Twitter says an attacker used its API to match usernames to phone numbers - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/twitter-says-an-attacker-used-its-api-to-match-usernames-to-phone-numbers/ <comment><USER2> What happened: Twitter asks users on sign up to scan their contacts (read: steal and upload them). If you say no, twitter asks again and again every day / every login until you finally allow it to. Twitter builds a huge and unnecessary db of users and phone numbers, as well as non-users IDs tied to phone numbers. Someone uses an API to steal this info that in most cases twitter only collected by tricking their users / forcing it.

Anyone affected by this should be suing twitter for even collecting this information! My friend can give away my phone number because of this data collection.

<comment><USER3> A trick I found to stop this nonsense is, at least on iOS, answer yes to the Application's custom dialog to ask permission. This will then invoke the iOS security dialog where you can click "No" and never be asked again.

Generally what I see happening is apps will ask the user if it's okay, and only when the user says yes will they execute the necessary system call to request access. In iOS at least, if a user clicks No the app can never prompt for that permission ever again. Until the app makes this formal request to the operating system, it does not show up under privacy (as the app had never asked for it in the first place).

<comment><USER4> Your friends/family probably won't do this, so your phone number is going to be shared with Twitter anyways.

<comment><USER5> Well then the obvious solution is to start treating phone numbers as you would an email address - effectively public.

I would love a version of privacy.com for phone numbers..

<comment><USER6> Start? It wasn't that long ago that the phone company published a book with near everyone's phone number in it.

<comment><USER7> There was no book with everyone's phone number in it. There were many books that covered small regions. If you lived in Oshkosh Wisconsin and wanted the number for someone in Kansas City, or even Madison Wisconsin it wasn't that easy to get that book. Maybe your library had it. Phone numbers on paper aren't that useful. You can't robodial a paper phone book without hiring actual people. But no matter what you couldn't get millions of phone numbers while sitting on your couch, and if you could they would be useless because they were all on paper.

<comment><USER8> The books were hard to get, but directory assistance did exist if you called the operator.

<comment><USER9> I'll bet there are quite a few people on HN that have never dialed 411 or 1-<area-code>-555-1212.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was amazed when I found out about this "trick" a year or two ago. It basically means that if you've used your personal email or phone number to create an "anonymous" twitter handle (e.g. a whistleblower, leaker, etc.), then it's not anonymous at all.

Someone can just put batches of emails into their gmail account (e.g. journalists' public emails, their employees' emails, other suspects), then use the Twitter contacts-import functionality to import those emails and match them up with Twitter account handles. It's insane.

I first saw people explaining how to do this on Quora a year or two ago, but here's another explanation that was posted just a few days before this announcement: [https://www.quora.com/How-228/answer/William- Boyd-181](https://www.quora.com/How-228/answer/William-Boyd-181)

Twitter MUST have known about this loophole for many years. It's nigh on impossible that they are that incompetent, so, as far as I can see, they were just ignoring the loophole because they didn't want to slow down their growth by removing the feature. As with all social networks, the most important factor in keeping users is to quickly get them a network of followers and followees.

EDIT:

> "People who did not have this setting enabled or do not have a phone number > associated with their account were not exposed by this vulnerability," > Twitter said.

This spokesperson is extremely sneaky. They completely neglect to mention that the "let others find me by _email_ " is checked by default, and so we can only assume that anyone who has a publicly scrape-able email _somewhere_ (basically everyone, because you've got to count all the leaked databases too - see: haveibeenpwned.com) has had their Twitter handle linked to that email. Atheist bloggers in Saudi Arabia, whistleblowers in the US, opposition activists in Russia, and so on - all potentially fucked over (past tense) by this.

And while I'm ranting: What's worse is that they apparently _haven 't disabled that API_. They've just removed a few big crawler swarms. But the thing is, Russia / Saudi Arabia / etc. probably have narrowed their suspects down to 500 (or so) emails anyway, so they can discover the heretic/activist in a SINGLE API REQUEST! So Twitter has done _nothing_ to fix this loophole.

<comment><USER11> The first thing twitter proposes when you create an account : "Do you want to match emails and phone numbers to account".

In this thread : "How can it be possible to match emails and phone numbers to accounts?"

It's not a loophole, it's a feature.

It's in the TOS before you sign up : "Twitter also uses your contact information to market to you as your country's laws allow, and to help others find your account if your settings permit, including through third-party services and client applications."

How can someone then not realize this is a possibility ? At what moment can someone start to even begin to think twitter is a safe place for endangered people ? It's an ad company, what do you expect really ?

<comment><USER10> The fact that you're citing the TOS is not exactly helping your case, since it's well known that basically no one reads those. I'm not as concerned about techy people as I am about the average person's understanding of their identity privacy on Twitter.

But even as a techy person I was surprised by how easy it is for a random person to link millions of identities. And I'm obviously not alone given that this post made it to the front page. So when you say "what do you expect really?" \- well, most people expect that a random person can't discover their email from their twitter handle. I think that's a completely fair expectation, and people should rightly be concerned about this "feature". Posts like this should be upvoted, because a lot of people aren't aware.

Your incredulity here tends to come across as "it's in the TOS, you're all pretty ignorant, I knew about this all along." which isn't all that helpful, even if it's all true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> From Twitter's statement:

> People who did not have this setting enabled or do not have a phone number > associated with their account were not exposed by this vulnerability.

This is a bit disingenuous, given that you can't really open an account unless you provide a phone number to "verify" it.

Edit for clarification:

As gojomo said below ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22233612](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22233612)) you may not need to provide it during sign-up, but your new account is almost immediately locked for "suspicious activity" and you need to provide a phone to unlock.

<comment><USER13> I just checked the twitter signup form, which does have a phone input. But there's a toggle saying "use email instead".

So, no phone number is required.

<comment><USER14> New accounts without an associated phone number tend to face a lock & challenge, for "suspicious activity" (even if they've never posted), which can only be reversed by adding a phone number.

So, Twitter is _de facto_ requiring phone numbers on many more accounts than the initial sign-up flow might indicate – to the detriment of user privacy, & increasing the damage of compromises like this one.

<comment><USER15> Note that activities which are potentially suspicious aren't just about posting, it includes following people, because that makes their follower count go up, and the whole point of displaying that count is most people want to appear popular - and so of course people create bogus followers.

I agree that Twitter using this to get people to give them PII those don't want Twitter to have, especially when Twitter aren't a good custodian of that PII is terrible, but it's not as though Twitter's other option (anybody can mint a thousand bogus Twitter followers with no pushback from Twitter) looks great either.

<comment><USER16> > I agree that Twitter using this to get people to give them PII those don't > want Twitter to have, especially when Twitter aren't a good custodian of > that PII is terrible, but it's not as though Twitter's other option (anybody > can mint a thousand bogus Twitter followers with no pushback from Twitter) > looks great either.

Third option: don't display follower counts.

<comment><USER17> Hiding counts makes it hard to identify imposter accounts and bots. Users need to be able to see account age and counts at a minimum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The deepest irony of all this is that they require phone numbers to verify accounts, which should cut down on fake accounts, yet they had a large amount of fake accounts using this very feature, which means verifying with a phone number may not be super effective anyway...

<comment><USER19> I factory reset my phone so my lost my gauth 2fa for Twitter. I'm locked out now.

I cannot get Twitter to let me back in even though I can verify my email and phone SMS.

I didn't make a backup code because I assumed I could use email/SMS in this situation. It seems not.

So another smaller irony is that you cannot make valid use of your linked phone number that they nag you for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > The endpoint matches phone numbers to Twitter accounts for those people who > have enabled the "Let people who have your phone number find you on Twitter" > option and who have a phone number associated with their Twitter account.

I don't recall hearing about this option. I followed the link they helpfully included[1] to see if I had it set.

I found that I DID have "Let people who have your phone number find you on Twitter" checked. But did NOT have "Let people who have your email address find you on Twitter" checked.

It's possible I actually chose that at some point, for some reason decided I was okay with "by phone number", but not "by email". But that doesn't sound like me, I'm wondering if I unchecked the "email address" one at some point when the "phone number" one didn't exist; then they later added the "phone number" one defaulted to on?

I am guessing they intend to default all of these to on (opt-out rather than opt-in), cause few people would take the trouble to go and opt-in even if they didn't mind or would like it.

But... you know. Anyway, I've unchecked both of them now.

I don't entirely understand the vulnerability, it sounds like it was "letting people who have your phone number find you on Twitter" just as advertised. "we immediately made a number of changes to this endpoint so that it could no longer return specific account names in response to queries." OK, so... you can't use the API to do that anymore, but can still use the twitter web app directly? I mean, it says right there you are letting people who know your phone number find you on twitter, which I would assume means find your account name.

It kind of sounds like they realized this whole feature was privacy-violating, or would be perceived as such, but they haven't gotten rid of the feature... I'm confused what they considered the vulnerability and what they changed or didn't, and to what extent usernames and phone numbers can still be matched by a third party on twitter.

[1]: [https://twitter.com/settings/contacts](https://twitter.com/settings/contacts)

<comment><USER21> > It's possible I actually chose that at some point, for some reason decided I > was okay with "by phone number", but not "by email". But that doesn't sound > like me, I'm wondering if I unchecked the "email address" one at some point > when the "phone number" one didn't exist; then they later added the "phone > number" one defaulted to on?

I looked at mine, which I'm sure I've never touched before because I never cared about Twitter settings. As with my Facebook account, my Twitter account was mostly just created to get an acceptable name in case someday I actually wanted a serious social media presence.

