We earned $50 000 on programming books in 2015 and so can you - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@pankowecki/we-earned-50-000-on-programming-books-in-2015-and-so-can-you-ed1cac712248 <comment><USER2> Dear mod, please remove the "so can you" from the title.</comment>


Ten caching mistakes that break your app - <AUTHOR> http://www.codeproject.com/KB/web-cache/cachingmistakes.aspx <comment><USER3> I was somewhat surprised to learn that .Net's built-in serialization is quite slow (up to 100x times slower than a handcrafted solution, apparently) - <USER2> this common?</comment>


Designing Twitter Video – A look into the design and prototyping process - <AUTHOR> http://paulstamatiou.com/twitter-video/

<comment><USER2> Stammy's articles are always a great read. As a developer, I appreciate his perspectives on the intersection of programming and design. I recommend his three-part post on designing and developing a responsive, retina-friendly site.

[http://paulstamatiou.com/responsive-retina-blog- design/](http://paulstamatiou.com/responsive-retina-blog-design/) [http://paulstamatiou.com/responsive-retina-blog- development-...](http://paulstamatiou.com/responsive-retina-blog-development- part-1/) [http://paulstamatiou.com/responsive-retina-blog- development-...](http://paulstamatiou.com/responsive-retina-blog-development- part-2/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Shameless self promotion - I just did a talk about protoyping last week that touches on many of the points Paul makes, and also explores some of the tools available. Hope some find it useful here: [http://bit.ly/gbks- prototyping](http://bit.ly/gbks-prototyping)

</comment><comment><USER4> Great post, it is always nice to see how other teams build things. I don't think it is that hard though to just prototype in the Objective-C for iOS or Java for Android. Why the extra JavaScript prototype?

<comment><USER5> So much faster for custom animations and transitions :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Now engineer a way for Twitter to make money.</comment>


Continuous Deployment - <AUTHOR> http://gun.io/blog/continuous-deployment/

<comment><USER2> Continuous deployment principles do not fly in businesses where IT/programming departments are considered a cost center. We are seen as 'burning money' rather than 'generating money.' Our opposing view is: without our programs, we would go from 140 employees to 5000-15000 employees to handle the workload.

My business's happiness is not about the IT department's happiness. It is about meeting quota. I'm a big fan of TDD (test driven development) stuck in a waterfall.

</comment><comment><USER3> just deploying every time your tests pass is not continuous deployment. using it in production will only lead to pain down the line.

to do it properly you need some or all of the following:

a) to be able to deploy to only a fraction of your servers, and expose new version to fraction of your users b) detect performance degradation c) detect increase in error rates d) detect decrease in traffic, user engagement etc.

and of course, auto-revert in case any detected problem.

somehow I doubt they actually do that.</comment>


Flying cars finally lift off - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jan/30/flying-car-terrafugia-transition-aircraft

<comment><USER2> The flying car is a prime example of more functionality resulting in an inferior product. It's a mediocre aircraft and a mediocre car. A better alternative is an ultralight you can pack or tow behind a car and use it separately.

<comment><AUTHOR> But then you don't have a car when you land

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Disclaimer: This is very, very impressive and I'm inspired.

But it seems a _bit_ of a stretch to call it a flying car.</comment>


Smurfs Sneak into Apple's App Store, Rob Parents - <AUTHOR> http://slaven.posterous.com/smurfs-sneak-into-apples-app-store-rob-parent

<comment><USER2> A massive number of Top Grossing games use this model. Just looking at the Top 20: Tap Zoo, Restaurant Story, FarmVille, Kingdoms at War, Touch Pets Cats, Zombie Farm, We Rule.

I suppose there should be a setting (perhaps even the default) that allows parents to always require a password for every in app purchase. Wonder how much it would affect sales...

What's funny is I bet that most people who complain about "expensive" (read: more than $5) apps wouldn't blink at spending a bunch of money on virtual coins/berries/gems/stars/whatever.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd love it if we could get a better breakdown of app-types: 1) paid download 2) free-to-download and play 3) free-to-download with in-app purchase

This would not only be more reflective of the state of the game but also allow me to make better informed decisions when downloading apps for my child (or myself).

<comment><AUTHOR> I have some paid apps that also offer in-app purchases so maybe a new flag that lets parents know which apps have in-app purchases? Or at least a way to reset the iTunes password on demand...

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Good point! I've never seen this model shoot straight into the top spot on grossing list, I guess that's probably because Capcom jacked up prices on their items. I don't think they'll be allowed to continue this, or Apple will have a revolt on their hands.

<comment><USER4> This has definitely happened before. Last time I checked, almost half of the apps in top grossing were free. You don't think apps should be allowed to price their in-app purchases at whatever they'd like? Really?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, when you're targeting children with a $60 upsell then yes, really.</comment></comment></comment>


iOS 7.1 - <AUTHOR> http://www.apple.com/ios/ios7-update/ <comment><USER4> And the biggest feature of 7.1 is that within a few weeks 4 out of 5 iOS users will be running 7.1.

[http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/01/apple-80-percent-of- act...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/01/apple-80-percent-of-active-users- are-now-running-ios-7/)

<comment><USER5> Given that Apple still sells an 16GB iPhone (for some baffling reason) I wonder what percentage of users will not have the necessary 4GB of unused space.

Anecdotally, Several of my officemates have had this issue.

<comment><USER6> Not sure that would be baffling - that's the model everyone I know has (including myself).

<comment><USER5> Sorry for being confusing - I don't disagree it's popular model. What I don't understand is why Apple's baseline model has 16GB. It seems like flash memory can be had very cheaply - Amazon shows several examples of 64GB MicroSD cards for ~ $25.

It would seem like starting their base model at 64GB would be very consumer- friendly, and have a very low cost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been running the latest beta for a while, and I'm updating my devices now. Here's my beef:

This came too late. For months now - ever since iOS 7 came out, I've had to tell people "iOS 7 is great, but buggy. Don't worry, Apple will release 7.1 soon that will fix a lot of these issues." Time, and time again, I said that. With each beta it became more and more obvious that Apple wasn't releasing a quick fix for the myriad of issues that plagued users.

I think Apple did this wrong. 7.1 contains new features and updated UI elements. Fuck that. I wanted the hundreds of bugs that were impacting users to be fixed back in October. I expected the new iPads to be running 7.1. I think Apple should have focused solely on fixing the bugs present for 7.1, and then released 7.2 that had these features. But since September 18th, (173 days ago!) I've been dealing with a buggy OS and been apologizing for it [0].

To me, that is unacceptable.

[0] I'm a big Apple fan, and develop iOS apps, and a lot of people in my circle come to me with their Apple questions.

<comment><USER8> This is interesting - I've been using iOS7 since the day it came out and don't think I've seen a serious bug yet, certainly not hundreds of them. I really am curious - is it the hardware (iPhone 5s here) or different usage patterns? I'm a developer too, and just haven't had this experience. Please let me know a couple of the specific bugs you've seen, as I'd like to try and recreate them before upgrading to 7.1

<comment><USER9> I've seen two annoying bugs so far:

* the music player corrupts itself and starts skipping all songs, may or may not be fixed by rebooting the device. May require resynchronising all the music (remove/readd everything)

* it regularly decides to stop opening sync sessions with iTunes and has to be rebooted

Apart from that it's been pretty smooth sailing.

Oh yeah, and every single update re-enables bluetooth, that's annoying.

<comment><USER10> The only bug I've seen is that the device would restart itself on occasion. There was a critical bug right when iOS7 came out where if you tapped define in mail or notes, it would completely freeze the app. Seems to be fixed now.

Then again, I wouldn't say I'm a heavy user. I mainly use it to check on my mail, read some news, etc.

<comment><USER11> I've had my iPhone5 restart happen during a call in iOS7.0 - the call went along as if nothing had happened.

Was it really a restart or just the UI (springboard) restarting?

<comment><USER12> Theoretically, both would be possible.

The cell phone modem is a separate hardware piece in your phone, it has its own operating system. The smartphone OS communicates with the modem over an interface usually using "AT" commands. The iPhone 1-4 had an cell phone modem design by Intel (GSM version, modem manufacturer got bought by Intel).

The iOS UI consists app(s), so it may crash and restart.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > "iPhone 4 users will enjoy improved responsiveness and performance"

I hear: "iPhone 4 users will be slightly less screwed over this time". I am updating as fast as I can, because frankly, nothing can be worse than the iOS 7.0 upgrade that I (regrettably) did.

No matter how iOS 7.1 works on my iPhone 4, I will remember how I got screwed by the 7.0 update. In the future I will never upgrade to a major new OS version without waiting several weeks and seeing how other people's devices behave. The trust has been broken.

<comment><USER14> Well, it's a real damned if you do, damned if you don't situation for Apple.

If they cut off support they are evil for making old devices obsolete too quickly.

If they don't cut off support they get poor performance with an OS that takes advantage of all the performance in the newest models.

<comment><USER15> Does taking advantage of the technology in the newer devices automatically mean you must have degradation in the older ones?

<comment><USER14> Not automatically, but there is no free lunch. Also, if Apple disables too much stuff they also get yelled at for not bringing all the features.

I mean, sure, there is a balance somewhere in there, but it's not easy to hit quite right and I don't think it will make everyone happy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Having recently switched from an iPhone to an Android smartphone, I really question the "most advanced mobile OS" claim. Apple phones are more polished, more logically organized, easier to use, more intuitive... fair enough. But more advanced? Not by a long shot. The amount of features and customizable options on Android is insane. You can argue that this is not necessarily a good thing for the average user, but you can't make the claim that iOS is more advanced. It's simply not.

EDIT: OK, fair enough. The word "advanced" is very subjective and means different things to different people.

<comment><USER17> I have never owned an Android device however recently had some exposure when a colleague asked about battery life. I went through her settings etc to see what was enabled/not enabled and found a battery graph. It gave a breakdown of how much power each app was using and a graph of the battery charge over time.

