes, it's clear there was some real impact.

</comment><comment><USER7> > When a user uses Chrome for Android to search Google, they get AMP results. > When a user tries the same search in Firefox, they only get regular results.

Sounds like a win for mobile Firefox.

<comment><USER8> I am curious how Firefox does this, it is just a setting to auto redirect AMP to the real page?

I primarily stick with Safari since it all syncs with iCloud, that would tempt me to use Firefox.

<comment><USER9> It's not Firefox doing it, it's Google. Its search results only serves AMP links to whitelisted user agents.

<comment><USER10> I wasn't aware of this. This sounds excellent, as it means I can avoid AMP by spoofing my user agent string.

<comment><USER7> Yes, but of course, you miss out on other browser-specific optimizations that way. Also, I believe this is only for Google search results.

You might consider a userscript instead, like [https://github.com/bentasker/RemoveAMP](https://github.com/bentasker/RemoveAMP).

<comment><USER10> > you miss out on other browser-specific optimizations that way

That idea doesn't actually bother me at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Without user research support, there's no acceptable route to creating new AMP components."

I can't think of a way to say this without sounds really cynical... I don't think they can about "users" in the same sense that "user research" would support, but rather they can that users click on whatever AMP is designed to do best, which is I assume ads or paid stuff at the top of search results. I seem to remember Google selling people on this by highlighting it's fast and more people click on it? I would think that's all that matters to them. I can't blame them, that's their job, to get more people to click on more things that Google makes money from.

</comment><comment><USER12> Fantastic, a big thanks for doing this. Google probably has the most to benefit from, but I suspect there is something more structural that is leading to poor management decisions.

"Well, AMP was an interesting experiment. Now it is time to shut it down and take the lessons learned back through a proper standards process."

<comment><USER13> > poor management decisions

You make the mistake of thinking it is a bad decision for Google to make AMP. It suits Google's interests, that's why it exists. It might be selfish, monopolistic, and harmful to the open web, but Google doesn't have to care.

<comment><USER12> This was in reference to many other things going on at Google.

It was in Google's interest if everyone went along with it. They haven't. Perhaps the strongest opponents now are the webmasters who added amp support and then lost rankings, users, and as revenue.

For all that Google has, they have zero control over the platform the majority of the wealthiest internet users in the United States use — iOS. If Apple doesn't like something, Google has to care.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This was a very well rounded analysis and I agree with it's points. Even though I like AMP in its general case (making the web less of a hog), it's proprietary nature, lack of accessibility and so on are in fact real dings against it.

</comment><comment><USER15> I have to agree with this but if Google's goal is to make the web faster then the AMP mission can still be done almost exactly as they are doing it today. Just publish a profiling tool (expanding Lighthouse maybe) that reports the numbers back to Google and then you either get to use their cache and edge servers and get ranked higher or not based on whatever metric that Google wants us to care about. Maybe I'm missing something but that really seems like a much more obvious approach to solving the problem without going through this weird extra webcomponents library, different URL schemes and all that.

<comment><USER16> > use their cache and edge servers

Using the amp cache requires pre-loading content in the end user's browser. That makes things really fast (there is zero request latency to "load" and AMP page), but has security implications. If I stick `window.onload(send a bunch of user analytics to my personal server);` in a preloaded page, than anyone who does a google search where my resource is a result unintentionally loads my page and then has data leaked to me, a random nefarious internet person.

So given these two requirements:

1\. 0 request latency

2\. Prevent data leakage to third parties

Come up with a scheme that is different from AMP. Or you can argue that either of these requirements is wrong: that data leakage is okay, or more likely that some low-but non-zero level of latency is alright. But my understanding is that the options are either use something amp-like and get approximately 0 latency, or use something non-amp like, and have latency of 50-100ms minimum on good, wired, HTTP/2 connections for well designed websites, and that becomes really bad, really fast, if you're on a 2g or 3g HTTP/1 connection in rural $wherever that's dropping some packets.

<comment><USER7> Perhaps give browsers the ability to load cached content across domains? So, Google would tell my browser to cache this resource, and then when another website requests it, it's already available in my cache.

I'm sure there are some security/privacy implications that would need to be worked through, but they don't seem insurmountable? It can't be worse than letting websites show fake URLs...

(Security-wise, the primary thing that comes to mind is you'd want to store and check a hash of any asset cached by a third party, to make sure they're actually the same file.)

<comment><USER16> > I'm sure there are some security/privacy implications that would need to be > worked through, but they don't seem insurmountable? It can't be worse than > letting websites show fake URLs...

Prefetching cross-domain means that now anyone who loads google.com has the potential to also ping mywebsite.com/trackingendpoint, which is a resource that you have to cache. So I get some information, likely less than if you actually execute the page, but still enough to be worrisome.

> It can't be worse than letting websites show fake URLs...

I really don't get this complaint. I can absolutely understand the unease people have about "fake urls" but a lot of urls already lie. How many are really cloudflare or aws? It's completely possible I'm missing something, but as far as I can tell, signed http exchanges are more secure than a CDN, since they're signed.

I guess that potentially since I, a nefarious person, can re-host your signed content, there might be data leakage possible there, but given that AMP is mostly static, I think that's mostly mitigated. Could be wrong here, I'm not a security (or AMP) expert, but I don't get the fear.

<comment><USER7> > Prefetching cross-domain means that now anyone who loads google.com has the > potential to also ping mywebsite.com/trackingendpoint.

Sorry, I'm not suggesting prefetching cross-domain. I know for a fact this works already, as I've done it.

I'm suggesting that one domain should be able to load assets cached by another domain. They can check the hash to ensure it's the correct, unmodified asset.

<comment><USER16> I had a longer reply to this but lost it.

There's some significant security concerns with this (I start claiming to cache the pornhub css file), it's not at all clear how it works when you have other caches (if Bing refers me, how do I decide to use bings cached version of my asset vs Google's). I guess you might mean that google can cache something _as_ my site, but I'm pretty sure that would also allow me to maliciously overwrite Google's js in your cache.

And it still has the latency issues: to connect to your site I now have to establish an initial https connection and load the main html page. That's significantly more than 0 latency.

<comment><USER7> Shouldn't storing and checking a hash solve most of the security problems? That way, you know the asset hasn't changed at all. It doesn't matter if there's multiple caches because unless you've managed to break sha256, they should all be the same file.

The actual html can also be cached, which should make it zero latency. However, I am realizing now that I'm not sure where the checksum gets stored...

(I'll readily admit this was a spur-of-the-moment idea that I haven't actually thought through intensively.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Thanks for being the voice of reason over there Terence, well done.

</comment><comment><USER10> I only want one thing from AMP -- the ability to opt out so that I never get an AMP page.

</comment><comment><USER18> "Some people felt aggrieved that all the hard work they'd done to speed up their sites was for nothing."

This seems like a backwards way of saying that speed improves for most sites? Isn't that a goal?

<comment><USER19> I wrote the article, let me clarify.

Imagine you're a newspaper. You spend lots of money and time optimising your site. More people visit and your search ranking increases because Google takes page speed into account.

Your rival newspaper doesn't do any of this. But one day they switch to Google's proprietary language. They now get featured at the top of Google's results page.

All your work was for nothing and you have to spend more time + money on an AMP solution. It's no faster than your previous one, and no improvement on user experience. But you have to otherwise you don't get the top spot.

There is nothing you can do to differentiate your site from a performance point of view.

So, yes, all sites are now fast. That might be good for the users. But it also means that you don't get the free market benefit of optimised sites attracting more users. Which, of course, lowers the quality of content for the user.

<comment><USER18> Thanks!

Yes, I can see how it would be unfortunate for them. In the long term, though, not competing on performance (because it has become good enough, for everyone) means that the competition switches to other things like quality journalism. (Or more cynically, clickbait headlines?)

It's not clear that competing over milliseconds like the high-frequency traders do is something we should want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> How does it compare to Facebook Instant Articles?

</comment><comment><USER21> What's your solution for instant-loading pages from link aggregation pages? If you have a better solution, the AMP advisory committee will have a reason to change. Otherwise, you're wasting your time and now ours.

<comment><USER22> Put your site behind a CDN like Cloudflare and cache it aggressively.

It's really not rocket science.

<comment><USER21> That doesn't make it instant. AMP pages load instantly because AMP prerenders just the part of the page above the fold for multiple links efficiently.

If you don't understand the problem AMP solves, you aren't going to be able to offer an alternative solution; and Google, Bing, Baidu, Cloudflare, and the other AMP users are going to ignore you as a crank.

<comment><USER10> But you have to give up so much for that "instant load". Personally, as a user, I couldn't care less if a page loads instantly or not. I do care that AMP pages tend to be terrible in multiple ways, though.

The solution, of course, is to make it possible for the user to choose whether or not they will get AMP pages. I think that it's telling that Google refuses to address this despite cries for this ability from day 1.

