Apple is now a privacy-as-a-service company - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/03/apple-is-now-the-privacy-as-a-service-company/ <comment><USER2> Lots of negativity/skepticism here which is reasonable I would say given tech companies' abuse of our trust. I for one, am happy that Apple can afford to offer privacy as one of its strong suites. Whether they can do it because of their business model or not is moot IMO. Everyone is here to make money, I would rather have someone who doesn't have to sell every aspect of my life to do it.

<comment><USER3> The biggest problem that I have is that it's privacy built on a closed source platform that works extremely hard to wall users in and create substantial vendor lock-in.

As someone who has tried multiple times to dip their toes into the Apple world, I can tell you that it's highly hostile to users who try to pick and choose how much they want to be an Apple citizen. If you don't agree to sign up for Apple cloud on the latest iOS, it feels like 80% of the basic functions for a smartphone get locked away from you.

And they have viral aspects to their lock-in as well. Have a single family member who isn't on iMessage? Looks like they don't get to participate in your family discussions anymore.

Their privacy features are a selling point today, but your privacy is 100% in their control. If the executive team made the decision tomorrow to switch Apple into a fully panopticon ecosystem, they'd be able to switch over in a year with little visibility for their users that this transition was happening.

If you are in the Apple ecosystem, you under heavy lock-in pressure and you are fully putting your faith in Apple that the directions they go in the future will be directions that you are happy with.

That doesn't feel secure to me.

<comment><USER4> This is quite at odds with my experience with my iPhone, so I'm confused.

I don't have an iCloud account. I'm not sure what "basic functions for a smartphone" I'm unable to use, but, I don't want my photos backed up to iCloud - I'll handle that on my own, for the photos I actually want somewhere other than on my local device. Everything otherwise seems to work.

I don't use iMessage. I've ticked the little box that says to use regular SMS and not iMessage. (This was back when there were stories of people getting stuck on iMessage and losing messages when they switched to another OS, and I wasn't sure I wanted to buy into the Apple platform permanently. I could probably switch back now, since I've been a regular iOS user for years and I hear that [https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister- imessage/](https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage/) works.) Multi- party SMS works fine. Multi-party Signal, Hangouts, Slack, etc. chats also work great. Similarly, I don't use FaceTime, but I've got tons of messaging apps that support video calls on their own.

Generally things have been fine, so I'm curious what specifically hasn't worked for you.

<comment><USER5> I find Apple extremely annoying when you disable iCloud: they keep reminding you to enable it on every occasion (updates, freeing up space, going through photos, etc).

<comment><USER4> Hm, is that a matter of personal taste? I get the prompt for each major version update, but since it takes a few clicks to get back in after an update, one more doesn't bother me. I don't get it on point releases. There's a message about iCloud photo backups when looking at space usage but it's not even a popup/dialog, you can scroll right past it. So it doesn't bother me.

Looking harder, I think what's happening is I _do_ have iCloud, I just don't use it. I don't have automatic backups of photos, I don't have iCloud Drive (what it prompts me for on software updates), etc. Everything is unchecked except Find My iPhone. I haven't had any downside from having iCloud in this active-but-unused state.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Apple's strategy is simple.

They want to retain control over their customers; at the same time, force the developers into relying entirely on Apple as a middle man so that they can't cut Apple out of any transactions.

This way, Apple gets their cut and user's get some level of privacy.

That they can get away with this arm-twisting as "privacy" is to give credit to their brand positioning.

<comment> 1-6 Apple's strategy is simple because they had no strategy. They're pretty far behind with software and had no real cloud offering besides iCloud. They're doubling down on what they can do which is to convince people to avoid moving their life online.

In reality, I don't think people will go back to Cloud 1.0 but at least Apple will keep companies in check while they rot away to oblivion.

<comment><USER7> > They're pretty far behind with software

Examples? They are a platform vendor and have done no worse than other companies when it comes to their platform. Sure macOS has stagnated somewhat, but so have nearly all desktop platforms. Windows 10 started gaining momentum only when Microsoft realized that they had no scope in mobile space and had to save the last fort they had left. And to be honest, I do not consider Windows 10 to be massively superior to macOS. There is a reason they are building a Frankenstein's Monster by grafting a Linux kernel on top of Windows.

And iOS, despite its problem, can't be considered as worse than Android -- the later has its own problems.

At this point, OS platforms are as good as they are going to get. Barring a paradigm shift in computing, all we are going to see are incremental improvements. And IMO, that is not a bad thing. I, for one, do not want to see an interface redesign every other year.

> no real cloud offering besides iCloud.

That is like saying Google and Microsoft have no cloud offering besides Google Drive and OneDrive respectively. Or are you talking about GCP/Azure? If so, how is that relevant? Apple, unlike the other two, remains a consumer focused company with limited investment into enterprise.

> In reality, I don't think people will go back to Cloud 1.0 but at least > Apple will keep companies in check while they rot away to oblivion.

What does that even mean?

> They're doubling down on what they can do which is to convince people to > avoid moving their life online.

Are you suggesting iCloud is not online?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's a devil's bargain: now we have to choose between walled gardens that offer some privacy and extract their revenue from lock-in, and more open systems that live off spying our data.

Truth be told, the software development cost of these systems (Android and iOS) is not that huge, a reasonably good open source alternative could probably be created for less than a billion dollars, knowing how financially efficient are open source projects compared to commercial companies. That's a few cents per smartphone user per year, for the next decade, negligible compared to hardware costs.

If this order of magnitude funding could be secured for a well organized open source project, we could have the best of both worlds, a truly open ecosystem with privacy at it's center.

<comment><USER9> > the software development cost of these systems [...] is not that huge

> probably be created for less than a billion dollars

I don't think I've worked anywhere that's put more than $500M into a single software project. That is "huge" cost.

(Except maybe Yahoo! but even then I'm not sure.)

<comment><USER10> They're sunk costs now though. How much more needs to be added to Mobile OSes? Can't they just innovate functionality though installed apps?

<comment><USER9> GP was, I believe, talking about a whole new mobile OS, built from the ground up for privacy and an open ecosystem rather than just innovating on the existing platforms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> They're offering privacy, yes, but not as a service. They're still very much in the business of selling devices to their customers, and this business model is incidentally one of the main reasons they, unlike Facebook or Google, can afford to offer such comprehensive privacy measures.

</comment><comment><USER12> In other news "Apple's privacy reputation at risk with new iTunes class-action lawsuit"

> The plaintiffs allege that a third party can purchase a list of iTunes > customers based on different demographic requirements, like a list of > unmarried people who have a taste for a particular genre of music:

> The lawsuit further alleges that the third-party beneficiaries of this > listening data match it to other sensitive personal information gathered > about iTunes users from various sources, and then resell that information on > the open market.

[1] [https://thenextweb.com/business/2019/05/27/apples-privacy- re...](https://thenextweb.com/business/2019/05/27/apples-privacy-reputation- at-risk-with-new-itunes-class-action-lawsuit/)

<comment><USER13> Their main claim revolves around "iTunes & Pandora data" based on a 3rd party aggregator's claims.

Interesting that they mention Pandora - is that how the data got exfiltrated/aggregated?

All the claims in the suit mention "publicly available information" but the references given don't present actual harm to the class.

It'd be very unlikely to me that this class action goes anywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> When I was a teen, my uncle, who was an executive at Oracle at the time, yelled at me for admitting on a medical form that I smoked pot. I said, "But, it's confidential, right?". He told me, "It may be confidential now, but it won't always be. Databases are forever." Apple won't be a privacy company in 10 or 20 years.

<comment><USER15> I think we are living at just the dawn of a long and very privacy obsessed era, that will probably become more intense as the decades pass, and the generations. I don't see why a company that pounces on this reality now won't be still successful at it decades from now.

<comment><USER14> Because, eventually, Apple will lose revenue, and their shareholders will demand profit. And, Apple will be sitting on a trove of data, or metadata, or predictive models built from that data.

<comment><USER15> That sounds speculative. Why will they lose revenue eventually? Do you think 40 years from now they will be in a worse position than today? After all, they are today in a better position than 40 years ago. Perhaps a privacy-focused company will actually perform better in a society obsessed with privacy, and eventually, their competitors who don't share these perspectives will be the ones that lose revenue.

All we can do is speculate.

<comment><USER14> It's not speculation, just logic. Shareholders seek as much profit as possible. The moment that being PrivAAS is worth less than not being one, they'll switch strateg

<comment><USER15> It seems logical to me that a company that is privacy-focused in an era of a privacy-obsessed customer base will actually make more profit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I love this. Apple is one of the only companies (alongside perhaps Mozilla) with the brand muscle to get away with shooing third-party vultures away from a user's implicit information, like the new protections against inferring your location through IP addresses, the option to share your location only once, and enforcing other restrictions like requiring "Sign In With Apple" on all apps that offer Facebook/Google sign-in. [0]

Some developers may balk at giving up all that tasty data, but as a user, this is _GREAT._

Regardless of how you feel about Apple on the whole, who else do you think can afford to put their foot down against predatory practices in favor of the user?

