Kill the Wireless Contract, Buy Your Own Phone - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/kill-the-wireless-contract-buy-your-own-phone-1424807865?mod=WSJ_hps_sections_tech <comment><USER3> > That $199 iPhone? It really costs $650!

It's been really nice to see unsubsidized wireless become more of a thing in the US. I can't even begin to describe the confusion my family members have when I tell them that their iPhone actually cost $600-700. Their response is, "oh, no, it was only $200." It's astonishing how misunderstood this is... like saying you financed a car purchase and it only cost you the downpayment.

<comment><USER4> For the car analogy, it is like the car cost you $1000 up front, but you have to buy a specific brand of gas for the life of the car. Which could be a good deal, since you have to buy gas anyway, as long as that gas isn't much more expensive then other brands of gas. And if that brand is available in all the cities that you drive.

<comment><USER5> _> Which could be a good deal, since you have to buy gas anyway_

Is there any market where this has ever been a good deal?

For printers, mobile phones, etc. I'm not aware of a single example.

Maybe renting a flat is a model where this works, compared to repeatedly buying and selling your house whenever you move. However, maybe this just works in countries like Germany which have very good laws to protect customers/lodgers.

<comment><USER6> The question is how you see it as a good deal.

If you need to defer up front costs and facilitate it through increments then yes.

If you see it as the total cost, then it is not a good deal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Article doesn't mention that T-Mobile will let you buy that $650 phone in installments if your credit is good.

So you can still get that new handset and pay for it in your monthly bill, but now you have the option to pay the remainder off at any time and switch it out/sell it/change carriers/etc.

<comment><USER8> Pretty sure that Att also offers this.

<comment><USER9> Yup, it's the AT&T Next program. I'm on it right now with my iPhone 6+, so at the end of the payments I have paid the phone off in full.

<comment><USER10> If you use Next to upgrade you are actually losing the money you pay each time you upgrade. The math works out better if you buy the phone straight up and resell it every time a new phone comes out which you want.

<comment><USER11> Given that Next is effectively a 0% interest financing plan with no prepayment penalties, it's easy to compare the market rate for your used device vs. the amount of remaining payments you still owe and make the best choice from there. (That "best choice" could be driven by financial reasons, or by convenience.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sad to see that Ting was left out of their list of MVNOs. Ting just added GSM service, too, so they offer service on both the Sprint and T-Mobile networks. Sprint roams on Verizon, so there's no loss in voice/SMS coverage by switching.

There's a thriving used market in phones at Glyde, and Ting's refurbished phones have been great.

I've heard good things about the other MVNOs too, but haven't tried them. Decoupling from Verizon was a great financial move; as a bonus, I'm actually happy about my phone company.

(Disclaimer: I'm both a happy Ting customer and happily own a few shares in Tucows)

<comment><USER13> The problem with Ting is that it is not designed for people that use their devices exclusively with data, like me.

<comment><USER14> Why do you say that? I think it's perfect for that situation, because Ting allows you to set alerts or even hard limits for going over certain usages. (hard limit can be anything, even zero)

Ting will let you set your account so it is impossible for you to use minutes or text messages. (Or cap them at a certain number) That's perfect for data- only usage, isn't it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I can't praise Republic Wireless enough - it's a wifi/cellular hybrid Motorola phone. My phone bill is $25 a month for unlimited 3G data. Was able to make/ receive calls to / from the US in Russia last summer with no issues. Paying $100 for a contract phone is insane.

<comment><USER16> Recently switched to Republic and am quite happy. I initially signed up for the 4g service, which is roughly $46/month after taxes/fees, but I'm realizing I offload over 90% of my usage to WiFi, which is making me reconsider one of the cheaper 3G plans.

I've also been shocked by how great the call quality it is (I can often make out what people talking in the background or on the radio on the other end of the line are saying), but it's probably more related to my previous phone being terrible than anything else.

I've always been surprised that contract carriers are so popular when you end up saving hundreds with pay-as-you-go, even including up front phone cost. The break-even point is frequently around a year from service start, so it's always seemed like a no-brainer to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> One benefit of an unlocked phone is being able to use a local SIM card when you travel internationally. This could be a big savings over paying roaming charges.

<comment><USER18> True.

And those US prices seem insane to me. As an example of what you can expect with prepaid operators, here's what Virgin Mobile in Poland charges:

$5.1/month buys 2GB, unlimited sms, 100 minutes $7.8/month buys 2GB, unlimited sms, unlimited talk time $16/month buys 10GB, unlimited sms, unlimited talk time.

<comment><USER19> That $16 is about $56 when you adjust for the median household income difference between Poland and the US.

I wouldn't expect my house, utilities, food etc to cost what the median prices are for those things in Poland either.

The US is a vast country to try to build 99% LTE coverage across population wise, which the US carriers managed to do. It cost a lot of money to pull that off. Labor costs, spectrum rights (thanks FCC), et al. are far more expensive in the US than Poland.

Check out what a plan costs on Swisscom, you're talking $80+ to get started. That makes sense because Switzerland has a high median household income. Nobody expects a $7 all-in phone plan in Switzerland.

<comment><USER20> Their customers also don't seem to care. AT&T and Verizon have a combined 220 million wireless subscriber lines (or so). This is pretty good evidence that they don't particularly need to lower prices, regardless of whether they can or not.

I'm not sure spectrum auctions are that big a deal, the companies are paying months of revenues for decades of license.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> In the UK, mobile operators introduced 'SIM only' contracts a few years ago, where you got a rolling monthly contract (you weren't tied in for more than a month at a time), effectively giving you the flexibility of 'Pay As You Go' but without having to bother with top-ups.

Initially, these were much cheaper than the year-long contracts, if you already had a phone. Now, however, they have little advantage over a 'standard' 2 year contract, as they've made them much more expensive (if you want a decent amount of data, which people who own smartphones do) and much less value for money on a monthly contract than a yearly contract.

