Google's dropping H.264 from Chrome a step backward for openness - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2011/01/googles-dropping-h264-from-chrome-a-step-backward-for-openness.ars

<comment><USER2> I fully agree with the article. Google's move makes me very angry, for two reasons:

1) Google uses us as tools in its battles and wars, because it is us who will be inconvenienced for years to come if companies continue to fight over video codecs. Sure, the explanations are grandiose — "we fight for openness" and the like — but the fight is being done by our expense.

2) Google's hypocrisy is unbelievable. H.264, an ITU/ISO standard, documented, with reference implementations, with a free/oss encoder (x264) and hardware support in a bazillion devices is called "closed and proprietary". Meanwhile, Adobe Flash (which this whole fight will just strengthen) is just fine, thank you. Oh, MP3 and AAC are fine, too.

I'll skip over technical details in this post, suffice it to say that I know and understand why H.264 (especially Main and High profiles) is vastly superior to On2 VP8 (now renamed WebM).

<comment><USER3> x264 may be free software to download, but you are still obliged to pay MPEGLA license fees under most circumstances if you actually use the videos you encode with it.

<comment><USER4> > you are still obliged to pay MPEGLA license fees under most circumstances

As far as I am aware software patents only hold in the USA and a few other countries that the US has strong armed into accepting them. So I don't think you need to worry about the MPEGLA coming after you if you are somewhere on the other 90% of the planet.

<comment><USER3> I am far from a lawyer, but there are several international patent treaties, signed by a wide range of countries. See - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parties_to_internationa...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parties_to_international_patent_treaties)

Also there's the World Intellectual Property Organization ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Intellectual_Property_Org...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Intellectual_Property_Organization)) of which the majority of counties are members.

Yes, specifically _software_ patents may be considered a bit of an unconfirmed area, but I doubt it's something many people would want to risk going up against.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One detail that caught my eye:

> ISO and ITU do not require the members working on their various standards > and specifications to give up any specific patent claims that may cover the > technology that they define.

Quite the contrary -- the ITU specifically had language that every contributor agreed to provide their contributions royalty-free. Unfortunately the politics got complexated when it became a joint ITU/ISO thing. Some of the biggest players made noises that they would agree to a "royalty-free baseline profile" (ie without some of the more patent-rich features, such as interlace and B-frames).

At the last minute, like Lucy from Peanuts, they took their ball and went home, leaving all the smaller players who had an interest in a truly free standard high and dry. This event IMSHO left a vacuum that resulted in pent-up demand for a truly free codec, which created room for Theora and WebM.

[disclaimer: I was involved]

<comment><USER6> Do you remember how Microsoft snuck a Trojan into their IPR statement for the integer transform? Something along the lines of, "We agree to the standard royalty-free terms, _as long as everyone else does_ ".. It didn't take long for everyone to adopt the "Microsoft amendment" to their IPR statements, and for one token member to object to royalty-free terms, and the whole thing came tumbling down.

<comment><USER5> sounds familiar. I was involved around '03, when Polycom and about 25 companies were up against the 4 or 5 biggies over the patent issue. It was like watching a bunch of school kids get beat up by teenage bullies. Very ugly.

MPEG-LA are really just a bunch of thugs. They remind me of Tony Soprano: "Satisfaction guaranteed -- or double your garbage back!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't think Google has affected _anything_ with this move. By any counts out there, Firefox has double the market share of Chrome. It might reduce the use of HTML5 video versus Flash video in Chrome itself, but for the whole web, it doesn't make a difference when Firefox already took this position with twice the market share.

<comment><USER8> I would argue that _none_ of the desktop browsers are having an effect in this area. The only thing that is really driving the adoption of html5 <video> is mobile devices and their poor or nonexistent support for flash.

Many sites that serve mobile devices html5 video still serve flash to html5 capable desktop browsers.

<comment><USER9> Mobile devices will support WebM; simply because desktops/laptops still rule and there's tremendous pressure to support desktop technologies for content- delivery that are popular.

And I would argue that the majority of traffic for websites like YouTube comes from desktops / laptops.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> On page two, "Consistency Counts", the argument isn't right. "Openness" is sadly very ambiguous, but as noted earlier in the article, there's a difference between being developed openly and having patent encumbered royalties. Flash is actually an open specification, and anyone is free to develop tools that create flash content (distributed as source or binary) without paying royalties to Adobe in any part of the world. Anyone can create a flash player too without paying royalties.

VP8 and Flash are not open standards, but they are royalty free. AVC was openly developed and is an ISO standard but is not royalty free.

<comment><USER11> Flash isn't an open standard anymore. As of Flash 9 when they started shipping the DRM subsystem, free software cannot be fully compatible without rev eng.

<comment><USER12> Which is only a capability relevant when interacting with Adobe's flash media server. There are several alternatives media servers available, most of which are open source.

The problem of FMS parity is a wholly different ball of wax, aside from (although perhaps relevant to) the behavior of the Flash VM itself.

<comment><USER11> What the hell? Who cares? The effect is that I can't and never will be able to watch Hulu in an open Flash implementation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are two different kinds of royalties associated with H.264. One is the fee on each encoder or decoder, and the other is a _per stream_ royalty. Although most of us are concerned with royalties on the codec, Google is more concerned about the royalties on the streams.

Although the Ars article mentions that MPEG-LA won't charge per-stream royalties for free youtube videos (for 5 more years, anyway), H.264 content from the Youtube Store are already subject to per-stream fees, starting at the beginning of this year. Also, Google TV streams may not fall under MPEG-LA's definition of royality-free "Internet Broadcast AVC Video". Furthermore, MPEG- LA hasn't yet made it clear exactly how much these fees will be!

WebM (vp8), along with lower-quality FLV (vp6), is a hedge against both current and upcoming per-stream h.264 royalties.

<comment><USER13> The MPEG-LA promised in August that they wouldn't charge per-stream for free videos ever.

[http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG%20LA%20News%20List/Attachme...](http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG%20LA%20News%20List/Attachments/231/n-10-08-26.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> All of the articles, particularly this one, seem to be missing the point. They attribute Google's actions to abstract ideas of openness or competition between codecs.

But there is a concrete issue involved: under MPEG-LA's licensing terms, Google should be paying $6.5 million a year to distribute a H.264 decoder. Under that license, the end users only get the rights to use the software "for personal and consumer purposes": they couldn't fork Chrome, redistribute it, etc. The Ars article mentions this, but immediately moves on.

It's possible Google expects MPEG-LA to try to enforce the patents, and that's why they're dropping H.264 support. After all, Google is the only browser vendor not in MPEG-LA worth trying to get money from. The yearly licensing amount just went up by $1.5 million, which might have influenced the timing of the announcement.

Comparisons with Flash are irrelevant: it may be less open than H.264, but not in the way that matters to Google.

<comment><USER15> $6.5 million is chump change for Google. And $1.5 million would be lying in the seat cushions of Google executive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> when firefox 4 is released (and is rapidly adopted+), if you are a major video provider on the web and you want to use html5 video, you will need to serve webm or theora or you will miss out on a quarter of the world web audience and the majority of the european web audience.

if you weren't planning on doing so, you were either going to have to serve video via flash or not at all anyway. google's decision only tips the scales a little more.

+edit: note that I'm not prognosticating a new firefox monopoly or anything, just that firefox 4 will rapidly replace most of the current firefox 3.*s out there, which currently make up the referenced marketshare.

<comment><USER17> Article states that Microsoft already has a h264 plugin for Firefox. I imagine MS will probably do the same for Chrome. They have big vested interest in ensuring that their DRM video will be ubiquitous. I imagine their licensing fees to companies like Netflix makes it a good business decision.

And Google can laugh all the way to the bank while they build and promote their own competing format.

