gurpreet-

Personally, as an app developer, I think Spotify is taking the right stance here.

I believe that Apple should take some cuts but not as high as 30%. I believe for some categories like microtransaction based apps Apple should take maybe 5%. Plus, I think that if Apple has a competing service, then it should waive the tax altogether. It's only fair.

If the only function of the App Store (or Play Store) is to provide hosting and some quality control then I don't see why apps can't be hosted on a secure website from the vendor - as far as I'm aware, Apple requires you have some sort of website anyway.

At least Google allows installing apps without the Play Store, perhaps it's time Apple permitted something similar with its apps? This could solve this whole problem and have other positive side effects such as people being less likely to jailbreak their iPhones.

Why is it a necessity to store information for 90 days? Why not 10 or 30?

This is an amazing post and one that every person who has released public works should read, including open-source maintainers.

The basic gist of it is that a game developer, Jason, released a game in the public domain for free. Some mobile developers from the company DualDecade released it on the App Store with the exact naming as the title and did not bother to highlight that it was an unofficial derivative work made by Jason. Game becomes very popular. Jason receives various emails wanting him to change the game. Jason requests that DualDecade change the name.

It draws attention to the fine lines between copyright, commercial communication, plagiarism, naming and more. I will be following this very closely. Will the creative commons licence that Jason chose hold weight, especially as it wasn't CC-BY? I guess we'll find out.

I for one love this website. So clean and aesthetically pleasing. People who aren't devs would love the attention to detail, the high-res images and the animations. Well done!

PS: You can press your arrow keys to move forwards and backwards through each slide, removing the delay between the slides.

Immensely saddening. I just read through some of his cancer tagged posts on his blog and it seemed like he was finally reclaiming his life back. So sad to read that it came back.

Hope that you find peace, my friend.

I have used CockroachDB and it a gem. Seamless replication, failover and ultra easy to setup. A bit more polish on certain aspects of it (especially querying) but overall it's excellent. I really hope that they keep their licence structure as-is.

Reading your links, it's comforting that they've thought a lot about their licences and have differing (liberal) licences for various parts of their database.

I trialled ArangoDB for a short while approximately 2 years ago. I was looking for a graph database to tinker with and learn about.

I was pleasantly surprised with ArangoDB. It was really user-friendly and I liked how easy it was to setup when compared to other multi-model databases. Definitely consider it for a hobby project.

In my opinion, the first thing you should do is write down a list of things that you're really passionate about. Is it languages? Then find a language based repository on GitHub/GitLab. Is it networking? Contribute to a project that interfaces with HTTP.

"First of all, how do you pick an area to contribute?"

I can see from your submissions history that you are interested in AI and some machine learning. Those two somewhat related fields are fields that are hot right now so finding projects on them will not be difficult. You don't need to join a super large or complex project, it could be as simple as contributing to a series of tutorials on machine learning.

"Do you go with something that's related to your field of expertise?"

Do you want to learn something new? Then find something that's not related to your field. Otherwise if you want to solve a problem in your field of expertise, then sure go with your area of expertise.

"Is it even feasible to instead pick an area that you want to learn more about?"

Yes, but it depends on the area. If it's developing an operating system, then be prepared to do a lot of reading beforehand before you even think about contributing. Project maintainers who are in charge of behemoth sized projects (such as those in charge of maintaining an operating system) tend to have little to no time to field questions. Whereas small projects and their maintainers have ample time and, in fact, would love to answer questions about their projects.

"Do you jump straight in and start fixing bugs to get started?"

Personally, yes I have if it solved a particular irk I had. Although, I would first open an issue and detail what you plan to contribute. Then send a pull request.

"What's the typical timeline by which you feel like you are being productive?"

Typically, a few months in I became really productive.

I would also suggest creating your own project rather than contributing to it. But be selfless and open-minded with it. Allow contributions and let people criticise it - it's all part of the learning experience. Helping other devs never feels like a chore and actually ends up being enjoyable.

The best thing about open-source is that I felt like I was contributing to something bigger than me. That my projects can and may live on long after I've gone. When you receive your first issue or pull request it gives you a sense of happiness that people are using something that you created. For me, that is one of the best feelings ever.

I suppose a related question is if every single person were to comment, would that be beneficial in any way?

I personally think we'd get a lot of duplicate comments stating the same thing which would reduce the overall quality of the topic at hand. An example that proves this is Ebay's user reviews. You have a lot of people participating in reviews because it's a review system that works both ways, so it's in the both user's best interest to review and rate. But most reviews are duplicates.

YouTube's comment system, which has a younger audience mainly, is rife with spam, trolling and comments that add nothing to the discussion. Is this what we want everywhere? Are those people outliers too? Or people with more spare time than people who purely browse?

I wouldn't use the term "outliers" then to describe these people. I would simply call them "people with initiative"... And in some cases "people with initiative who also want to help".

I was addicted to gaming in my teens, often staying up late nights till 4am. I'm 100% sure if I'd have stayed playing games I would have destroyed my career. I understand the allure of games. I understand the buzz of fading into a world where you can be anyone or anything.

I came to the realisation one night that I was wasting my life away. That gaming was an escape from reality. I stopped gaming completely because I felt like I was missing out on what the world had to offer.

After I stopped gaming a lot of things changed for the better. I became happier, healthier and made more friends in real life than I had ever before.

Gaming addiction should be spoken about more.

Wow this is was truly an amazing piece to read. I have a few questions:

1) How did you manage to keep working even after you realised you were $85k in debt after 2 years?

2) What drove you further into investing into the business after that point? Sheer motivation?

3) How did you stay sane throughout all this?

Yes, it would help to know why that condition is there in the first place and also why Apple exercise it for some apps and not others.

There's little app developers can do about it for iOS. On Android you can install new app stores, but with Apple you're forced to use theirs. This can be both a blessing and a curse.

In this case, it's just unfortunate luck.

If we were not to improve ourselves then it would be problematic for humanity as a whole. Think of the health professionals (such as nurses, doctors and psychiatrists) who, if had not put in their time and effort would not have helped countless people. Or what about Edison, Newton, Einstein, Stephen Hawking each of whom spent countless hours improving their knowledge to better humanity.

On the other hand, you have multi-millionaires who have hustled their way to the top but are miserable and jaded after improving themselves so much that they neglected friends and family. Is it worth it then to pursue of a life of improvement?

Ultimately, the decision to go down the path of improvement and subsequently sacrifice is up to the person. But beware, this rat-race can never be won.