Now if you 'bring your own phone' \- and it's a smartphone, so you want some data, a 'SIM only' contract allows you to choose between not really saving any money, but being on a rolling monthly contract - a bit pointless unless you plan on switching providers very soon or giving up mobile phones forever - <USER2> saving having to buy a phone you don't need over 2 years, but still being locked in for a year.

All this said, I've managed to get a year's service with Vodafone UK (unlimited calls/texts, 6GB data) for £9/month effectively, due to cashback and offsetting my Spotify premium that I was paying for.

My phone (that I bought from O2 and had them unlock) is a Nokia Lumia 635, which is around £70 and is, well, 'functional'.

</comment><comment><USER22> Really excited to see the MVNOs getting better service by licensing multiple Tier 1 networks. I'm still using AT&T on a family plan, but only because they've followed T-Mobile's strategy almost verbatim for the last year.

I grew up in Alaska (now in Colorado), and my parents in Anchorage don't have home internet. Even in Anchorage, a city with 300,000 people, $60/mo will only buy you 10Mbps of download speed with capped bandwidth, through the only cable internet service in town. Now, with AT&T's rollover data I get about 45GB of cellular data usage per month. I'm on the 30GB/mo plan, but most months we only use 15GB, so the other half rolls over. Now, when I travel to visit my folks, I can tether without any concerns. It's actually worth paying the AT&T premium to be able to tether hassle-free. AND, in Alaska the LTE is way faster than the entry-tier cable internet plans. For many people with cellular service, it might actually be cheaper to use your phone as a hotspot in Alaska than to have cable internet.

Glad to hear so many of you are having good experiences with T-Mobile and MVNOs though. I'm so psyched for the future of data access!

</comment><comment><USER23> I had never concerned myself with cell phones since the whole "get a 'free' phone with a contract!" seemed like a total scam, and I didn't need a personal cell phone, so I let my SO "do the needful". Recently I lost my corporate iPhone, and was referred by a colleague to Cricket, which is a subsidiary of AT&T. $35/month unlimited domestic calls/texts + 1GB LTE data (with throttling, not cutoff, if the data alloc is exceeded) seemed like a great deal compared to my SO's Verizon contract deal. I can use any AT&T compat phone. Then I was informed by the Cricket salesman that a $100/month for 5 phones deal was available; we ditched the Verizon contract (paid a small penalty for doing so): 2 kids now have phones, I have 2 (1 work, 1 personal); all MotoG's ($25 ea after rebate). Recently Cricket bumped the monthly data alloc from 1GB to 2.5GB (per phone per month, same price). There may be somewhat better deals, but I'm quite pleased with the current deal, and NO CONTRACT!!! Things can only get better...

</comment><comment><USER24> If you're willing to use an older phone, it's possible to find an iPhone 5, 5c or 5s in the $225-275 range.

</comment><comment><USER25> I don't really understand the reasoning here: because I sign up to a long contract I expect big _discounts_ on calls/data (more so than I could hope to find while shopping around different carriers with a phone I own). If calls/data are the same cost as it would be without signing a long contract then I expect the phone to be discounted instead!

If I could buy the phone and still get the same total cost (or even cheaper) without locking myself to a carrier for 24 months then of course I'd do that?

Not sure if it's a local/EU law or something, but total cost is always listed, and the option to buy the phone without contract is always given.

</comment><comment><USER26> I have the "excellent" oneplus mentioned and while it is a great phone I should mention that I've had audio issues.

The issue I'm hitting up against is that even though the support is relatively good, it's all through email and appears to be from China. Days can go by before I get a response.

Now it looks like I will have to RMA, and it's taken a few weeks to get to this point. This also means I will have no phone while they wait for my return before sending out the replacement.

All in all, happy with this phone. But there's a caveat when buying from a non traditional supplier - 'virtual' support.

<comment><USER27> Just buy two shit ones.

If you can't afford to replace it, can you afford to own it? Never rely on vendor support; Motorola UK taught me that.

Two Lumia 630s here.

<comment><USER26> "If you can't afford to replace it, can you afford to own it?"

With that logic I'd own two fields with a tent in each (o; I'm not an apple fan but I do like the ability to talk to a "genius" in person.

And I guess that's the difference between REI and an ebay seller, Apple and some no name Chinese equivalent. It's the premium you pay to get the comfort in knowing there's going to be no hassles IF something goes wrong.

The build quality & specs on the oneplus is definitely that of a $600 flagship. The $300 price tag does not mean I ought to buy two to make up for the lack of support.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > Sadly, Apple doesn't offer that sort of affordable pricing on iPhones, > though you can save about $100 if you look for used models ...

Not true. Last year, I lost my iPhone in July, but wanted to wait for the iPhone6. Verizon had a deal: a refurbed iPhone 4s, unlocked, for $150. I bought that, and moved to a prepaid plan on VZW. $40/month, all in.

When the 6 came out, I turned the 4s in for a $200 rebate (and bought the 6 outright), thus coming out ahead.

One advantage of CDMA phones (like VZW) is that they also work on GSM! So you have the flexibility of using any network, with the right SIM.

</comment><comment><USER29> I think I understand that people want to have the option to switch, but I never, myself, had any reason to do so. I mean the differences between the services different providers provide is not that much (for me) to justify the switch. Maybe that is because I am on a grandfathered unlimited plan. Over the years I have periodically (with every new iphone), reviewed other options and never found the switch compelling. Anybody knows any reason other than "just having the option" ?

<comment><USER30> The cost is a compelling reason. Last year, my spouse and I terminated our Verizon contracts, bought used iPhones on Glyde, and switched over to Page Plus Cellular. Our monthly bill dropped from $110 to $65. Factoring in the cost of the phones and the termination fee, the move will pay for itself within a year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Buying a $600+ phone is a little crazy. It shouldn't be a commonplace thing. I don't want a phone I will regret landing on top of while skiing or biking or just bumping into things. It's a triumph of marketing but it makes little sense when you can get, e.g., a new moto E with LTE for $150. That's what a good smartphone, with no glaring deficiencies, should cost.

