skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Apple provides a ton of services besides the credit card processing.

- 24/7 worldwide availability, instant payment/app download
- Easy re-install after deletion, you still own the app even if deleted
- Region restriction
- Separate app pricing by region
- Revenues paid to developer from multiple region currencies without
conversion fees
- Tax calculation and collection
- Customer refunds
- User rankings and reviews
- App store advertising in category listings
- Video previews of the app in operation
- Packaging of media content allowing developers the ability to load game
levels as needed. This allows a user to start playing your game quickly.
- App sales stats
>there’s a point to be made about how much monopoly power Apple holds

>If anything, the lesson to be learned here is that if your business depends exclusively on another company for its survival then it’s not your business.

The problem is that these two ideas shouldn't coexist. If Apple does have monopoly powers then mobile app developers have no choice but to base their business's survival on the whims of Apple. Once a company reaches a near monopoly, both the laws and obligations regarding how that company must operate change.
He's allowed to do other things. Also, maybe his part of the project is done. Also the thing might be delayed.
Epic's "trap" seemed terribly tonedeaf. This will not end well for them.
I couldn't find "J for C programmers" in my installation, but there seems to be more info here.

https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Books#J_for_C_Programmers
First of all, great project! I love this kind of tool and I bookmarked it because I could definitely see myself using this.

Some feedback: you need undo capability. It's quite common to make a mistake or change your mind about something and reflexively hit cmd-z to undo it. Along those lines, you need a "select" tool to click on things so that you can move or delete them after they are added to the map. Other than that it looks promising and I hope you continue development!
Facebook left 6,500 gallons of drilling fluid off the coast of Oregon
This clearly and unambiguously crosses the line into abuse of market power.

Epic is taking them to court. What did they expect, a nice thank you and a pat on the head.
Seems pretty straightforward to me.

If you sue me, and go out of your way to publically attack me, I'm not willing to do business with you until it's settled, if ever again.
> That's not how free market works.

It... isn't? How not?

> Imagine being unable of refueling because your car does not work with standard oil pumps and you had to go to Apple licensed gas station whom Apple charges 30% to.

Then I'd probably buy a competing brand of car, if that bothered me? You know, one of my other choices on the market? Like how there are a bunch of Android device vendors and a couple Linux mobile vendors that I could choose if Apple's App Store model bothered me, rather than being something I actively want? I am 100% not following how this isn't a market working. The choices people are making may not be the ones you prefer—happens to me all the time with markets—but there are choices.

> That's exactly what many want from Apple.

> Change the rules.

Many developers and publishers, maybe. I'm very much unconvinced that's what the subset of users who are aware of this issue in the first place, want, for the most part. I think if it were a major problem for them they'd have bought an Android device, or something else.

> If they can't allow sideloading, they're not as good as I thought.

They do allow sideloading, it's just fairly inconvenient. They can't allow a form of it that's convenient enough to allow other app stores to thrive, without changing the character of the ecosystem for their users. I don't think any amount of being "good" at what they do would change that.

> If Apple sold Android powered iPhones you would still buy an iPhone, you're are buying the brand, not the product.

OK, cool, guess continuing this exchange is pointless.
If you can figure it out, you can jailbreak it; but there is no reason why jailbreaking a device is inherently possible: jailbreaks for iOS are happening later and later in the boot cycle and so are more and more limited, and we have had a single bootrom exploit in like a decade. If you want to be able to jailbreak a device it must be illegal to lock it down like that, not merely legal for someone to figure out how to maybe break the lock after you build it.
I wonder if changing the cow's diet could limit the amount of methane generated?

I've noticed that changing my own diet by eliminating animal products has cut down significantly on methane production in my own gut.

My farts literally don't smell like anything at all anymore, when a small one used to clear the room with ease.
Companies shouldn't be allowed to fire customers that blatantly break rules the customer agreed to?
You are speculating with other people’s money and at very high leverage. If the market keeps going up the amount of profit can be spectacular and the losses while also potentially spectacular may not be so bad if you don’t have any collateral in the first place.
If this law was a tax, you would be correct, but this is a law to force Google to pay news corp
I don’t have a side in this fight, but I do admire how Epic has clearly planned this out to wring every ounce of publicity and goodwill they can.

I don’t find this particular measure (shutting down the accounts) particularly sinister. Epic has made it abundantly clear they don’t like the App Store’s rules and regulations. That’s fine but it means you won’t be selling on the App Store. I see this as Apple taking them seriously on that point.

We are well past the point of negotiations here. And following from the planning point, there is zero chance Epic did not see this coming.
While I don't like Apple's 30% cut on multiplatform/subscription products, I think Epic's real motivation here is to run their own App Store, build a bigger moat and get the profits themselves (they take 12% cut, 5% if you use Unreal Engine, from developers in their store). They also make exclusive deals, bribing developers with funding/marketing support, so that the games can only bought in their store for 6-12mo. Clearly they are not welcoming to competition themselves.