<comment><USER16> well, I'm not sure if I completely understand your line of reasoning, but note also, as clark-kent notes below, that Microsoft will also allow VP8 to be installed as a codec at the OS level and then work through IE9. The same will be true with Quicktime and Safari, but my understanding is that that is still hypothetical.

<comment><USER17> To be certain, lots of conjecture on my part. I just found it very interesting that Microsoft is essentially taking on the h264 licensing fees for Firefox by releasing a h264 plugin for the browser. (I'm assuming that MS will be footing the licensing fees -- or maybe they're just covered by a blanket $6.5 million fee, so it's just the cost of building the plugin that they really have to eat)

My extrapolation is a reach, but supporting h264 on Firefox doesn't make sense except if MS is seeing cash from h264 ubiquity.

<comment><USER18> Microsoft's Firefox add-on simply replaces the browser's <video> player with a Windows Media Player object, so the fees have already been paid for as part of their licence to include an H.264 decoder with all copies of Windows.

Supporting H.264 makes sense for Microsoft as a licensor of the patent pool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> _If it's going remove features for poorly-articulated ideological reasons, it would surely make sense to apply that ideology consistently_

No, that doesn't particularly make sense. Choose your battles. They are endless in number. Nobody has time to fight them all. Fight the ones that matter most.

All else aside, there is nothing hypocritical per se about taking a stand on one issue and not another.

</comment><comment><USER20> Maybe I'm just a moron, but couldn't a lot of this problem be solved by making the decoder free to use in all circumstances? They already allow free Internet broadcast at no royalty, and have other free parts of their licensing now, so they're clearly open to the concept at least.

If I understand things correctly, for people shipping decoders the royalty amount is capped at $6.5 million a year. So they're making $6.5 million from Microsoft, Apple, Sony, Toshiba, Samsung, etc. All in all, probably a few hundred million over everyone?

Would it not be more advantageous to leave that money on the table, completely entrench your format EVERYWHERE, and then pick it up on the professional/encoder side of things?

CNN, CNET, Fox, whoever, probably wouldn't mind paying a little more and getting a single universal format for everything everywhere and home users/hobbyists can play for free since they'll never hit the thresholds. Startups can get going by working in the free zones (< 100k paid subs, free un-paid use).

</comment><comment><USER21> "Rather, the point is that in practice developers don't let royalties impede their implementations."

This is simply not true, MPEG-LA would go after any commercially successful project not paying royalties.

<comment><USER22> Of course this can only happen if said project is based in a country which actually upholds software patents. In countries were software patents are void MPEG-LA's claims are also void in which case I'd like to see them try to sue the developers/projects operating there...

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm continually amazed at the erosion of the term "Open Standard". There's a whole segment here that reads like someone arguing "It's not about Free Software, after all Internet Explorer is free", or "It is Open Source because you can just look at the python code they provide".

If someone comes up with a catchy slogan for their concept whether it's "Free Market" or "Fair Trade" it's simple politeness to engage with that and make a substantive point rather than making up your own definitions to suit and play semantic games.

<comment><USER24> That is a rather anachronistic complaint. The term "open standard" was a term of art for standards such as H.264 long before the term "open source" was coined.

<comment><USER23> No it wasn't. "Open Standard" was coined and defined precisely to indicate an affinity with "Open Source"

If you read the ITU reaction to the attempt to define "Open Standards" this is obvious.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard#ITU-T_definition>

Any limited use of "open standard" before that point was as meaningful as someone referring to "free software" or "open source" before those terms were defined.

<comment><USER24> Sorry, but that's wildly anachronistic too. The term "open standard" was in widespread use long before "open source" was coined in 1998, and certainly before the ITU-T definition in 2005: [http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=open+standard&...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=open+standard&year_start=1975&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3)

A term does not need to have a formal definition in order to have a meaning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Can we all please collectively stop abusing 'Openness'? Google is the guiltiest of them all- shoe-horning open source, open standards, royalty-free, patent-unencumbered and god knows what else into the same overly-generic term complicates the debate. In fact, its clearly harmful- look at the way Gruber has hijacked the debate and refocused everything on Google's 'hypocrisy' for bundling Flash with Chrome.

For the love of God, stop saying 'Openness'

<comment><USER26> That's actually a good point. From the reaction of Gruber/Ars Technica, Google may have been better off without using the word "open" at all. They were already speaking to mostly technical people anyway, so it's not like they're going to lose their audience when they speak about wanting a "patent and fee unencumbered format" and what that means rather than a vague "open" format.

Edit: I think it's harder to argue against those points than it is to point to their hypocrisy in using both open and Flash (although I think that argument ignores the fact that they have to pick their battles, and Flash would not be one they could win). The "patent unencumbered" part seems to only be answered with vague accusations about possible patent infringement. The only real analysis on that is one blog post by a codec engineer, and as people here have pointed out, it makes more sense to trust that Google's patent lawyers looked at a multimillion dollar acquisition a lot harder than that analysis. The fee part was answered pretty weakly in the Ars article. Fees would cripple open source projects, and they just tried to gloss over that by pointing to Google.

<comment><USER25> Yeah, Google really screwed themselves with that blogpost. To quote from a ZDNet article "Out of 250 words, open was mentioned 8 times." I don't know why they feel the necessity to paint everything that they do as open. This move itself could have been explained in one line like so: "We believe that the de facto codec for HTML5 video should be royalty-free, and to that end cannot continue supporting H.264 in our browser any longer." That much would have sufficed, and avoided a lot of the pointless bickering.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Google dropping a highly patented codec from Chrome is a step backwards for openness

Even the title doesn't make sense. They could say "step backwards for easy of use" or "step backwards for MPEG LA", but saying "step backwards for openness" is ridiculous.

If it's encumbered with patents, it's not open, no matter how many free software implementations it has. Open means, open to anyone, not only open to those who pay for it.

<comment><USER28> It is apparent you did not read the article. Please go read it, or at least this quote:

> _This explanation is lacking, to say the least. It appears to be a > conflation of several issues: openness, royalty-freedom, and source code > availability, among others. In the traditional sense, H.264 is an open > standard. That is to say, it was a standard designed by a range of domain > experts from across the industry, working to the remit of a standards > organization. In fact, two standards organizations were involved: ISO and > ITU. The specification was devised collaboratively, with its final > ratification dependent on the agreement of the individuals, corporations, > and national standards bodies that variously make up ISO and ITU. This makes > H.264 an open standard in the same way as, for example, JPEG still images, > or the C++ programming language, or the ISO 9660 filesystem used on CD-ROMs. > H.264 is unambiguously open._

> _In contrast, neither WebM's VP8 nor Theora were assembled by a standards > body such as ISO. VP8 was developed independently and entirely in secret by > the company On2, prior to the company's purchase last year by Google. Theora > was created by a group of open-source developers…_

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Every browser should just support every codec in the universe. I don't care if it's illegal or patent infringing. Do it anyway. VLC, Mplayer, and ffmpeg are all open source, all work, and are all still around. This goes for image formats and audio codecs as well.

Let's just make forks of Chromium and Firefox that include built-in support for as many codecs and file formats as possible. Someone wants to use a psd in an img tag? Sure! Someone wants to use a flac in an audio tag? Go for it! Want to use a bink video in a video tag? Be my guest.

Even if it's illegal, who cares. You can do it the same way that Windows Media Player and Ubuntu handle it. Every time the user comes across a video they can't play, a popup asks them to click a few times, and then voila! They have the codec.

Web developer are always going to have a crappy time of it. We will never ever be able to simply make one site one way and have it work nicely on all devices with web browsers. Give up on that dream. But the dream of making things good for the users, is achievable. Aim for that first.

<comment><USER30> I understand where you are coming from with this but let's consider the security implications of embedding just anything in the browser.

A prime example is embedding custom fonts with CSS. The code that handles them wasn't built with arbitrary fonts downloaded from untrusted sources in mind (I think the guy that wrote the code said that's insecure and a bad idea).