$600+ for a tablet that you keep protected in your bag is a whole other thing.

<comment><USER32> This is exactly how I roll. I will never pay more than $200 for a phone and I will never, every pay more than $200 for a tablet or any computing device that comes with a walled garden OS.

I did pay over $1,000 for a Surface Pro and I will do it again when the 4th version comes out because that's a fully capable general purpose computer that I use as a portable workstation and/or gaming rig. I paid $350 for a Dell Venue 8 Pro because it's got full Windows 8, it fits in my pocket and the battery lasts 13 hours. I can easily install Chrome with Adblock on these tablets and it's faster and easier to setup than any Android or Apple device that I've ever used because I've got way more control.

I even upgraded that little 8" tablet to Windows 8 Pro for another $100 so I could add it to my company's domain and walk around accessing every single company resource that I need with the same native apps that I use at my desk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I've been using Virgin Mobile happily for coming on two years. $35/month for LTE on my iPhone 5s is pretty much impossible to beat. Plus, I can get tethering for $5/day if I need it while traveling.

Yes, it's Sprint, and their network isn't the best, but since I don't live in San Francisco I've rarely had problems.

</comment><comment><USER34> I always wonder when I read about TMobile from a US-PointOfView. In Germany, TMobile is the "Verizon". I pretty much think they raise rates here in order to have money for competitive rates in new markets, but as soon as they achieve a certain marketshare they will raise their prices as well, happend in Austria recently.

<comment><USER35> Yea, I swore an oath never to be a Deutsch Telekom/T-Mobile customer ever again after experiencing their customer service first hand while I was stationed in Germany 10 years ago. They make Comcast look good.

I don't even acknowledge the existence of T-Mobile in the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Wow, what a news! It's a mystery for me how people can come to conclusions like that this late. I haven't bought any subsidized phone for like ten years. I understand that with CDMA careers it might be hard, but with GSM? There's no excuse.

</comment><comment><USER37> I'll say again: I really like T-Mobile's $30/month prepaid unlimited data plan. Combine with Hangouts for voice and Voice for text (who names these?) and it's about the cheapest you can get for a smartphone.

(Tradeoff? Poor service outside cities.)

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm very happy paying $10 per month with Republic Wireless. I got the MotoX for $300 up front. It's not exactly unlocked because they have custom software for wifi calls and handoff. But I get "unlimited data" via wifi and if I really want reliable data on the go there is a $25 plan, plus you can switch plans with their app up to twice a month and have it prorated. Think you need cellular data for maps? Get OSMAND and download the maps you need to your phone.

<comment><USER39> Everyone in the US gets unlimited data via WiFi.

<comment><USER16> The key thing is that your phone's voice and data service is offloaded to Wifi when possible, so you can use your phone from Timbuktu if there's wireless there. IE You don't even really need a data plan with them as long as you've got Wifi coverage.

<comment><USER38> >> You don't even really need a data plan with them as long as you've got Wifi coverage.

Yeah, last I checked they had a $5 per month plan that's wifi only. You can still make calls and texts but you have to be on wifi. Not my thing, but they have it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> This makes sense for so many people; I (continue to) feel it's really only a matter of time.</comment>


Attention Developers: Google Analytics API Launched - <AUTHOR> http://analytics.blogspot.com/2009/04/attention-developers-google-analytics.html

<comment><USER2> Google analytics is installed on something like 40% of all sizable websites. What somebody should do with the API is link up the traffic flowing between those sites. Then you could tell how much value one site is delivering to another. You could create an affiliate network overnight.

<comment><USER2> Appears that some people agree with me here. Email me if you ever want to discuss more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What I really want i a read / write API to Adsense, to be able to do some automatic A/B optimization. Some startups can do it right now, but they involve scraping which is against Google TOS. Not taking the chance to lose my Adsense account for that!

<comment><USER4> Use clicky, <http://getclicky.com>

I've run A/B experiments via them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> We've been using this - see <http://blog.dabbledb.com/2009/04/introducing- dshbrd.html> for an initial post about what we've been up to.

(I normally post as avibryant, but had to create this new account to get around noprocrast. sigh)

</comment><comment><USER6> This seems like the real beginning of the end for Omniture. I interviewed with them once and their strategy for defeating Google in analytics was to just move faster. With Google's developer base, that doesn't seem possible.

<comment><USER7> Is Omniture really a direct competitor with Google Analytics? I haven't used it (Omniture) in a long time, but last time I did we used it extensively for A-B testing, click tracking and other user-experience type events that I don't generally use Google Analytics for.

I am fully aware that I'm probably using about 10% of Google Analytics potential, so maybe they already do all this kind of stuff.

The thing I remember the most about Omniture is this: it was expensive as hell.

<comment><USER8> Yes it is. Precisely because they offer a report builder (for an addt'l fee) that lets you create custom reports that are simply impossible with Google Analytics. My employer was paying them a huge amount of money just to be able to generate reports that collate data from a few dozen different sites.

A GA API changes all that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Unfortunately, Google Analytics is becoming increasingly less accurate as more and more people begin to use javascript blockers and other privacy tools.

This is especially a problem for sites with a high percentage of Firefox users, a significant portion of which are using the NoScript extension (it has almost 50 million downloads).

<comment><USER10> And there are easy ways that Google could track people with javascript turned off. I always thought they would add this as a 'Pro' feature and charge money for that option. So you'd have to pay for the complete stats, most personal sites wouldn't care about non-javascript stats, while most commercial sites would gladly pay the fee.

<comment><USER9> It's probably in Google's interests to make better tracking available to everyone. But I think trying to avoid script blocking by using other means is only going to trigger a filtering arms race.

