Competitor access to telco fiber would fix "net neutrality" - <AUTHOR> http://freedomofthought.org/blog/?p=12 <comment><USER2> I recall watching a documentary that looked at internet access in various countries. The most interesting was the UK. Their approach is interesting and successful.

Basically, the government forced local loop unbundling, so that the phone companies were required to lease space in their equipment centers to competing ISPs at fair prices and give them access to local loops to offer DSL and other services.

Of course, the phone companies said this would be disastrous. Turns out it was not. A huge number of ISPs jumped in to compete in the DSL market, and the phone companies found they were making more money as landlords leasing out space for equipment than they had been making from running their own ISP business.

On the consumer side of things, there was a big increase in choice, with ISPs jumping in to offer everything from serious power user plans and low latency plans for gamers to cheap plans for people who just use email.

Amusingly, AT&T and Verizon from the US both wrote to British regulators when unbundling was under discussion and provided strong arguments in favor of it. However, when asked if the US should do something similar, they say it is bad for consumers.

Ahh...found the documentary. It was an episode of the PBS series "Need to Know". The journalist who did the segment on broadband also writes for Engadget, and that segment of "Need to Know" and a text version of the story is available at Engadget: [http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/28/why-is-european- broadband...](http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/28/why-is-european-broadband- faster-and-cheaper-blame-the-governme/)

<comment><USER3> > Basically, the government forced local loop unbundling, so that the phone > companies were required to lease space in their equipment centers to > competing ISPs at fair prices and give them access to local loops to offer > DSL and other services.

Similar idea was implemented in Poland. It mostly means that you can now get the same crappy DSL connection from a number of providers instead of the single (formerly national) telecom. The quality probably did increase a little, and it is fairly affordable but I don't know a single person who's genuinely happy with that sort of Internet access. Most live in suburbs or outright rural areas and have no choice (the other options are flaky mobile, or expensive and high-latency satellite link).

Only real competition leads to improved quality. In large cities where you have properly separate providers -- cable companies, local area networks, mobile providers and the large telcos -- actually competing, you can get a decent TV package, phone with a local number, DVR, 10+MBit (and going as high as 120MBit) connection and maybe even mobile Internet dongle thrown in for ~$40.

<comment><USER4> Many European cities lack a cable TV infrastructure, preventing the use of faster DOCSIS connections like in the US. On the other hand, digging the densely populated European cities to install extensive optical fibre networks terminating either to buildings or local cabinets (with the remaining loop length being under 300 metres) is an extremely costly affair.

For those cases ADSL over PSTN is the only practical choice for broadband Internet access, but since the incumbent telephone operator (usually an ex- state owned company) owns the entirety of the PST network and related facilities like exchanges (subsided over the decades by the state, directly or indirectly) that puts other providers at a huge disadvantage, being unable to even offer any service.

That's why the LLU scheme was devised. Providers rent the telephone loop, rack-space and in some cases backhaul connectivity at the incumbent's exchange, install their own DSLAMs and provide both telephone and ADSL service. It's the only practical choice for competition in the ISP field. And at least for my country, Greece, it has worked marvelously with prices racing to the bottom and speeds jumping to the maximum of the protocol ever since the LLU scheme started.

Small steps are being made in many cities where fibre-optic networks are slowly being deployed, usually (and in our case) subsided by EU funds and planned to be offered under a scheme similar to LLU but it's a very long time until population (as opposed to geographical) coverage can reach good levels.

<comment><USER5> > On the other hand, digging the densely populated European cities to install > extensive optical fibre networks terminating either to buildings or local > cabinets (with the remaining loop length being under 300 metres) is an > extremely costly affair.

In Stockholm, the city-owned company Stokab has been doing exactly this for the past 15 years or so. They started out by laying fibre in the inner city and leasing it to businesses. They've been pretty profitable, and reinvesting all their profits into extending their network, moving to less and less profitable areas.

The last year or so they've started connecting every apartment building in the entire city, suburbs and all, and they'll be done in a year or so with that. They hooked up my building last month, for free. And then it's up to us in the coop to pick an ISP and connect each apartment.

They were also smart enough to put in one fibre per apartment, so in some not- too-distant future, it should be possible to upgrade the building LAN to fibre, which means that every apartment gets an unbroken fibre all the way to their connection point. And _that_ in turn enables the same business model as we have with DSL now, i.e. each apartment can freely choose ISP, and different ISP can then compete for the privilege of lighting up my fibre and give me internet.

Digging up suburbs to lay down fibre is extremely costly as you say, but renting that out is extremely profitable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The common carriage laws are some of the most important laws for the future of this nation.

One possible solution is public maintained networks which operators could use. Every carrier would be a virtual network overlaid on top of the public physical infrastructure.

The problem with this, of course, is that some very large companies have spent quite a bit of money building out these networks and thus simply nationalizing them would be unfair.

I contend that an amicable solution to this problem is a fund to help the top 100 metro areas build ubiquitous public backbones and sell access at an agreed upon (but fair) rate. In reality, there may be very little that any one can do to disrupt big telcos. It is simply a difficult and slow moving market. You'd need something like LightSquared to really have a lasting impact.

Time will tell if they get their spectrum swap; here's hoping.

</comment><comment><USER7> There's a common fallacious argument in here:

A. The corporations that have the most power in this industry have lobbied for and gotten a consumer-hostile regulatory regime. B. It's the government's fault that the regulations are less than ideal. Therefore the consumer would be best served by getting the government out of it.

This is like saying, "The problem with being stranded in the desert is the lack of water. Therefore water is the problem. Therefore we should remove _all_ the water from the desert."

<comment><USER8> The article is not arguing that we should remove government regulations. It is arguing that we should re-instate a particular regulation that has been shown to work for very similar systems (and would already apply if not for a specific exception).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a good idea except for the part where big telco's have more lobbying power in congress than oil companies and this would never happen

<comment><USER10> _"telcos have more power than oil companies."_ This is demonstrably false. From opensecrets:

Lobbying money by industry 1998-2012[1]

      Industry                              Total $
      </comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---
      Pharmaceuticals/Health Products       2,505,357,767
      Insurance                             1,774,111,357
      Electric Utilities                    1,663,072,243
      Business Associations                 1,438,954,214
      Computers/Internet                    1,359,204,389
      Oil & Gas                             1,329,100,727
      Education                             1,159,377,327
      Misc Manufacturing & Distributing     1,147,911,037
      Hospitals/Nursing Homes               1,069,574,050
      TV/Movies/Music                       1,022,160,821
      Civil Servants/Public Officials       1,014,054,831
      Securities & Investment               980,371,025
      Real Estate                           975,927,683
      Health Professionals                  941,438,165
      Air Transport                         896,844,603
      Misc Issues                           773,377,869
      Telephone Utilities                   746,207,234
      Automotive                            732,207,809
      Telecom Services & Equipment          701,829,850
      Defense Aerospace                     647,089,847

Lobbying money by industry 2012[2] (Telcos did not even make the list in 2012.

      Industry                              Total $
      </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-
      Pharmaceuticals/Health Products       180,048,744
      Business Associations                 121,893,383
      Insurance                             113,540,783
      Electric Utilities                    108,068,579
      Oil & Gas                             103,734,662
      Computers/Internet                    96,569,868
      TV/Movies/Music                       89,178,807
      Misc Manufacturing & Distributing     79,921,881
      Securities & Investment               74,038,412
      Hospitals/Nursing Homes               68,677,679
      Education                             67,041,930
      Air Transport                         58,666,778
      Health Professionals                  57,991,637
      Real Estate                           55,517,526
      Civil Servants/Public Officials       54,276,821
      Health Services/HMOs                  50,248,170
      Commercial Banks                      44,376,751
      Automotive                            42,835,629
      Chemical & Related Manufacturing      42,435,792
      Defense Aerospace                     42,398,654

Lobbying money by industry 2011[3]

      Industry                              Total $
      </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-
      Pharmaceuticals/Health Products       241,462,770
      Insurance                             159,878,505
      Oil & Gas                             149,169,677
      Electric Utilities                    145,285,040
      Computers/Internet                    126,911,432
      TV/Movies/Music                       122,898,063
      Misc Manufacturing & Distributing     118,668,254
      Education                             106,246,285
      Business Associations                 106,139,640
      Securities & Investment               101,913,226
      Hospitals/Nursing Homes               100,768,231
      Civil Servants/Public Officials       83,236,247
      Health Professionals                  81,006,752
      Air Transport                         80,773,141
      Health Services/HMOs                  74,033,507
      Real Estate                           67,178,304
      Automotive                            61,776,786
      Commercial Banks                      61,376,654
      Defense Aerospace                     59,702,900
      Telecom Services & Equipment          57,736,688

[1] [https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?showYear=a&ind...](https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?showYear=a&indexType=i)

[2] [https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?showYear=2012&...](https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?showYear=2012&indexType=i)

[3] [https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?showYear=2011&...](https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?showYear=2011&indexType=i)

<comment><USER11> Your list reports Computers/Internet as a separate category from Telecom Services & Equipment, and Computers/Internet beats out Oil & Gas on the 1998-2012 list. How much of Computers/Internet should be counted as Telecom?

<comment><USER10> I would like to point out that it is not "my list." I do not want to mislead anyone, the data was compiled by openserets.org (hence the reference links).