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Getting rid of flash is more difficult then getting rid of x264 since its obviously used all over the web. Dropping support for x264 now will prevent a similar issue in the future. Its a great first step.

Having a company like Mozilla pay a royalty on each user would cripple Firefox and any new browsers that may come along.

</comment><comment><USER32> While this is clearly an opinion piece arguing for inclusion of H.264 in Chrome, I feel like this article actually does a great job of actually portraying most of the facts that affect both side of the argument. Certainly it feels like the most informative article I've read on the subject (again, despite its bias.)

</comment><comment><USER33> I don't believe I'm reading such reactionary scaremongering FUD from Ars. Google supporting (and helping develop) an open codec with no royalties attached is construed as a BAD THING?

</comment><comment><USER34> I don't think it's a step backwards, but clearly there is a double standard here by fully supporting Flash. I knew it from the beginning that supporting Flash wasn't in alignment with their open web vision, yet they still did it to spite Apple and its iPhone. I hope they get rid of Flash within a year.

</comment><comment><USER35> A rebuke from Opera: <http://my.opera.com/haavard/blog/2011/01/13/openness>

</comment><comment><USER36> Much of the debate is centered around the quasi-ubiquity of h264 and accepting the royalties involved and it's proprietary nature as a compromise that we are willing to make, which is very short sighted and dangerous. Also the typical patent FUD in this article suggesting that WebM might violate patents without naming them is somewhat indicative of the author's motives.

I keep hearing the Flash analogy, which is nonsense, flash doesn't just do video playback, the technology is ubiquitously used in a variety of ways and is not comparable to a video codec, and does not have any of the patent licencing issues h264 has.

This move is a step forward towards openness as it will force publishers and users to consider the non-proprietary alternative.

<comment><USER15> >Also the typical patent FUD in this article suggesting that WebM might violate patents without naming them is somewhat indicative of the author's motives.

Stating that Webm might turn into a patent minefield is FUD now? What happened to journalistic freedom and rational discourse?

<comment><USER37> If I say "with additional research, it may be discovered that there's a correlation between eating corn and various degenerative diseases, and therefor you should not eat corn" with no evidence to support that assertion, it is FUD. Similarly, if I say "with additional research, it may be discovered that WebM infringes on patents, and therefor you should not use it" with no evidence to support that assertion, it is FUD. If a claim is unsupported but used as a criticism of something - especially a reason not to use a product - then it is FUD.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Reliable International SMS gateway with API (other than Clickatell)? - <AUTHOR>

We have been using Clickatell's API to send text messages to US & International users for ~ 1 year. However, their US gateways have been down for a few days, meaning all of our text messages to US phone #'s are being rejected! For 3+ days, their customer service has been: "We know this is bad, we're working on it". This is a problem for us.
Can anyone recommend a bulk SMS gateway with solid uptime performance that offers a web API? Nice to have would be web-based reporting and a Ruby API library.
Has anyone used http://www.redoxygen.com/pricing/united_states/ ? <comment><USER2> The company I work for ocasionally does SMS campaigns (eg text-in competitions) and they recently switched from Clickatell to TynTec[1].

[1] <http://www.tyntec.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Try www.Message-Media.com</comment>


A Summer of Code on Mars - <AUTHOR> http://erasproject.org/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, we are the Italian chapter of the Mars Society (IMS). IMS is spearheading the European MaRs Analog Station for Advanced Technologies Integration project (ERAS [http://www.erasproject.org](http://www.erasproject.org)). ERAS' main goal is to provide an effective test bed for field operation studies in preparation for human missions to Mars. If you are a student interested in contributing code to the ERAS project you should start by visiting our GSoC and SoCiS project ideas pages witch contains a list of suggested projects: [http://erasproject.org/socis-2015/](http://erasproject.org/socis-2015/) [http://erasproject.org/2015-gsoc/](http://erasproject.org/2015-gsoc/)</comment>


Relationship between psychedelics, the brain, well-being, and creativity - <AUTHOR> https://mythirdbrain.substack.com/p/what-psychedelics-teach-us-about <comment><USER2> LSD is very, very interesting if you have a somewhat disciplined mind. When the border of reality becomes diffuse, you're for some reason able to reason about your own consciousness. You see how arbitrary your perception of reality really is. You start thinking about where thoughts come from, and the difference between a state (mind) and a process (the underlying biology from which the consciousness emerges). Fun stuff.

It's extra fun when you realize you're seeing fractals and thinking recursion.

Be safe. Your experiences may differ.

<comment><USER3> Seeing fractals is great! Getting stuck in a thought loop less so...

<comment><USER2> Yes that's very unpleasant. I guess that's why they recommend starting slow. But it also gives some insight, as I (feel) I'm more able to control my thoughts the next time it happens. But yes, do not take psychedelics lightly.

<comment><USER4> > But yes, do not take psychedelics lightly.

Some thought loops can actually be life threatening (e.g. suicidal ones). This can also happen when there are no apparent signs of it during your normal day to day life. YMMV, but I was happy to have a sober trip sitter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > "It's like a stepladder to look over a brick wall that's a little bit too > tall for you. You use a stepladder, you get to see this crazy landscape that > you kinda had an inkling about every time you walked by this wall, and then > some people, you know, can sit in front of the wall, and, like, meditate, > and then the wall becomes transparent, and they see beyond it, you know? So, > there are many pathways to arrive at the same realization." \- Reggie Watts > - Have a good trip (Netflix)

I believe that the responsible use of psychedelics could open the door to a new leap in human civilization. They are powerful tools and should be approached with upmost respect.

<comment><USER6> > I believe that the responsible use of psychedelics could open the door to a > new leap in human civilization. They are powerful tools and should be > approached with upmost respect.

A lot of folks believe that much of religion and early human societal organization actually originally came about as a result of early human utilization of psychoactives. It makes sense when you think about, for instance, shamanic utilization of ayahuasca and its tradition stretching back historically. As you point out, "They are powerful tools and should be approached with upmost respect." But the flip side is that, as powerful tools, they can be dangerous when not used in a safe setting. But I always am a little bit specious when folks say that "responsible use of psychedelics could open the door to a new leap in human civilization" \-- the tool itself, while useful, has been around for a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I just read I Have America Surrounded[1] a biography of Timothy Leary and found it fascinating. His descriptions of levels of consciousness are a bit wacky but I think helped me understand the appeal of psychedelics.

I assume Timothy Leary is a pretty divisive figure for some, I didn't know a lot about him before reading, so went in with a relatively open mind.

[1]: [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/123706.I_Have_America_Su...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/123706.I_Have_America_Surrounded)

</comment><comment><USER8> Another great article that's kind of on the same subject [https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/08/27/carhart-harris- fristo...](https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/08/27/carhart-harris- friston-2019-rebus-and-the-anarchic-brain/)

</comment><comment><USER9> gosh i've heard so much about how good psychedelics are for treating depression, but they're obviously illegal to get a hold of.

hopefully we can see some clinical trials and find a theraputic use for them within my lifetime.

<comment><USER10> I believe shrooms are not illegal on most western countries

<comment><USER11> They're most certainly illegal in the U.S.A.!

I did a lot of street acid as a teenager and it caused me a lot of problems it seems. Only did some half decent psilocybin shrooms once, more recently (but years ago), but I liked the fact that I actually came down, acid seemed to just linger and linger long after the main trip was over.

<comment><USER12> > I did a lot of street acid as a teenager and it caused me a lot of problems > it seems

Can you expand on that?

<comment><USER11> One year I did about 40 hits of acid, often multiple hits at a time, and started stuttering and just felt like I had less going on mentally. It really seemed like I had permanent brain damage. I'm not sure exactly what was going on, there were definitely extenuating factors (e.g. family dysfunction, depression etc.) but it took years for me to recover.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Haven't done it in years but I always kept a bit of an interest in it. No idea how it'll affect me after more than 10 years.