I was quite impressed. There is no native iPhone equivalent and I find most 3rd party apps that claim to track data/battery are not 100% accurate.

<comment><USER18> That's just the tip of the iceberg. Android offers:

1) Generally much easier rooting/access to bootloader/custom ROM installation than iOS. 2) Install custom keyboards, home launchers, icon sets 3) Change default web browsers, caller, messaging apps to third-party alternatives 4) Full access to filesystem 5) Fully customisable homescreen widgets 6) Full sharing intents system 6) Generally more "computery" interface - <USER2> displayed in notifications pane for example.

And of course you have the advantage of a choice of a range of devices with much larger screens than an iPhone.

It's just a shame that the Android UX experience is so chaotic. A consequence of Google never really seeming to settle on a single UI vision beyond "different enough from iOS to avoid legal action."

<comment><USER19> More work for the user to do is a symptom of a _less_ advanced system.

<comment><USER18> I could reply that a computer system which fails both to satisfy me with its out-of-the-box experience, and to offer any way for me to tweak that experience to my tastes, is even _less_ advanced.

<comment><USER19> You could, but that would be a spurious argument since it could apply to anything you didn't like.

If you don't like iOS, just say so.

<comment><USER18> I don't like iOS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Now Siri knows when to stop listening."

I find this to be some really interesting marketing spin for "Siri doesn't always know when to stop listening, so now you can tell it".

IE

Now your car knows when to slow down

Manually control the speed of your car by pressing the brake pedal

<comment><USER21> Funny, I read it the opposite way: as a wry and pithy way to say "FINALLY goddamned Siri doesn't just hang around and try to parse noise, which has been annoying all of us at Apple as well for ages."

Not that one or the other of us is "right" it's just funny that a short sentence can be read many different ways.

<comment><USER22> Yeah, but they didn't fix that problem, they just made a way to override it.

<comment><USER23> It sounds like they changed the UX entirely.

Sure, that's not the same as solving the technical problem of "when to stop listening". But it's solving the user problem of "it doesn't know when to stop listening". And it's not some explicit additional button you have to press to override any default behavior. It's implicit in the new method.

Unless the former UX is still around and this is an additional, optional, pattern. But that seems ... not very Apple-like.

<comment><USER22> "Manually control when Siri listens by holding down the home button while you speak and releasing it when you're done as an alternative to letting Siri automatically notice when you stop talking"

Given that, it is very Apple-like, in that there is an "advanced" way to use it if you have an edge case, but you can continue doing it the old way if you don't care.

<comment><USER23> I read it as: hold-to-Siri is just "the way" to use Siri now.

If hold-to-Siri is optional for power-users, advertising it like that doesn't feel Apple-like. _Having_ it seems fine; Apple does that plenty. But _advertising a power user option_? That's new-to-me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The most annoying bug of iOS 7 was crashing of Safari. For iPad Air it happened for me all the time, every day 3-10 crashes during regular usage. Using other browser did not help - the problem was deeper, all browsers shared this issue. My biggest hope for 7.1 was this bug being fixed. But no, Safari still fails.

How to reproduce: 1\. Go to someone's mobile.twitter.com account, like [https://mobile.twitter.com/newsycombinator](https://mobile.twitter.com/newsycombinator) 2\. Scroll down a few pages (for example, scroll down until 5 new pages load from infinite scrolling). 3\. Scroll up very-very fast - Safari will fail. This behavior did not change in 7.1, and this is not the only way to reprocude. Sometimes it just fails while opening a single page, without any other tabs opened.

<comment><USER25> I experienced that bug with Google Chrome, it use to happen when I open "too many" tabs (10 or more). Not sure if that's google's or apple's fault.

<comment><USER12> I doubt it has anything todo with the number of tabs. I had hundreds of tabs open in Chrome. As Chrome keeps only the last few pages in memory, that's not an issue. But some very JavaScript heavy sites can be an issue, especially with devices that have only 512MB of memory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 This ~200 meg update requires 1.9 gigs of free space to install itself. It would be so much easier to clear space off of my 16 gig iPhone if it was possible to clear the space that Facebook (189mb), Tweetbot (181mb), Instapaper (361mb), Yelp (161mb) etc uses for their caches. Having to micromanage the disk space on an iPhone when this happens is quite the pain.

<comment><USER26> It may be easier to let iTunes install it. That's how I deal with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> A warning for any iOS developers. XCode 5.1 is not on the app store yet so updating to 7.1 means you can't test on your updated device for a while

<comment><USER28> It's available from the iOS Dev Center.

<comment><USER29> Where? I'm logged in, and the download link in the dev center sends me to the XCode page, which then sends me to the app store, which still has the old version of XCode. (This will probably get sorted out in a few hours - <USER3> store did have the never version of the command line tools.)

<comment><USER30> It is up now [http://adcdownload.apple.com/Developer_Tools/xcode_5.1/xcode...](http://adcdownload.apple.com/Developer_Tools/xcode_5.1/xcode_5.1.dmg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Am I the only one who is anal about the excessive use of periods in these marketing pages?

> Getting the update is easy. Go to Settings. Select General. And tap Software > Update.

cmon, commas were created for a reason.

<comment><USER32> It bothers me too, but what bothers me the most is the last sentence: "And tap Software Update." It should be "Tap Software Update."

<comment><USER22> And you "select" General and "tap" Software Update, but those are the exact same action.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Anyone else find the new 'slide to unlock' animation hideous compared to the 7.0 one?

<comment><USER34> Yes. For anyone using a black background, switch to a light background to see it. Much less offensive with a dark background.

Also worth noting it doesn't show the "slide to unlock" for a bit if you have Touch ID enabled, which is nice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Just got a facetime call from my wife immediately after the update, the UI - button placement, etc. seemed much easier to use.

</comment><comment><USER36> The CarPlay page ( [http://www.apple.com/ios/carplay/](http://www.apple.com/ios/carplay/) ) is interesting.

The manufacturer line-up at the bottom is impressive - the major absences are Volkswagen-Audi and FIAT-Chrysler. Renault is also missing, but partner Nissan is in. GM seems to be in, with Chevy and Opel brands showing.

<comment><USER17> GM is an interesting addition to the list. They have seen some small integration with Siri in two models. However there was an article about CarPlay the other day and it sounds like GM is going away from Apple integration. ([http://www.autonews.com/article/20140303/OEM06/140309988/app...](http://www.autonews.com/article/20140303/OEM06/140309988/apple- rolls-out-carplay-technology-in-ferrari-mercedes-and-volvo)

\</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

GM is launching its own in-vehicle app store for 2015 Chevrolet vehicles, featuring apps from GM and third-party developers. Apps from the Chevrolet AppShop can be downloaded into the car and work in the center-stack display.

"This is an evolutionary environment we live in," said Junior Barrett, GM's infotainment strategy manager. "We're investigating all different avenues."

</comment><comment><USER37> Oh look, I'm go glad they changed the way I answer phone calls... again. :\

</comment><comment><USER38> Does iOS have WebGL yet? (I feel like I should make one of those Yes/No answer websites on this topic.)

<comment><USER39> Does iOS have WebGL? Yes. Does Safari have WebGL? No.

It's available in the iAd platform but manually disabled elsewhere - you can enable it on jailbroken devices though. Infuriating. Also infuriating is Apple's lack of support for WebRTC. I've learned not to expect much from them in terms of mobile web any more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I've never seen this much marketing for a minor iOS update. I wonder what prompted the change.

<comment><USER41> When they've discussed Android in the past year or so, Apple execs like Cook and Schiller seem to have focused on two areas where they feel iOS has an advantage over Android:

\- Android lacks many decent tablet applications; most of them are blown-up phone versions.

\- The Android ecosystem is fragmented. Very few devices (proportionally) are running the latest release, and it can take years for new features to be widespread enough that developers can rely on them and users can benefit from them.

The technological (OTA "delta" updates) and marketing push around major and minor releases appear designed to reinforce the second point.

I'm not endorsing either of these claims, since I don't use Android devices enough to know.

<comment><USER42> Also, I think that iOS 7 has gotten mixed press. (Like it, hate it, not-quite- baked, etc) that it's worth making a big deal of 7.1.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Great. With only having to tap the screen to answer the phone, how many calls am I going to accidentally answer that I didn't want to by just pulling the phone out of my pocket?

<comment><USER44> The answer call screen that only requires a tap and not a swipe is only used when the phone is unlocked, which is how it worked in 7.0 as well. A locked phone still requires a swipe to answer the call

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Coolest feature for me is a bit hidden in Accessiblity settings:

Outline of Buttons

On/Off Indicator

Those two improve the flat design by a lot. Buttons become clearly visible again. They should make it the default setting, going back to normal is jarring.

</comment><comment><USER46> I wonder if they fixed the iMessage caching-phone-numbers-after-you-switch-to- Android bug that's been so terrible? Really wish they had a FULL changelog, not just marketing spin.

<comment><USER47> Just to be clear, this is when one of your contacts who formerly had an iPhone but switched (to an android in your case), it still tries to send via iMessage and silently fails? Yeah, that one sucks, I sent a message to my brother in law congratulating him on his engagement and he never got it. I found out awhile later he'd changed away from iPhone :-/ Annoying. And then trying to change my phone to actually send him SMS instead ... I'm still not sure it's working right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Really thankful they added a "new" Month view in the calendar app. The ability to see all the events for a day at a glance was something I was really missing from iOS 6.

</comment><comment><USER49> Anyone know if this includes the minimal-ui meta tag for Safari? Can't see any mention of it in the changelist

<comment><USER50> It does, and the tag works as per the beta.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Would an update like this potentially fix iOS' buggy implementation of rendering CSS viewport units??

</comment><comment><USER52> Just updated. Disappointed that it hasn't fixed my ability to connect to Wi-Fi using an iPhone 4S

<comment><USER53> Why would a software update fix it? Note that it doesn't have hardware support for the 5 GHz band, much like the iPhone 4.