With that being said it is fairly easy to check and see what companies were included in the Computers and Internet category. The list for 2012 is quite long so I do not want to paste all the entries. Here are the links for 2012, 2011 and 2010 respectively:

[https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indusclient.php?id=B12&...](https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indusclient.php?id=B12&year=2012)

[https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indusclient.php?id=B12&...](https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indusclient.php?id=B12&year=2011)

[https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indusclient.php?id=B12&...](https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indusclient.php?id=B12&year=2010)

What companies do you think should be included in Telecom? How do they compare to the top 5 in Oil and Gas?

      Royal Dutch Shell $10,860,000
      Exxon Mobil       $9,870,000
      Koch Industries   $7,800,000
      Chevron Corp      $7,080,000
      BP                $6,860,000

<comment><USER11> Sorry, by "your" I meant "the list you quoted." Thanks for the links to the breakdowns; they succinctly answer my previous question: "very little."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sad but true. America loves to fuck its citizens over, online and offline, for money. They broke Ma' Bell up into companies that have become monopolies in their own right. Cable was never actually regulated against monopoly (despite appearances to the contrary) and neither are new new children Bells (ATT and Verizon being high at the top of that list).

Monopoly or duopoly or oligopoly. It's all the same. However, this is not a problem inherent to ISPs and telcos but across the whole American and world- wide economy.

The next time you buy cereal, soda, water, etc. at a supermarket ask how many choices you have as far as actual, separate, competing companies making the product. And if you don't like the choices ... I suppose you can still grow your own. Good luck with that.

<comment><USER13> _Cable was never actually regulated against monopoly (despite appearances to the contrary) and neither are new new children Bells (ATT and Verizon being high at the top of that list)._

You've got it backwards. Cable and telephone companies were _granted_ local monopolies all over America, which is why there is a _legally enforced_ duopoly now all over the whole country.

Monopolies only exist when created by regulation.

By the way, to head off a common concern, by example: People who think Microsoft _ever_ had a monopoly are using the word "monopoly" wrong. Consumers were always free to go a different way, or start a competitor (and many did). In fact, MS would probably be weaker today had regulation not _forced_ it to improve its self-defeating business practices.

<comment><USER14> Except that _there is no legally enforced duopoly_. By and large the only legal restriction on building a network in the US are related to construction permits & zoning. Cable franchises restricted competition for wireline video delivery but that got tossed a few years back.

If you would like to bury your own wires and use them to deliver Internet, you can. It is just like any other significant construction effort where the costs & paperwork may be daunting to some.

<comment><USER13> _By and large the only legal restriction on building a network in the US are related to construction permits & zoning_

I was presuming that when the company agreed to build a local network, it got an agreement from the local authority that nobody else would be granted a permit to do so.

That's still a legally enforced duopoly. Or are you saying, that acutally doesn't happen?

 _Cable franchises restricted competition for wireline video delivery but that got tossed a few years back._

I am guessing that's because the phone companies also wanted to deliver video over the wire. So this still wouldn't break the duopoly.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Strange times: The sui generis Dave Brubeck - <AUTHOR> https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/strange-times/ <comment><USER2> Possibly one of the most moving interviews I've seen was Dave Brubeck talking about returning to America after WWII and witnessing racism towards black veterans.

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

The story he tells at the very end brings me to tears. What a genuinely good human being, and a musical genius.

</comment><comment><USER3> Dave Brubeck — specifically, "Take Five" — will be forever associated in my mind with "The Secret Life of Machines"

I'll add a link once I have a chance to search. It's a delightfully quirky TV program from the 1970s, and which I thought showcased some brilliantly fun, yet simple, mechanical engineering.

<comment><USER4> I think they used the Reggae version by Val Bennet called "The Russians are Coming"

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pzqoqzSZkPs](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pzqoqzSZkPs)

But yes, great show.

<comment><USER5> That's right. Good memory. I'd never realized it.

[https://youtu.be/mDe-T5JayN8?t=1349](https://youtu.be/mDe-T5JayN8?t=1349)

(At the end of this episode, he talks about the short life of vacuum cleaners as compared to vacuum cleaners of the past. Hah.)

[https://www.secretlifeofmachines.com/the_music.shtml](https://www.secretlifeofmachines.com/the_music.shtml)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Awesome read. Cool to learn about Charlie "Triumph of the Underdog" Mingus standing up for Brubeck's non-conformity when bop took over.

</comment><comment><USER7> [https://archive.is/bhuMV](https://archive.is/bhuMV)</comment>


How do you find freelance coding projects? - <AUTHOR> Hey, so I came up with this question recently. What do you do to find a side project for coding? <comment><USER2> Please see this previous comment of mine and the resources it refers to: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15910781](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15910781)

The gist is: If you want your business to be independent, sustainable and profitable in the long run building a network to draw upon is essential.

Don't put all your eggs in one basket by exclusively relying on recruiters or - worse - sites like Upwork.

Have a professional online presence, i.e. website, that's controlled by you. It probably won't immediately help you with getting projects through organic search traffic but if executed well a professional website can help convince potential clients that you're the right person for the job.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice, not sure that I want to run it more like a business, maybe find one-two clients on side 'cause I have a day job and I'm good with it.

<comment><USER2> Freelancing always is a business. It doesn't matter if it's run on the side.

While you can outsource aspects such as marketing and sales you should be aware that in that case not only will you be leaving a lot of money on the table (because someone else higher up the value chain will capture that value for you) but you'll be dependent on third parties other than your clients, which means that your freelancing income can dry up at any time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've done freelance web development for a number of years now. In general, the best jobs have all come from inbound leads instead of outbound leads. Upwork and cold emailing and door to dooring can work but require a lot of effort and I don't find the clients to be as high quality as when they come to me.

I much prefer when clients come to me. For this to happen, you have to increase your "luck surface area" \- the more you demonstrate competence and value in public, the more chances that clients will find you and reach out.

1\. Participating in online communities like Hacker News. I once said in a comment "oh hey, I was a digital nomad for a couple of years and did part time Django work." To which someone replied, "Are you still doing part time Django work? I need someone." They have been my best customer for the past year. Also, make sure your HN profile has your freelancing information in it.

Post every month in the who's hiring freelancers thread. I've gotten a few gigs there.

See if your city has a city-wide slack channel. Chicago where I am has a very large one and hanging out there has exposed me to a number of opportunities.

2\. Be helpful. Someone from my college once asked me how to freelance, so I took them out for coffee and spent three hours discussing the ins and outs. Three months later he emailed me saying "I decided not to but do you want this client I found?" That client ended up paying me around $12,000 in the end. People like reciprocating help.

If I see someone asking a question about freelancing, I usually try to give a good answer. Some people use Twitter and post little tips. Some people give talks at local meetups.

3\. Bring up often that you freelance as it makes sense. Don't be obnoxious, but let people know what you do. Nobody can ask you to freelance for them if they don't know that you freelance. My longest and best client ever knew that he needed a developer, and went back to my university and asked "do you know any freelancers?" I was the only one the professors knew who had said they were going to freelance, so they referred me.

4\. Work in public. I have a mailing list where I write about how to freelance. I recently got an email from a reader saying "hey, we like your emails. Want to work for us?" One of my current best clients.

One of my colleagues has found good work from an open source Django library he maintains. His client of over 7 years was using that library and reached out because of the link to my colleague's website in the Readme.

I once got a client from sitting in a coworking space. A guy I had talked to and told about my freelancing said, "hey I'm getting a full time job, want my client?" Client for 3 years.

5\. Keep in touch with everyone. This is a little more labor intensive, but super powerful. Using a spreadsheet or a CRM, regularly send emails to people you've met. Try as much as possible to provide value when you do, whether just asking how they are, giving encouragement, showing them useful articles, or making them aware of opportunities you think they'd benefit from. Don't try to sell, just build relationships. If at some point you need work and don't have anyone, you'll have a large network of people who remember you and will be sympathetic.

\---

So, is the answer to be a digital nomad, take college grads out for coffee, have an email list, tell your college department you freelance, go to a coworking space, and maintain an open source library?

Well, no. If you had asked me to tell you two years ago how I would get all of my current clients I would have never been able to predict the exact methods. But as I said, a high "luck surface area" is what makes this work. Doing some combination of the above can make you a pretty "lucky" person.

All of my current clients came to me, and they are all wonderful to work with, pay well, I never have to chase down invoices, and selling to them is way easier because they are already sold on hiring me from what they've seen me do before contacting me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for such a detailed answer covering your experience and approach. It makes me rethink the whole thing.

Also, how can I find out more about your mailing list?

<comment><USER3> Glad it was helpful! My stuff's in my profile. Also happy to chat over email if you have any other questions. Cheers!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hi there! There is a complicated question. I have been using several ways to find a job.

1)Facebook Groups. It's a little bit tough but I had some success there. Groups like Startups Jobs, Jobs in San Francisco, Remote Jobs in Startups etc.

2) Freelance Marketplaces. Upwork (upwork.com), Freelancer (freelancer.com), and Periodix ([https://periodix.net/](https://periodix.net/)). It's a new service but helps me a lot already. I found this service in Reddit and didn't expect great results. But I found something reasonable for myself and be hired fast.

3) Linkedin. Recruiters write me every day.

4) Local Websites. I check every day local job boards to find a local project. Because it seems faster to be hired.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, recruiters write me on LinkedIn also but usually hunting me to the full- time positions.

Facebook groups - good idea, thanks I'll check them but I'm afraid it will take a lot of time to define those groups and to find a good job there. What is your experience there?