<comment><USER14> I felt similarly but I recently tried it again after about 10 years with a very small amount and had a really positive and fun experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't see how you need some sort of health benefit as justification to enjoy psychedelics. Why not do it for its own sake?

<comment><USER16> Long-term negative effects?

<comment><USER17> You mean more or less severe than long-term negative effects of sugar or alchocol? And there is greater stigma for non-drinkers than for drinkers in our societies so go figure...

<comment><USER18> i am honestly slightly worried that in certain social circles, things will get to the point where not taking psychedelics carries a stigma.

i am guessing this is already the case in certain subcultures but I think there is a chance it could reach the mainstream in blue coastal cities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The entropic brain hypothesis reminds me of the Mandukya Upanishad. I or Ego is neither the waking state, neither the sleep state and nor the dream state, but the one from all these states emanate from.

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

</comment><comment><USER20> I missed any mention of the potential of some psychedelics for triggering mental illnesses (psychosis, etc.) in some people.

I try not to judge users, but I think it is best to dodge the risk and not mess with your mind until science knows a hell of a lot more about the brain and the effects of some substances on it.

Decriminalization is a must, though.

</comment><comment><USER21> Cool article! I recently bought a book on LSD but I'm still waiting to read it. What surprised me is that OCD was on the low entropy side, because I feel like it makes the brain more active.

</comment><comment><USER22> I once read somewhere that while designing Hypercard, Bill Atkinson used to consume LSD in order to get some mental boost.</comment>


Full Analysis of iPhone Economics: Bad News? - <AUTHOR> http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2010/06/full-analysis-of-iphone-economics-its-bad-news-and-then-it-gets-worse.html

<comment><USER2> > Half of all developers will earn less than $682 per year. Do you still think > this is a good business idea?

I'm one of those developers. And do you know why? Because it's not my business. I wanted to make some apps. I didn't put in a huge effort.

For the numbers to mean anything, you should filter out the 90% (or whatever) of apps that aren't intended to be part of a serious, profitable business.

<comment><USER3> The numbers, assuming his inputs are reasonably accurate, still mean something - most people trying to make money selling iPhone apps don't make a great deal. It's easy to distinguish between apps that are trying to make money and apps that aren't - apps trying to make money are not free. The sort of filtering you want is next to impossible - you're asking that only the apps that are trying to make money but really mean it are to be considered.

He doesn't address something that maybe you're touching on, indirectly - unlike the markets where someone makes zillions on SMS voting for a popular TV show or selling Tetris to feature phone users, the iPhone app market is very accessible to J. Random Hacker. Compared to the previous age of mobile development, it's a major improvement - same device (more or less), same screen size (more or less), same framework, no complicated permission needed from the carrier, payment taken care of, etc, etc. Plus, you never hear of anyone saying they program J2ME or BREW or Symbian apps for fun.

<comment><USER2> > [all] apps trying to make money are not free.

No, 3 of my 4 apps are paid, even though I'm not making a serious effort to make money. Why shouldn't they be? I don't mind making a little money.

Just because filtering the numbers to get useful results is infeasible doesn't mean we should pretend averages across the entire store mean anything for a person who sets out to build an app store oriented business.

It reminds me of all the psychological studies that use inadequate controls just because adequate ones for what they want to do would cost trillions of dollars. Then they claim to have done legitimate science. But the standards of science don't lower themselves to what data we can easily get.

<comment><USER3> _No, 3 of my 4 apps are paid, even though I'm not making a serious effort to make money. Why shouldn't they be? I don't mind making a little money._

Nobody said they shouldn't be. The point is 'serious effort' vs anything else is not readily measurable. This is something you say, rather than something you do. 'Trying to make money' vs 'Not trying to make money' is measurable - if you're not trying to make money, you don't charge. If you charge, you are obviously trying to make money, even if it's very little money.

 _Just because filtering the numbers to get useful results is infeasible doesn't mean we should pretend averages across the entire store mean anything for a person who sets out to build an app store oriented business._

The numbers are still useful, whatever their caveats and limitations. At the very least, they are more useful than non-numbers or numbers-that-ought-to-be- obtained-by-some-method-that-doesn't-actually-produce-measurable-numbers.

 _But the standards of science_

I don't think there was any claim to reaching the 'standards of science'. It seems a little silly to bring them up, though - the author's sources and methods are well described. There's probably plenty of room to take issue there. But you can't trot out 'the standards of science' if your standard is some underivable set of data that just happens to support your viewpoint.

<comment><USER4> There is nothing useful about those numbers, there's nothing based on hard fact, it's all conjecture, but worst he's presenting conclusions off the numbers that make no sense. In my mind this line summed up his total lack of understanding:

 _Today if you decide to develop a free app, you pay your $35,000 development cost, then you find your free app competing against just a modest set of 60,750 rival free apps on the iPhone. Imagine if you are your consumer, scrolling past that set, to find you._

Firstly 35k assumes a decent sized app, not a few day job like a lot of these apps are. Secondly a lot of these apps have NO rivals. Search 'Nottingham Cinema times'. 2 apps. But guess what. Those guys also make 'Leicester Cinema Times', 'Birmingham Cinema Times', 'London Cinema Times', etc., etc.

All the same tiny piece of code.

And what about all the hoo-hah about those guys who had 20,000 apps like 'Pamela Anderson Pictures' that were eventually pulled? Guess what. Search 'Claire Danes', 'Kiera Knightly', any female actress. 59 p app for each one of them. Probably thousands of them. Same piece of code.

And look at some of the numbers he throws about, 2.1 billion app capable phones vs. 80 million iPhones. I'm sorry, but add up ALL of Europe and ALL of North America and you've not got 2.1 billion people. But I bet a large proportion of those iPhones are in that market. And I bet the vast majority of app purchases are in that market.

And worst of all for those 2.1 billion phones. THERE'S NO MARKET.

Roughly 50% of the people I know have an iPhone. And I'm probably downplaying that number. Young professionals with large disposable incomes. Just the sort of people you can make a lot of money off.

He's not comparing like for like, he's not realising that the median earnings per serious software shop is actually higher much higher than the average per app because of so much dross and he claims a 'typical' app costs 35k without considering that they probably only asked the serious software shops and not people like the poster above you or those shops which are pumping out 100s of apps per week.

<comment><USER3> _There is nothing useful about those numbers_

Well, you can keep saying that but you have _no_ numbers and no particularly concrete criticisms of his argument. Maybe he's not comparing like for like. Maybe all your friends have iPhones. Maybe you've forgotten many people outside of North America and Europe own mobile phones. The $35k, as mentioned in other comments in the thread, has very little bearing on his central argument that iPhone apps don't make much money.

And maybe he's made a complete hash of it. But at least we know how he got there.

 _he's not realising that the median earnings per serious software shop is actually higher much higher than the average per app because_

Because what? What's a 'serious software shop'? How do you come to this conclusion? Right or wrong, I have a reasonably good idea how the author of the article came to his. Can't say the same for yours.

<comment><USER5> "Maybe you've forgotten many people outside of North America and Europe own mobile phones."

I wonder how many of those folks have phones that allow them to participate meaningfully in an application marketplace.

<comment><USER6> Isn't part of his point that you can make money or engage users via SMS or the web without an application marketplace?

<comment><USER5> I think it is part of the author's point but it isn't a strong argument. The author does a lot of speculative math on developer return in the iOS app market and then makes the implication that the market for feature-phones is vastly larger. However, just because there is a larger population of such devices does not mean that the addressable market is larger. The author does not share or speculate what kind of money could be made in that market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When reading this, it helps to remember that the author is a former Nokia executive that does consulting and speaking to Big Business. He mentions Hilton Hotels, Rite Aid, and Walgreens.

