Egyptians may have moved massive pyramid stones on wet sand - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/05/02/the-surprisingly-simple-way-egyptians-moved-massive-pyramid-stones-without-modern-technology/

<comment><USER2> "[A team of eight researchers led by Daniel Bonn] placed a laboratory version of an Egyptian sledge in a bin of sand that had been dried in the oven. Then they threw down some water, and measured the grains' stiffness."

Surely the way to test this theory isn't to make a model of a sledge, and bake some wet sand in an oven in your lab in Amsterdam! Go to Cairo, build a wooden sledge, get some water and fifty men for an hour and see whether one can sledge two tons across wet sand. I quite fancy testing it out myself. Perhaps I could run a Kickstarter to build a pyramid.

<comment><USER3> Why Cairo? Why not Fort Mohave, Arizona?

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure I wouldn't rather explain to Egyptian vs American immigration officials that I wanted to go out into the desert with a bunch of people and "build an experimental..."

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure you'd want to be a Westerner in the deserts of Egypt right now, either. It's not exactly a safe place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The picture is quite convincing indeed... once I was biased by the explanation!

For those of you that haven't read the article yet, I suggest you study the picture with the hieroglyphics in detail first and then read the conclusion!

Edit:

Just to be clear, I wanted others to have the benefit of seeing the picture before the explanation, because after the fact I had no idea whether I had been biased by what I had read first! I wasn't trying to suggest it was biased per se! I have no idea whether I was biased or not. I can't undo history.

<comment><USER7> OK, I did that. Still haven't read the article yet, actually. It looks like a statue on sled with a guy pouring something out in front of it. And having now read the article, it appears that's exactly the same conclusion it reaches.

<comment><USER6> Cool. Glad to know. I was worried I might have been biased by the text. Good to know it was obvious before reading the text as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In 3,000 years, I'd love to see what archeologists have to say about our code (assuming any of it survives, which IMHO is a long shot):

"Ancient engineers used text editors to write machine language."

"But how did they construct network packets?"

"With Emacs macros. And purification rituals involving Python."

"No way. It had to have been aliens."

</comment><comment><USER9> I love seeing how clever people figure out ways to solve problems with the tools they have. Also good to remember hacking didn't start with and doesn't only apply to computers.

<comment><USER10> computers have only been around for a few decades, "people" have been solving their daily problems for millions of years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Stephen Colbert tweeted:

A new theory says wet sand was used to build the pyramids. But where did the aliens get all that wet sand???

</comment><comment><USER12> _If the water had the appropriate level of wetness, something called "capillary bridges" — extremely small droplets of water that glue together individual grains of sand — would form._

I wonder what happened when the water wasn't wet enough.

</comment><comment><USER13> I like this part, in reference to a painting that shows water being poured on the sand in front of a sled:

>"In fact, Egyptologists had been interpreting the water as part of a purification ritual, and had never sought a scientific explanation. And friction is a terribly complicated problem; even if you realize that wet sand is harder – as in a sandcastle, you cannot build on dry sand — the consequences of that for friction are hard to predict."

Makes me wonder what other practical things we might be misinterpreting as rituals. Are we constantly ignoring ancient cultures' innovations because we assume they have no practical purpose?

</comment><comment><USER14> Well technically, the slaves built the pyramids. They just don't get the credit in the README.

<comment><USER15> Unless Bertolt Brecht is writing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > In all, the scientists say, "the Egyptians were probably aware of this handy > trick."

Wheelwrights hate him! Use this one weird old trick to make your pyramid bigger!

</comment><comment><USER17> How many times is someone going to discover yet another way the Egyptians built the pyramids?

</comment><comment><USER10> OK, but how did they move the water? I can't load the Uni page to see how much water was needed but if we're talking miles or tens of miles, we should be talking about a lot of water. Water that dries very quickly so the path has to be wet again for the next load.

<comment><USER18> I think that egyptians had access to irrigation technology. And from what I remember as a kid on the beach you don't need that much water - you only need to create a film.

A few ways come to mind - a channel from nile parallel to the hauling route. On the barge itself.

Although I would have used combination of highly polished wood, leather/hides on wood planks and cooking oil. And crews that just take the back pieces and move them in front.

<comment><USER10> I agree, but the alternative to have more slaves (plenty of them) pull and have them pull harder.

I guess it depends how far the rocks were moved. I know they were quarried far, far away but then moved via the Nile.

Now from the Nile to the final location is how far?</comment></comment></comment>


'We should be outraged': Alabama congresswoman tackles voter suppression - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/feb/24/we-should-be-outraged-alabama-congresswoman-tackles-voter-suppression <comment><USER2> What we should be out raged about is it takes more forms of ID to purchase alcohol or tobacco, than is does to vote.</comment>


G2A sold $450k worth of our game keys - <AUTHOR> http://tinybuild.com/g2a-sold-450k-worth-of-our-game-keys <comment><AUTHOR> archive if it's down: [http://web.archive.org/web/20160620202448/http://tinybuild.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20160620202448/http://tinybuild.com/g2a-sold-450k-worth- of-our-game-keys)</comment>


Ask HN: Pragmatic Fitness? - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN, many of us are basically workaholics and don't make time for fitness. Summer's around the corner and no time like the present right. For me, there was a time I felt like I was in great shape, but that time's long since passed. I'm starting to get that itch again - yes, to build habits so it's built-in, but also to jump start things and get leaned out for summer. Any suggestions out there for getting jump started? Looking to put together a simple, pragmatic plan that ultimately is surprisingly effective without taking too long to begin to see results... The idea being that results re-enforces things are working, which gets the habit machine turning in the right direction. Maybe many of us could benefit from taking a hard look at this side of ourselves, no better time like now. Would love your thoughts, ideas, anything that you know to be effective. <comment><USER2> I started 2013 with a small exercise routine, initially just a few minutes every other day. As I got stronger it eventually grew to 30 - 40 minute sessions mon/wed/fri, still just simple exercises and a pullup bar.

When that became routine I started building positive routines around it, exercise was just one missing habit, I had plenty others that were missing or bad, largely because I'm a lot more passionate about my work than many other things. I elaborated on this just the other day with a morning routine that prioritizes everything _but_ work [1].

On Elon Musk's most recent AMA someone asked him what his most important daily habit was, and it was just showering. Makes me rethink the little stuff.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9095514](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9095514)

[2] [https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2rgsan/i_am_elon_musk...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2rgsan/i_am_elon_musk_ceocto_of_a_rocket_company_ama/cnfpv7q)

</comment><comment><USER3> Few things to keep in mind...

1\. It takes a while to see results. This is something you do for life. Don't start working out 2 hours a day, get burnt out because you're not looking like a Greek God by next month, and give up. Your goal isn't to get fit the next few weeks, it's to turn your life around and to get into a balanced routine.

2\. Find exercises you enjoy. I hate treadmills, I get bored after a few minutes and I can never stay motivated to use them. However, I enjoy biking, I can bike for hours in a nearby park, my legs will be burning, and I'll be having fun. Indoor exercise bikes I don't mind either. The same applies to weights, I use a few dumbbells and they're alright, but I really enjoy bodyweight exercises. I've been having a lot of fun with weighted parallel bar dips, and pullups lately. I see results with them, and look forward to it. My advice is to try out lots of difference exercises, and pick the ones that feel right for you, while still covering all the major muscle groups. This is the difference between going to the gym on a regular basis, and making excuses not to go. If you hate your workout routine, you're not going to stay motivated.

3\. Work is always there. Until you die, there will always be code to refactor, bugs to fix, support questions to respond to, features to add, and higher revenue targets. It doesn't end, you'll never be done. Similar to exercise, it's a lifetime process, so you need to find balance. Set aside a day a week, like Sunday, where you don't work at all, you just clean your house, organize your desk, wash dishes, go shopping, return e-mails to friends and family, and get everything non-work related finished. Also, do the same daily, and set aside certain hours for yourself. For example, every evening, 5-8, you spent time exercising, then making a decent dinner. It doesn't matter what you do, just pick specific hours, and spend it improving yourself.

</comment><comment><USER4> Below is one of the best articles about the "truth" of exercising I have ever read.

In sum: Lift. Move. Regularly.

The lifting (building of muscle) is seemingly more important than anything else.

[https://medium.com/message/put-down-the-pink- dumbbell-104940...](https://medium.com/message/put-down-the-pink- dumbbell-1049400ede28)

</comment><comment><USER5> [http://www.amazon.com/Starting-Strength- ebook/dp/B006XJR5ZA/](http://www.amazon.com/Starting-Strength- ebook/dp/B006XJR5ZA/)

(that link is taken from the Starting Strength website, so if that is an affiliate ID on the end it's not mine)

<comment><USER6> Not an affiliate ID — just an ordinary Amazon sku number.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What I'd recommend depends on what current condition you're in right now. Leaning out happens more in the kitchen than the weight room though. Without any idea what you are currently doing (if anything) and what you eat it's difficult to point you in the right direction.

I'd be happy to help come up with some habits that work for you, feel free to reach out to me.

</comment><comment><USER8> For me, the 7 minute workout was kind of effective. I say kind of, because i couldnt build the habit, but got some light results in less than a week.

So even if it isnt the most effective it could help you start building the habit.