[0] [https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=06032019j](https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=06032019j)

</comment><comment><USER17> It's worth remembering that Apple's privacy spin began with people noticing that Siri is a joke and other ML powered functions in Apple's software are not nearly as good as the competition's, so the company line basically became "our software sucks because we don't spy on you" and because tech journalists are predisposed to hate everyone else and really love framing their stories as rivals dueling they gladly adopted that narrative.

<comment><USER18> Why is that worth remembering when the end result, being privacy conscious is much more important than the reliability of Siri?

<comment><USER17> Says who? Personally I prefer sophisticated software that works to this ill conceived fear mongering notion of privacy.

<comment><USER18> We all have our own preferences.

But whatever they are, that still doesn't mean that Apple failure with Siri as alleged reason to focus on privacy is relevant when the end result is better privacy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've been an Apple fan for a long time but for the past 10 years or so I've been using more Google products. Well, I think that is changing. Google is proving itself more and more untrustworthy and Apple is moving in the right direction.

For example, I've been using Android phone ever since the second iPhone came out and have been very happy. I signed up for Google Fi as soon as I could and have been rocking a Nexus or Pixel device every since. However, this PaaS push by Apple, and Google's more recent announcements, have pushed me over the edge. I want to get cameras on my home. I want to sign up for things using email. I want to be able to use my personal devices without having to worry that law enforcement can back-door them. I think Apple is the only company that is taking this seriously and can be trusted to do it right.

</comment><comment><USER20> As a non-iOS user, can someone explain what is happening in this image?:

[https://techcrunch.com/wp- content/uploads/2019/06/2019060317...](https://techcrunch.com/wp- content/uploads/2019/06/20190603174213_461726.jpg)

Does the 'X' mean "selected" or "don't share"?

<comment><USER21> From my iOS experience I would expect the 'X' to delete all of the text in the field, but it's very confusing considering the toggles below it.

<comment><USER22> I agree, my interpretation of that user interface would be that X clears the field and lets you type something else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Still they were/are part of PRISM so keep in mind that the privacy offered depends by various U.S agencies.

<comment><USER24> Privacy is not all or nothing issue. If you have privacy against commercial use but not against various U.S. agencies that's better than nothing.

Any service where you can reset your password/token that is known only to you after you lose it is not safe from government warrant. It can still be safe from mass collection like PRISM.

<comment><USER23> I agree though I believe the abuse of privacy rights by the government is the worst kind of the two, capable of inflicting the greatest damage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Next up: Aaas, Anonymity as a service...

The bottom line is, only _you_ care about your privacy, because you're the only one who _can_ care about your privacy. You can do that by voting, and by running Free Software.

Effective privacy and anonymity are based on control:control of your software, control of your hardware, control of your life.

Everyone asking you for control in exchange for anonymity or privacy does not necessarily have your best interest at heart.

Apple's business model is about monetising control, and now they're extending that by ostensibly selling some of that control back to you. Apple will only grant you privacy as long as it doesn't interfere with them taking control.

<comment><USER26> Daas: Doxing as a Service, on an Open Identity Marketplace (meBay). Users can selectively sell their anonymity and personal information, consensually doxing themselves to the highest bidder, and Apple gets a 30% cut.

<comment><USER27> Applause, that's how disruptive unicorns are invented.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> My cynical side read this as cheap/free = google/android who own your data in return for their services

vs expensive = Apple who are selling you some degree of perceived privacy baked into the operating systems of their primarily hardware offerings, which you pay more for.

<comment><USER29> Sure, but that's the always-acknowledged reality. Either you're paying for the product, or you are the product.

<comment><USER30> > Either you're paying for the product, or you are the product.

Where would you place an app like Signal?

<comment><USER7> Will signal continue to be free if they have a billion users like WhatsApp? Who will fund the infrastructure and development?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Apple was the first company to take accessibility seriously. And that is definitely a market where it likely didn't make a lot of revenue, if any at all. Just consider this, if you think every niche market is irrelevant.

</comment><comment><USER32> It's good to see at least one tech giant wants to compete on privacy, rather than selling our data. It's great that Apple does this. And yet, I find the Apple ecosystem closed and restrictive. I'm not eager to get an iPhone and would much rather use something like Lineage OS, for example.

</comment><comment> saulio-g They've been building up to this point, taking this lead by presenting at EU data conferences in Brussels, and calling for stronger US data protection law.

Facebook on the other hand, has announced they are now a Privacy focused company (whilst appealing the Cambridge Analytica fine of £500k) and gearing up with legal teams. Not walking the walk.

I wouldn't say they are a privacy-as-a-service company, I'd suggest they are a company that are future proofing their revenue streams by enforcing privacy rules on their development / APP environment.

Remember Apple control their environment. It's a closed shop. So perhaps these changes are really protectionism against Regulation.

</comment><comment><USER33> Their marketing campaign ("what happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone") is of course providing a false sense of security ...

<comment><USER34> With Apple apps, sure.

With third party apps, no.

<comment><USER33> Well, Safari is an Apple app. And Onion browser for Tor isn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Is it only me imagining some kind of scenario where, if this gains traction, suddenly 3rd party developers will have to share revenue with Apple for being able to use the Apple sign in.

</comment><comment><USER36> I don't think there's any need to pretend Apple is marketing this simply as a virtuous act. They have competitive advantages in some areas, and not in others. They are taking advantage of such an advantage.

</comment><comment><USER37> From reading the developer documentation it looks like developers need to implement & maintain Sign In with Apple as a new SSO method: [https://developer.apple.com/sign-in-with- apple/](https://developer.apple.com/sign-in-with-apple/)

When I read the keynote highlights I assumed Apple were extending the existing (iCloud) Keychain/Safari integration to include username generation, and obfuscated email generation resolving to your iCloud account. Since they implemented 2FA codes auto filling in the QuickType bar in iOS 12, they could've extended this UX further, or used 'Siri suggestions' to complete email verification.

I assume they didn't take this approach as it's harder to present a consistent call to action to initiate sign up, but it seems like a missed opportunity to me.

Does anyone know of a password manager that allows you to generate unique email addresses as a part of the core UX?

<comment><USER38> Ideally, they would work with Solid, a standards based approach to decentralized identity, to provide a general solution, rather than creating yet another new one.

<comment><USER37> I find Solid incredibly interesting academically, and watch it with interest, but I'm sadly skeptical that it'll find traction— it requires both substantial development resources (as apps need to be rewritten to its standards) and a change in consumer behaviour.

I'm reminded of this Steve Jobs response from WWDC 1997 [1]:

> One of the things I've always found is that you've got to start with the > customer experience and work backwards for the technology. You can't start > with the technology and try to figure out where you're going to try to sell > it. And I made this mistake probably more than anybody else in this room. > And I got the scar tissue to prove it.

The beauty of the implementation I described is that it could work with any existing (web) app with little-no development effort while leveraging affordance users already have from using Touch/Face ID to authenticate Keychain, Apple Pay etc.

Until a proposal like Solid is widespread, I'd love for a browser/password manager vendor I trust (for me, Mozilla or Apple) to integrate with a privacy- forward email vendor for unique email addresses to provide a less 'fingerprinted' approach to auth, useful today with all legacy (web) apps.

[1] [https://youtu.be/FF-tKLISfPE](https://youtu.be/FF-tKLISfPE)

<comment><USER38> I don't disagree with what you're saying. But it's also reasonable to focus just on working with those who see the same thing you do, and develop widely usable systems based on that. That's where everything comes from, basically. If we keep pandering to the lowest common denominator, the results will always be compromised.

GDPR is having a big impact on these discussions. Organizations don't want to own data any more. It would be a true tragedy of more collapsing of the net if it came down to using one of a few big providers, without alternate options. Yet we're seeing this happen, since many sites now only offer login via social media, with no option via email. IMO, these sites should be boycotted.

<comment><USER37> Relatedly, it seems Apple is planning to make 'Sign in with Apple' mandatory for every iOS developer using any third party sign in: [https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/3/18651344/wwdc-2019-apple-f...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/3/18651344/wwdc-2019-apple- force-ios-developers-sign-in-third-party)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Are we so brainwashed that we barely can feel outrage at a title like this? How about privacy as a basic human right?

<comment><USER40> Finally I've found at least one coment related to this point. Everyone seems so atonished because of a new alternative for monetization, they forgot that privacy is a right that tech companies must fulfill. We are running fast towards a content distopy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Apple delivers privacy from 3rd party developers and at the same time retains all that user data for itself, shoring up its unfair competitive advantage as a non-neutral-platform who makes major forays into its partners' businesses. Eg health apps, maps, news, podcasts, imusic, etc, etc.

<comment><USER24> User data has less value for Apple.

The main economic incentive to collect massive amounts of user data comes from two-sided market (users and advertisers). Google, Facebook are in that market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> It is good to have alternative.

Except in china I guess. That place seems somehow everyone is making exception like people are different kind of human. They are the same human. Should have the same human rights.

<comment><USER43> from wikipedia on human rights:

> The onset of the Cold War soon after the UDHR was conceived brought to the > fore divisions over the inclusion of both economic and social rights and > civil and political rights in the declaration. Capitalist states tended to > place strong emphasis on civil and political rights (such as freedom of > association and expression), and were reluctant to include economic and > social rights (such as the right to work and the right to join a union). > Socialist states placed much greater importance on economic and social > rights and argued strongly for their inclusion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> That's all fine and very good for the consumer. Now they just have to get the fuck out of PRISM and I'll start taking them seriously in the privacy realm.