I don't know how you would split out Brand apps vs hobbyist vs junk apps, but he should have mentioned that. I'd be surprised if there are more than 10K Brand apps like the ones he appears to be most familiar with.

</comment><comment><USER8> Interesting analysis, but I'd like to see the numbers for apps that are actually maintained and marketed vs. some guy who hacked up an app and never fixed any bugs or improved it based on feedback. I suspect the number get better if you filter out the crappy unmaintained apps (but of course, this isn't an easy data set to obtain)

<comment><USER9> I agree, there are a lot of apps that didn't take the developer more than 5 hours to put together. Earnings made by well made apps is probably much higher.

<comment><USER10> Yep, _Half of all developers will earn less than $682 per year_ assumes the average developer produces 1 app. Also, most apps revenue falls off over time so a more realistic number is 80% 682 * 2 probably 1091$ in the first year and 272 in the second.

If someone is churning 20 in a month and then getting 1364$ * 20 = 27,280$ over two years for one months work that's not bad.

PS: The average app has probably only been out for 1 year so it may be reasonable to double these numbers. Basically, anything released yesterday is unlikely to have generated much revenue, averaging _ALL_ apps over a 2 year earning period is silly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "former Nokia executive" [number froth] "What I have been telling my readers and followers and this blog and in my books, that the real money is in true mass market services like SMS, MMS and WAP. That is where the REAL money is."

This guy makes a strong case for skating to where the puck used to be.

<comment><USER11> I'd say there are a lot of pucks, and he's suggesting skating towards some of the less sexy ones. The app store is shiny and new and fun for hackers, but his point about market size is pretty valid.

All iphones are SMS-capable. Not all SMS-capable phones are iphones. Just like Twitter never killed blogging, smart phones still haven't killed plain old dumb phones, either.

<comment><USER5> Verily, there are many pucks.

It is pretty funny that the author includes WAP as one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm not sure I buy that a typical iPhone app costs $35,000 to develop. Considering the simplicity of most apps, combined with the fact that many apps are effectively the same program with some content alteration, it seems like a really inflated figure.

<comment><USER3> It doesn't really make much difference, for the purposes of his analysis. Let's say a typical app costs $1500 to develop. If his other numbers are right, that typical app would take about 2.5 years to break even. His argument is that, on average, developing an iPhone app is, in itself, a fairly dismal economic proposition.

<comment><USER13> However, making, say, 80, spending time promoting them, and perhaps having a few of those be moderate successes may make this a much more viable option. I have a friend who's pursuing this option of making multiple apps (not sure he's to 80 yet, but will likely surpass that in the next year).

I agree, the chance of one app being the runaway success that affords one an early retirement is pretty remote, but the tech press loves to promote the huge success stories, and many others love to follow them.

<comment><USER3> If you are making 80, or even 20, chances are you're not really making apps but repackaging offline or online content in the form of an app and that's a rather different niche. It's also one that Apple is making efforts to squish, although I'm sure it will continue to thrive on Android and other non- restrictive markets.

<comment><USER13> I can say that in the case of my friend, it's not repackaged content, but actual real apps. They tend to be somewhat on the basic side, but are nonetheless 'real' apps in the sense of having real hand programming behind them and such. FWIR, he's using Titanium, which makes it pretty easy to do basic apps fast (but still native apps all the same). Whether Apple will continue to let Titanium exist on the iOS platform is a whole other question :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Full Analysis" seems like a bad title for this post.

First off, in app purchases are not included. Secondly, his argument against free apps is simply that the reach is smaller than other platforms. Finally, he acknowledges that the median paid app get fewer than 1000 downloads.

The 25-50K number for development costs is way off for the median app. Something like $5K-$10K is more in line for most of the apps I'm seeing (but I work cheap), and I've done a couple small ones (probably more representative of the bottom half of the distribution) for clients in 3 days' time.

<comment><USER15> None of this refutes his point, which is that developing for iphone is a suboptimal use of marketing/advertising dollars. Even if you'd assume his numbers had a 100% error margin, you _still_ couldn't get iphone apps to work.

<comment><USER2> Just assuming he's only off by 100% is silly. There are lots of ways he could be off by a factor of 5 or 10.

<comment><USER15> Well instead of pulling numbers of thin air, how about you provide some rationalization for your 'factor 5 or 10' statements? The post came with lots of details on data sources, how assumptions/estimations were made, the relative effect of error margins etc. Saying 'there are lots of ways he could be off' is meaningless against a rationally founded argument like was made in the post.

<comment><USER2> It's averaging stuff across all apps. That has pretty much no meaning for someone who doesn't intend to be anything like the average.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think a lot of us are instinctively reacting negatively to this article, and I don't think it is because it's news we just don't want to hear. There is one point that the author fails to take into consideration: future growth.

Anyone who has used iPad or iPhone or an Android device can tell that devices like these, not Symbian or WAP or Brew or whatever, are the future. Those other platforms might catch up, but for now they lag abysmally behind in terms of user experience. And so while they might outnumber iOS and Android for now, that numerical advantage can not last.

Walk around a Y-Combinator event (or CES, or E3, or anywhere else where leading edge alpha geeks congregate) and count phones. I'd be willing to wager a lot of money you'd see a bunch of iOS and Android devices, a few blackberries, and a smattering of ancient nokia and samsung free phones held by users who "just want to make calls" (and thus aren't going to be reachable by any apps at all, WAP or Java or otherwise).

So, yes, a company developing an app today for iOS or Android isn't going to make their money back on the platform as it stands in any reasonable amount of time. But a company or developer who positions themselves to be on top of a platform that is rising meteorically (and will displace literally billions of feature phones over the next decade and a half as moore's law drops silicon costs by a factor of 1000) is going to do well.

Hype is about future expectations. When expectations rise above exponential growth in our industry, those expectations usually turn out wrong. But the mobile market has a current penetration of over 3 billion people and I'll wager practically every phone on the planet will be a "smartphone" in under 15 years. That's a lot of headroom for growth.

</comment><comment><USER17> It seems like the expectations are very high for the App Store, so perhaps this article is just a reaction against hype.

But, don't we say that only one in ten start-ups makes it? So, as a baseline, why expect more than one in ten apps on the App Store to be profitable?

<comment><USER18> Because in a start-up the one in ten that makes it makes the average effort worthwhile. (That is how VCs make their money)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why does the author assume normal distribution (bell curve) for apps' revenues? In reality app sales are similar to those of books and follow power law distribution. A few bestsellers will account for large chunk of overall app sales. Then there will be a very long tail of unprofitable apps.

Therefore all of his numbers and his final conclusion are wrong. People do not write iPhone apps in order to achieve some sort of 'average' income. They hope to strike it lucky and get a disproportionately large payoff.

<comment><USER20> Where are you getting the normal distribution information from?

 _"This is the average, remember, it is not the median. The average skews too high because of the long tail. There are a few who make several millions, who distort the average number, so it is not true that half of iPhone App Developers earn more, and half less, than $3,050 per year."_

He references the long tail you mention, and describe exactly what you mean about some people making a lot, but because of distribution and how users find and download apps - its more akin to say - the lottery - than actual market strategy.

Some will make money. Most of them will be development/contractor shops that charge out-the-ass for mobile apps to companies who want a "mobile presence." These medium to large companies won't realize that the money they are losing isn't worth it until its happened a couple of times. Then they'll stop coming back.

That said, independent developers making money on that app store directly is a complete crap-shoot. Very few get rich, lucky ones make a very modest living, more get a hobbyist return, most get dick - and some don't even get the money they _did_ earn from Apple.

Therefore all of your rebuttal and final conclusion are wrong. How many books have you written on the subject?