<comment><USER9> [http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/the- scientific-7-mi...](http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/the- scientific-7-minute-workout/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Take a look at [http://fitloop.co](http://fitloop.co). It's a site I've build based on the advice on reddit's bodyweight fitness subreddit. It lets you do a workout from home with minimal equipment, so even if you don't have that much time you should be able to get started fairly easily.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for taking the time to put your thoughts down this is awesome, many great ideas and references here. Started yesterday with a basic gym trip, stretching, treadmill time, situps - no headphones just thinking about some of these ideas. Thank you again guys!

</comment><comment><USER11> [http://liamrosen.com/fitness.html](http://liamrosen.com/fitness.html)

<EOF></comment>


Meyrin: CERN Terminal Font - <AUTHOR> http://optional.is/required/2014/03/26/meyrin-cern-terminal-font/ <comment><USER2> For those who don't know (apparently including the authors), this is the standard 3270/IBM terminal font. It is available all over the web in various formats, notably in bitmap format with [http://x3270.bgp.nu/](http://x3270.bgp.nu/), though it is in a different encoding (EBCDIC probably). I may look into converting it later.

There's also one a copy at [https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font](https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font), and you may be able to find a better copy by doing more searching.

<comment><USER3> It looks like this project is trying to also trying to "port" how the pixels and resolution effected the font, while the ones you linked to are just the same shape, and rendered with a higher resolution.

<comment><USER4> The one provided by x3270 was originally copied by a Georgia Tech student (IIRC), pixel by pixel, from an IBM terminal. The one I made was created by retracing one of the x3270 bitmaps using FontForge so that it could be comfortably used as a monospaced font in modern setups.

I wish I had a functioning IBM 3270/9, but those are incredibly rare.

Legend says the 2260 (an older terminal family) had its video signal generated on the terminal controller (another box where you plugged your terminals) and the font bitmap was actually visible, implemented in ferrite core memory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _> This meant we needed to write a quick shell script to loop from 0 to 255 and try to output to screen the ASCII representation [...] The computer locked-up and we needed to hard-reset it_

That sounds like you echoed a Ctrl-S character, which tells a terminal to stop updating; the opposite command is Ctrl-Q, but since that came earlier in your sequence rather than later, you were out of luck.

Try reversing the for-loop next time!

<comment><USER6> Or do the sensible thing and print only printable characters.

<comment><USER5> Nah; with these old machines, often an "unprintable character" would turn out to be the only way to get a "é" or a "¢".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love the history/nostalgia in this font, but after opening a Gnome Terminal with the .ttf font, its unusable. The characters are full of horizontal 'scan lines' which look neat when zoomed in but make the font fade to almost nothing on a black background. Ironically the sceenshot in the story for the terminal shows solid characters.

<comment><USER8> You just have to emulate the blurring inherent in a CRT display :)

<comment><USER9> Here's the most complete crt emulator I've seen: [http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/01/cathode-vintage-terminal- emu...](http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/01/cathode-vintage-terminal-emulator/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Clever. Just a small nit I noticed at first glance: the tail of the lowercase 't' uses two horizontal pixels in the photo, but only one was provided in the font.

<comment><USER11> Good catch, I'll see what I can do about fixing that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's a pretty sweet font. I just made a little test with @font-face: [http://hugo.sx/meyrin/](http://hugo.sx/meyrin/)

<comment><USER13> Definately looks better with some blur

        text-shadow: 0 0 4px rgba(0,255,0,1.0)

<comment><USER14> That does look better. How could a blur be incorporated into the ttf?

<comment><USER15> I might be wrong, but I believe that Inkscape has the ability to do blurring.

<comment><USER16> The TTF format does not, however.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here is VT220 emulation font of similar style (complete with scanlines): [http://sensi.org/~svo/glasstty/](http://sensi.org/~svo/glasstty/)

edit: webfont sample here: [http://johanneshoff.com/vt220/](http://johanneshoff.com/vt220/)

<comment><USER17> This font even takes into account the imprecision of analog scanlines — the lines that make up the characters are subtly rounded. It's a very enjoyable font, though a bit impractical :-)

<comment><USER18> > It's a very enjoyable font, though a bit impractical :-)

On Hi-DPI displays, it's actually pretty usable. On my retina Macbook at 14 points it looks pretty much how I remember my old vt-220 looking. IE, very readable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> For those who don't know "Meyrin" is the name of the municipality that hosts part of the CERN.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meyrin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meyrin)

</comment><comment><USER15> Wow, I didn't realize it was this easy to make a font from SVG files. Thanks!

<comment><USER11> I have written about how to make your own fonts. Both regular and symbol fonts.

You can see a short online video here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ltm- psNPxI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ltm-psNPxI)

The short eBook is also available: [https://gumroad.com/l/FpfR](https://gumroad.com/l/FpfR)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't have my MBP nearby to try it out, but this font + "Cathode" [0] seems like it'd be pretty neat.

[0]: [http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode/](http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode/)

<comment><USER21> Cathode doesn't let you use custom fonts sadly.

<comment><USER17> Yes it does! Preferences -> Font, and under "Modern", it will let you use any monospaced font.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> lack of an element of social responsibility in the contract policy is unacceptable. Rather than serve as a cushion of laziness for supervisors, who often have only a limited and utilitarian view when defining the opening of an IC post, the contract policy must ensure the inclusion of an element of social justice, which is cruelly absent today.

[http://staff- association.web.cern.ch/content/unsatisfactory-...](http://staff- association.web.cern.ch/content/unsatisfactory-contract-policy)

<comment><USER23> I'd actually welcome a new post about this issue, which I haven't known much about before. However, this is the wrong thread. Good luck.

<comment><USER22> _However, this is the wrong thread_

This thread is about a branding exercise on CERN. Which is a pity, because trendy retro hipster feel-good sugar-coat marketing propaganda will do more harm to CERN and its cause than good on the long run. Ask Herwig Schopper if in doubt.

Just to illustrate my point, here is a quote:

 _After digging and digging, we came to the conclusion that the font rendered on screen wasn't going to be a font-file, it was probably C code in the drivers for the screen. This was disheartening since there was no easy template to build from or convert._

The guy and his audience has apparently very little notion on how a terminal works (let alone how it is built), never mind about the computer itself. For educational purposes, here is a better way to go about a similar digging:

[http://www.nycresistor.com/2012/08/21/ghosts-in-the- rom/](http://www.nycresistor.com/2012/08/21/ghosts-in-the-rom/)

Which would actually lead to the old character map in the ROM that would be seen glowing on a CRT.

Case in point about XOFF: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7587088](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7587088)

And again, right on topic, however only accessible for those who do not suffer from functional analphabetism:

Strangely, not only has it forgotten how to fly, it also seems to have forgotten that it has forgotten how to fly. Legend has it that a seriously worried kakapo will sometimes run up a tree and jump out of it, whereupon it flies like a brick and lands in a graceless heap on the ground.

ps: the post is old, because the issue is old and recurring. It is a reminder against the memory hole.</comment></comment></comment>


Burner app now on Android, Updates iOS - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/2013/04/10/burner-app-brings-its-disposable-phone-numbers-to-android-updates-ios-for-privacy-controls/

<comment><USER2> Smart move</comment>


When Food Knows Your Name - <AUTHOR> https://www.nicholasjrobinson.com/blog/food-tech/when-food-knows-your-face <comment><USER2> "when Dominos launched online ordering in 2007, it was revolutionary. No other national pizza chain offered online ordering. This was decade's before the Apple App Store launched, and way before ubiquitous GPS and mobile apps made services like GrubHub and Postmates possible"

2007 isn't decades before 2008. It isn't decades before _anything_ yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good catch, thank you!</comment></comment>


Tuition free MIT? [NSFW] - <AUTHOR> http://philip.greenspun.com/school/tuition-free-mit.html

<comment><USER2> ... and this was written in 1998.

I got into MIT but eventually decided against it because KU gave me about two full rides, and MIT wanted $30k a year. I got lucky that I essentially got paid to go to college, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't really _really_ want to go to MIT. I think it was any nerds dream for people my age.

Today I think Stanford or UC Berkeley would be my dream schools if I had it to do over again, but I never applied there, so who knows if I'd even have gotten in.

I think the argument for free tuition at such prestigious schools is an easy one. Tuition is a tiny portion of their income, and by charging outrageous tuitions they end up with all the rich kids (which may be smart) instead of all the smart kids (which may be rich, but may not). Like Greenspun points out, if you are going to such a place and plan to come out with a huge debt, then it kind of forces you to chase a high paying job, instead of one you might like better... so yeah, tuition that high just distorts things.

<comment><USER3> what's a ride? full tuition waiver?

<comment><USER2> Generally a full ride is understood as not having to pay tuition and fees. If you live on campus, some people consider room and board part of that, but I never did, so when I think full ride I think just tuition and fees. KU gave me about double what I needed for tuition and fees for four years, so the rest got spent on rent and books and such. I still worked full time in the summer to get by, but thankfully I could find work programming, so I never had to spend a cent of my parents money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting to point out that he went on to fund ArsDigita University, which was, in fact, tuition-free. The lectures are still online: <http://aduni.org/>

</comment><comment><USER5> "We will live in a society where the best educated engineers are not designing anti-lock brakes. They are either managing comparatively poorly educated people who are designing anti-lock brakes, stitching up wounds in people who were injured by faulty anti-lock brakes, or defending companies that got sued for their anti-lock brake systems that didn't work."