Both are unchecked. The account was created in early 2008.

<comment><USER22> yeah, same. account created in oct 2007, never checked and i have everything turned off.

<comment><USER23> also unchecked,and i have my phone number there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Any chance this means they'll get rid of their popup that asks for my phone number everytime I visit. You only have to refresh the page to get rid of it but it is annoying. This incident shows they don't know what they are doing and don't respect their user's data.

</comment><comment><USER25> I read the article and thought, "well, yes, the option that needed to be enabled on the account for the attack to work describes what the API did, what is the bug?"

I found the original notice from twitter [1] easier to understand (maybe change the URL of this post?) and it does not speak about a bug. Twitter did implement a change so that the attack cannot be done anymore though.

I did not understand the fix itself, it seems the API cannot be used for its intended use anymore?

[1] [https://privacy.twitter.com/en/blog/2020/an-incident- impacti...](https://privacy.twitter.com/en/blog/2020/an-incident-impacting- your-account-identity)

<comment><USER17> The fix was to block the botnets that were scanning millions of numbers and ban the associated accounts. Likely that includes some ongoing threat detection as well. That'll at least prevent scammers from collecting one more account name/number to attempt exploiting.

It doesn't do anything against a targeted attack against someone who has chosen to be discoverable. That's just how search/discovery is intended to work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> > Twitter did not clarify who these third-parties were, but it did say that > some of the IP addresses used in these API exploitation attempts had ties to > state-sponsored actors, a term used to described either government > intelligence agencies, or third-party hacking groups that benefit from a > government's backing.

Can someone explain this to me please? Are "state-sponsored hackers" this foolish to use the same IP addresses as previous, known IP's used in hacks?

Or is this just the current "because terrorism / because pedophiles" used to cover incompetence?

I don't get it...

<comment><USER27> I've been involved in research of this nature, though not specifically attributing APTs. Think of it like old school detective work: every crime and every criminal leaves traces, including the traces of the ways they attempt to prevent being traced. This sometimes also includes attempts to impersonate other entities ("false flags"). No matter how many layers of indirection an attacker uses, there's going to be at least one thread to pull on.

There's no equivalent to DNA testing, but sometimes you can have pretty high confidence in an attribution. To be clear, this goes incredibly far beyond looking at IP address geolocation or whatever. That's less than 1% of what you're looking at. That'd be like police assuming a death threat was signed with someone's real name.

There's no way of knowing exactly what they identified or how they did it or if they got it right. I wish more companies would release such information and how they conducted the entire analysis (some do), though I understand that may not be possible due to legal and counter-intelligence reasons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Went on a tweet storm a few months ago. Twitter locked my account and forced me to give my phone number. I started getting spam calls at a level I didn't before (may be coincidence but am very tight about that sort of thing, I don't even give my grocery store my #) and I knew, just knew that at some point, this very thing would happen.

Combine that with the story that the Saudi's had infiltrated twitter and were spying on users, especially in light of how they treat their opponents (Kashoggi), when do we stop supporting companies that do these obviously poor practices?

<comment><USER29> > when do we stop supporting companies that do these obviously poor practices?

Well, you just indicated you chose to continue supporting this company with the poor practice above. What would make you switch away from them? Clearly the spam calls weren't enough.

<comment><USER28> It's a complicated issue. I am very privacy focused, the kind of person that doesn't do facebook, burns accounts on different forums regularly, etc, but I have to admit I enjoyed the information I got out of twitter while not enjoying some of their recent changes.

Since the spam calls and the phone link in though, I have already changed my twitter-name and lost all followers, and since then I pretty much stopped tweeting. Haven't logged in in at least a month now.

The main problem with adoption of an alternative is that I was using it to keep up with the kinds of people that aren't necessarily going to move to an alternative until it reaches some sort of critical mass. My RSS feeds are already full enough without having to add a bunch of random single person blogs to keep up with, so I'm not sure to be honest. Twitter was my main compromise to stay more socially connected with a wider array of people and it's hard to let go of that.

Despite my desire for good federated and open source social networking, it isn't quite there yet, and so for the time being the one social outlet alternative I see glimmers of hope in is WT.Social.

<comment> em-bee you can still follow people without logging into twitter. their posts are public. you can't DM with them though, and they also can't follow you. they also can't block you. but as far as "getting information out of twitter" is concerned, no account is needed

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> So I guess Twitter applied for a technology embargo exemption to Iran?

I mean, I guess that's been public knowledge already that they serve there, but the overwhelming majority of public companies block the IP space of every country on the embargo list.

I'd think that serving Iran right now would be fairly politically untenable

<comment><USER31> Most of Iran's leadership have active twitter accounts, so I'd have to guess so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> TL;DR

Twitter's data collection/friend matching feature used an API endpoint that returned usernames given phone numbers. A security researcher exposed it publicly, Twitter patched it (to just return a token or something). Twitter investigated and just released their findings "out of an abundance of caution and as a matter of principle." that it's clearly been "exploited" many times in the past. Twitter probably charges for the data returned by this "exploit". It doesn't look like the settings offered stop Twitter from selling this "exploit" as a service for "promotional" content.

It's seems strange not care that Twitter sells your username but care they also accidently gave it out for free in the past.

</comment><comment><USER33> Nothing in the article about collaboration with law enforcement or national security.

Some amount of liability on Twitter's part in this is palpable, but this is also a criminal act on the part of the attacker who should accordingly be brought to justice, _or at least an attempt should be made to do so_.

If this is happening with law enforcement agencies then I feel like tech companies usually say so. Twitter's statement says they are "releasing the details" but there's no mention of law enforcement or state department involvement.

If the press release is meant to achieve this engagement publicly, then there are no actual "details" in it for example, no link to a list of IP addresses, twitter accounts, and times at which the endpoint was accessed!

Thats a bit flippant of course but perhaps there is actually a way they could have released some of those details: ASNs, days of the attack, some other aggregation?

In any case, some reassurance from Twitter that this is being followed up on by a government agency would be good to see.

</comment><comment><USER34> Attacker what? He, Ibrahim Balic, is a security researcher; but when it comes to Twitter, they are stubborn claiming the bug was a feature. See what "attacker" says:

[https://youtu.be/CuiGKv_nx7o](https://youtu.be/CuiGKv_nx7o)

</comment><comment><USER35> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21748137](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21748137)

From 2 months ago:

>Basically Twitter got pwned big time, and now denies it because GDPR will ruin them if breach is proven. Here is what Doubi's online followers figured:

>State security got all phone numbers used for Twitter phone verification up to May 2019 and possibly till July.

>Twitter haphazardly closed the breach in complete secrecy.

>API hole explanation is excluded as people with 100% private accs got police visits.

>People with foreign SIM cards also got into trouble. So the explanation that China compromised Twitter's SMS providers is also excluded, as its improbable that they did it in 4+ countries.

>2016 breach is also out of question.

>The only explanation is that they got hold on a big piece of their user DB, or, worse, they have an active infiltrator in Twitter, or Twitter voluntarily cooperated.

>[https://mobile.twitter.com/robert_spalding/status/1134797195...](https://mobile.twitter.com/robert_spalding/status/1134797195..).

>[https://amp.ft.com/content/afd44222-5c34-11e9-9dde-7aedca0a0...](https://amp.ft.com/content/afd44222-5c34-11e9-9dde-7aedca0a0..).

</comment><comment><USER36> Twitter could go a long way in solving this issue by _not requiring a phone number_ for an account. While you don't need one to sign up, after some short period of time you'll be locked out if you don't provide one.

</comment><comment><USER37> phone numbers are better than ips for surveillance. they follow you everywhere.

<comment><USER38> I eagerly look forward to a phone-number free world.

Would help a lot with global mobility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I swear I saw someone mention this a month or two ago in HN comments. They said that they believed Twitter's API was being used to unmask accounts by state actors. I can't find the original article now.

<comment><USER40> You're thinking of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21873229](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21873229)

That was slightly different, since at that time the only information we had that this unethical "security researcher" had exploited the bug for months on billions of phone numbers and only disclosed it once Twitter blocked them.

This announcement is different in that Twitter appear to be saying that this was being abused by other actors as well.

<comment><USER39> That was exactly the comment. Thank you! It sounds like everyone and their mother was exploiting the API based on today's post. Thanks again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> > After our investigation, we immediately made a number of changes to this > endpoint so that it could no longer return specific account names in > response to queries.

Does anyone know what this actually means? If the contact discovery API doesn't return a username, what does it do? If the answer is that it returns a user ID now instead of username, then presumably that can then be freely queried for the corresponding username..

</comment><comment><USER37> There should not be an app permission to export contacts list in the first place. If an app needs your contacts, there should be a way to export them offline and upload the contacts file. If a user is not technically adept to do that, they are clearly also not adept to judge the ramifications of pressing the "allow" button on the contacts permission dialog.

</comment><comment><USER42> I was rejected with no explanation from a Twitter API key, despite it being for a real account that must appear very normal in every respect.

I think it's kind of funny that they are so draconian with hobbyists and people making toys, but that any motivated bad actor can probably access most of the same endpoints and services by virtue of the fact that they have to be accessible for people to use Twitter.

</comment><comment><USER43> Someone have mentioned spam after being forced to provide his/her phone number to Twitter, and I have known of similar cases in 2019. I also remember a case where the police matched a twitter handle to a phone number and proceeded to arrest a guy who have been a strong activist against electronic vote. So I can conclude that this bug was well known at the beginnings of 2019.