Thanks for Periodix, looks like something interesting - I've already signed up and it shows pretty good jobs matches for me. Will see if will land a job there soon.

<comment><USER4> I mentioned in Linkedin Tagline that I'm open only for Freelancing Positions or Part-Time Remotely. So, I suggest you do it too.

On Facebook Groups, you faced competition and sometimes clients don't reply to you because Messanger doesn't show you mails not from your friends. They are hidden. So, I don't like it much.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like the idea about the LinkedIn Tagline, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Do you mean where to find freelance jobs/projects or ideas for side projects to code yourself (e.g. [https://www.codementor.io/npostolovski/40-side- project-ideas...](https://www.codementor.io/npostolovski/40-side-project- ideas-for-software-engineers-g8xckyxef))?

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, I meant where to find freelance jobs. But thanks for the link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not a side project coder but from the anecdata I've read in HN posts and comments, people seem to find their successful side projects from automating some thing from their daily lives - be it something related to their industry or just universal aspects of daily life like commute or cooking.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, will take a look at this

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Toptal, like upwork, but way better. Curated on both sides

<comment><AUTHOR> Is it hard to get approved on Toptal?

<comment><USER7> Not sure, it probably depends on the specialty you apply for and the interviewers.

I did DevOps and it took more than a month to go through the process. There is a need for that specialty more than others, so that likely had some impact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> [https://www.bountysource.com](https://www.bountysource.com) is another one

</comment><comment><USER9> I work on Toptal [https://www.toptal.com/#connect-unmatched-coders- now](https://www.toptal.com/#connect-unmatched-coders-now)

They filter both the clients and freelancers so you get quality on both sides. My experience is very positive for now.</comment>


The biggest aggregator of IT conferences with a review system - <AUTHOR> https://confs.review <comment><AUTHOR> BOOM! I just launched [https://confs.review](https://confs.review), the biggest aggregator of IT conferences. It has a review system and a user- friendly spatial browser.

Share your experience and let others know, which conferences are worth the time and money.

Feedback welcome! :)

</comment><comment><USER2> This is a great idea and just in time to start planning 2020</comment>


Why You Should Hire a Professional Website Designer - <AUTHOR> http://snatchdigital.co.uk/why-you-should-hire-a-professional-website-designer <comment><USER2> If you don't, your site might be able to load without javascript. ;)</comment>


Night Shift compared to f.lux - <AUTHOR> https://forum.justgetflux.com/topic/3655/f-lux-vs-night-shift-in-macos-10-12-4/8 <comment><USER2> One thing I find quite annoying about f.lux is that it doesn't just have a simple custom schedule setting. Night Shift has that, and it's great.

I live very far north. In the winter the sun is up for just a few hours, and in the summer it's down for just a few. Obviously, I don't want to follow the sun for my sleeping rhythm, and exactly nobody over here does.

Most of the time, I go to bed based on the clock. We use lots of artificial lighting in the winter, and window blinds in the summertime. I'd like to simply configure when I expect to go to bed, and possibly when I expect to wake up. With f.lux, I have to try to find a location on the globe where the sun matches my actual sleeping cycle, and hope that it stays that way (it doesn't).

I did notice that there's a new "far from the equator" setting in the latest version, but I don't understand what it does and how it's supposed to help. Just give me a schedule setting.

<comment><USER3> Use a cronjob (or your DE/OS's equivalent).

<comment><USER4> That will probably not work in the summer. f.lux won't turn on its effect until the sunset at midnight for example, even if you start it at 9pm (planning to go to sleep at 10pm).

<comment><USER5> I can manually set the time i go to sleep, playing with that setting moves around the "curve" of bright/dimmed light. I have set it so that flux thinks I wake up in the middle of the night, so it dims the screen in the early evening.

Personally I wont stop using f.lux, what I really like is that I can set custom colours and get a more orange screen even during daytime. I really like the softer colours, even when the sun is up.

<comment><USER6> That setting only exists on Macs last i checked so that is quite useless

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One important advantage with Night Shift is that it doesn't mess up YouTube videos. I get weird artefacts with f.lux when watching videos, and overall Night Shift seems to perform slightly better as well. I'm sad for f.lux but for now I stopped using it.

edit: I don't get the artefacts with NS but I do get the same white border on the mouse cursor after watching a video full-screen for some time

<comment><USER8> This seems like a bug. I've been using f.lux for years across multiple home and work computers and never had a problem with YouTube videos.

<comment><USER9> I have artifact issues with f.lux whenever I'm watching videos in full screen mode. It seems that anything "white" coloured becomes fluorescent. Making the nav / time bar pop up with my mouse seems to make this all disappear. This is on a 2014 MacBook Air running the 2nd latest version of OS X.

<comment><USER8> Interesting. Is it a subtle effect? Maybe I just haven't noticed it before.

<comment><USER9> Not really. These artifacts are very bright white coloured. It's almost as if F.lux can't deal with certain shades of white and forgets them.

<comment><USER10> F.lux doesn't "deal" with anything, it just takes your existing ICC/ICM file, alters it, and resets your GPU's LUT with it.

I've had the same issue with an Intel GPU'ed MBPR 13" (ie, no Radeon or Nvidia GPU also), and it _rarely_ happened in OSX, but only during certain HW accelerated overlays (such as YUV acceleration in videos, or OpenGL programs doing sufficiently interesting things).

I don't think F.lux has the bug, but OSX's rendering pipeline does. I had similar issues with color profiles I generated myself that noticeably differed from the screen itself (Apple has yet to produce an actually fucking accurate- to-sRGB screen, I don't care how many Photoshop jockeys praise their lord and savior, St. Jobs).

So, yeah. In other news, my MBPr runs Windows 10 and I'm never going back; and I've also never seen the bug here.

The side effect is: F.lux's Windows version is not feature complete with OSX's, and noticeably redshifts at different times than OSX does depending on what settings you prefer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It seems like the replies here are very much in defense of Apple which I am not surprised about, but I do not really consider it to be warranted.

I have been using f.lux for years and it has definitely had a huge impact on me. I don't have any scientific data to back up my claims, but f.lux is a fantastic product.

When you consider that f.lux released a side loading version of their app on iOS and then Apple threatened to remove their developer license, and then after it was pulled, released their own ripped off version of the software that does not work as well, you can understand how they might be upset about that. I understand that is business, but as someone who has used both I find f.lux to be completely superior.

Apple probably should have bought f.lux and then integrated it into their products, but instead decided to do it themselves. I'm not saying the software is earth shattering, but they spent years on the problem, and it feels as if Apple implemented their version in a few days.

I think Apple should open up the screen/display APIs on iOS to allow f.lux and other similar apps to be installed. I would happily pay for it rather than use night shift.

<comment><USER12> The reason f.lux sideloaded app got pulled is because they didn't release their source code. Instead, f.lux relied on loading/patching a binary that bypassed some of iOS security features and could load unsigned binarys (read: it could then run pirated apps).

<comment><USER13> This order of operations is incorrect, though the grandparent set you up a bit by saying "released on iOS". In order to install the f.lux app you would first need to be jailbroken, ie able to run pirated apps.

<comment><USER14> Not true, f.lux released a version of their app in the App Store. Apple pulled their app and so they added another method to sideload it [https://justgetflux.com/sideload/](https://justgetflux.com/sideload/) using xcode. Apple then revoked their development license which broke that method as well. It's always been available as a jailbreak tweak but it's also been available to the general, non-jailbroken public

<comment><USER15> Why don't they just open-source it? I'm sure that'd get around the reason Apple banned it.

<comment><USER16> I don't think you understand how Apple works. They love to promote proprietary software in their "walled garden".

Apple's concern was that f.lux changes the color of the screen outside the app, and that fact alone goes directly against Apple's philosophy of keeping apps in their own respective sandboxes. Only Apple is allowed to change UI outside of an app. Consistency at all costs.

<comment><USER17> I think you don't understand what the comment was implying. If it was open source anyone could build it using xcode and install it in their devices themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think Apple may have deliberately chosen to go for a less severe difference in colors, so as to get more people onboard the general idea of colors shifting through the day, at first. Expect it to evolve in a future macOS/iOS (hopefully along with the introduction of a true dark mode.)

f.lux, while more effective, may be off-putting to most people. The medicinal orangeness was a bit sickening to me when I first tried f.lux, to the point that I didn't want to use it, though I warmed up to it later.

<comment><USER19> I am still unable to get used to flux. It bothers me a lot, and I think my brain is trying to color correct or something; I swear it contributes to tension headaches. Could also just be getting them from too much screen time but the effect seems worse with flux on.

<comment><USER20> You start slow. I started from mild for few weeks then cranked it up. Slowly you get so used to it that the yellow tint doesn't bother you. And for me I now have a habit that as soon as I start Photoshop or Illustrator I turn flux off.

<comment><USER21> You can also disable f.lux for specific apps, just click on the menu icon when the app is open, and you'll find the option under _Disable_ > _for Photoshop_.

<comment><USER22> I used to do that for a few programs but it was always so jarring seeing the transition happen back and forth when I would tab out of Photoshop to the Finder or another app. Now I just disable for an hour if I'm doing color sensitive work at night.

<comment><USER23> I end up just lowering the strength when I'm using certain apps - I wish that was an option rather than completely disabling.

<comment><USER20> Disable for 1hour works great most of the time.