 _puke_

</comment><comment><USER6> _"I have decided to stop personally participating in the system of extracting money from MIT kids and their families. On Thursday, March 12, 1998, I guest- lectured an MIT class (on designing database-backed Web services). I calculated that the students were paying about $80 in tuition/lecture-hour. I withdrew a stack of $100 bills from my BankBoston account and I handed one out to each undergraduate in the course. I then proceeded to give my talk, telling the students that I was happy to teach them but I was not going to take their money."_

Phil Greenspun owes me about $1000.

<comment><USER7> What, you ditched class that day?

<comment><USER6> Nope, I attended a couple weeks worth of lectures (6.171) before dropping his class due to time. Of course, I had his class in 2003, so maybe he reversed himself on this issue.

<comment><USER8> Well, 1998 was in the heyday of ArsDigita, so that may have been why that policy went the way of Slashdot's Beanie Awards.

That or lecture halls crammed with belligerent hobos.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Love his writing style. Pity we don't have "creative writing" here in Russia: I only recently realized that I can't write or talk effectively.

<comment><USER10> Hey cousin_it, can you post an email in your profile to get in touch with you? Couldn't find any way to contact you privately without signing up for livejournal :~/ .

<comment><USER9> vladimir.slepnev at gmail

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> nsfw (picture).

<comment><USER12> Shock! horror! I might see a picture of a _human_!</comment></comment>


Why I don't want to be a front-end web developer - <AUTHOR> http://www.developerhandbook.com/2015/06/25/why-i-dont-want-to-be-a-front-end-web-developer/ <comment><USER2> I'm with you on the light speed pace of new front end tools/frameworks/libraries/etc. It is completely overwhelming to work in an industry where a new way of doing things (almost always a new way of doing the same thing) comes along every month or so.

It's trendy to keep up with the pace and hiring managers will think you're a rockstar but a team doesn't change up their stack overnight (and if they do it's probably not a team you want to work with).</comment>


Supreme Court "seemed on the edge of overturning" Sarbanes-Oxley - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121170889

<comment><USER2> It's all pretty interesting that they are arguing for overturning Sarb-Ox because of oversight issues. I don't really understand why they set up a separate commission in the first place instead of bringing in that type of oversight under the SEC.

Anyone have any insights?

<comment><USER3> This sounds like a result of the usual deal making and compromise in Congress. Sarbanes Oxley was passed during the Bush admin when republicans were pretty strong in Congress (don't remember whether there was complete republican majority at that time). In any event, the republican line was that regulation is always bad government is always bad (except for wars), and everybody can self regulate. Also, for some reason, some conservative politicians really hated the SEC and would never give it more responsibilities or funding. So this seems like an attempt to have it both ways -- have a law and have self regulation at the same time, by allowing a board of accountants to set up some rules.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There sure is a lot of editorializing in this piece. _..acknowledged that if he's successful, business interests that have chafed at new regulations will have a chance to rewrite the law..._ , _...Scalia, Roberts and Alito pounced..._ , _...Justice Scalia, sarcastically..._

Hopefully this was to "jazz it up" a bit. Because it looks to me a bit like the reporter finds SarBox to be goodness, those who question it partisan, and the court something like a football match.</comment>


Umbrella Man breaking windows at Floyd protest in Minneapolis: white supremacist - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/29/umbrella-man-white-supremacist-minneapolis/ <comment><AUTHOR> > The break finally came last week, when a tip came in naming "Umbrella Man" > and said he is a member of the Hells Angels, a motorcycle gang made up of > mostly white men who ride Harley-Davidson bikes. Christensen wrote that > "Umbrella Man" is also a "known associate" of the Aryan Cowboys, a group > described by the Anti-Defamation League as a white supremacist prison gang > based mainly out of Minnesota and Kentucky.

> Christensen also wrote that just before smashing the windows to the > AutoZone, "Umbrella Man" spray-painted in white, "free s--- for everyone > zone," on the red doors of the store.

> He was also involved in an incident in Stillwater, Minn., where a group of > motorcycle gang members wearing Aryan Cowboys leather vests accosted a > Muslim woman, according to the affidavit.

Original title was too long. It was:

'Umbrella Man' who broke windows at George Floyd protest in Minneapolis, is a white supremacist, police say

For those who have trouble with the link:

[https://archive.is/sA7hs](https://archive.is/sA7hs)

</comment><comment><USER2> >The 32-year-old man has not been charged.

I wonder why. They say they've identified him. What's the hold up?

<comment><USER3> White supremacist without further elaboration is a better story for the police and prosecutors than police provocateur (and quite possibly not technically false, either as to affiliation or motivation for the action, even if incomplete because the latter is also true), so if it's actually the latter, the former is a more convenient narrative but not one which would likely be able to be maintained if there was a trial.</comment></comment>


Analyst: Siri more than just speech recognition - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/briancaulfield/2011/10/07/apples-next-big-thing-is-already-here-siri-more-than-just-speech-recognition-analyst-says/

<comment><USER3> And they needed an analyst to find that out?

I thought Apple was quite clear about that in their presentation, there was no way any alert listener could have missed that.

Siri has the potential to be awesome because of that if it works well. We will find out soon. I'm curious.

<comment><USER4> There's a lot of editorializing from the Android camp that seems to think Siri is just Apple playing catch-up to Google's voice search.

Guess we'll see who's right in five days.

<comment><USER5> It's not "just" playing catch up. It's partly playing catchup, and partly expanding on it. And to be fair, the credit should go to the Siri team more so than to Apple as a whole. They innovated and Apple bought them and added polish.

So why are some Android users less than impressed at the gushing over Siri? Because we've been able to do many of the things you see in the video demonstrations for a long time now. Some examples:

"Navigate to <local restaurant name>"

"Text <person> <some message>"

"What is the weather in New York?"

"What is the time in Paris?"

Siri integrates more features in a polished way and also adds context to the queries. By context, I mean that the interpretation of the next request can depend on the previous requests.

While little has been released on the actual technical constructs of these systems, I would imagine that they work somewhat similar to this:

1 Translate voice to list of text interpretations. 2 Guess an intent based on each text interpretation, combining the translation and interpretation score. Pick the action of highest score.

The intents need to be hand coded. Siri likely modifies the second step by allowing intent inference to be based on the last command or couple of commands in addition to the current request. That is the innovation, and I use the word innovation lightly as I'm sure the idea has been thought of in academic circles.

A lot of people seem to think "you can throw anything at it" and I seriously doubt that is true. The library of intents might be large enough to fool some people, though. It isn't revolutionary, it's a well executed incremental improvement on what we already have. It's worth mentioning that there are also other applications such as Vlingo that try to expand the capabilities already present on current day systems.

None-the-less, Apple's excellent marketing team seems to have convinced people that this _is_ revolutionary and that Apple should be credited with yet another huge world changing innovation. The media needs it's heros and there can't be heros unless the valuable contributions of the many people whose work led to this point are forgotten, marginalized, or simply reattributed.

<comment><USER6> _That is the innovation, and I use the word innovation lightly as I'm sure the idea has been thought of in academic circles._

Just a quibble. Innovation is, according to the dictionary, the "introduction of new things or methods". This is quite different from invention, which is "an act or instance of creating or producing by exercise of the imagination, especially in art, music, etc".

Invention can be done in academic circles, but innovation needs someone to actually roll up their sleeves and _introduce_ the damn thing - in this occurrence, introduce it to the vast, chaotic, challenging consumer electronics market.

Apple certainly takes no credit for inventing voice recognition, or any of the concepts used in Siri - in fact, Apple invents very little. However, they should get full credit on the innovation side. As an easy example, tablets were _invented_ for decades before the iPad, but they were not effectively introduced to the consumer market until the iPad. That's innovation - <USER2> ideas into realities - as opposed to invention - coming up with new ideas. Both are essential.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm really interested to see if Apple's attempt is better than Google's. It looks so from demonstrations, but then, Voice Actions looks really great in demos too and I can almost never get it to do exactly what I want.

<comment><USER8> Just by looking where Siri comes from it should be clear it's better. The biggest difference is that Siri doesn't have commands 'hard-coded', you can throw anything at her. Thus, the whole design of Siri is completely different than in voice control systems. Only thing that's comparable is the speech-to- text accuracy.

<comment><USER9> >you can throw anything at her

The word 'her' surprised me - 'it', surely?

But I guess this just goes to show, once again, how easily anthropomorphisation comes to people; if the experience is good enough that customers start thinking about the software as 'her' rather than 'it', maybe Apple will have a hit on their hands.

<comment><USER8> Well, that was intentional. I'd like to think Siri as a person; she is supposed to be intelligent after all. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd be more excited about Siri if I had a better way of talking to it. I wish Apple would design a really great A2DP bluetooth headset, now that'd I'd be excited about.

My Backbeat 903s have never really fit my ears right, so I'm looking for alternatives. Any suggestions?

<comment><USER11> Try Jawbone's Era:

<http://jawbone.com/headsets/era/overview>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This.

If Siri works as well as advertised, it will be a triumph for natural language processing as a field, not just Apple.