</comment><comment><USER44> Why on earth would you give twitter your phone number!? It's an ad company. Why on earth would you give an ad company your phone number?!

</comment><comment><USER45> At some point we'll realize that privacy invasive policies are a huge security liability, right?

</comment><comment><USER46> I don't even feel sorry for them. Many many times over, industry experts told people: SMS is NOT 2FA and should not be used as such. Great to see karma served, and I look forward to U2F or Webautn on my twitter account soon.

<comment><USER47> What's there to feel sorry about? Twitter isn't facing any regulatory scrutiny over this, let alone possible fines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> It's interesting to me that these kinds of things are not catalogued and advertised like other vulnerabilities. This is an exploitable information leak using an endpoint that many other services likely have.

</comment><comment><USER49> They should not allow phone number -> handle lookups. That is quite creepy.

A much more privacy-respecting method would be to only allow lookups if _both_ parties have each other added.

</comment><comment><USER50> Class action?

<comment><USER51> Unlikely to succeed. This sort of invasive, drag-net data collection without user knowledge or consent is considered standard practice.

All twitter users "agreed" to it when they created their account (via the legal fiction that humans read and agree to terms of service)

<comment><USER52> I didn't create a twitter account but my information could have been leaked via this process.

<comment><USER51> Is there some law against them collecting your information from your friends without your consent? I'm not a lawyer, just an observer of how these sort of things regularly go, and I'm going to guess that what they did here was 100% legal.

Obviously this is morally abhorrent, but in the US the laws are written to protect large corporations like Twitter, not their victims.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Isn't this old news? Thought this came out a few months ago.

<comment><USER54> According to the article, Twitter discovered the problem on the 24th of December 2019.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Kind of ironic Twitter can't protect data theft but spends considerable amount of resources to detect Deep Fakes.

<comment><USER56> How is that ironic, those are two entirely different issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> this "bug" made hundreds of thousands Chinese activists' account "disappear". Sad.

</comment><comment><USER58> One of the reasons i never installed the twitter app. Will keep using the web page.

</comment><comment><USER59> Why is "impacting" better than "affecting?"

<comment><USER60> For starters impact is a noun and affect is a verb.

It's probably textbook risk analysis lingo, an impact is measurable but an affect is not.

Usually an impact scale is created to define what impact level 5 would involve versus impact 1. It's still arbitrary but more configurable than affect.

Just my two cents, no guarantee.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I was already thinking of deleting my twitter account. This is just an extra incentive

</comment><comment><USER62> Wtf

</comment><comment><USER63> It's a phone number, not your bank account.

It's public information.

Do you want to sue the phone telcos for publishing the phone book?

<comment><USER64> What's your phone number?

I might call you and check- and check for VOIP numbers, too, so no fakes.

<comment><USER65> > check for VOIP numbers, too, so no fakes

Ah yes, continuing the fiction that anyone who uses a VoIP service must be a fraudster with a faked phone number.

Just another in the long list of if you are not using Google or Microsoft e-mail and AT&T or Verizon or T-Mobile or Sprint postpaid mobile phone service, you're obviously up to no good and deserve whatever "anti-fraud" you get.</comment></comment></comment>


Bob Dylan Has a Lot on His Mind - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/arts/music/bob-dylan-rough-and-rowdy-ways.html <comment><USER2> Speaking of being lost you might enjoy this story from 2009 where people called the cops on Bob Dylan for being "an 'eccentric-looking old man' in their yard," and the officer did not recognize him:

"'I asked him what his name was and he said, 'Bob Dylan,' Buble said. "Now, I've seen pictures of Bob Dylan from a long time ago and he didn't look like Bob Dylan to me at all. He was wearing black sweatpants tucked into black rain boots, and two raincoats with the hood pulled down over his head."

"He was acting very suspicious,'' Buble said. "Not delusional, just suspicious. You know, it was pouring rain and everything."

[https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/jersey-homeowner-calls-cops- bob-d...](https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/jersey-homeowner-calls-cops-bob- dylan/story?id=8331830)

</comment><comment><USER3> Saw him 234 nights ago. My date and I have each seen-heard him a few times before but none of them shared. We both thought it was an incredible show, which we wouldn't say about all of them.

This interviewer had good questions. Didn't know him, but was pleasantly surprised to read a bit about him.

I get a free assist over that paywall from my public library.

What is the significance of the 19th?

</comment><comment><USER4> Anyone have a link without a paywall?

<comment><USER5> The com. trick works

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> More to the point, Bod Dylan has a new record, Murder most Foul. It might be a good album or not, though there's probably no going back to the Dylan of the '60s, or the '60s anyway. In any case, noone's going to find out how good the album is from a NYT article and I don't know why we have to spend so much time reading adverts disguised as thoughtful interviews.

<comment><USER7> The new record is "Rough and Rowdy Ways" and comes out on June 19th (note that this is a significant date).

Songs for the album: "Murder Most Foul", "False Prothet", and "I Contain Multitudes" were pre-released in the past month or so.

<comment><USER6> Thanks, my mistake. I confused the title of a song with the title of the album.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Worst concert I ever attended. Absolutely zero engagement with the audience. Played what he wanted to play, and that didn't include most of his hits. Showed up, collected his fee, left.

<comment><USER9> > played what he wanted to play > Didn't include most of his hits

I am always baffled when people expect a jukebox from artists of this caliber. When I go to see an artist I want a unique experience. Dylan is known to rework his songs on the fly live and you never know what you're going to get. He's got one of the best backing bands on earth who can go wherever he wants too. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. Sounds like you might have caught the former which sucks but it's the nature the way he approaches live music. It's anything but safe and doesn't always work. That takes serious guts IMO and it's much more exciting that seeing some geriatric geezer punching out his hits and "collecting his fee".

<comment><USER10> I'm long-time Dylan fan and I've seen him live quite a few times.

I can honestly say he puts on one of the least coherent concerts of any famous musician. Yes, he reworks the songs nightly but he can barely sing anymore and no one can tell what he is saying anyway, so the results are unpredictable. But sometimes it can be great.

He's been doing it like this for decades so it's just part of the deal. Take it or leave it. I think it's fair to call it out and fair to enjoy it.

<comment><USER11> There was a question in this interview where the interviewer asked what role improvisation played in his performances, and Dylan said absolutely none.

I was a bit surprised by this answer but too it at face value. I am a Dylan fan but haven't seen him live. Now that I have heard a description of live shows, I assume the response to the interview question was pure sarcasm.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Instrumenting jQuery errors in production - <AUTHOR> https://rollbar.com/blog/post/2013/08/08/jquery-error-instrumentation/

<comment><USER2> We've been using this internally for the last couple days. It's strangely awesome to see real stack traces for Javascript errors. Makes it feel just a little more like a "real" programming language. If anyone has any questions, we're here.</comment>


Ask HN: Why does apple still charges $99/yr for App developers - <AUTHOR> A trillion dollar company charging $99 for each of its app developers? what is the actual deal with that charge? <comment><USER2> It can.

It proves the developers are serious. It is like how you have to put some chips in the pot to participate in a poker hand.

</comment><comment><USER3> Imagine a graph with y=developers and x=cost how does the curve look? (Will it look like a tipping c or \ ) What will happen if they lower or increase the cost? Then draw another line y=developers * cost. The lines likely intersect at $99/yr.

<comment><USER2> A problem with that is that Apple does not need to optimize supply and demand for the developer's program because they have many source of revenue such as hardware, subscriptons, media, and a cut of app sales.

If they felt desperate for more devs they could give developer subs away for free, or even pay people to make apps as Microsoft tried.

Business strategy for a platform company is all about deciding who to get revenue from and (often) who to subsidize. Apple does not need to subsidize anyone because they are established, but Uber does.</comment></comment>


Google+ Ripples for Dalai Lama hangout - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/ripples/details?activityid=JavTTDqMMUh

<comment><USER2> This is absolutely fantastic news. Data visualization is one of the great promises of our unfolding information revolutions.

I have also been fascinated by what choices Mr. Page was going to bring, when he described Google's future with fewer arrows, but more wood behind them. Add to this, that they are now aware of their 'platform' deficiency, it's going to be incredibly enlightening to watch how Google allocates that wood to increase the power of their individual arrows.

It appears that Ripples is a great start on both the promise of better information, and the promise of a higher caliber platform.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting but a good example of how Google+ is made for geeks, by geeks. Social is about mom and dad and my sister, not me. I get this, it's cool, but it's confusing and useless to them. It seems to me Google keeps missing the point and as long as that happens they simply won't be able to pull people off Facebook.

<comment><USER4> The tool isn't so much for the individual user but for the marketers and content creators that are on the platform and will join in the future.

Hopefully people start to realize that Google+ isn't about Facebook....it continues to be a great social layer over everything Google does.

If the "point" of social networks was simply viewed in the narrow sense of Facebook, then Twitter wouldn't be around either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks like they're using some kind of sunflower phyllotaxis for placement. Especially obvious when you zoom in.</comment>


Index Funds May Work a Little Too Well - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-07-22/index-funds-may-work-a-little-too-well <comment><USER3> A bigger problem with index funds is the inherent bias they create towards consolidation of capital at the top. A company that becomes part of the S&P 500 will automatically have bi-weekly buyers of their shares as people pump money into index funds via payroll deduction. Nearly every piece of mainstream financial advice in the US suggests such behavior... "d% of mutual funds fail outperform the S&P 500" etc. Of course such comparison ignores transaction costs, administrative costs, risk, diversification across asset classes, et al. However, it leads to many people who want to "Set it and forget it" to just buy the S&P 500 index companies automatically every 2 weeks, pumping up the values of large cap corporations whether they perform well or not.