<comment><USER21> > Personally, as a user, I couldn't care less if a page loads instantly or > not.

Google's, Bing's, Baidu's, Yahoo! Japan's, and others' metrics show otherwise. If not, they wouldn't use it. I know I prefer instantly loading pages, so I personally seek out results with the lightning logo.

> I do care that AMP pages tend to be terrible in multiple ways, though.

The people who say this tend to be people who use terrible browsers (i.e., all browsers on iOS) where the instant loading comes at the expense of triggering browser bugs that the user can't avoid by switching to a better browser. For people with non-buggy browsers, the experience is fantastic.

> The solution, of course, is to make it possible for the user to choose > whether or not they will get AMP pages.

That already exists. Use the basic HTML search page. All the aforementioned search engines, including Google, provide one.

<comment><USER10> > Google's, Bing's, Baidu's, Yahoo! Japan's, and others' metrics show > otherwise.

I didn't realize that they had metrics about what my personal preference was, let alone that their metrics demonstrates that I'm wrong about what I prefer.

> For people with non-buggy browsers, the experience is fantastic.

Not for me. I don't have a problem with bugs as you describe. I have a problem with the contents of the AMP pages (generally speaking -- I have seen one or two that weren't awful).

> That already exists.

That's insufficient. I do that, but I still manage to get AMP links in various ways. I admit, it's merely an annoyance as I can generally edit the URL to get the real page, but it's annoying nonetheless.

<comment><USER21> > I'm wrong about what I prefer.

You're certainly in the tiny minority.

> I have a problem with the contents of the AMP pages

And more people have problems with the contents of non-AMP pages. What problems do you have with AMP pages that can't be solved by the AMP publishers?

> I still manage to get AMP links in various ways.

You were specifically talking about Google search. If you get them from other sources and have some (so far, it seems) irrational hatred of them, you can probably find a way to solve that too.

<comment><USER10> > You're certainly in the tiny minority.

Probably so, but that's irrelevant to my comment.

> have some (so far, it seems) irrational hatred of them

Since I'm expressing my opinion rather than making a technical argument, I'll admit to the "irrational" part. AMP pages are less useful to me, bring unnecessary third parties into the exchange, and I dislike them.

I don't hate them in the sense that you imply, though. I don't care if others see AMP pages. I just don't want them myself. That's no more "hatred" than saying that I prefer not to eat a certain type of food.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


CHART OF THE DAY:Android Is Blowing Everyone Away - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-smartphone-platforms-2011-7

<comment><USER2> A great comment on the chart points out that 6 days prior, the Business Insider CHART OF THE DAY shows Android growth stalling.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/android-growth- flattens-2011-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/android-growth- flattens-2011-6)</comment>


To be a millionaire, it's better to be a software engineer than a pro athlete - <AUTHOR> http://uk.businessinsider.com/better-to-be-a-software-engineer-than-a-pro-athlete-2017-1 <comment><USER2> Not sure 40 years is a fair number to use:

[S]ix years after finishing college, 57 percent of computer science graduates are working as programmers; at 15 years the figure drops to 34 percent, and at 20 years — when most are still only in their early 40's — it is down to 19 percent. In contrast, the figures for civil engineering are 61 percent, 52 percent and 52 percent.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/better-to-be-a-software- engin...](http://www.businessinsider.com/better-to-be-a-software-engineer- than-a-pro-athlete-2017-1?r=UK&IR=T)

<comment><USER3> Also if you are in SV all of that money is going to go to rent, or maybe you will buy a house with the hope that property values are going to keep going up insanely and that you'll be able to sell at a high price later.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is your hack for social anxiety? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Acting. Sounds ridiculous, I know, but after you have done it a few times it becomes kind of natural. I have a theory that everyone else is doing it to a greater or lesser degree most of the time.

I was once married to one of those very sociable people that everyone seems to envy. Behind the facade was a very disturbed (and incredibly insecure) individual.

</comment><comment><USER3> See a therapist. Your personality and emotions can't be easily hacked that way.

<comment><AUTHOR> tbh talk therapy has never worked for me aside from a slight bump in confidence (knowing someone / even paid / is on my side)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just remember none of that shit matters.

Maybe reading this will help: [http://jezebel.com/just-give- it-7-seconds-1795766407](http://jezebel.com/just-give-it-7-seconds-1795766407)</comment>


People make incorrect assumptions about their opposing political party - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/youre-probably-making-incorrect-assumptions-about-your-opposing-political-party/2019/07/26/9f888f0a-a995-11e9-86dd-d7f0e60391e9_story.html <comment><USER2> I really wish people would stop associating themselves with parties and instead care more about issues. I see it quite often that somebody thinks an issue is good but as soon as "their" party comes out against it they are suddenly fiercely against it too. Party allegiance pretty much stops people from thinking about issues. Instead of doing the right thing it becomes all about winning and defeating the "other".

I bet on a lot of issues it would be really easy to find large national agreements if the parties didn't sabotage them for tactical reasons.

<comment><USER3> > Party allegiance pretty much stops people from thinking about issues

I think you hit the nail on the head. Unfortunately, explicitly _not thinking_ seems to be the end goal for a lot of people, based on my own (potentially circumstantial) experience. A large percentage of people don't seem to find joy in thinking or thinking about thinking. It seems to be viewed as work, which is to be avoided when possible. Optimizing for the lest amount of mental work, basically, which your amygdala will graciously step in to provide emotional reactions that "feel right".

May at least explain _why_ or _how_ things seem to err in that direction.

<comment><USER4> Thinking _is_ work, isn't it? The brain is an organ, it needs energy in order to work efficiently. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the brain had properties somewhat like a muscle, and deep reasoning for prolonged periods burned a lot of energy.

I'm not sure if there's any biological evidence to support what I just said, but I do get the strong impression that critical thinking is like exercise: some people do it more, and it gets easier for them, so they do it more, and so on. But for most people it's just a drag and they don't like it, they'd rather do other things.

WRT people changing their perspective because of party ... I suspect this is just a mental shortcut. The left and right exist because they summarise deeply held intuitions about human nature. The positions held by each side _do_ follow logically from those intuitions, but sometimes it needs thought to see why, and it's of the rather subtle often semi-sub-conscious type of thinking that most would rather not do. So it may make perfect sense to change opinion if you learn your party has changed its opinion - if you think that your party of choice has got basically the right idea about the world in broad strokes, then it's a nice time-saving assumption that they thought more about any individual issue than you did, and you'd probably agree with them if you thought harder.

<comment><USER5> > The left and right exist because they summarise deeply held intuitions about > human nature. The positions held by each side do follow logically from those > intuitions

I really don't think so. For example (all of these apply to the supporters of the left/right, and not the people actually in power, because who know what they actually believe/support, vs. what is just political dealings), "how can you be against the death penalty, but pro-abortion" \- but then, the opposite stance makes just as little sense. For another example, the US left used to be anti-globalization, but now they are banging the free-trade drum, while the US right is flirting with protectionism. Or compare LGBT support on the left today, with their persecution under most communist governments in the past. Then there is the Christian US right that mostly ignores Jesus' rather socialist teachings, while the mostly non-Christian left is in a hurry to bring them up. Unions used to be (still are?) anti-immigration, and kind of a left-wing thing?, while the left is pro-immigration. Environmentalism and animal welfare were right-wing positions in Nazi Germany ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_welfare_in_Nazi_Germany](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_welfare_in_Nazi_Germany)), while now they're left-wing ones, and the right tends to ignore/oppose them.

If I knew more about politics in Asia, Africa, or South America, I bet I could come up with lots of other examples where the positions of their local left/right differ from those in the US/Europe.

Point is, the positions are driven group affiliation, not logic - historically, it was far more important to be in the right group, than to be correct.

<comment><USER6> > "how can you be against the death penalty, but pro-abortion" \- but then, > the opposite stance makes just as little sense.

Where's the inconsistency in the opposite stance, supporting death for murderers and opposing it for the innocent unborn?

That's not my personal position but it seems perfectly reasonable to treat those two groups differently.

<comment><USER7> > "how can you be against the death penalty, but pro-abortion"

I personally don't see an inconsistency with this original belief either, when you include the belief that a soul/conciousness is only created later on, e.g. during birth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >The authors of a 2017 study in the Journal of Politics revealed that the average Democrat believes that more than 40 percent of Republicans earn more than $250,000 per year. Meanwhile, Republicans believe that nearly 40 percent of Democrats are LGBTQ. How close are these estimates to reality? Not very. Just 2 percent of Republicans are doing that well financially, and just 6 percent of Democrats are LGBTQ.

I think the authors of the study and the author of this article are measuring something completely different than what they think they're measuring. Although the questions are geared towards measuring specific traits (wealthy repub, or LGBTQ dem), I think what the study participants are actually estimating are the support network "power" for those ideals. I would bet if you rephrased the questions to:

>"What percentage of Republicans would go along with wealthy Republican leadership decisions?"

and

>"What percentage of Democrats would go along with LGBTQ leadership decisions?"