<comment><USER45> Do they have an option? It was my understanding that national security letters are involved.

<comment><USER46> That's not the point though. Either they can offer privacy, and have a way by which the whims of the government cannot affect that, or they can't.

<comment><USER47> That's why Apple puts so much emphasis on functions working on your phone and not in the cloud. At the keynote they said "this happens on your phone and nothing is sent to Apple" at least half a dozen times. If it's stored on your phone, it's not subject to Prism and is encrypted so the government can't pry through it at will.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> They had to focus on privacy to separate out from the competition. Also this distracts the focus on walled garden criticism and freedom to own the devices.

</comment><comment><USER49> And you need to pay an absolute premium for this pricacy - I've plotted the price of iPhone prices increase here and even after adjusting for inflation the price growth is really high. Especially if you look at the flagship phones

[https://kyso.io/eoin/iphone-prices](https://kyso.io/eoin/iphone-prices)

</comment><comment><USER50> Give me an example of Apple not bowing down to chinese censors and i just may believe you.

[https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/25/18020508/how-china- compl...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/25/18020508/how-china-complicates- apples-chest-thumping-about-privacy)

<comment><USER46> But that's censorship - and Apple are not aligning themselves to any "free speech" kinda line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I don't get how this is a value proposition. Privacy should be included in any service related to technology and data. It's not a plus, they are trying to charge for an obligation. We are losing our rights for the creation of new markets.

</comment><comment><USER51> If Apple really wants to help me then they need to create a product to wean me off Gmail.

<comment><USER52> iCloud has a mail service.

<comment><USER53> It's feature-lite though, by comparison.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I highly doubt apple isnt collecting inform on users of their services, they just aren't letting anybody else access it. Its matter of time before Apple builds something that uses all the info they have collected.

</comment><comment><USER55> Control f "china". Nothing.

I have a hard time trusting anything that doesn't message how iMessage is end- to-end secure but Apple operates in China.

Nobody has ever talked about that.

</comment><comment><USER56> Is there an existing alternative service (read: FOSS) that would auto-generate temporary emails and manage identity for services like "Login with Apple"?

<comment><USER57> There are lots of temporary email services, most or all of which are blocked by major sites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I am clearly in the minority here but I think "Sign in with Apple" is terrible for consumers. You keep your email address hidden from service providers, sure, but you are also placing your online identity entirely in the hands of Apple. If you get on the wrong side of Apple's algorithms, there is zero recourse. At least in the case of Facebook and others the third party still has your email address so you can always start using that to identify yourself.

<comment><USER58> > If you get on the wrong side of Apple's algorithms, there is zero recourse.

I don't follow what you're implying.

<comment><USER59> I think I understand the GP.

Let's say I sign up for an online game using Apple's secure sign in because I don't want to share my information.

Some time passes, and I've invested 250 hours into the game, when Apple decides to ban my account for whatever reason (perhaps I've refunded too many apps, maybe the credit card that pays my Apple Music expires, my country gets sanctioned by the US gov. etc.)

Apple would, presumably, shut down email services for me. Meaning, I won't be able to log into that game any longer. With no alternative log in method (which would defeat the purpose of using Apple's sign in) I would likely lose access to that game forever.

<comment><USER60> Isn't this just a general SSO problem - I assume the same would happen if someone signs on with Google/Facebook/Twitter and is banned from one of those services?

Is the idea here that there's a higher chance of this account type being banned without recourse because of the number and type of ecosystem interaction points (App Store, subscription services, etc.)?

<comment><USER61> Unlike Google, where high-profile Twitter shaming is basically the only effective technique for resolving issues, for consumers the Apple stores are a legitimate place to go and complain.

It's not perfect but on the spectrum of bureaucratic chaos, Apple is a lesser offender.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> "Apple is now a privacy-as-a-service company"… as well. Assuming it's its defining characteristic is a bit over the top

</comment><comment><USER63> _I for one, am happy that Apple can afford to offer privacy as one of its strong suites._

But can you afford to buy it?

</comment><comment><USER64> I rather pay Apple with my money than the other companies with my privacy to use their product

</comment><comment><USER65> The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.

</comment><comment><USER66> Apple makes good products, but they build closed ecosystem for premium price.

So, I not use they products, maximum run macOS in VM sometimes.

And if will be forced to use a smartphone (maps in new city for example), it will be iPhone, 'cause I prefer privacy vs "open source with spy" by Google.

</comment><comment><USER67> Paraphrase it: you are paying Apple a premium to not sell your data.

<comment><USER68> And I, for one, am OK with that. I'm glad there's a vendor who is baking a device's lifetime of backchannel personal data "monetization" into the upfront price, and I keep my privacy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> I still can't access Techcrunch and other Oath website on mobile. Instead of the article I land on a GDPR cookie page and I can only say "OK" there is no way for me to refuse tracking or turn off part of the cookies like on _every other websites_. WTF?

</comment><comment><USER70> The 'service' here is the apple developer subscription of $100/year. Apple is pandering to its beloved developers here, because, let s be real, the public doeskin care.

</comment><comment><USER71> Sure sure, If you avert your gaze from China.

</comment><comment><USER72> But Tim Cook said they were a Health Services company. What if privacy is part of human health?

</comment><comment><USER73> Except the iOS Mail app is so exceptionally bad one is forced to use Gmail or another app.

<comment><USER52> Anecdote: I've been using the iOS Mail app exclusively ever since Inbox shut down. I don't feel "forced" to use another app at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> Apple is a 'use all of our products, or else we will make life inconvenient for you' company. The fact that this happens to offer some privacy benefits is just a strategy credit[1]

[1] [https://stratechery.com/2013/strategy- credit/](https://stratechery.com/2013/strategy-credit/)

<comment><USER75> Not sure how true this is.

I run my own infra (caldav,carddav,imap/smtp) and all of it intergrates seamlessly into iOS and macOS. I tried the same on android and it did not work seamlessly with anything except google services.

Sure, their own stuff works better with their own stuff, and yes, the watches can't be configured without a phone, but that's also true of android.

<comment><USER76> Could you outline what kind of problems you had with android and integration? In my experience android is the superior platform for plugging in your own modules and your own data where you want it.

<comment><USER75> The way you describe it; I would agree. You can "do anything" on Android, but this leads to poor implementations for common things.

What I'm referencing is that the OS and Apples own applications are built to support what I would be consider very sane defaults (as in, it supports me doing my own thing, without the need for plugins/modules).

My experience is that on Android I had to have many third-party integrators to get things up and working, and they were very poor quality and would run in the background murdering my battery life. (and I had to pay for it: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=at.bitfire.dav...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=at.bitfire.davdroid&hl=en))

IMAP/SMTP Were less of a problem but it always /felt/ very third party when using tools for that purpose, where google mail was truly first class. On iOS I don't feel this way at all, once I had push notifications set up the experience was identical (if not a little better with my own server due to apples SMTP servers getting overloaded).

So, you're right when you say that Android is more modular and supports stronger composibility of the system. But the experience of actually using it is so incredibly poor that even with Apple doing it's bullshit (no small phones, no headphone jack, protruding camera) I have very little inclination to go back- the "feeling" I get is that it's funnelling me to third parties, whether it be google or samsungs awful "samsung cloud ecosystem"

<comment><USER76> > My experience is that on Android I had to have many third-party integrators > to get things up and working

That you have to buy/install CalDAV AND CardDAV connectors is indeed a weird shortcoming of Android. On the flip-side you _had_ the option to do so.

Also, in the age of everything-SaaS, a one time payment of $10 for basic infrastructure isn't all that bad.

> IMAP/SMTP Were less of a problem but it always /felt/ very third party when > using tools for that purpose, where google mail was truly first class.

What Email app did you use? Gmail (which obviously treats Gmail better) or something else?

> But the experience of actually using it is so incredibly poor

Different strokes to different folks I guess.

I never experienced Android to be that different (or worse) when using my own standards-based providers.

That said _iOS_ feels a lot more coherent if you stick to Apple apps all the way. But not being able to set another default browser or email client is just weird.

<comment><USER75> > That said iOS feels a lot more coherent if you stick to Apple apps all the > way. But not being able to set another default browser or email client is > just weird.

in this, we agree.

> What Email app did you use? Gmail (which obviously treats Gmail better) or > something else?

Samsung mail, I couldn't find any decent alternatives, maybe this is my shortcoming for not knowing what is available?

>Also, in the age of everything-SaaS, a one time payment of $10 for basic infrastructure isn't all that bad.

Except I'm paying to use a connector to use /my/ infrastructure. But, I don't mind paying for software, so long as it's good and well integrated. DavDroid was half decent, worth the money if you consider the effort involved, but not "good".

<comment><USER76> > Samsung mail, I couldn't find any decent alternatives, maybe this is my > shortcoming for not knowing what is available?

Oddly enough, one of the best options I found was Outlook. No really!

Simple to setup, easy to use. No need to fiddle with 2000 settings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> Not open source, and if it was, the cloud is someone's else computer.

</comment><comment><USER78> NSA probably have full access to the backend of this service

</comment><comment><USER79> This headline is pure propaganda.