Getting that sort of parsing and semantic analysis into a form where it can be done by a mobile device must have taken a lot of work, and I'm sure that was only the start — Apple must have had to go back through every single data source and API in iOS to add semantic tags for Siri to latch onto.

<comment><USER12> Isn't that done by a backend that's not on the phone? I know at least dictation is done remotely...

<comment><USER4> I don't think it'd be fast enough. Even in damn-near-perfect signal conditions I have a RTT over 100 ms when I'm on AT&T 3G. That and how lame would it be if Siri ceased functioning entirely (not just the maps/other network-requiring bits) when you had no coverage?

<comment><USER13> Given that the original product that Apple bought worked that way, I'd find it hard to believe that the newly integrated one changes things that significantly. If they did get it working locally it would be very interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What I am wondering, is when it will be available for people to hook their apps into!

"Can you see if there are any open reservations slots at Prime Italia tonight?"

"Can you tell me how many incomplete stories there are on the iCalledit project in Pivotal Tracker?"

</comment><comment><USER15> Does anyone have any predictions on when android will have something comparable. I really just want an easy way to make calendar reminders.

<comment><USER16> Try the "Quick Event" app.</comment></comment>


Post-mortem: MRI disables every iOS device in facility - <AUTHOR> https://old.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/9si6r9/postmortem_mri_disables_every_ios_device_in/ <comment><USER2> See also: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18340693](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18340693)

</comment><comment><USER3> Description of the issue from the original thread [0]:

The processor in a modern, high volume device typically has its main clock driven by what's known as a MEMS oscillator. These are barely visible mechanical systems that resonate at some designed frequency, and include packaging to convert this resonance into a useful electrical clock signal. These devices are extraordinarily cheap ways to produce a steady clock, but they have a number of drawbacks. Most relevant, in order for these types of devices to function properly, the mechanical resonator must be inside a tiny hermetically sealed chamber with either a controlled gas inside or a vacuum, as the gas composition in the chamber can affect the output frequency.

For both cost and physics reasons, these hermetic seals are not perfect, and are somewhat commonly permeable to small atomic gasses such as helium.

...

For this specific case, Apple devices probably share a common family of MEMS resonator to reduce manufacturing costs. This clock likely leaks in helium rich atmospheres, pushing the output frequency outside of the bounds that the main processors are designed to handle, rendering them non-functional. If left idle long enough, the devices may begin to function again, but depending on the concentration of helium which leaked in, this could take anywhere from weeks to years to occur in natural atmosphere and temperatures.

[0] [https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/9mk2o7/mri_disabl...](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/9mk2o7/mri_disabled_every_ios_device_in_facility/e7g5rcw/)

<comment><USER4> >For this specific case, Apple devices probably share a common family of MEMS resonator to reduce manufacturing costs.

At risk of provoking a standard flame war...

They had mentioned that Android phones are unaffected, but don't those generally use even more "economical" manufacturing?

<comment><USER3> It's not economical in the sense of cheap parts, rather it's economical in that Apple uses the same part in all devices. This can simplify supply chain and engineering efforts, so makes sense when possible.

The comment is looking to explain why all the Apple devices failed; they were all affected by the same sensitivity to helium.

Android devices tend to use a multitude of different parts to each other, so while some may have been affected you wouldn't expect them all to fail in sync like the Apple devices did.

<comment><USER4> The investigator reported that they couldn't find _any_ Android with the error.

>>There were also a lot of Android phones in the facility at the time, none of which were impacted.

Somehow, all these commodity vendors all used designs that were resilient against helium.

<comment><USER3> I agree that it's interesting they found no android devices that failed. Would love to see a more comprehensive study, looking at which devices fail at what levels, etc.

Not that this is necessarily 'Not Invented Here' syndrome for Apple, as I think they may have compelling reasons to design and procure a bespoke component, the benefit of using something off the shelf is that it is battle tested by other people. You get a component tested not just on your use cases and failure modes, but everyone else's, so that if your needs or environment changes it's more likely for the component to keep working.

I would also love to know more about how the enclosures used affects helium sensitivity; is helium pervasive enough that it gets everywhere anyway, or can some phone bodies etc keep it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow, that's a really insane and cool phenomena. I should keep this in my memory in case I encounter it in my career.

Also, if there was enough helium to contaminate the entire atmosphere, was there not a pretty significant chance of an asphyxiation hazard?

<comment><USER6> I don't think there was. It's not like people figured out _today_ that bad quantities of helium can be bad, and that big tanks have big quantities of helium, so MRI rooms are routinely equipped with oxygen sensors (see e.g. [https://www.pureairemonitoring.com/oxygen-o2-monitor-for- mri...](https://www.pureairemonitoring.com/oxygen-o2-monitor-for-mri-rooms- pureaire-sells-a-hassle-free-10-year-oxygen-monitor/) \-- not affiliated, it's just the first result on Google). If the spill had been significant, these would have definitely caught it.

Besides, an MRI's liquid helium tanks are big, but not _that_ big to cause trouble if they leak over a period of a couple of hours in a ventilated room.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> So, what could it be that makes iPhones "react" with helium? Helium is an inert gas and shouldn't really chemically react with anything in there.

Any clues why such an environment doesn't make Android phones behave in such a way?

<comment><USER5> Basically electronic oscillators rely on a very small piece of quartz crystal that is cut in just the right shape. Quartz has a phenomena called piezoelectricity, where if you apply an electric field, it deflects slightly. Conversely, if you deflect it, it creates a small electric potential. A properly shaped quartz, when exposed to some circuitry (oscillator circuitry; positive feedback), it will resonant at its natural frequency, not unlike how a tuning fork resonates at its natural frequency.

Since the crystal is literally vibrating inside the metal can it's packaged in, the atmosphere around the crystal influences the natural frequency. Helium will make it vibrate it faster, since it presents less air resistance to the crystal.

<comment><USER6> Note, however, that MEMS oscillators (which modern iPhones use) and quartz oscillators are _not_ the same thing. SiTime's MEMS oscillator is made of silicon, not quartz.</comment></comment></comment>


App Review process updates - <AUTHOR> https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=84w3e5bm <comment><USER4> My update, which has a new feature but no bug fixes, is currently in limbo because the reviewer is getting mysterious proxy connection errors that no customer of mine has ever reported.

I saw another developer today say their app was "rejected" because the reviewer asked "How does the app utilize Touch Bar and where can we locate these features?"

This kind of crap happens all the time, and I don't see anything in this announcement that will help. App review is just plain incompetent and terrible.

<comment><USER5> I've been having similar issues with one of our apps, the reviewer can't seem to log in and keeps getting network error messages. No customers have had any issues, I've tried logging in to multiple accounts including the apple reviewer account on multiple networks and I have no issues whatsoever. It's really frustrating.

<comment><USER6> If it can help you, you should know that they test everything over a VPN that doesn't support UDP. So if your app makes use of UDP you'll need a fallback method.

<comment><USER7> What kind VPN doesn't support UDP!?

<comment><USER8> For example, I've never managed to establish any sort of UDP connection over an AT&T line, neither home nor cellular.

<comment><USER9> UDP on AT&T and other carriers is just fine, but you need to do NAT hole punching or proxy the UDP packets. See my comment to the grandparent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> We've been making white-label apps for fitness businesses for a few years now. Our white label app allows fitness businesses to deliver better personal training experience to their clients. Personal trainers and their clients can use the app to plan and track workouts, track progress, chat with each other etc.

Recently, Apple started rejecting our white-label app because allegedly we are breaking their "3.1.3(b) Multiplatform Services" guideline. As per the guideline, if a business is selling digital content on other platforms that's accessible inside the iOS app then those items should also be available as an in-app purchase on the iOS app too.

This was very surprising because we always thought personal training services to fall under the category of "goods and services" and not digital content. And as per guideline "3.1.5(a) Goods and Services Outside of the App" we aren't even allowed to use in-app purchase selling services.

But Apple reviewers disagree that our app falls under the "services" category. According to reviewers, since clients are getting "digital value" from the app we therefore must add an in-app purchase to the app.

We are ready to add a free tier to the app. But that is a no-go solution. We must add in-app purchases of some kind to get the apps approved.

The "3.1.3(b) Multiplatform Services" guideline does not make sense. You can use the same guideline to force any for-profit business that offers anything useful inside an iOS app to add an in-app purchase. How is this even allowed?

By the same reasoning apps built for physical therapists, doctors should add in-app purchases too?

And why is Uber not giving a 30% cut? Their customers do get digital-value inside the app.

Not sure if this new change can actually help us.

<comment><USER11> This is a blatant attempt by Apple to extra their 30% rent on business that happens outside of their App Store. It's shocking that one of the wealthiest companies in the world acts this way towards small developers and companies.

<comment><USER12> I think you're misunderstanding this rule. If I made a phone game where there was a "store" where I could buy physical stickers but each sticker pack came with a code for 10,000 in-game coins Apple would see that as just a way to get around paying 30% for something digital.

And if the _only_ way to get in-game coins was by buying stickers off-app Apple would say you have to offer buying them in-app too as an IAP.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, when a rule has all these bizarre apparent loopholes and where the rule- setter needs to examine the implied intent of the action... it might be a bad rule.

<comment><USER12> I think any system of rules is going to look weird and organic when they have millions of people trying to rule lawyer the system.