<comment><USER23> Going straight from full-blown f.lux to "disabled", everything looks extremely blue and harsh to me, and still doesn't look natural, so I prefer a lighter touch of evening mode.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Sort of on-topic, I've been using Redshift <[https://github.com/jonls/redshift>](https://github.com/jonls/redshift>) for years and love it (both windows and linux).

<comment><USER25> I've used both f.lux and redshift over the years. f.lux worked really well on the mac at work, but I had problems with it on my linux machines. Was using redshift till a few days ago. I recently switched to the "Night Light" that Gnome added as that also works on Wayland (I think f.lux/redshift don't support wayland yet)

[1] [https://www.gnome.org/news/2017/03/gnome-3-24-released/](https://www.gnome.org/news/2017/03/gnome-3-24-released/)

<comment><USER26> Actually no program can support Wayland to change color temperatures except for the compositor.

<comment><USER27> You're right, though the compositor could provide an ipc mechanism to let another program tell it to change color temperatures. Sway (a Wayland compositor/window manager) works with a patched RedShift, and I assume this is how it does it.

<comment><USER28> If I understand correctly, they've implemented a new wayland protocol (extension?) [https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway/blob/master/protocols/gamma...](https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway/blob/master/protocols/gamma- control.xml)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've used f.lux for years and I really like it, as I have noticed my sleep patterns have improved during that time.

However, I do think that the transition is sometimes really too quick. I can be working away, deep in 'flow' and I will alarmingly perceive the screen going darker/changing a couple of times over the evening. It almost feel like I am passing out or getting a precursor to a migraine sometimes, with the change, which is quite jarring.

The other thing is the constant annoying notifications of "You are going to be awake in 'x' hours". Well, actually, no - If I am up and coding until 2am, then chances of me being awake at 6am when you expect me to is just not on.

I also wish they would have an 'emergency awake' function, so that when I jump on to the keyboard to fix a server outage at 5am after many hours away sleeping, that it would immediately go to full brightness there and then, rather than wait until 0630 as per normal. If I am active at that time after a long break, I am NOT going back to sleep and I have to have full illumination of all those red signals on my server dashboard! :)

<comment><USER30> there is a setting in the menu bar:

Disable:

> For an hour

> Until Sunrise

> For current app

<comment><USER29> Thanks - yeah that is normally what I do, but sometimes in the rush I just want to start opening up diagnostic apps and don't really realise until a bit later when I find myself squinting and straining my eyes to read a really dark screen in (what is now) a brightly lit room.

It would be nice if f-lux could detect that there is activity after many hours away, and the ambient light in the room is quite high, so let's go "throttles to the firewall" automatically and set the screen back to daylight mode to commence the work day earlier than normal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Pretty sure this is all snake oil — both f.lux and Night Shift. I don't doubt that blue light affects our brains. But I see no evidence that color filter software has any impact.

If the issue is the number of blue photons per square millimeter of our retinas, why isn't it being discussed as such? This means screen brightness and distance from your face would have a much bigger impact than a color filter.

I personally think the f.lux team knows this and that's why their FAQ is devoid of any questions about effectiveness.

FWIW the only person I've known to use f.lux is an insomniac who barely ever sleeps and is always tired.

<comment><USER32> > _Pretty sure this is all snake oil — both f.lux and Night Shift. I don 't > doubt that blue light affects our brains. But I see no evidence that color > filter software has any impact._

A color filter such as in Flux and NS removes blue light.

> _If the issue is the number of blue photons per square millimeter of our > retinas, why isn 't it being discussed as such? This means screen brightness > and distance from your face would have a much bigger impact than a color > filter._

No, it doesn't mean that at all.

Or rather, it does, but it's a moot point. All you're saying is: you can reduce blue light with an orange filter, but you can also go away from your screen or dim it so you can't see it. Or even not use a computer at all.

While all of those things hold, the "orange filter" achieves the same thing (removing blue light) without affecting our ability to work regularly on the computer (increased distance, less brightness, etc).

I'm not sure how people come up with such logic errors.

> _FWIW the only person I 've known to use f.lux is an insomniac who barely > ever sleeps and is always tired._

It's not worth much. It's not supposed to cure insomnia (which has 2000+ different causes), just to keep up with the natural light changes and improve sleep.

<comment><USER33> It would help if it could dim the displays over HDMI whatever or some driver mechanisms

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> When it comes to blue light filtering, all I want is something with good defaults (for me) that works unobtrusively.

My first days of using Night Shift has worked exactly like that. I don't particularly care about configurability of the tool (I live on a pretty well supported latitude I guess). Moreover Night Shift presents significantly less artifacting in videos based on my brief experience. Transitions are also far less jarring than they are with f.lux.

So yeah, I guess f.lux will be the better choice for those who really care about the details of their blue light filter. Night Shift, like LineageOS' LiveDisplay, Windows' Night Time and GNOME's Night Light, take a simpler approach that will get you 98% of the way there in a few clicks, which should be good enough for most people.

<comment><USER35> The issue pointed out by the herf is that what is unobtrusive is not a good default, because it doesn't actually work. You have to eliminate lot of blue light to get any benefit.

Night Shift's defaults aren't getting you 98% of the way there; they're getting you maybe 15% of the way there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> If you use and love f.lux, consider donating!

[https://justgetflux.com/promo/paypal.html?ab=8-planet5](https://justgetflux.com/promo/paypal.html?ab=8-planet5)

<comment><USER37> Open-source first, donations second.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Night Shift lets you set a custom schedule. Somehow, insanely, Flux does not. It's the only thing I want, so Night Shift automatically wins. I don't know why they're so stubborn on that issue, I would've even paid a few bucks for a "premium" version with that feature, but now Apple is eating their lunch.

Bye forever, Flux.

<comment><USER39> Setting your wake-up time isn't enough? I am new to Flux but unless they introduced this feature in the last 6 days, I don't understand your critique.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> TLDR

>To be fair, we thought it was pretty easy after our first year making f.lux (Night Shift today looks a whole lot like our first version). We figured we'd solved the blue light problem and that there just wasn't much left to do. We couldn't have been more wrong. Every person has individual needs, and those needs are different based on your sensitivity to light, your own chronobiology (imagine early birds and night owls), your own schedule, and other factors too. Those needs change across seasons, and over your lifetime. Today our approach is different: we are working every day to understand how light affects human biology, not strictly sleep, and we are constantly applying what we learn to updates and new features for f.lux.

</comment><comment><USER41> My life doesn't necessarily fit into a sunrise-sundown bracketed timeframe. I regularly need to postpone dimming until later in the evening, and then return to full color brightness before dawn. F.lux refuses to do this. Night Shift (at least on iOS) does.

<comment><USER42> Yeah, Flux is useless in places far from the equator. I don't want my screen to dim at sunset/6PM.

<comment><USER43> Why not? Its better for your eyes if you're working in dim rooms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Gnome also has a similar feature now, night light

[http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/02/gnome-night-light-blue- li...](http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/02/gnome-night-light-blue-light-filter- linux)

</comment><comment><USER45> Night Shift:

> Doesn't apply to projectors or TVs

> Doesn't mess with fluidity (turning Flux on or off gives _massive_ > framedrops

> Doesn't give weird artefacts on YouTube

Flux devs also ignored all (!) my e-mails about fixing how Flux reads its settings. You can directly edit the settings file via Terminal, but Flux ignores all the values you set and simply sticks to the ones set in the app itself.. even after a restart of the app or a reboot.

</comment><comment><USER46> As I have my daytime f.lux setting at 5500k, I don't plan to change over. I prefer to have the blue light reduced slightly all the time

</comment><comment><USER47> I love f.lux but I always end up uninstalling it because of how it messes up with games when they are running. Performance tanks and I get tired of switching out and killing f.lux every time.

<comment><USER48> Yeah that's because they insist on refreshing the gamma really fast, and that messes up a lot with games. I had the same problem in the past, and that's why I made my own f.lux where I can just change the refresh interval and set it to change the gamma every one second or something. There's no point in updating it so fast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> They are both terrible compared to Quicksilver's little brother, Nocturne. Nocturne can turn a Mac full red monochrome. Coming from the military, it's amazing.

<comment><USER50> Cool, I never knew that Nocturne was developed by the military. Also, do you have a working link for it? Every link I've tried is down.

<comment> purple-dragon I think he was saying he is from the military, not that Nocturne was developed by the military.

I think Nocturne was abandoned long ago. Someone forked and updated it a couple of years ago, but I don't know if it works with Sierra as-is: [https://github.com/Daij-Djan/nocturne](https://github.com/Daij-Djan/nocturne)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I must be out of step with the times as I'm surprised by the favorable comments about Night Shift.

For my eyes, the f.lux nighttime adjustment and configurability is great. at work, i use it during daytime hours as well, helps greatly with eye strain.

Night Shift is like an introduction of the concept to a mass audience, surely it has a positive benefit for the uninitiated but there's a lot missing for folks who rely on it. Android is much better with multiple applications available to control this.

I thought it would have been a good gesture for apple to buy f.lux and get the "market leader", and some built in goodwill, as opposed to just copying them, but I guess such is life when you are the largest corporation in the world.

<comment><USER52> If Apple bought f.lux they'd cease all development for all non-Apple platforms and people would FREAK OUT. They wouldn't get any goodwill.

<comment><USER53> People would freak out over Apple buying f.lux, and then install Redshift.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Does anyone have a good suggestion for an Android app that does blue filtering, and:

1\. Doesn't require root.