<comment><USER11> The "other means" is providing a way to submit/process the web server log files.

<comment><USER12> Google App Engine, you mean?

<comment><USER11> I don't mean Google App Engine, no. I'm not sure where you're getting that from, unless App Engine lets me upload my Apache logs into my Analytics account where GA will match up IP addresses to page views and whatnot... ? Not sure how it could since I'm not using App Engine for anything, even so I've googled around a bit for 'google app engine analytics' and I'm not finding any results about doing this for App Engine hosted sites either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What I'd really like is an Excel plugin/toolbar that uses this API to let me create a dashboard for my sites inside an Excel spreadsheet.

Downloading 20 CSVs once a week (and pasting them into my spreadsheet) is labor-intensive and lame.

</comment><comment><USER14> Hehe, yesterday I was just messing around with some screen scraping for Analytics. Talk about good timing :) This should open up some fun projects.

</comment><comment><USER15> The mentioned Desktop Analytics application is a fascinating use of Adobe's new AIR cross-plattform app: <http://www.desktop-reporting.com/polaris.html>

I can imagine so many uses of integrating monitoring data into apps.

</comment><comment><USER16> I was more interested in a way to _write_ data into Google Analytics, something like what MixPanel does ( <http://mixpanel.com> )

</comment><comment><USER17> The samples don't really seem to be working though. Clicking through auto- inputs an ID, but the next step does not show anything (on the graphs). Does this work for anyone?

<comment><USER18> Nope

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> iPhone app anyone? Might even be a nice addition to blog-posting apps to see stats on views, etc.

<comment><USER20> There are 2 iphone apps that already tap into google analytics. One is Ego (<http://ego-app.com>) and another is analtyics app (<http://analyticsapp.com/>) Both not bad.

<comment><USER11> Also Touchlytics:

<http://www.newstreetsoftware.com/touchlytics/></comment></comment></comment>


Why I Don't Do Live Coding Interviews - <AUTHOR> https://www.zamiang.com/posts/post/2016/04/08/why-i-dont-do-live-coding-interviews/ <comment><USER2> I am also not a fan of the "hey code this while I watch you" process. There is no reality to this process, I have written code that many of the people "testing" me would not have ever considered, does that make me some super programmer? NO, it makes me a guy that had no other choice so I learned it and did it. Asking me to write your next brainfuck interpreter or whatever algorithm you want may or may not result in positive results, but either way you will learn very little of what I am capable of in your pre determined time period.

If you want to know what I can offer after 25+ years in this industry, look at what I have done, talk to me for 15 minutes without the entitled attitude that tells me you are a new grad and have no real world experience. That fact is, I don't care if you are a new grad, but I admit I do get excited when I meet new grads because that means I can likely learn things from you, at least as much as you can learn from me. But in the end, don't BS me, I've written production level code for years and (overall) know the reality versus your fiction you are telling yourself.

In the end, I don't mind hard questions or questions that are related to the issue you will have me solve. But to ask me to write an array reversal in Javascript and I do so at a low level and you ding me cause I didn't use some new fangled framework is just an indictment of your own education not my experience.

</comment><comment><USER3> Coding Interviews are like testing a Marathon runner by how fast they can run the 100 meter dash. Sure people who struggle in the 100 meters will also probably struggle in a marathon, but the best marathon runners aren't always the fastest sprinters.

</comment><comment><USER4> From the subheading: "Live coding interviews test culture fit under the guise of testing competence."

When I'm interviewing it's not a guise. I am very clearly interviewing you for:

\- cultural fit

\- how you approach the problem

\- and how well you communicate

For us the actual code we ask to write is very simple. Think fizz buzz. I would never dream to ask to, for example, write code to balance a binary tree. I think those questions are crazy. 90% of our team couldn't do that on a white board and that's completely OK because it's not a skill you need day-to-day. If I based decisions on those kind of algorithms I wouldn't have hired most of our team and it would have been our loss not theirs.

With that said, some people couldn't complete our basic challenge so even though it's not intended as a code competency hurdle, it effectively has weeded out some people who clearly would not be able to function in their daily job.

I'm not sure how I'd react if someone outright refused to do it. I guess I'll deal with that if it happens.

<comment> nikki-9696 "it effectively has weeded out some people who clearly would not be able to function in their daily job"

Did it, or did it weed out people who got so nervous at being asked to perform for an audience on demand that they froze up? I have social anxiety, and while I've been super lucky to get jobs through referrals of other colleagues (who introduced me ahead of time to folks I would be interviewing with), if I had to do this in front of a bunch of strangers judging me, I'd probably appear to be very bad at my job. How I act normally with people whom I know is very different than how I act around people whom I feel are just there to judge me and decide how worthy I am.

<comment><USER4> You raise a valid concern I don't have a good answer for you.

I've interviewed people with some pretty severe anxiety who have passed it and some who accepted offers. But that is not to say there wasn't someone weeded out that shouldn't have been.

Although for the people who failed the coding part of it I'd say they definitely behaved more overly confident than anxious.

Edit: with that said I have some experience successfully teaching programming to people with disabilities (in a university setting) which probably makes me a fair amount more qualified than many other higher managers. But again, there are no guarantees.</comment></comment></comment>


IOS 5 may offer over-the-air software updates - <AUTHOR> http://www.tuaw.com/2011/05/05/ios-5-may-offer-over-the-air-software-updates/ <comment><USER2> What's wrong with downloading it over wifi? Why's it got to come over the carrier's network?</comment>


Why women don't FLOSS - <AUTHOR> http://blog.milkingthegnu.org/2008/06/why-women-dont-floss.html

<comment><USER2> We shall not rest until every subgroup of the population has perfectly proportional representation in every possible activity!

</comment><comment><USER3> In my experience women are less involved in FLOSS because they gravitate more heavily towards institutional jobs where IT staff learn whatever systems the company uses. FLOSS expertise is concentrated in people who use software independently before they use it organizationally.

