skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There was a period of a few months when I was first learning about web apps where I saw "i18n" multiple times. The first time I came across it, I tried to sound it out:

i18n -> I-one-eight-n -> iwonation

I was already a couple of rabbit holes deep at the time and didn't have the mental capacity to look it up and wrap my head around yet another new concept.

"Oh boy." I thought to myself, "One more word I've never heard of, probably representing some complicated CS concept."

I was so annoyed when I finally found out what was going on.
I feel slightly weird about being so specific about it, but there were only two people at Mozilla who were on the core team: Niko and Manish.

Alex hasn't been on the core team since February. He's still on the Cargo teams and the wasm WG though.
The really tragic part about this comment is the idea that what was needed was a "big, well funded company" to hit the duopoly.

The law exists that the strongest might not always get their way. Literally anyone hitting it /should/ have the same claims, rights, laws, and the same process as the very rich and strong when up against these enormous "legal persons". It's an ideal and we won't achieve perfection in trying to get there and there are tradeoffs with other ideals.

But let's never lose sight of the ideal of equality before the law and the strongest should not always get their way.

It's just so important. Without it, we end up with people as the enemy of the state with its monopoly on violent enforcement, then on to revolution and all that horror.
I think it's an ideal that is slightly more important than the desire and profit of google and apple claiming the right to tax success and profit as though they were nation-states and the welfare of other big, well-funded profitable companies that don't like that. Regulatory capture is a disaster and an even bigger one that it first appears, be you leftist, rightist, collectivist, rugged individualist or, more hopefully, someone not so easy to label who thinks about individual issues and wants an outcome approximating what you think is best for everyone. We're all united against corruption, I have no doubt, we only disagree on whether particular cases are or are not that. The unity opposed to corruption is a thing that gets lost quite often as the division are imposed on us.
They would like to own every step of the process, and people actually put in the time to build apps on their platform and people line up to buy their hardware.

Wake me up from this horrible nightmare.
Parent said that it was unfair for Apple to make money from a game that they had no hand in creating:

> By any measure, having to hand over half a billion dollars is just an insane cut of revenue to have to give two companies that had absolutely nothing to do with conceiving, designing or developing such a successful game.
Or tweak what you got
The relationship between game and console makers, and the one between console makers is very different than one between app makers and Google/Apple.

Game studios and console manufacturers have historically negotiated on relatively equal footing. It's as important to console makers that game studios make games as it is for game studios to have access. So studios are courted and get a relatively fair shake. Apple/Google don't care if you don't make an app for their system. They're not giving any discounts or incentives to app makers.

Console makers also are in a more competitive market. There were usually three makers plus near competitors like PC, web, and arcade gaming. Plus, not owning a console was an option.

On the other hand Apple/Google barely compete with each other. Pretty much everyone is going to buy a smart phone and they're the two options. They're a cushy duopoly with no incentive to rock the boat.
Samsung put together hardware to make a phone. They don't develop the software (OS, API, directX equivalent, iCloud/GoogleDrive, etc...). It's maybe one tenth of what Apple does all things considered.

edit: Samsung does a bit of software, trying to push its own applications with subscriptions and bundling crapware pre installed with the phone.
The problem is that app stores are charging 30%. More Operating Systems and competition would be good, but it's not going to fix the problem. After all, Steam takes a 30% cut, and they've got a client for multiple desktop operating sytems, as well as numerous stores competing against them (Windows Store, Mac Store, Itch.io, GoG, Humble, Greenman gaming, tons more). Normal people are just not going to install another operating system on their phone, or app store for that matter.

Apple or Google may cave in this particular case because Epic has some leverage with their userbase, but I'd be shocked to see either of them lower the rates for anyone other than Epic. I think it's going to take legislation to fix this.
Just as counterpoint, we got iPadOS and that seems to be the opposite of convergence or do you see it in a different way?
There’s probably some BS law somewhere outlawing a private citizen from collecting this type of information.
I think this argument is on shaky ground when Epic Game Store can only be installed on Windows. Rocket League lost MacOS/Linux support when absorbed into the Epic Game Store. Imagine if Windows was the only way to distribute games.

Further, if you want to target mobile devices, you can distribute on Android.
> Android has a plethora of app stores, there have always been tons of them.

Google put restrictions on Android so that third party app stores can't install in the background, auto-upgrade or batch install.

> Google Play Store won out on Android simply because the multitude of stores was a nightmare for customers.

The Play Store is the only app store on Android where users can install apps in the background, auto-upgrade apps or batch install apps.

The reason the Play Store won out on Android is because it the only app store that Google allows to have the features app stores require.
One way to deal with AI/ML shortcomings I've seen is to require end-user intervention for edge cases; such as a support chatbot that transfers the customer to a human rep if it can't understand the issue. Human intervention isn't mentioned in the article but maybe they'd put that under "narrow the problem," or they may not consider that a solution since human involvement eats into margins.

