Python 2.7 released - cool-RR http://www.python.org/download/releases/2.7

<comment><USER2> The obligatory What's New in Python 2.7 document: <http://docs.python.org/dev/whatsnew/2.7.html>

<comment><USER3> Link is broken now, should be: <http://docs.python.org/whatsnew/2.7.html>

(Which is actually from the future! "Python 2.7 was released on July 7, 2010.")

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm disappointed that distutils2 didn't make it in this release. Does that mean it won't be in the standard library until the 3.x series?

<comment><USER5> It simply was not going to be ready - and with the amount of churn and changes going on in that space, it was felt that the community would be better served with something stable, later (but still install-able via pip/etc) then something unstable and still cooking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great, now we finally have long awaited ordered dictionary in 2.x branch as well :)

<comment><USER7> Unfortunately they have non-transitive equality when used with standard dictionaries. For example, if O and R are ordered dictionaries with the same entries in different orders, and D is a standard dictionary with the same entries, then O == D == R but O != R.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm confused by why the python 2.x branch is still being actively developed with new features rather than just being maintained for bug fixes. What are the roadmaps and goals of the 2.x verses the 3.x branches?

<comment><USER9> 2.7 is the last major release of the 2.x series. The goal was to ease transition to 3.x by backporting some of the features and provide a stable base for people unable or unwilling to jump to 3.x.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> How does one go about updating Python on OSX Snow Leopard?

<comment><USER11> I wouldn't recommend overwriting OSX's Python. You can install yourself from source into /usr/local, but a package manager like MacPorts or Homebrew helps a lot. It's a little more work up front - to install the package manager - <AUTHOR> it pays itself back over time. Homebrew has 2.6.5 in its main branch, and 2.7 in a fork. See the notes here:

[http://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/blob/master/Library/Formula/...](http://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/blob/master/Library/Formula/python.rb)

I've tried Fink, MacPorts, Rudix and Homebrew. Homebrew isn't perfect, but it's damn good.

<comment><USER12> i am a new mac user (and new to *nix in general). i was trying to get mapnik with postgres working on my mac yesterday and it took me 5 hours to get macports / mapnik setup, and after most of my day was done it turns out that ImageMagick via macports and snow leopard don't mix. (Finally I tried downloading the binary for ImageMagick but then macports doesn't recognize it..) Very frustrating. Is there really nothing better, or am i just too much of a noob? What is the reason for making me build it instead of doing soemthing like apt-get on ubuntu?

<comment><USER13> _What is the reason for making me build it instead of doing soemthing like apt-get on ubuntu?_

Originally, because around '00 Apple asked some Debian people if they minded if Apple used dpkg, and GPL non-withstanding, Debian said (paraphrasing): No, you evil capitalist pigs.

Or at least that's how I remember it being related to me at the time when it was explained why, in the interest of open-source peace and PR, we couldn't using dpkg =)

But now, realistically? Because nobody invests the time in doing it. MacPorts can actually spit out dpkgs, rpms, and apt-get and yum repositories, but nobody has brought the rest of the glue together to actually build and distribute binaries using it.

<comment><USER14> > Debian said (paraphrasing): No, you evil capitalist pigs.

Oh, please... Apple could have used dpkg if they wanted to.

dpkg is open source software released under the GPL license. Apple just chose not to, because they would have had to open source all their code that linked to dpkg libraries.

That is the price they would have to pay for piggy-backing on the efforts of many volunteers and gain immediate access to a state of the art packaging system.

But of course Apple being Apple has a lot more money to spend on PR and along with the help of their fan boys, the story turned into "Debian developers are mean, capitalism-hating hippies". I am not really surprised.

<comment><USER13> > Oh, please... Apple could have used dpkg if they wanted to.

Apple chose not to given the apparent community stance.

> dpkg is open source software released under the GPL license. Apple just > chose not to, because they would have had to open source all their code that > linked to dpkg libraries.

> That is the price they would have to pay for piggy-backing on the efforts of > many volunteers and gain immediate access to a state of the art packaging > system.

Neither dpkg nor apt-get _have_ any libraries to link against, so that really wasn't the issue.

> But of course Apple being Apple has a lot more money to spend on PR and > along with the help of their fan boys, the story turned into "Debian > developers are mean, capitalism-hating hippies". I am not really surprised.*

This isn't an Apple PR story. This is something I just told you, recollected from nearly a decade ago when the mere _possibility_ of using dpkg was on the table.

... Although, I have to say, your modern response really rather lends some credence to my ancient recollection.

<comment><USER14> > Apple chose not to given the apparent community stance.

Apple still could have used it. It is open source, that is the point of open source. Redhat might not like that CentOS is recompiling their source and release their distribution. But there is nothing they can do.

> Neither dpkg nor apt-get have any libraries to link against, so that really > wasn't the issue.

Not true. There is libapt, synaptic depends on it, for example. Unless they intended their users to open terminals (oh the horror), they would have had to link against libapt to create a responsive installer GUI. Otherwise they would have had to parse stdout of external processes.

> This isn't an Apple PR story. This is something I just told you, recollected > from nearly a decade ago when the mere possibility of using dpkg was on the > table.