This is not intended as a sexist post or a comment on differences in capabilities between genders. I've seen capable women who find it harder to get employment than their male peers, and think there are sexist pressures in the workforce that make it a lot harder for women to work as independent consultants. So I know a lot less who worry about Hadoop.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hmm, I'm not buying all their arguments. From the article: "However, the extent of the problem is not funny...Almost half of the women have been asked out. "

On college campuses, probably 80-90% of women have been asked out. Does that prevent women from going to college?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes but there are major differences: \- In college you're not interacting only through the Internet \- Even though you might be popular, you're not going to have that many guys asking you out. \- But the main thing is at work, or when practicing your hobby, you're not expecting to be bugged very often by people probing for a relationship...

<comment><USER5> "But the main thing is at work, or when practicing your hobby, you're not expecting to be bugged very often by people probing for a relationship..."

Thats silly, for many folks (for good or for ill), it is through work or their hobbies that they meet new people.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not quite. You're socializing (including taking on new hobbies) to meet new people, yes. But you're not passioned by your hobby (say History or computers) _because_ you want to socialize ... And if you're into say long distance running that's not to have all the guys -who otherwise might have run faster- start slowing down just to look at your butt ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I take issues with some parts of the article:

"She presents the following reasons: CS jobs are clean jobs and they don't require much physical force. It's a typical tertiary activity that can even be conducted while staying home!

What's interesting is that the arguments used are well, sexist"

Huh? Can somebody explain what is sexist about those arguments? Because it implies that women might have less physical strength than men on average? Is there a debate about that?

"women, who normally still assume a disproportionate amount of domestic responsibilities."

Is that true? If so, why, and maybe that would be a more suitable starting place for striving for equality?

<comment><AUTHOR> She said that in the context of "There is nothing masculine/male about CS ..." and since gender was the subject of the dscussion you don't need a huge leap of faith to accept the comment as sexist.

As to the broom work, yes it's suitable t there, although not the subject of the post...

<comment><USER6> So why is it sexist to say "there is nothing masculine about CS"? If you say the opposite, surely it would be sexist, because it would imply that women are not made for CS. But saying "CS is not masculine" seems not sexist to me. Except that the whole question is rather uninteresting ("masculine" or not - who cares?).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's ironic that asking a woman out is not OK, but huge flamewars between men in the F/OSS community are OK.

</comment><comment><USER8> Perhaps this will sound sexist, but in my experience, women are more critical than men, especially towards other women. And even if a particular woman does not exhibit this quality, she still expects it from others, both men and women. I'm not saying this is an inborn trait (although some aspects of it could be), but I have definitely observed it when I'm out with girl friends of mine.

Could it not be, then, that when considering the prospect of writing software and releasing it for scrutiny, an expectation of excessive criticism prevents many women from doing so?

</comment><comment><USER9> Men and women are different; they think and act differently. I think we shouldn't make such a big deal about it. Just let the natural forces of it play out. Sexism will only prevent a woman from achieving her dreams if she lets it. Sometimes I think that people complain politically out of incompetence in the real world to just deal with it and succeed.</comment>


Battle Of The Flagships (50+ Headphones Compared) - <AUTHOR> http://www.head-fi.org/t/634201/battle-of-the-flagships-50-headphones-compared

<comment><USER2> I love all things head-fi.org. Here, take my up vote...</comment>


Introducing Live Chat analytics from Hipmob - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hipmob.com/post/49461489477/introducing-chat-analytics-from-hipmob

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here (Ayo at Hipmob). We've integrated with mixpanel and Google analytics for a while now. Our latest feature takes key insights from your sales or support chat, and sends them to you in a digest. We thought - instead of you going to dig to see what the data means, we'll just do it for you. Happy to answer any questions - or email me at email@example.com</comment>


Duktape: an embeddable JavaScript engine - <AUTHOR> http://duktape.org/ <comment><USER3> Very, very cool.

I've lamented for a while that, while JS engines are flourishing from a speed perspective, there has never been one as small or embeddable as Lua.

Now we have JS as embeddable as Lua, and nearly as small (it probably can't be _quite_ as small because Lua is a simpler language).

Now the only thing Lua has on JS, implementation-wise, is an implementation that is very small/embeddable _and_ very fast (LuaJIT). LuaJIT is also about as small as a JIT-compiled interpreter can be.

But it looks like Tessel is working on filling that gap as we speak -- they are working on targeting LuaJIT for their JavaScript implementation [http://blog.technical.io/post/102381339917/a-new-engine- for-...](http://blog.technical.io/post/102381339917/a-new-engine-for-your- tessel)

<comment><USER4> > Now the only thing Lua has on JS, implementation-wise, is an implementation > that is very small/embeddable and very fast (LuaJIT).

Well, and a simpler, more regular syntax. Simpler semantics. Real coroutines. Tail call elimination. Multiple returns. Better iteration syntax and protocol. Better lexical scope. Operator overloading. A well-established FFI. No weird variable hoisting, nasty implicit conversions, semicolon insertion, etc.

But, sure, aside from those things, Lua doesn't have anything on JS as a language. (Of course, as an ecosystem, JS is miles ahead.)

<comment><USER5> Those are all very important comparisons (and I would add that both Lua and JS got the global by default thing wrong0. I would note that ES6 requires proper tail calls and that trampolining can accomplish tail call elimination (tail call elimination is different than proper tail calls).

The major issue to me is time. I know quite a few languages, but have only mastered a couple. JS is everywhere and the browser makes sure this will be the case for a long time.

The issue is that these advantages do not outweigh the ubiquitous nature of JavaScript. If I already need to learn all of those JS quirks, why learn Lua too?

<comment><USER6> because learning isn't something you stop doing?

Also, lua is a nicer language, and if you have the choice, you should chose it over js.

<comment><USER7> > Also, lua is a nicer language, and if you have the choice, you should chose > it over js.