I believe all software companies will be AI companies in <5 years. By then, not having AI/ML would be like not having a database today. There will be no choice but to deal with the long tail, and the competitive advantage will go to the company that does it better. That makes this advice all the more timely and important, and it also means opportunities for startups to innovate in this space. Eg, better model optimization, low-cost operations without regressing to colocated GPUs, etc.

"The critical design element is that each model addresses a global slice of data... There is no substitute, it turns out, for deep domain expertise." Totally true for marketing as well. Much more effective to define audience segments and tailor the messaging and marketing for each.
I agree 100%, although I will give Steam some credit: when it launched it was universally maligned, but with enough work it became probably the digital storefront people are most loyal to, and for some justifiable reasons; and it passes the most important test: many prefer it to piracy.

Go get is weird. I guess it’s still federated even with GOPROXY as a middleman, but I am still not sure how I feel about all of it. It makes sense from the perspective of ensuring things don’t maliciously break, but it feels less obvious what it’s doing than I’d hope, and that probably makes many uneasy.
I don't have time to respond to every comment. The court case argues that apple monopolizes the iOS App Distribution market. So they claim a real monopoly.

Similarly, I'm sure Walmart monopolizes the Walmart distribution market.

As that law has been interpreted, it is not illegal for a company to have a monopoly, to charge "high prices," or to try to achieve a monopoly position by what might be viewed by some as particularly aggressive methods. The law is violated only if the company tries to maintain or acquire a monopoly through unreasonable methods.

They STARTED the app store with these terms, that is literally the OPPOSITE of achieving a monopoly with predatory or below market pricing. They did such a good job that despite the high price most developers make LOTS of money on the app store, and users value many of the elements as well.

Anyways, will be an interesting case, but it's not "crazy" that someone doesn't have time to respond to every point on HN - seriously HN has gone full outrage / offense these days with no ability to just discuss merits, consider other viewpoints.
I don't have problems with disconnections on Galaxy, the only probem is that you still need the third-party stores at all on your computer.
I mean, rust does have the equivalent of #ifdef. There are platform-specific things.

It's just that, with the benefit of hindsight, we designed support in three major layers:

* core, which only relies on there being like, a symbol for memcpy

* alloc, which gives you a heap

* std, which gives you operating system-dependent features

Based on this hierarchy, a lot of libraries that are OS dependent may use only core, or core + alloc. And way more crates do this than you might think, and it's pretty easy to move a crate to them if they truly don't need all that libstd has to offer.
Yes, in the beginning the idea was that the browser would be responsible for rendering pages nicely. So you could render them in high quality, like current desktop engines, or very quickly in a mobile environment. But of course, publishers didn't like the loss of control. And now we're stuck with a complex tangle of technologies that keep getting out of control.
I was particulary offended by this in the recent Star Trek: Picard.

In previous shows the Federation has demonstrated the ability to create totally flawless and interactable holograms.

Yet somehow in this show everyone has switched over to glowly flickering interfaces hovering over your desk.

In the headquarters of Star Fleet, a giant hologram of a star ship is in the atrium, and it glitches out for a moment as the camera looks at it just to let the viewer know it's a hologram.

Not only is there no reason for holograms to glitch out all the time assuming that the technology could be created, but this TV series has already demonstrated their ability to do this much better!
> cripple your devices and both dump you in their walled garden

What? This certainly doesn’t cripple the devices, and I’m the one who purchased products I knew would only work with Apple. That’s consumer choice.
I don’t think Fortnite has much in the way of randomized loot boxes, but instead sells cosmetic dlc that can be partially earned through playtime.
There’s something that feels a little sketch about how they use time pressure to encourage money spend, but I do know plenty of people who just don’t bother with skins.
Let's assume that phones are general purpose computing devices.

So what ? There is no legal requirement that computers must have user-installable apps or comply with some standard around openness. Nor is there some rationale as to why computers should be treated differently to any other device that can run apps.

And if Sony decides to ship a browser with PS5 does it suddenly switch to a general purpose computer device and must allow competing app stores. And if they remove it does it switch back to a console.

The whole concept is completely nonsensical and unworkable.
A smartphone has a pretty defined purpose: communication. It's powerful and generic enough to be a general purpose computing device, sure, but the vast majority of users use it to do just that: make calls, send messages (whether via traditional SMS or social media offerings). It has some secondary usage such as internet browsing (primarily consuming streamed content, these days) and photography (largely for messaging/social media purposes). Occasionally it might be used for something more heavy duty, like some light editing of photos and videos. Some people play games on it. But it's still oriented around being a communication device.