I understand it is not an Apple PR story in this case. It just seemed that the story wasn't true and it seems to me often enough the untrue stories always favor those who have most fanboys or largest PR pockets.

<comment><USER15> > Unless they intended their users to open terminals

They could run it on a separate process and deal with stdin/stdout within a GUI program. No problem that way either.

<comment><USER14> Even better they could have assigned some devs to create dpkg and apt options to output stdout data in a structured format (xml for ex) to facilitate this kind of interaction. Bazaar has that for example.

The downside is that that could significantly slow down the application, depending on the types of queries and commands that are performed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Did they remove the global interpreter lock?

And if not, how can the language be used for high concurrency (ala Facebooks tornado).

<comment><USER17> In short: epoll. Network IO bound servers need only deal with sockets that have some event ready. Unless I'm mistaken, Tornado isn't written to be highly concurrent, it is, rather, quite asynchronous: they make it very simple to deal with IO only when there is data to process. You _can_ block the whole process with a long lived handler.

<comment><USER15> > You _can_ block the whole process with a long lived handler.

Or you could handle the event out-of-process.

<comment><USER17> Quite so.I made my statement more to dissuade the notion that Tornado was in any way a magic concurrency machine, that, ultimately, careful programming is still required.

<comment><USER15> +1.

Out-of-process handling is no silver bullet either. Careful programming is, but it's a skillfully handcrafted bullet, made from the most exotic materials in addition to its silvery base and that kills only the specific problem it was designed to kill.

Getting rid of the GIL would be like having a machine gun for mass-produced silver bullets.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


ISP Advertisement Injection - CMA Communications - <AUTHOR> http://zmhenkel.blogspot.com/2013/03/isp-advertisement-injection-cma.html <comment><USER3> I posted about this on reddit a few weeks ago[0]. Someone in the thread said they had contacted the Better Business Bureau, but I'm not sure what their process is or how far it's gotten.

There has also been a short email thread in which their official response is this:

> Mr. [redacted],

> CMA is in the process of trying to find ways to drive income from our > internet service in new ways. These new ways would allow us to expand our > service offering and maintain the cost of the current residential and > business internet services.

> We've been testing a new service which allows us to overlay / insert some > local advertisement on certain web pages. A company called Route 66 is our > partner. Right now, you're barraged with a lot of internet advertising, > popups, etc… This has become part of the internet experience. At the core, > we're simply trying to better customize some of this experience. And > possibly give you access to highly relevant local advertising.

> Having said that, I've recently become a little more familiar with what some > of these ads look like and how they operate. I will concede that I'm not > sure they strike the perfect balance between being information and non- > invasive. Like I mentioned, we're involved in a test and the feedback we're > getting from the test is helping us to refine and improve how (or if) we'll > continue here. So I'm stopping short of saying that we'll be ceasing this > type of internet advertising experiment. But I do want you to know that your > feedback has resulted in the beginning of a pretty intense internal > dialogue.

> Thanks for your feedback.

> [redacted]

> CMA Communications

It's absolute insanity and a major breach of trust that they'd inject their own content into webpages I visit. I'm permanently using a remote VPN for all outgoing traffic through CMA.

[0]: Didn't know exactly where the post belonged, so I put it in /r/self: [http://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/19zhl6/my_isp_is_injec...](http://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/19zhl6/my_isp_is_injecting_advertisements_into_my/)

<comment><USER4> The BBB has exactly 0 power over anyone, so I really doubt that will fix anything.

<comment><USER5> Complaining to the BBB is slightly less useful than posting an angry comment on a YouTube video.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Immediately cancel your account and switch. If you are forced to use them as an ISP due to municipal/geographical regions complain to your city manager.

The only way to slap these companies back into line is with your wallet. If you can't do that then a couple complaints to the city manager can go a lot farther than you think, especially in smaller areas where there isn't a lot of support staff in city hall.

<comment><USER7> Considering just how big the outcry was over ISPs delivering advertisements instead of an NXDOMAIN response, and how many ISPs are continuing to mess with DNS over ten years after the execrable practice started, I haven't got much faith in the power of the market. Has there been just one ISP that stopped hijacking DNS over customer complaints?

<comment><USER8> Sonic.net ftw! Not available everywhere but great ISP who stands up for a free and open Internet.

<comment><USER9> Looks like Sonic only provides service in CA.

<comment><USER10> And as far as i know, only in certain parts of the bay area. I wish i could get it in cupertino.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "knowingly and with intent to defraud, accesses a protected computer without authorization, or exceeds authorized access, and by means of such conduct furthers the intended fraud and obtains anything of value, unless the object of the fraud and the thing obtained consists only of the use of the computer and the value of such use is not more than $5,000 in any 1-year period"

Injecting or replacing ads in other people's content on the wire: 'knowingly and with intent to defraud', 'exceeds authorized access', 'furthers the intended fraud'

Ad revenue from doing so: 'obtains anything of value'

Forget copyright infringement: a case could be made that CFAA applies here.

<comment><USER12> Wouldn't this depend on the TOS of the ISP? Perhaps by signing the contract you "authorise" this.