Buying games on PC now means that you have to install 5 different app stores which are usually slow, buggy and not that well written cross-platform code (pretty much like Fortnite itself).

Tencent is also 40% shareholder in Epic, and there has been criticism on Epic sending user data back to China.

> In early December 2018, Epic Games announced that it would open a digital storefront to challenge Steam by using a 12% revenue split rather than Steam's 30%.[20] Epic also said that it would not impose digital rights management (DRM) restrictions on games sold through its platform.[20] The store opened days later, on December 6, 2018, as part of the Game Awards, with a handful of games and a short list of upcoming titles.[21][22] The store was open for macOS and Windows platforms before expanding to Android and other platforms.[20] Epic aims to release a storefront for Android devices, bypassing the Google Play Store, where it will similarly only take a 12% cut compared to Google's 30%. While Apple, Inc.'s monopoly on iOS currently makes it impossible for Epic to release an App Store there, analysts believe that if Google reacts to Epic's App Store by reducing their cut, Apple will be pressured to follow suit.
so "no". thanks for the followup
USA does not elect the President by way of a popular vote, so your point is irrelevant from the start. Also, no serious person believes he cheated.
No, that’s not what I’m saying.
How can you remember something you forgot could be rephrased as how can you forget something if you remembered! My experience is the same, the dreams are like a story a kaleidoscope of things that happened and ideas rather than visual memories
Ah, this is exactly how I feel like this tool should be! I found the UX on other similar apps to be confusing or lacking what I felt were fairly necessary rudimentary features.

Thanks for building this tool!
I think that's the right way to view it. People are viewing this through the lens of their current employment, but that's assuming a lot. I did something somewhat similar (in type, if not scope) when I was young and in tech support. The notable facts at the time were that a) we were friends, b) the computers were customized by us, but for the most part interchangeable because a web browser was the software needed, which allowed us to install Linux if we wanted, and c) I didn't really hack it as much as use an admin account he gave me to help in do something on his box.

Friendship comes fast when you're in your early 20's and there's lots of free time to screw around. It's twenty years later now, and I probably wouldn't do that to any of my coworkers. I probably would do it to any of my siblings though. How invasive you can get away with a prank being without upsetting the person targeted is largely based on trust.

When I pranked my friend, the company we were at had probably 30 people working for it, and there were maybe 16 of us in tech support total. It's easy to trust others when you're such a small group, because you can actually know most the people you work with. If your company employs even hundreds of people, that's much harder to do.
This is getting interesting. Looks like Apple wants to set an example. I'm wondering what Epic is going to do after this...
What they actually do is give data to law enforcement when users make violent and terroristic threats, which is what the right-wing users described in the article did. I know this because I read the article.

Reading the article is usually a great way to find out what the article says, and I recommend it to anyone who is interested in knowing what they’re talking about before they open their mouth to opine.
tl;dr: Only haters and lovers write you. Everyone else is indifferent. You don't care about the haters, only the lovers.

Well, that's what makes his letter interesting. There are a hundred and one people who don't like your product. There are all the undecided people and non-promoter users who won't write you about things about your product. And then there are the super-fans.

You can win over the undecided and the non-promoter users, you have the super-fans, and it'll take a lot of work to get the people who don't like you to like you, so you spend your time on the first two categories.

Given that only the last two write you, and you don't care about the last, it makes sense for the super-fans to make it clear that they're super-fans. And if a super-fan is telling you you're making things hard for them, you care.
I agree, I do side projects on the weekend to decompress, but...not a great look in 4 years and running of consumer fraud

edit: rolling my eyes at downvotes, we have a CEO and CTO selling "full self driving" for several thousand dollars, promising cross-continental trips by end of year, promising you're buying a money printing robotaxi, telling you to buy today before they raise prices because fair market value is $150K. You have direct evidence of this as recently as 72 hours ago. If you're still splitting hairs to infer good faith, who is benefiting from that?
I tend to start work early and get a lot of work done in a short amount of time. I drink bulletproof coffee right when I wake up, fast until 1, and finish work by 430, when my kid wakes up from their nap. I am lucky to not be pulled into a lot of meetings, so I have large blocks of time dedicated to only coding. I try not to do anything else during work hours except work, and maintain a flow state for most of the time.
Apple sells access to your wallet, not data, similarly to how ad-supported services sell access to your eyeballs, not data.