Sorry, but I prefer the nasty language with 0-indexed arrays.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If anyone is wanting a node.js like experience with duktape, I've been working on libuv bindings for duktape.

[https://github.com/creationix/dukluv](https://github.com/creationix/dukluv)

<comment><USER9> I want to use it for the name alone

<comment><USER8> [http://dukluv.io/](http://dukluv.io/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Could someone clarify why you'd want to have a JavaScript engine in your C/C++ Project?

Is the idea if you have a desktop app executable wrapper and you could include this engine to start building desktop apps in JavaScript?

I don't think I have a clear understanding of this type of use case or how this will be used, please share.

The only thing I can think of is you could use this JS engine allow folks to code in JS, instead of C/C++, that actually interface with C/C++ APIs? Examples anyone?

<comment><USER11> There are lots of reasons to want some form of scripting language embedded inside a C++ project. This is the primary use case for Lua, especially in game development. For example

\- In a game, write quest logic in the scriptable language so that game devs can tinker with quest design without recompiling the game binary.

\- "plugins" (usually UI plugins of some kind). Games like Elder Scrolls Online and World of Warcraft allow for 3rd parties to write UI extensions in Lua.

\- Any other logic that you want to run and frequently modify without modifying the binary.

There are other great uses-cases that I can't think of right now, hopefully others can help.

<comment><USER12> Another one could be:

\- You already have working JS code that you don't want to rewrite for a new platform

<comment><USER13> Any non-trivial JS code is likely to be closely tied to the original platform/runtime for which it was meant, and thus hard to port. (Vs. purely computational)

<comment><USER14> I have experience of porting JS code from one environment to another. First I was using Delphi Application with MS Active Scripting and MS JScript Engine then moved to nodejs on linux, then back to windows on nodejs, and still have JS code originally written for MS Active Scripting. With nodejs vm module you may create needed context. I also was successfully using socket.io and code on top of it with MS Active Scripting based application by implementing simple WebSocket wrapper to Delphi component.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Duktape seems to be based on the same principle of sqlite3. Distributed as one big c file. Really cool.

Another note: Try to do fib(33) in duk, it takes 9s, while lua interpreted mode takes under 2s. So no doubt it's still got a long way to go in terms of performance.

<comment><USER16> Very little performance work has been done so far. Most of the effort has been in E5 compliance and more recently to support low memory environments (96-128 kB system RAM) better. But there's going to be performance work early next year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Out of sheer curiosity, I wonder if duktape can run node? If so, I would think it to be possible to repackage node libraries as ruby gems. Not saying this would be a good idea, I am just wondering if it would be possible.

<comment><USER18> Ruby gems? How'd you figure that?

<comment><USER19> You can very easily expose C/C++ libraries to Ruby. Totally native too - <USER2> hacking it together.

<comment><USER18> Right - but node.js is already a C++ project, so I don't see the difference?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Obligatory:

[http://jsfiddle.net/jrxvw1yd/](http://jsfiddle.net/jrxvw1yd/)

Compiled through emscripten to build a JS interpreter in a browser... at only 1.5MB!

</comment><comment><USER21> A bit disappointed at its heavy use of macros, makes it a fair bit harder to link to from other languages (just sat down to write bindings for this, and realized it'll involve a lot of rewriting).

Disappointed mainly because the fact of no platform dependencies and two simple files would have made it a very very convenient library even from non-C.

<comment><USER22> The macro usage might look daunting but most of it is pretty typical for libraries without platform dependancies (lots of compiler dependant config and shims for missing libraries).

Look for "BEGIN PUBLIC API" for the stuff you'd have to wrap. Stop at "END PUBLIC API". Nothing there should be that weird looking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I checked out duktape a while ago and found the documentation quite impressive. Although it didn't seem to have too many examples regarding how to embed into a typical app (with class hierarchy, etc).

Also like a lot of these other "lua alternatives", it's interesting to note development seems to be driven mostly by one guy... which if you want to use it in a project brings up the question: "What if they get hit by a bus?".

<comment><USER8> A lot of these one-man projects aren't because nobody else in the world can work on them. It's usually because everyone else is busy working on something else.

If I ended up having to maintain duktape I'm confident I could understand and improve the code with a little rampup time. This isn't rocket science. The hardest problem is finding time and funding. If a company depends on the project they have incentive to provide those things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Just yesterday I was looking for a simple C based javascript engine. Thank you.

<comment><USER25> Here's a C++ one:

[https://code.google.com/p/tiny-js/](https://code.google.com/p/tiny-js/)

I started using it for a small side-project but had to put it on hold because of issues elsewhere in the stack.

From a cursory glance at things, Duktape looks way more advanced, and being written in pure C should make it much easier to embed. I'll definitely give it a try when I have time to look at that project again.

That said, the TinyJS code is _extremely_ simple, so it makes a potentially good starting point for extending, if you want something JS-like rather than a pure JavaScript engine.

<comment><USER24> I'm not a huge fan of C++. And that's primarily out of ignorance, I stick with C and leave all the strange syntax wizardy, templates, metatypes to other people.

Also the portability of Duktape impressed me. I was able to get a test up and compiled in cygwin within a few minutes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Maybe I'm asking a dumb question, but does this mean I can stick JS onto a microcontroller of my choice, just by wrapping it in a C program? I wonder how big it is when compiled.

Edit: I see the requirements are right there.

<comment><USER16> Around 200kB of code (flash), and around 25kB of RAM after startup, with low memory optimizations in the master branch (for the upcoming Duktape 1.1 release). This doesn't include User Javascript, just what Duktape needs to start up.