I know that companies don't necessarily benefit directly from an increasing stock price, but in reality it allows them to raise capital by issuing new shares with less dilution. Also it makes it costlier for smaller competitors to raise capital, crowding out competition. At the end of the day, the "antitrust" question is not about Apple v. Microsoft... it is moving more in the direction of "Apple & Microsoft" vs. anyone trying to claw and scrape their way into the game.

<comment><USER4> What's preventing an "active" manager from managing in a fashion similar to an indexer?

It seems like with a few, inexpensive tweaks, it wouldn't be too difficult to beat the index.

<comment><USER5> The fees add up in the long term to reduce the overall returns.

<comment><USER4> Part of acting like an index fund would be keeping fees low.

<comment><USER6> Then just buy the index fund. I can buy an index fund that has fees of 0.2%. If the managed fund has fees of 1.2% that means it needs to beat the index by at least 1% to come out even. If you can beat an index by 1% while trying to replicate an index, then you're either a genius or cheating.

The numbers are even worse if it's in a taxable account. That means you need to beat both the management fee and the taxes because you'll end up paying taxes for all the turnover too.

<comment><USER4> Well the idea is to beat the indexes on a net basis. The fees would be much lower (than 1.2%) because it would not be very active. It would be replicating the index (which lots of people can do fairly easily) but with a tweak or 2 like a slight change in weighting or trimming the 50 worst X or lopping off the 10 biggest caps. I've seen some back-testing on stuff like this that can get you that extra point or 2.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting. The idea is that index funds implicitly favor collusion between companies in the same industry since investors/institutions own the competing companies (perhaps even at the same weight). That is, an index owning both Coke and Pepsi may not be too keen on one slaying the other, but instead for them both to become bigger together, yet separate.

There's also the idea that index investing "should" be considered illegal because of the possible antitrust issues.

Also, the rise of index investing puts more favor to stock buybacks/dividends as opposed to reinvestment. The idea being (as an example) that the index would rather take Coke's profits and redirect to a smaller higher-growth- potential company (or even spread it out more evenly among all holdings). However, if no index investing, perhaps investors would be more willing to "ride it out" with Coke reinvesting a lot more profits back into the business (maybe the don't own Pepsi, or other soft-drink companies and want to see them all get demolished).

<comment><USER8> An index owning both Coke and Pepsi wants the soft-drink market to grow bigger -- it is presumably indifferent to whether Coke slays Pepsi, Pepsi slays Coke, or both grow bigger together, as long as the total market increases.

Which is arguably a good thing. Let's say that Coke has 60% of the market and Pepsi has 40% of the market. If Coke's investors are separate from Pepsi's investors, then it would be in their interests to take a tactic that kills Pepsi and allocates half of its market share to Coke and the other half goes up in smoke to a smaller overall market -- now Coke is half again as big as it was! But the industry is smaller.

That said, I'm not sure that realistically, market-decreasing tactics really exist in most cases -- I can't think of a real world example.

The collusion argument is certainly interesting.

<comment><USER9> Why can't the index fund just sell Pepsi and keep Coke? Just because one of the companies does bad means you have to divest from the entire industry?

<comment><USER10> Because both companies are on the index that the index fund matches, and the whole premise behind index funds is that they're set up to require their managers to purchase stock of all companies in the index (managers not allowed to pick and choose).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The quote "stock acquisitions that create such anticompetitive horizontal shareholdings are illegal under current antitrust law" doesn't seem to include any reference that I can find to any original text written by Elhauge. Instead the footnote links to a bunch of the author's own articles about Elhauge.

The only properly cited textual evidence offered is a series of denials by Elhauge that he ever said index funds are illegal.

Levine has been writing about this for months in articles with linkbait titles like: "Should Mutual Funds Be Illegal?" ([http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-04-16/should- mutu...](http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-04-16/should-mutual-funds- be-illegal-)) and "Labor Department Wants to Tweak Your Retirement Plan" ([http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-04-15/labor- depar...](http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-04-15/labor-department- wants-to-tweak-your-retirement-plan))

It seems like Levine has an axe to grind with regulators, and doesn't want anyone to talk about research that might suggest regulation. He might be right, but he is making a crappy argument.

EDIT: Ok, I stand corrected. Elhauge totally said that. It's in the abstract. I had trouble finding it because Levine cited himself instead of the paper at the end of that that paragraph. Sorry.

<comment><USER12> That's a direct quote from the linked paper [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2632024](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2632024)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting. With enough optimisation of the mechanisms of modern capitalism we arrive at a state where a single amorphous entity owns the economy so there are no incentives created by competition.

<comment><USER14> Isn't the whole capitalism based on promising people monopoly but not letting them actually get it? I.e. no profit-seeking entrepreneur in their right mind would act to create competition for themselves. Competition means waste of time and resources, so there's no surprise every player tries to figure a way how to reduce it, aiming for bigger and bigger pieces of the whole pie in the process. The state you described seems like a part of the natural evolution of market incentives.

<comment><USER15> > Isn't the whole capitalism based on promising people monopoly but not > letting them actually get it?

No. Modern mixed economies, which have _replaced_ capitalism as the dominant system of the developed world since capitalism was described in the 19th Century, are based on incorporating the features of capitalism that tend toward monopoly, but incorporating other features to impair the development of some monopolies and restrict the adverse impacts of other monopolies.

Capitalism _itself_ does nothing to control monopolies.

<comment><USER16> If you define capitalism as "property laws allowing ownership of capital" and further define it as "laissez-faire" meaning that the state does not use its power to promote or restrict particular firms or outcomes, then at the very least you will get the promotion of competition between industries, plus eventual limits to what a firm can do.

For example, if a monopoly in airlines leads to prohibitively expensive plane tickets, then competition from bus lines will serve as a control, and the monopoly for "all transportation types" will be reduced. Unless of course you have the airlines buying out the bus lines. But even in that case, there is a limit to how much they can charge because a new firm can enter and make a new capital investment in that industry. So at most, the monopolist can charge whatever rate would make it prohibitively expensive to enter that industry.

<comment><USER14> I can see several strategies you could use under conditions you described to maintain your monopoly if you're already big. You could, for instance, immediately buy out any serious competition before it becomes dangerous. Or, since you're a big player with deep coffers, upon seeing an upstart you could start operating at a loss an just wait until your competitor runs out of capital, and then bring the prices back up. Defeating you would require a lot of people coordinating to hit you at the same time, and we all know that people suck at coordination (and if somehow they managed to orchestrate such an operation, it wouldn't take much to bribe a participant and turn him into a defector in order to derail the whole group).

Or you could just hire a hitman. There's no concept of "fair play" in the "physical order of nature".

<comment><USER17> > You could, for instance, immediately buy out any serious competition before > it becomes dangerous.

That's great. So your are writing free puts to my startups' equity?

Ie after you buy me out, I can go and start a new company, threatening to compete again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is cool, but incomplete. An index fund would still want competition if by competing, Pepsi gains 100% and Coke loses 1%. i.e., in any case where competition grows the pie rather than cuts it up differently, the index fund would want competition.

I claim this is the __right result __. We should discourage competition where everyone ends off worse, and encourage competition otherwise. Individuals competing do things like dump goods below cost to bankrupt smaller competitors; an index would perhaps not do that.

<comment><USER13> "Everyone ends off worse" \- by a strange definition of everyone that leaves consumers out of the equation.

<comment><USER18> Well, consumers shouldn't be much worse off, otherwise it creates an arbitrage opportunity.

Although Pepsi and Coke may be indexed, they aren't the same entity allowing investors to just own one. If there's some action that Pepsi could take that would massively reallocate the pie in it's favor (by winning over consumer for instance), then investors ought to start massing to it and becoming more activist. This would come at the expense of the index of course.

So really as long as there's easy 'severability' of the companies in the index, they shouldn't be overtly monopolistic.

But I agree in industries with high capital requirements (energy, biotech, etc.) it may be impossible to separate out the companies and then they would be de facto merged.

This really is an interesting idea because a solution seems hard to find. Outright banning indexing would be nearly impossible to enforce (large pension funds could reproduce the index at a slighter higher cost).

<comment><USER19> > Well, consumers shouldn't be much worse off, otherwise it creates an > arbitrage opportunity.

Only if the industry has a low barrier to entry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is a fascinating line of thought and, at least from a game theoretic perspective, seems to be a mechanism for creating automatic, passive collusion between companies.

If we model the market as a prisoner's dilemma where a lawyer is deciding whether their client should defect or not, mutual defection is the normal Nash equilibrium. But if both lawyers are representing the _same_ client then cooperation becomes the dominant strategy: regardless of what the other lawyer does (cooperate-defect and cooperate-cooperate both have higher total payoffs than defect-defect).

Notably, this mechanism is entirely passive: it requires no communication between managers or even managers and their investors. Merely knowing that my investors are also investors in my biggest competitor would make "cooperation" the dominant strategy without requiring any conscious collusion.

Taken to the extreme, this actually undermines the entire free market: every manager in a 2+ place firm would have a fiduciary responsibility to drive their company out of business so that the first place firm could enjoy monopolist profits (and thus maximize their shared investor's total return).

</comment><comment><USER21> Which institutional investor should I specifically be concerned about?

