Watch a Computer Made Out of Dominoes Do Basic Math - <AUTHOR> http://thescienceexplorer.com/technology/watch-computer-made-out-dominoes-do-basic-math <comment><USER2> If you are interested in non-electronic digital computers you might want to check out this previous discussion:([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7824588](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7824588))

If you are particularly interested in domino logic and adders, baddox posted this video ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SudixyugiX4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SudixyugiX4)), petercooper posted this one ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNuPy-r1GuQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNuPy-r1GuQ)) by Matt Parker (the same guy in this video) and I documented a 2-bit build I did ([http://imgur.com/a/qq7Kl](http://imgur.com/a/qq7Kl)).

<comment><USER3> There's actually a style of digital circuit design called "domino logic": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domino_logic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domino_logic)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The mathematician who set this up also wrote a popular maths book called "Things To Make And Do In The Fourth Dimension". It is by Matt Parker.

<comment><USER5> I read that a few months ago and was incredibly upset when I turned to the last page.

Such a fun read, requires no more than early college math (maybe not even that), but dives deep into some really, really interesting and quirky problems.

Can't recommend it enough.

<comment><USER6> I'm confused. Would the same book with the last page removed be recommendable?

<comment><USER5> Yep :) I was disappointed _because_ it was the last page "Oh no, it's over!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was slightly hoping that it would be this: [https://davidlazar.github.io/PCPL/](https://davidlazar.github.io/PCPL/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice. It is unfortunate, though, that every logic gate can be used at most once.

Nice idea for the next project: a robot that puts down domino blocks based on a specification.

</comment><comment><USER9> An automatically resettable version of this, with configurable inputs, would be super awesome for a science/computer museum.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is fascinating because it's such a relatable physical demonstration of real physical CPU concepts such as overclocking, die size, voltage, reliability, tunneling/leakage, architecture, multiple cores, etc.

For any kid out there who's thinking "why can't they just make CPUs faster", this is a great way of explaining why. It's hard, and as you push the limits, reliability goes down. So the challenge is in keeping reliability high enough to be acceptable, and performance increased.

</comment><comment><USER11> While I was watching that some time ago I was wondering what it would take to optimize this and make it still work with the same underlying principles. It occurred to me that falling dominoes are just transmitting a mechanical signal, that is ultimately "sound", thus phonons.

So I thought : can you make a computer that would use phonons inside tiny metal wires instead of electrons?

<comment><USER12> See, for example, this form of memory:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay_line_memory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay_line_memory)

> Delay line memory is a form of computer memory, now obsolete, that was used > on some of the earliest digital computers. Like many modern forms of > electronic computer memory, delay line memory was a refreshable memory, but > as opposed to modern random-access memory, delay line memory was sequential- > access.

> Analog delay line technology had been used since the 1920s to delay the > propagation of analog signals. When a delay line is used as a memory device, > an amplifier and a pulse shaper are connected between the output of the > delay line and the input. The memory capacity is determined by dividing the > time taken to transmit one bit into the time it takes for data to circulate > through the delay line. Early delay-line memory systems had capacities of a > few thousand bits, with recirculation times measured in microseconds. To > read or write a particular bit stored in such a memory, it is necessary to > wait for that bit to circulate through the delay line into the electronics. > The delay to read or write any particular bit is no longer than the > recirculation time.

<comment><USER13> I recently stumbled upon a good video showing some old delay line memory: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9cUbYII5RY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9cUbYII5RY)

<comment><USER14> good explanation of earlier version [https://youtu.be/Yc945sNB0uA?t=102](https://youtu.be/Yc945sNB0uA?t=102)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I used to do the same thing in my youth. The dominos have a rather low reliability and I'd always run out before I could set up a useful circuit. Resetting your design to test it with different inputs can make the whole thing a real test of patience. Now days when I want to make esoteric computers I simply play minecraft.

</comment><comment><USER16> This was lifted from Numberphile. That's the place to go for cool videos like this.

</comment><comment><USER17> Ingenious. I wonder if they found serious race condition issues.

<comment><USER18> They had a current leak in the demo

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Where can I buy cheap dominoes just to make these ladders?