This sort of thing doesn't surprise me any more. AFAIK DNS on every major ISP in the UK is broken, there is no NXDOMAIN. Unresolvable domains are simply redirected to a specific IP address which happens to host a page of ads and a search bar on port 80. This might not matter to most people, but it's a huge PITA when I'm testing some things.

<comment><USER11> I'm not aware of any similar arguments being tested in court, so this is all conjecture.

That said, barring an explicit definition of 'Internet service' in your service contract, it's commonly understood that requesting a page from example.com, all the data your ISP returns implicitly is sourced from example.com. Introducing your own content in between is therefore fraud, as you've mis-represented the origin of the content.

I believe the owner of an involved web server would have standing as well, not just the users.

<comment><USER12> But in such a case you could make the same argument for ad supported wifi connections or proxies.

<comment><USER13> You do enter into agreement (usually), but do you have a valid contract when using those connections?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> They go as far as even replacing existing ads with their own, this seems criminal, especially when they are directly impacting google/microsoft/apple by removing their ads and replacing them with their own.

</comment><comment><USER14> A picture speaks a thousand words here; the author did a great job supplying plentiful screenshots to emphasize how _wrong_ this practice is. I read about this in the past but wasn't too moved until I scrolled through all those screenshots and thought, wow, this is not good for ad publishers OR brands OR anybody. This is only good for the greedy ISP.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is an interesting problem. On a broadcast channel, when a local station attempts to replace the ads the network has put in their shows, with their own ads, the network has some leverage to shut down that process. But on the Internet there are a bunch of web sites and they don't have any leverage at all. They could do an IP filter, which is to say put up a page "This site unavailable on this ISP's network" when a request came in from a CMA communications IP block. That would cause a support headache for CMA with all their customers calling into complain. The other defense would be to create a web page that doesn't cache (it pulls the actual page content through AJAX calls gets around any local script injection). Lastly there seems to be "product" here where you bundle up an EC2 instance and some friendly software on the PC that spins up a VPN tunnel for all of your traffic.

<comment><USER16> "on the Internet there are a bunch of web sites and they don't have any leverage at all"

They could use TLS...

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> HTTPS everywhere would solve this, and the Comcast Javascript injection - <USER2> wonder how many more people will deploy things like this before that happens?

<comment><USER10> https is the wrong solution. that is for preventing others from seeing what you're sending/receiving, not verifying the integrity of what is sent/received. well, it does do that too, but it adds extra unneeded overhead by encrypting everything. Besides, the ISP can easily man-in-the-middle any connection you make and then inject their ads into the webpage, even if you use https.

The correct solution is signing the webpage (but not necessarily encrypting it). More technically, that means the server/website would hash the source of the webpage, and then send the webpage, the signed hash, and if needed, the cert it used to sign the hash. Upon receiving both the webpage and the signed hash, the browser would then check to make sure that the signature can be trusted (using a chain of trust the same way we do with certs for https pages already), hash the webpage source it received, and then verify that that hash matches the signed hash it received from the website.

It doesn't matter if any of that is sent in plaintext, because there is no sensitive information, and as long as the hashing algorithm used is strong (ie sha2 family, not md5), then the isp can do fuck all to inject javascript.

<comment><USER5> If TLS could negotiate certificates instead of supporting one and only one, the backbone of any sane "virtual host" system, then https: wouldn't be a big deal. It'd be the default.

Now you need a separate IP (expensive) or port (annoying) for each virtual host configured with a different SSL cert. This has to stop, but it will not be easy to fix.

<comment><USER18> RFC 3546, which includes TLS Server Name Indication, has existed since June 2003. The problem preventing deployment is the lack of client support, especially Internet Explorer on Windows XP and Android 2.x [1].

\--

1\. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Name_Indication#No_suppo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Name_Indication#No_support)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Technically, isn't this copyright violation? People who inject ads into a page are creating a derived work without permission of the rights holders. I'm sure Apple didn't okay that addition to their HTML.

It would be interesting to see a lawsuit along those lines.

</comment><comment><USER20> If they had only replaced ads and not created new ads at the bottom of the page, nobody would have noticed.

</comment><comment><USER21> It's been long enough for me to state, but I used to work for a contractor hired by CMA Communications.

ISPs of this size try and maximise as much profit out of their customers and being that a lot of CMA's sites were over provisioned and are barely able to provide telephony service without incompetence-y along the way, it is not shocking that ads being injected into pages is a new thing for them.

To see these bullshit ads showing up on random pages is far from surprising.

</comment><comment><USER22> The first screenshot has the Google squiggle. Am I right there? That somehow Google ads are being injected?

Because that seems like something that Google would not tolerate.

</comment><comment><USER23> This was inevitable.

That's why I bought Google stock after they got into Android, as Android makes it possible for Google to now step in & protect against the MITTM attacks by ISP's blocking their ads. The OS gets the final word before it displays content to the user & it can detect & block these.

Now, they just have to deploy the fix to Android...

<comment><USER24> And what happens when Google are the one doing the MITTM attack?

It all comes down to who do you trust.