2\. Actually filters blue out, instead of adding red (i.e. a pure black screen should remain pure black).

The built-in feature in Nougat previews was great, until they removed it...

<comment><USER55> The built-in LiveDisplay feature in LineageOS can do this without root.

<comment><USER54> Sorry, I forgot to specify stock Android as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Somewhat related - any physical filters for backlit eInk readers? The leds on my kindle paperwhite are pretty blue

<comment><USER57> That's not a bad idea. The newest kobo reader actually has red LEDs (I assume) to fade to red at night: [https://us.kobobooks.com/products/kobo-aura- one](https://us.kobobooks.com/products/kobo-aura-one)

Hopefully amazon copies that feature for their next one.

<comment><USER58> I can vouch for the Aura One, it's a lovely device. The screen color temperature adjustment goes very warm. Tough to eyeball without a side-by-side reference, but I'd guess at least down to 2200K.

I've seen it referred to as RGB LEDs for the backlight, but I think it's more likely to be two-channel mixing with cool white and warm white, as is common on "tunable white" light fixtures. All you get for control is a cool/warm slider or auto, so the hardware is a bit immaterial the average user (though it would affect the blue wavelengths present in the spectrum). I think we have some sort of spectrometer around the office, I'll have to see if I can track that down and check.

[https://imgur.com/Irw9yhg](https://imgur.com/Irw9yhg)

<comment><USER58> Checked the spectrum, it's a range from 6300K (cool white) down to 1700K (very warm white, could probably call it amber). I measured it at three points: the ends of the range and a point eyeballed in the middle of the UI slider, which may or may not have been quite at 50%.

Points on black body curve in CIE 1931 colorspace: [http://i.imgur.com/FCsdxZW.png](http://i.imgur.com/FCsdxZW.png)

That's the curve where we define "white" light, based on the perceived color of a black body object heated to various temperatures. The naming convention is a bit strange; "warm white" refers to the orange end with relatively cool temperatures, while "cool white" refers to the blue end with relatively high temperatures.

Relative spectral distributions, each normalized with the peak wavelength at 1: [http://i.imgur.com/3Bw6ltt.png](http://i.imgur.com/3Bw6ltt.png)

The "cool" spectrum is pretty typical of a phosphor converted white LED, where you get a strong peak in blue and then a smooth curve across the upper end of the spectrum produced by the phosphor.

The "warm" spectrum has two peaks, dominated by red around 630nm and a smaller green peak around 530nm.

You can tell just from the black body curve that they've used more than the two-channel LED mixing that I guessed in my parent post. With just two LEDs, you're basically making linear combinations of the two colors and can only move in a straight line between them. If it were only the cool white and red LEDs, the color would move along this path between 6300K white and 630nm saturated red: [http://i.imgur.com/d2W3sb4.png](http://i.imgur.com/d2W3sb4.png)

Having a 3rd channel green LED allows them to pull it back up to the black body curve. Interesting to see that they're apparently doing a 3-channel color adjustment with cool white / red / green, rather than the RGB system that people are so used to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Are the charts for Night Shift on MacOS? The dataset provided at the very bottom is for the iPad Pro...

</comment><comment><USER60> "Our circadian system is actually not reacting to small changes in "color". Instead, it is mostly reacting to the "amount" of light. Our eyes are extremely good at distinguishing little shades of color from each other, but this is a different system than the one that drives circadian rhythms."

Is there any data to support this?

<comment><USER61> One of the primary drivers of melatonin suppression is the IPRGC [1]. So yes, what seems to be more important than the perceived color is the intensity of light in the 460-480 nm range. Which, if the spectral data in the original post are correct, means that NightShift has a major disadvantage.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> I've found something pretty interesting myself when using redshift. If I set the display directly to 3000K or so, it looks really weird. Same if I fade from 6700->3000K. But if I set it to 1000K and then to 3000K, it looks fine. Anybody else do this to "prepare" themselves?

</comment><comment><USER63> It's a good enough argument for a current user like me to keep using it, but I don't know if the benefit is tangible enough for most people (or me on a new system someday) to seek out an alternative to Night Shift.

Makes me wonder if the placebo effect would come into play here as well.

<comment><USER18> I'm going to try using both in turn on alternate days, and see if there's any difference (to my personal wellness).

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> There is already lots of blue light in my room, when I use a computer at night. I don't see how it would help to remove all the blue light from the screen, when the room is still bathed in it. I use quite warm light, and have it even warmer in the evening, but still, the standard settings for Night Shift looks very orange to my eyes.

I would love if Night Shift could just shift the white balance to match the surrounding. Does anyone have experience with True Tone on the 9.7-inch iPad Pro? I imagine would work like that.

</comment><comment><USER65> Any hints on getting f.lux to work in sync with a Hue bulb on macOS?

</comment><comment><USER66> For all of the squabbles between Night Shift and f.lux, both are doing a great job compared to what we had before. I am sure they will both continue to improve and become standard in all platforms

I am a lot more concerned about street lights, which are headed in the exact wrong direction: [https://www.ama-assn.org/ama-adopts-guidance-reduce-harm- hig...](https://www.ama-assn.org/ama-adopts-guidance-reduce-harm-high- intensity-street-lights)

</comment><comment><USER67> I've just turned the blue/magenta/cyan sliders in monitor controls to 0%(Blue components in images appear as black/grey pixels). Blue light damages the retina and messes up circadian cycles: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4734149/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4734149/)

</comment><comment><USER68> Windows 10 has a similar feature called Night Light. I have it set to Sunset/Sunrise. The $49 Kindle Fire has a similar feature.

I appreciate the work f.lux did, but this is going to be a core feature of every OS now, and none of them bought their tech to do it. That is a tough spot to be in, but it is probably time to start winding the project down.

<comment><USER23> I just wonder if they're waiting for some patent to be granted to strike...

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> How does f.lux make money?

</comment><comment><USER70> I'd say a big plus of f.lux is that it works on my 2009 mac pro and 2011 macbook pro, while Night Shift does not.

</comment><comment><USER71> Are there any scientific claims to blue light? Or real studies? I tried using flux for a month and ended up with sore eyes which I don't get when I don't use flux. So I don't know if this blue thing is a legit thing or not. My flat mate says he sleeps better. But I just get sore eyes.

</comment><comment><USER72> I noticed a massive battery life improvement after removing f.lux and using night shift/night light on mac and windows.

Far less stuttering as well. Whatever f.lux is doing is not worth the janky implementation.

</comment><comment><USER73> I tried f.lux on the Mac and was very disappointed with the results. To me it looked like a red film overlaid on the screen. Distracting and ugly. Night Shift on iOS looks much more natural.

</comment><comment><USER74> I loved f.lux, but now I don't need it. Just like many other utilities before the good ones eventually get adopted as base functionality.

They should have sold it when they could have....

</comment><comment><USER75> I'm very sensitive to blue light and been using flux for few years. After trying nigth shift for few days I'm back to flux which actually works

</comment><comment><USER76> I've no idea why people use this type of software. I tried it a couple times, and it just annoys the hell out of me. It makes the colors on my monitor all kinds of messed up, and doesn't have any positive effect whatsoever on the tiredness of my eyes. If anything, the effect is negative: the messed up color makes text hard to read.

<comment><USER77> Try to customise the strength to only a slight change for sunset and bedtime. So hardly any colour distortion, mostly just less bright. And enable the slow transition. Use that for a few days to make sure you no longer notice it.

Then one late evening disable it.

Every time I do that it as if I have been hit with full beam car light.

Really shocks me how bright a non f.lux/night shift/redshift screen is without them. I now really struggle to look at a non-adjusted screen in the evenings. And I am glad my eyes don't have that strain normally. I could possibly deal without it on a small laptop screen by just dimming it but need these tools when using my normal home 34" monitor. That is a lot of brightness otherwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> How does Night Shift's reddest setting compare with Flux?

</comment><comment><USER79> Or you can go to astronomy mode (linux):

xcalib -green .1 0 1 -alter

xcalib -blue .1 0 1 -alter</comment>


Ask HN: Is starting eBook store today an insane idea? - <AUTHOR> With the new year kick off I promised myself to start an eBook store as my new year resolution. I have been reading a lot of books over the last decade and I had always felt that starting eBook store will come natural to me giving my web designing background and love for the books. However, I have been always reluctant to begin due to the huge competition, Amazon to name the main one. I'm no longer feeling that I need to achieve what Amazon has achieved, I just want to have my book store. I have secured one author whose ebooks and reports are already on my website so the dream is coming true.<p>Would love to hear what the community thinks and if you guys have your own experience in running ebook stores that could share with your fellow HN reader. <comment><USER2> I can say the one reason I only buy from eBook stores that are not Amazon: If I buy an eBook, I expect it to be DRM-free. I am a pretty big patron of Informit for this reason, and I buy a lot of Humble Book Bundles as well.

I've noticed many publishers have DRM'd up versions on Amazon or other book stores, but often have DRM-free offerings on their own site. Simon and Schuster is another one that does this, particularly with Star Trek novels. Authors may be extremely hesitant to sell just through you because losing Amazon discoverability is painful, but you can definitely offer things that Amazon will not.

<comment><USER3> I'll second this: when I buy a book, I want to own it. DRM means I'm constantly at risk of my "ownership" being revoked. So I always try to buy the non-DRM version.