<comment><USER52> I can't connect to any Wi-Fi networks at all. This was an issue introduced by iOS 7. If a software update can break it, a software update can fix it. From what I understand the strain on the CPU from the additional processing required to run iOS 7 causes heat to become an issue for the Wi-Fi chipset.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> iOS 7.1 release has the same UI bug as the iOS 7.1b2 ([https://twitter.com/davidcollantes/status/411597596588011520](https://twitter.com/davidcollantes/status/411597596588011520)). Reported, hasn't been fixed.

<comment><USER54> Perhaps it's not a bug?

<comment><USER32> It isn't? I thought of it, but it is so ugly (perhaps is my "OCD" talking here), that I can't imagine it otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Huh. Upgrading to the release version from the beta requires 3.9 gigs of available storage. That's pretty frustrating considering every other beta to release upgrade that I remember has been about 10 mb.

Edit: My memory may be fuzzy though.

</comment><comment><USER56> Oh no, they've removed the useful little feature where you could scroll through all your appointments by clicking the search icon and not enter anything. Still works on iPad but not on iPhone. Why would they do that?

<comment><USER56> Ah, I just discovered the feature is still there, just moved to a different spot: you need to "zoom in" to a day and then there is a new icon that will show list view. Note that you cannot get there unless the new combined month/list view is switched _off_

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> iPhone 4 users BEWARE. My brother just updated his iPhone 4 to 7.1 and afterwards his phone wouldn't boot up fully. His phone is in recovery mode and his only option now is to do a factory reset.

</comment><comment><USER58> Is there some trick to getting HDR to actually work? I set it to "On" but the image is no different than when its "Off".

<comment><USER59> On scenes that don't need it, you'll likely see no effect. I leave it on [Auto] for my 5s and it very rarely kicks in these days.

<comment><USER58> What is an example of a scene that would cause it to kick in?

<comment><USER59> Person with the sun behind then - you've got a high dynamic range there from the sun to the shadowed face.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Is anyone seeing apps that are closed using location now on 7.1?

</comment><comment><USER61> "Manually control when Siri listens by holding down the Home button while you speak and releasing it when you're done."

Does anyone think this is a downgrade? Is it optional?

<comment><USER62> I don't see the point of that either. My home button is going to suffer a lot, and it's already unsteady.

<comment><USER63> It's optional. You either release the button and it acts normally, or keep pressing and when you release it stops listening.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> And where did they put the camera?

</comment><comment><USER65> iOS 7.1 now on my 4S and guess what:

it has crashed at least 7 or 8 times in the few hours I've had the iOS update

thanks a lot, crApple

<comment><USER66> You created an account just to say that? Wow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> people at hacker news still use iOS? meh, developer freedom is overrated i guess.

</comment><comment><USER68> "most advanced mobile OS" an os where you can't choose the default application to open your mail or files and where you have to double click home button and tap to go back to the app you were before. I'm sorry but apple lost the "most advanced mobile os" battle time ago.

<comment><USER69> You can also four finger swipe to your last app.</comment></comment>


Apple Pay: An in-depth look at what's behind the secure payment system - <AUTHOR> http://www.tuaw.com/2014/10/02/apple-pay-an-in-depth-look-at-whats-behind-the-secure-payment/

<comment><USER2> The HK title is identical to the article's title but the article's title is misleading. Even the author goes into great pains in the first paragraph to say that this will look at "[the] process in broad strokes" and not really in- depth.

Plus the article is really low-tech (spending a very long time teaching us about tokens) and very pro Apple (e.g. making claims that make no sense like "it may very well be the safest way to make any type of credit card payment" yeah, except those dozens of other identical systems we already have, and have had for at least a year!).

I have nothing against Apple Pay at all. I am glad they joined the party. This article though is meh.

<comment><USER3> Could you elaborate on the dozens of identical systems? I haven't yet managed to find one where no one except the credit card networks can see my CC number (and I thought the tokenization spec was only released 6 months ago...)

<comment><USER4> Virtual credit card provisioning seems common.

For example: [https://support.google.com/wallet/answer/2740044?hl=en](https://support.google.com/wallet/answer/2740044?hl=en)

Token-like services are also common for contactless payment systems ...

<comment><USER3> Your linked example is drastically different. Although the merchant only sees a virtual card number, Google sees, stores and charges your real credit card number the old-fashioned way.

<comment><USER4> You say "Google sees your real credit card number".

(I'll address the rest later)

Somebody sees the credit card number, even in token based systems, even if it's only for a moment to acquire a token.

In other words, either Apple stills sees it while it acquires a payment token, or someone does to issue the payment token, as it's the only mechanism that identifies the account number to get a token for. The tokenization specification has a whole section on what identification and verification should be taking place to ensure the "primary account number" (credit card number) that the payment token is replacing is one the user has authorization for.

So let's focus on the "stores and charges". Yes, Google stores and charges your primary account number. This is just because Google happens to be the one doing the payment processing. Even in a token based system, again, somebody _on the other side_ knows what real primary account number (credit card number) this token links back up to so they know what to subtract money from. The token based stuff is not an full anonymization protocol, it's mainly a way to securely avoid transmitting and storing credit card info to/by random merchants. In _that_ respect, the virtual credit card numbers provide the same protection. They are one time use, and interception or storage by the merchant can not harm you. Secondarily, the payment tokens are also a way to reduce the number of networks your credit card number goes over, when used properly. The virtual credit card numbers perform the same function here too.

The person who knows in either system is usually your payment processor (though in case it isn't, it's possible for the tokens to be used there too. however, nothing in Apple Pay currently guarantees _this_ happens with the tokens). Since that is google here, it makes sense they would have the primary account data to do the lookup.

If you are expecting tokens to replace credit card numbers all the way to the issuing bank, you are sorely mistaken. The lookup happens much earlier than that.

The TL;DR is that virtual credit card numbers are in fact, a method of tokenization. The only reason they went with "token" is because they don't have to be credit card numbers, and because not all virtual credit card implementations have the same guarantees.

In any case, if you want fully tokenized systems, those have existed too, just not en masse.

<comment><USER5> EMVCo payment tokenization is more secure and more private than Google Wallet. With Google Wallet, two people know your card number and purchase history: Google and your issuer. With EMVCo tokenization, just your issuer knows your card number and purchase history.

It's better. It's the future.

 _" If you are expecting tokens to replace credit card numbers all the way to the issuing bank, you are sorely mistaken. The lookup happens much earlier than that."_

I disagree. Care to explain?

<comment><USER4> "just your issuer knows your card number and purchase history."

If this was true, i'd agree. But it's not, AFAIK.

"I disagree. Care to explain?"

Nothing in the spec that i have seen requires that it be used all the way to the issuing bank.

In fact, here is one actual implementation: [http://www.firstdata.com/downloads/thought-leadership/EMV- En...](http://www.firstdata.com/downloads/thought-leadership/EMV-Encrypt- Tokenization-WP.PDF)

Now look at figure 2 on page 8, and you can see ... It's not the issuer doing the tokenization or the PAN lookup, firstdata is doing it (in this case), just as Google is doing it in the Wallet case. Firstdata sells an approved apple pay solution.

It happens that Apple does not provide payment processing services, and is thus not doing it. That of course, does not change how many parties see your card number :)

Now, maybe there are issuers doing the tokenization, storage, and lookup themselves. But it's not required.

The actual spec leaves these functions to an "Agent" (not an issuer) and defines an Agent as "An entity appointed by the Card Issuer to perform specific functions on behalf of the Card Issuer. Some examples of these functions include card processing, Cardholder verification using the 3-D Secure protocol, and Token Service"

There is also nothing that assumes they do not appoint multiple agents (and in fact, specifically forsees this happening), etc.

Love to see something that says otherwise, but i can't find it.

<comment><USER5> That whitepaper is from 2012. The tokenization there is for merchants to be able to keep a token on file for a customer instead of keeping a card on file. It's like getting a Braintree or Stripe token to use for payments, but instead, you're getting a First Data token.

This is how things work in 2014: [http://clover- developers.blogspot.com/2014/09/apple-pay.html](http://clover- developers.blogspot.com/2014/09/apple-pay.html)

(Clover is owned by First Data.)

<comment><USER4> "That whitepaper is from 2012"

It's pointed to from their apple pay solution as to how it works?

"This is how things work in 2014: [http://clover- developers.blogspot.com/2014/09/apple-pay.html](http://clover- developers.blogspot.com/2014/09/apple-pay.html) "

Again, I have not seen a single implementation that claims to actually perform token usage all the way back to the issuing bank, just some diagrams that say "it's supposed to work that way" in some magical world where issuing banks run token service.

(and i've looked at actual implementations).

If you look at the comments on the blog, the author actually agrees with what i said: "Yes, the token is issued by the payment network, but Apple is not the payment network. The network would be Visa/MasterCard/AMEX. Apple receives the token from the payment network when the card is stored in Apple Pay (or Passport), then the token is provided each time a payment is made."

Note: Issued by the payment network. This is not the same as "bank who issued you the card". In fact, it's exactly the people I said it was (look at definition of payment network in the spec).

Also note: Apple sees the card to get the token to store in the wallet (it has to, unless the client directly understands how to route to an agent for a given card and connect there, which at least as apple has implemented, it doesn't). If you remember, above you said in an EMV world, only the issuer sees the real number. This is 100% false. Apple has no other way to get a token other than providing the PAN and letting an agent do ID & verification as part of a token request.

As I also said, the spec _very specifically_ does not require anything else, delegating token service providing to agents.

Do you have anything to refute that issuing banks are going to be 100% compliant with the EMV tokenization spec (and apple pay) if they delegate the vault/lookup to someone else, like the payment processors? (I pasted the definitions from the spec, it specifically says the card issuer _or_ the agent can perform this )

How about if they delegate to multiple people?

How about if they delegate to stripe, or google, or whoever?