<comment><USER25> Has Google ever modified other websites' pages like this?

<comment><USER26> Yes, I believe they call it Adsense.

<comment><USER25> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdSense> "How AdSense works

(1) The webmaster inserts the AdSense JavaScript code into a webpage."

So this is _the webmaster_ modifying his own page. It's not Google injecting Javascript into someone else's page like CMA Communications or Comcast is said to be doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The sad thing about this is in many places (at least in the US) there are few if any alternatives. In my city, I can either get Time Warner Cable or AT&T DSL. I'm 20 miles from Verizon's office but FIOS is illegal in my city. So if the ISP starts screwing with the content then you have virtually no alternative.

<comment><USER28> I'm interested to know why FiOS is illegal in your city? I don't know of any regulation that would make it.

<comment><USER27> Some odd law in Texas. But I think FIOS is no longer being expanded anyway in favor of wireless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Sprint is another (lesser?) offender -- their mobile broadband injects a script in every page that loads compressed versions of images until told otherwise. (Annoying, but at least it's well-intentioned.) I've long since blocked the IP, but it gave me a bit of a scare to see unfamiliar code in my own websites.

</comment><comment><USER30> Ugh, I hate that attitude of "Macs can't get malware" that this guy exudes so smugly.

<comment><USER31> Yep. I rolled my eyes at this, before I even got to the meat:

"I laughed to myself briefly, thinking: "who uses Bing?", and then realized I was a computer science grad student who had managed to get malware on a Mac, so I wasn't in a position to judge."

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> My parents use CMA Communications. I can confirm that they receive injected ads as well.

I looked into switching then to another ISP, but the only one available is 1.5Mbps DSL vs their 15Mbps connection now.

</comment><comment><USER33> Top contender for "worst publicity"

</comment><comment><USER34> Damn, that is low. Time to get a vpn.

</comment><comment><USER16> Another reason to use ABP...

</comment><comment><USER35> Every website should use https</comment>


Evernote is down - <AUTHOR> https://maintenance.evernote.com/maintenance.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Frustrating when the whole point is to "stay connected." I have a critical meeting where I prepared notes and they didn't sync and now I have to just deal with that.</comment>


Snapcode lets you take a picture of code and run it - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sergeichestakov/snapcode <comment><USER2> Your project is very cool and interesting, given its close to magic. However you might want to consider a name change...[0]

Wouldn't want this project to be ruined by Snap's army of brutish trademark lawyers or have a repeat of what happened to this unlucky guy. [1]

[0] [https://support.snapchat.com/en-GB/a/about- snapcodes](https://support.snapchat.com/en-GB/a/about-snapcodes)

[1] [https://theregister.com/2020/04/28/snapchat_domain_name_come...](https://theregister.com/2020/04/28/snapchat_domain_name_comedy_1m_sale/)</comment>


7 Key SaaS Metrics Startups Need to Be Tracking - <AUTHOR> https://blog.paymill.com/saas-metrics/ <comment><USER2> Nice article! I really like how the website style's orange colour goes into your diagrams.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great post, thanks for sharing your knowledge.

<comment><AUTHOR> My pleasure, glad you enjoyed it! :)</comment></comment>


Google's response to Mocality (Kenya): We were mortified to learn... - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/115264064268941645500/posts/WfALKwfmCGJ

<comment><USER2> Seems to already be posted here:

<http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=3462129></comment>


Ask HN: How can I send an open letter to HP? - <AUTHOR> I want to send an open letter to HP and I can't seem to get a proper contact/complaint form from their website.
Does anyone know a way of sending this letter and letting the world know?
Thanks in advance <comment><USER2> Who should you send it to? -> [https://www.google.com.co/webhp?#q=ceo+HP](https://www.google.com.co/webhp?#q=ceo+HP)

How to find their email? -> [https://www.google.com.co/webhp?#q=how%20to%20find%20anyone%...](https://www.google.com.co/webhp?#q=how%20to%20find%20anyone%27s%20email)

Where to publish it? -> medium or the like.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> None of their emails are available/published

But medium is a good choice. Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Unfortunately, there's nothing you can say that HP would actually care about.

<comment><USER4> Sadly this is the truth. This is about as futile as trying to "communicate" with Comcast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Dont even bother, it took me ayear to get a pen from the service and eventually got wrong one. It is not worth your time, health and money. Just get rid of what you have and move on.</comment>


Why Android devs are losing money, and it's not due to piracy - <AUTHOR> http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/08/16/why-android-developers-are-losing-money/

<comment><USER3> I haven't found any Android apps worth buying. I look through the paid apps section now and again and it seems to be very utility-centirc. I'm not going to pay for a backup tool, file manager, ROM manager, over-clocking utility, task manager, etc. Of course you don't have to. The free versions of these apps are good enough. Then you have an assortment of weather apps, alarm clocks, etc. Again stuff that just doesn't justify even 99 cents to me. I don't keep up on exchange rates so I generally won't buy anything that's listed in Euros because I'm not sure if it's worth it or not. For games the #1 game, Robo Defense, doesn't even have a screenshot so there's absolutely no chance I will buy it. 2 of the other apps in the top 5 are emulators that will require me to go find ROMs. The Android market just kind of feels like a bad Windows shareware site to me. It's lacking instant gratification.