There isn't much difference between that and a modern gaming console (apart from the orientation being around games/interactive entertainment). Take my PS4, for example: beyond the games there's pretty capable light photo and video editing software, a web browser (based on Webkit, actually, and has a surprisingly pleasant and minimal UI/UX even when using just the controller and not an external keyboard and mouse), a ton of content apps (Netflix, Disney+, Spotify, YouTube, DAZN, etc) as well as Twitch and the Playstation Network platform (essentially social media). In my opinion the only thing holding it back from gaining more apps and completely eating up the lower end of the desktop market is that developing apps for it is prohibitively expensive (gotta order a dev kit). Even at that I still plan to keep it around as a very light desktop alternative when I replace it with the next generation.
There is no concept of a “fair” margin beyond which companies may not charge more.
I've yet to see an "AI" that is not just memorizing data.
> ...that works right up until Apple bans you, or one of your favorite services, or just demands you pony up 30% of all the money you spend online.

Another commenter framed it well: that Apple behaves both as a consumer union as well as a protection racket, sometimes hiding behind the former in pursuit of the latter. It's definitely worth questioning if 30% is a fair transaction fee, but OTOH that's how much every app store charges in the market today, including Epic's very own.

> You think that's unlikely? In the 80s, Microsoft was the hero and IBM was the villain. In the late 90s and early 2000s, Google was everyone's favorite. During the Arab Spring, Facebook was a popular tool for liberation.

Yes, and IBM eventually withered away into irrelevance and Microsoft hasn't created a business with dominant market share since Office. Facebook still is a tool for liberation, just for the "wrong" people, and Google still provides a robust Search and Maps product. One day, both of those companies might find themselves no longer the dominant player — just like DEC, IBM, and Microsoft.

> The only long-term defense we have is decentralizataion, and you're fighting that. Why? So you won't get spam that you never see?

I understand that, decentralization has a lot of merit — it's what affords us the option to not use Apple at all and have nothing to do with its walled garden. We still have the option to not use Apple today. The day this stops being true is the day that we all have to worry.
Not all games. If you make the game with Unreal Engine, it's free.

UE4 itself is free until you make $1mil lifetime per game, and then 5% after that, IIRC.

But unlike Google and Apple's store, there are plenty of other stores on Windows, and making your own store is really easy. It can literally just be a website with downloads.
The predominant test is market or pricing power, whether the people you are selling the good or service move to putative competitors in response to pricing/conditions changes you make. If Apple makes their terms more onerous, does it drive purchasers of their app distribution service to the Play Store? If not, they aren't competing in the same market.
Are we finally going to get the transparent displays from sci-fi movies?
> Samsung put together hardware to make a phone. They don't develop the software (OS, API, directX equivalent, iCloud/GoogleDrive, etc...).

Precisely, and they also profit off the phone.

And yet Apple double-profits off both the phone and the apps, and they shovel the cash away.

The protest by these companies is entirely sound.
Thanks for clarifying, boogies.

I agree. Apple should not charge 30% for this type of transaction, which is just the resupply of virtual currency.

Apple should have a lower tier fee for this type of ongoing service transaction, which is clearly different to a sale in which a new customer is converted.

If Apple had a service tier with a fee of say 5% for virtual currency they’d still be compensated for providing the platform, but not excessively. Consumers and software vendors would benefit commensurately.

This two tiered model is just what happens in traditional pre-digital capitalism. Furniture stores charge 30-50% markup to cover the overheads of showroom rent and sales staff. Financial services companies like forex and credit cards charge 3-18% because they have different overheads and provide different value-add compared to retail sellers.
Honestly curious, since I haven't been following news as closely as I probably should have: has Apple done anything to actively hinder those who wish to jailbreak their devices beyond patching exploits?
Caltech Undergraduate Program to Be Fully Remote in Fall 2020
Developing Python with Poetry and POETRY2NIX
How does a rallied user base win a lawsuit?
What are the obvious benefits?

My experience is that people who tend to disparage web tech don't have much experience building clients in general, so they think building web clients is hard and annoying because it's the web without realizing it's because it's a client.
> science fiction movies have used transparent displays

I always figured this was for cinematographic reasons. It lets you see what’s on the screen and the character’s face simultaneously.
Android requires users to go through the explicit install and upgrade screen to upgrade apps outside of the Play Store. That means that F-Droid can't upgrade applications in the background, nor can they be upgraded automatically. Batch installs are also disabled for third party app stores.
3) There's no choice to target iOS user.
This is the complete opposite of holding Apple liable for sideloaded apps. Apple was a direct party to these transactions.

If Apple isn't the payment processor, they're off the hook.
A unit fee for each distribuion of a couple of cents is warranted here and NO MORE than that. And it should be a flat fee for each unit be it 1 unit of a billion unit. Possibly with volume discounts if there were any variation in that pricing.