</comment><comment><USER80> ITT people who are blowing off privacy as though it's not valuable while simultaneously talking about Apple lock in like they're the only company to do that.

Idk what yall are on but privacy is valuable to most of us. That comes with a cost and it's not hard to see why - selling private data is how companies make more profit while charging less than apple. Don't wanna pay? You lose privacy. Want privacy? You pay. It's that simple. At last apple gives an option, meanwhile idk how Facebook and Google and all don't face regulation for the egregious privacy violations they commit.

</comment><comment><USER81> Yeah, right. And I'm Napoleon.

There is no privacy with proprietary software.

</comment><comment><USER82> Declaring your something doesn't mean your that. Show me.

</comment><comment><USER83> I feel Apple is abusing their dominant position (single app store) to force all the developers to implement & maintain Sign In with Apple as a new SSO method: [https://developer.apple.com/sign-in-with- apple/](https://developer.apple.com/sign-in-with-apple/)

I'm really curious to see how this will fly with the Antitrust

<comment><USER84> I suspect perfectly fine, actually. Why would this somehow trigger just above a certain threshold?</comment></comment>


A quantum effect you can observe with the naked eye - <AUTHOR>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Yh-U8Ro-P0
I find it amazing. You can repeat the experiment using lenses from polarized sun glasses with sun or computer monitor light.
Does anybody know of other examples? <comment><USER2> Well one could argue the world is quantum, so that would give you lots of examples! But more to the point:

* The colors you can see on a puddle of water with a bit of oil on it is due to interference [1]

* Certain butterflies wings colors are not due to pigments, but to microscopic structures that cause interference.

* One very striking example is superconductivity [2], where a material can conduct electricity without resistance, and expels magnetic fields, leading to magnetic levitation.

* Diamagnetism: Since water is slightly diamagnetic, that is, it creates a small magnetic field that oposes an external magnetic field applied to it, things with lots of water can be levitated in a strong enough magnetic field. [3]

[1] [http://www.kentshillphysics.net/light-optics/thin-films- and-...](http://www.kentshillphysics.net/light-optics/thin-films-and- interference/)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HHJv8lPERQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HHJv8lPERQ)

[3] [http://www.ru.nl/hfml/research/levitation/diamagnetic/](http://www.ru.nl/hfml/research/levitation/diamagnetic/)

</comment><comment><USER3> why can't this (three polarizers) be explained classically? googling turns up this explanation, for example [http://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=16544](http://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=16544) or this one [http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/14/polaroid.htm](http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/14/polaroid.htm)

</comment><comment><USER4> Double slit experiment with a key ring laser. Liquid Helium.

</comment><comment><USER5> Fluorescent lightbulbs, you may have seen one.</comment>


The tyranny of the Hollerith punched card - <AUTHOR> http://pub.gajendra.net/2012/09/hollerith_tyranny <comment><USER2> The article has the causality backwards. We don't use 80 characters because that's what the Hollerith card used, the Hollerith card used 80 characters because that's a good ergonomic width. (Or, if you prefer, the Hollerith card _succeeded_ because it was a good ergonomic width.)

Coincidentally (or perhaps ironically) the article itself is formatted for ~80 characters per line, not because it's bound by the Hollerith card, but because 80 characters is a good ergonomic width.

<comment><USER3> I researched Hollerith cards and 80-character lines in excessive detail while studying card sorters [1]. The Hollerith card is the root cause of 80-character lines, of course. Prior to 1928, Hollerith cards used round holes and 45 characters per card. IBM wanted to fit more data on a card and investigated two alternatives: binary coding so 90 characters could fit into 45 columns of holes, or rectangular holes which allowed narrower holes so 80 columns would fit. They chose the latter because it was more compatible with existing card sorting equipment, and the rest is history. Competitors used 90 column cards, but didn't achieve the same success as IBM. IBM later introduced 96-column cards, but they weren't as popular. Thus, it's just a historical accident that everyone uses 80 columns rather than 90 or 96. And 80 columns is used because that's how many could fit on a punched card the size of obsolete US currency. Note that ergonomics has nothing to do with the success of 80 columns: for the most part these cards held accounting data, not program code or text. (I wrote an article covering this in great detail but haven't posted it to my blog yet; hopefully I'll get it out soon.)

[1] [http://www.righto.com/2016/05/inside-card- sorters-1920s-data...](http://www.righto.com/2016/05/inside-card- sorters-1920s-data.html)

<comment><USER2> The facts you cite are true, of course, but it does not follow that the H-card was the cause of 80-character lines. We've had plenty of opportunities to ditch that standard if we wanted to. The Apple II had 40 characters per line. That went by the wayside not because there was a compelling reason to be backwards-comatible with H-cards, but simply because 40 characters is too short. When longer lines were enabled by technology we went to 80 rather than (say) 132 because 132 is too long. We can quibble over 80 vs 90 or 96 (or 72), but it's pretty clear that the sweet spot is right in there somewhere. It is not at all like (say) electrical outlets where we really do have to do deal with all kinds of crazy incompatibilities when traveling for no reason other than historical accident.

<comment><USER3> The jump to 80-column video displays was due to late 1960s CRT-based computers for data entry such as Four Phase and Viatron, which allowed people to enter punched card data on a screen and edit it. These of course had 80-column input. These were followed by more general purpose video displays like the VT50, which also had 80 columns for compatibility with punched card systems. This led to terminal emulator windows such as xterm using 80 columns. It is a clear historical path. (I don't know why you're bringing the Apple II into this.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't doubt that the author's story is correct, but I think that 80 is a perfectly reasonable number to have as a standard. It's very annoying when I read code that doesn't use the 80-character limit, because my terminal is not guaranteed to be as wide as theirs, and I really don't like resizing my terminal window to fit their line length.

For car width, I think that that's also a pretty reasonable width, since it's the perfect width to fit two people side-by-side comfortably, with a bit of room in the middle.

Now we only need to think of things that have developed for historical purposes, yet are not reasonable defaults.

<comment><USER5> 80 characters seems really narrow. IDEs like IntelliJ put a guideline at 120 characters, which basically allows two full width editing windows side by side (depending on your font size) at the pretty standard resolution of 1920x1080.

We've all got widescreen monitors now, right? So it makes sense that people are going well past 80 characters.

<comment><USER6> As another commenter noted, it's not (just) about screen width. It's about having a text width that allows your eyes to track both column boundaries as achoring points. If a text is too wide, your eyes will have trouble finding the start of the next line.

For the same reason, newspapers use multiple columns, even though the paper itself would allow for 200-character lines.

<comment><USER5> I don't think we read code the same way we read normal text. If you have this in your code:

        qry.setParameter("a", a);
        qry.setParameter("b", b);
        qry.setParameter("foo", foo);
        qry.setParameter("bar", bar);

After the first "qry.setParameter" you're no longer reading anything but the parameters and your eyes are moving vertically.

Or if you have something like this:

        Query qry = getEntityManager().createNamedQuery("User.findUserBySomething", Long.class);

You're only reading the "User.findUserBySomething". The rest of it is mainly fluff.

<comment><USER7> Just for the record, that bit of code gets cut off at ", Long." for me, and then there's a scrollbar. (I always read HN zoomed-in.)

<comment><USER8> There's a CSS rule constraining the width of <pre> blocks to 600px.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting fact: the Hollerith punched card is the same size as the dollar bill in 1890. This is because Hollerith was able to take advantage of existing stacking and sorting equipment already designed for banks.

[http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/voy/museum/pictures/display/...](http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/voy/museum/pictures/display/2-2-ElecKeyPunch.htm)

<comment><USER3> Strangely, punched cards are just a bit bigger than the old US currency, not exactly the same size. Also strange: nobody knows exactly how big the old currency was. To be precise, there are three slightly different sizes quoted as the official size. I asked the Bureau of Engraving and Printing about this - they print the money so they should know - and they couldn't explain the discrepancy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> 50-75 characters is the optimal line width for the human eye to scan: [http://baymard.com/blog/line-length- readability](http://baymard.com/blog/line-length-readability)

<comment><USER11> For code it also seems most of the text reside on the left. Opening an extra wide window to display text for the occasional long line seems a waste of screen space.

<comment><USER12> Indeed. The rule for prose is that a text block width should be somewhere between 2.5 and 3.5 full alphabets. This takes into account the variable spacing of different characters. This is to strike a balance between having inconsistent space or too much hyphenation (if the line is too short) and the eye's ability to find the next line when scanning leftwards from the end of the previous line (which is difficult if the line is too long).

Code is different in several ways. Firstly, code is generally shown in monospace typeface. Secondly, breaking lines too early can be even worse for code than for prose. Thirdly, even with a long line limit, code will generally have lots of short lines anyway, and this helps the eye find the next line when reading. The long lines (as long as they aren't all long) stick out from the rest of the code text, making it easier to read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is one of my major pet peeves

Except for Linux Kernel people (who actually have to work and debug stuff in the builtin 80x24 screen) there is no excuse for not using something bigger

Having to break a line because it's 81 characters and your linter is going to complain _is completely and utterly ridiculous_

It's 2016. How long since the first IBM PC again?

Yes, it's a tyranny. I don't care if the average is around 80 columns, I care about having a hard limit

My current terminal is 110 chars wide, and that's because I use a bigger font.