In recent years, I've found that Amazon's Kindle store has become less good. Their recommendations are much worse than they used to be, their handling of book series is bad (if a book is in a series, show me them all, in order, and identify those I already own), the pages are just awfully messy and cluttered, they push Prime in my face all the time, etc, etc.

I'll love a great, curated online book store. Much like a real bookstore, have things organized well, have staff recommendations (not random bot-boosted rubbish); focus on authors with interviews, and AMAs, and so on; and make it a nice place to browse (and buy).

If you make the commercial deal for authors/publishers decent, I suspect you would be able to build a decent list of suppliers. And if you focus on the "good bookstore" feel, I think you've got a good chance at some success.

<comment><USER4> I go to bookstores for the curation, but then feel bad not buying anything cause I really don't want to carry a physical book around. I'd take something online, or somehow plugged into an actual store - snap a qr referral code then the barcode and buy straight to the device.

Going against giants, it seems like finding a niche and doing it really well is the way to survive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You should start a niche bookstore. So, as with any other product - look out for a profitable niche first. And you have to secure exclusive deals with respectable authors in that niche which is a tough task. As with any other marketplace you have to attract authors and readers at the same time, but it requires a lot of marketing and business skills.

</comment><comment><USER6> I have bought quite a few ebooks from LeanPub.

It was a great experience, they email you when there is an update to a ebook you have purchased.

Take a look their site and how they work with authors.

[https://leanpub.com/bookstore/type/book?search=vue](https://leanpub.com/bookstore/type/book?search=vue)

<comment><AUTHOR> Very interesting idea. There is definitely many useful parts of their service that I could implement. Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It depends.

The odds against an eBook store:

0\. Undefensible business model - little/no barrier to entry, few patents, anyone can start such a store

1\. Getting advertising and distribution at scale

On the plus side:

2\. It might work at a tiny scale for niche categories/communities/local businesses.

Otherwise, I wouldn't waste too much time on it. I would something that's more difficult to copy or emulate.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think it's a bad idea to sell them through a dedicated stand-alone website/store. Many people are selling ebooks successfully using ClickFunnels, especially when combined with upsells. Don't think of an ebook as a way to earn $15, rather as an entry point to a $500+ sale of another related product/service.

</comment><comment><USER9> The trick is to make a sublime experience for the seller. Make your cut less than what amazon takes. Then convince people with successful ebooks to sell via your store. They'll send you the traffic because they want to sell their books. You only need a single book to start making money.

</comment><comment><USER10> It is, but don't let that stop you. It seems like a tough nut to crack to me, but I have bought directly from publishers when they offered better value for money over Amazon or the Dutch giant Bol.com. You can get your 1000 true fans if you offer something specific and great.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think my main motivation is that I can anticipate and bring extra value to the customers. I do a lot of videos and social media content to promote the books, I feel like building community around it will give everyone new experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Have you ever checked out Bandcamp? It's a competitor to iTunes - a place to support the music you like. I feel that this might be a good model for you.

Their niche is indie music, plus it allows for artists to be more flexible on pricing. I think there are a number of parallels when it comes to ebooks and supporting authors.

<comment><AUTHOR> I never heard of the Bandcamp service. They seem like a definition of perfectly executed niche service, I'll watch them closely from now.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Great response from the HN community. For anyone interested in the project: [https://hundredfoot.com/](https://hundredfoot.com/) If anyone would like to get in touch, shoot me an email: info[at]hundredfoot com

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to all who took the time and wrote back. Every comment is valuable to me.</comment>


An Open Letter to Google and Apple: Stop Hindering Iranian Entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/18/an-open-letter-to-google-and-apple-stop-hindering-iranian-entrepreneurs/ <comment><USER3> I'll note again the snowball effect that the Google Cloud block has (Google Cloud totally blocks Iran on a network level).

Now, _your_ services that you host on Google Cloud are not available. Say you are Gitlab, and you host there (they do!). Now, if you put your Open Source project on Gitlab, that project is not accessible to Iranians either (as well as other sanctioned countries).

As someone you spends a couple of weeks every year in Iran, I can tell you that arbitrary websites breaking because of blocks on the US side have a far worse effect on my ability to work then the fact that Facebook and Twitter is blocked.

Why doesn't the documentation for date-fns work? Oh, they load the data from Firebase.

Why can't I compile by Android app? Oh, the Android repository is hosted on Google Cloud.

Etc.

<comment><USER4> At work we ran G-Suite. Lead Dev went to Cuba for a holiday and was not able to use any of the services.

Great for him, not so good for a couple of angry customers that got no answers to emails.

He set an out of office but also said to those customer that he would reply to any queries ... oops

<comment><USER5> The gmail app doesn't complain that it can't connect to its servers?

<comment><USER6> I'm guessing the dev quickly noticed the lack of connectivity and may have tried some obvious things to change his autoreply message, but those things didn't work and he & his company deemed it not worth it to try further.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The author of the great app "City Producer" is French, born in Iran. He fled Iran as a child 40 years ago. He was invited to present his app to Tim Cook at Apple's HQ; however as he's born in Iran he can't enter the US, any time, ever. Never mind he and his parents actually fled the regime. Never mind he isn't an Iran passport holder.

This is US foreign policy. Bullish and stupid.

So this isn't really a problem with Apple or Google; it's a problem with the way US enforces sanctions on countries.

</comment><comment><USER8> Whilst I understand where the author is coming from, I'm not sure the companies are to blame here.

> Two years ago, under the guise of complying with American sanctions against > Iran — sanctions that have existed for decades — Apple started removing > Iranian apps from its platform.

Sanctions aren't always clear-cut, and if a buck is to be made, companies often try to stretch interpretations, try to fly under the radar or rely on the administration on being lenient in some aspects. So I'm not sure it's as simple as "sanctions existed before, so this must be the companies fault".

I'd much rather see sanctions in this space limited/removed - but I hold no hopes for enabling moves in this geopolitical game of power.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think to blame the companies will have any effect either. We think these companies with their financial and market power can do better here to show that the tech community is not a part of political war. For example, there can be new companies in third countries with no legal obligation to US sanctions that can provide Apple and Google products to countries like Iran.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The 80 million Iranians are currently held hostage by two entities. First, it is their own government (which is by far not the worst in the world, being in Iran feels more free than one would expect). Second, it is the USA. The US imposed sanctions put real stress on everyday life in Iran, they make transactions complicated to impossible, healthcare unsafe, flights totally unsafe (we had 2 emergencies in the last 12 flights between Iran and Germany) and they currently provoke a big brain drain and probably a new wave of refugees. From what I see the US sanctions are catastrophic for those 80 million people while the government is more or less untouched. For the sake of the family I married into and the genetic relatives of my children: stop that nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER10> I get it - Sanctions hurt people. They are blunt tools when we need more refined dialogue. It is putting the pain of conflict between our governments onto the people, and not driving change.

All these things are true. But this letter is written to the wrong people. This situation stems from a problem between our governments, and that is where it needs to be fixed. We have limited power to change this, but what power we do have is enacted by electing leaders who will work for a better solution. We get a chance to pick a US President again in just over a year.

Please, when the opportunities arise over the next 18 months, get out, get involved, and vote.

<comment><USER11> Meanwhile companies are hijacking governments by pouring billions of dollars directly or indirectly in order to push policies that benefit their profit- driven agenda.

Big companies and governments go hand in hand, so the only way to enact some REAL change is to strike where the MONEY is and cut their economic power.

A vote becomes worthless in a society where lobbying is legalized and media channels have economic interests in play.

<comment><USER10> > strike where the MONEY is

What does that mean, exactly? What specific actions do you propose people take?

<comment><USER11> A few examples of things we could do to stop a little the bleeding out of democracies:

1\. Outlaw lobbying;

2\. Tax the ass off the filthy rich;

3\. Break up big corporations in tech, oil, media, you name it. No more monopolies or monopsonies;

4\. Change the electorate system.

5\. Increase work conditions. Higher wages, jobs availability, social welfare, etc.

The obvious takeaway is that if you reduce wealth inequality you get a healthier society and democracy.

<comment><USER10> OK, how can we do those without electing leaders into office who will do those things?

<comment><USER12> Why without? Ever heard of Bernie Sanders?

<comment><USER10> pnongrata is arguing that voting is worthless. I'm honestly trying to understand their position, but so far having no success. Seems to me that we absolutely should be electing leaders with political positions that match what we desire to see in our society.

<comment><USER12> Not only the political positions that match the desire, but also voting record that matches their position.

I would personally prefer direct democracy, but I think it is extreme to claim that every politician is corrupt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's not even about being in Iran, you can be anywhere and they will hunt you down and will try everything in their power to make you suffer more.

I've written about my own experience at [https://alireza.gonevis.com/how-i- didnt-get-my-first-paying-...](https://alireza.gonevis.com/how-i-didnt-get-my- first-paying-customer/)

<comment><USER14> I have to ask: why not find an Emirati friend you trust and have them be the owners of the business and you an employee? It sounds like it would be less costly.

<comment><USER13> I had that Emirati friend to employ me on several companies of his and employment permit/visa was getting rejected or being "under processing" for +1 years. I've applied in Dubai, Ajman and Sharjah. All with the same result.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Trade sanction seem counterproductive to me, they breed resentment in a generation of young people, they breed poverty and that ultimately is what breeds extremism and fundamentalism.

Shouldn't trade sanctions be more fine grained? Having part of the population be part of the global economy seems like the best way to eventually push for change in those countries...