The tokens only go exactly as far as the parties agree they want them to.

Two parties still see your card in Apple Pay: Whoever initially asks for the token to store (Apple right now), and whoever is playing vault. Apple just doesn't store it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is great and all, but of the 9 million merchants that accept credit cards at the point of sale, Apple says only 220,000 locations will accept it at launch.

Walmart and Best Buy have gone so far as to basically say they have no plans to implement and maintain NFC at the POS.

<comment><USER7> October 2015 they'll be liable for CC fraud if the transaction in question was not cleared on an NFC+EMV capable terminals. I don't know where your info is from, but it's either old, or they'll change their tune fast. Also, some businesses can avoid PCI audits if 75% of their transactions are cleared on NFC+EMV terminals. The liability shift you keep hearing about bundles NFC+EMV together into a single concept. They're inseparable as far as CC liability is concerned.

<comment><USER8> His info is based on the fact that Walmart is all in with CurrentC another mobile payment system developed by MCX.

Unless Apple can show that Walmart will actually lose customers by not doing it, I don't see them adopting Apple Pay soon.

EDIT: Nevermind. I wasn't aware that NFC was the only requirement on the merchant-side for Apple Pay to work.

<comment><USER9> The minute Walmart get a POS that supports NFC, they won't have a choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here is more technical description of how exactly it works if you are interested in the details:

[http://clover-developers.blogspot.com/2014/09/apple-pay.html](http://clover- developers.blogspot.com/2014/09/apple-pay.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> > Note, though, that the precise components of the Apple Pay cryptogram aren't > publicly known.

So we have a hash function whose workings are known only to Apple and Visa, MasterCard etc.

I wonder how long that'll last.

<comment><USER12> Its most likely some existing function, btu they aren't specifying which one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Only if everybody uses phones with Apple Pay compatible payment systems will every business see the need to support Apple Pay. I hope everyone gets on the same standard soon.

<comment><USER14> Do they need anything above and beyond an NFC reader that supports contactless cards? Contactless is getting really popular in the UK - it's super cool if it is just that that it needs to work. Contactless on the tube too!

<comment><USER15> The ones that roll out alongside chip-and-pin seem to be all that's needed to meet the requirements of this system from a technology standpoint. Behind the scenes, the hardware passes your fake device-account number as it would a credit card, and someone turns that into an actual credit card number deep in a financial system your retailer uses. There's different standards for contactless payment, though, and I bet Apple's partnering with EMV players because it wants to be as compatible as possible with existing arrangements.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Performance of Common Operations in iPhone - <AUTHOR> https://iphoneperformance.com/ <comment><USER2> That must've been a fun project. Did you write some sort of test harness for this? How did you build up this web page? Did you use the Objective-C compiler? Will you add the Swift compiler?</comment>


Show HN: Holiday traditions around the world - <AUTHOR> http://culturecurious.co <comment><AUTHOR> Discover and share all the interesting/funny/strange ways people celebrate the same event. Holidays and festivals are essential to our cultural heritage - they can seem so different, yet capture the same spirit and all mean good</comment>


FCC Fines Sinclair Broadcast Group $13.4M for Running Sponsored Content as News - <AUTHOR> http://variety.com/2017/politics/news/sinclair-fcc-fine-sponsor-violation-1202647175/ <comment><USER2> I think people know, but Sinclair is the emerging threat to American public debate that is controlled by conservative owners. Sinclair requires their local affilate TV stations to run conservative-biased segments. In one case last year Sinclair lied about Hillary and the Democrats -- they _required_ their local affiliates to run this segment -- saying viewers "should not vote for Hillary because Ds were historically pro-slavery". But all educated Americans know that the parties flipped their positions in the 1960s when Dems under LBJ courageously pushed out the racists to pass the Civil Rights Act and the racists moved to the Republicans. [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/business/media/sinclair-b...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/business/media/sinclair- broadcast-komo-conservative-media.html)

Sinclair also used their size and connections to the conservative movement to get FCC commissioners who would repeal rules on concentrated ownership of local TV stations.

Ownership of media outlets used to be a big topic of concern in the US. Who owns media outlets is going to be one of the defining issues of our future.

<comment><USER3> While I don't disagree there are currently some racists/supremacists who are also registered Republicans, unless Republicans suddenly were a pro-slavery party in the 1960's, "flipped positions" isn't really accurate in that regard.

Also the 1964 Civil Rights bill was voted along party lines like this:

House: Democrats: 63% yea.

House: Republicans: 80% yea.

Senate: Democrats: 69% yea.

Senate: Republicans: 82% yea.

In short, a much larger percentage of Republicans voted in favor of the 1964 Civil Rights Bill than Democrats. Educated Americans can look this up.

<comment><USER4> 1) Do you think the modern Democratic Party has more or less conservatives then it did in the '60's? Do you think there are more or fewer liberals?

2) Do you think the modern Republican Party has more or less conservatives then it did in the '60's? Do you think there are more or fewer liberals?

3) Do you think conservatives voted for or against the civil rights bill? Do you think conservative ideology has distinct preferences against civil rights?

4) Do you think liberals voted for or against the civil rights bill? Do you think liberal ideology has distinct preferences against civil rights?

I find a lot of people are able to get away with a lot of political sophistry because they can skillfully abuse peoples lack of historical and political knowledge. I find this problem is especially pernicious regarding the civil rights act, because this was right around the time that the political parties were undergoing major changes in their makeup, so people concern trolling are often able to ambiguate ideology, political affiliation and the structures of political parties in such a way as to push the deceptive and deceitful lie that liberals are or were pro-slavery.

I find a lot of those tactics being used in your arguments, so as an exercise I like to help people disambiguate facts from cleverly positioned lies and see if their claims still hold up. I suspect your argument is weak and based on conflating political ideology with political affiliation.

<comment><USER3> You appear to be reading things into my argument that aren't there, I suspect as a result of ideological blindness.

Might I suggest you broaden your perspective just a bit beyond simple "liberal" and "conservative"? Because the real world is much more complex and so is my take on it.

I object to mythological re-interpretations of events, that's all. No attempt to equate modern Democrats with slavery or segregationists is made. It doesn't matter what old Democrats did, the platform is what it is now. I don't believe, nor do I suggest otherwise.

Please don't fall into the trap of thinking "this person doesn't agree 100% with X therefore they are by default Y". It leads to long posts which boil down to "ya, well you are a liar and a troll". Which isn't accurate and it's offensive.

The antidote is perspective and nuance. Something unfortunately political ideologies tend to discourage.

<comment><USER4> I'm sorry but I can't discuss politics with people that refuse to answer basic questions about the past and what they believe regarding it without ducking and obfuscation. To me it's always a sign of concern trolling, especially when the argument then devolves into arguments that really just center around calling others ideologically blinded and calls for perspective and nuance - which you are curiously advocating for by dumping out of context figures and refusing to give context about.

For others that are interested, the liberal and conservative blocs were the predominant factions of both parties that played pivotal roles in civil rights era legislation. Specifically, the '64 bill was passed by factions of mainly northern democratic liberals and liberal republicans - many republicans actually played crucial roles in captaining the legislation through congress and surviving quorum calls organized by the opposing conservative southern and midwestern factions. Looking at the civil rights issue through the perspectives of liberal v conservative is also interesting for other reasons as well. LBJ in many ways was a pseudo-conservative, who by dint of his firmly conservative credentials was able to position himself to be mentored by and ultimately betray his mentor, the leader of the conservative faction and the strongest force for segregation in America - the senator Richard Russell. In the larger tapestry of American history, Russell was also a new dealer, which in many ways was a deal in which conservatives accepted the progressive safety net in exchange for entrenching the socioeconomic subjugation of minorities through carve-outs to their eligibility to receive aforementioned benefits. This is the thesis behind Ira Katznelson's 'Fear Itself'.

Additionally, America has been undergoing a political realignment in which party and ideology are increasingly correlated - there are fewer liberal Republicans and fewer conservative Democrats, which in turn has led to greater political polarization and the greater political paralysis we see today. Understanding the drivers of the realignment between conservatives and liberals is crucial to understanding American politics today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _"Sinclair proudly supports the Cancer Foundation and its educational mission. Any absence of sponsorship identification in these public service segments was unintended and a result of simple human error. "_

I hope a 13 million dollar fine will inspire them to prevent this type of human error again. But given the size of Sinclair it's more a slap on the wrist.

<comment><USER6> I don't think the size of Sinclair is the relevant benchmark. The profitability and prevalence of the practice is the important part.

How much did that sponsorship earn them? How many other sponsored stories are they running? What's the probability of a new sponsored story generating a new fine?

Make it so that they lost significantly more than they got doing this, and so that they expect to lose money if they do it again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> John Oliver's segment does cover Sinclair in detail: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc)

</comment><comment><USER8> See also another article published today:

Building A Case: Sinclair Broadcasting's Project Baltimore offers right-wing news coverage of city schools by Jaisal Noor

[http://baltimorebeat.com/2017/12/21/building-case- sinclair-b...](http://baltimorebeat.com/2017/12/21/building-case-sinclair- broadcastings-project-baltimore-offers-right-wing-news-coverage-city-schools/)

// "[Project Baltimore] are building a case to privatize schools," Diamonte Brown, a Baltimore school teacher and an advocate for reforming the school system told The Real News. //

Wonder who's paying for that...

<comment><USER2> And this one

"Fox's Unfamiliar but Powerful Television Rival: Sinclair" [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/03/business/dealbook/sinclai...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/03/business/dealbook/sinclair- media-expansion-fox-conservative-media.html)

And "How a Conservative TV Giant [Sinclair] Is Ridding Itself of Regulation" [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/us/politics/how-a- conserv...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/us/politics/how-a-conservative- tv-giant-is-ridding-itself-of-regulation.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Someone ought to fine the US congress for running sponsored content as laws.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is like 5% of their net income, so a slap on the wrist. They control more than 40% of the local news market. The FTC needs to break them up, not keep approving their continued growth.