...you would get similar percentages to the original questions. I would argue that the participants are naturally estimating the social power of the ideals in question, because it's a more useful metric, and I would make the argument that humans (on average) are really good at estimating that particular thing because it's what we've been optimizing for for the last few thousand years with investments, fashion, war, and innovation.

<comment><USER9> I agree that something is fishy, but I think it's not quite as simple as that. I'm pretty confident those questions would return way over 40% from the opposite parties.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > The authors of a 2017 study in the Journal of Politics revealed that the > average Democrat believes that more than 40 percent of Republicans earn more > than $250,000 per year.

Wow, really? I'm not your average Democrat.

How about this though: Do you believe that of people making more than $250,000 most are Republican?

And: Do you believe that among those that identify as LGBQT most are Democrat?

<comment><USER11> Here are the answers at the back of the book:

For income, you have this graph, partitioned into <$20,000/y, $39,000-$62,000/y, and >$102,000/y.

[https://www.npr.org/news/graphics/2012/09/pm-repsndems/gr- pm...](https://www.npr.org/news/graphics/2012/09/pm-repsndems/gr-pm- repsndems-462.gif)

For LGB you have: [https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/25/lesbian- gay...](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/25/lesbian-gay-and- bisexual-voters-remain-a-solidly-democratic-bloc/)

Neither one lines up exactly with the parent's questions but this should give you an idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Motive attribution asymmetry makes us unwilling to cooperate. When we hate > our neighbors, we lower our defenses against the virtual invaders who detest > the United States' pluralist and classically liberal values.

Mentioning motive attribution asymmetry, and committing it in the very next sentence - hilarious. I dare say those people don't detest 'classically liberal values', but US foreign policy and influence (such as imposing seed patent law on invaded countries).

Of course this policy isn't driven by the US people as a whole, but by a handful of special interests. But it is very convenient for them to use the US as a shield, and remain discreet themselves.

That said, I can't really disagree with the rest of the article.

</comment><comment><USER12> Direct link to what this article reports on: [https://perceptiongap.us](https://perceptiongap.us)

<comment><USER13> > Democrats' understanding of Republicans actually gets worse with every > additional degree they earn. This effect is so strong that Democrats without > a high school diploma are three times more accurate than those with a > postgraduate degree.

Wow.

<comment><USER4> And also, the more news you read, the higher the perception gap.

The problematic effects of education don't surprise me at all though. I've felt for a while that more education seemed to make people somehow less intelligent in some strange, hard to define way.

I think it's partly that people's defences are down - they think "I have a PhD so I couldn't possibly be manipulated or misled, unlike the plebs who left school at 16".

It may also be due to people with higher education being more willing to uncritically accept anything said by 'experts' (i.e. their academic peers), without being willing to double check it against common sense or man-on-the- street reasoning. I've noticed that people with less education - we probably shouldn't call it worse education, given these findings - are much more willing to reject statements by academics if they're counterintuitive or seem to contradict lived experience. Whereas people with doctorates almost never do, regardless of how bizarre or absurd the claims being made are. Journalists likewise seem to be more likely to fall for bad science than they once were and I wonder if that's due to journalists always having degrees, these days.

This is perhaps one of the problems leading to the replication crisis.

<comment><USER14> _And also, the more news you read, the higher the perception gap._

If readers are educated, isn't then that news are shit?

<comment><USER15> One should understand the concept of "yellow journalism:"

-scare headlines in huge print, often of minor news

\- lavish use of pictures, or imaginary drawings

-use of faked interviews, misleading headlines, pseudoscience, and a parade of false learning from so-called experts

-emphasis on full-color Sunday supplements, usually with comic strips

-dramatic sympathy with the "underdog" against the system.

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

It emerged with discussing collectivism vs. individualism. We know who lost (i.e. 1989). Some people want to forget and rehash this stupidity. It's not clear if they understand that these ideas mean "war." When I retire in ~15 years I just want to catch fish with barb-less hooks, but the lunatics are making that prospect unlikely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > _As America slouches toward the 2020 presidential election_

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards the 2020 presidential election?

<comment><USER10> I guessed William Blake — happy I wasn't too far off.

<comment><USER16> You're just bragging lol. Stop it (said flirtatiously)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's strange watching American politics as an outsider. Trump was basically elected by the flyover states because he acknowledged that blue-collar America's economic situation was sub-par. And while he probably hasn't helped out their plight as much as hoped, the US economy overall certainly isn't hurting. Yet the democrats seem completely oblivious to the reasons Trump came to power in the first place, and somehow are poised to completely blow the next election despite the media machine railing against Trump and his supposed unpopularity.

All the talk about Trump's racism, Nazi immigration officials, etc..., just makes the democrats look desperate considering his policies aren't much different than Clinton's in the 90's. His economic policies would have been considered orthodox in the 70's and 80's. The Democrats wasted years trying to come up with some sort of Russian link which they haven't proven and which frankly, I don't think anyone cares about.

And it's all quite ridiculous considering Obama continued most of Bush's policies. He extended the Patriot Act, didn't shut down Guantanamo, killed people abroad with drones, detained and deported migrants. The absurd angle the democrats are taking with Trump is going to lead them to another defeat, as they're diluting their message by being so extreme. Trump makes everything about himself, the Democrats reinforce it, and it's impossible to see anyone from the Dem side challenging him.

<comment><USER18> I don't agree with all of this but I am absolutely flabbergasted that Democrats seem to be falling into the exact same trap as they did during the previous election...

I'm an American living abroad and was as shocked as anyone when Trump was elected. The racism/xenophobia and pseudo-intellectual far-right rhetoric is more vocal than it has ever been before and that does have a lot to do with Trump. It should be making it painfully easy to get Trump out of office in the coming election and yet somehow the Democrats seem to think we should continue down the weird neoliberal path of the past. Just start speaking in a language that blue collar workers can understand... that's it. Nothing fancy. But for some reason it's just not happening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Good article with a good message. I hope lots of people hear and understand that we truly are 'More alike than different'.

</comment><comment><USER20> Impossible!

I'm 100% certain that they suck. I don't even need to listen to them or read their documents. It's just axiomatic.

</comment><comment><USER21> Non-paywalled link: [https://outline.com/ycP9Y5](https://outline.com/ycP9Y5)

</comment><comment><USER22> I wonder how well the questions distinguish between opinions about other voters' opinions, and the actions of people that are elected.

For instance, with recent gerrymandering decisions from the Supreme Court, and Mitch McConnell's blocking of bipartisan election security funding, it is easy to infer that a majority of Republican representatives in many elected bodies are against fair elections.

I doubt that many voters are against the right to have their votes counted fairly.

<comment><USER23> Have you looked at primary sources (statements from McConnell, his office, or Congress) for more about why they blocked that funding? Your inference sounds like it's based on one-sided reporting and the asymmetry described in the OP article. There may be another explanation that doesn't assume the worst.

(I've been complaining about election security for twenty years, but this issue has become a political game since 2016.)

<comment><USER24> > I've been complaining about election security for twenty years

Or longer. For me, personally, it was the "hanging chads" in 2000 that forced me to consider how insecure our elections are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I learned that some of my family with Trump stickers are basically socialists, they just don't realize it. When you start talking to them about the things they're happy their local government does, it's all safety net and arts.

<comment><USER11> I know some Democrats who are basically anarcho-capitalists, who aren't socialist at all but just don't like Republican family values candidates.</comment></comment>


The Thrush (raganwald) - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/tree/master/2008-10-30/thrush.markdown

<comment><USER2> I love his innovative use of github. It's clever, and it works surprisingly well!

<comment><USER3> [http://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/tree/master/2008-10-3...](http://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/tree/master/2008-10-30/why_im_using_git.markdown)</comment></comment>


Are bay area companies trying to tire candidates into submission? - <AUTHOR> Are companies trying to tire & hire engineers by forcing them to invest too much time on the recruiting process?  Or is it something in the candidate's profile which could be giving them second thoughts.
I recently started a job hunt and there have been 3 companies which I talked to so far.
a) Early stage startup: Interview process: I counted at least 1 homework and presentation, along with 3 separate on-site visits to their office.  I declined to pursue.
b) Late stage startup: Had phone screen + 4 hrs of on-site interviews.  Was told as I was leaving that there would be another round of interviews.  Wish I had known earlier.
c) Established company: After (a) and (b), I asked what was the process before starting.  Was told it would be just phone screen and half a day of on-site interviews.  Now after finishing that, they want to have 2 more interviews (phone/online) "to meet other team members".
Is this the new normal?
PS : I have several years of relevant experience in the industry and I recently moved to bay area <comment><USER2> Yes, this is the new (ab)normal, unfortunately. No one has any evidence whatsoever that all these hoops have any relevance to on the job performance. All we can do is push back. Be clear with HR on what you expect from the interview (I need to interview the company just as much as the company needs to interview me - if you give me 5 minutes to ask questions "at the end" I _will not_ accept your offer). Even then you will walk into ambushes.

