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Another hit from Neal. I wonder (and envy, in a good way) where does he gets the time to work and all this wonderful little games.


there was a highly similar project to this on HN a few months ago.

his previous project (infinite craft) was one of the first things i ever heard people talk about wrt LLMs.

His skill is in execution. I think he finds inspiration from the people around him.


Was this the one you were thinking of? https://eieio.games/nonsense/game-12-stranger-video/


Same. Not just the time, where does he gets the ideas for these games.

Plus, his implementation in a few of them is really exhaustive and polished. Are there any "interns" helping him?


Doesn't he do this full time?


But there's no attempt to monetize anything...

... which is part of why everything seems so polished, they each express an idea without compromise, and when he's done he can just be done.

Someone could make a pretty good museum exhibit from his site.


> But there's no attempt to monetize anything...

Maybe for the pages you tried, but I see ads on these pages:

https://neal.fun/infinite-craft/ (bottom)

https://neal.fun/perfect-circle/ (right)

https://neal.fun/days-since-incident/ (bottom, near the end, above the "you may also like" section)

The last one occasionally fails to show ads due to some javascript error (visible in the console). The same error was also observed on a few other pages with the "you may also like" footer, so my guess is that some ads were supposed to be visible on many pages, but were accidentally hidden due to some configuration issue.


It’s my understanding that Infinite Craft alone is probably so popular that those ads actually bring in decent revenue.

For comparison, at one point slither.io, which is another browser game (not his project) was bringing in $100k/day from one ad unit showed each time the player dies https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-slither-io-goes-viral-games-...


It boggles my mind how valuable advertising is. Who is clicking on that shit and presumably buying those products? I just cannot believe that there were actually $100k/day worth of actual ad conversions, no matter the player count. Yet the money flows so I guess people really do click on that shit and then buy that shit.


Kids love ads, and that game was full of kids.

When I say love, I mean genuinely seek them out. When I was younger, there was no internet in my house, and adverts were the opportunity to step away from the TV and do something else. But I worked as a babysitter in December a few years ago and things have certainly changed a lot.

They would turn on the TV just to watch ads to "find out what I want for Christmas" then turn it off again when the advertising finished and ask for Netflix. When playing games on an iPad or laptop, they would click every ad to open it in a new tab, meaning they could browse products after they were done playing.

The first couple of times I told the kids not to do that, and reported back to the parents after. But turns out most parents liked this behaviour...it made Christmas shopping easier, because their kids would make a list of cheaper things aimed at them, rather than all asking for expensive iPads and PlayStations.


I have to agree $100k/day seems close to unbelievably high, so I had to do some napkin math. In short, it seems it may be possible.

If the avg player dies 10 times, and the ads shown had $.5 CPM, then to make a dollar you'd need only 200 players. So to make $100k/day you'd need 20M daily actives, which is very high but it was really popular around those days.

Is 20M daily actives possible? Yes, because if the average play session is 15 minutes, with that many players you'd have ~200k concurrent players. There's currently a game on Steam called "banana" where you just click on bananas, and that one has 292k concurrents. There are also several Roblox games with that many concurrents, so it checks out.


Not exactly easy to fire someone (even with reason) in some EU countries due to (in some cases very needed) regulation.


This is very true. I have known people truly shit at their jobs. They've done things I would assume to be the final nail in the coffin - and some how they just trundle along frustrating everyone around them. WFH and you can easily get away with under performing by 25-50% in countries with strong protections for employees.


It may be overblown by media, sure, let's say we agree on that, but I know of at least 3 cases of very close people that have suffered the issue in the last 3 years alone. It may be my social bubble, but I don't think it's a completely fabricated matter.


> It may be overblown by media, sure, let's say we agree on that, but I know of at least 3 cases of very close people that have suffered the issue in the last 3 years alone.

For curiosity's sake, were the affected people owners of multiple properties or was this issue considering their primary residential homes that they were actively living in?


I know no one who had his first home or summer house squatted. No one.

I've lived here all my life.

I know at least 15 okupas who lived +4 years in properties of banks, unused and not finished, which, after eviction, are still unused and unmaintained. What harm did this okupas do? They didn't contributed to rent inflation, so they did some good.

Having property unused and don't having an eye on it is madness. I wouldn't do it. That's common sense. People think that money buy things. Ok, buy a Ferrari and park it outside of a big city and leave it there during a month.

This law is here to protect the right of housing. Some mafias use it? Could be, but this law works to protect real families and the benefits are much greater than the harm that opportunists do abusing it, this organizations doesn't have anything to do with the okupa movement.


No, it's not.

It does not mean you have the right to live in a flat en La Castellana for whatever you want pay. It means the State has to implement policies to help people access housing.

Also, article 33 give citizens the right to private property. You cannot come squat in my house because article 33 should prevent it, even when article 47 exists.


Yep, good point.

Let's avoid considering outliers to maintain a balanced discussion.

While I don't believe anyone has the right to live in Castellana or the Royal Palace, it also wouldn't be fair to require someone to move to the desert to find a home.


Homicide is also NOT an issue in the daily life Spanish citizens, that doesn't prevent it from being a big problem for anyone who suffers the problem.


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You should be allowed to stay inside Apple's walled garden while the rest of users should be allowed to leave it whenever they want (at the very minimum at their own risk).


> ...rest of users should be allowed to leave it whenever they want (at the very minimum at their own risk).

You can, though? Just go buy an Android. There are a billion different options there.

Heck, you can also still buy old-school type flip phones at Walmart.