<comment><USER7> If eyes were easily repairable I might agree. But I figure at some point in my life (even though I keep my fonts larger than I need to) I'm going to need even larger fonts. I'd rather write code my future self will have less trouble reading, especially since I might be sharing my code with others who have poor eyesight now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> While the first example of car sizes and Roman chariots is likely incorrect (as the article itself points out, and it's also suspiciously familiar to the debunked railroad gauge/Roman chariot story[0]), I'm always fascinated by stories like this. It underlies the organic nature by which many of our systems have grown.

The same kind of "cruft" you see in systems and designs that have been around for a long time (Why is it the "Referer" header in HTTP? Why do we still call it Ajax/XHR when XML is rarely used?) is seen in many aspects of life.

Etymology is choke full of them. Consider the word, "consider" \- its roots may have meant something like "consult the stars" at one point in time. (I think I first read about this in Sagan's _Cosmos_ )

0\. [http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.asp](http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.asp)

1\. [http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=consider](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=consider)

<comment><USER15> Or the reason for the JHKL vim arrow keys - I've read quite often how ergonomic that is, but it's just historical: [http://www.catonmat.net/blog/why-vim-uses-hjkl-as-arrow- keys...](http://www.catonmat.net/blog/why-vim-uses-hjkl-as-arrow-keys/)

(then again, maybe the original keyboard maker put them there for ergonomic reasons)

<comment><USER16> I always thought it was because on slow modem connections the traditional arrow keys could become unreliable. Vim supports use of the arrow keys, but back in the day when I tried to use them over a modem occasionally the sequence would be interpreted as escape then garbage, breaking me out of editing mode and sending some unsuppported command to the vim. That's why I learned to use hjkl instead. Those keys are also reliably placed on Qwerty keyboards, whereas any other keys may or may not remain in a sensible location, especially back in the old days before keyboard layouts settled down.

<comment><USER17> There were no "traditional arrow keys" on the terminal that vi was developed on, but arrows were printed on the hjkl keys; see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_keys#HJKL_keys](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_keys#HJKL_keys).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Cars are pretty well sized for fitting two people side by side(and the appropriate controls).

80 columns is a pretty good length for lines of text.

I see no tyranny here.

</comment><comment><USER19> You know, those kinds of history forcing itself into modern standards only happen when the historic one isn't inconvenient.

When compatibility is a burden, people do work hard to break it.

Anyway, there's a "(2012)" missing on the title, and even that makes the article kinda late to the discussion. By that time, most people already didn't care about the 80 lines limits.

</comment><comment><USER20> Punched cards were a pain to work with. We used to have a 40,000-card master file that we had to run through twice a day on a Univac 1001, at 1,000 cards/min. per feed, plus jams. The racket was deafening.

When the card reader jammed, it destroyed the card. We had to retrieve the bits of card, and tediously re-create the card on an IBM 026 keypunch, one column at a time.

One time a card got caught between two pinch rollers, and smoke started billowing from the machine.

IBM sold the "Multi-function Card Machine", or "MFCM". Customers called it the "Mother Fletcher Card Masher", except they had another word for the "F".

The computer's card punch could only do 200 cards/min.

In humid weather, cards would swell and jam the reader's picker knife.

I was so glad when we switched to mag. tape.

<comment><USER21> > except they had another word for the "F"

I believe you're allowed to say "Fuck" and it's various declensions on HN now!

I'm always particularly intrigued by people who write things like "Sh#t" or "F#ck" because it's unclear who they are censoring for, and indeed why. If it was simple prudishness, I assume they would either use some twee alternative or mis-spelling, but simply eliding one letter suggests they themselves have no problem with expletives. It certainly doesn't protect viewers from seeing the taboo word, as a string of punctuation like "#&$!" might, so that isn't the purpose. Wildly off-topic, so apologies...

<comment><USER20> I was just trying to convey the sensitivities of the era. As a Quebecker, I am not averse to expletives :o)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> 80 is an _awful_ width for code in a programming paradigm encouraging long variable names. If you're comparing two values from class.accessor, you fly right past 80 characters if you have any indentation at all. Namespace hierarchies pretty much put you over the limit if you use named constants in your constructors.

If you actually use long/descriptive variable names, you can mentally process much wider text quickly, invalidating the research the "80 character optimization" was based on.

Personally I use a 145 character width, because that fits nicely on my portrait-oriented monitors, with room in both left and right margin for the editor to highlight/mark. 80 character wide limits on a modern project is like an adult riding a "Big Wheel".

<comment><USER23> > 80 is an _awful_ width for code in a programming paradigm encouraging long > variable names

Which is exactly why all such paradigms are _awful_.

<comment><USER22> All hail strpbrk()!

Do you have any defense of that? I'd be interested to read it.

I think every article on coding advice I've read for the last decade favors long and descriptive function/variable names.

<comment><USER24> strpbrk() is a bit too short for my taste, but I'll choose that over FindFirstOccurrenceOfAnyCharIn(). There's "long and descriptive", and there's "too long".

Think about it: there's a reason why human languages are filled with pronouns, because if you use the full name for everything, communication will soon become tedious and it will become actually harder to understand.

Any desire for a long and descriptive name should be tempered with a matching desire for conciseness. Otherwise you end up with names like MaybeUpdateDisplayParameterListForValidation. Throw twenty of these names onto a screen, and I have no idea what the hell is going on: I can't even figure out which names are the same at a glance.

<comment><USER25> Human languages also solve it by taking into account context - and so do PLs. For example, if your language can overload functions based on argument types, then "Char" is already redundant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> A someone who believes proper non-abbreviated naming is essential to maintainable code I think the 80 char/line practice should be dead already.

A couple 14 char class names and some indentation and suddenly everything is a formatting contortion, even if the average content length of a line is well under 80, occasional outliers and moderate indentation (at least 3 or 4 indentation levels are common in object oriented languages from class declaration to control flow) and it's well worth it to use 120 char lines.

(And if you write Java you probably need even more space to handle stuff since class names are often a ridiculous number of words long...)

Outside of programming languages, I also think the 80 char limit is terrible for readable html or html templates.

<comment><USER27> This is the first reasonable thing I've read in this post. I can't believe that upthread someone actually proposed limiting variable names to four characters to keep the 80 char limit!

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Someone already knows the answer to this, (but not me): if you examine a statistically representative set of ancient books, (both pre- and post- Gutenberg) what is the average line length? And doesn't that partially depend on "standard" parchment/vellum size? And doesn't that depend on the size of a young sheep's belly? ("The tyranny of the size of sheep!" Where's James Burke when you need him?)

</comment><comment><USER29> Out of curiosity, where did the 132 column standard (for wide carriage printers) come from (why 132, not 130 or 120)?

<comment><USER30> Likely because of the VT100:

[http://vt100.net/docs/tp83/chapter5.html](http://vt100.net/docs/tp83/chapter5.html)

> 132 column × 14 lines (VT100, VT101, VT125) display

> Allows you a larger format for detailed or spread sheet work so you can > preview reports prior to printing. (Note: The advanced video option, which > is standard with the VT102 and VT131, provides 132 column × 24 lines > display.)

<comment><USER31> I'm not sure what the vt100 resolution was, but later terminals allowed you to download your own bitmaps. According to ([http://www.vt100.net/docs/vt510-rm/DECDLD.html](http://www.vt100.net/docs/vt510-rm/DECDLD.html)), these bitmaps were:

      "10 pixels wide for 80 columns, 6 pixels wide for 132 columns."

If their baseline was 800 pixels (80 cols * 10 pix/col) then 132 is the largest number of columns fitting into 800 pixels at 6 pix/col.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Apologies for being somewhat off topic, but does anyone know where I can go these days to get some cards punched (for a small museum display)? Given how common punchcards were, it has been difficult to find someone. Anyone out there have access to an old IBM 026, 029, 129?

<comment><USER3> The Computer History Museum in Mountain View has 026 and 029 keypunches. Go to the 1401 demo and they'll probably let you punch a card. Or let me know what you need punched and I'll see what I can do. What museum are you getting this for?

If you're in the bay area, you should go see the IBM 1401 demo; it's cool to see a punched card computer in operation. Demos are Wednesdays and Saturdays; schedule is [http://www.computerhistory.org/hours/](http://www.computerhistory.org/hours/)

<comment><USER33> The Living Computer Museum in Seattle has a keypunch - ask a docent and they'll turn the machine on, give you a card, and a bit of instruction and you can have at it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> "number of characters per line" made sense when we all used text-based monitors with a fixed number of characters on the screen.

Nowadays, most people are using graphic displays, at a very high resolution, with beautiful, mathematically described fonts, which can be resized at will. So why are we restricting ourselves to an arbitrary number?

80 seems too low, no matter if you are writing javascript callbacks or writing Scheme code. Or doing python with a 4 space indentation. But it may be too much for older folks.

I feel that the reason we have computers is to deal with this kind of stuff, so why can't we do whatever we want and have the computer display the way we like?

<comment><USER21> Has anyone ever designed a visual editor or IDE where the syntactic and semantic elements were differentiated using font _SIZE_ as well as the usual colouring and face variation (bold, italic, underline) we normally get? I could imagine having class names in a larger, heading type font size, for example. Code folding could be used, with attributes like access modifiers aligned underneath. Code blocks could be displayed as actual boxes, with borders and fills?