<comment><USER4> Interesting. I know that some games are direct ports of their iPhone versions. It doesn't make sense why they would be worth the money on the iPhone but not on Android.

<comment><USER5> It makes a little sense. Demographics is one aspect -- people who buy Android tend to be cheap, and don't like paying for quality. Or else they would own iPhones. :) The required flamebait out of the way, let me get to my real points. (Well, this was a real point too, but said as offensively as possible, which the remaining are not.)

Another issue is market construction. Think about walking by a luxury goods store. Imagine you're on Michigan Avenue with the sky scrapers and the beautiful people, the August sun beating down and a light breeze to keep you cool. All those factors probably put you in a pretty damn good mood, the mood to spend.

Now imagine you're instead in downtown Detroit, browsing the same merchandise through poorly lit, grid-crossed holes in squat, cinderblock buildings. Maybe the goods inside are worth the same amount, but the average person in the same situation is not going to pay as much.

That's what the Android store is like. Two screenshots compressed at just insane levels like Google has run out of hard drives, and four hundred characters for a description. That puts anyone in the mood to spend, right?

A final factor is the miserable battery life of the average Android handset, which makes them less suited to be a gaming device if you want them to work as a phone later.

Also, how many games have really been ported directly to Android from iPhone? I mean good ones, now, ones people have actually bought on the iPhone. There's a halo effect involved too. If you go for years without seeing a decent game for a device, you end up being trained to think of it as a non-gaming device. On the other hand, I only have to browse the internet for a couple of minutes to find a half dozen iPhone games I wouldn't mind paying a buck to try out.

<comment><USER6> Good points. I'd add that in the AppStore, consumers feel safe. You don't have to worry about viruses, malware or even that apps don't do what they say they do. Apple has removed numerous reasons for _hesitation_ from the buying experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Before poo-poo'ing the idea, consider that a conspiracy isn't required for Google to be unconcerned with paid app sales. Android only exists because Google was afraid of being cut out of mobile search advertising. Their priority has been getting a competitive OS with a prominent Google search box on as many handsets as possible. Paid app revenue is something of a sideshow. (Even with paid apps, Android isn't going to turn a profit in the short term, so why worry about minor revenue streams?) I'm sure Google doesn't _want_ a shitty, disorganized app store that can't collect payments or rampant piracy, but they aren't exactly hurting Android yet, so why should they worry about it?

Edit: Even worse, Google apparently doesn't get _any_ revenue from paid app sales. Their 30% cut goes to the carrier. (Thanks gregholland!)

<comment><USER8> The paid App Store or Android market will never be a revenue stream for Apple or Google. In fact it is probably designed to be break-even at best. They need interesting apps to push their respective platforms further - that's where the gold mine is for both companies (apple gets to sell more hardware and goog gets more searches)

<comment><USER7> Yep, the difference between them is that Apple had the luxury of waiting a year before tackling the app store (and experience with iTunes to draw from) whereas Google needed an app store on Day 1, albeit a store they could neglect.

<comment><USER9> Point, but they also got something existing to copy -- and be compared against.

<comment><USER10> Point, it is way easier(and far less work) to copy than to design something from scratch.

<comment><USER9> That was half of my point; the other half is that the copy _will_ be compared to the original.

When you steal a design and reimplement, only Microsoft (ten years ago, not now) got away with doing it worse...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Google also has a vested interest in keeping as many apps free as possible. Most free apps makes use of Admob (Google) as their primary source of revenue, this means that Google gets a cut of this. But for paid apps, the 30% that gets taken away from your sales goes to the carrier instead and Google does not see a cent of this. Therefore by limiting the number of countries from which developers can publish apps, as well as the countries where paid apps are available, Google is actually boosting their own profits.

I have almost given up on the Android market, Looking forward to MeeGo and Win7mo.

<comment><USER12> _But for paid apps, the 30% that gets taken away from your sales goes to the carrier instead_

Do you have a source for that? As far as I know you pay for apps using Google Checkout and the carrier never enters into it.

<comment><USER11> <http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10072682-94.html>

quote

"One difference the mobile phone industry might well find appealing: Apple keeps the remaining revenue, but Google gives it to wireless service carriers, minus billing settlement fees."

<comment><USER13> With Google not getting revenue from the Android store, they have no incentive to improve it in any way. They won't be nearly as concerned about their developers making money, either. It sounds like a terrible plan all around.

<comment><USER14> They do have an incentive... but an incentive to make developers use ads- subsiadised apps. Maybe that was their main strategy all along, and they told the carriers they could keep any money made on the store to get some traction (and to avoid the carriers creating their own stores).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Although you CAN buy apps on the New Zealand market place, as a developer in New Zealand, you CANNOT sell any apps!

As a developer you need to be in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, United Kingdom or United States to set up a merchant account.

I had an email conversion with Tim Bray about this...