Like the basic tenant of "we take a 30% cut of the sale of all digital goods on our platform" is pretty straightforward, you only run into weird rules when you try find ways around it.

<comment><USER10> How are we trying to find way around it? We don't want to sell anything via IAP because it does not make sense in our app. But somehow we are forced to do it.

<comment><USER12> Look, I don't at all think you're trying to get away with something -- I think you're caught up in weird rule that was intended to plug the loophole of "selling a stick of gum that comes with a free bottle of water." From the reviewer's perspective they see that when personal trainers sell their services to clients they're also selling your/their white-label app. To Apple that's a sale of digital goods and they want their pound of flesh. The fact that it's bundled with an IRL service doesn't seem to matter to them.

You might be able to get away with skirting this rule if your white-label app is just a client to a fitness tracking service. Then it should fall under the same rules as Netflix and other "reader" apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was once rejected because my one-window app didn't have a Minimize button...for a game...that primarily runs in Full Screen. Other rejections were at least as pointless, every time leaving a bad taste in my mouth and making me wonder why they wasted as much time as they did.

The breaking point for me was when the reviewer _refused_ to allow my minor update in because it "crashed" in _an unreleased minor OS update_ that I literally _could not acquire at the time_. I removed my app from the Mac App Store the same day and haven't been back.

It is a petty, pointless, and infuriating experience, which wouldn't bother me so much if it wasn't abundantly clear how much trash still makes it into the store and how inconsistent they are. I recommend that everyone use the "suggestion" box to suggest removing App Review entirely.

<comment><USER15> I think the first reason is a legitimate criteria. Any app that has a window is definitely expected to have a minimise button - it's very strange behaviour if it doesn't, and even games that normally run full screen should have this button when placed in windowed mode.

The second reason certainly sounds infuriating, but it's odd that the reviewer had access to an OS update that you didn't. In general, a crash on the latest OS update is a good reason for rejection because you're going to have to fix it sooner or later anyway. Better to fix it now rather than have to come back to it later.

<comment><USER16> Well they should dogfood their own rules and add such a button to Safari. Every time I end up mistakenly tapping Open in New Window (which I NEVER want) instead of New Tab, I have a very frustrating time figuring out how to gesture that new window TF off my screen.

<comment><USER17> Safari does have a minimize button. It's the yellow one that sends it down to the dock, and is present on every single window on macOS that I can find. Even the mini-UI palette windows like "Safari User Guide" have a mini version of the same three window controls.

But if you're trying to _close_ a window that you didn't want to open, you probably want the red button not the yellow one.

If what you're trying to do is move a page from its own window to another window, you can drag its tab. But that's not possible if you have "Show tab bar" disabled in the view menu, the tab bar will be hidden for windows with a single tab.

Alternate workaround if you find yourself accidentally opening things in a new window by accident frequently: instead of right clicking and picking from the menu, command-click on the link to open it in a new tab. If you have a 3-button mouse, middle click will do this as well.

<comment><USER18> How do you reverse the effects of "Cmd+H" without resorting to the mouse or trackpad?

<comment><USER18> Thabks for the suggestion, but IME cmd+tabbing till the hidden app is selected, then releasing (ie, standard cmd+tab ux) does precisely nothing. Hence the question.

<comment><USER17> Another thought - if you meant to ask how to restore a window after minimizing it to the dock with cmd-M (rather than hiding the app with cmd-H), there's an even less well known shortcut: Open the command-tab switcher, select the app you want, then hold down option and release command.

Doesn't handle multiple windows gracefully (if the app has another window not minimized it won't do anything, just switch to that window as normal). But if you have an app with a single window and you've minimized it, this will pop it back up.

Alternatively, you can access the whole dock directly with a keyboard shortcut using ctrl-F3 (add Fn if needed depending on your keyboard setup).

<comment><USER18> "command-tab switcher, select the app you want, then hold down option and release command"

bingo! thanks! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The fact that Apple seems to think it is effectively responding to the mounting discontent with their stewardship of the App Store by offering developers a form to complain into demonstrates how far out of touch they've become.

We know from court documents that exactly these sorts of developer concerns have been discussed at the highest levels of Apple's leadership and they have consistently failed to make any meaningful policy changes. What Apple is offering now is merely an official process for disregarding this sort of criticism.

I'm sure anyone who is considering investing significant effort or resources into products built on Apple platforms will be completely reassured by this gesture – especially knowing how receptive Apple has been to criticism of its policies in the past.

This press release reads to me like "Here's Your Complaint Form, Jerk"[1].

[1] [https://slate.com/technology/2010/07/apple-s- condescending-i...](https://slate.com/technology/2010/07/apple-s- condescending-iphone-4-press-conference.html)

</comment><comment><USER20> I work on an e-commerce app, we were rejected because one of our screeenshots depicts a Microsoft surface. Only Apple products are allowed to be shown...

<comment><USER21> If this isn't an abusive monopoly position, I don't know what is.

<comment><USER22> It isn't an abusive monopoly position basically by definition: Apple is not a monopoly in any market that they participate in. There is tons of competition in smartphones, laptops, etc.

The problem is not one of monopolies - the problem is that a set of private companies - including Apple - control _critical digital infrastructure_. This digital infrastructure is required by almost all other companies and people to function, yet it is in private hands, and they can do with it as they please.

Imagine if all roads were owned by a small number of private companies, and you would need their permission to use the roads. That is what is happening in the digital world right now.

<comment><USER23> We need to stop looking at whether they are a monopoly and start looking at what their anti-competitive behavior means and how it affects the market and consumers.

Anti-competitive behavior is to assault as a monopoly is to murder. One often leads to the other, but they are both harmful. We don't generally let people run around assaulting people and say "well they aren't murdering people, so let's leave them alone".

Apple is clearly exhibiting Anti-competitive behavior, and in a way that distorts the market. The whole reason we have laws about monopolies is because we identified the Anti-competitive behavior and labeled that specific type as a monopoly. A monopoly is only a problem in that it can easily affect the market as a whole through Anti-competitive actions. Apple can do so even though they aren't a monopoly as we've defined it. Why shouldn't we legislate to reduce the harms they are committing as well?

<comment><USER24> We need to stop looking at what the courts decide and start listening to the anti Apple crowd on HackerNews!

<comment><USER23> >> Why shouldn't we legislate to reduce the harms they are committing as well?

What do you think a call to write legislation is for?

> We need to stop looking at what the courts decide

The purpose of courts is to interpret the legislation passed by our representatives. The purpose of legislation is to enact the will of the people as interpreted by their representatives and the existing constitution.

If we didn't didn't follow this path, there would be no such thing as anti- trust law - it didn't come from the founders, the harm of anti-competitive behavior was identified and legislated against in the late 1800's - so why shouldn't we identify new forms of anti-competitive behavior that causes harm and do the same?

<comment><USER25> _The purpose of legislation is to enact the will of the people_

The purpose of the legislation is to enact the will of the states. The Senate doesn't represent the "people". It represents the states. Each state regardless of population has 2 senators. Meaning that 46% of the Senators represent less than 25% of the population.

A powerful government can do much more harm than a corporation. There isn't a single corporation in America that has the coercive power if the government.

<comment><USER23> > The Senate doesn't represent the "people". It represents the states.

Senators are elected by the people of those states.

> Each state regardless of population has 2 senators. Meaning that 46% of the > Senators represent less than 25% of the population.

It's not a direct proportional representation. That's what congress is.

> The purpose of the legislation is to enact the will of the states.

Congress also makes legislation.

> A powerful government can do much more harm than a corporation. There isn't > a single corporation in America that has the coercive power if the > government.

Thankfully.

<comment><USER25> The Senate is far more powerful than the House. They also approve judges with lifetime appointments, Cabinet members, and committee chairs - <USER2> regulations are actually chosen.

<comment><USER23> And they are still elected by the people. Just because senators are not proportional to the number of constituents and instead proportional to the number of states does not mean they doesn't represent the people - <USER3> represents the people of a state but in a non-proportional manner. You haven't made any points against that since I pointed it out, and it completely negates your original point, so I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish by noting the Senate is more powerful. They are, in _some_ respects, but that's irrelevant as to whether they represent the people. Also, Congress has quite a few unique capabilities as well, such as oversight, impeachment, the ability to declare war. Powers are split between the two parts of the legislative branch.

<comment><USER25> If I lived in California, why would I want the states in the Bible Belt to have a disproportionate amount of power?

How did that whole impeachment thing work earlier this year? Wasn't it stopped because a disproportionate number of Senators to the population stopped it?

How often have Presidents used military force when the majority of the people weren't in favor of it?

Judicial, Cabinet, and Committee are all decided by the Senate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's all become too much. I'm deprecating Apple support at my company. Current company-owned Apple devices may continue to be used, and any BYOD is fine if it doesn't run an Oracle DB instance, but we will no longer pay for repairs to Apple devices and we will not pay to replace them with Apple devices. We have about $45k original MSRP of Apple equipment, so it's not a big deal, except to us. The trend of Apple hardware and software problems soaking up an increasing amount of time would reach the ultimate limit of complete 24/7 time consumption by the year 2031, if the current trend were allowed to continue.

We are in the robotic manufacturing sector, and also we have a lumber mill for some reason.