 _Note: The reason he uses a normal distribution is because it would actually help DISPROVE his thesis, a normal distribution would make it easier for an app developer to make money, not harder. When the normal distribution showed a shitty return - he reminded us it was actually worse._

<comment><USER21> Unfortunately that's not necessarily true. A normal distribution is just vastly different than an exponential distribution. Using the central limit theorem allows you to expect the mean to be normally distributed around your samples, but that's about all.

The reality is that taking an average over an exponential distribution is largely meaningless. There are an infinite number of distributions that would create that exact mean. Some of them not at all profitable for certain apps, others very profitable.

The problem with using an average over this distribution is that it doesn't give you anything to work from. You can't figure out who is profitable and who isn't, or how high up the curve you need to be to be profitable. Taking an average over all of the apps in the app store is like taking the average revenue of every website that tries to make money on the internet. It's a meaningless number.

At the end he compares the low numbers in averages to a single anecdotal example of something that had a 100 Million downloads. On the one hand he dismisses the few highly successful appstore apps but then uses another singular example of a highly successful app to recommend a different platform. Overall the methodological approach is deeply flawed.

I could go on, but ultimately, I found this analysis not very insightful. As with any new channel, it takes some time to figure out what works and what doesn't. Who is going to buy and who isn't. In almost all software the distribution is exponential where the top 10 to 20% make over 90% of the revenue. The same is true of the app store.

It all comes back to fundamentals. Find an unmet or under-served need in the market, figure out how big that market is, figure out how much it's going to cost to fill that need, make sure your app fills the need, and start trying to sell it. Then once you've built up a sales platform, then you start scaling it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I thought it was already understood that the model of "create a $1 app and sell 10k of them per month" was long over. The App store is still a relatively new market, so people will continue to learn how to be successful on it.

I just got an iPad and started using the App store for the first time in my life and guess what? Out of the 5 things I wanted to use the pad for, 3 of them didn't exist at all. There is plenty of space in this market I would say. Just not for iFart anymore.

<comment><USER23> I'm also curious as to what you wanted to see. When I picked up my friend's iPad (a month or two ago) I struggled to find a good finance app that actually gave good charting and numbers for stock market options and commodity futures. I know I'm not the only one who would be interested in that AND I know that those of us who are have fairly deep pockets.

<comment><USER22> Yea, in my experience it seems the apps are pretty focused. There are a lot of games, a lot of toys and a lot of professional made apps in specific areas (e.g. drawing/photo editing).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Some people seem to assume that building a profitable app is entirely about luck, and not about having the insight and ability to develop something better than what is in the store currently. Many of these app are developed by beginners and casual hobbyists and, frankly, just aren't very good. Thinking you can work to be in the top 10% of this crowd isn't necessarily unrealistic.

<comment><USER25> Fair enough. How much does the last app in the 10% make?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This sounds very much like the way things worked when I was working in the AAA games business as well. >90 percent of all titles are lossleaders, and the few that are hits make up for the lost money developing the others.

My guess is that most branches of entertainment are similar. Movies, TV, music etc. There's no such thing as a steady, guaranteed income when it comes to things like this (in my experience/opinion).

That doesn't mean making apps is not a viable business. Just not for everyone who tries.

<comment><USER27> Unless you are Pixar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think this man doesn't get it, as a "former executive" he thinks anything in live is money.

People write apps for iPhones because they dream to do what they love without working for the man. Of course it is only a remote possibility, but it is real.

99% of the people that went to California searching gold didn't find it, as in SouthAfrica, but the now deeper old mine was discovered by a solitary man looking for gold armed just with a mining pan.

There is something in the human spirit that is as valuable as money that makes musicians painters, singers,movie makers or engineers that maybe won't get rich keep trying. Maybe they get to work on what they love.

PS: I'm an iPhone App developer myself, since Linux Click an run app store I believed that a "right" implementation of an Appstore was going to be the future. I expected to be Apple the first to to this. In contrast with this executive they just seem to "get it".

Steve Jobs is really smart in this too, when he creates something he diminish it, so the competitor's executives see an appstore and say: It's only a mere millions dollar market, not important.

IBMs mainframes were the "important stuff", when real money was, mini computers were just "cheap" toys with no real application. People who wanted "job security" deciced to work with the "big boys" because it was safe... until it was not.

</comment><comment><USER29> I don't care for the 35k iPhone App and 3k WAP site numbers that he pulled out of thin air. From my experiences, the costs are not so disparate.

iPhone vs. WAP is a poor comparison because an iPhone app and a WAP site are two different digital tactics that address completely different objectives.

Brands are not buying iPhone apps to get the same utility that is available from a WAP site. They are buying them to make their brands appear technically savvy, and to increase engagement.

</comment><comment><USER30> It'd be interesting to see a comparison to "traditional" distribution methods, eg shareware, web apps, and so on. Maybe it's just that writing small software applications doesn't pay?

</comment><comment><USER31> For the sake of argument, let's assume the analysis is off by two orders of magnitude (i.e. assume half of businesses will earn less than $70K per year).

Can anyone justify an investment in development of an iPad-only productivity software? Do you think a startup can raise capital based on such economics?

My takeaway: Selling AppStore apps/ads isn't THE business model. It should be one of the channels amongst others.

</comment><comment><USER32> My main issue with this article is that the author assumes that all developers operate equally. He averages the individuals who build apps in their spare time and might make thousands of dollars as 'extra' income, with the large app companies who spend tremendous resources on building apps that get high returns. When he crunches his numbers, he gets results that are probably very far from the actual reality of things.

<comment><USER33> He is an ex-executive. What does he know about software development?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> His proposition of doing SMS app because the Idol/whatnot had made hundreds of millions is misleading. The cost of doing a SMS app might be low but the app itself is an accessory of the real product, the game show. It takes tens to hundreds millions of product and marketing cost to make and run a show like Idol over years. You think a $35,000 developed SMS app can make that kind of money by itself?

</comment><comment><USER34> I'd have preferred to see a more detailed breakdown of apps. It may be a terrible market for utility apps. Or, for apps that are more feature than product. How many apps are truly products with solid business models? How do these apps do?

Or, how does the picture look for games? Especially now that game developers can embrace a virtual currency / goods business model. They can get all the distribution benefits of being a free app while still making (potentially much more) money over a longer period of time. Or, do these apps not count as apps because they're too close to the web-based games that are doing so well on Facebook?

If you're a developer, looking at industry-wide numbers is good, but it's better to research the apps in the niche you plan on entering.

</comment><comment><USER35> It's interesting that he's a big business guy. I would restate his title as: "the Apple store is for suckers or smallfry, if you're a big company."

And, he's right. Big companies do take $50k+ to create mobile apps. Big companies do have much better things to do with their money; they can add far more value at greater scale. Of course, Jane developer might not be in the same boat.

Another interesting confounding variable: he clearly conceives of developers as 'one-app' developers. And, he's right that this doesn't pay on the apple store. There is just, frankly, some randomness in which apps tip on the store -- most developers have figured this out already, and of course Apple gives links so that developers have an easier time cross promoting.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're absolutely right. But where's the fun in a headline like that.

More to the point, I think if you read the rest of his blog, and take the perspective of some of the larger international companies, going for gold with the iPhone won't be the best business strategy.

Tomi has given some case studies of how MMS has worked for car dealers in Germany, and even campaign promoters in Australia. There is this under- exploited niche called mobile marketing, which relies on WAP, SMS, MMS, etc which could give pretty high ROI for large companies (eg: BMW)

Especially if you take a B2B perspective, what he says makes huge sense.

<comment><USER35> Yep, agreed completely. The Apple app store is a democratizing force.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I can't believe this guy because he claims that the iPhone 4 launch was a stumble.

[http://communities- dominate.blogs.com/brands/2010/06/smartph...](http://communities- dominate.blogs.com/brands/2010/06/smartphone-wars-update-mid-june- iphone-4-sales-stumbles-nokia-profit-warning-microsoft-os-confusion.html)

What?