To exclude other companies from accessing your wallet Apple must control the software running on your phone, which means blocking you from installing or modifying software on the device you supposedly own.
It could be cool for creating some equivalent of wifi geocaching. Small simple websites that you need to get within a specific area to access.
We've been back since May, no changes other than face-coverings required while in the general building (but not always at your own desk). AFAIAC we locked down too early in my neck of the woods, the infection rate is only going upward at this point, but another "lock-down" isn't going to happen.
Every one of those other than the used physical copy involves a large cut to Sony.

It is true, there is no physical media for Android or iOS purchases.
Rogue Microwave Ovens Are the Culprits Behind Mysterious Radio Signals (2015)
How to Use Spotipy API to Scrape Spotify Data
Relevant: https://cdn2.unrealengine.com/epic-v-apple-8-17-20-768927327...
At least on iOS, native apps matter because Apple suffocated web apps by blocking a lot of functionality (APIs, PWA support).
30%, amazingly enough.
Liability is always limited to the value of the company. Thus even in the extreme case liability would at worst force companies to run each pice of software as it’s own legal entity. Aka Microsoft is going to keep selling Windows as an OS even if they need to spin off a subsidiary.
A monopoly needs to dominate the market. Apple is not, it does not dominate the smartphone or mobile OS market. People on here can't get past this basic fact.

> It is unfair if they are engaging in anti-competitive practices to prevent competitions from competing.

Which has been proven untrue - because there are 2 million apps on the marketplace. The rules are out there. I haven't seen a case where the rules were violated and nothing was done.

> Allowing alternative apps stores to compete against apple's would make it fair, and giving users the option and ability to do this, easily. So, specifically I should be able to install a Steam, or epic app store, on the iphone, without apple having any ability at all to stop me, or take a cut.

This is a significant risk to the product. Opening it up means that the quality of the product and consumer suffers. The competing app store is the Play Store. Feel free to switch to that OS.

> Of course it is. If you have a monopoly, then the harm is on the customers of the market. That includes both buyers and sellers. That is how monopolies work.

Sigh. It isn't a monopoly, but I'll humor you. Go ask any iPhone user what they think about the app store. I highly doubt you'll find any significant figure upset.
I think it would be interesting to approach this from the language mode side, insisting on structured buffers (syntax tree with rope leaves†). It is pretty rare that two clients (mode and user window, or two user windows) would lock a single large leaf, so you could just choose an authority/leader for each subtree, and have the leader explicitly and synchronously sequence the peon clients' edits.

Then, working backward from language specific modes, I could imagine a way to generalize this to free form text, by negotiating the split points with the authority (or not at all, in the case of free text being edited by one client).

Though I guess for now just making these completely synchronous across the whole buffer, as you have, is fine in most cases, and already a significant improvement vs some editors (looking at you, beloved Emacs).

† i.e. for js, you could imagine a tree of statements/blocks containing expressions (maybe incl. operator precedence); for Clojure you could imagine a plain syntax tree, for JSON you could imagine it being the literal JSON data (plus whitespace metadata).
Traditional QM requires an outside observer but has nothing to do with consciousness. Consider the collision events recorded at the LHC: the vast majority have never been looked at by a human.
I did not get that far!
>megaserg 28 days ago [–]

>I think this was written by GPT-3.

It didn't fool everyone.
Regardless of where you buy it, Sony takes a cut--unless you buy used.

And IAP, which is the subject under discussion, is 100% through Sony, and Sony still gets 30%.
> …that I can trust to issue refunds and discontinue subscriptions promptly.

This is a big one. I'm significantly more likely to subscribe to a service/app if I'm able to do so through iTunes, because it means the app developer can't directly reach into my wallet. If I hit "Cancel Subscription" in the iTunes subscription panel, it's canceled, no ifs, ands, or buts, and no hidden unsubscribe links or intentionally obtuse unsubscription processes to have to contend with.

This is a huge thing for consumers to give up for the sake of developer freedom. If Apple begins to allow third party payment systems, developers should be required to connect said payment systems to Apple-provided standardized subscription control APIs so strong user control is maintained.
So if the government doesn’t side with Epic or bail them out at this point are they done for?

Seems like Epic put everything on the line.
I experienced that myself first hand. Players are no activists, only some who make a lot of noise. You simply mustn't instrumentalize them.

As you said: people see that the game does not work anymore. Who is to blame? And what can we do about it? Install another game, because what they see is that other games are available and in the end, this is not about Epic, it is about fun for people.
Have you learned Chinese, Japanese or Korean? Perhaps try classical Chinese.
Play charges 30% as well, it seems to be the market price.