<comment><USER11> As a developer of a couple of open source macOS apps, I couldn't have said it better myself.

<comment><USER27> I don't quite understand people complaining about macOS apps. You aren't forced to publish in the app store. You can still disable Gatekeeper. You can disable code signature and entitlement enforcement altogether, although the process is messy. There's still nothing technically stopping you from avoiding Apple policies.

<comment><USER11> You can try to understand why macOS developers are frustrated with Apple by reading some of these[1] comments on HN.

> _You aren 't forced to publish in the app store._

If you don't pay $100 each year to Apple, macOS will treat your app as if it is radioactive. If your users don't know the magic security ritual to run un- notarized apps is, the app will just appear to be broken.

> _You can still disable Gatekeeper._

Yes, if you're a power user. Apple is removing the ability to easily run un- notarized software in future macOS releases.

> _There 's still nothing technically stopping you from avoiding Apple > policies._

Apple's literal technical limitations for distribution and execution of applications for apps that can't make it through Apple's approval process for notarization prevents users from using the applications they downloaded but Apple doesn't approve of.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24276406](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24276406)

<comment><USER27> It does say right there that Big Sur will be requiring signatures on all binaries, but it does actually specifically say that a self-signed certificate would be enough.

If someone wants to distribute apps without notarizing them, it's just a matter of adding instructions on how to bypass the notarization check.

And again — there's shouldn't be a party more trusted than the device owner. Otherwise I'd characterize such an OS as malware.

<comment><USER11> > _If someone wants to distribute apps without notarizing them, it 's just a > matter of adding instructions on how to bypass the notarization check._

In the future, that will require disabling SIP. Good luck explaining to a non- power users how to do that.

Your analysis ignores the anticompetitive behavior Apple is engaging in. By making unapproved software second-class citizens on macOS, only apps that get Apple's approval through the Notarization or App Store process can be run easily by users.

<comment><USER27> > In the future, that will require disabling SIP.

Are you sure about that? Catalina has this "developer tools" permission that allows running unsigned/non-notarized binaries. Xcode grants that to itself, but you could as well grant it to things like Terminal and run your app from there. Bonus points for including a shell script with your app so the user doesn't have to run "scary" commands manually.

Yes, there are going to be (one-time) UX compromises, but I think it's possible to make it feel more or less okay for the average user.

<comment><USER28> Jeez, have some empathy for regular people. The whole damn point of those measures on Apple's side is to introduce friction and make it excessively hard to install non-notarized apps. It's already bad and unusable by most average people, and that's exactly the goal.

<comment><USER27> > The whole damn point of those measures on Apple's side is to introduce > friction and make it excessively hard to install non-notarized apps.

I understand that. And that's why I'm trying to come up with a good enough, UX-wise, way to bypass this malicious, hostile behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Original announcement for reference: [https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/06/apple-reveals-new- dev...](https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/06/apple-reveals-new-developer- technologies-to-foster-the-next-generation-of-apps/)

 _> Additionally, two changes are coming to the app review process and will be implemented this summer. First, developers will not only be able to appeal decisions about whether an app violates a given guideline of the App Store Review Guidelines, but will also have a mechanism to challenge the guideline itself. Second, for apps that are already on the App Store, bug fixes will no longer be delayed over guideline violations except for those related to legal issues. Developers will instead be able to address the issue in their next submission._

<comment><USER29> >First, developers will not only be able to appeal decisions about whether an app violates a given guideline of the App Store Review Guidelines, but will also have a mechanism to challenge the guideline itself.

Sounds good, but Apple still can just simply say no.

<comment><USER17> That's true but there is already at least one case of Apple saying yes, so this doesn't seem to be a fake initiative to deflect criticism while not changing anything: [https://twitter.com/chronic/status/1299777657744142336](https://twitter.com/chronic/status/1299777657744142336)

<comment><USER30> I believe there are two ways of friction/problem:

\- such created by accident weather it's because of suboptimal rules, vague formulation or reviewers give mad with power

\- such created intentionally to control the platform in all reasonable and unreasonable ways

I believe Apple does try to fix or lesson the burden of the first for the benefit of everyone including them.

But they won't do so for the second reason where you most likely still get a no even if they are acting unreasonable.

At the same time they now can point to this and say "see we are all fair" even if they are not.

<comment><USER17> Agreed, Apple isn't going to say "Well since you asked nicely, I guess you can implement your own in-app purchase processing." But having an official recourse on their arbitrary app store bans from minor rule interpretations is still a great improvement. Probably driven by the antitrust attention they're getting, since otherwise they've been able to get away with whatever they want and small developers can't do anything about it.

The remaining big question is whether Apple will rule in someone's favor on their own, or if in practice the result is still "Things will get fixed if and only if they get enough attention on twitter."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> A while ago, I developed an Apple Watch app that detected when you raised your hand and touched your face and notified you so that you could build a habit avoiding doing so ([https://www.facealert.app](https://www.facealert.app)).

Apple stretched out the review process before rejecting the app, and after I escalated to tcook's email address, I received a call from their team telling me my app took "measurements the Apple Watch was not designed to support".

This, of course, is complete BS since the _whole_ point of generalizable sensors and Apple's ML tools is to build apps to add new capabilities to the device, otherwise all we'd have are map and messaging apps. And it's slightly comical that they added the feature to detect hand washing in the newest WatchOS, something the Apple Watch "was not originally designed to support". I'm fairly certain they didn't want to have any part or apparent liability for the app if it "didn't work correctly", nevermind the app did not mention COVID, disease, or anything else controversial.

There was always a way to "escalate" or "appeal" a review, so any new processes are smoke and mirrors. Apple will always reject whatever they want to reject until they're forced otherwise by a regulatory body.

<comment><USER12> I mean is it really that weird that after Apple reviewed the app they came to the conclusion that "while neat we don't think the sensors handle this use- case well enough and we don't want to support/guarantee that all/future models will even be able to take measurements like this."

I'm really not surprised that Apple is wary of an app that with the current sensors can at absolute best guess when you're touching your face. Because if/when it doesn't really work it just makes the watch look bad.

<comment><USER32> > "while neat we don't think the sensors handle this use-case well enough and > we don't want to support/guarantee that all/future models will even be able > to take measurements like this."

Is that what they said?

<comment><USER12> I don't really know how else to read "measurements the watch wasn't designed to support" as "we can't guarantee the measurements you're taking are or will be accurate enough for what you're trying to do."

I mean this whole story is heresay. How do you know that the OPs interaction even happened?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> An update to a Mac app I was working on was rejected because it used some permissions. The reviewer claimed those were not needed but, not only those permissions were needed, previous versions of the app had those same permissions.

We sent our comments to the reviewer and never got an answer back. A couple of days later we appealed to the review board and the update was accepted in a matter of hours. Not sure what happened there. Our guess was that maybe Apple was testing some kind of automated process that failed.

I don't remember the details, but we were using UDP features in the app and the permissions were related to being able to receive and send UDP packets.

<comment><USER34> I'm shocked they have permissions that are that granular. I can understand "network access" in general, but having to ask specifically for UDP?

<comment><USER33> Not so much required for UDP specifically, but for being able to open a socket and receive packets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> >Second, for apps that are already on the App Store, bug fixes will no longer be delayed over guideline violations except for those related to legal issues. Developers will instead be able to address the issue in their next submission.

This is good news. We've had instances in the past where a critical bug fix was delayed because of a completely unrelated and minor issue with the update (for example: issues with the store listing content that was approved in previous updates but now rejected).

This was a bad experience for everyone involved. Obviously for developers, but I'm still not sure how much Apple cares about that. But more importantly for users, who may be stuck with a broken or unsafe app for another day or more for relatively trivial reasons.

I think this change is made in good faith by Apple. Of course there are always bad actors who may try to game it, but overall it should improve the process for developers and users.

</comment><comment><USER36> For those thinking 'they already announced this', you're right.

The change, as I understand it, is that today the policy goes into effect.

<comment><USER37> I wonder how intentional it is that Apple chose to terminate Epic Games' developer account one business day prior to this going into effect. Epic Games presumably can't access the form since it can't log in. (And obviously they don't want to screw with the Unreal Engine's Apple account on this fight.)

<comment><USER38> This was announced before Epic violated the ToS whose account was terminated after the 14 days to comply with the App Store rules had elapsed.

This has an exception that still wouldn't allow Epic's games to remain in store:

> bug fixes will no longer be delayed over guideline violations except for > those related to legal issues

<comment><USER37> I agree this was indeed announced prior to the Epic Games event, but Apple chose when to remove their developer account. Apple absolutely had the leeway to remove an app violating their terms (which at that point, the account is no longer violating the policy), but not close out the entire account. The choice to do that was punitive, because they really want Epic to roll back the change for revenue reasons.

I am not sure "they sued Apple" counts as a "legal reason" for blocking the app. Not giving Apple a cut of sales isn't illegal.

(Note the judge during the TRO hearing felt both companies were being stubborn here, as whether Epic removed the payment method or Apple allowed the app, the winning company to get back their monetary impact upon the conclusion of the case. Keeping the app off the store is "making a point" more than actually protecting any revenue on either side.)

<comment><USER39> It's simple contract violation, Epic violated terms and conditions they agreed to in exchange for being on the Store.