I can tell you that being honest about your treatment after the interview will win you no friends - more likely attacks on your character. So pleasant.

Anyway, if you need a job you just have to suck it up. If you have a job, I recommend pointing this out repeatedly - that you are not a supplicant, that your own, tiny measure of them is this interview process, and that if it goes poorly you will not be accepting a job offer even if offered one.

Never saw anything like this on the East coast or in flyover country (1988-2012), yet somehow, just somehow, these companies manage to hire and retain talent just as well as the west coast companies. Everyone ignores that data point, but it is the elephant in the room.

</comment><comment><USER3> I used to be on the hiring committee at Google, and sometimes we'd ask for extra interviews if the person was very strong, but feedback was mixed in a particular area. For example, if a candidate bombed one algorithms question but performed strongly on an algorithms question from a different interviewer, then we might want a third data point.

That happened for <10% of people -- it was really the exception case.

So I think b) and c) could be that process.

a) sounds like they were just disorganized -- which happens a lot with early stage startups. Takes founders time to learn how to hire well and I don't think any accelerators or VCs are providing interview training to their startups.

<comment><USER4> I find the interview process at Google/Facebook extremely disturbing for senior devs like author of Homebrew. Nobody can remember how to manipulate binary trees/linked lists/(un)directed graphs after working on real world projects for several years. Why can't you just interview like the rest of the industry? I understand some deadwood might get in this way; just simply fire'em after several months on the job. Netflix is an excellent example in this regard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Do you really want to join a company after only 3 hours of conversations? Which company you join will have a huge impact on your future. You should do your due diligence as much as the hiring company does. Do I really want to spend the next few years of my life working alongside those people?

When we were a small startup (10-20 people), we'd take candidates who we are making offers to for dinner. It's not quite an interview. It's not quite social. But it gives both sides a little bit extra information.

<comment><USER6> > Do you really want to join a company after only 3 hours of conversations?

Right on! The more conversations with individuals in the organization actually works in your favor. You'll be able to compare and contrast priorities, vision, work flows, etc... Getting team buy-in is an important consideration for managers.

If the time commitment is a real issue for you-- share that with them. See if they're amenable to a Skype/phone conversation instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The 'meet other team members' may be something they like to do, to get you to like them. Get an attachment to the potential employer. A convincer against other offers.

Multiple interviews are a red flag to me. They don't know what they want. Interview once and get very very deep. This requires a lot of introspective thinking knowing who you actually are, who your organisation is, and what's needed to be successful there. When that's done, a single interview is fine. Multiple interviews are a sign the organisation doesn't know what it is and lacks the substance for action.

As for duration: it could take as long as it takes. But all in one take, no reason for spacing out over multiple days.

</comment><comment><USER8> The discussion trend around tech hiring seems to be toward careful selection of candidates for employment. This is explicit advice in the orbit of YC with the six months to make the first hire at AirBnB the case study. Not to mention Google is well known for their potentially long recruitment cycle.

It's natural to want a potential employer to be so blown away by the resume that they make an offer on the spot. In the Bay Area, that probably happens to Peter Norvig with a high probability and ordinary ninjas with a lower one.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER9> You should push back and let them know that you don't have an infinite amount of time to invest in their recruitment process.

For me, personally, a phone interview plus up to a day of on-site interviews would be the maximum I'd be willing to do. If I am asked to come back for more interviews, I will reject that.

</comment><comment><USER10> Lot's of interview seems normal. But the best companies I've interviewed at have figured out ways to condense the process into one day on-site. So you might go in and have 4 or 5 different interviews with different people back to back, but you only had to show up on-site once.

<comment><USER11> Multiple offline stages might be acceptable, but it would be a red flag to me if they can't conduct the necessary in-person interviewing in a single day, unless they can communicate the process in advance.

Cases where they can't get everyone together at one time speaks to a lack of coordination.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am really curious if that's normal in other industries as well. I never did code tests in any place I've worked for as a computer engineer.

A conversation was always enough.</comment>


Uncertainty and the Welfare Economics of Medical Care (1963) - <AUTHOR> http://fermatslibrary.com/s/uncertainty-and-the-welfare-economics-of-medical-care <comment><USER2> > The special role of educational institutions in simultaneously sub- sidizing > and rationing entry is common to all professions requiring advanced > training.23 It is a striking and insufficiently remarked phe- nomenon that > such an important part of resource allocation should be performed by > nonprofit-oriented agencies.

I wonder if Arrow would understand today's higher education institutions as remaining nonprofit oriented?</comment>


Apple has copied some of the most popular apps in the App Store - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/05/how-apple-uses-its-app-store-copy-best-ideas/ <comment><USER3> Since the App Store launched in July 2008 until Nov 2011, my app, Drum Kit, was one of the top apps in the Music category. It went up to #2 at one point, only behind Smule's Ocarina, and had over 10 million downloads.

The day GarageBand launched, my app went from something like #24 in Music to #64, and downward from there. Fun times!

Interestingly, at an Apple conference sometime in 2010 (either C4 or WWDC), some guy asked me all kinds of detailed questions about the custom audio engine I wrote. Back then the "iPhone SDK" (now iOS SDK) audio APIs had too much latency for a drum app. So I had to write my own in C++ based on Audio Units (a low level C API). A tricky thing I had to do was mix multiple buffers of audio to create the resonance effect drums make when you hit them repeatedly (most prominent in cymbals). Later I found out the person asking me the questions worked at Apple, on the team that made GarageBand. They didn't launch with a blended resonance effect. When you hit a cymbal repeatedly, it would cut off the sound and play the sound again. Ew.

People miss out when they don't try some of the more indie apps. A lot of care goes into making them.

<comment><USER4> I've made some (C#) code that applies an ambisonic convoluted reverberation impulse response to an audio stream, but I'm hitting performance walls with Unity & C#. I want to go C++ & Unreal, but every time I try to learn C++ my eyes glaze over and I come down with a bad case of the Stupids.

Is there any "C++ for dummies with a bent for audio processing" material you'd recommend?

<comment><USER5> I hate to just say it like this, but it's unlikely that C# is really your bottleneck. It's more likely the approach or the libraries you are using that are the issue.

Try a clean implementation of that particular logic in pure C# on .NET Core, you should be able to get it working more than adequately fast. I'm saying this as someone that (re)writes applications in C++ and rust to provide pseudo-rt guarantees.

<comment><USER6> yeah especially with Span<T> it's way easier to create high performance code, while reducing GC pressure. Also depending on the Platform P/Invoke to C/C++ is also a solution that works quite better than on Java's JNI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Of course Apple copies features—Camera+'s volume button shutter was initially blocked from the App Store then wound up in the first-party Camera app. But I don't buy the premise of the article.

There were dozens of flashlight apps in the store when iPhone OS 2 came out, so the OS can never have a built-in flashlight feature?

That article's examples of "copied" features are also straightforward evolutions of existing ones that have been around for years, but the author doesn't mention that.

Sidecar, ostensibly a clone of Duet Display, builds off of the ability to wirelessly extend the display to an Apple TV since Mavericks (2013). Regarding Clue, the second release of the Health app added reproductive health tracking in iOS 9 (2015). Certainly at the time engineers and product managers would have been thinking about the future direction of these features.

In fact, it strikes me that Apple is _very_slow_ at making obvious improvements, creating opportunities for third-party developers to make plenty of money. Those ad-infested, 100 LoC flashlight apps made cash for 5 years before the feature became part of the OS.

Whether copied or not, I'm extremely skeptical that App Store analytics are influencing OS features. It's never been Apple's style to be analytics-driven.

<comment><USER8> I remember one of my acquaintances on Facebook shared a sad story of how the app they developed was stolen by Apple: it trackedyour iPhone activity.

They went in detail about the "revolutionary" tech behind it: they made you set up a VPN on your phone so that they could track all of your net activity, from that they would estimate your screen time with the apps.

There was a long set of paragraphs on how Apple is taking advantage of independent developers.

I mean - I hate the fact that I can't change the default browser to Firefox, too. But making the users set your logging VPN under the guise of "making your life healthier by knowing how much time you spend on the phone" is another level.

<comment><USER9> Setting up a VPN that tracks all of your network activity? That makes me queasy. Why should I trust these people to keep all that valuable network traffic data private for me?

Apple didn't steal this idea. They may have implemented it in a better way given their low-level system access but, in this case, and in my opinion, I'd rather this be something the OS tracks for me for free by a company that doesn't make their money off the sale of my private personal data.

<comment><USER10> It's a local VPN, all on device. Still a workaround, but data isn't being sent anywhere though.