<comment><USER11> Isn't that still alot? How much should the fine be?

<comment><USER12> Just fyi: [http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/questions-and- quan...](http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/questions-and- quandaries/grammar/is-alot-a-word)

<comment><USER11> Thanks for that.

FYI [http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_good_word/2013/09/lan...](http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_good_word/2013/09/language_bullies_pedants_and_grammar_nerds_who_correct_people_all_the_time.html)

<comment><USER12> I rarely point out grammar (or spelling) mistakes. "Alot" is one of those run- together phrases that people need to be told isn't a word in order to stop using; clearly nobody has with you, so I thought I'd do you a favor. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "[They] deliberately runs shows that will earn them huge fines they can then funnel through the FCC straight to the Republican Party. Everybody in the media knows it but no one has the guts to say it." Simpsons Season 18 Episode 22

</comment><comment><USER14> How much was Sinclair paid to air the content? I mean... how could you possibly write an article without including this sort of information? It is impossible to know whether the fine levied was at all reasonable without knowing how much Sinclair profited from breaking the law. If they were paid $13.4 million + $1 or more, then the FCC has guaranteed that airing such content will become standard business practice. Only if they were paid less than $13.4 million is there even the slightest hope that their actions will be modified in the future.

</comment><comment><USER15> "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

What is the statutory reason that they are not allowed to do this? Sincere question.

<comment><USER2> "The Supreme Court has noted that the FCC has an expansive mandate to ensure broadcasters operate in the public interest." (National Broadcasting Co. v. U.S., 319 U.S. 190, 219 (1943).)

It's like shouting fire in a theater when there is none - that would not be in the public interest. Neither is broadcasting lies to deceive the public.

<comment><USER15> Falsely shouting "fire!" in a crowded theatre incites behavior that is knowingly contrary to the well-being of the patrons. (Also, some defenders of the first amendment argue that this is protected speech, but let's ignore that for now.)

Imagine I pay a news station to run a story about a hospital (for example) which I believe to have saved many lives and I expect will continue to do so. Arguably my advertisement is in the public interest, because it brings attention to a potential health benefit.

What then, hypothetically? Is "public interest" still a justification for the fine?

<comment><USER16> Imagine if you will an absurdly constructed hypothetical argument.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Joplin – a note taking and to-do application with synchronization capabilities - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/laurent22/joplin <comment><USER2> I felt that Evernote was becoming increasingly constraining and slow/flaky, so after trying a few alternatives (text files/dirs, SimpleNote, Apple Notes, BoostNotes, Zim, etc), I've made a leap of faith to Joplin.

My requirements: multi-platform, multi-device, auto-sync (more than 2 devices in free ver.), tags, webclip-ability, preferably markdown format with code rendering. Text diagramming such as PlantUML is a big plus. The idea of owning my notes is very appealing.

My early attempts at synchronizing encrypted notes over OneDrive experienced repeated hiccups (stopped syncing for no apparent reason), so currently trying without encryption. Win10 and Android clients seem to chug along just fine, but the Linux client shows weird errors in the log - trying to hunt down the root cause.

The fact that Joplin is WIP and open source is encouraging. I'd like to be able to have separate DBs, e.g. for personal and business use.

ADDED: forgot to mention that the lack of dark mode on Windows EN client was a constant source of irritation.

<comment><USER3> It sounds like what you're looking for is Notion. It checks most of your boxes, I believe.

<comment><USER4> I just switched from Notion (and Evernote, Google Keep) to Joplin, and currently I'm quite satisfied with its offering.

Some cons I felt while using Notion: \- Mandatory to log in using a Google account is a _very_ big pushback for me - I need it to work all the time offline. \- E2EE encryption? I don't think it's there. It's something I strongly desire for privacy reason. \- It's a freemium subscription modal, I have nothing against it, but imho, completely free one is of course better \- It's not open sourced, but Joplin is.

<comment><USER5> Take a look at Standard Notes. It can be self hosted and has E2EE. It's not quite a replacement for some features but there is a web clipping add-on in development.

Note that it is paid, the company has a longevity statement around that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> After years of searching I've pretty much settled on one note-taking app: Apple Notes. Quite unexpected to me as well because I started off just to sort of "cache" random notes in it before sorting them out in OneNote. Then I found myself almost stopped using OneNote. It's just ubiquitous enough when you have a few extra PC devices, (unlike say, Bear) and versatile enough so it's not limited to texts like Notational Velocity or SimpeNote, and quick and easy enough so I never have to wait for launching or syncing like with OneNote. It's not enjoy-sparking to use and the text is a bit cramped. But it gets stuff done and I forget about it most of the time. So it's just almost perfect for me.

<comment><USER7> The only thing that makes me keep looking for an alternative to Apple Notes is _search_.

1\. You can't restrict search to just one folder.

2\. You can't use tags (would be better than folders) and search by them. I have a partial work around (I just type #tag and search for that) but it does't work that well -- the search correctly filters for "#foo" but shows "foo" highlighted in the sidebar...and doesn't scroll to the match.

A small amount of additional functionality would pretty much nuke any need for Evernote or any of these other apps (though exporting is...tedious).

<comment><USER8> Quiver.

<comment><USER9> I really tried to use Quiver for almost a year. I converted to it from Org- mode in Emacs. The reason for converting was to get better typography and layout. I really want to get header rendered in different sizes, bold really looking bold etc. Quiver looked really nice ans pleasing. But the rendering engine in Quiver is flaky. Headings of the same type end up having different sizes for example. I also never felt a benefit of the cell concept. Instead often accidentally creating new cells that had to be fixed.

I've now moved to Bear, and the experience is much better. Yes, it stores notes in a DB, not as files. But it is a standard, open SQL DB you can talk to if needed. Bear renders markdown nicely, has nice themes. And syncs between devices quick. I now read and write journal notes etc on desktop, iPad and mobile. And Bear supports inline images. This, together with nice rendering of quotes, code etc makes making complex notes possible. If I only could change the caret to a non-blinking, block everything would be great. Notes in Bear really are beutiful and pleasant to write and read.

[https://bear.app/](https://bear.app/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Off topic, but anyone else annoyed by these walls of contributor avatars in READMEs popular in the JS ecosystem? Occasionally they only include a handful of project members, with roles, so it could be mildly useful, but more often than not it's a pointless list of just avatar and handle of everyone who ever fixed a typo, and if I want to see the list I'd better click on "contributors" which is built into every GitHub project. To me, this seems to be a manifestation of today's front end devs' utmost disrespect for people's bandwidth.

Ironically, this README loads more than a hundred images but I can't even find a desktop screenshot.

<comment><USER11> The avatar list I guess is a way to thank the contributors, and it's at the bottom of the readme so shouldn't be a big annoyance for most readers. There's a screenshot of the desktop app at the top of the readme.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I moved to Joplin from Evernote a little over a year ago. It has had ongoing development and new features being added the entire time. The development is very iterative, and functionality comes before fashion, but the UI has been getting improved too.

The backup/sync system is great. Fully encrypted and numerous cloud configuration options. I use it with Fastmail's $5/mo. service and it's very easy to setup.

The iOS app could use some more improvements but far better than not having one at all.

Overall Joplin is highly recommended because of it's compatibility, flexibility, privacy, and no-frills functionality.

</comment><comment><USER13> One great aspect is that joplin supports iOS 8+. My Ex needed to write a big dissertation that she just couldn't make progress on (unsurprisingly). Her work laptop is too bulky to carry around every day unfortunately.

So at some point I figured she could use my old ipad mini 1 with a size-fitted logitech "ultrathin keyboard" (that magnetically holds onto the ipad, making it one piece for storage) that I impulse bought and never used. So hardware was there, but looking for a markdown editor that supported sync and that old device + her windows laptop was not fruitful. Except well, short story: joplin is awesome for that.

She could use the ipad to write a few minutes here and there during transit and was able to complete it. The markdown file is then converted to latex/pdf using pandoc + pandoc-citeproc (for citations using a bibtex-file).

Support for antiquated iOS versions is rare (making the ipad mini 1 useless in many cases although it still appears to be a capable device) even though many apps don't seem to have a need for higher versions. I suspect that most apps use frameworks that have a version cutoff to reduce complexity if that even makes sense.

</comment><comment><USER14> I replaced Evernote with Joplin a year or so ago and am pretty happy. It's a little rough around the edges, but it works great and is actively updated. And all my data is stored where I want it to be, with no monthly bill, and no one trying shove "chat" or "enterprise" features down my throat.

Also, as the desktop client is a JavaScript app, it was relatively easy to go in and change a few things that I wanted tweaked. I hate MarkDown with a passion, so I just turned off all that stuff in the toolbar and use it as a plain text notepad that syncs. Works great. (At some point I need to make the effort to figure out the options dialogs they have and submit a pull request where this can be turned off/on permanently.)

I do wish it would clean up the weird note/todo item duality (at least in the options). You can treat a note as a todo item, so the list of notes acts as your list of todos. Or you can just use a note and put the todo items in it (which is what I do). I just don't think the folder interface works well for the todo item paradigm.

Anyways, highly recommended if you're still spending money on Evernote and don't use any advanced features. If you're using web clips or other stuff, someone else will have to chime in.

<comment><USER15> Genuinely curious why do you hate Markdown with a passion?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> When it comes to todo lists I really prefer nested checkboxes, like Dynalist[0] has. That enables me to make a list of projects, where each project has their own todo items, and maybe they have sub items, and so on. I like being able to divide stuff into smaller and smaller chunks, and then checking them off as I go.

[0] [https://dynalist.io/](https://dynalist.io/)

<comment><USER2> Looks like a strong candidate to replace Google Keep when they suddenly decide to shut it down.

<comment><USER17> And what happens when dynalist shuts down? That's why I prefer self-hosted or plain old Apple Notes :-)

<comment><USER18> Daily export to Google Docs/Dropbox for paid users and free manual export to html, text and I believe cvs for anyone.