</comment><comment><USER37> This article makes sense for you if you're the kind of company that needs 35k to create an app. In that case, sure, stay away from the app store. But for indie devs with a bright idea, the app store is a great opportunity to try something out for a very low cost. A very interesting space for startups, I'd think.

</comment><comment><USER38> How is this bad news? The consulting firms charging 35K per app are making a killing!

</comment><comment><USER39> The analysis misses the point of why people get into mobile development.

See <http://bit.ly/iPhone-economics>

</comment><comment><USER40> I don't understand how this is any different than if you did an analysis of Startup Economics.

In any space with great competition and where your product is scalable, few will make enough money to justify their investment.

Also many paid apps are part of a bigger picture, the iPhone app is not the only revenue stream they have.

That's reality, now deal.

</comment><comment><USER41> Excellent analysis !!! Good job !!!

</comment><comment><USER42> This is an interesting analysis but a very flawed conclusion. What percentage of restaurant owners will make money? How about online entrepreneurs?

Just because the expected value of building something is low doesn't mean it's a bad model. It just means you have to execute well and that most people fail.

</comment><comment><USER43> "Now the heartbreaking news. Lets factor in our development costs. Again, independent source, the Internet Retailer reported on May 1, 2010, that most apps cost between $25,000 and $50,000 to develop."

These numbers were really taken out of the ass of a troll.

</comment><comment><USER44> His entire analysis is basically taking the revenue total for all apps, divided by the number of apps, and saying each developer only makes an average of $3k per year. Sorry, this is not a good analysis. Some people give their apps away for free. Some quality apps make millions. This doesn't mean the opportunities are not there.

A similar analysis could be done of PC shareware software authors, with similar results.

<comment><USER45> He has data that indicates 73% of total apps on the store are paid. He then bases his remaining calculations on that paid app number.

<comment><USER46> Yeah, but he doesn't take into account the fact that 73% of apps do not get 73% of the downloads.

<comment><USER47> However, paid apps do get all of the purchases. The number of downloads doesn't matter, only income does.

<comment><USER48> Free apps have in app purchases, and ads. Some developers do very well off of free apps.

<comment><USER47> Ads, until the introduction of iAds, would not have gone through apple, and therefor would not count towards total revenue.

You do have a point with in app purchases, but I doubt that they would significantly skew the numbers - they would make them worse for developers of paid apps, in fact. Given the other optimistic decisions the article has when dealing with numbers, I think that ignoring in app purchases fits with it: it's a best case scenario for paid apps.

It would be quite interesting to see how much money has been made through in app purchases, though. Not merely anecdotes, but the percentage of free apps which have in app purchases, and the average/median income through in app purchases in those apps.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Nirviral-Website built over night off of the open source Telescope project - <AUTHOR> http://www.nirviral.com/

<comment><USER2> It's nice, but sure as hell there are a lot of errors on this site, still usable though</comment>


Acidity and Alkalinity in the Body – What You Should Know - <AUTHOR> https://danielriley.blog/acidity-and-alkalinity-in-the-body/ <comment><USER2> > _If this excess acid in the blood persists, the next trick that your body > uses is its fat stores as a line of defence against the acidic blood – > mainly to protect your arteries. Your body holds on to this excess fat for > protection, and this is why it is almost impossible to lose your unwanted > fat when your body is more acidic than it should be._

Is there a link for this? I never heard it and it makes no sense. All the article is very dubious, confirm all the info with a medical doctor before following the advices of the article.</comment>


Subscription Fatigue: Nearly Half of US Consumers Frustrated by Streaming - <AUTHOR> https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/streaming-subscription-fatigue-us-consumers-deloitte-study-1203166046/ <comment><USER2> The convenient thing to me is that you can just subscribe to a month or two of whatever streaming service has the show you want, and then cancel it when you're done. In this fashion you can just rotate the service you subscribe to over time, see everything you want and only maintain one subscription. Could be more challenging with families all wanting to watch different things, but maintaining two services also wouldn't be too bad.

<comment><USER3> Can you pay for some large number of subscriptions to all the streaming services then sell a wrapper service that offers all of the content and will swap logins for you depending on what you watch?

I guess the big players would shut that down really quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My friends used to be jealous of my giant archive drive full of TV shows and movies. Then for a time they made fun of me, asking me why I would download things I could already watch on Netflix or Hulu. Now they're jealous again.

</comment><comment><USER5> Different companies from CBS to YouTube want to win the streaming wars, but they're going to end up popping the streaming bubble, and I'm sure there will be alarmist articles claiming that streaming "just isn't viable". Everyone wants to be next Netflix, but they don't seem to stop and think if they should. The more that the content I like becomes desperate among various services, the more I'm going to say "f __* it " and go back to torrenting.

<comment><USER6> Right? For all the hype about the iPad, iTunes (the store) was the real genius of Jobs (pre-iPhone), and it was just what people had made clear they wanted - all their music tastes in one convenient place that wasn't bundled with stuff they didnt want and was available at a decent price.

Yet despite people being clear about what they wanted, producers tried everything they could to prioritize opposite goals.

Now we're seeing the same thing happen in streaming. I'd love to see multiple platforms with the same content do they could compete over experience and platform, but instead I have to deal with Hulu's abhorrent player, with Netflix's increasing unwillingness to just be quiet, and with Amazon's insistence on putting in ads for their content when I watch something. All because they each offer unique content.

Competition is supposed to be about offering more value, not seeing how much irritation you can get away with.

<comment><USER7> Are you saying the best for visual media streaming would be how iTunes was where you paid for seasons or episodes? I've watched quite a bit of tv, namely from Hulu, Netflix, Prime, HBO. If I had to pay for all I've watched. It would have cost a fortune.

<comment><USER6> No, I was saying it should be like iTunes was for music where you could buy a song without having to buy the CD, contrary to the trends of the time. Obviously that doesn't line up as well for visual series episodes, but I was focusing on the "avoid the unwanted trends the producers are trying to use to force a higher price" aspect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not just streaming video. The same storm is brewing in gaming. Google, nvidia and MS are all launching game streaming platforms. Actual...think sony too

<comment><USER9> And Apple

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Its astounding people still have streaming subscriptions when you can just lookup and find a free version for whatever you wanna stream.

<comment><USER7> Some people have qualms with the morality of piracy when it isn't needed. Is it really astounding?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Movie Streaming all though partly good is like an all you can eat buffet. There is plenty of food to choose from but nothing you want to eat. Compare that to buying movies ala carte food aka buying quality movies.

Plus buying movies your movie viewing do not get data analyzed in the same way especially not if you buy physical media.

You can then build a personal media library.

</comment><comment><USER12> My solution: There Can Be Only One. If it is not on Netflix, it does not exist. That's bad for my range of choices, but see also: the paradox of choice.

</comment><comment><USER13> People will really be excited when all of their software goes subscription too!

<comment><USER7> At least half of everything that costs money on iOS is subscription based at this point. If not more.

I'm not including games. I assume that's diff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I do Amazon Prime Video +1

Just canceled Netflix going to spin-up HBO for a few months.</comment>


What Social Media Means for Your Personal Growth - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicolefisher/2018/08/10/your-brain-on-drama-what-your-social-media-means-for-personal-growth/ <comment><USER2> This sounds like the same old argument, blaming someone's stupidity on outside forces. Not everyone is born smart. You want diversity? Well it doesn't only come in color; it comes in intelligence as well as other aspects. Swaying peoples options is by no means new or born of the digital age, and when it deals with politics, guess what, it's call propagandaBut the research is limited and in its infancy. The artical says, "Despite this, we are well aware that understanding and manipulating human behavior has been a motivation of recent events targeting political elections through social media". In the 19-teens and 1920s, we had the Creel Commition, the U.S.'s first real propaganda machine. Noam Chompski as well as other have writen om the subject. Hell, there's even a section in Machiavelli's "The Prince" on the subject. The stupid will always exist to do stupid things and as the population grows the proportion of stupid grows and the more we make that the subject of our news the more noticable stipid will be.</comment>


Illustrated Calculus Textbook - <AUTHOR> http://www.math.upenn.edu/~ghrist/FLCT/ <comment><USER2> It's like a lot of other calculus books I have, only polychromatic, difficult to read, and gives me this slightly creepy face every now and then. I mean, it seems solid, but it's just really hard to read.