He said: "I hear you. We're working on lots more countries. It's an amazing amount of work to do each one. -Tim"

But did not indicate any timeline :(

<comment><USER16> Here's the list of countries: [http://market.android.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&an...](http://market.android.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=150324)

I'm _amazed_ that Google hasn't fixed this. Apple didn't have the problem at all, and I don't understand why it is taking Google so long.

<comment><USER17> > Apple didn't have the problem at all

You sure about that? Just because Apple took care of it doesn't mean it didn't take a lot of work.

<comment><USER18> The secret is that Apple did all the groundwork years in advance, as part of rolling out the Apple Stores, the iTunes Music Store, et cetera.

<comment><USER8> Doesn't Google already have a way to remit money to adsense partners across the world?

<comment><USER18> Presumably. But AdSense is a rather different business.

Consider: I don't think advertising is subject to sales tax. Here's New York State on the subject:

[http://nystax.custhelp.com/cgi- bin/nystax.cfg/php/enduser/st...](http://nystax.custhelp.com/cgi- bin/nystax.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1215&p_created=1104328228)

When you go into a product business you may have a different set of legal issues to consider. It's also B2C rather than B2B, which changes the sort of customer service you need and (I'm guessing) dramatically increases your vulnerability to things like chargebacks and stolen credit cards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It is just as big a problem or perhaps even bigger that hardly any countries are allowed to _sell_ apps. It means there are millions of developers with no option to put a price on their apps. So what do they do? they make free apps that compete with the paid apps. The free apps aren't always as good as the paid ones but they still bite into their revenue because for some reason people will irrationally put up with a lot of crappiness to save 99c. And they'll conclude that apps on Android are crap at the same time, hurting the Android brand which hurts all the paid app developers all over again.

The result is the quality of apps is poor and profits are lower across the board.

<comment><USER20> >So what do they do? they make free apps that compete with the paid apps.

No, they stay with Apple, where they can actually make money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Google thinks they can have lightning hit the same spot twice .i.e. crowd sourcing. It worked with Google Search but for the Android platform, Google will have to actually do some PR work. As an android developer, I got pretty frustrated by the lack of clear documentation and their horrible API. Chances are, if you are used to the Sun Java API (or even C# API), trying to develop in Android will easily get your frustrated with the Android API. Method names sound alien or don't really mean what they imply. Also, the whole XML resourced-based format prevents you from easily creating components dynamically (through java code) and referencing them in more than one project.

I could go on and on...

Even the Developer portal on the Android Market is just horrible. I'm not sure what they were trying to accomplish.

\- 2 screen shots???

\- extremely limited description?

\- No clear text box for "Update Reason"?

\- You can't respond to user ridiculous comments?

\- Sometimes my paid apps get cancelled after two days of purchase

P/S: I have more than 1/2 million combined downloads

<comment><USER22> Ok this is just wrong on so many levels.

It's trivial to create interface elements on the fly, even when using XML resources. You're not under any obligation to even define things using XML if you don't want to (and some more dynamic apps don't).

There are some issues with the way things are named (a spinner is not what you think it is), it's really a pretty small issue. I find the API's to be fairly well documented and fairly straightforward. A large amount of the standard Java library is available as well.

The app-store is a complete and utter mess and I think Google knows it. I fully expect them to address it in their next release (I hope).

<comment><USER21> You obviously don't develop large/similar applications do you?

We have custom controls (text boxes, listviews, dynamic formviews) that inherit from Android controls, that are reused over 15+ applications. It was hell building them scratch because the main app was a Java library (not an android app so the XML resources are useless).

I don't think you even understand what I'm saying. For example: Can you explain to me why the __CheckedTextView __control is available in XML but the class itself is __abstract __?

<comment><USER23> I'm not even an experienced Android developer, but I just looked up CheckedTextView:

[http://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/Checke...](http://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/CheckedTextView.html)

I see no indications that it's abstract, and I found a bunch of other abstract classes that clearly say "abstract" above the class name at the top of the page. Am I totally off base here?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm an android guy, but I bought an iPad recently, and I think the author's missing a huge chunk of the issue here: Design & Culture. There is a big, big difference between how Google & Apple handle paid-for purchases - on Android, you get a confirmation screen, you have to verify the purchase, and you get 24hrs to return it. On iOS, you press a button and the app starts downloading. It's almost frighteningly fast - no confirmation screen, no returns, Congrats, and enjoy your $10 app. Psychologically, these are very different experiences, and I think they push users to spend more on iOS than android.

There's also a difference in average price points and expected prices - <USER2> android is absolutely cheaper. I think this is partly because the iOS marketplace is more mature, partly because big companies are not totally committed to android yet ("Testing the Market" price, not "Making Money" price), and partly self-reinforcing.

Whatever the cause, though, it's just flat out Easier to spend more money on iOS, and I suspect THAT's why Android devs aren't making what iOS devs are.

Mind you, I think Google's model is more consumer-friendly, and I endorse that, but the flip side to that coin is that Devs aren't making as much money, and that might hurt the platform in the long run.

<comment><USER20> You normally have to put in your password as well, unless you have chosen to skip that step in itunes, which seems a pretty silly thing to do.