One huge selling point for Dynalist, and why I don't mind paying for it, is the data portability is perfect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I would recommend [https://standardnotes.org/](https://standardnotes.org/) after trying all other (OneNote, Boostnote, QOwnNotes, etc.) note taking SWs. Encrypted linked storage (S3, Dropbox, ...) for files, encrypted notes, multiplatform, multiple editors (code, 2FA, markdown, spreadsheets, your own!, ...) & can be self hosted. Easy (also encrypted) backups. I only miss the diagrams tool (like draw.io) or handwriting (touch/pen) support.

<comment> evil-olive I was a Standard Notes user, including a premium plan, but recently switched to Joplin and I've been very happy with it.

I like Standard Notes' no-nonsense business model, with the downside that the free version is _heavily_ feature-crippled (not even a Markdown editor, just plain text).

The Standard Notes server is self-hostable, but it requires a dedicated backend server [0] which was more hassle than I wanted to deal with. Joplin integrates much more nicely with Syncthing for self-hosted but still peer-to- peer replication.

0: [https://standardnotes.org/help/47/can-i-self-host- standard-n...](https://standardnotes.org/help/47/can-i-self-host-standard- notes)

<comment><USER20> The reason to use Standard Notes, IMO, is the zero-knowledge encryption. I'll check out Joplin and the others I'm learning about in this thread but I'm happy with Standard Notes at the moment though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've been using Joplin for a few months now. So far it seems to fit my requirements better than any other note taking app I've tried - and I've tried plenty - including my own Jupyter based solution. \- future proof (it's open source) \- standard/open format for notes (uses mark down which is easy to write and easy enough to parse if needed in the future) \- sync support and conflict detection - Kudos to their implementation here, it's very versatile. I use Syncthing and it's worked very well for me. \- support for multiple clients (I use Linux, Android, OS X and Windows) \- stable (no issues so far)

The major issue I have is it doesn't support stylus based notes like Onenote. A partial solution would be to extend Joplin to support additional file types so I can keep all my notes together when they are different types. For now, I keep my written notes separate.

If stylus support isn't a requirement for you, I strongly recommend Joplin. I've tried a number of closed and open source note taking tools - Joplin hits the sweet spot for me. For a long time I used Jupyter for taking notes with custom scripts for Search. It's been pretty good however it had two major shortcomings: no android client and the Jupyter client had poor conflict detection when using a a file based sync tool like Syncthing.

</comment><comment><USER22> Since none of the top comments seem to directly discuss Joplin itself, let me just say that I've been using it for years, and it's great.

<comment><USER23> If it (or Notion.so) supported Inking, I would switch completely from my combination of GDocs, GKeep and GoodNotes5.

Will see if I can contribute to this project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've replaced both Evernote and my markdown file hierarchy with Joplin (on linux and windows, trying android next), and love it!

Only thing I really miss is the ability to have completely separate instances. While it's theoretically possible to script different configs, they can't be used simultaneously.

Syncing works well both through Syncthing and Google Drivw. Haven't tried syncing through OneDrive, and IIRC the docs had some warning about it.

</comment><comment><USER25> This subpackage called Webclipper would be cool for parsing articles like Instapaper but instead of a better web version it saves to a markdown file than opens in Vim (or similar).

For some reason I like those old long readme.txt files from the 1990s. The ones formatted with max 80-120 characters wide per line, black background, etc.

[https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/blob/master/readme/clipp...](https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/blob/master/readme/clipper.md)

I haven't tried this one yet. But the biggest problem with that approach is the links typically don't work, nor will citations render properly for Wikipedia. So maybe it's preferable using Lynx or w/e just for long-term reading or articles on news sites with disaster web design.

</comment><comment><USER26> Switched from Evernote and I'm very happy. As often happens, Evernote took on VC money and then were obligated to keep growing and adding features, while increasing the pressure to monetize (see also: Any.do).

Joplin does the simple things I want, well. They are also adding features pretty quickly, but I'm happy with it the way it is.

</comment><comment><USER27> I tried a few note taking apps but in the end came to the realization that regular editors are actually better at the job.

My reasoning:

* _Sync_ should not be solved by the note app (applications that implement sync themselves are usually buggy, I prefer to outsource sync to nextcloud / dropbox / ...)

* I want the same _editing capabilities_ as usual (block edit etc., note apps are usually less power full editors)

* A _tree organization_ is important to me, which is trivially solved using editors and the file system

* There are _Markdown_ packages for pretty much every editor.

Note taking apps tend to ship these features but are not as mature as editors are.

</comment><comment><USER28> Nothing compares to Microsoft OneNote - I wish it would work with just regular file storage, rather then requiring OneDrive.

It has all the best features, including client side encryption, while still enabling collaboration.

<comment><USER29> There's some good news on this front, they are bringing back the desktop version support: [https://www.thurrott.com/cloud/office-365/221340/microsoft-b...](https://www.thurrott.com/cloud/office-365/221340/microsoft- brings-onenote-2016-back-from-the-dead)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I use WriterPlus [0] on Android and ReText [1] on Linux for taking notes (markdown supported). Syncing notes is via Syncthing [2]. All plain text files so not much dependency on the apps themselves. Works perfectly.

Update: This thread prompted me to re-check the options on Android and I found Markor [3]. Much more polished and I was able to point it to the notes folder. Now I have the option of using it or WriterPlus (though seems to me that Markor's option of opening notes in preview mode by default + more customization options makes it better than WriterPlus).

[0]: [https://writerp.fileplanet.com/apk](https://writerp.fileplanet.com/apk)

[1]: [https://github.com/retext-project/retext](https://github.com/retext- project/retext)

[2]: [https://syncthing.net/](https://syncthing.net/)

[3]: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.gsantner.m...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.gsantner.markor&hl=en_US)

</comment><comment><USER31> Another alternative is Trilium Notes which ticks the boxes from the title (sync, note, todo) but goes in a bit different direction (unlimited hierarchy, WYSIWYG, scriptability) - [https://github.com/zadam/trilium](https://github.com/zadam/trilium)

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm looking for a multi-platform (linux-mac-ios) markdown editor that saves at regular interval and keeps history and sync via git.

Is there anything like that?

How hard would it be to extend joplin to write a service driver to sync via Git(-hub / -lab / your own server)?

<comment><USER33> Have you considered Emacs + Org-mode? Works wherever Emacs works (Linux, Mac) and there are apps for Android and iOS. Org files are basically text files that you can commit to git or sync via Google drive, Dropbox, OneDrive etc. Not exactly markdown but GitHub renders org file pretty well.

After trying out multiple note taking apps this is what I settled on. You can use it as simple as a note taking app or configure it to do lots of complicated things like managing your to-dos, appointments, agendas. And my favorite feature is inline code-block that I can execute.

<comment><USER34> Big +1 on Emacs.

I spent years in the same position we've all been in, searching and hoping for the perfect note taking app to boost my productivity, have a "second brain", write down my fleeting inspirations, etc. etc.

After finding Emacs last year, I feel like I've been under a spell my whole professional life that's been broken. I'm a little embarrassed of the time I've spent griping and pining for the perfect note app. It took me far less time to learn Emacs than it did to try out the 20+ todo and notebook apps on the market.

To all who are still on the hunt: there is no perfect app, and we're all kidding ourselves. You're looking for someone to give you a fish. This is just text we're talking about, it's easy enough to learn to wield it, manipulate it, and organize it, and soon you become the man who has been taught to fish on his own. Plus, when you have the epiphany of how much more quickly you can manipulate text with the control of Emacs and/or Vim, you'll wonder how you spent so much of your life in typing in software without these capabilities.

Learning Emacs has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my computing journey, I highly recommend checking out a well-configured distribution like Spacemacs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> > Recognition data - Evernote images, in particular scanned (or photographed) > documents have recognition data associated with them. It is the text that > Evernote has been able to recognise in the document. This data is not > preserved when the note are imported into Joplin. However, should it become > supported in the search tool or other parts of Joplin, it should be possible > to regenerate this recognition data since the actual image would still be > available.

This is the feature that has me locked in to Evernote and no one else seems to have. I'll be watching this repo and jump over as soon as it becomes supported.

</comment><comment><USER36> Also discussed 2 years ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15815040](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15815040)

(Not a dupe, link posted for info purposes.)

</comment><comment><USER37> Relevant but not directly related -

I use iOS.

I have been looking for a note taking app that will directly save my notes to my Google Drive as soon as I take it.

For past 4 years I have been using the default Apple Notes. Back then, I noticed I can configure Notes to be synced with my Google account, and a new label called Notes is created in Gmail. But what I missed is that a separate Google account folder is created Notes and I need to save all my notes there in order for it to be uploaded to my Gmail in real time, and this I noticed only last week. So, for the past 4 years, I have been saving all my notes on my iPhone, in the default folder. And now there's no other way except to manually upload all notes , one by one, which I have collected over the past 4 years, which goes in thousands, to Gmail.

Last week I downloaded Google Keep. There's one big difference I noted between Apple Notes and Google Keep. In Apple Notes, the Notes which you have recently created / edited / modified / updated, automatically comes to the top, whereas that's not the case with Google Keep. I love this feature of Apple Notes so much that I decided to stick to Apple Notes despite the disappointment I faced earlier of missing out on the separate Google folder in Apple Notes

Does anyone know of a way to upload all of my Apple Notes, which I have accumulated over the past 4 years, to Gmail directly in one go? Any workflows available to make this happen?

Any suggestion from anyone would be reciprocated with disproportionate gratitude _/\\_

Memento Mori

PS - I am looking for a free software.

<comment><USER38> A really weird way to end a comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I have been using Joplin in my Linux laptop for the last two month. A good note taking for meeting, journal and even technical documents. It sync well with dropbox.