Show me the institutional investor that owns 30% of American, 30% of Delta, 30% of Southwest, and 30% of United. [1] If this is the case, then yes we have a problem. The manager of this fund has a major incentive to have these 4 major firms collude and price gouge its customers, as competition among the firms would minimize profit for the index fund. It would major shares of the companies that own the entire market. I think it's safe to say that this institutional investor doesn't exist.

Which concentrated group of 3-4 (oligarchy) institutional investors own a combined 50% of American, 50% of Delta, 50% of Southwest, and 50% of United?

If this is the case, then yes, we have a problem. Collusion will occur between these funds, who will agree to use their voting/management rights to collude at the airline level, as they own the companies that own the market.

We're usually used to seeing collusion between the CEO's and boards of major companies in concentrated markets because we tend to think of these people as the people who profit the most from price gouging. Antitrust lawsuits against AT&T, Kodak, Standard Oil - these are all pretty concrete examples of collusion from brands that we (used to) interface with. [2]

Now we could be seeing collusion abstracted one layer - <USER2> owners/shareholders are institutional investors who don't have a well-known brand. Which institutional investors specifically should we be worried about? Unlike AT&T + Verizon, I don't interface directly with any of them, so I'm not sure which firms I should be concerned about.

Where's the data?

[1] 30% is an arbitrarily large number.

[2] [http://www.hg.org/article.asp?id=6025](http://www.hg.org/article.asp?id=6025)

<comment><USER22> Based on the latest market data, the largest holder of AAL, DAL, LUV, and UAL is Vanguard which through various mutual funds owns 11.5% of the total market value of those four airlines. Second largest holder is T.Rowe Price with 6.8% of the total ownership. Concentration of ownership goes down rapidly from there. So it's hard to see this as a real problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why the assumption that an index must represent a market?

Wikipedia def: "An index fund (also index tracker) is an investment fund ... that aims to replicate the movements of an index of a specific financial market, or a set of rules of ownership that are held constant, regardless of market conditions."

The OP only discusses the former, not the later. I see the point that an indexed fund tied to a specific market, the narrower the better, may bring antitrust rules into play. But the later concept, that a indexed fund is simply a fund with fixed buy rules, need not get anywhere close to antitrust. They need not have a presence across any "market" as conceived by antitrust.

How about an indexed fund with the rule: Own equal numbers of share from all publicly-traded social media firms, except facebook. Such an indexed fund might find lots of investors without getting anywhere close to antitrust.

<comment><USER19> Sure, index funds can track any sort of index, and use any sort of weighting scheme. But modern portfolio theory dictates that truly passive investors should hold two assets: the "market portfolio", and a "risk-free" asset such as Treasury bonds, or cash.

As other commenters have mentioned, "index investing" is better referred to as "passive investing".

<comment><USER23> I think the very term "indexed fund" is an artifact. Indexed funds need not be tied to an index. They can still be "passive investing" without the index.

"Antitrust" is a similar linguistic artifact as you can violate antitrust rules without any mention of trusts,

<comment><USER19> I agree we should get away from the term "index fund", but for better or worse, investors are hung up on indices. Why do we talk about the S&P 500? Why not 1k? etc.

Don't get me started on the price-weighted Dow...

<comment><USER6> We do. The S&P 500 is the classic index that tracked, but it's hardly the only one these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I just can't see it as something positive.

This is signaling that monopolies have massive power in their industry horizontals. 'To compete', they must take over another industry horizontal.

</comment><comment><USER25> If index funds create larger voting blocks of shares, wouldn't that create a more powerful pool of voting power to influence changes than if all shareholders were voting individually? Index funds could turn over voting control to a proxy/research based voting service or survey their investors to determine how to vote.

I'm embarrassed to admit I actually don't know the voting policies of the major index funds I'm invested in (VTI, AGG mostly).

<comment><USER26> [http://www.vanguard.com/pub/Pdf/sai040.pdf](http://www.vanguard.com/pub/Pdf/sai040.pdf)

Page 45.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Maybe it's upside down.

Index funds effectively buy and sell at prices set by non-index fund investors. They are reacting to market price, not trying to predict where the stocks will go in the future.

All other investors are betting on the future price moving one way or the other.

I'd argue that index funds are an amplifier for demand, but that the actual demand is still generated based on 'analysis' by investors seeing the the current price as an opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER28> The article's focus on the temptation for collusion seems overblown to me. Yes, the interests of Pepsi+Coke's index shareholders are served if the companies avoid cannibalizing each other's value, but those shareholders have no way to apply pressure on the companies to do that. Index shareholders do not vote, and by their nature cannot sell shares of a company that they are displeased with.

The other concern seems more well-placed. An efficient market requires that shareholders buy and sell companies in response to performance. Index funds buy and sell companies in response to the performance of the fund, or the market as a whole, or some other arbitrary factor. If 50% or 80% or 90% of a company is owned by 'dumb' funds, what does that do to their market value? And how could that affect the choices of the CEO?

<comment><USER29> Vanguard may invest passively, but they claim to do active things with their proxy votes:

[https://about.vanguard.com/vanguard-proxy- voting/](https://about.vanguard.com/vanguard-proxy-voting/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Say index funds become illegal, just for the sake of argument. Aren't they replaceable by an algorithm - trading software that balances a portfolio that copies an index per investor? It's less efficient, of course, but it's essentially the same thing. You get millions of tiny, cross-sector owners instead of few big index funds. So in that sense the argument in favor of banning index funds is really pointless. They're just one implementation of a strategy that investors could follow on their own, just less efficiently. Essentially, banning them is just a way of enriching brokers because of the expected rise in transaction fees.

</comment><comment><USER31> index allocation as a % of total assets will keep rising, but total assets will also keep rising.. That means individual stocks will still have price discovery despite a futuristic scenario where 99% of all money is indexed. The mechanism for how this leads to collusion is unclear.

</comment><comment><USER32> For an individual index fund, who is making the argument that it's big enough for anti trust? If one fund owns 1% of American Airlines, and 1% of United Airlines, they have no monopoly/dominating power over either.

</comment><comment><USER33> As someone who derives most of his income from the value created by start-ups disrupting incumbents, I'm all in favor of index funds making firms anti- competitive in their own industries.

</comment><comment><USER34> Matt Levine is awesome at separating arguments from interests, and writes very clearly. He was great on Dealbreaker, and I'm glad that he's not tempering his voice on Bloomberg.

</comment><comment><USER35> One problem with this argument is that it ignores the fact that investors are also consumers. If the representative investor is also the representative consumer, then managers who aim to maximize shareholder utility will not set monopoly prices, but rather competitive prices! Of course, like the author I don't think any of this bears out in reality.

</comment><comment><USER36> Index fund works well because it's diluted. When you invest in a single company there are many unknowns and downsides but stretched across the sector, you find less risk (how likely is it that other than Toshiba and Kodak are cooking books).

However, the returns are also limited to the sector as well.

I admit picking undervalued companies AND being solvent enough before the market reacts rationally is a huge undertaking and why there's so little of successful value investors.

</comment><comment><USER37> Index funds and ETFs will work until they don't anymore.

It always happens...

<comment><USER38> What always happens?

<comment><USER37> It's amazing how fast people forget the past. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania)

It happens every time, if there a way to make money speculators will come into the market, take advantage of it. Or in the case of index funds, it will become overcrowded and inefficient and the market will move on to the next big thing. Just ask LTCM. It's the invisible hand of the market...

Honestly, anybody that down voted me is probably invested heavily in index funds because they heard something on a blog and listened to Warren Buffet once.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The OSS model is instructive as an analogy.

80% and shrinking of the fund market is closed and proprietary software. Its very expensive and relies on single points of failure, often one person per fund. There's a lot of propagandizing that they're the only way to invest or best or whatever.

20% and growing of the fund market is free open source allocation, here is TODAYs definition of an index now buy stock to reflect it. Needless to say its incredibly cheap compared to the closed source funds and arguably gives an overall higher rate of return.

Some of the lower rate of return of closed source funds is because of their massive advertising and propaganda budget spent to convince investors that they're a better deal. Sometimes, by obscure enough definitions of better deal, they are. Usually not. Needless to say someone who's paycheck depends on FUDing the free competition isn't going to have anything nice to say about FOSS or index funds.

The idea that FOSS or an index fund is a conspiracy is kind of weird. If index funds are made illegal on that ground, I suppose Emacs will be made illegal soon because its unfair to make individual proprietary editor writers compete with the entire world teamed up against them. "The right of the rich to privatize gains and socialize losses shall not be infringed" and possibly other constitutional amendments will be marched out in the corporate press, etc.

<comment><USER40> The article is not about index funds competing with alternate investment opportunities and whether or not the competition is fair, it's about what index funds do to the competitiveness of the companies they invest in.

<comment><USER39> Exactly, that's the best way to present FUD.

Don't tell people you're trying to grind an axe, just say I'm merely providing free advice from my grindstone financed workplace.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple Watch 3 - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/12/the-new-apple-watch-series-3-has-cellular-built-in/ <comment><USER2> From the bottom of the page:

 _Apple Watch Series 3 (GPS + Cellular) requires an iPhone 6 or later with iOS 11 or later. Apple Watch and iPhone service provider must be the same. Not available with all service providers. Roaming is not available outside your carrier network coverage area. Wireless service plan required for cellular service. Contact your service provider for more details. Check apple.com /watch/cellular for participating wireless carriers and eligibility._

So, using it as a cellular device by itself would seem to be impossible.