</comment></comment><comment><USER35>
      > But breaking the statement arbitrarily at some point
      > seems more like saying that you have to end a sentence
      > at the end of each line, whether the sentence is finished
      > or not because, you know, that's the way it's always been
      > done. (I know it's not a perfect analogy.)

Isn't it more like line-breaking sentences at the edge of a paper page, which we do, and which is perfectly reasonable because of the page's fixed size?

Sure, you can design your document for a different paper size, but then you have to reconfigure the printer for that size, make sure you have the right paper size loaded in the printer (and change it back afterwards!), get new envelopes in the new size, get new binders...

Similarly, if I read a program wider than 80 characters, I have to resize my terminal window and my Emacs window. When I then switch to working on other programs in the same windows, those programs then tend to be infected by wider-than-80-character lines, unless I remember to resize things back to normal, which in turn perpetuates the problem. So either the applications would have to constantly resize themselves when I switch between files (which seems really annoying) or we could just decide to stick to the standard 80 columns which, as many comments here have pointed out, is a reasonable choice to standardize on even if it's arbitrary.

<comment><USER36> Sounds like lines should change width more often to make such silly bugs noticeable so they can be fixed.

<comment><USER35> What's the silly bug? How should it work if it were fixed?

<comment><USER36> > I have to resize my terminal window and my Emacs window.

Should be an option to auto resize or auto wrap

> When I then switch to working on other programs in the same windows, those > programs then tend to be infected by wider-than-80-character lines unless I > remember to resize things back to normal, which in turn perpetuates the > problem.

Why would a program care about what size the window was when you ran it in the past?

> So either the applications would have to constantly resize themselves when I > switch between files (which seems really annoying)

Isn't that exactly what a GUI is for?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The banana/monkey story is not actually true, it was not tested as described, and a somewhat similar test did not have clear results.

[http://www.throwcase.com/2014/12/21/that-five-monkeys- and-a-...](http://www.throwcase.com/2014/12/21/that-five-monkeys-and-a-banana- story-is-rubbish/)

<comment><USER38> I like the Ricky Gervais bathtub selfie in that article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Going to go with the fact that original cards were the same size as paper currency at the time and re purposing of equipment to handle paper currency was the expedient thing to do.

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm a programmer, but I don't have any sort of CS degree. Is the 80 character line limit something that is typically taught to CS students? I had been programming for 15+ years before I ran into references to this limit. I'm still not really sure what it means. Do most developers set up their IDEs to let them know when they have gone over the limit?

</comment><comment><USER20> Actually, if you subtract the columns used for sequence numbers and statement labels, in FORTRAN and COBOL you only had about 65 to 68 columns of code.

In one of my early jobs, we used binary format to store data in Hollerith cards. Twelve rows were divided into three groups of four bits, giving us three digits per column, or 240 digits per 80-column card.

The cards looked like lace doilies.

</comment><comment><USER41> Similar story about the bin, sbin, usr/bin , usr/sbin split in UNIX : [http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2010-December/074...](http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2010-December/074114.html)

</comment><comment><USER42> They could have gone with backwards-compatibility for Jacquard's 11x4 loom cards; so no "tyranny" here.

[http://homepage.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/cards/history.html](http://homepage.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/cards/history.html)

</comment><comment><USER43> Related: Why the space shuttle size is related to a horse's back end :)

[http://www.astrodigital.org/space/stshorse.html](http://www.astrodigital.org/space/stshorse.html)

<comment><USER44> That is more fiction than fact.

The first railroads in the US and UK standardized fairly quickly on 4'8½", but that's not the only size (even today!). The Great Western Railway, for example, was infamously at a 7' gauge. Even in the US, most railroads in the south converged on a 5' gauge until they shifted to 4'9" (not 4'8½"!) on May 31, 1886. The gauge differences in very early (1820s and 1830s) railways were just as diverse as the coal tramways that proceeded them--which means you basically have every value between 4'6" and 5' as the actual track gauge.

Of course, that belies the fact that your track gauge does not determine what you can stick on a train. That's the loading gauge, and these are nowhere near as consistent. The UIC standard loading gauge in Europe is 3.15 m wide, while the standard US loading gauge is 3.25 wide--and they both share the 4'8½" track gauge. (Note: the actual adherence to these standards, particularly in 100+ year-old railways, is a different matter.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> >> Now, just for laughs, run stty inside your xterm or in Terminal.app and tell me why your window has a baud rate.

That gentleman just made me make my powershell terminal choke.

</comment><comment><USER46> Looks like the page has been HN-ed, not loading anymore. Google cache has the content if anyone else has the issue.

</comment><comment><USER47> emacs, submlime, xcode can soft wrap code well (indenting a little extra on the wrap). wrap for semantics, not any arbitrary boundary, and then you can view the code perfectly across many different resolutions & window configurations (2-up, 3-up, whatever).

</comment><comment><USER48> From the title, I thought it would be about IBM's intimate connections to Nazi Germany.

</comment><comment><USER49> I've switched all my settings (terminal, console, emacs) to 120 characters.

</comment><comment><USER50> Personally, I agree with the author and generally have argued against hard line-length limits. Today's computers have different screen characteristics than even 15 years ago and we're at a much greater loss of vertical length than horizontal length so it bugs me when I pull up code that has less- readable statements broken apart over ten lines, doing one thing, and leaving 80% of my screen empty when readability would have been improved by leaving parts of those ten lines on a single line.

I can understand the benefits, though, to having sane rules around "how much can go in one line", I just think the overall width of a line is of way lower importance than breaking things up into logical parts -- especially in C# in code that avoids LINQ statements[1] where method chaining can result in some extremely wide, difficult to parse, code. I write almost all of my software on a Widescreen 1080P display where vertical real-estate is vastly lacking and horizontal real-estate is greatly underutilized. I use a pragmatic approach over artificial hard barriers and the assumption that I'll be using my display to look at code the way I do 99% of the time - one or two code files on screen at a time (but almost always a single code file).

My code still tends to _mostly_ prefer vertical orientation. I use these simple rules:

(1) Avoid same-line chaining (Even "ToList" or "ToArray" gets its own line). Line up the dots of the calls with the previous line's dot to make it easy to see it's a part of a chain. This results in "wider" code but makes that code able to be parsed quickly while not wasting vertical space.

(2) Avoid more than one statement per line (conditionals excluded where readability requires -- doing if (isThis && isThat && string1==string2 && string3==string4) would put the two string comparisons on two separate lines usually).

(3) Omit (yes, omit) braces for single statements that don't have indented single statements below them. This gets me yelled at sometimes, but my IDE enforces code formatting for me, so the drawbacks of "accidentally having a statement appear to apply to a conditional that it doesn't" don't happen and with the lack of newlines-for-newlines'-sake in my code, code that's indented for branched statements is easily discernible from code that has a newline due to chaining or some other reason.

(4) Break the rules if readability is improved and avoid religious wars.

At the end of the day, I can live with nearly any code formatting ruleset. I read code more than I write it and I end up reading code that follows a large variety of rules so I try not to be a pain in the ass about it. If I haven't been the most substantial contributor to a project, I follow the other person's rules. If I have, I _hope_ that they'll follow mine. The result has been few, if any, arguments over "tabs vs. spaces" theology.

[1] I have never liked the LINQ statement format as I find it hard to follow "What's Being Done" so I have, with rare exception, stuck with method chains.

<comment><USER51> I have often argued that 16:9 is a terrible ratio for office work. 4:3 was a great ratio for creating documents since they are almost necessarily longer than they are wide. The relevant portion of most spreadsheets is rather wide, since you don't necessarily care about looking at every row at once; however menu bars and other information is generally placed horizontally across the screen, eating up valuable real-estate.

I've tried rotating my monitors so they are long in the vertical direction, which is great for reading, but doesn't account for the space needed on either side of a document for supporting information, or what have you.

<comment><USER50> Completely agree! I resisted replacing a laptop for more than 2 years because all of the options available were 16:9 and I had an nice, high-resolution 4:3 display. That was years ago.

In my basement office, I have both of my displays set at a vertical orientation. When I took a new job, which has me working full time out of my home, I vowed to get used to using my laptop's display (and purchased a laptop based almost entirely on the display characteristics) because I wanted to be able to code wherever I was. This resulted in my writing an extension for Visual Studio to help identify certain code blocks I often scroll around aimlessly for and using parts of the IDE that I hadn't often used due to being able to see even terribly written classes all on one screen.

With a few adaptations, which included relaxing my style rules, I'm as productive on my 1080P display as I am with those two monitors. Some things are more difficult, but its made up for by being able to get up and work outside, up the road or on the beach up north, when I run into a wall with a coding problem. I require fewer breaks because I work feels less like work when you can change your environment on a whim rather than adapt to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I've heard this reasoning (that 80 col terms are directly due to the 80 cols on a punched card), but never any proof.

Frankly, it sounds like numerology, to me.

"Hey! Both these numbers are 80, and they describe closely related dimensions. No _way_ that's a coincidence! The newer one _must_ have been specifically chosen to match the older one."