</comment><comment><USER40> This application makes use of ip-api.com by default, this site is free for non-commercial use only.

this should probably be reconsidered, or least made clear to everyone.

<comment><USER41> I don't see any commercial offering here, seems to be based entirely on donations.

<comment><USER40> This doesnt just apply to if the application was sold, but if it is used in a commercial environment, I.E. If you plan on using it at work, this would likely be considered commercial use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I'm looking for an Evernote alternative since long. Evernote is one of my favourite applications, but I fear the moment when Amazon or Google or Microsoft buys it like Fitbit or Nest. It is going to happen, and I put more and more info into that app.

I'm definitely going to try this and I truly hope it is good enough for me.

<comment><USER43> Notion.so is a good one

<comment><USER44> I'm not sure the best response to "I'm worried the cloud service I use might get bought and changed" is recommending another VC funded cloud service. But I've heard good things about Notion as a product too.

<comment><USER45> They have export features so in theory you're not tied down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> If you search 'Markdown' on HackerNews, it'd seem like the 'market' for markdown editors is fragmented: there isn't a single dominant editor yet. I think every week there's a new editor posted (Joplin is an exception given that it's been here for a while). Why is that the case?

<comment><USER47> I think it is because each comes with its own opinionated workflow, and missing features. Each has a way of writing markdown/connecting notes that is novel, which means each other option is missing that feature.

A take away from this scenario might be that this design space is wanting for a meta-editor. Some tool which allows feature creation in the same context as these markdown/note tools. An analogy might be that this meta-editor is to digital note keeping as racket is to programming languages.

Of course all the obvious requirements apply. Has to be usable out of the box, has to just work, has successfully convey it's ability to be changed to the end user.

I think emacs is such a solution, there are no features in the list of hn posts under the search "markdown" that it doesn't have. But emacs is missing all the requirements. It is not usable out of the box.

I think this meta editor could best be built on top of emacs, but this will require a lot of work. I have been playing around with this idea for a couple of years now and it's slow going but fun to think about.

<comment><USER46> I've been looking at the ProseMirror as a way of building this meta-editor that could have plug-and-play components. The issue is, although the library is open-source, there hasn't been many open-sourced components that people have built. Ideally, we could go one step forward and abstract away the npm library; then everybody could build their custom editor by mixing components. One editor that sort of does this is StandardNotes but I haven't tried building something for it yet.

[1] [https://prosemirror.net/](https://prosemirror.net/) [2] [https://standardnotes.org/extensions](https://standardnotes.org/extensions)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I recommend Ulysses app due it ability to sort notes by drag and drop an export multiple notes as one document. Didn't find this functionality so far in any other app. Only minus is Ulysses it is fact that runs only Apple devices

</comment><comment><USER49> I haven't found something that does it all for me. I still use Evernote. Every time I get a real paper mail, an invoice or a receipt, I scan it with my phone and save to Evernote. For the PDF OCR search. Thats my only Evernote usecase.

For notes I use Bear. Which is, IMO, the best UX for note taking on iOS. But. It doesn't have a web GUI or a Linux app. So. I can't really keep using it.

I've tried them all. Joplin, SimpleNote, Evernote, Turtl, Laverna, you name it. But none of them have both Linux Apps and a great iOS app/experience. (80% of my notes is done from iOS).

One day I'll have to go out to write something myself.

<comment><USER50> > One day I'll have to go out to write something myself.

I resonate with that. I need to be able to add attachments to my notes - ideally with OCR capabilities. Evernote does that, but I've had a hard time finding something else for the Linux desktop.

It's 2019 (almost 2020) and a cross-platform note taking application that does notes + attachments + OCR it's still not available (I am not referring to "workarounds" or "tweaks", attachments as links, etc). If anyone knows one I would love to hear about it.

I am currently using a web app that I have built myself, it does notes and attachments but I am still working on implementing OCR via Tesseract (form images and PDF attachments).

@surfsvammel, if you decide to go that way and start building something, give me a shout - email in my profile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Big company evil, let's take ownership of our own data etc. But if Dropbox is supported as a sync conduit - why is Google Drive missing?

Especially noticable on Android where Google is obviously omnipresent

</comment><comment><USER52> I use it every day, it's great and very portable. All the data is backed on Dropbox. Only a bit too heavy considered that runs on Electron.

</comment><comment><USER53> Tdo is built for handling many little tasks by using only a keyboard. Feature- wise, markdown is used for formatting, RegEx and custom CSS task highlighting, search supports logical operators (AND, OR), Firebase enables realtime sync, etc...

[1] [https://github.com/codaxy/tdo](https://github.com/codaxy/tdo)

</comment><comment><USER54> Issues when I tried Joplin last time (this year):

Android: no auto-save. type something, close it, lose everything.

Scrolling is a pain. Need to reach the end very fast? Forget it.

[https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/issues/899](https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/issues/899)

</comment><comment><USER55> To add to the list for those willing to try alternatives, here is a multiplatform markdown note taking application I've been using for a while: [https://tamlok.github.io/vnote/en_us/](https://tamlok.github.io/vnote/en_us/)

</comment><comment><USER56> [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/nirvana-for- gtd/id1022913190](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/nirvana-for-gtd/id1022913190)

Nirvana hq and David Allen GTD are great for being organized and feeling in charge of all your tasks

</comment><comment><USER57> I use DevonThink. It's great-- excellent capture-from-web features. It has See Also, and folders.

<comment><USER58> I'm 20 days into my trial of DevonThink and I'm getting close to pulling the trigger. I'm using it as a hybrid read-later pocket replacement + personal knowledge database. The combination of "See Also" auto suggestions for inbox sorting and deep search capabilities is everything I had been wanting in a PKM suite. I wish they had extended the auto-sorting/suggestions to the tags feature, it's my favorite feature of Pocket.

<comment><USER23> Is there a Windows or Web client for DevonThink?

<comment><USER58> DevonThink Server has a feature limited Web interface

<comment><USER23> Can the Server be launched on a Windows machine?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Would you consider data privacy and features that enhance protections for end users becoming popular? Bear Notes just added a "vault" style feature. With all the leaks, hacks, and mis-use of personal data, surely there's something brewing in the market?

</comment><comment><USER60> I read few comments against OneNote, may I know what's the problem with that? (Other than no Markdown—but even Evernote doesn't support it)

<comment><USER61> I use OneNote, and it works beautifully. I've used it for years. I use it for planning events, I use it for meal prepping, I use it for just about anything. It's like a second memory bank for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Why are new applications still adding dot folders/files to the home directory and not following freedesktop standards?

</comment><comment><USER63> Sometimes all you want is a notebook. If it needs to be digital... -> www.minimal.app

</comment><comment><USER64> What do people who also want Latex use? So far I haven't found anything better than VSC.

<comment><USER65> I use LaTeX in Joplin with no issues. It uses the KaTeX lib to render the equations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Disclosure: I work at a competitor note-taking app called Notable [0], so I'm somewhat biased.

I've made a comparison table [1] comparing Joplin and other popular note- taking apps, you may find it useful.

Joplin could have been my go-to note-taking app, but IMO they made a few bad design decisions and there are few things I really don't like about it, maybe listing some of them from my point of view could be useful either to Joplin's maintainers or potential users:

\- Notebooks are indefinitely nestable but tags are not, why?

\- Joplin's icon is SO out of proportions, it looks way out of place in my dock, it may sound silly but I might not have used it just because of this alone.

\- There's a button for opening the current note via a third-party editor, this is quite powerful because it means you can use all the fancy plugins and capabilities your general purpose text editor has, but why are all metadata about a particular note stored who-knows-where rather than putting them in the note itself as YAML front matter so I could have edited them directly too?

\- Attachments are stored on disk as plain files, that's great because now you can find them and edit them without going through Joplin if necessary, but those files are named with unique ids so actually finding the files you're looking for will be a problem.

\- And why not storing all notes on disk directly too, so that you could have done fancy things like running a global search and replace on them, run git on them...? Storing them in a database is generally better for performance, but you can do both.

\- Notes have a separate title field, why wouldn't I want to write my titles in an H1 heading in the Markdown content directly instead? The default notes look a bit silly because of this, coming effectively with 2 identical titles.

\- The UI looks pretty ugly, there are too many buttons, the interface isn't properly responsive (at some widths the toolbar gets cropped, labels spawn multiple lines etc.), useless things like the "Watching..." label are displayed etc.

\- The database location is not customizable, if it were you would have the ability to store multiple notes collections separately, and you could achieve synchronization for free just by putting your database inside Dropbox for instance.

\- Some shortcuts are weird and/or missing, for example there's a shortcut for cycling between previewing, editing, and the split editor. That might be useful sometimes, but don't people just want to toggle between editing and previewing or between previewing and the split-editor most of the times? There should be shortcuts for doing that instead.

[0] [https://notable.md](https://notable.md)

[1] [https://github.com/notable/notable#comparison](https://github.com/notable/notable#comparison)

<comment><USER11> If your opinion is biased, as you said, why do you even share it? Just be honest that you want to advertise your (commercial) product.

Your "comparison" is just a long list of what you think if bad about Joplin, as if there could not be a single good thing about it - there's nothing neutral or fair about any of it. You're just denigrating competition and advertising your own stuff.

I guess it's to be expected from someone whose tagline is "the app that doesn't suck", yet heavily copying features from all these other apps, which presumably, suck.

<comment><USER66> > If your opinion is biased, as you said, why do you even share it?

I think I may have something interesting to say given that I'm writing one of these apps myself, and mentioning for example that in Joplin tags aren't indefinitely nestable but notebooks are is not like I'm making stuff up, if I weren't writing one of those note-taking apps that wouldn't really change that fact.

> Just be honest that you want to advertise your (commercial) product.

Partially my comment was prompted by the opportunity to target new potential users, i.e. people reading this thread are people interested in Joplin, which is an app very similar to mine.

Partially I want to share what I think about Joplin from my perspective.