<comment><USER11> How can a VPN be local? If there is no vpn server at the other end is it really a VPN?

<comment><USER12> The phone itself is the VPN Server. Its a trick used for the app to look at some of the network traffic.

Cloudflare's 184.108.40.206 app does the same thing but for DNS, to capture the DNS requests from the phone you need to create a "local vpn", but not all your traffic is going though Cloudflare (yet, they do plan to add a VPN to the 188.8.131.52 app at some point).

EDIT: All Custom DNS settings apps for mobile connections on iPhone (I forget if Android is the same) ate like this. I use nextdns and their app does the same.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the explanation

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm sympathetic to my fellow product developers. As a user, I'm glad Apple adds features to iOS without charging for updates, and does so using a consistent and legible privacy/security model. Unlike on macOS, every "sherlocked" iOS app costs Apple App Store revenue, so they're working against incentives to make a feature first-party. That suggests the decisions are at least motivated by a belief in doing right by users.

Still, I'd like developers to be compensated for being put out of business.

<comment><USER14> The EU has grumbled about platform owners also being publishers so hopefully they intervene at some point.

Look at how well-behaved Microsoft the iOS publisher is, compared to where and when they have dominated as both platform and publisher.

I think we will all be better off when the iOS app store has a mandate not to compete. Same with Twitter on their platform, Amazon with theirs, Facebook, Google etc.

<comment><USER15> Was Office on Windows not well-behaved or something?

<comment><USER14> Many years ago when Windows represented close to 100% of computing, before smartphones as we know them, Microsoft deliberately killed off competing browsers by bundling IE for free and coupling it so deeply with Windows you couldn't even uninstall it for the longest time. Just by being able to bundle their own software they had a huge competitive edge because to use anything else meant downloading browsers on dial-up internet, and they leveraged that to destroy all other browsers' market share.

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

         The first browser war ended with Internet Explorer
         having no remaining serious competition for its market
         share. This also brought an end to the rapid innovation
         in web browsers; until 2006 there was only one new
         version of Internet Explorer since version 6.0 had been
         released in 2001.

It wasn't until Firefox that browser competition emerged again then some years later Chrome followed. IE was so prolific iirc both Firefox and Chrome had extensions that would actually use IE6 or IE7 to power a tab so you could access sites with IE-only technology or support. After antitrust cases in the US and EU the software bundled with Windows didn't really grow in variety again, and we got browser selection choices and stuff forced upon Microsoft.

Today on iOS and Android where MS is only a publisher they compete on the merits of their software instead of unfairly leveraging the platform. We also see Twitter, Facebook, Apple and Amazon pretty wantonly leveraging their platforms against the people using them to displace them with official alternatives. I don't really feel like Google is or has been as predatory but might just be out of my purview.

<comment><USER16> And yet... Every smartphone on the market bundles a browser and none of them make it possible to disable or remove the browser from the rest of the OS today.

History has proven Microsoft's argument - a web browser is a core part of the modern operating system.

<comment><USER17> On iOS you can use "parental controls" (Settings > General > Restrictions) to disable Safari. It removes Safari's icon from iOS's app launcher / home screen.

<comment><USER16> Just like add and remove features did in Windows of the era. However, the bundled Webkit components like system web view are not uninstalled, the icon for the front end is merely hidden

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Skimming through, I found this:

> Copying technology has gotten tech giants in trouble before. Two decades > ago, the Justice Department and 20 states sued Microsoft, whose operating > system Windows was dominant at the time, after Microsoft copied the Netscape > Web browser and made its own version, Internet Explorer, the default option > in Windows. Microsoft settled the case.

That's not exactly why they were sued. It was because they made it hard to uninstall IE and hard to install other browsers.

<comment><USER19> There are a lot of parallels between what Microsoft did with IE and what Apple is doing with basically the whole App Store. Apple will either eliminate competition with their apps or use their position as the iOS creator to make their own apps better integrated (namely Apple Music). Apple also makes it impossible to install any software except what they've signed in the App Store.

Seems to me to basically be the same case.

<comment><USER20> The crucial difference is the monopoly which Windows had but iOS doesn't.

<comment><USER21> If you have an iPhone then you don't have a choice in which OS you use.

<comment><USER22> You have a choice of not buying an iPhone - like 80%+ of the market.

<comment><USER21> But iPhones aren't the same as android phones. You can't run android software on an iPhone and vice versa.

<comment><USER22> How much software besides first party apps is iOS only?

Also, most of the popular non game apps are both cross platform and subscription services that can run on either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is an example of what I call "Feature vs. Product."

A classic example is Snapchat and Instagram. Snapchat was never something that stood on its own, as everything that made it unique would easily be duplicatable by Instagram, down to the tiniest feature. Theoretically, the network of users would be the unique value but it was nowhere near Facebook's size, and thus would not be able to truly compete. All it took was Instagram copying most every good feature to dominate the space.

In the article's case, each of the apps (Clue, Duet, DoApp, Voxer) were creating something that, while valuable to users at the time, was simply an addition to the existing functionality and in no way was a valuable product outside the context of the phone or iOS itself. Effectively, they were features wrapped in an app that in no way stood on their own.

If you want to make a successful app in the App Store, make something with value to a user that can stand alone.

<comment><USER24> You talk about Snapchat like it went out of business.. it's a publicly traded company worth $22 billion.

<comment><USER23> Nah, it's not out of business, but the point about there not being much of a fundamental differentiation from Instagram that gives it unique value stands.

That may change over time as these things aren't set in stone of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm surprised f.lux isn't mentioned here, if I remember correctly not only Apple copied its functionality but it also prevented the app from being published on the App Store [https://justgetflux.com/ios.html](https://justgetflux.com/ios.html)

<comment><USER26> > …but also prevented the app from being published on the App Store…

The only thing Apple did to "prevent" f.lux from being published on the App Store was to not offer any public APIs that could be used to implement it. This wasn't some sort of deliberate decision to get in the way of f.lux; there was simply no clear use case for an API to allow an app to change the behavior of the screen on a global basis.

<comment><USER27> > there was simply no clear use case for an API to allow an app to change the > behavior of the screen on a global basis.

A usecase is f.lux's functionality. There is definitely a clear use case. The decision to expose the API could have other factors to it, but lack of use case doesn't seem to be it.

<comment><USER26> An API use case for a single app is pretty hard to justify, especially when it's coupled with other concerns like "but wouldn't this require the app to stay running in the background" or "but what happens if two apps both try to do this".

<comment><USER28> How about an app for helping with colorblindness?

<comment><USER29> There are already accessibility settings for this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> What's the right model for this? It seems like this is a problem platforms always run into. Early on, you need a third-party tool for some esoteric task. If that task becomes commonplace, people start to expect it from the platform. And how do you do it in a way that doesn't burn the developer community.

In 1998, it might have made sense that I had to use a third-party tool to burn CDs with Windows, but by 2001, Windows XP shipped with this capability. And this wasn't some large, IE-scale strategic play--it was table stakes for an OS back then.

<comment><USER31> Treat features like bugs and offer a bounty if you decide to implement something a user did already. It could be part of the terms that the user has to accept in order to be on the store. If it's a feature that lots of people implemented (eg the flashlight) split the money between them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> IIRC many of the period tracking apps sold their user's data. Seems like a good reason for Apple to introduce a version which uses the OS level features to keep data synced and in the user's hands.

<comment><USER33> Apple also got a lot of flak for not including a menstrual cycle tracker in their Health app. It was a popular sign of Silicon Valley's male bias for a while. To wit:

> Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised. After all, Apple's first diversity report > did show that the company is mostly white and male. So it's likely that > menstrual cycles just aren't a concern for a majority of the company's > employees. But that shouldn't be an excuse.

[https://www.theverge.com/2014/9/25/6844021/apple-promised- an...](https://www.theverge.com/2014/9/25/6844021/apple-promised-an-expansive- health-app-so-why-cant-i-track)

> But considering that plenty of other, extremely popular apps for menstrual > tracking already exist (Clue and Period Tracker are two stand-outs), all we > have to say is, thanks for finally including women in your world, Apple. > Welcome to ours.

[https://www.health.com/pregnancy/apple-finally-adds- period-t...](https://www.health.com/pregnancy/apple-finally-adds-period- tracker-to-its-health-app)

> That Apple overlooked period tracking as a key function that roughly half > the population would expect to see included in a comprehensive health > tracking app is not entirely a surprise.

> Apple today is a company where only 30 percent of its employees are female, > and only 20 percent of those in engineering positions are female.

[https://techcrunch.com/2015/06/09/apple-stops-ignoring- women...](https://techcrunch.com/2015/06/09/apple-stops-ignoring-womens- health-with-ios-9-healthkit-update-now-featuring-period-tracking/)

This last one comes from The Washington Post, perhaps demonstrating that sometimes you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't:

> Apple notoriously ignored women's health issues as it developed previous > versions of Health

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- switch/wp/2015/06/17...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- switch/wp/2015/06/17/apple-wants-to-know-if-you-use-protection/)

<comment><USER34> I'll take the bait.