Really, my favorite gentle calculus textbook has been one I recently was Thompson's "Calculus Made Easy." The way it's written is informal by the standards of when it was written, but to a modern eye reads like your whimsical grandpa decided to bust out a pipe, an expensive brandy, and serious calc knowledge.

<comment><USER3> One of my favourites is Hiroyuki Kojima's "Manga Guide to Calculus" (<http://nostarch.com/mg_calculus.htm>). It probably can't get much more informal and it's actually quite entertaining.

It somehow manages a decent balance of being fun without slipping into being trivial.

<comment><USER2> Someone anonymously sent me a copy of this. I still don't know who. Was it you? :)

<comment><USER3> Nope. Quite odd. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The idea of presenting calculus visually is certainly a good one, but this is useless for anyone other than the author. The point of illustrations is to enhance the material and this is just plain unreadable.

Here is an interesting project that is far more successful at math illustration and shows some promise:

<http://worrydream.com/KillMath/>

<comment><USER5> I don't know, the anthropomorphic lemon saying "easy peasy" enhanced it greatly for me.

(Seriously, there's a certain great charm to these sorts of things that make them strangely appealing to certain people, like me. It might not be great for learning, but it's awesome as entertainment.)

<comment><USER6> It's certainly fun to look at, but I'd have a hard time following any of the mathematics.

What I'd like to see is an online calculus book which takes advantage of interactive animations and graphing to demonstrate how things like integrals and derivatives work. For example, for the limit-based definition of derivatives, you could concoct an animation showing how the math works as deltaX goes to 0, and so on.

There's also clever ways of demonstrating the product rule through geometry that make the math make so much more sense. There's a lot of potential in interactive, graphical textbooks that has yet to be explored, I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ow, my eyes.

I love the idea but it's very hard to read.

<comment><USER8> White space does wonders for readability.

That's a lesson a lot of us in mathematics have trouble learning. We have this tendency to try to maximize information density, viewing empty space as inefficient because there's "nothing" there, when in reality the space communicates separation and therefore actually does contain vital information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It looks like a good idea.

On a side note, I fully agree with Conrad Wolphram that basic calculus is conceptually rather easy to grasp and use on daily basis, but the focus on calculations by hand makes the subject completely inaccessible.

[http://www.ted.com/talks/conrad_wolfram_teaching_kids_real_m...](http://www.ted.com/talks/conrad_wolfram_teaching_kids_real_math_with_computers.html) <http://www.computerbasedmath.org/>

It's a great idea worth spreading.

</comment><comment><USER10> I imagine something like this would would have happened if the unabomber was really into maths.

I love the idea of this book and its humour, but it is quite hard to comprehend. I can actually see maths' popularity increasing as people begin to see it as a useful hobby, especially those who are learning programming.

I would willing to pay for lessons if learning maths didn't have to involve a dense textbook, but instead could graphically demonstrate the theory (think 3D modelling, moving sine waves etc.) and explain all the underlying concepts that were glossed over in formal education.

Videos or apps like this would be a great help to me, especially if it managed to retain this author's irreverence, Sal Khan's presentation style, but placing more importance on rehearsed & polished lessons, 3d animation and beautifully set typography.

Anyone know any resources that are along these lines?

<comment><USER11> _I imagine something like this would would have happened if the unabomber was really into maths._

"In late 1967, Kaczynski became an assistant professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught undergraduate courses in geometry and calculus. He was also noted as the youngest professor ever hired by the university. This position proved short-lived, as Kaczynski received numerous complaints and low ratings from the undergraduates he taught. Many students noted that he seemed quite uncomfortable in a teaching environment, often stuttering and mumbling during lectures, becoming excessively nervous in front of a class, and ignoring students during designated office hours. Without explanation, he resigned from his position in 1969, at age 26. The chairman of the mathematics department, J. W. Addison, called this a "sudden and unexpected" resignation,[18] while vice chairman Calvin Moore said that given Kaczynski's "impressive" thesis and record of publications, "He could have advanced up the ranks and been a senior member of the faculty today."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Calculus For Serial Killers

</comment><comment><USER13> It's really difficult to follow, not the Maths, the graphics. Which part of the page is the most important thing to understand? Even, just what order are the sentences intended to be read in? Lucky it's not handwritten, he could just change the font...

</comment><comment><USER14> I like the concept and am interested into how much time you spent on the project so far, when do you expect to be completed? Is this the first textbook that you wrote?

I like the graphics, but your font is very difficult to read for extended periods, it is best used as a headliner at most. I understand your desire for a distinctive look, but readability is most important for a textbook. Also the pages appear to me as too cluttered. Think about it as a PowerPoint presentation with 50 million bullet points, there's a point of diminishing returns. Spread the information, users won't mind the additional pages.

I look forward to seeing this completed.

</comment><comment><USER15> This may work with narration but the text in itself ,at least for me, is completely useless.

I think other attempts from "Manga Guide" series and even the "Transnational College of LEX" series are far more effective than this one.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is fun to look at; if he spaced things out some more, it would be easier to read. Then again, it might lose some of its chaotic/stylized charm.

</comment><comment><USER17> Anyone else having trouble comprehending the text?

<comment><USER18> yups, read it slowly and you will understand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Ghrist is a brilliant guy. He does his presentations at conferences in exactly the same style and it is brilliant. He has a framework of notes that he scrolls through, but as he is speaking he will fill in parts of overall picture with sketches. He is one of the few speakers that can make technical topics both interesting and intuitive.

</comment><comment><USER20> The approach certainly has merit - in the sense of making math seem less serious and more fun. We need more of this approach!

Execution needs work though. Way too cluttered and dense. I would move more slowly and make sure 1 concept is put totally to bed before moving onto the next one.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm taking Calculus 2 next semester and I was hoping this would be a good source to study from. I appreciate the fact that the information is condensed to exactly what a person needs to know to solve the problem, but the text is unreadable. This is wasted potential...

</comment><comment><USER22> I have a horrible attention span for math nowadays but found the whole first chapter a pleasant read. Different strokes for different folks and all that. It could be a little better spaced out and what not, but this is a great refresher.

</comment><comment><USER23> Actually I found this very easy to read & follow, maybe because my own note- taking is very similar to this -a total chaos and pictures all around.

</comment><comment><USER18> I like the notes.It makes it easier to grab the concepts. After going through notes i will dig deeper in the concepts. Than kyou for the post

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm not sure how easy it is to learn something new from those notes, but they are probably the greatest calculus refresher I've seen so far.

</comment><comment><USER25> Come to think of it, my first calculus book (back in the 70s) was a comic book--"Prof. E McSquared's Calculus Primer"

Highly recommended.

</comment><comment><USER26> This book is actually very easy for me to read. This may explain why I never got along with my calculus teachers.

</comment><comment><USER27> I like this. I think it derive's a bit from Khan's Academy in that it tries to make it look casual and fun.

</comment><comment><USER28> Why's (Poignant) Guide to Calculus

<comment><USER29> It's not the same without the foxes and the soundtrack.

Seriously, though, this might be a good idea, but it desperately needs improving. I shouldn't have to catch myself thinking about typography so often while reading a Math textbook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is cool :)

Any estimate on when it will be complete?</comment>