> Your "comparison" is just a long list of what you think if bad about Joplin

Well, I started my sentence with: "Joplin could have been my go-to note-taking app", meaning there's a lot about it I like, mentioning that I like that it supports Markdown is not an interesting point to make I think, plus I'm actually praising some things, like the ability to edit a note in a third- party editor, is mentioning an ever more powerful way to implement this (i.e. notes stores as plain files on disk with metadata in the front matter) not interesting?

And not all the things I don't like about Joplin are even solved in Notable, some are though, obviously, or Joplin would have been my note-taking app too.

> as if there could not be a single good thing about it

As I said that sentence started with "Joplin could have been my go-to note- taking app", which I think implicitly says a lot of good things.

> there's nothing neutral or fair about any of it.

Ok, what's not fair or neutral about stating the fact that tags aren't indefinitely nestable?

Or maybe your point is that since I'm working for a competitor app I can't talk about this?

> You're just denigrating competition and advertising your own stuff.

I don't think that's fair to say, obviously I wouldn't have made my own note- taking app if I thought Joplin didn't have any important shortcomings.

Would my comment have been fairer if I didn't mention I'm developing Notable? I mean I'm a person who tried Joplin and there were some things I didn't like, how am I supposed to be talking about these things then? How would you have phrased my comment?

> I guess it's to be expected from someone whose tagline is "the app that > doesn't suck", yet heavily copying features from all these other apps, which > presumably, suck.

If the very first calculator did only additions it would have sucked, if any later calculators _also_ did additions that doesn't imply that they must suck as well.

Plus that's kind of a cheeky tagline that's meant to say the following: I tried other note-taking apps, I couldn't find one that I really liked, so in this sense they sucked for me.

Like if you absolutely need a web-clipper I guess Notable would suck and Joplin would not suck _for you_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Is there anything like this that is Vim-centric? Pretty please?

<comment><USER68> What does Vim-centric mean? Not asking to disagree, just wondering what this refers to. Thanks for any clarification.

I don't use vim, so it's just a matter of curiosity for me - but it's always interesting to hear what kinds of tools other developers like to use.

<comment><USER67> I checked out the CLI for Joplin and it's a multi-pane environment with a command line at the bottom. This is also true of Vim, especially if you like panes, or "splits". For those of us hooked on Vim (I am silent on its merits), there is a state of flow that is quite pleasant, and you find that you want that flow wherever you can get it. The arrow keys just _are_ j,k,l,; for example, and just lifting a hand from the home row position feels awkward if you're in deep enough. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Can this be synchronized with Google Drive using any driver?

Thanks

</comment><comment><USER69> OneNote on Linux, if only such a thing existed.

</comment><comment><USER70> Had the same problem, decided to make my own. With pouchdb / couchdb for sync. Https://tagidea.net All free

</comment><comment><USER71> wow thats the worst mac desktop app i've seen for a while.</comment>


MacBook Pro (Mid 2018) Throttling may be due to GPU - <AUTHOR> https://www.geekbench.com/blog/2018/07/macbook-pro-mid-2018-throttling/ <comment><USER2> Instead of taxing the CPU with running their benchmarking app they resort to compile it. This reminds me of this [0] interview they gave on XDA-developers:

"One of the things we've done in four is we've started pausing in between the workloads. Mostly because of thermally constrained devices like these fanless laptops, smartphones, and all that sort of thing."

If we have a CPU benchmark that tries to treat CPUs nicely and avoids any throttling, then what is the purpose of this CPU benchmark?

[0] [https://www.xda-developers.com/geekbench-ceo-fireside- chat-p...](https://www.xda-developers.com/geekbench-ceo-fireside-chat- pt-1-64-bit-mobile-throttling-scores-design-a-benchmark-and-more/)

</comment><comment><USER3> "My recommendation? If your work doesn't involve long-running tasks that are CPU- and GPU-intensive (such as Premiere) then the new MacBook Pro should provide a considerable increase in performance."

So it's perfectly fine as long as you don't use it for Pro-grade workloads. Seems about right.

<comment><USER4> so compiling software is not a Pro-grade workload? I would say it does not fit _all_ Pro-grade workloads.

<comment><USER5> Compiling is definitely CPU intensive

<comment><USER6> But it's usually not GPU intensive.

The implication is that taxing BOTH the CPU and the GPU will cause performance issues. Something like compiling, which is usually just CPU intensive bursts, should see a performance improvement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To quote Louis Rossmann, "Apple should have their discrete GPU license revoked". That was when he was repairing heat related GPU damage on like 2012 MBPs.

</comment><comment><USER8> The Blackmagic/Apple external GPU might help, though it has its' own issues - it doesn't actually speed up Adobe apps.

[https://youtu.be/TwLjimAEDL8](https://youtu.be/TwLjimAEDL8)

It may be worth turning off the discrete GPU in some instances - [https://codyschrank.github.io/gSwitch/](https://codyschrank.github.io/gSwitch/) \- that makes a big difference to thermals on my current late 2013 mbpro with Nvidia GPU.

BTW - any recommendations for MB Pro cooling solutions, beyond the usual stand with a fan?

</comment><comment><USER9> Not that anyone should be thrilled by this news but this is, to me, at least a little more reasonable. I think for a vast majority of professional workloads (video/3D modeling excluded) this is a reasonable trade off. The same way I don't complain about network latency trying to saturate my NIC. I look at performance in and around the expected load with a margin for head room.

I suspect that anyone doing big time rendering work needs a beefier desktop / external GPU anyway.</comment>


Ask HN: How about a word ration economy for brevity/value/time saving? - <AUTHOR>

My personal model for clear and concise communication is Stephen Hawking; perhaps his proficiency at getting to the point is based on the fact that it takes a lot of effort for him to communicate, and so he, unlike most people, is forced to think about what is worth saying and the best way to say it.
Having said that, perhaps it's time to entertain the idea of a word economy on Hacker News, ie, some sort of daily/weekly "word count account" ... perhaps based on seniority/points ... that would counterbalance the compulsive counter-comment inspiring nature of this service.
Debate is sometimes good; scrolling down and down and down to get past endless trails of points/counter-points of exponentially decreasing marginal value to the original post seems like an exercise in obsessive-compulsive disorder reinforcement.
Surely having a set amount of words one can use in any given day for comments/responses would inspire more "on-point" and brief commentary that would make numerous editing features of this site redundant?
It's still free speech, just limited, self-edited free speech.
Flame away ... <comment><USER2> I'd rather not read something that's too long and/or off-topic than take away someone's ability to post it. This type of system sounds way too complicated. I've read some AMAZING long responses here. And I've read total crap where the main point could have been made in 20 words.

And basing it on seniority/points is pointless. There are people who have been here for ages who have more karma than I'll have in the next 20 years. Some of them post a lot, and some of them go on-and-on. Just because they have karma doesn't mean they don't sometimes post long-winded junk. But that's no different than people with fewer points. Some content is good; some isn't.

Every community has its strengths and weaknesses. That doesn't mean we have obsess over eliminating the weaknesses. As you become more active in the community, you just learn to change your behavior accordingly.

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems like it would also inspire a lot of pointless, "I agree!" comments.</comment>


Why isn't Abbott Labs getting slammed in the media for this? - <AUTHOR> http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/heres-some-waste-we-can-cut/

<comment><USER2> Because it has too many big words. Make a version written for children and the media might be able to understand the implications.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd file this under "don't hate the player, hate the game". Abbott can argue that they're maximising shareholder value, as they are legally obligated to do. The rules that make patent trolling and the like profitable, though -- that's what needs rallied against.

Well, that or change the legal definition of "corporation" to include a "don't be dicks" clause. And that's just not practical.

PS: I don't really like your title - it's pretty editorialised, and doesn't actually tell me anything about the article.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a pretty well known practice. Astra Zeneca, the maker of Prilosec, which is one of the most prescribed medicines in the world, has done this exact maneuver with Nexium.

<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1023326369679910840.djm.html>

</comment><comment><USER5> If Abbott wants to sell different doses of the same pill, I don't see how that could be prevented. But either the doctor or pharmacist should say, "Hey, this is the same drug, just at a slightly different dose, and actually no studies have shown that the new expensive one is better... so just use the cheap generic."

<comment><USER6> Doctors don't do that, and the acts that medical companies partake to go directly to the consumers are sometimes quite underhanded.

I was listening to an NPR special about a year ago on how, for some high-end medications which now have generics on the market, patients can receive 'coupons' for medications that cover their copays.

What does this mean? Well, for the generic the patient would have paid $7 and the insurance company would have paid maybe $50, for a total cost of $57 (hypothetically. In the case of the branded medication, the patient pays nothing (they would have paid more than the generic, usually twice or thrice the generic copay, but they pay nothing because they have a 'coupon'), but the insurance company might pay out upwards of $850 now, for a medication for which they may have paid $50.

This happens all over the country, and if it's even effecting one tenth of one percent of the US, you're looking at over a billion dollars in unnecessary healthcare spending.

The insurance companies are definitely not the Robin Hoods of the healthcare world, but they're also certainly not the worst aspect of that wasteful industry.

<comment><USER5> Why don't doctors do that? Shouldn't doctors know what the available drugs are to treat a disease?

And I know for a fact that sometimes pharmacists will give you a different size pill than the doctor requests, if it's substantially cheaper. They tell people to just break them in half, or take 2, or whatever.

<comment><USER7> Doctors do know the available drugs. . . but the current system is set up such that the primary channel for learning about them is direct-to-physician marketing by drug companies.

Which is hardly the most effective channel. In fact, studies have shown an inverse correlation between how much time a physician spends being "educated" by drug reps, and patient outcomes. Of course, while the patients' quality of care goes down the cost of care goes up, because they're paying out the nose for expensive new drugs instead of equivalent (or, as is often the case, superior) generics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's confirmation that the current pharma R&D and patent system is broken.

</comment><comment><USER9> Why can't we have a functioning media?</comment>