I don't get this. As an Android user, Google routinely leaves out features I'd like in their apps. I just use an alternative app. Sometimes it's very annoying because I want all the things on the same platform. But again, usually there's an alternative app I can use. Why not just use a different app? I mean, I get wanting everything in one app, but these quotes are a lot less "I wish my favorite app had this useful feature" and a lot more on the outrage side, which makes no sense considering the amount of features useful to 100% of the population that Apple continues to leave out.

>Apple notoriously ignored women's health issues as it developed previous versions of Health

Issues? Plural? Beyond menstruation tracking, what else is missing? Or is this just another example of story padding?

I guess I just don't understand why this is any different from any other missing feature from any app. Why is it apples responsibility to provide this feature?

<comment><USER33> What bait? I just quoted what other people said. Once upon a time, the Washington Post thought that Apple was notorious for ignoring women's health issues because they didn't include a cycle tracker. Now it thinks Apple is anti-competitive for including one. Like I said, you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.

<comment><USER34> Not bait by you, but rather the bait in the way those articles are written.

<comment><USER33> My mistake. I jumped to a bad conclusion. Your statement made sense in context.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Apple does this in other areas, too. In 2017, for example, they encouraged/pressured video-streaming apps to integrate with their new "TV" app which, at the time, they claimed was just an aggregator for all your streaming services.

Part of that integration involved reporting which shows were watched when to Apple. And now, they're using the data they collected from third-party services to decide which shows to produce for their own offering.

<comment><USER22> By 2017, _everyone_ in the industry knew that they were working on a streaming media service and even after the announcement, Disney and other companies are still adding support.

</comment></comment><comment> grey-area This is not a new thing really, it's quite tricky for Apple as probably every idea they come up with internally someone else has already had in some form, so I don't see how they can avoid it, though they could try to be graceful if they completely replicate a tool, and offer to buy it out.

Back in the day I produced a little shareware utility which was a speaking clock for Mac OS. Apple took notice and I was invited to SF by someone at Apple, but had other commitments at the time and couldn't go at the time. They asked for partial source code (I think after a bug I reported to them) and I sent it over, and that was the last I heard about it.

Soon after they introduced the feature in the OS and it is still there to this day in Clock settings - Announce the time on the hour. I was actually pleased about that, as I never made significant money from the utility anyway - I'm not really sure if they were inspired by the tool but always suspected they were.

</comment><comment><USER36> Of course Apple copied apps from the App Store. As a developer you should expect that, and the solution is pretty easy, just look at Shazaam.

Pick an app that's sufficiently difficult to copy, at which point they'll try to buy you if they find the app sufficiently important to the platform. And if not, they probably won't spend the capital to try to dethrone you. If you make an app that say... changes alerts based on location, I'd probably expect it's just a matter of time until they copy your app.

</comment><comment><USER37> 1\. Make a platform so locked down that basic features are lacking. 2\. Prevent users from easily writing and executing scripts to add functionality, like Greasemonkey. 3\. Sell apps that cover missing features. 4\. Improve your original operating system, rendering paid apps useless.

I'd like to see Apple let AppleScript be executed on the Apple Phone. I'd like to have more control over my device, like an Android. Maybe someday...

<comment><USER38> If you want to have more control over your device I do not see why you would buy one which you know does not allow this type of control. This is, after all, the tool the market offers to take care of this type of problem: competition. Use it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Everything is a remix. Every app has copied some parts of its functionality from elsewhere, and the world is better for it.

If Apple could only add features to iOS that isn't covered by an app store app, there would be almost nothing new they could add.

Sure, it is annoying for the devs who get sherlocked, but most such apps are pretty obvious in the first place.

And this is not a new phenomenon. Given Apple's focus on health these last many years, it's hardly a surprise that they're adding period tracking. If the period-tracking-app didn't see this coming, they really need to hire someone with a little bit of foresight.

</comment><comment><USER40> Sherlock'd.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_(software)#Sherlocked...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_\(software\)#Sherlocked_as_a_term)

<comment><USER41> Yeah, anyone remember Konfabulator? Apple's been at this for a while.

<comment><USER22> This is an old wives tale. Apple first had a keyboard shortcut to get to widgets in 1986 with the Apple //gs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> To be more precisely Apple copies ideas not only from Apple Store but from any startups.

One of the most notable one is Sidecar introduced in iPadOS 13. This is basically a dual-screen feature paired with a macbook, which some startups like Duet and Astropad have been doing for years.

<comment><USER43> Sure, but it isn't like Apple moved into this market all of a sudden. They've had the capability to use Airplay to wirelessly create a second display, as well as built-in OS support for drawing tablet displays for _ages_.

Nor is it like it was some genuinely new idea. Nor did Apple copy their technology, or violate some partnership agreement or noncompete/nondisclosure. Nor is Apple violating some patent. Nor does Apple treat it as a product or a revenue source or even a lead in to a new software revenue source - it is an improvement to the platform.

If they sold product targeting Linux systems that did this, someone built the wireless functionality into Wayland to do this and distros bundled the updated releases, would those distros now be somehow acting "unfairly"?

So I don't quite know what "system of fairness" would be here - a platform shouldn't evolve existing features if someone has a paid solution, even if that solution only partially solves the problem or does so in an inferior way?

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Like _all_ platform owners, Apple gradually commoditizes its complements. The most extreme end of this behaviour is when they release a free app or feature that wipes everyone else out (or drives them into tiny niches).

iTunes was a famous example: It instantly obsoleted indie music apps on the Macintosh.

We had a good time discussing this fifteen years ago(!) when Cabel Sasser, cofounder of Panic Software, wrote about the demise of Audion at the hands of iTunes:

[https://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/](https://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/)

My own take on this is to think of building apps and services on top of a platform as sharecropping:

[http://weblog.raganwald.com/2004/11/sharecropping-in- orchard...](http://weblog.raganwald.com/2004/11/sharecropping-in-orchard.html)

This doesn't mean I countenance Apple's behaviour. Far from it. It simply means I think of it as inevitable that platform vendors will court indie developers and partners when they need them to grow the platform, then turn on them when the vendor thinks it needs to commoditize their work.

Twitter and its indie clients is another example.

</comment><comment><USER45> I think it would be ok for Apple to create apps that fill a particular, yet to be explored niche, or to create foundational quality and functionality standard for a given area.

Sort of 'Apple-basics'.

However it is very anti competitive, and monopolistic to target mid/upper tier product segments, against your market participants.

It would be like NASDAQ running their own brokerage business.

</comment><comment><USER46> Hasn't this always been a risk for third-party developers - that the platform owner might incorporate popular third-party features to the main platform? I vaguely remember Microsoft Word used to have a third-party addon for a spell checker, then made it built-in - and got sued by the third-party developer. I think they lost though...

<comment><USER47> It has been going on forever. As lower levels of the OS get commoditized, OS providers have to provide more functionality if they want to continue making money.

Back in the day, people would buy graphics libraries to draw lines on the screen, buy utilities such as ZIP or defragmentation utilities, and each program had its own logic for printing, with each of them, at setup time, asking questions such as "what should I sent to you printer to get bold text?", "how many characters on a line does your printer support?", and "should I wait a bit longer between lines to make sure your printer is ready to accept new input?"

Now, of course, Apple doesn't need to make money on their OS, but I think they are forced to move 'up' to compete with Microsoft.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> They've been doing that since the early days of the Cydia store and jailbroken mods.

<comment><USER29> They've also hired a number of people from the jailbreak community, FWIW.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> [http://archive.is/cUxGy](http://archive.is/cUxGy)

</comment><comment><USER50> The cynicism of Apple is pathetic. Steve Jobs is reported to have said [[https://www.pcmag.com/commentary/329826/why-steve-jobs- went-...](https://www.pcmag.com/commentary/329826/why-steve-jobs-went- thermonuclear-over-android)]:

> "I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every > penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I'm going to > destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go > thermonuclear war on this," the late CEO famously said.

</comment><comment><USER51> I actually still miss Watson/Sherlock. It was a great timesaver. I always wonder if Watson would have survived longer if Apple hadn't copied them and then let Sherlock to rot.

</comment><comment><USER52> Ask the developers of Delicious Library about this. Apple completely ripped off their design and the functionality of their app without so much as a thank-you.

<comment><USER53> Apple certainly was inspired by the look of Delicious Library but I'm not upset to have influenced them. For me the whole point of UI design is to move the state of the art forward for everyone. I'd be disappointed if Apple didn't take my interface and use it, it'd mean Mike and I kind of failed.

I mean, I didn't invent the push-button, but I use it everywhere in my apps, as we all do. Someone, somewhere invented it first, and I thank them.