You can run Duktape with 128kB RAM, and to some extent with 96kB, see e.g.: [http://www.slideshare.net/seoyounghwang77/js- onmicrocontroll...](http://www.slideshare.net/seoyounghwang77/js- onmicrocontrollers)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I've been using duktape for some while now and it's totally amazing, for the wonder minds about why using duktape instead of V8 or SM here's some of my list

First of all duktape written in C not C++ I hope this is a good point for you as it was for me :)

Not everyone seeks speed, for me, simplicity and ease of use beats speed any given day, after all I'm not after complex computations and fib that loops for ever :) one file to include and pretty sure it well compile in many platforms to get a full working Ecmascript E5/E5.1 how awesome!

Compilation time, don't know about current SM compilation time but I tried once to compile V8 and I still feel sorry for doing that to my poor old machine :)

Memory management, I'm not sure how, but duktape's GC is amazing.

Last and the most appealing point for me "unfortunately no one mentioned that yet" is documentations, I don't mean just api, please visit duktape.org and see how beautiful well written everything there, Sami "the author" put a great effort not just to write duktape but it's documentation too, api, usage, comments, specifications, examples ... and best of all it was clear and very easy to follow.

The only thing I hope is more people join to help Sami maintain the project, currently the man is very active and responsive, but I think the project will expand in the next few weeks with more and more users, so I guess he will need some help then :)

</comment><comment><USER28> It serves a different purpose, but speaking of tiny JavaScript interpreters there is also the one for the Espruino boards. Last time I checked it was said to be 95% compatible, but I don't now against which specification. Probably it's OK for most tiny applications anyway.

Source code at [https://github.com/espruino/Espruino](https://github.com/espruino/Espruino)

Espruino boards at [http://www.espruino.com/](http://www.espruino.com/)

</comment><comment><USER29> You've got to love it when a library is at that point where ease-of-use and features perfectly intercept.

This library is great:

On the simplicity side:

Only include two files, no linking, no shared objects, no cruft.

On the feature side:

The functions are simple, the usage-pattern is familiar (alloc, use, free) and the code is fast (written in C, which _almost_ makes it fast by default).

Great library, will probably use it when I need to write some more scrapers in the future.

<comment><USER4> > the code is fast (written in C, which _almost_ makes it fast by default).

I hate to be that guy, but [Citation Needed].

Most language implementations are written in C and most language implementations are quite slow, once you include the giant slew of hobby, toy, and less successful languages. Remember, Ruby, Python, and early versions of JS interpreters were all written in C too and are or were dog slow!

Duktape does have a section on performance[1], but it's basically just a guide to things _you_ have to do to not make it extra slow. I didn't see any reported benchmarks.

This doesn't mean Duktape is bad. Simple+slow is a perfectly good trade-off for many real-world uses. Embedded scripting languages tend to spend most of their time in the FFI, not executing code, so perf doesn't matter as much as maintainability.

But it's really dubious to just say, "well, it's written in C so it's probably great." It's using ref-counting and linear scanning or hash table lookup for property look-up. Perf is likely _not_ great.

Just as a point of comparison, my little hobby language[2] is also written in very simple C, but it's carefully designed to be fast too. Property look-up and method calls are just pointer + known offset. GC is tracing. Because of this (and other stuff), perf actually is good[3], typically better than Python and Lua and on par with Ruby. (With the usual caveat that all benchmarks are bad. :) )

[1]: [http://duktape.org/guide.html#performance](http://duktape.org/guide.html#performance)

[2]: [https://github.com/munificent/wren](https://github.com/munificent/wren)

[3]: [https://github.com/munificent/wren/blob/master/doc/site/perf...](https://github.com/munificent/wren/blob/master/doc/site/performance.markdown)

<comment><USER30> > _Most language implementations are written in C and most language > implementations are quite slow_

That's not a fair comparison. Speed is relative. Compare them to implementations written in other languages.

<comment><USER4> I think even then, you'd find C isn't particularly fast if you consider the mean speed of all languages implemented in it.

Languages that have decent implementation speed are a rare outlier compared to the hordes of slow implementations out. That horde of slow languages is wide enough to also encompass slow implementations in other languages too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> seems the C interface is modelled after Lua. Is there any inspiration there?

<comment><USER16> Absolutely, the original motivation was to have a Lua-like implementation for Javascript.

<comment><USER7> I really want to applaud your effort. Are you accepting donations?

<comment><USER16> Thanks! At the moment no, but send me an e-mail if you use Duktape somewhere :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> We need to have Node bindings so we can javascript in our javascript.

<comment><USER33> It's been done [http://dukluv.io/](http://dukluv.io/)

<comment><USER8> Actually dukluv is the other way. It's a re-implementation of of a node-like environment using duktape instead of V8. I think the original question here was to write a node addon that allowed you to run arbitrary code in a duktape sandbox.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Very happy to see this effort. Until about 2004 my little company licensed an embeddable javascript engine written in C. For the past decade I've continued to provide free support and advice for the old customers, but haven't been able to point them to any new engines with a good API, customizability, small footprint, and licensing to replace our old Nombas engine. From the guide and API duktape looks like it might be the one! Thanks, Sami et al.

</comment><comment><USER35> This is a useful little piece of code, but it has risks if users are allowed to insert Javascript in something running elsewhere. That might happen if you're writing a multiplayer game where users can add content. Or using it in a browser-like environment. How much power does that Javascript have? How well is it sandboxed? What about buffer overflows?

</comment><comment><USER36> Are there any tools to create a single binary from JavaScript (using Duktape or some other embeddable JS engine)? I am thinking about the deployment scenario here. In its current form Duktape shipping a binary and a JS file separately. Is there a way to "compile" the JS file into the C file and produce a single binary?

<comment><USER6> it's pretty trivial to do that - just define a macro and use it to insert the contents of a _.js file into the_.c file, and use it as a string like in the sample program.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> We use Duktape at AllSeen Alliance (disclaimer: I work there) to put JavaScript bindings on small devices.