<comment><USER25> I think iTunes is the only place where I can skip a password and choose not too, out of fear of buying things by accident. I could go or a confirmation dialog instead, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is not a new problem. It was an issue for Valve with piracy of their games in the Russian market. So they decided to actually sell their games in Russia and it went a long way to reducing piracy of their games in that market. People will get things as soon as they can if they want it. For instance, fansubs of anime and foreign films are pretty popular and widely circulated. If that means stealing it then they will.

[0] [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/valve-we-dont-worry- about-...](http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/valve-we-dont-worry-about-piracy)

</comment><comment><USER27> Speaking from my own iPhone App Store experience, the US, Australia, Canada and the UK are by far the biggest customers, with the US obviously having by far the largest single installed base, and therefore the largest demand for apps.

If these countries are covered for buying Android apps, and per the article they are, then Android should be doing just fine.

For this reason, I'd disagree with the premise that the Android marketplace problems are caused by not supporting paid apps in countries that are marginal buyers at best. It seems much more likely that Android apps get pirated, simply because it's relatively easy.

I'm interested in writing for Android, but I'm holding off until I see some evidence that the Google DRM actually works and allows application writers to be paid for their work.

edited to give my reasoning on why I respectfully disagree with the article. ;)

</comment><comment><USER28> Payment friction is the enemy of many plans. If you don't account for it in your model, prepare for possible doom.

</comment><comment><USER29> Maybe Google is hoping that someone will fork the app store side of things, and it won't be their problem anymore?

</comment><comment><USER30> Couldn't other app stores step in to fill the gap?

</comment><comment><USER27> Here's some information about the Android installed base by country.

[http://www.techinfospotlight.com/2010/05/phone-os-market- sti...](http://www.techinfospotlight.com/2010/05/phone-os-market-still-twice- as-big-as-android-in-us/)

The big takeaway for me is that 75% of Android phones able to access AdMob are in the North America, versus about 50% of iOS installed-base in North America!

Quote: "Over half of Apple's sales are now outside the US. AdMob's figures indicate 49% of the iPhone OS devices reaching its advertisement network are in North The united states, while 28% are in Western Europe, 14% are in Asia & 10% are elsewhere around the globe. For Android, a whopping 75% of the installed base visible to AdMob are in North The united states, with only 11% finding their way to Western Europe. A similar 12% are present in Asia, while less than 3% are in use elsewhere on the globe."

</comment><comment><USER31> What is the spread of third-party Android markets? Are there any that are set up to work in nations that the official app market doesn't support yet?

<comment><USER32> <http://slideme.org/> \- app for it comes with CyanogenMod

<comment><USER33> <http://store.handmark.com/> \- Accepts a wide variety of payment forms and has a decent selection of titles for Android.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> In a similar vein, some of the best apps are made by non-US developers, but neither of my [American] credit cards works buying apps in non-USD.

(Not sure if Apple has the same limitation, or whether they "solve" that problem by only showing American apps, but I never ran into it there.)

<comment><USER29> Thats a limitation with your credit cards. Mine can bill in any currency required (obviously, followed by a currency conversion fee, and the conversion itself being completed at rates seemingly VERY favorable to the bank/cc company).

<comment><USER35> Actually the exchange rates are quite good.

But many (not all!) banks will charge a fee (1- 3%) on top of that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> " _Paid Android apps are [ only ] available in the following countries: Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States._ "

Yikes!</comment>


Introducing Chaos Engineering - <AUTHOR> http://techblog.netflix.com/2014/09/introducing-chaos-engineering.html <comment><USER2> Man, I really have the impression that my video-on-demand service has a better understanding of ensuring availability and risk-management than either my bank or any government service.

Could you imagine say a utility company creating a title called 'Chaos Engineer'.

<comment><USER3> Can you imagine how difficult that would be to justify in a bank or government service? It would be very hard to convince someone in a position of power at an institution like that that _deliberately introducing random failures and problems_ into your production services would be a good idea. Even if it is a good idea, it would be hard to make that argument.

If Netflix's system fails, the worst thing that could happen is you don't get to watch _Orange is the New Black_. If your bank's system fails, you may lose payments, fail to pay your bills on time, or worse.

<comment><USER4> I work for a large institution. The thought process doesn't work that way -- the suggestion of introducing chaos would be a no-go not because of business risk, but the risk of disrupting the layers of bullshit that people build between them and whatever the actual business is.

Netflix's cost of failure is very high -- customers get real-time discovery of your failures, and the service costs less than $10/mo, so they aren't deeply invested in it and will drop you like a hot potato.

<comment><USER5> When people are only paying $10/month, failures are cheap. I imagine low-cost customers tend to be more forgiving. I could be wrong on this.

<comment><USER4> The difference in many government and some banking situations is that you don't have much recourse. If the DMV goes down, you still need plates. If it's a really epic failure, there may be political fallout, otherwise, it's just meeting low expectations.

For many people, changing bank accounts is very difficult for many people, which is one of the reasons that many banks are able to treat customers with something close to contempt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Netflix puts out some great articles about architecture in the cloud. Auto- scaling, chaos monkey, and how they handle 'steal-time.' Does anyone know of any other company that publishes so much about cloud architecture? This is great stuff!