<comment><USER3> The phone is how you configure, update, etc. the watch. So I'm betting you need a phone for all the initial setup, and then you can leave your phone at home and go on a marathon run and take phone calls while you are out and about.

<comment><USER4> why couldn't you do that with a computer or an ipad, or an older iphone? ofc you could. Just Apple being really greedy, as we are getting used to

<comment><USER5> You say that like it's a bad thing. Greed is what corporations are for. Greed --and nothing else--drives businesses to provide things that their customers value.

<comment><USER6> Greed implies excess.

<comment><USER5> Who decides what's excessive?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Made me giggle that the ad for this is some surfer being totally in the middle of an amazing moment and then getting distracted by a phone call.

I really like my apple watch, but this really isn't selling it...

<comment><USER8> The same can be said about mobile phone when it was first introduced. "Look at that mobile phone ad, he was spending time with his family outside the house and then getting distracted by a phone call! This would never happen if we only have landline phone!"

<comment><USER9> Still true though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't want an iPhone (or any phone for that matter). I want this. Being reachable, listening to music and gps is all I want from a "phone". Anyone know if carriers will charge extra for the watch. Cook said something about "great introductory rates" from carriers but I'm not if that refers to the watch or the service.

<comment><USER11> I'm with you. Before watching the keynote, I was looking forward to the new phones but the presentation made me more excited about the new Apple Watch with LTE.

I may be in a minority, but over the past few years, I've been trying to actively reduce the amount of times I pull out my phone. I feel like it will be liberating to leave home without your phone to go to dinner or go for a run, but still connected through the Apple Watch. Although it will still display notifications, I personally won't be tempted to browse Twitter or Instagram when I have a free moment.

<comment><USER12> The air pods were the revolution for me. This is the one thing I was looking forward to until I heard that you needed a connected iPhone as well. Now it is a non-starter. Guess I need to go test the Samsung buds.

<comment><USER13> I own the Samsung pair. Don't have much good to say about them except they work... for a bit. I usually can use them for an hour and then they're completely dead.

They also can't hold a charge very long. If I charge mine up overnight, by next evening when I go to use them, they're already half dead. Great product except for very poor battery life.

<comment><USER14> Gear Icon X? The new yet unreleased version has much better battery life. 4 or 5 hours

<comment><USER13> Yeah, Icon X, I probably should have waited for the next generation. But I suppose that can be said about any new technology being released.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have thought about buying an Apple Watch multiple times. But, then, I see comments from a lot of Apple Watch users who say that they completely stop using it after few months. For many of them, the utility is not strong enough. Have things improved in that regard? What do you Apple Watch users think about it now?

<comment><USER16> I always thought the apple watch was frivolous. Then I got one as a gift and cant imagine not having one. The ability to see whether or not a text/call is important without having to pull my phone out of my pocket is a killer feature for me. I always felt that it was rude to do that and this prevents me from having to. The fitness tracker is also really fun to use, and imo more accurate than the fit bit I had.

<comment><USER17> Second this. It seems much less rude to discretely glance at your wrist briefly.

<comment><USER18> You think that, but it's super noticeable. Muliple times I've been in a situation where I'm in a conversation with someone who is constantly glancing at their watch. Depending on how well I know them, I either say, "You you like to just look at your phone?" or "Is time moving faster on your side of the table, because you seem to be very concerned with your watch."

Or I say nothing and just think about how rude that person is.

<comment><USER19> Not everyone is in a position to ignore their notifications. Would you rather they pull out their phone?

<comment><USER18> As someone who was on call for 20 years straight, I'm well aware of that. :)

And yes, I would rather they pull out their phone than stare at their wrist every 10 seconds. I don't have a problem with someone looking at their notifications, I'm just pointing out that people think they're being sneaky with the watch when they really aren't.

<comment><USER16> I get your point and I am well aware of the rudeness of looking at your clock during a conversation and how rude that is. However, I am not someone who is constantly getting notifications, and my phone is kept in my front pocket and is generally a pain to stand up and pull out of said pocket. Knowing I dont have to do that and can at least see who is contacting me from my wrist is a minor, yet still net benefit to my life. I am a big fan of everyone taking stock of how their phone habits are affecting their social and professional lives. I personally hate the phone pose where everyone is on autopilot while staring at their phone. I think this is a way to kind of back away from that and maybe avoid the temptation to be stimulated 100% of the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is a life saver for those who spend time outdoors and can't or don't like to carry phones. I run for example for hours in the Canadian winter and the idea of having an emergency phone is attractive, in case I fall, or maybe there's a big issue at home.

Another alternative would be an iPhone SE but sadly we are in the era of oversized phones.

I would also love it to have more Bluetooth integration (continuous glucose monitoring is a good first step), and continuously monitor more health data in general: hydration, temperature. Omron is working on a watch that measures blood pressure. The last step is food intake monitoring but I guess we will need a couple more iterations and more sensors (onboard camera?) to get the Watch record that

<comment><USER21> I was relieved to see they are still selling the SE. It's really a fantastic little device and I much prefer the form factor. I don't see a compelling reason to upgrade.

<comment><USER22> They knocked another $50 off it as well, now starts at $350 - Damn good deal.

<comment><USER23> Just got it for $140 on ATT. Bought the subsidized pre-paid version (same phone), but it works for postpaid ATT.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Making messaging on the watch with a separate cellular connection work seamless with messaging on the phone is an amazing symphony of cloud services. Apple is currently, IMHO, the only company with the cloud service ability to pull this off. Google Voice is a close second, but that hasn't been moved forward in quite awhile.

It is amazing how hard multi-homing has ended up being. Facebook Messenger has it working correctly, and the new chat apps that store all state in the cloud, e.g. Slack or Microsoft Teams, also pull it off.

Maintaining reasonable battery life with an always on LTE is also to be commended. Wireless is a huge power drain, providing low latency, low power, messaging is hard. FWIW, just having an LTE chip that never needs to turn on is easy, a fresh install of any mobile OS with no messaging apps installed will last for days. Put a single app that needs real time(ish) messaging delivery on board and watch the battery life drop in half.

</comment><comment><USER25> I think this product has the potential to reduce the distracting habits that we have with our phones while we're out and about while still keeping us connected.

You can finally leave your phone at home in more scenarios.

<comment><USER26> I tried an Apple Watch for a few weeks thinking that it would be less of a distraction than the phone in my pocket. Found that

(1) it's much more of a distraction because it's so much more accessible and is more likely to be buzzing regularly. There's a mental and physical barrier to pulling my phone out of my pocket that makes it easier to disconnect; there's almost no barrier with the Apple Watch, it takes much more mental effort to limit its disruptiveness.

(2) someone looking at their watch frequently (more than about every 15 minutes) is often interpreted socially as a sign that the conversation is boring or going too long or they are otherwise anxious about the time. I generally found that looking at the Apple Watch was more disruptive socially than pulling out my phone (partly due to #1)

<comment><USER25> (1) I've turned off all notifications except the ones that absolutely need to come through (SMS, Calls, Calendar Events etc). You need to have a different notification strategy for your Watch vs. your Phone.

(2) You can't look at your Watch for that long comfortably. It's good for glances and that's what I end up doing most - glancing. I think this is far better than getting sucked into your phone. You get the information you need quickly and get out quickly. That's not the case with my phone.

<comment><USER27> 2 - I agree. That's why it's so damn infuriating that Apple won't let you remove the Photos app from the Watch without also removing it from your iPhone (where it's actually useful)!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Obligatory Robert Tinney Byte cover: [https://archive.org/details/byte- magazine-1981-04](https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1981-04)

</comment><comment><USER29> Honestly, it's worth thinking about if I could happily live my life with just this watch and ditching the phone all together.

<comment><USER30> That would be so great, but they need to figure out camera (taking photos is still a big part of what phone in my pocket is used for)

<comment><USER31> Can anyone recommend a standalone camera that's as easy to use and takes photos as good as an iPhone 7 plus? Camera is now the _only_ reason for me to have a phone rather than a watch. Difficulty: I really like live photos and expect future-me to be super happy with present-me for taking so many live photos of my kids.

<comment><USER32> If you're going to be taking a camera with you, you might as well as carry a phone instead, since every camera I know is a lot bigger/thicker/have worse battery life than any cell phone. Alternative would be a Snapchat glasses or the discontinued Google Glasses, which have lower-quality image and the added bonus of looking dorky in appearance.

EDIT: Forgot about GoPro Session or those miniaturized action cameras (such as Mobius and Polaroid Cube)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The only thing I'm interested in with this new Watch, is the heart study. I'm VERY interested if they have this monitoring mastered without the chest strap. Super useful for me.

<comment><USER34> They're trying to to detect heart issues in people who don't otherwise have any reason to suspect they have them. Given that the heart rate monitor isn't even accurate enough to be useful for exercising[1], it seems unlikely you'd want to rely on this if you already know you have an issue.

[http://www.mdpi.com/2075-4426/7/2/3/htm](http://www.mdpi.com/2075-4426/7/2/3/htm)

<comment><USER35> Curious why you come to that conclusion? That study itself says the watches were within acceptable error for their purposes. Why would you need more accuracy than the roughly 2% error on the Apple Watch?

<comment><USER34> The error-rate for walking was up to 3.8%, which is roughly 8bpm for someone with a 200bpm max HR. And that error rate is averaged over a minute, so presumably the instantaneous error rate is even greater. If I'm trying to keep my HR at a constant 150 or whatever, I don't want to be speeding up or slowing down on the basis of getting garbage data from my HR monitor. This is an issue even with the Polar chest straps, and those are significantly more accurate than the Apple Watch.