Apple and Google are claiming the right to tax the success of others as though they were nation states and had been granted that right by popular mandate.

A percentage? Of revenue? From companies that refuse to pay a percentage of profit in acutal tax to governments who actually do have that mandate to impose the tax.

Evil is what evil does. Call it out.
That existed for years in the form of Windows RT. It's also an option in Windows 10 called S mode.[1] I wouldn't buy such a device for myself, but I'd certainly consider it for my grandmother. It seems like a useful way to prevent naive users from installing malware.

1. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4020089/windows-10-...
This is a good comment. I think democratizing application building will have all sorts of wild effects on the near future.
It would make more sense to just have panels on your dock so you could have more of them and thee wouldn't have to be designed into the boat.
I think one solution would be like a purism laptop (and upcoming phone) - hardware switches (they one for camera/mic, one for bt/wifi)
Slightly tangential, but why are Pacific Islanders often considered in the same "ethnic group" as Asians in the USA?

They're about as similar as North Africans and Europeans.
Dude, maybe cool down a little. I understand you feel really strongly about this, but there's no need for personal attacks. We're all dealing with the implications of this, and there are pros and cons on both sides. This is a nuanced issue.

And if you'll excuse some unsolicited feedback, your arguments will bear way more weight if you do away with the histrionics.
I don't find it easy to have to individually upgrade each app because Google decided that third part app stores are not allowed to batch upgrade in the background.
That's a great idea, thanks!
mOS is not directly related to the work described in that paper, but some of the stuff described there; e.g., reducing lock contention in physical memory page management, is something we do in mOS as well. The lightweight kernel in mOS manages the physical pages, while we use Linux functionality to manage the virtual space. (This helps with compatibility.)
We have published several papers in the ROSS series of workshops, discussing mOS: https://www.mcs.anl.gov/events/workshops/ross/2020 Our 2018 IPDS (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8425166) paper has some performance numbers, and the book here https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811366239 has a lot of detailed info and lessons learned from mOS and other Supercomputing OS projects around the world.
I think it would be nice to have a transparent oled + e-ink display. Sort of an indoor-outdoor display.
*Foreword
10 years from now people will think it was crazy that you couldn't publish a totally legit app just because you had a payment button on the app. It would be one thing for APPL to charge a low fee for listing an app to cover their costs of hosting and review, but this is 100% about squeezing everyone, because they can
Uber and Lyft to leave California after failing to delay driver status order
Oh cool, politics.
The other thing that stood out to me is this "The incidence of it is anywhere from 10 to 80 percent, even in young people who recover from a mild attack of COVID-19" about "Long COVID".

That seems very high.
I'm confused, the other story on this is "Apple kicked Fortnite off the app store". Did Google coincidentally do the same thing? Did Epic actually pull their game in both places?
There are multiple groups of people. This problem has been addressed by the nix package manager the way you would expect.
> If Apple offered other avenues for publishing apps then I think there would be no leg to stand on i.r.t their fees

People are making it seem as if Epic is an underdog with no options here. They make hundreds of millions of dollars from distributing Fortnite on the app store -- and it's a free download. Apple doesn't make a cent from helping to market and distribute this game (and I'd imagine 90% of users are free only).

Epic has the following choices:

1. Don't offer IAP at all

2. Offer microtransactions via web browser

3. Accept Apple taking the 30% cut of current pricing

4. Increase their pricing to accommodate Apple's cut

5. Withdraw the app
Yeah not sure what they were getting at. There are also a lot of people who fundamentally don't know good software engineering practices and cause a ton of tech debt
No jira sucks. Azure DevOps spoiled me. Going back to jira is painful.

Is not the process, it's the broken tool. Broken file uploads, general wonkiness and all the minor irritations that just don't get fixed.

Managers choose jira. Developers will create a process but will choose tools that work.
Unfortunately I can't edit the title
This misses one particular market though, which is the users that don't care how "My Bikes" is displayed. This is the Shopify / Squarespace market; people that just want to sell/conduct their business, not design a website.

To those people a natural language such as this could be a huge boon to business, because they could just spend an afternoon writing an instructions.txt and publish the website that night rather than spending hours figuring out how to use the built-in editor and customization options.
The only reason Linux doesn't have malware/viruses is because the number of people running it on the desktop is basically zero. And the people using them are much more technically savvy so it's really not worth anyone's trouble.

Now if you were to take the package model and move it to Windows it would be the same mess we have today.

Many of us, including Apple, do not want ransomware, malware and viruses on their phone. It's not a computer. It's a phone.
In the real world public pressure does affect court cases. Also there's clearly an attempt here to get political action on this issue.
see also: "How we lost the moon"