Leaving the app up allows Epic to continue to break rules and Apple has consistently said if Epic submitted a version of Fortnite without the alternate purchase options and the dynamic updating that allowed Epic to modify it without App Review they'd put it back up. Instead Epic submitted three versions with those same features.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Sounds good, but we will see if it fully honest.

My guess is it still work well for all accidental friction but won't help at all with friction Apple put in place intentionally.

Through if the appeal goes through a different person then the reviewer it might help with unreasonable reviewers (which Apple isn't probably to happy with either as they are prone to create bad PR)

<comment><USER40> I'm curious to see too, because my instinct is that accidental frictions are actually a very large chunk of the problems people have. At the scale that Apple works, even a 0.1% of updates being wrongly flagged probably meant dozens per day, and it's really annoying for a dev to have to deal with the inconsistency of randomly getting flagged for something that was fine a week ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Apple should make a two tiered app review process - one which checks if the app meets their guidelines around UI/advertising/etc and one which just checks if it is malware or not. Then in the app store they can downrank anything that doesn't meet their guidelines, keeping the quality apps more visible, without entirely removing apps for dumb things like not having a minimize button.

</comment><comment><USER42> Till they allow users to side load any changes are just platitudes.

<comment><USER39> If iOS is ever forced to allow side-loading, it becomes far less attractive to its core market.

<comment><USER43> You can already sideload on iOS (with no jailbreak) - it is admittedly janky though.

I sideload a YouTube Vanced - like app on all my devices

<comment><USER44> To clarify, side-loaded apps are only signed with a certificate valid for 7 days if you're on a regular, non-developer Apple account. If you pay $99/yr for the developer account, that is increased to 1 year.

There are workarounds being worked on for this - one being AltStore [1] (does not allow arbitrary IPAs yet).

You can also sideload on Windows/Linux with Cydia Impactor[0] - on Mac you can use either impactor or xcode/CLI tools to sign IPAs.

0: [http://www.cydiaimpactor.com/](http://www.cydiaimpactor.com/)

1: [https://altstore.io/](https://altstore.io/)

<comment><USER45> A few minor corrections: AltStore does allow sideloading arbitrary IPAs, even on the non-Patreon version, and IIRC Cydia Impactor is currently broken for free accounts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I am not very knowledgeable of the US law but a law websiste² does point out that anti competitive behavior is punishable, a monopoly position is not. I personally would label a lot of things apple does (like e.g. not allowing game streaming from 3rd parties, not allowing the use of other browsers, not allow people to use existing payment infrastructure, ...) as anti competitive.

A layer on youtube³ however says throughout multiple videos that epic has a (if even)very weak case and apple is in the right.

I would be interested to have someone break it down to understand the case.

[2][https://definitions.uslegal.com/m/monopoly/](https://definitions.uslegal.com/m/monopoly/)

[3][https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi5RTzzeCFurWTPLm8usDkQ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi5RTzzeCFurWTPLm8usDkQ)

</comment><comment><USER47> > And now, in addition to appealing decisions about whether an app violates > guidelines, you can suggest changes to the guidelines.

<comment><USER17> And this has already been used successfully by GuardianVPN

[https://twitter.com/chronic/status/1299777657744142336](https://twitter.com/chronic/status/1299777657744142336)

<comment><USER48> This story keeps floating around but the reality is Apple saw a $0.99 in-app purchase for a one-day pass, interpreted that as a one-day non-recurring subscription, which they don't support, but they demanded subscription billing be used instead of in app purchases.

They conceded this utterly pointless problem they invented for the developer. Developers have been arguing against these for years, stupid rejections were once so common that Apple threatened against revealing them to the press in the official guidelines [1].

It's yet to be seen if they will cave on any issues like emulators, or apps mocking President Xi, or Xbox streaming, or external billing, full web browsers, transparency about their transaction fees, porn etc.

[1] [https://web.archive.org/web/20141226094343/https://developer...](https://web.archive.org/web/20141226094343/https://developer.apple.com/app- store/review/guidelines/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I have a feeling these suggestions will basically be a black hole, much like all feedback mechanisms Apple provides.

I would like to be proved wrong though.

</comment><comment><USER49> So we just slip in our third party app stores in "bug fixes" now?

Or what exactly _is_ a legal issue?

<comment><USER50> What used to happen is this:

You release version v1.0, with something that's borderline under Apple's policies. Apple approves it.

You release version v1.1, with just bug fixes. Apple decides what you did in 1.0 wasn't OK after all, so you can't release your bug fix until you're removed whatever apple thinks is noncompliant.

This happened with Hey, for example.

<comment><USER51> This happens to us _constantly_

We sell a business tool, once the business account is upgraded, the rest of it just pay per seat linked to that org. All our sales are done over the phone, so we don't need to accept payments in app. We never ever tell you in the app how you can upgrade to the premium version. We never even link to our own damn website out of fear of Apple's wrath.

About 1/4 of the times we submit big fixes or feature updates we lose the game of Apple Review Roulette, and get denied. So we have to do an appeal and explain it all, again, and so far at least, the 2nd tier always approves it.

Practically, it just means that everything we do with Apple, you have to plan for it to take 2 weeks

<comment><USER39> You kids have it easy. My first App was held up for 6 weeks due to its name! Back then even standard App Review with no problems took a week minimum.

It is so much faster now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Stop releasing software for Apple products. Release for Windows, release for Android, release for Linux where applicable but ignore Apple. If enough people do this Apple will either give in and loosen their stranglehold or they'll see their platforms loose shine. I predict they'll loosen their stranglehold to keep up sales and their stock price. This will be a good thing for both users and - in the end - the company.

</comment><comment><USER53> How does Apple determine if an update is a bug fix or a new submission?

<comment><USER54> I'm guessing the way this is going to work in practice is an update would be allowed if it contains a violation but the violating behavior is substantially the same as the existing version but had not previously been flagged.

New violating behaviors and existing violations behaviors that had previously been flagged would prevent the update from being approved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Our latest update was failed because the first screen didn't respond to touch on iPad. We pulled our hair out trying to replicate it.

I asked what model iPad and they just replied with '13.6.1 on an iPad.' We started digging further.

We ran it on Xcode 12 (beta) and reproduced the problem.

I asked if they were testing on a physical device or the simulator. They directly denied that... but said the issue had cleared up and we were passed.

No code change of course... so tell me how this magically 'cleared up'? Frustrating

</comment><comment><USER56> App Review should be more transparent and more public. For instance, even without naming an app, the reasons for rejection by category could be public.

In the bigger discussion, we don't know if "difficult" cases like the ones in this thread are common, if the approval process is used against whole categories of apps, if competitors are being harmed, or perhaps if it's more about fine-tuning user experience, and bad developer experiences are rare.

Right now, there are many awful stories (and many successful apps), and we don't know how long companies and developers spend trying to resolve problems like these. If the App Store is the modern market for software, the lack of transparency is a big issue, and developers would feel more comfortable making a multiple-year investment to bring a product to iOS if they could see what's likely to happen in advance.

</comment><comment><USER57> I would like the current state to improve so thought of submitting feedback on Apple's program page.

Unfortunately the "Provide Feedback" ([https://developer.apple.com/app- store/tell-us/](https://developer.apple.com/app-store/tell-us/)) page reads:

"We'll be back soon."

No more comments...

</comment><comment><USER58> Like other commenters here, I've also experienced app rejections that seem arbitrary and fail to look at the bigger picture.

I don't have any proof of this, but I have a suspicion that app reviewers may need to meet some sort of rejection quota. It would certainly explain some of the frivolous rejections I've seen. Reviewers must be evaluated and held to account by some standards, so it doesn't seem too far fetched to think that some sort of rejection ratio may be applied, or at least tracked somewhere.

If this is the case, it's not necessarily an easy problem to solve. How you you enforce a consistent quality bar without using some reviewer KPI/metric that's inherently flawed? This being said: rejecting apps for menial reasons does not seem like the right compromise to make.

</comment><comment><USER59> It's interesting to observe the difference between Apple's great treatment of consumers and their actions towards businesses that they interact with, as the App Store is fundamentally a b2b experience. It really highlights the difference between consumer and enterprise DNA.

<comment><USER60> Apple does not have great treatment of consumers. It's very inconsistent, so it sometimes feels great. But if you've ever had an idiot at a store totally misdiagnose an issue with a MacBook and force you to pay for repairs to faulty hardware that's under warranty, you'll realize there is actually no official escalation process.

<comment><USER39> Apples customer satisfaction has been the highest in the industry for decades, and it's never even been close.

The occasional genius mistake doesn't the undo the many, many interactions they get right, go the extra mile, and help customers beyond specific warranty limitations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> That should be interesting. Most of my bounces are guideline issues.

I just released four apps over the weekend, and one of them was like "guideline ping-pong," until I got it right.

Usually, I am forced to agree with them, but every now and then, I get a true Whiskey Tango Foxtrot one.

</comment><comment><USER62> I have deprecated my apps on Apple Store. I cant even put a message saying I am going to remove my app in couple months to my current users without another app review.

Anyway, after reading the comments here, I am glad I am not supporting this mess.

</comment><comment><USER47> > For apps that are already on the App Store, bug fixes will no longer be > delayed over guideline violations except for those related to legal issues. > You'll instead be able to address guideline violations in your next > submission.