</comment><comment><USER20> Memserizing! Getting timing right must be hard. It's a one time use computer though :)</comment>


Finding Customers Ahead of a Startup Launch - <AUTHOR> http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/220018

<comment><AUTHOR> My startup (<http://bizen.com>) gets a mention in this article :)</comment>


Ask HN: Review My Startup (Zazu) - <AUTHOR>

Hey y'all,
The end goal of Zazu is to build Jarvis from Iron Man. We have delusions of grandeur, but we will not rest until it's done. The current iteration of the product is an Android application that replaces the built-in alarm clock with an alarm clock that we believe to be more intelligent: it pulls whatever information you find important -- like your RSS feeds, your calendar, your email, your twitter stream -- and reads that information to you using a Text-To-Speech engine. We're working on a deal with Nuance to get a better sounding TTS engine working, but for now we're relying on the phone's internals.
Within the next week we'll be launching a microstore within the application, so our users will be able to enable certain features (like the calendar integration). We're also working with a few big brands to create a new form of interactive marketing/advertising, but that's not going to be public for a while. We promise that we're only going to be providing relevant information to our users... so y'all won't be blasted with Colon Blow advertisements 1000x a day.
We just launched the first version of the application, and I really appreciate y'all's advice so I'd love to hear what you have to say about it. Please be harsh.
Thanks, Marc
http://getzazu.com
Edit: We're going to be leaving the morning space fairly soon, meaning we'll integrate with your calendar to let you know what you need to regarding where you are and where you need to be (both physically and metaphorically). We're trying to transform the moment of alert into a moment of informed decision making. We'll be looking at emails and other areas that involve alerting and decision making, too. <comment><USER2> I was a huge fan of the idea but the execution is really awful. An alarm clock that wakes you up with a horrendous siren (in the production version can you at last change the tone?) and then reads RSS feeds in a really bad TTS voice just makes me want to put a pillow over my head (or throw the phone at the wall). Besides this, though, the biggest problem I had was that it is completely unintelligent in deciding which headlines are important. I tried setting it up to read HN to my, or NYT, and since it just reads through the feed from top to bottom it gets frustrating very quickly. In order for this to be useful you need to do a lot of backend work to figure out 1) what the user cares about, and 2) reformulate text into short headlines. You also have the issue of content providers making stupid decisions about what to include on their sites. For example, if I chose CNN (god help me), I might want to know what Israel is doing in the West Bank but I sure as heck don't care about the latest celeb to enter rehab, and since this is the first thing I hear in the morning I'd be really peeved. This same basic criticism can be applied to my email inbox, too. If you start reading spam to me, or mailing list messages, I'm not a happy camper.

Calendar integration is critical and should be free. You should also add some "smart" alarm functionality so you can gradually wake your users over a course of several minutes with increasing light and sound. People want to wake up gently first, and only care about content secondarily.

If you add ads, you'll scare away users... unless maybe you partner with guys like Groupon or Ticketmaster so you can present deals, coupons, and events.

Regarding your Edit, I'd be interested to hear why you think anyone is looking to make important decisions at the "moment of alert", especially when that moment is when they wake.

To conclude, maybe I'm just not your target audience. I like my morning routine to be tranquil and calm, and I learned after trying Zazu that I prefer to be the one to engage my brain rather to have it forcibly engaged by my alarm clock.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the input. It's really good to hear.

On the production app, you can now change the tone of the alarm (it was a later alpha-phase function).

I do agree that the TTS engine on the phone is horrific, we're working on a deal with Nuance to use their TTS engine. Their engine sounds amazing.

We're also working on calculating what the novelty of a piece of information is to a specific user. The User Experience of the application will be something like "here is a list of information sources that I want to hear from" then we'll let you know what we think you find the most important (novel).

As for the reformulation of text into short headlines, are you more interested in the general concept of the headline or a general summary of the article?

I'm going to try to convince some people that the calendar should be free, because it's a major "I need to know this stuff, this is why I'll start to use you" feature.

We'll try to never present Plain Old Ads, we're trying to engage users with brands. We believe there could be a real connection between a user and their material world. Radio-style shout-outs are just too irritating.