While it could of course be true, until I see reasonable proof, I'm going to assume that both values were the outcome of fitting a data representation (holes or characters) into a size that was effectively fixed for other reasons (standard card size, commonly available paper and CRT widths).

Especially since IBM later put out 96 column cards.</comment>


IPhone development team - Julian Smith parody (video) - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_h6dD674stw

<comment><AUTHOR> I know it's probably more reddit, but I don't do reddit and thought it was worth throwing in on HN due to all the app store vitriol that has been surfacing in the wake of this "app spamming" nonsense.</comment>


Centralization vs. Decentralization - <AUTHOR> https://avc.com/2018/12/centralization-vs-decentralization/ <comment><USER3> False prophets are plenty in crypto, especially when their bags are full and heavy. Fred Wilson has repeatedly supported centralized premined coins, and he was the one to claim that "the market cap of ethereum will bypass the market cap of bitcoin by the end of the year."

The first step in writing about decentralization is to understand what decentralizaiton means. Premined coins are centralized by desgin--the founders may hold an undisclosed amount of coins that were acquired at no cost. Thus, any fork that threatens the founders can be attacked crushing the incentives of the miners, and thus the security of the network.

Linking to websites such as [https://arewedecentralizedyet.com/](https://arewedecentralizedyet.com/) is both lazy and meaningless because those metrics are easily gamed, insecure, vulnerable to sybil attacks, and unreliable. Most of the decentralization discussion is a red herring that many use either out of ignorance or in order to distract from fundamental problems such as the distribution of incentives.

<comment><USER4> > Premined coins are centralized by desgin--the founders may hold an > undisclosed amount of coins that were acquired at no cost.

This seems like a deep thought, but it isn't. All this is, a shot fired in coin v coin wars (and this one against Ethereum).

Bitcoin used to be easily minable from a CPU, and was under a dollar for a large point. Any entity could be holding undisclosed amount of coins that were acquired at no cost either.

<comment><USER5> I suppose its a matter of semantics, but 'easily minable' is not the same as 'guaranteed free'.

Bitcoin's mining cost was always a function of hash power, hardware and electricity cost (and competition). If it was cheap, it was because you were early. Satoshi mined from day 1, which is how he amassed coins.

Some forks however played in a developed crypto space and wanted to guarantee themselves a chunk of coins that would not require them to openly compete for them.

Does the difference matter? I dunno.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm surprised that Fred didn't identify this as a cyclical phenomenon in computing.

The history of computing is the cycle between centralization of compute (Mainframe, Cloud) and decentralization (Desktop, Edge) from the users perspective. It's been going on forever and I don't see it stopping because of the computing cost cycles and increasing network speeds.

We're going to push more compute to mobile devices, then back to mesh networks etc...

<comment><USER7> Fred is applying this tech logic specifically to Crypto's evolution.

<comment><USER6> I think the cycle still holds even with Crypto.

If you look at the primary platform where velocity is happening in the crypto space (number of transactions or touch points) - coinbase - it's a centralized broker for crypto.

Individuals aren't mining their own coins, they are buying them from more and more centralized miners.

<comment><USER7> I'm intrigued because historically currencies tend to get 'rolled up' \- euro centralization of european currencies around the (very secretive) ECB is a good example. I agree with your point about the tech world centralizing and decentralizing in sequence (thin clients/cloud etc) but in the monetary world there seems to be far more momentum to centralize than decentralize. We even see this in banking - there are 5 big high street banks in the uk and 100s of local banks in Germany, who arguably are the defacto central bank of the european union. Closer to the center equals more options for diversification. This may be a similar scenario with crypto, especially now security tokens are increasingly asset backed.

<comment><USER6> Different time horizons, but it actually happens there too, only it looks like the disintegration of nation states into smaller states and then centralization again.

Interestingly there haven't been as many of these monetary cycles in history since the emergence of major centralized banks, which is a good thing. So there is a (strong) argument that currency centralization is a driving force in stability and peace.

<comment><USER8> The correlation is clear, and probably meaningful. The causal are are complicated.

Countries that have been at peace a long time, and which have whatever institutions and habits encourage such peace are also ones that can grow big multi-national corporations including banks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The diagram about tech monopolies is interesting, but I don't understand why he thinks it will happen.

You need a new business model to go along with the new tech. What is that for crypto?

\- For Microsoft, it was selling software instead of hardware like IBM. "Open source" hardware complements software. This was hugely profitable.

\- For Google, it was selling user attention instead of software like Microsoft. Open source software complements web services. This was hugely profitable.

This analogy breaks down here a bit because there is a strong incentive for "open source" hardware (money for dozens of vendors), but not as much for open source software. It's more of a byproduct of the SaaS movement. I guess you could say the real corporate motivation there is developer attention, e.g. the purchase of Github. So the analogy falls down a bit.

\- So now he claims we will have open source data. I would love this, but why? What's the new business model? Companies USED to provide APIs in the 2008 era when they thought it would benefit then, but they've now pulled back -- Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc. Google APIs are in terrible shape.

He said someone proposed a regulation that Twitter be forced to write a better API? Huh?

That would be analogous to the government forcing Apple to open up its hardware like the IBM PC, or the government forcing Google to open source its search algorithms. I see why it sounds nice, but I don't think it will happen.

This is an honest question, not trying to pour water all over this ... what's the new business model, or is there at least a candidate?

<comment><USER10> There are a few candidates. The most obvious case of the technology is currency. Another interesting use case is social media and it's interesting that Steemit wasn't discussed.

I love Steemit's idea (not necessarily implementation) of a decentralized social media platform. All the data is public so now there's a decoupling of the network problem and interface problem. Facebook for example is impossible to compete against due to network effects. If you have a better version of facebook, it's very hard to get people using it because all of their friends are already on Facebook. Steemit decouples the problem by enabling people to create new interfaces to it and everyone with a steemit account can already immediately use it because their account, followers, and the rest is all the same data. Someone connected IPFS to Steemit and created DTube which basically the same thing as Youtube.

Why use a decentralized social media platform? The two biggest reasons are that decoupling the data from the interface creates better and new interfaces and content creators are rewarded with money. Right now, social media companies like Reddit get money for the content you create. With Steemit, the rewards go to those who create content and those who run the network. It seems like a more fairer system. Steemit does have problems though but the idea I think is some version of what we can expect to see more of in the future.

<comment><USER9> Hm so Steemit scrapes Facebook so your friends are there? Why wouldn't Facebook just cut them off?

In general I don't think it is possible to create new interfaces to social media sites without the owners consent. It is too easy for them to break you on purpose, and that has happened many times in the past.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding how it works.

Decentralization also seems orthogonal to this issue. If someone could gain users by creating a new UI on top of Facebook, it would have already been done in a centralized fashion.

<comment><USER10> Steemit is completely separate from Facebook and you have to create an account there. In terms of interface, it's a lot like reddit.

The thing that makes Steemit unique is that to create your own version of Steemit, you just build an interface on the blockchain. You and every other developer has unlimited access to Steemit users, followers and other data. This allowed projects like DTube (a decentralized Youtube) to immediately have millions of users. If the Steemit website starts placing ads everywhere for example, someone can create a different better interface. The point of this decentralization is exactly what the author mentions. You decouple user data from the interface enabling companies to compete on interfaces instead of network effects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > "Sadly, I think we are in a race with ourselves in this centralization vs > decentralization debate. We need the decentralized tech stack to evolve more > quickly and show the world how decentralized technology works in a > mainstream way at scale before policy makers and regulators force the tech > sector to go the wrong way."

This is something I've been working on for the last few years. I've been working on a selfhosted music server that anyone can setup in there home to stream their collection.

I've had some success building a dependency version that's deployable as an EXE for Windows (or pkg for OSX). The fact is most people aren't going to setup a separate computer just to host a decentralized server. But people are willing to use their current hardware for decentralization. And most people's current hardware is a Windows PC.

The other thing I focussed on was making it dependency free. This way you can just install it and run. Most people don't want to hunt down dependancies and write config files.

The fact is, decentralization won't take off until people can do it effortlessly. The reason centralized services rule is because it requires no effort or cost to the end user. Until that changes, decentralization will always be a niche

<comment><USER12> What are your thoughts about using ipfs/filecoin or swarm/ethereum as the data store for such a media player?

<comment><USER11> I'm looking into IPFS for the project. Looks like it might be a good way to backup things. Need to more research to make a decision though

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The way I see it, centralization has the more favorable best case scenario while decentralization has the most favorable worst case scenario.

Centralization allows for extreme optimization, but decentralization allows a system to keep on chugging along no matter what the conditions (within reason)

<comment><USER14> _> centralization has the more favorable best case scenario while decentralization has the most favorable worst case scenario_

This is a very insightful observation.

I guess that makes me slightly pessimistic for favoring decentralized services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Mh, nntp news are decentralized and no one control the entire network, email are similar in that sense. On crypto GNUPG works in a fairly decentralized concept because yes we have keyservers but they are no single body and we can also build "sub-network" of trust as we want.

On cryptocurrencies that seems IMO the "real" topic of the article IMO they are not a "free new form of currency" but a test by some bigs of IT that think they are big enough to substitute with their infrastructure the actual banking system. Of course cryptocurrencies are generally free software but due to poor scalability of blockchain operations and it's ever-grown size and the substantial need of connection and hw to operate they are de-facto a controllable ecosystem. And actual hw and firmware's trend is direct in a really dangerous direction.