<comment><USER7> Most companies their size would use their own servers instead of the cloud.

<comment><USER8> Using AWS does not magically give you a HA infrastructure when you have a complicated service oriented architecture like Netflix. All the stuff mentioned here are still relevant even if they're running their own DC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if Netflix has ever come out with some kind of, "So you want to get into chaos engineering, eh?" kind of article that explains the basics and some pitfalls/things to look out for.

<comment><USER10> I gave a talk at pagerduty about how this has been done for the last few years: [https://blog.pagerduty.com/2014/03/injecting-failure-at- netf...](https://blog.pagerduty.com/2014/03/injecting-failure-at-netflix- staying-reliable-for-40-million-customers/)

<comment><USER6> Nice! Thanks for sharing man!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I assume that other big internet companies also practice chaos engineering under a different name, but having such a name for the job is awesome. It highlights the difference to traditional stress testing. Names have surprising power. Growth Hacker was a bit annoying but very effective title trend and it helped to communicate the different approach to traditional marketing efforts. I think Chaos Engineer has the same potential.

<comment><USER12> You're probably right re:other companies doing similar things. Certainly Google does something similar via their "disaster days": [http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2371516](http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2371516)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's great to see Netflix taking disaster recovery and chaos mitigation seriously. Learning to work with constant failure is one the biggest challenges to anyone working with distributed systems and scale, and concepts like the Chaos Monkey help enormously. I hope other companies follow suit, and soon.

</comment><comment><USER14> How does one go about becoming a chaos engineer? I imagine up to this point it is a field one falls into accidentally and gains experience over time. I can imagine it becoming a topic taught at a college level in the near future.

<comment><USER2> Not really, you probably start with an entry-level sysadmin/devops position, and work your way from fire-fighting incident to firefighting incident.

You just need an appreciation that any down-time in a system is a symptom of larger problems, and the will to identify (and reproduce as chaos!) those problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Someone calling themselves 'the chaos commander' who uses multi-regional active-active jargon is looking for chaos engineers.

Nope.

</comment><comment><USER16> Lol at monkey picture, full rambo style :p</comment>


The Oatmeal v. FunnyJunk, Part III - <AUTHOR> http://www.popehat.com/2012/06/15/the-oatmeal-v-funnyjunk-part-iii-charles-carreons-lifetime-movie-style-dysfunctional-relationship-with-the-internet/#more-14866 <comment><USER2> "security attacks instigated by Matt Inman"

That sure as heck sounds defamatory, but I bet the words are carefully chosen.

> instigated - 2. Incite someone to do something, esp. something bad.

Hm, now it seems nuanced word selection asking what the definition of "is" is.

What does incite mean then?

> in·cite - To provoke and urge on: troublemakers who incite riots; inciting > workers to strike.

Hm, although Inman's articles may have provoked others outraged by Mr. Carreon's absurd legal demand letter, I see no evidence Inman urged anyone on. Carreon's letter itself was sufficiently inciteful to inspire attacks from unknown parties of its own accord.

Mr. Carreon may be attempting to provoke Mr. Inman into an emotional state where he says something that is actionable, or for Mr. Inman to unnecessarily spend money on costly legal maneuvers that Mr. Carreon can then interact with at no personal financial cost, eventually wearing out Mr. Inman.

If it was me, at this point I would document everything and not respond at all beyond publicly posting all received correspondence letters without commentary so that the facts of the case may speak for themselves to the public.

<comment><USER3> If Inman has any sense at all (which he certainly seems to), he should sit back with some popcorn at this point, watch the ensuing carnage, and just wait for the day when he gets to photograph the money and that disturbing bear-love drawing.

<comment><USER4> Agreed, while he generally posts with the best of intentions, I can see him easily incriminating himself unintentionally with a haphazard response.

The charity idea was brilliant though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I admit it, I chuckled. Sometimes I think this kind of news is the soap opera for geeks.

<comment><USER6> I haven't been this entertained since the Ocean Marketting saga of late last year.</comment></comment>


A Messy Loss for Climate Lawsuit Plaintiffs - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.forbes.com/docket/2010/05/28/climate-lawsuit-plaintiffs-lose-another-district/?boxes=Homepagechannels

<comment><USER2> > > The plaintiffs, property owners on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, accused the > industrial companies of spewing greenhouse gases into the air and helping to > cause global warming, rising waters, hurricanes and all manner of other > natural disasters.

Suppose that the plaintiffs' allegations are true but the effect of defendants' actions is to counter-balance cooling caused by volcanos, the solar cycle, and/or othe factors. In other words, there's no change because the of the defendants' actions. (This is the background to Niven's Fallen Angels.)

In that circumstance, should the plaintiffs pay the defendants for the benefits that they provided?

If not, why not?

</comment><comment><USER3> > The plaintiffs, property owners on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, accused the > industrial companies of spewing greenhouse gases into the air and helping to > cause global warming, rising waters, hurricanes and all manner of other > natural disasters.

I thought the latest guess was that the warming mostly happens near the poles, thus reducing temperature differentials, thus leading to _milder_ weather?</comment>