The "moment of alert," at the moment (pun not intended), is really more of a future thing. We're envisioning that if your wife emails you, Zazu will chime in and let you know that there is something you should check on; or if a meeting gets canceled, Zazu will let you know that you now have time to head home (there's traffic on your normal route, so you should take the backroads) and catch a movie with your family. As cheesy as that sounds, we really believe that people could find some utility in being up to date without having to explicitly look for whatever information you need to know. The current manifestation of that idea is a glorified alarm clock -- with the moment of alert being when the alarm goes off. Yes, I do realize that we are creating a moment of alert for our users, but what better time is there to plan your day than at the beginning of it? --, but we're just testing out the waters.

This feedback is great, I really appreciate it. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Marc, that's a really long explanation (iron man? microstore? a new form of marketing?) for something that's basically a somewhat improved alarm clock?

Feedback: the homepage doesn't really explain what it is clearly. The wording can be better ("wakes you up verbally"?). You should show screenshots of the app, and try to communicate its value/why it's cool (with quotes from users perhaps). I couldn't even find a screenshot in the blog.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't mention in the description of the post what the next general step for the company is. We're going to be leaving the morning space fairly soon, meaning we'll integrate with your calendar to let you know what you need to regarding where you are and where you need to be (both physically and metaphorically). We're trying to transform the moment of alert into a moment of informed decision making. We'll be looking at emails and other areas that involve alerting and decision making, too.

We're aware of the lack of information conveyed on the website. That's on the backlog, but it's just recently been pushed closer to the top of the stack.

<comment><USER4> The idea itself, as it currently stands, is an amazingly strong one that is relevant to almost everyone. Are you sure it's necessary to get so complicated so fast? I worry that perhaps you'll lose potential customers and mindshare by being too quick to "web2.0 it." For instance, I almost stopped reading this post after the first couple sentences - the information was in the wrong order. Tell us the simple version first, then tell us how it will grow.

I hope this doesn't sound rude - I don't mean it to be. I really like your idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hey, some quick thoughts on the home page.

\- There's a lot of odd looking empty space around the logo. In general the homepage just looks like you've placed the elements in random locations. Maybe move the Blog/Team/Press/Contact links to a horizontal list to fill the space at the top and lose "The Perch" for starters.

\- The text on the rotating set of images is hard to read due to downsampling and jpeg compression. You probably shouldn't have paragraphs of text displayed in this way - I want to read it at my own pace. I don't want to rush because the image is about to change.

\- The logo's colour at the top is far too similar to the background. The green would work much better.

\- Have an informative page title. Currently it just says "Zazu". Others may know about SEO implications, but imaging I'd looked at your site earlier and couldn't remember the name - the first thing I would try is typing "Android" or "Alarm" into my Chrome/Firefox bar.

Currently installing the app itself...

\- The first screen said something like "Use existing login or enter an email address and password to create and account". Does that mean if I misspell my email address I'll actually just create a new account? You should have a quick "New account? Yea/nay" dialog.

\- As yet no email confirmation saying "Welcome to Zazu!"

\- I'm not sure about the AM/PM option on the "new alarm" screen. It's not consistent with the default Android alarm screen, and incrementing the time over the AM/PM boundary isn't optimal this way.

\- IMPORTANT: A bug. Create several alarms. Deleting one deletes them all.

That's all I have time for. Basically I like the idea. You need to tighten up the execution. {olish up the interface and the website for the real thing, try and integrate with Google Reader or similar (I don't want to set up my feeds all over again), change the word "infostreams" to feeds or something.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER6> Really awesome app idea, here are my suggestions:

1) The green color scheme clashes with the red and orange banner.

2)The duck doesn't stand out because there's little contrast between it and the banner. I suggest changing the banner colors to something that blends in better with the rest of the site.

3) The barcode takes up a lot of the screen, but isn't valuable. With a short name like Zuzu, people can easily search for it on their phones. The goal is to excite them enough to search for it.

4) Get rid of the "Perch" menu bar. All those links can be horizontally listed under the banner giving you more space to show off the product.

5) Make the box of scrolling pictures MUCH bigger, stretching across the entire screen (horizontally). The words in the pics are too small to read.

6) Get rid of the "Wake up and win with Zazu" image and keep the tagline "Zuzu wakes you up verbally..." on a single line.