IMO the problem is not much centralized vs decentralized or distributed but a matter of "design mind", today most people are _unable_ to think free by design solution, being born in an unfree world where web tech are so "affordable&effective" that seems to work like magic.

</comment><comment><USER16> > From the slide: "Cryptonetworks --> open source data"

What is a cryptonetwork and how does it lead to open source data? Wait...lemme guess...a blockchain! I wish that people would be more precise with language. Here's a news flash: crypto already runs the world. And blockchain runs almost nothing. This wholesale substitution of "crypto" for "blockchain" is disingenuous at best and self-serving at worst. It reminds me of substituting "climate change" for "global warming" (or for "pollute less").

> "...regulators...are taking actions to slow the decentralization sector > down..."

I thought that regulators were taking actions to slow the centralized sector down (through antitrust, privacy provisions, etc.). Wouldn't this provide fertile ground for the (undefined) decentralization sector. Oh wait, you mean the blockchain sector? And ICOs?

This whole blog post makes me uneasy. The inaccuracies and omissions are one thing, but the fact that VCs now have the power, wealth, and inclination to become lobbyists for failing investment theses by "...spending a lot of time with public servants of all kinds, educating them, imploring them, and desperately trying to get them to understand where we are, why it is an important moment, and why we need to this new technology to succeed..." makes me ill.

These attempts to tilt the regulatory playing field are the stuff that undoes free markets.

</comment><comment><USER17> This article is quite forceful in laying out the metaphor from cherry picking suitable historical events.

The computing primarily is because Moore's law, i.e., the continuous lowering of computing hardware.

With the dropping costs of hardware, coming the proliferation of software, then at certain generic integration point, naturally some major players pop out: Instruction set Operating system Internet Web

It's then a matter of who can be the right pint to capature the market opportunity and become the winner.

The article tries to fit this process with open sourcing metaphor. But open source has little matching properties with this process. It's more like the software abstraction always goes higher and higher therefore the previous winners naturally loses their advantage when the world moving to build new things on a different basis.

Crypto network, how it's connected to this process is not clear to me.

In the end, there is no competing of centralization vs. decentralization. They always coesist. All the crypto buzzword is just a slogan for financial industry to adopt open data exchange protocols.

And to equate crypto network or blockchain with decentralization is about as deceptive as calling internet an open network for information exchange.

</comment><comment><USER18> > "Sadly, I think we are in a race with ourselves in this centralization vs > decentralization debate. We need the decentralized tech stack to evolve more > quickly and show the world how decentralized technology works in a > mainstream way at scale before policy makers and regulators force the tech > sector to go the wrong way."

Hear hear.

</comment><comment><USER19> My take on this is that the ecosystem of interacting decentralized platforms needs to sort of become the new government in order for it to be effectively regulated. In other words you can't deal with it with some external group of people that not only don't fully understand it but also have no direct influence.

Which is not to say that any self regulation built into decentralized platforms should closely resemble anything like traditional government.

</comment><comment><USER20> I tend to believe this argument is correct but has nothing to do with crypto, and everything to do with evolving REST into providing uniform extensible media types for describing state transitions and data.

[https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/StuC/ill-see-you-on-the- wr...](https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/StuC/ill-see-you-on-the-write-side- of-the-web-7575407)

</comment><comment><USER21> > Twitter should significantly expand the features that let individuals and > groups manage the visibility for tweets for themselves. There are already > useful features such as muting a conversation or blocking an individual. > These could be expanded in ways that allow for delegation. For instance, > users should be able to say that they want to subscribe to mute and block > lists from other individuals, groups or organizations they trust. One > example of this might be that I could choose to automatically block anyone > who is blocked by more than x% of the people I follow (where I can choose > x). Ideally these features could be implemented at the tweet/conversation > level and not just the account level.

These are not new ideas. [User] sovereignty in controlling one's own view and being able to voluntarily pass control of what you see to someone else are quite literally _the_ founding ideas underlying a democracy.

At the risk of belabouring the point that these are not new, I already have what he describes in production [1], by the way of moderators you can disable and enable as needed, coupled with community mod elections. See the docs here: [https://getaether.net/docs/faq/voting_and_elections/](https://getaether.net/docs/faq/voting_and_elections/)

It does make me happy to see I'm not the only person thinking about this, though.

[1] Currently disabled, pending UI work

</comment><comment><USER22> How does monetizing an API compare to monetizing a walled garden? It seems like it's be super hard to police content in an a way that's palatable to advertisers.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is some creative re-interpretation of history.

 _" But the open PC hardware standard allowed Microsoft to develop an operating system that could run on any computer built to the PC hardware spec and they eventually unseated IBM, only to become a near monopoly themselves."_

Microsoft didn't unseat IBM. IBM hired Microsoft to write its operating system, and Microsoft retained ownership of it, and many versions were made for many personal computers. Hooray, write it once, use it everywhere, right? But as more software began using direct calls to hardware (rather than just MS-DOS calls), that software had to be ported to new systems. Most were unable to port successfully, so everyone just started writing software for IBM PCs.

Even though there was this "open standard", the de-facto standard remained "IBM". All personal computer manufacturers were forced within a few years to abandon any proprietary product and sell only IBM PC-compatible machines. It took nearly a decade for the clone makers to reduce the price enough to make it affordable to buying something not IBM. Eventually IBM lost the lions' share of the personal computer market, and went back to its original near- monopoly of mainframes and minicomputers.

 _" But just as we were wringing our hands about what to do about Microsoft's monopoly, an open source operating system (Linux), the internet protocols, and the free distribution of the world wide web undid that monopoly and we got Google, Facebook, Amazon, and other big tech platforms."_

Microsoft's monopoly wasn't unseated, and the rest sounds like nonsense. There were a variety of operating systems and software running Internet services back then. Linux and the Apache web server unseated them from web hosting and commodity server needs, but Microsoft maintained its consumer-facing monopoly for... ever, and its business-facing network software. I don't know what "the internet protocols" has to do with M$... they tried to market competing protocols, they failed. We could extend this comment into the browser wars, but that's a whole 'nother rant (and the one monopoly they've really given up). As for "the free distribution of the www" ? What does this even mean? The web has always been paid for by somebody, I'm not sure who ever thought it was free. Microsoft was never a threat to the distribution model of the web - <USER2> anything, AOL was that threat.

Microsoft's tech platform is still here. Amazon, Google, and Facebook were not created after someone "unseated a monopoly". The web was just there, and these companies built businesses on top of it. Amazon and Google were even created whilst Microsoft was at the height of its power (1995 and 1998).

 _" And now we are wringing our hands about these near monopolies and their market power and the ability of bad actors to manipulate them. And around the same time, the technology to architect and scale a completely decentralized system emerges."_

This is actually an interesting point, though completely by accident. It seems like new markets sometimes spring up while we're distracted looking at some other market. We're distracted right now with Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc. But probably some new business model will emerge that has nothing to do with these, and they'll become less important as we shift our attention somewhere else.

.... However, please note that we still use IBM PC-compatibles, we still use Microsoft platforms, and we will probably keep using Google Search & Maps and Amazon until the sun burns out.</comment>


Limewire settlement unlikely to blunt piracy - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9216698/LimeWire_settlement_unlikely_to_blunt_music_piracy

<comment><USER2> I wouldn't be surprised if they merely broke even with the lawyer bills with that $100 mil win.</comment>


Favorite game varies widely from state to state, says Google Trends - <AUTHOR> https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2019/10/favorite-us-games-2019-fortnite-dota-league-of-legends.html <comment><USER2> Without knowing how popular each games are _relative_ to each other this doesn't mean much. Most of the games listed are either new or very popular so its possible each game varies by a few percent between states.</comment>


Ribbon Hero 2 is released: using game mechanics to teach Office - <AUTHOR> http://www.ribbonhero.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Disclaimer: I worked on RH2 a bit, but I think it's a pretty innovative approach to addressing the issue of feature discoverability in large applications.

<comment><USER2> Love it. We talk about you guys often with our customers. Its a great example of education through gamification. I'm still waiting for my Visual Studio achievements. :)</comment></comment>


Apple's 2013 To-Do List - <AUTHOR> http://hypercritical.co/2013/02/02/apples-2013-to-do-list

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, now that Siracusa brought his Hypercritical podcast to a close at episode 100, it looks like he's returning to writing.

<comment><USER2> I didn't realise that was by Siracusa until you mentioned it. The article could really do with a byline that's not hidden away on the about page.</comment></comment>


If a carbon atom represented one bit of binary data... - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/gd3lx/if_a_carbon_atom_represented_one_bit_of_binary/ <comment><USER2> Gotta love the banter on other forum sites. Its interesting how anyone operating on high school chemistry and some internet research is an "expert" in this forum. The threshold prerequisites for pretention have really decreased in the info-for-all age. My last sentence alone is no more a testament to my being an intelligent adult than to my being a twelve year old with a knack for thesaurus.com. Likely I'm somewhere in between. An intellegent 12 year old with a knack for adultasaurus.com perhaps.</comment>