You know that they meant there should be an option to enable software sources other than Apple’s App Store.


If I switch to android I lose the apps I paid for and my ability to text American iPhone users is completely hamstringed


Completely hamstringed? SMS is the standard, and yes it sucks horribly. Elevating the experience with additional software features and cloud services on one platform does not immediately entitle all smartphone users on the globe to the same experience. Google made a push for RCS, botched it, service providers either didn’t adopt it or only partially implemented it. That was upsetting to me. Do we sue Google and service providers as well?

I do agree that losing app licenses is upsetting. But this is no different than the licensing model for many softwares in the desktop market (e.g. per-user and per-install licenses).


Emails from apple executives have made clear that iMessage is purposefully used as a lock in tool. whether thats legal or not idk, what I do know is that it prevents me from switching to android and I would like the government to make apple stop.


It quite literally does not. Step one: walk into any store and buy an Android. Step two: have your phone service transferred to that Android. Step three: there is no step three.

People do this every day. Hundreds of them, at least. Every day.


Apple is using their market power to degrade their competitors product. Of course I could switch to android, but I dont want to, solely because texting iPhone users would become a much worse experience


> Of course I could switch to android, but I dont want to, solely because texting iPhone users would become a much worse experience

It's 99% the same experience - except for iMessage users your texts become green instead of blue.

On top of that, you can use many other services for texts, like FB Messenger, WhatsApp, etc.

Beyond that, I don't see why it's Apple's problem that Google and/or other carriers can't make a decent texting experience without Apple making theirs less secure or a shittier experience in the process.


That’s a Hobson’s choice.


That's copium


I’m fine with more app stores, let others compete, and ideally compete on review security.


If you want Fortnite then you need the Tencent...sorry the Epic Game Store. That comes with all of the PII leaks[0]. Because their game store will require permissions/privileges to install system wide apps, it won't be constrained on what data it can leak about users or what it can decide to install in the background. I for one can't wait for a dozen app stores to pop up all installing Sony root kits or Denuvo malware on people's phones.

[0] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/12/...


The problem with this is that going outside of Apple's walled garden benefits 3rd parties who would prefer to do whatever they want so to use the same apps as before, everyone will have to submit to that risk. Apple's walled garden is a type of regulation.


But I thought all of Apple's users were extremely rational actors who freely chose for their experience to be restricted because they knew it was better. Surely if the alternative app stores were so inferior and dangerous all of these discerning users would reject them, and paying the 30% tax would be well worth the competitive advantage of offering your product at the only marketplace that notoriously lucrative cohort would accept. You're not insinuating that Apple's userbase isn't that sophisticated and doesn't make purchasing choices based on factors other than social vibes?


Let me explain again since it went over your head the first time.

Companies, all else being equal, will choose less regulation over more regulation. If TikTok could release outside of the App Store where no one can inspect what they do, they would only release it there. Users addicted to the app wouldn’t suddenly stop using it but now they would be exposed to whatever TikTok feels like doing. They will choose the path of least resistance, not all the paths. It’s not that hard to understand.


So what. If iOS doesn't suck, their apps won't be able to do anything malicious so no added risk. If a kid in China with an iPad testing the app for 3-4 minutes is a real security benefit, I'm Tim Cook.


Spotify does not get that money. The general EU budget does.

> Fines imposed on undertakings found in breach of EU antitrust rules are paid into the general EU budget. This money is not earmarked for particular expenses, but Member States' contributions to the EU budget for the following year are reduced accordingly. The fines therefore help to finance the EU and reduce the burden for taxpayers.

https://competition-policy.ec.europa.eu/index/fines_en


Yes, these are fines, not damages. The headline says as much.


Can Spotify sue for damages as well?


Interesting question and I suspect so but since I am no lawyer plus have never heard of such a case in the media I do not know.


They do not sell subscriptions on apple store.


I wonder if there is perhaps some sort of anti-trust based reason for that?


There are no damages really, without Apple Spotify would be a dead product by now. Their entire existence is more or less due to the advent of iPhones and the App Store where customers subscriptions were significantly higher than any other platform (this was common knowledge within the organization too, we loved Apple, I say we as I worked there for many years)


Without Apple, there would be other mobile devices, surely? It was an idea that was in the air. Arguments about Apple doing it better or quicker or differently don't have much bearing on your specific point here.


There were, windows phone and android, but neither could prove the Spotify model that offering a free tier led to paying subscribers (and at least Android had enough market share for this to be certain), something their entire existence was built on and something the labels questioned a lot. People seem to forget this part entirely.

Now you could argue everyone on iOS would pay as happily on Android if there were no iOS, but then you argue fiction against reality.


Your argument is about a hypothetical counterfactual.

We are both arguing fiction against fiction. We can't re-run the experiment without Apple.


No, my argument is what actually did happen, in this reality. There’s no need for any experiment to be run to state what events led to what is today, and what would happen in a another reality like the one you described in your first post is irrelevant for the subject at hand.

Apple provided Spotify the platform they needed to prove their business model, it really is as simple as that.

All the other infinite possibilities are moot.


"without Apple Spotify would be a dead product by now" is fiction as well

You can argue fiction against fiction by saying everyone on iOS would pay as happily on Android if there were no iOS


True without context, but not if you worked there at the time. It’s hard to describe just how much iOS did for Spotify at a crucial time of the company’s existence. But sure, we will never know for sure, but certain outcomes have far higher likelihoods than others.


Well Apple would be nowhere without the invention of the wheel.


Not mandatory to use the Shadow DOM. And you can easily add public methods to the component for external interaction.


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