I hope this helps. If any of this is unclear and you'd like me to make annotations on a screenshot, let me know.

Goodluck!

</comment><comment><USER7> You want this:

"Zazu wakes you up verbally to your calendar, weather, and news!"

To be above the fold. Right now it's going under it.

</comment><comment><USER8> to be honest that page feels way too similar to those spam pages thrown up by domain squatters.

</comment><comment><USER9> clicky: <http://getzazu.com>

Sorry, but you will need to get another name.

I liked the implicit pun in this bit "but we will not rest until it's done" for an alarm clock related start-up that's really funny. It basically says you will _not_ be eating your own dogfood :)

Promoting 'zazu' as a brand when you do not have 'zazu.com' is working for someone else without getting paid for it.

You yourself refer to it all over the site as 'zazu', not 'getzazu'.

<comment><USER10> Hey, Dropbox got away with only having getdropbox.com for a long time.

<comment><USER9> Zazu.com is apparently _not_ for sale.

see: <http://www.zazu.com/>

Maybe he's just playing hard to get but it could also simply be the truth.

The guy is called 'Glenn Zazulia'.

<comment><USER11> Almost everything is for sale - although they may not be able to agree on a price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _Zazu is an Android application that replaces the built-in alarm clock with an alarm clock that we believe to be more intelligent: it pulls whatever information you find important -- like your RSS feeds, your calendar, your email, your twitter stream -- and reads that information to you using a Text- To-Speech engine._

You say that really well. Your site doesn't. Is there some reason you can't just say exactly that on your website?

</comment><comment><USER13> It seems to me like you're about to compete with a much more polished product, Qwiki, that just won the TechCrunch disrupt event last week.

See <http://vimeo.com/15444551>, around 4:20.</comment>


The Unexotic Underclass (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://miter.mit.edu/the-unexotic-underclass/ <comment><USER2> Describing veterans as an _un_ exotic underclass feels incorrect to me. Maybe it's just perception bias, but for instance my FB feed contains an order of magnitude more appeals for veterans causes than literally any other endeavor. GoFundMe's, petitions, charities, races, events - you name it. 4 out of 5 of my last donations concerned veterans (as a group) or individual vets, as were 5 out of 5 of my last signed petitions (whose value, I will grant, is probably a bit tenuous)

Maybe there is some other social circle out there that exclusively cares about black and latino inner city youth, or Kenya, or Bangladesh - but if they really are as over-represented and over-valued as the author seems to derisively imply, then I'd like to see some data to support that.

edit : the instant downvotes interest me. Can you qualify your disagreement?

edit : to clear up some confusion, I mentioned anecdotal experience with veteran charities and fundraising efforts in order to illustrate their relative popularity - not their success. In my opinion, a popular cause is by definition not un-exotic (i.e. marginalized), which is the notion that I am responding to.

<comment><USER3> The veteran thing is strange. To a non-American the veneration of military personnel and veterans seems over-the-top to the point of self-parody. Watching the Super Bowl a couple of years ago, I wasn't sure whether I was watching a sporting match, or Starship Troopers.

That said, for all the splashy thank-you-for-your-service it's a shame but no real surprise that veterans are getting shafted, behind the scenes, by one of the largest bureaucracies in the world.

<comment><USER2> Absolutely. The VA is a disgrace, and it's a clear cut example of the government not living up to its obligations vis a vis veterans.

However, my point concerns public perception, which is to a significant degree the focus of the OP. Specifically, the author made the claim that veterans are perceived as being an unexotic cause in public consciousness - whereas I think the opposite is true. I think their cause is a popular one in America.

For comparison, this is how I personally perceive a few of the various underclasses he mentioned :

The rural poor in Appalachia? Unequivocally unexotic : lower income whites often appear to be more scorned than pitied. Inner city youth? Periodically exotic. Veterans? Unequivocally exotic, in the sense that I perceive their cause to be one of the most popular in contemporary American society.

<comment><USER4> One problem is that it is difficult for the VA to fire people for performance problems. There was a bill (HR 1944) that passed the House this summer, but the corresponding Senate bill was only introduced in November.