</comment><comment><USER63> Someone, including a few very big names like Netrlix, Wikipedia etc. need to coordinate an 'app store strike' and pull their apps for a week.

Big brands won't have to worry as their downloads will pick up the week after, though it will piss off some of their customers.

It will however create a massive, international PR storm over the issue, and every press outlet in the world will be talking about it widely.

If the PR is well messaged and coordinated, it can be made into an anti-trust populist issue, which will hit the vein of some Democratic lawmakers who may in a couple of months be empowered to move on it.

</comment><comment><USER64> Hmm...I have huge delays in reviewing my app to TestFlight from yesterday (previously it was maximum half day). Maybe that's the reason?

</comment><comment><USER65> Reading the threads, I can see that Apple AppStore is not a gate to keep their customers safe (security, frauds, etc) anymore. It is to get more profits for the company by forcing more rule on 30% sales on every app.

</comment><comment><USER66> Maybe an opportunity to change their 30% model? It could be a path towards building a case to change their pricing. I may be be wishfulthinking, though.

</comment><comment><USER67> Everyone's anecdotes make me wonder if the review drones have an implicit or explicit rejection quota they're pushed to meet.

</comment><comment><USER68> How do you guys put up with this level of arbitrary and have your livelihood depend on it? I am working on a new business plan and cannot work around that we most likely absolutely must have an ios app. And if that app is rejected our business might fold once we are on that path. It just feels like an insane amount of risk to engage with a very money hungry company with capricious rule enforcement.

</comment><comment><USER69> Ah, so this is probably why I couldn't log in to a fresh Xcode install yesterday to get signing certs.

</comment><comment><USER70> This kind of change would be welcome to Google Play as well. I would submit immediately.

</comment><comment><USER71> Two weeks ago I had an update rejected because we decided to remove Login with Facebook from our app. The plugin that provides that support to Cordova is a dependency nightmare and not many people used it anyways so we removed it during a bugfix and dependency update. We got flagged for only supporting Google as a 3rd party login and basically forced to implement Apple ID sign in to release our fixes. Since adding support we've been further held up from releases because we require an existing account for Apple ID sign in to work and they rejected us for not allowing the QA account to sign in, while completely disregarding the use of the QA user account and password that we've always provided for the review process.

tl;dr Because of the broken App Store review process we've just removed 3rd party auth support from our app, which is a shame because it's a really slick sign in experience, but we don't want to deal with bugfix releases being held up in review.

</comment><comment><USER72> It is hilarious to read threads about Apple's app reviews. Every single time there's something about Google Play lots of commenters praise Apple but in reality it is at least just as bad.

</comment><comment><USER73> I see a lot of comments regarding the App Review process and lack of competition in this space as to why the App Review process is broken, in regards to App review.

A different take:

I don't think App Review would exist on a competing 'App Store' on iOS. Fundamentally, if any review took place at all, it's going to be automated only. I don't see any competitor being able to withstand the cost of having humans review Apps going into their stores, nor do I see any players who could afford it have an incentive to do so if they can just push users to an App Store they don't have deal with in this way.

For instance, I couldn't find any indication that the Amazon AppStore has any human intervention for the reviewing of applications submitted [0][1], and not without issues[2]. Notoriously, Google is automating everything they can about the app review process, across both Google Play and The Chrome WebStore[3][4] and its a dumpster fire[5].

Comparing this to the iOS App Store, its at least a league cut above the rest here, and there are many justified criticisms and problems with it as well.

I think what we need is firm transparency of app store policies, and frankly I think App Review should include more about what code is exactly the issue (or at least, what APIs aren't being used correctly, or what have you), and give specific, detailed examples, rather than often undetailed responses that help nobody through the submission process. The hostility here is the problem, as with other issues that are re-occurent recently, I think Apple wins by providing more transparency and less opaque in the process. I don't know if the consumer really wants an alternative app store (I know developers do, but thats really not the question at the end of the day, if Apple suitably changes course on managing the existing store)

I don't think its competition thats the problem, as we've seen on Android, it doesn't show merit that this actually makes things better, or that consumers are really interested in having this competition in the space.

[0][https://developer.amazon.com/docs/app- submission/understandi...](https://developer.amazon.com/docs/app- submission/understanding-submission.html#overview-of-the-app-submission- process)

[1]Granted, I read through their docs, and I never saw any reference to a "reviewer". Everything about this makes it sound like an automated API that runs a bunch of tests, responds back to you with failures, rinse and repeat. Not saying this is bad, but its worthwhile to consider, perhaps [2][https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2011/07/amazon-appstore- game...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2011/07/amazon-appstore-game- developer-pulls-app-highlights-problems/) [3][https://developer.chrome.com/webstore/faq#faq- gen-08](https://developer.chrome.com/webstore/faq#faq-gen-08) [4][https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/02/15/tasker-briefly- disa...](https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/02/15/tasker-briefly-disappears- from-the-play-store-due-to-automated-removal/) [5][https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41111992/google-play- and...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41111992/google-play-android- review-process)

</comment><comment><USER74> I submitted the same stuff with different comments 3 times. 3rd time it was accepted. lol

</comment><comment><USER75> Consumers are the discerning ones. Developers will put up with anything.

</comment><comment><USER76> that's good!

</comment><comment><USER77> Its afraid.

</comment><comment><USER78> > _guideline violations_

What a language! How could "guidelines" ever be "violated"? Rules? Injunctions? Yes. Guidelines? No.

Rules is too harsh certainly, so let's use guidelines instead. But since the underlying meaning does not change, words lose connection to reality.

We think we are creating a softer and kinder world, but the opposite is true. If a guideline is actually an order, what's an order?

<comment><USER79> Par for the course with Apple. Apps in macOS never crash, they merely exhibit unexpected behaviours.

<comment><USER80> > unexpected

"off-nominal"

<comment><USER40> I don't care if it's not correct, I just like how "non-nominal" sounds.

<comment><USER81> It eventually leads to "rapid unscheduled termination".

<comment><USER82> Eww, not "termination", that sounds harsh … maybe "exit" or "closure"?

<comment><USER80> the term is "rapid unplanned disassembly"

also see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_flight_into_terrain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_flight_into_terrain)

<comment><USER83> Oh, wait... That linked name is completely reasonable and descriptive. It's not like the others.

<comment><USER80> has a better ring to it than "crashing into the side of a mountain"

<comment><USER83> It doesn't mean "crashing into the side of a mountain".

It means "flying normally, into a path that ends on the side of a mountain". That "flying normally" part is really relevant.

<comment><USER80> well, yes, it also means that.

nothing in that statement implies that crashing was not preceded by normal, controlled flight. the term "crash" has no innate implication besides violent impact. though, yes, in actual use it often implies "accidental" and/or "uncontrolled".

<comment><USER83> It is a specific term that means the aircraft was flying normally all the way until it reached the ground.

Yes, "crashing on the side of a mountain" is also a correct description of the same event. But those two phrases do not have the same meaning.

<comment><USER81> Specifically, CFIT is a subset of "crashing into a mountain" where the aircraft was under control all the way until terminal lithobraking. It's implied the last part is usually unexpected, otherwise it would be avoided.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> We think we are creating a softer and kinder world, but the opposite is true. If a guideline is actually an order, what's an order?</comment>


"John Aldridge fell overboard in the middle of the night, 40 miles from shore" - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/05/magazine/a-speck-in-the-sea.html?pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> A great story, with lots of interesting technology aspects too. The Coast Guard seems to have a strange mix of advanced and very primitive technology for conducting searches - a program that uses Monte Carlo simulations to predict the best places to search and (presumably smartly) computes good search paths for all the available resources and can relay those paths directly to the helicopters' autopilot systems, but then does the actual searching with people in the helicopters scanning with their eyes and the computer system crashes with no way to restore state mid-search.

Seems like it shouldn't be too long before the Coast Guard can just launch a few hundred drones (e.g., DJI Phantom 2 Vision Quadcopters only costs ~$1K each, but might need a few boats to provide networking and recharging out at sea) with directions to scan the area, and computer vision algorithms would do most of the video analysis.

[https://plus.google.com/u/0/+DavidEvans/posts/FFQsaWuy8Ry](https://plus.google.com/u/0/+DavidEvans/posts/FFQsaWuy8Ry)

</comment><comment><USER3> What brand of boots!? What brand of boots!?!

<comment><AUTHOR> I couldn't find the brand anywhere, although I found a good picture of his boots here: [http://www.kjonline.com/news/NY-lobsterman-rescued- after-12-...](http://www.kjonline.com/news/NY-lobsterman-rescued- after-12-hours-in-water-.html)

That article has a quote that explains why the brand of boot isn't mentioned: << His father, John Aldridge Sr., joked to his son not to reveal the brand name on the boots to reporters: "Not until we get a contract offer." >></comment></comment>


Riding in the Google Car That Drives Itself (video) - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2011/03/03/google-self-driving-car-video/

<comment><USER2> HOLY CRAP! I was scared just by watching the video, it would take serious balls to ride in that car that fast. If ran off the ramp at 40mph even with airbags you'll still get hurt. And there was serious tilting when it rounded a corner.

If your self driving car hit someone, who would be liable?</comment>