<comment><USER16> The goal was never to end extremism or fundamentalism. Conflict is very very profitable to all sides except the common person. I guarantee that a lot of elite Iranians prefer war and conflict over peace, just like the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is a touchy subject because it gets into the realm of the people are not the regime. Its terrible that everyone gets wrapped up in international conflicts, but I always have to ask what is an alternative plan? In the case with China, no amount of diplomacy would have worked to get them to renegotiate on trade. I'm not sure about other posters on HN, but I know I personally am strongly for stopping nuclear proliferation around the world and it doesn't end with Iran. I want to see India and Pakistan give up their weapons because the doomsday clock there always seems its a minute to midnight. Its a tough, controversial subject and I feel for innocent people caught in the crosshairs.

<comment><USER3> Then you should know that the people who wanted the US to drop the Non- Proliferation deal with Iran known as the JCPOA did so because they are willing to put geopolitical considerations, specifically alignment with Israel and Saudi Arabia, before proliferation concerns. To put it another way, if the had to choose, they would choose a weak isolated Iran with nukes over a strong one that could build nukes but doesn't.

You see that happening right now with Iran ramping up enrichment again, and if they play their cards right, they can absolutely go the North Korea route and get it done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I sincerely hope that the ongoing trade and business war will lead to nice new competitors to Android and iOS. The more countries they ban the higher the chances.

<comment><USER19> This is the ironic part right here from a security perspective. If countries with sufficient resources like China or India or Russia would manage to establish a parallel ecosystem every country that even tangentially fears to end up on the USA's bad side has a strong incentive to hop on.

America's companies and government might very well be giving up a very comfortable monopoly in some key sectors right now by encouraging new ecosystems out of necessity.

<comment><USER20> > America's companies and government might very well be giving up a very > comfortable monopoly in some key sectors right now by encouraging new > ecosystems out of necessity.

At the same time, they are exploiting the monopoly (the US as a hole, that is). I suppose there's a line between "this is too much pain, I'm jumping ship" and "this is an acceptable amount of pain, I'll just pay my tribute and stay". I don't know whether they've crossed that line - especially when adopting a Chinese system won't really change a lot, it will only change who you depend on and whose wishes you need to comply with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Maybe i'm bitter, or old, but my exclusion from a service is #1 reason to stay away from patronizing it.

It's my opinion that the excluded, Iranians in the case of this article, should be having hard discussions about how _they_ could get away from the likes of Google and Apple, not talks about how to integrate into an ecosystem that appears hostile.

I understand the difficulty of that in practice, but integrating into a group that makes hostile world-changing decisions about groups of people based on geography and cultural differences seems to just empower that group further the next time they try to inject political maneuvering into their business -- making them an even larger threat to those it disagrees with in the future.

In other words : Second verse, same as the first -- vote with your dollar, vote with your participation.

<comment><USER20> > Maybe i'm bitter, or old, but my exclusion from a service is #1 reason to > stay away from patronizing it.

Sure, sure, but that's often not an option. If you're black and the only grocery store in town has a "no colored people" policy, you're out of luck.

With the internet getting more and more centralized to a few large US corporations, you're in a similar spot. Banned from using their services? There's no alternative, because everybody else relies on them and will have their contracts canceled unless they also not do business with you.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> There are lots of ways to provide free access to information to everyone. How do you expect other people to grow without giving them enough information to understand? Peace depends on the freedom

<comment><USER22> Russia has semi-free access to information and majority of Russians applaud the wars that their governments wage against their neighbors.

<comment><USER23> > Russia has semi-free access to information

The only major resources which have permanent ban I know of are PornHub and LinkedIn (not including the sites which were blocked during the Hunt for Telegram, 95% of IPs have been removed after the body which operates the blacklist admitted their fail).

> majority of Russians applaud the wars

If you got the data from official Russian survey agencies or government, you can divide it by 0 twice. And don't forget that more than half of the population were born in USSR, a third part had been educated in soviet schools and a sixth part in current propaganda-driven schools (started in 2004) which makes a majority alone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The article mentions the kind of dependency on the Android and iOS platforms. I believe this is the right time for Iranian entrepreneurs to start porting or start installing Google free Android as a service on customers' phones and then have their apps running on them. Some of the smarter ones can even exploit the political scene and say they're giving a big middle finger to Western companies in favour of something they built locally. I'm assuming that the local politicians are at best indifferent to these measures.

</comment><comment> rbrtdrmpc- Please to all the posters, stick your head out of your butt for a sec, this Iran thing is not something related to just some poor dev unable to publish on their store, it is a world wide dumb reaction all started from the USA foreign agenda. I'll give you an example to highlight how f'd up is the situation, in Italy, country with a quite respectful relation with Iran, banks started kicking out clients (with a one month notice) like my friend just because she was BORN in Teheran grew up in Italy (she's a fucking grown up working as a doctor), with dual italian/iranian citizenship due to the ius sanguinis (iranian mother, italian father) just because of the USA sanctions. If that's not WRONG, tell me what it is.

<comment><USER25> It is targeting everyone.

As an European I would love to visit Iran. Amazing country, some friends there, direct flights... But I would lose ESTA and would need to apply for a visa before visiting US.

<comment> rbrtdrmpc- I feel you, this friend of mine had the same thought one year ago, he then decided that it will be ok for him to not visit the US in the next ten years then he went to Iran and had a lovely time there, he was so overwhelmed by the iranians and didn't regret anything. One of the funniest thing he saw was this kid dancing with a donkey costume and blasting a trumpet (you know the annoying vuvuzela thing) in a mosquee, what a dangerous country.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This get me thinking: are Multinational Companies actually multinational? If their HQ is in one place and they have to operate globally either under jurisdiction or under board pressures of that place, isn't it super dangerous for the people that buy into their "multinational" narrative and place their trust under the assumptions that infrastructure would only seldomly be biased?

EDIT: "seldomly" should be "to a less extent"

</comment><comment><USER27> Can't really expect the corporate tentacles of the National Security™ apparatus to comply, especially when there's a slew of bright eye'd folks willing to step up to the plate to pay down their student loans by drinking the kool-aid and lube up to jump in bed with such corporates.

Best to hope for in this environment is to expect nation states to waste more and more resources toward such unproductive endeavors and exploit the gaps.

</comment><comment><USER28> There are alternative app stores available, for example: [https://code.tutsplus.com/articles/10-alternative-android- ap...](https://code.tutsplus.com/articles/10-alternative-android-app-stores-- cms-20999)

Does anyone know enough about the legal angle to talk about what it would take to develop an alternative platform not impacted by US sanctions?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not just about the publishers, Apple and Google are being forced to ban any transaction from Iran. Iranian apps cannot be published from any provider around the world on Apple devices. Apple home, Google Chromecast and other appliances don't even work in Iran.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> We tried to use Stripe Atlas to open a company in USA because Stripe is not yet available in India. From the start they bombarded us questions like, 'How will you prevent users from Iran/N.Korea etc from using your product.' It went on for about 3 months. We gave up and switched to Singapore. Couldn't have been happier. Singapore is too damn good for business.

</comment><comment><USER30> And scientists.

I recently got contacted about an old genetics project that stopped working because Java applets. I told them I can reimplement it in JS, just pay for my time. They said they would love to, but they are an Iranian institute, and I'm a US citizen. So it's a lose-lose situation.

</comment><comment><USER31> There is no reason America shouldn't have an ally, or at least a trading partner, in Iran. The ONLY reason they don't is because of the influence of the lsrael lobby over every level of US foreign policy.

</comment><comment><USER32> Can someone who is educated on the subject help me understand what the sanctions are about? I've tried Google, but I'm sure HN'ers have a higher IQ/EQ on average than whatever is on the first page of Google results.

</comment><comment><USER33> Judging from the quality of discourse in this thread, Hackernews are evidently some of the least enlightened people I encounter in a peer-group setting.

</comment><comment><USER34> _The 80 million Iranians are currently held hostage by two entities. First, it is their own government (which is by far not the worse in the world, being in Iran feels more free than one would expect)._

The Iranian people are not the target -- Persia is a rich ancient civilization that's being repressed -- the West knows this and wants to see the Iranian people's massive creative potential unleashed.

Sanctions are designed as a non-kinetic force applied to pressure the Iranian government into a weakened position. The Iranian people play a significant role in amplifying the pressure. The louder and more vocal their voice becomes, the more pressure their government will feel. If the Iranian people want a change, the change has to come from within.

At some point, when the people amplify the pressure beyond the point the government can withstand, the situation tips and the people force their government to release. This is the effect the sanctions are designed to create.

<comment><USER12> > Sanctions are designed as [..] when the people amplify the pressure beyond > the point the government can withstand

Do you have any historic evidence that it ever worked like this?

I don't, and therefore, I think the sanctions are a predatory policy designed to break the country so it could be attacked by the U.S., where the military- industrial complex is getting too horny.

I mean, I could understand sanctions in the style of European sanctions against Russia, which are targeted at oligarchs and very specific in avoiding damage to ordinary Russians. That at least would be understandable.

But Iran sanctions.. no, I think we know the history all too well.

> The Iranian people are not the target

This is just empty words. Action speaks louder.