Also, if you look at the protocol the vast majority of participants wouldn't have even broken a sweat, let alone have been sweating significantly.

<comment><USER36> In what health scenario do you need your HR to stay at a constant 150 so stringently?

<comment><USER34> If you're trying to do UT1 (70%-80% of max HR) training and instead you're doing UT2 (55%-70%) or AT (80%-85%), then you're not going to get the benefits you were going for.

Further, the only way you can accurately measure your rate of improvement is by comparing average watts across time at a fixed HR. So if your HR isn't at your target level then not only are you not going to be making progress at an acceptable rate, but you're not even going to know that you're not on track until it's already too late.

<comment><USER37> Your assuming that your other measurement devices don't have any significant error rates.

And that the gobblygook of UT1, UT2, etc, is actually meaningful.

<comment><USER38> It's not gobblygook, it's training at a serious level. Those levels correspond well with lactic acid levels in the blood, for various types of training. I've both rowed at a high level and done tech research work with an Olympic cycling team, and this (or variants) are used frequently. HR for power (not pace etc) is a good measure of personal fitness and wellbeing (e.g. high resting heart rate means you're possibly falling ill or not well rested). However, all this doesn't matter for anyone who just wants to be healthy. That said, I defer to Garmin For proper HR smart watches and accessories, which are tailored for specific sports.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> > Q: Can I use my Apple Watch Series 3 (GPS + Cellular) internationally?

> A: Apple Watch Series 3 (GPS + Cellular) does not support international > roaming.

From the FAQ section of the Apple Watch page in the Store. I'm wondering why the device has to support roaming, isn't that just a feature of the cellular provider?

<comment><USER40> It might be a technological issue: standards (GSM, CDMA) and allowed frequencies vary a lot from country to country. The chip in this Apple Watch might be too specific? If it's a purely contractual issue, it should be gone soon (for a fee): too much money to be made from international roaming.

<comment><USER41> Unlikely, the chips in iPhones have been carrier neutral for at least a couple of generations now.

<comment><USER40> iPhones are bigger and have more power: the chip in the Apple Watch might be different. It's just an hypothesis.

<comment><USER42> They don't seem to list regional models for the bands:

[https://www.apple.com/watch/cellular/](https://www.apple.com/watch/cellular/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Underwater + cellular is pretty impressive. The extra sensors + medical algos are what is really going to win in the long run though. Once doctors start prescribing Apple Watches things will really start to takeoff.

<comment><USER44> >Once doctors start prescribing Apple Watches

I wouldn't hold my breath on that, for a few reasons:

\- The sensors likely aren't good enough yet

\- To be prescribed and paid for by insurance cos and medicare, it would need to be an FDA approved device, an onerous and years(maybe decade) long process that I doubt apple would want to go through. You can't have an FDA approved device that you constantly update for example

\- There is no evidence that this kind constant vital stats recording is medically useful. You'd think it would be, but the literature suggests otherwise

So, there are a ton of hurdles for medical use. They would need to establish the utility with a years long peer reviewed study, get FDA approval, convince payers to cover it, convince doctors to prescribe it, and brand it as a health device. I'm not convinced that this is feasible.

<comment><USER45> Doctors can recommend things without prescribing them. No need for approvals in that case.

<comment><USER44> Sure, they can... but they generally will not if the evidence doesn't back it up, and it isn't covered, and it wasn't taught in med school when they went through.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Cellular coming to Apple Watch finally makes it a usable product for me, Apple Music being the killer app.

Question is then, will Spotify and Google Music ever come to Apple Watch?

<comment><USER47> I'm not buying one until Spotify has an app for it. I'm not switching to Apple Music just to get a watch.

<comment><USER48> Seriously. Lack of syncing Spotify & podcasts for offline playback is a deal breaker.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> <ThatGuy> Samsung introduced 3G connectivity in the Samsung Gear S2 already two years ago, and added 4G LTE in the Gear S3 last year. </ThatGuy>

<comment><USER50> Nobody here is saying that Apple was the first to add cellular capability to their watches. They're just glad to see it as a new feature.

<comment><USER49> The Apple keynote made a pretty big deal about innovations that enabled the LTE features. They didn't explicitly say that those were Apple innovations, though.

<comment><USER51> Compare the size of either Apple Watch to a Samsung LTE watch - even the larger 42mm Apple Watch is comfortably smaller than the Gear, and the 38 makes the Gear look like you're wearing a yo-yo on your wrist.

That size/battery life stuff is what took all the work, and why Apple waited until it was able to ship without the compromises.

<comment><USER49> The 3G model of the Gear S2 is roughly the same size as the Apple Watch Series 2/3 42mm model.

The size increase in Gear S3 was more dictated by fashion than necessity -- after the Gear S2, Samsung had market data that their primary buyer group favors larger watches in general, so they decided to bulk it up and increase battery life. (A lot of men actually like that "yo-yo on the wrist" look, for reasons I don't entirely fathom. I guess it's sporty.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Apple Watch is one of the very few v1 products I just never felt the need to upgrade. I tend to always be on the latest generation of everything, but the watch just works fine in it's launch-day v1 state. v2 was underwhelming, and as someone who _always_ has his phone on him, v3 doesn't do much for me.

This isn't a complaint in the least, good to see Apple making products that don't feel old 2.5 years later.

<comment><USER51> The jump from the v1 watch to the Series 2 isn't a huge win until you use it - Siri is faster, more reliable, and more responsive, other apps are much more useable, battery life is improved, etc etc.

Much of the improvement on series 2 was invisible, but it helps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> This is a relatively small problem - that sure is one ugly red knob on the side. I don't think it jives with the design at all and looks cartoonish. Otherwise, seems like a decent upgrade

<comment><USER45> A very important part of the value of this watch - like all expensive watches - is social signalling.

The red crown signals you have the new watch.

Don't get me wrong: it's a cool gadget and the LTE and music streaming makes it quite desirable. But this is also a fashion accessory, unapologetically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Curious about hardware differences across markets. I bought my previous gen 2 watch in Japan, so it came with the Suica feature (which my phone lacks). Will they again limit this feature to Japan sales? And then, will LTE be different (optimized to frequencies) from country to country, given the small size?

</comment><comment><USER55> anybody know how this cell version compares to Samsung Gear S3 frontier ([https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-SM-R760NDAAXAR- Gear-S3-Fronti...](https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-SM-R760NDAAXAR- Gear-S3-Frontier/dp/B01M7MDK5S))?

</comment><comment><USER56> The one thing that everyone besides a quite limited group of people is asking for many years - battery - gives no change.

Give people 1-week battery life. Otherwise just stay a gizmo.

<comment><USER57> Cellphones used to have a 1 week battery life.

The market spoke. We care more about weight than charging frequency. Sorry for those of you who have other preferences but this is not changing any time soon.

<comment><USER56> I wish that the other 99.5% of people that do not own Apple Watch actually mean something to Apple then.

I wonder why so many Apple "defenders" are passive aggressive... Being a user is one thing, but being passive aggressive over a tech product have no explanation.

<comment><USER57> The reality is that Apple can't fit all the features (e.g. bright colour screen) in a watch AND have a battery big enough for 7 days of juice. It's just not physically possible. They could make the watch super chunky but then almost nobody would buy it.

Everyone wants long battery life but it's not that simple. If the tradeoff is having a huge, ugly watch then most people opt to simply charge daily like we already do for our phones.

<comment><USER56> I beg to differ. There are ways to improve battery life in Smartphones and increase their life from 1 day to up to 4 days (by removing all power draining apps and adjusting settings differently). I know this would be hard, but this is Apple. I would assume that if anyone, they should be able to deliver. This would be what I would call a real revolution. Give us a smartwatch that can be charged on weekends and is waterproof.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Delegating access to a resource protected by a SIM card seems dangerous if not executed with meticulous security considerations - both technical and behavioral.

</comment><comment><USER59> Seems like the lack of SIM also means no choice of carrier - the slide only showed 9 or 10 carriers in just a handful of countries where that will work.

<comment><USER60> The techcrunch article says there is a SIM card.

<comment><USER61> It's not a real SIM _card_. They talked about it in the keynote; it's a built- in electronic SIM chip or something.

<comment><USER62> So in other words no way to get this directly rather than from a carrier and no way to switch carriers unless they explicitly support it.

Sounds great.

<comment><USER50> It uses your phone's carrier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Will the cellular piggyback on your existing service, or will it require a new line?

Here's the list of countries and carriers that it will work with: [http://live.arstechnica.com/apples- september-2017-iphone-8-l...](http://live.arstechnica.com/apples- september-2017-iphone-8-launch/images/IMG_0195.JPG)

<comment><USER47> You'll probably have to pay around $10 to add cellular for the watch, similar to how it works for the iPad plan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> LTE is a great addition but disappointed Apple Watch 3 has no new sensors. See you next year Apple Watch!

<comment><USER65> Actually, I believe it has a barometric altimeter, for measuring height - e.g. flights of stairs climbed.

<comment><USER66> It's also useful for climbing situations. Unfortunately, I don't think it'd survive alpine conditions.

<comment><USER67> Apple specifically called out skiing and boarding in the keynote when they mentioned the altimeter. Which I'm really excited for!

Plus the current generations work fine in alpine conditions, from personal experience.

<comment><USER45> Quick calls and messages by Siri without taking my gloves off on the lift. Nice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> A few more iterations of the Apple Watch and we might be in a position to ditch smartphones entirely.