[https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate- bill/108...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate- bill/1082/related-bills)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> She uses the VA as an example of an approachable "underclass" problem...but in order to work with the government, you have to be on their procurement cycle, which is (perhaps by design) anathema to all but the large contractors who have equal budgets for their legal and software development teams.

Edit: he to she

<comment><USER6> She, not he.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for letting me know. I need to get in the habit of either using "they", or being more strict about checking before I use pronouns.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Previous discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8261098](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8261098) [496 days ago]

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5782704](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5782704) [958 days ago]

<comment><USER8> If you click on "past" under the article title at the top of the page, it will show you several previous discussions.

<comment><USER9> Oh, is that new? I don't recall seeing it before, but I like it.

<comment><USER10> first time I noticed it too

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Unless we can find a way to give everyone a basic level of subsistence without any bureaucracy (read a basic living income) then nothing startups can do will help, apart from driving your business into the ground as there is no one to pay for it! Charities will not even touch the scale of the problem going forward.

<comment><USER5> I think the existence of the Gates Foudation and the success it has had is sufficient rubutal of your argument.

<comment><USER12> Ok, then the plan is start a world-beating company which monopolizes its (rapidly growing) market, _then_ retire and start a non-profit.

<comment><USER13> It might not be the best plan, but it's not the worst plan.

Step one: Do something mildly skeevy that skims from the public weal, e.g. by using monopoly power to suppress competition (hurting the ability of the invisible hand to give hand-jobs to the rich) and thereby profiting more than an "honest businessman" would. Step two: take actions that will actually benefit the least fortunate on a massive scale.

More concisely, steal from the rich, give to the poor.

Bill Gates is Robin Hood. We who read HN are the rich from whom he stole. I used to mildly resent it, but now I only resent that he couldn't figure out how to do it without side effects like giving a cut to Steve Ballmer and giving Paul Allen the capital he needed to start Intellectual Ventures. Until those guys start Robin Hooding too, at which point I abandon all comprehension of which white collar bastards are actually bastards.

<comment><USER14> Sorry, but some of those "rich" is my country's government, that Microsoft was caught bribing a couple of times and, like every other government, gets its money basically from the poor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder about this with open-source as well, since it's often about scratching the itches of the demographic that participates in it. But I don't know the unexotic underclass well enough to know if there's anything helpful software could do.

<comment><USER16> > I wonder about this with open-source as well, since it's often about > scratching the itches of the demographic that participates in it.

This is why I believe open source will always be much better at creating compilers and programming editors than desktop environments and word processors. There's nothing wrong with this, but it kind of explains why the Year of the Linux Desktop has yet to arrive. It's a lot harder to solve other people's problems than your own.

<comment><USER17> I would posit as a counterpoint that improving compilers, programming languages, and programming editors feeds back into improving the open-source tools available to tackle the problems of others. Hopefully, we eventually arrive at a series of summits where creating a useful solution for a non- technical problem using an open-source tools requires less and less obtuse, finicky, technical knowledge gained through trial-and-error.

That being said, I agree with you. Anecdotally, I haven't contributed anything to non-technical open-source projects outside of the odd bug report. That may be a good belated New Year's resolution.

I'm also hoping that interesting experiments in lowering the unnecessary barriers to doing powerful things in programming will inspire folks like me to find a useful way to contribute to one of those summits. We need infinite Alan Kays and Bret Victors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Entrepreneurship is a capitalist phenomena, and as such serves capital. People trying to solve real problems are going to fail more often, because there is just a lot less money in it. Helping rich people find a place to get their toenails done is a way safer idea then trying to help the homeless find a place to stay or whatever.

</comment><comment><USER19> This speaks to me on such an impressive level. Being one who lives in the midwest and not in a city, all the startups out there pouring just asinine amounts of money into solving complete non problems is just an endless source of amusement. Like that article I found way back here on HN about how you shouldn't send some rep from some shop-for-you company to CostCo, and I was literally laughing out loud saying "No shit, did this question really need an answer!?"

So much of Silicon Valley now is peppered with insipid firms run by well educated and street dumb people spending atrocious amounts of money solving problems that exist to no one outside of an urban center.

At the risk of sounding too rural: Ya'll look so silly.

</comment><comment><USER20> This just shows how much capitalism is broken.