If that is exorbitant, what SHOULD the price be?
Really? I got the opposite impression. Apple's tonedeafness and developer hostility is finally being challenged by a (comparative) underdog.
I am making that move, definitely surf motivated. But the sc crowds made me hesitate. im hoping the weekdays at weird hours will be better then weekend afternoons when i was there along with everyone else. i think living there gives you access to the other beaches no one talks about, up 1 and stuff. i also like to think i can out surf most people after 17 years lol. all through high school and college i never surfed weekends or holidays, i got my fill before work surfing the week. expecting to go back to that

in the end for me ob is to hit or miss and the season is really only fall. 8ft+ ob when the solid winter swell come in gets crazy. spring and summer just blown wind. pacifica has weird locals and crap waves. hmb barely breaks and traffic sucks. fall surf at ocean beach is about as good as it gets though, ill miss that for sure. post covid ill get my perfect wave fill in hawaii, indo, central america i guess, ive saved so much money the last few months
What the f*ck is going on at Apple?
Why would you ask data scientists about RL? I bet no one there uses deep learning either. That does not mean much.
This is an invented problem. I would assign zero space in my head to this if I were hiring.
> Should closed hardware (that owns its entire stack) even be legal to sell?

I think the problem here arises not from the DRM (which I tend to believe is OK for clear cut cases like the above movie player), but from the universality of the smartphone device. Because of this universality, the phone is in a way "essential", so the "contract" you (as an end user) have with Apple is not able to encompass every use case of the device.

In this particular case, you might have bought the phone/tablet with the sole (or main - I know kids) purpose to play Fortnite on it. Now, because of politics, you can no longer use the phone for your initial intended purpose. Not because something you did, but because of something Apple and Epic did.

So it should be either forbidden for Apple, or they should be obliged to fully refund you, because the device is no longer usable for the original purpose you used it.

In an "ideal" world (with much less regulation), Apple would not be protected from such litigation (and now they are, because of the fine print) where users demand refund because of such things, but the world is not ideal. The regulation is there, so we should extend it onto Apple, who need to be "reduced" to something more like a utility company.
I'm one of those who probably cannot be convinced to go back to the office. Why would I want to go back to losing an hour and a half a day to commuting? What problem does this solve for me? I find most aspects of my job are actually easier when working remotely - in particular, being able to get people to leave me the hell alone for those two or three hour blocks of concentration. I used to have to go hide at the office in order to work without someone asking me a question every fifteen minutes.
Vandalism is a crime like any other. If my business or car or house were destroyed, you better believe I'd want the people responsible arrested. Responding to police brutality (a serious problem, to be sure) with more brutality is also a sad joke.
How to make a career change into the IT industry in 2020
I am an early 30s man. I am located in New England. I have a BA in Economics from about a decade ago but no experience in the field. I have worked predominantly low level jobs for various reasons since college. I am interested in getting into IT. Despite my work history I am an intelligent and capable problem solver. What are some of the most time and cost effective methods to get into IT? I am most interested in infrastructure and system administration like jobs. Like IT for a financial institution, college, hospital, factory etc. I am less interested in "web development" but am not excluding that from my options since that still appears to be a high demand sector of the industry. What is a reasonable price for a boot camp in the fall of 2020. A highly rated state college near me is offering a 6 month part time online program for "full stack" development for around $11,500. This seems a little high. What does HN think?

As I mentioned I am more interested in back end, like networks, servers, databases, etc, than designing web pages but I do understand that many web-pages have a back end too and are not just graphic design so maybe a bootcamp is a good option to get into IT.

Another option is self / directed study for certificates like A+, Network+ etc. What are the best certificates and what is the best approach to get them?

Last, I am flexible. What is the most in demand area of IT right now and for the near future? I am trying to determine what I should focus on studying to get the best bang for my time and buck.
Still going on... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/02/pentagon-bal...
It’s an attractive idea to anyone who hasn’t actually managed a team of Indian devs or worked with a typical Indian BPO company. IME they tend to require an obscene amount of oversight and micromanagement. I’m certain that’s not categorically true of all Indian labor, but it’s definitely been true of all my experiences.
> Apple's cut of sales for the service they provide is pretty small compared to the costs of doing it yourself

Pretty small? I think Epic, who makes billions and billions of dollars in overall sales (though revenue is unknown specific to Apple devices, but fair to say at least $100M), would strongly disagree with this point.
I suppose what you don't want is to publish everyone's exam results, and then have one of your helpful academics say "oh, but of course these results are rubbish", and then have a massive public scandal about how the results are rubbish.

However, what they opted for was the same thing, but without the second step.
> It's very weird to be in love with and scared of the same thing: Apple.

Sound like an abusive relationship, and like what an abused partner would say to try to rationalize the fact that they're economically dependent on the abuser.
I’m guessing the President of Belarus is backed by Putin?
Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is pushing a bill to allow employers to kill off employees that way without consequences.[1] See "SEC. 122. LIABILITY; SAFE HARBOR".[2]

So get back to work and die for the Man!

[1] https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-07-29/covid-empl...
[2] https://www.congress.gov/116/bills/s4317/BILLS-116s4317is.pd...