Instead of tablets being the ugly middle child, maybe they will become the new smartphones, with people favouring the large screen for intense work, and using the Watch for messaging and music.

<comment><USER69> I don't anticipate high schools being filled with two thousand children consuming instagram photos on their wrist. I don't anticipate college bars being filled with people cocking their wrists to the side taping intently onto a watch. And I don't anticipate my train commute into the city filled with people staring into the even smaller form factor of this device as they consume video and email...

<comment><USER70> I don't either. Just as with the shift from desktops to laptops to mobile, what and how we consume will shift.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Unlike most of the other commenters here, I'd like to have both a phone and a watch with my existing provider. However I wouldn't really be happy if there was an additional monthly cost to add the watch.

<comment><USER57> There's a charge of $5 or $10 a month for adding the watch on your phone plan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> I remember really wanting one a couple years ago and scoffing at the price when I realized there was no LTE. This sounds like a game changer for sure. I can see people completely replacing their phones with these.

</comment><comment><USER73> I've switched to Bluetooth earphones for my daily run. Still have to carry the phone though, which I hate.

An Apple Watch that can play my music through my Bluetooth earphones is a game changer for me.

<comment> X-Istence You could already load music onto your Apple Watch from your iTunes library and then pair your Bluetooth headphones with your watch.

The only thing this changed is allowing you to use LTE to stream music instead of having a static playlist.

<comment><USER74> The time required to actually sync music to the Watch (and the inability, until watchOS 4, to have multiple playlists) is what has always killed this for me. It's just too much faffing about.

As far as I'm concerned, the LTE Watch cannot arrive fast enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> Id love to get the Apple Watch for the heart rate and fitness functionality, but I don't believe they have addressed the tattoo issue yet. Certainly hadn't in the Apple Watch 2...

Anyone know?

</comment><comment><USER76> When these are less hideous, and actually negate my need for a phone, I'll consider one. Or, when we get Star Wars holograms from them. Then too.

</comment><comment><USER77> Can you surf the web on it? That's all I do on my phone.

<comment><USER50> No, since there's no web browser available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> This is the first time I have actually wanted an Apple Watch. My first iPhone was a 4, and by then it was pretty damn good. This watch feels that way too.

</comment><comment><USER79> Huh weird. I'm in Edge (a supported browser) and it still says 'Live video will begin at 10 a.m. PDT.' \- it's apparently 10:52 PDT now.

</comment><comment><USER80> I wish they had included the rumored continuous glucose monitor. That would've made me line up outside the store

</comment><comment><USER81> Not needing to pair with a phone is huge.

<comment><USER82> Totally! Can't wait to pay AT&T extra $ a month for having a sim in my watch!

<comment><USER50> Technically speaking the SIM is already in the Watch…

<comment><USER82> Have I implied otherwise ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> This was an exciting keynote because of three things:

Apple Watch 3 in Cellular, iPhone X, & the Wireless charging mat.

</comment><comment><USER84> Does anybody know if it is completely independent from a phone, as in: no need to even own one?

<comment><USER85> Sounds like it's still tied to the phone you can just take it places and leave the phone behind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> I wonder if they'll let me add it to an old grandfathered unlimited plan on att.

<comment><USER87> Doubtful, this is a perfect way to force customers wanting the watch into their new plans, which are almost always worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> What is the difference with existing android smart watches with a SIM card? [http://smartwatches.org/learn/best-standalone-smartwatch- opt...](http://smartwatches.org/learn/best-standalone-smartwatch-options/)

<comment><USER50> It runs watchOS.

<comment><USER89> No, Apple Watches run WatchOS.

<comment><USER50> Err…that's what I meant. Let me fix it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> Wow LTE, that's awesome. I hope it doesn't affect the battery life too much.

</comment><comment><USER91> The form factor is great on these. I see so many smartwatches with a circular screen, that just seems so inefficient to me. A square screen is so much better for usability.

</comment><comment><USER92> Phablets won over <4" smartphones. In a similar fashion "whones" which have large landscape screens with voice control could be cool. So primary use for smartphones isn't making calls and similarly "whones" should leave behind the "showing time" functionality.

</comment><comment><USER93> I am probably out of touch, but the idea of wearing a watch that cannot go a full day without a recharge seems... well, like having a car that can get you to work and halfway home before going dead. Incomplete.

I wear a Garmin vivoactive HR watch that does a lot, but certainly not all that an Apple watch does; but it goes about a week on a charge. One feature I like of smartwatches is the sleep tracking. But with the Apple watch, wouldn't you need to charge it while you slept? Otherwise you'd be taking it off some part of each day to charge it.

<comment><USER94> 30 years ago some would have said the idea of not being able to years without a battery recharge seems....

<comment><USER95> There's definitely a threshold of intolerability though. Somewhere between the points of:

\- charge when you notice you're low (weekly or more)

\- charge as a matter of routine (daily-ish)

\- obsessively hunt your tiny overlord's next power fix, living life as a series of trips from outlet to outlet (multiple times daily)

<comment><USER94> True, but if it lasts all day I don't see the problem with charging it when I'm not using it. Also, should they not produce the device because of this pain point? With new technology there will be pain points. This is to be expected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER96> This feels like the killer product from the presentation.

The no home-button iphone feels like 'meh, I don't mind having a button there at all actually', the 4k apple tv might be nice for people who enjoy sports, while this is the feature everyone has been waiting for.

It appeals to women because fashion, and appeals to men who don't need to check social media/message/calendar on a daily basis.

A total win for everybody involved. The pricetag for what it is, I find to be too much, but it's Apple, so.

<comment><USER97> > It appeals to women because fashion, and appeals to men who don't need to > check social media/message/calendar on a daily basis.

How extraordinarily sexist.</comment></comment>


1/4 Covid Deaths Are in Nursing Homes - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/nearly-26-000-nursing-home-residents-died-of-covid-19-federal-tally-shows-11591053033 <comment><USER2> The United States needs to take a long, hard look at the current culture of dumping the elderly into a nursing home. From what I understand, there are many cultures that instead take in the elderly into their own homes or try to keep them in their own home. I remember reading a good book on the subject, _Being Mortal_ by Dr. Gawande, a few years back. It was an eye-opener to the realities of how we treat end-of-life care in the U.S.

<comment><USER3> not sure why you think this is a US problem, in other countries these ratios are even higher

it is a developed world problem

simply put the way people live/work is not suited to multi-generational families - I wish it were

<comment><USER4> Agreed. Blaming one another isn't constructive. Framing it as a needed cultural change goes further.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't think nursing homes are as terrible as they're made out to be, at least not as a general concept. The issue, in my view, is much like the issue with private prisons - you have a highly vulnerable population with little recourse against the people in charge, because those people have so much control over residents' lives.

There should be much greater regulation along with frequent inspections and a mandate that residents have information in their rooms about how to report issues directly to the government.

Those things obviously wouldn't help with the coronavirus issues at present, but having that type of government infrastructure involved with nursing homes would have put a lot of pieces in place to allow for a more consistent and coherent response when we started seeing Covid cases.

Of course we also needed PPE and testing en masse at nursing homes early on, so maybe it wouldn't have mattered anyway.

<comment><USER6> There already is "greater regulation"..

In fact in NY the nursing homes themselves pleaded with the governor to not force the return of these COVID positive individuals back to the nursing homes. The governor of NY actually scrubbed his order from the state website sending these infected patients from hospitals back to nursing homes and assisted living facilities.

You can use whatever asinine ideas You like to protect your stance on big government. Not enough government wasn't the problem here, the government was essentially sending smallpox blankets into these at risk communities. If those people voted blue or were one of the protected classes, the access media would be all over this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This actually sounds low, from the other sources I was seeing. At one point, I could have sworn it was about half.

At any rate, this is shocking in how skewed it is. Not clear what the takeaway is. That we need a better story for an immunity later between at risk groups?

I'm still not sure, either, how this squares with the current mask story. Nursing homes bad at cleaning and isolation of sick individuals? Feels off. But not shockingly so. Regardless, hard to see how people in a mask at the grocery are somehow preventing people in long term care from getting it, at large.

Edit:. I say all of that as someone that is wearing a mask nowadays.

<comment><USER6> I think it's close to around 44% by recent numbers.

However, NY recently revised how they are counting these deaths, and they now count them in a way where if the nursing home resident is transferred to the hospital, they are generally not counted as a nursing home death. Up until very recently, they were counting that as a nursing home death the same as every other state in the union.

They've been the only state to make such changes so far, but the governor did make a deal with the nursing homes to limit their liability during this situation as well so this is pretty much par for the course here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This number is for USA. For Canada (as of 7th of May) 82% of deaths have been in long term care [1]

[1] [https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2020/05/07/82-of- ca...](https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2020/05/07/82-of-canadas- covid-19-deaths-have-been-in-long-term-care.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> Here's another article (May 26th) with stats as of May 22th that claims 42% of C19 deaths are from assisted living:

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2020/05/26/nursin...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2020/05/26/nursing- homes-assisted-living-facilities-0-6-of-the-u-s-population-43-of-u-s- covid-19-deaths/#9427a4874cdb)

In a number of states its a much higher percentage.</comment>


Can this flat-pack truck save the world? - <AUTHOR> http://www.topgear.com/car-news/big-reads/can-flat-pack-truck-save-world <comment><USER2> I love this idea. A bruiser truck that is meant to be easily repaired</comment>