</comment><comment><USER21> Wow, I can't upvote this enough.

> _The dysfunction in D.C. is a big problem._

Indeed, it's high time for a disruptive change.

</comment><comment><USER22> Lost me early on at the assumption that entrepreneurs have always faced Big Problems... When was that assumed/implied? Entrepreneurs are just small business owners... literally

</comment><comment><USER23> This video is a counter-argument to the idea that single moms are suffering and looking for flexible jobs, etc.: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhU85b7cidA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhU85b7cidA)

</comment><comment><USER24> It's happening! Those companies that serve the cushy urbanites (Uber et al) are also providing above-minimum-wage jobs to the unexotic underclass.

<comment><USER25> In general I wouldn't characterize the money Uber pays it's drivers as "above minimum wage".

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I can't even think of so many frivolous examples, off the top of my head. Most technology would also benefit the "underclass"? Maybe Tinder helps veterans and single moms to get together and have sex. Uber facilitates the date, and AirBnB organizes their honeymoon should they hit it off? Amazon saves time for everybody.

What are the horrible startups - are they really dominating?

What would be an idea that would benefit exclusively the underclass? (Political issues aside - or how could you launch a startup to fix the paperwork veterans have to do, wouldn't that have to come from politics?)

<comment><USER27> The frivolous examples all have something in common, spending money.

One thing all underclasses have in common, is not having much money.

As income and wealth concentrate into ever smaller groups of people, technologies that extract money are naturally going to focus on ever smaller demographics.

The point of the article is possibly there is some social good in doing something other than finding new ways to extract money by entertaining the ever shrinking pool of ever richer people, and by doing that, possibly, we can avoid joining the underclass. Ironically that joining is inevitable, much as people can try to avoid death but can't really, "we" can't avoid demographic pressures and we will all be poor sooner or later.

One aspect carefully tiptoed around in the article is if the number of rich people only decreases and the number of poor people only increases, there is some enlightened self interest involved. All of us are far more likely to become poor than to become rich. And that makes us and everyone around us extremely uncomfortable for obvious reasons, so its really cool to help exotic people on the other side of the planet, and really uncool to help our own people locally, beyond the minimal symbolic stuff like saying we support the troops and putting a ribbon on the car, for example. If you help a poor white male, that's going to make people extremely uncomfortable because its socially unacceptable to discuss that as our inevitable future, even if we all know it is our future and even worse we can't talk about it.

<comment><USER26> A couple of years ago I visited a castle in Slovakia. The boss of the castle had all sorts of amenities (the museum told), such as people who washed their clothes, food that would appear magically, heated rooms. That required a whole castle with lots of employees (slaves?) to sustain. These days "normal" people live better than the kings in former times, with zero employees, thanks to technology. So poor is not always the same as poor.

Also, please provide an example of startups catering to rich people? Tesla comes to mind, but other than that? Netflix is pretty cheap, I think - certainly cheaper than the cable subscriptions of old times?

<comment><USER28> The article isn't talking about the relative wealth of modern, industrialized/technologized society to medieval times.

The point is that a single mom (with an 80% chance of being "poor or hovering on the nasty edges of working poverty") probably isn't worried about how much Netflix, or rather cable TV, costs when she can't afford someone to watch her child so she can go to work and make money to pay for food and a roof over her head. She isn't going to pull out her iPhone and call an Uber to drive her to work from this place she AirBnB'd last night -- adding it to her Snapchat story, of course, before she heads out the door.

<comment><USER26> Is that really the case? I think some citation would be nice. For example the refugees in Europe often have a smartphone among the very few things they take along on their journey, simply because is is essential to their survival. I mean they have nothing, but they have a smartphone. And some smartphones have become really cheap, too - (there is Android, you don't have to buy an iPhone).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Letter to the New York Times from BSR - <AUTHOR> https://www.bsr.org/en/our-insights/blog-view/letter-to-the-new-york-times-from-bsr

<comment><AUTHOR> _"we believe that several important inaccuracies and misleading information remained in the story that was published on January 26."_

 _"The narrative you present is an inaccurate picture of the work we have done with Apple, of the role Apple played in the worker hotline project, and of BSR's views of Apple."_</comment>