<comment><USER52> That is a mature and selfless viewpoint, and I'm impressed. I was a user of Delicious Library at the time, and I couldn't believe my eyes when iBooks showed up in the keynote. I haven't used a mac in a long time, but that example of an egregious lifting of a design aesthetic has always stuck with me.

Thank you for your years of sitting in a Starbucks with your friends to make what was a beautiful and useful app. I don't use macs anymore, or else I would still be a happy customer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I much prefer features built in to my iOS than left as sketchy, personal information stealing, gaping privacy 3rd party apps

</comment><comment><USER55> If you're trying to make a living off a flashlight app, I'm not going to be very sympathetic to your plight.

<comment><USER56> This is a strawman.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Apple shouldve bought f.lux instead of copying it. I believe flux even had a patent for warmth values.

</comment><comment><USER58> What is old is new again. This is just Apple's version of Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish.

</comment><comment><USER59> Well back when the iPhone first came out, my thoughtful Canadian carrier Rogers thought it would be funny to sell me a phone that does not even take videos but sell me a 1000 Video text messages with my plan. Hilarious I thought, I just bought a 1000 video messages and this phone only takes pictures. While looking into that I discovered the jailbreaking scene and those guys hacked the phones to take videos. For people saying what the hell is this guy talking about, when iPhones were first released they literally could not take videos, only photos. The jailbreak scene was FULL of ideas that apple eventually made standard on the phone.

</comment><comment><USER60> It feels like the big issue here is not that Apple is copying apps in the app store (everyone copies everyone) but rather that they are using proprietary data (num installs, time spent, retention, etc) to guide their roadmap.

<comment><USER61> Plus that they are using API's nobody else are allowed to use, and that they generally don't seem to abide by the rules of the app store themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Yes, curious what will happen with the private repositories on Github now it's Microsofts'. Will no one in the company ever check what's going on?

</comment><comment><USER63> Good to see Apples business model has not changed at all since its inception. Good to see a big company stick to its roots.

</comment><comment><USER64> Mirror: [https://outline.com/nJ84Ea](https://outline.com/nJ84Ea)

</comment><comment><USER65> I remember a quote of sorts that went something like if your product relies on another company then (you aren't a product or you are the product?). I remember it being tossed around when Twitter was killing all the competing applications. Anyone have a source or remember it better than me?

</comment><comment><USER66> I guess Apple can just preinstall the software and not put it in the store.

Maybe operating system design can be government regulated.

Or maybe they can be split up as she proposes to enable Samsung and Xiaomi to have an advantage.

This just shows that Elizabeth Warren's advisers don't understand software and that she is dangerously unelectable.

</comment><comment> awinter-py from 7.10 in the facebook platform policy

> We can create apps or products that offer features and services similar to > your app

Would love to be a fly on the wall in the room when this was added

[https://developers.facebook.com/policy](https://developers.facebook.com/policy)

</comment><comment><USER67> The worst hit I think is Duet Display

</comment><comment><USER68> The same is happening with Microsoft GitHub Actions and the impact it has over Travis CI.

<comment><USER69> Granted, Travis CI was sold to some private venture, and the first thing they did was fire most of their engineers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Store brand copies popular product they distribute, news at 11.

(offtopic, I'm always in awe at how blatant Walgreens is, down to the packaging style, sometimes having two _identical products_ just copying two different competitors' packaging)

<comment><USER71> Since this is a Jeff Bezos' washingtonpost.com hit job, it's worth pointing out that Amazon Basics does the same as well,

[https://www.marketplacepulse.com/articles/number-of- amazonba...](https://www.marketplacepulse.com/articles/number-of-amazonbasics- best-sellers-up-fifty-percent-in-a-year)

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Sans paywall: [https://outline.com/nJ84Ea](https://outline.com/nJ84Ea)

</comment><comment><USER73> Apps are like music in this case. Apple listens to the popular tunes and adds thematic elements to their core. The use of the word 'copy' here is misleading, because Apple could literally copy-paste, bit-by-bit, compiled code banks into their core, but they don't. They rewrite the theme.

Especially in the case of health apps that are meaningful, more humans worldwide benefit when Apple includes it in the core (at some point).

What these App developers might want to do is file IP to protect core concepts if they want 20 years of protection. Patents have a lifetime cost of ~$100k, so it is a risk/reward consideration.

</comment><comment><USER74> I'm just waiting for the new version of Reminders in iOS 13 which will largely kill the need for tools like Todoist/Wunderlist/Things.

<comment> yoz-y Todo apps are largely safe I think, because people have varying and strong opinions about how task management should be handled.

What irks me is that the new reminders have killed the URL scheme support. So no integrations from outside world either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Isn't this Apple's entire business model?

</comment><comment><USER76> "Apple sometimes listens to their customers and supplies things they want/ask for"

</comment><comment><USER77> And this is the reason intellectual property exists, to protect inventors from being copied

<comment><USER61> Unfortunately, IP law doesn't really help when the platform owner can just say 'no' and cut off your entire revenue stream, perpetually. While you might have the law on your side regarding the IP, Apple seem to have the law on their regarding their right to cut you off. For small Apple only businesses, this is essentially a "license to kill", and you have no recourse but - possibly - <USER2> cause enough bad publicity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> Many ios features were copied from cydia as well, especially early on.

</comment><comment><USER79> While it may be that Apple has an unfair advantage regarding the App Store ecosystem, this particular example seems ridiculous IMO. Period tracking doesn't seem like something new, and it's quite a stretch to suggest that Apple copied the idea.

</comment><comment><USER80> Anti-trust, break up the app store + hardware.

</comment><comment><USER81> "Good artists copy; great artists steal"

<comment><USER82> Xiaomi must have an amazing team of artists!

<comment><USER83> Yep! I love their products. Their Roomba and Fitbit clones are great and so much cheaper and they make great powerbanks.

The Jaybird clones from "Taotronics" are another great money saver, and the audio quality is better too.

Almost forgot their sonic toothbrush and wiha screwdrivers (I don't even know what they're clones of)

<comment><USER84> > [...] and they make great powerbanks.

Do they? From what I understood they don't have good efficiency.

> Their Roomba and Fitbit clones are great

(Haven't checked their Roomba.)

The Amazfit Bip cannot disable Bluetooth. Battery life is decent though.

> Almost forgot their sonic toothbrush and wiha screwdrivers (I don't even > know what they're clones of)

The iFixit screwdriver set is the one I got. What I paid for it (during a Black Friday deal) isn't that much off the wiha screwdriver set from Xiaomi. And you support an organization which is part of the Right To Repair movement.

I got one of Xiaomi's Bluetooth speakers as well. I also got a Dafang camera of them. They're both decent and cheap, but not great. Which sums up my Xiaomi experience. Its not as if Xiaomi is so good quality; rather the rest from China is terrible, and we accept it apparently as such (yes some Western brands also deliver abysmal experience but then you got decent warranty).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> Ideas are worthless.

</comment><comment><USER86> How to bypass paywall?

<comment><USER64> Mirror: [https://outline.com/nJ84Ea](https://outline.com/nJ84Ea)

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> capitalism encourages this type of behavior. does it not?

<comment><USER88> Does it though? Copyright anyone?

<comment><USER87> you can't copyright an idea for an app, a name yes. you can patent something though but there are always ways around that.

I'm not agreeing with Apple, just stating an observation.

<comment><USER88> I meant copyright as a vehicle of capitalism contrary to this behaviour where something that works, is bluntly copied without caring for the individual. You know: "for the greater good" of the system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> apple's biggest con was convincing the poor uneducated masses both in tech and out of tech, that they need mobile apps. most functionality out there, can be replicated by web apps. but hey, let apple run a racket

<comment><USER90> iPhone originally only supported web apps. demand for native apps was so great Jobs was brought kicking and screaming into it if anything

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> Apple was the first to develop what we know as an Office suite on the Lisa. Due to developers crying foul over competing with them they let Microsoft copied it and developed MS Office. The first version arrived about two years later. They no longer seem concerned about competing with developers.

</comment><comment><USER92> In some sense developers are already ripping off their users, because they've made the app but are still charging for it / monetizing it, even after it's paid back the development costs and then some. Many apps don't reach that threshold and live in the minimal adoption range, but it's hard to assign blame to Apple for that. And the apps talked about here are the popular ones that have presumably recouped their initial investment many times over. So the complaints in the article read like "I was getting paid tons of money for doing almost nothing and then Apple stopped it."

I imagine in a better world the business model for apps would be simpler, something like a vulnerability bounty program but instead an app bounty program. Same with Amazon, maybe they could acquire Kickstarter and provide product development services instead of sniping new products. And in both cases the end user would get it for unit cost (0-ish for software, more for physical stuff). It requires people to get used to buying products months away from release though, not sure how to address that.

<comment> yoz-y Why would the later customers be entitled to free stuff once the first round of clients paid?