And even if the sanctions work as you describe in practice:

Vaclav Havel said that it's not a moral obligation of oppressed people to revolt (and risk their life), and therefore, it is immoral to pressure them to do that. (What is the point of fighting for freedom if you don't get to choose whether you want to be fighting or not?) I think I agree with that, and I am certainly glad that my country (Czech Republic) was never a target of severe U.S. sanctions.

<comment><USER35> > > Sanctions are designed as [..] when the people amplify the pressure beyond > the point the government can withstand

> Do you have any historic evidence that it ever worked like this?

It worked on South Africa. My hope is similar sanctions could be put on Israel to force it to end the occupation of Palestine. But in these cases the sanctions are for specific wrongdoings that the State can address. The US sanctions against Venezuela, Iran and previously on Cuba are much broader in scope. The US is essentially saying "we will sanction you until you roll over and die" which is of course completely counter-productive. The mullahs in Iran aren't going to surrender just because the US tells them to.

<comment><USER36> "It worked on South Africa... in these cases the sanctions are for specific wrongdoings that the State can address."

Apartheid South Africa was justifiably asked to change their entire government system, and to hand over power from the ruling racial minority to the majority. Iran - even according to Pompeo's maximalist "12 demands"[0] - <USER2> being asked for far less: none of the demands relate to internal affairs, much less asking the mullahs to lose influence on the government.

[0] [https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/05/mike-pompeo- speech-12...](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/05/mike-pompeo- speech-12-demands-iran-180521151737787.html)

<comment><USER12> There is also a question (even if we take the demands at the face value, for the sake of argument), how can public in Iran reasonably check that government is following these demands?

Really, how is that going to work operationally. Let's say I am demonstrating at the street in Tehran. I can readily tell that there is undemocratic oppression, OK. But how can I check that the government is not developing nuclear weapons or supporting terrorism, when this is hard to tell for normal citizen even in democratic countries?

IMHO, for the objectives to make sense, it would require these to be verifiable by the people pressuring the government (which you have so kindly decided to pull into the conflict). The fact that these demands are not verifiable is casting a shadow over the motives.

<comment><USER36> You as an individual can check very little. That's true even in a full democracy. Even in a full democracy, you often have to rely on friends, media and civil society to know what's going on.

If there's is some space for an opposition (which your demonstration example implicitly assumes), there's some space for listening to non-regime media and organizations. Indeed, many people in Iran use Satellite TV despite it being officially banned. They may or may not trust American-owned TV, but there are plenty of alternatives.

If, for example, inspectors are not allowed to check for nuclear activity, the world would raise a ruckus and the average Iranian citizen will be able to hear it and evaluate the validity of these claims, even if the regime tried to hide it.

That said, I suspect the intention of the current American administration is to do a new deal with the regime, not to have the people rise up. They may wish for that scenario, but it's not something they are working towards or something they rely on in order to pressure the regime.

<comment><USER12> > You as an individual can check very little

I think it depends on the issue. Things that affect lot of people (like can I criticize government official in public or police brutality against a minority) are easier to check than things that do not (development of nuclear weapons).

Also, democratic systems have sort of "defense in depth". I know that some free media exist, so I can reasonably trust their independence on government. We have freedom of information acts, which requires the government to at least tell the truth. And so on.

So it seems to me, to ask Iranians to rise up if they feel their government is lying about development of nuclear is effectively equivalent of developing a modern democratic society, at the very least.

> the world would raise a ruckus and the average Iranian citizen will be able > to hear it and evaluate the validity of these claims

That is still very vague, how are they gonna do it. Based on my indirect experience with communist regime, majority will probably believe foreign media unconditionally (believe me, they will know state media lie constantly, I know many emigrants were surprised that there is unemployment in the West, they thought it was a state propaganda), and a decent minority (about 20-30%) will not believe these claims and support the ruling class.

But - only extremely small minority will consider "international ruckus" a large enough problem so they would risk a life for it. Especially from a community which decided to throw sanctions on the nation.

> intention of the current American administration is to do a new deal with > the regime

Well, that's how this problem needs to be resolved - in a diplomatic way. That's the standard way to do it - mutual inspections to see if there are nuclear weapons, or mutual disarmament. You don't need to involve the citizens, especially since they cannot meaningfully keep tabs on their own government.

<comment><USER36> So you agree that in the case where the international community finds Iran has an active program to build nuclear weapons, most Iranians would believe them? So the information problem is practically solved.

As for motivation, well, there are already significant sanctions on Iran, and that's with merely the US alone. If Iran restarts a significant nuclear program, I think the response would be much more than my previous euphemism of 'ruckus'.

But I don't expect (or ask) the Iranian people to rise up, though this regime well deserves it. That would be really nice, but it seems to me the other outcomes are more likely. Most likely both sides will be able to reach some diplomatic conclusion (since neither wants a war).

<comment><USER12> > o you agree that in the case where the international community finds Iran > has an active program to build nuclear weapons, most Iranians would believe > them?

I think it's a moot point. If Iranian government agrees to the inspections (which is a big question why it should), then there is no purpose for them to hide the program from their own public.

There is a distinction between sanctions and diplomacy. Sanctions are not diplomacy. Diplomacy is making an agreement (on the level of national leadership, sidestepping the question of its legitimacy), which might be easier to get without threats or undermining the economy of the nation.

It's my opinion that nuclear disarmament can only happen if we treat everyone the same. So the countries which have significant nuclear stockpiles cannot go around and tell other countries to suck it up.

> But I don't expect (or ask) the Iranian people to rise up

Why do you defend sanctions as a tool, then?

<comment><USER36> "If Iranian government agrees to the inspections (which is a big question why it should), then there is no purpose for them to hide the program from their own public."

Sure there is. It's to make them appear to be defending themselves from a nefarious foreign plot. 'We cheated because we can' is not a good PR point even in those regimes.

"If Iranian government agrees to the inspections (which is a big question why it should)"

The truth of the matter is that the world doesn't want a nuclear arms race in the ME, nor do we want crazies which threatened to destroy another state to have nukes. That is treating Iran uniquely, but it's a unique regime with unique behaviour.

"So the countries which have significant nuclear stockpiles cannot go around and tell other countries to suck it up."

In our reality they can. That may not be ideal, but it is stable and prevents new world wars.

"Why do you defend sanctions as a tool, then?"

To get an inspection deal without sunsetting clauses and other loopholes, to pressure the regime to stop its malign foreign behaviour. I'd have also liked a change in the human rights situation, but that's apparently not a goal of this US administration.

<comment><USER12> > It's to make them appear to be defending themselves from a nefarious foreign > plot.

That doesn't make any sense, once Iran has agreed to cooperate with the inspectors.

> The truth of the matter is that the world doesn't want a nuclear arms race > in the ME

If you truly don't want that, support denuclearization of Israel.

> That may not be ideal, but it is stable and prevents new world wars.

No, it doesn't prevent new wars. How do you prove that, anyway?

> to pressure the regime to stop its malign foreign behaviour

This is pretty rich coming from the U.S., which has literally no business on the other side of the planet.

> I'd have also liked a change in the human rights situation, but that's > apparently not a goal of this US administration.

If this was their concern, they would stop supporting Saudis.

<comment><USER36> "That doesn't make any sense, once Iran has agreed to cooperate with the inspectors."

In the scenario we're talking about, Iran is cheating. Of course they'd want to hide it and claim to the populace they're just being persecuted.

"If you truly don't want that, support denuclearization of Israel."

Well, Israel has had it since the 1960s, without an arms race. Apparently neighbours are not so concerned, but with Iran involved, Saudi has already taken steps to build a reactor. Also, Iranian development can hardly be considered defensive when they are the ones threatening Israel and not the other way around.

"This is pretty rich coming from the U.S., which has literally no business on the other side of the planet."

The same argument could (and has) been used to ask US to let Europe go, first to the Germans, and then to the Commies. It's a bit rich hearing it from a continent which has profited so much from US involvement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> These sanctions are designed to foster resentment in Iranians toward their government. The seeds of this resentment are already blossoming in the post- Iran/Iraq war generation developing these apps. This generation is simply not capable of conforming to the religious zeal required of them by the ayatollahs, sanctions or not. The days are numbered for the velāyat.

The funds received by an Iranian civilian entrepreneur are still open to subjugation by the government. Without these funds, it will be more difficult for this government to destabilize neighboring states, blackmail the Sunnis across the gulf, and energize Hezbollah in their explicitly stated goals to genocide the Jews.

<comment><USER38> It doesn't work this way. Iranian government use every mean of propaganda available to them to amplify the effects of sanctions on the civilian population, and make sure that everyone thinks that the US is to blame. Sanctions that touch civilians is the gift for propaganda.

To the US credit, they were much more careful with applying sanctions to Russia: I am Russian (who lives abroad and doesn't support our current government), and despite sanctions, I still can get the US visas, open a Github account, publish apps in App Store etc. I am really lucky I am not Iranian. I can't do anything about the current government, Russia is not exactly a democracy, even if they maintain the motions and visibility of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> The US is almost at war with Iran so I personally find the title quite silly. The iranian entrepreneurs may soon find themselves blasted by tomahawk missiles.

<comment><AUTHOR> Tensions hadn't turned into war yet, of course, nobody can predict there would be actually any war or not, it seems close. But even if there's a war, there are innocent people on both sides. We can't ignore the lives of innocent people because of conflicts between politicians.

<comment><USER39> >> But even if there's a war, there are innocent people on both sides

That's the very definition of war. Sending an open letter to Google and Apple seems a bit misplaced?</comment></comment></comment>