What about updates?</comment></comment>


Enforcing your pull request workflow - <AUTHOR> http://radify.io/blog/enforcing-pull-request-workflows/

<comment><USER2> Finally, we won't have to keep repeating instructions or double-checking our own work.</comment>


By 2040, computers will need more electricity than the world can generate - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/25/semiconductor_industry_association_international_technology_roadmap_for_semiconductors/?mt=1469441767043 <comment><USER2> Reversible computing[1][2]. & I most highly recommend this fantastic lecture on the Physics of Computing:[https://youtu.be/OEzuZ6BpC-g](https://youtu.be/OEzuZ6BpC-g)

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

[https://youtu.be/qPgveUgK8P4](https://youtu.be/qPgveUgK8P4)

</comment><comment><USER3> I always find it funny when projections decades into the future show straight lines. Even more so when the scale is logarithmic.

<comment><USER4> I agree with the general sentiment, but their point here (as I understand it) is to show that the current trend cannot continue like this. The source paper has a poor choice of word in an appendix, saying "when the energy required for computing will exceed the estimated world's energy production" with "will" instead of "would", but it's clear from the text they don't believe this. The next sentence is: "Thus, radical improvement in the energy efficiency of computing is needed".

<comment><USER5> >Thus, radical improvement in the energy efficiency of computing is needed

Isn't that what all these new arm boards are?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In 1894, the Times of London estimated that by 1950 every street in the city would be buried nine feet deep in horse manure.

</comment><comment><USER7> A human brain runs on 20W. I think we have a lot of work ahead of us

<comment><USER8> >So a typical adult human brain runs on around 12 watts

[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/thinking-hard- calo...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/thinking-hard-calories/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why is the world's energy production a constant value from 2010 to 2040? Surely we produce more energy today than we did 30 years ago. Is this just a chart scale issue?

<comment><USER10> It's not constant, and the scale is logarithmic.

That said I think this prediction is really insane and goes against common sense.

<comment><USER11> What?! A constant in logarithmic scale is still a constant.

<comment><USER12> Parent said IT's NOT constant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> We'd probably increase power production before that point, methinks

<comment><USER14> Or reduce power consumption.

<comment><USER12> Or reduce computers...

<comment><USER15> Or reduce the production since the market can be saturated by then...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The Joules/year on the graph is a flat line from now to 2040. It ought to read "does generate" instead of "can generate'.

<comment><USER17> It isn't a flat line: [http://i.imgur.com/oTUC2Nf.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/oTUC2Nf.jpg). The black bar I added is flat.

<comment><USER16> Fair enough, but that's still "projected to generate" not "can generate".</comment></comment></comment>


Before Hunt - <AUTHOR> http://www.beforehunt.com

<comment><USER2> It's getting as bad as the old digg clones.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry you're not a fan, guess it's not a product for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Meaningless Words

</comment><comment><USER4> beforeidea</comment>


Crazy New Experiment Shows Human Brains Can Detect Earth's Magnetic Field - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencealert.com/your-brain-can-detect-earth-s-magnetic-field-even-though-you-can-t-tell <comment><AUTHOR> Our participants were all unaware of the magnetic field shifts and their brain responses. They felt that nothing had happened during the whole experiment – they'd just sat alone in dark silence for an hour.

Underneath, though, their brains revealed a wide range of differences. Some brains showed almost no reaction, while other brains had alpha waves that shrank to half their normal size after a magnetic field shift.</comment>


Ask HN: Would you use a cheaper and anonymous alternative to xero/mint? - <AUTHOR>

For a very long time I am trying to find something that fits my needs...and cheap. I don't want to fight with big guys. I just want to make something useful for me, but in the same time maybe useful for someone else out there.
The plan is already made, around 30% already implemented.
What I want:
 - simple to use
 - forecasting - !IMPORTANT
 - cashflow, income sources
 - <USER2>
 - bill reminder
 - https
What I don't want/need:
 - your real name, address, location
 - your phone number, ip address
 - bank/paypal account
Costs:
 - free alpha/beta, no matter how long does it take
 - after launch it could be freemium/pay what you want(modularity)
As long as I cover yearly costs and people use it, I am more than happy.
Finally: would you use it? <comment><USER3> I would not. Mint is sufficient for my needs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for honestity. Maybe I would use it, but not everyone lives in US.

<comment><USER3> Ah I didn't realize Mint wasn't available outside the US. In that case if I were living where Mint wasn't available, I would like to use something like it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Only US and Canada</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Empathy Is a Bad Thing [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/474588/why-empathy-is-a-bad-thing/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Empathy without boundaries is bad, just like apathy and psychopathy without boundaries are bad. The key is not disregarding or villainizing empathy, but reframing it in a way that says "given my desire to help people, how can I best do that and not lose myself in the process?". With the proper boundaries and opportunities, psychopaths, apaths and empaths all have a valuable roles to play in society.</comment>


To code or not to code? - <AUTHOR> I am thinking of starting to learn coding at the late age of 38.. More and more it dawns on me that my lack of coding skills is holding me back. I am working on a giant messy global startup ecosystem map (www.startupblink.com) and I am not sure what technologies we should be using, and how to check our code quality. Few questions: 1) Do you think that online entrepreneurs should invest time in learning how to code? 2) Is it too late to learn to code when you are deeply involved in a project which uses complicated languages (not css and html) 3) Did anyone start coding later on in their professional life? Why did you quit or continue? Is there a way to know in advance if I will be good at it? 4) If i decide to move forward, what should be the focus (which coding languages) should I learn? What course (length, online/offline) should I go for? Thanks for the feedback! <comment><USER2> > Is it too late to learn to code when

No. period.

</comment><comment><USER3> I started coding later in my career. I had been doing HTML and CSS from when I was about 25, but that was just a bit on the side while I was a product manager. I got into server-side languages and then lots of javascript front- end when I was 32. I've learned tons, enjoy coding, but I am also now transitioning into a CEO role after having transitioned back to Product Management just over a year ago.

You mention 'more complicated languages', which I think is the wrong perspective. The language itself shouldn't be considered complicated, it is the overall structure of your application which contains complexity. Data structures and architecture choices will dictate the challenges you'll experience more than the languages. Languages are, for the most part, about semantics.

I think you're a bit ahead of the game in having selected a project to work on. This is how I started coding, and having a vision you are working toward, I think, is a very good thing. A few friends who have wanted to take up coding over the years, never got very far because they would try a few tutorials, but never had their own project to try to adapt what they were learning to.

It will be very difficult for you to check code quality without knowing how to code. Even knowing how to code, you have to be pretty good to look at somebody else's code and judge it to be of quality or not. This is something I've often struggled with, until you're in there mucking around with it yourself and then you will have a better idea of what might be good or bad. This is assuming there are no massively stand-out 'this is horrible' type issues, but more recognising things that may become issues in the future.

So, with startupblink, did you pay somebody to build this? Or have you built it yourself? (I'm hoping it's the latter). If you've built it yourself so far, I'd say you're off to a good start. If you've paid somebody to build it, I think there are some issues (unless you didn't pay them much).

As far as what languages to learn. Front-end will always need javascript, but now you can also run javascript on the back-end, which means you can learn one language and use it in both places.

You can run javascript in a lambda (or google function) which means you don't have to run your own server, and it will likely be free for you. You can also learn how to use dynamodb for your database, which will probably be easier than learning sql at first as you'll be dealing with documents rather than tables and indexes and stuff.

One important thing to keep in mind is that you are going to make mistakes. You will spend a week building something, and then throw it away. That's going to be part of learning. You're going to come up with a feature, write it out, build a structure around it, and then you're going to learn something new and you'll get rid of what you wrote. To many people this will seem like a waste of time. It isn't. It's learning. We all do it to some extent, but I think you get better as you go.

I don't know about schools and courses. You didn't say where in the world you are, or if you know other coders. I was self-taught before online courses existed. You could try a code-academy, or figure out if you have connections to a good developer who may be able to help guide you.

Be prepared to bang your head against a wall, but learn to make it feel like you're not banging your head against a wall.

It's a challenging road to take, but I feel a worthwhile one. Though I will be coding less and less in the future, my understanding of coding will continue to serve me in the future. I suspect you will find the same.

Best of luck.</comment>


Backblaze Open Sources Reed-Solomon Erasure Coding Source Code - <AUTHOR> https://www.backblaze.com/blog/reed-solomon/

<comment><USER2> We probably should have submitted this as a "Show HN". Believe this is the first production quality Java library that's open source. You're welcome to do anything you want with it - no license restrictions.

Would love your thoughts and feedback, and to hear of what you do with this erasure coding library.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure why this fell off the front page so fast. I've been waiting for this article since the last one!

<comment><USER2> Not sure either. The magic of luck and algorithms I guess.

Are you planning on using the code in something?</comment></comment></comment>