[https://git.allseenalliance.org/cgit/core/alljoyn- js.git/sum...](https://git.allseenalliance.org/cgit/core/alljoyn- js.git/summary)

<comment><USER38> It's pretty cool indeed what you guys are doing with it, although currently there are not as many MCUs where Duktape fits... The STM32F4 Discovery board that AllJoyn+Duktape targets, is the same one Java Embedded also runs on, IIRC. From my knowledge the STM32F4's are some of the fatter micros currently on the market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Just when you were asking yourself "how can I avoid any future responsibility for maintaining this code and meeting my customers' usecase, while having industry support for my lack of responsibility?"

Why not just embed an API and call it SQL.

</comment><comment> drew-r Any C# bindings?

<comment><USER40> I've used Jint (a JavaScript interpreter written in C#) in a couple of projects:

[https://jint.codeplex.com/](https://jint.codeplex.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Is this going to be much more efficient than embedding v8 in php?

<comment><USER8> It a couple orders of magnatude slower, but smaller than V8. I love the low overhead and have been using duktape for some time.

<comment><USER42> How does duktape compare to v8? I've been happy with the ruby gem 'therubyracer' to evaluate javascript inside a ruby app. Method calls work both ways Ruby<->JS, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I'd like to see this running on an Arduino :)

<comment><USER44> I thought about this, but at least the atmega328p has nowhere near enough RAM for it. The Arduino Mega's chip is still a bit small (ref this comment [1])

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8702610](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8702610)

<comment><USER16> These amount of flash/RAM are probably not realistic for a compliant engine. For instance, the Duktape regexp engine alone takes around 10kB flash compiled.

Luckily Javascript has a great ecosystem, so there are non-compliant subset engines targeting tiny devices. What other (higher level) language scales this way? :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Why would I choose this over SpiderMonkey/V8?

<comment><USER8> It's worlds smaller and easier to work with.

Integrating duktape into my project was literally just including the C file. It added just a couple hundred KB of overhead.

Compare that to SM or V8 that require massive custom build systems and use up to 10mb of ram for a simple repl.

<comment><USER38> Well, not exactly, Espruino is way smaller. However, Duktape is fully- compliant ECMAScript interpreter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> It would be nice if the title gave a clue about the content. I know the mods are busy, but perhaps it could be changed to something like:

        Duktape: an embeddable Javascript engine,
                 with a focus on portability and
                 compact footprint.

Without that, the title is effectively click-bait, requiring a click just to find out what it's about.

 _Edit: I see it 's changed - thank you mods, or contributor._

<comment><USER47> Absolutely. The lack of context prevented me from clicking on the link at all. Thanks for providing a description.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> IMO the killer app today is compiling React server-side, and fast! I'd use that in Go...

<comment><USER49> Sounds like you're looking for Rendr.

<comment><USER48> Not everyone wants to use Node...

<comment><USER49> Why not use a node script for this one part? Seems to me pretty wise to use a javascript runtime when evaluating javascript. You can still use Go or whatever else for all your other tasks.

<comment><USER48> Just simplicity of the deployment. Now I think the right solution is an RPC to a NodeJS server, like you said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Nothing to see here. Come along. Just one guy that wrote whole JS interpreter in his free time. Holy shit!

</comment><comment><USER51> Question I got to ask: why? Maybe my understanding is wrong, but it's look like including car's spare wheel to a space shuttle.</comment>


Ask HN: How do Mint and Buxfer sync with online banking? - <AUTHOR>

Are they basically logging in as a user normally would, and scraping or downloading the relevant data?  Or do banks provide another means of accessing that data? <comment><USER2> Back during private beta I think someone told me that mint is using yodlee for account aggregation (yodlee's moneycenter has awesome functionality, crap UI). How does yodlee do it? No idea. Oh, this is interesting: [http://www.bizorigin.com/2007/techcrunch40-top-company- award...](http://www.bizorigin.com/2007/techcrunch40-top-company-award- everything-mint-is-yodlee-again)</comment>


Android Malware Detection Using Machine Learning - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.10926 <comment><USER2> It's less about the actual malware detection aspects and more about whether you can use an emulator to collect data from malicious apps. For background, those apps tend to do the Volkswagen-trick where they detect their environment first and are only active on real Android devices.

This white paper too finds that extracting the dynamic features (the data that would feed the ML algorithm) is more reliable on a device than on an emulator. Not surprising and not much to do with the machine learning aspects.

<comment><USER3> Hey, I'm from the same research group as the authors above. At the same conference, we also had a paper on Andorid malware detection using deep learning. (Our malware detection results are ok-ish, but we know how to make them much better, and will publish an updated paper soon).

paper - [http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3029823](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3029823) code - [https://github.com/niallmcl/Deep-Android-Malware- Detection](https://github.com/niallmcl/Deep-Android-Malware-Detection)

<comment><USER2> What's a minimum sample size you've been successfully using? I'd imagine that finding APKs, disassembling them and finding the malware yourself for the training datasets are rather resource intensive tasks, so it's a difficult balancing act?

<comment><USER3> We did an experiment where we vary the number of training samples and measure validation accuracy (Fig. 3). Basically, the system keeps getting better as you give it more data. (For good real world performance I'd say 10s of thousands of training samples would be needed).

Initially, we were using an off the shelf dataset donated by an anti-virus company. Later we did some experiments using a much larger dataset collected by our colleagues at ASU. Although I was not involved with collecting that dataset, as far as I know the Android APKs were scraped from various online stores and checked for malware using virustotal.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't think ML is the solution here. At least not right now.

Google needs to create a better system to rate developers. As it is now a normal person has ZERO chance of telling a part a big reputable corporation from a scammer on the Play Store. Which has lead to crazy things like this:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/6dzw22/why_are_app...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/6dzw22/why_are_apps_like_these_allowed_on_play_store_i/)

So Google has a bigger problems, and its Google itself. Once they clean their own mess we may benefit from ML malware detection but until then its just a whac-a-mole game.

<comment><USER5> There's also several apps called "Gallery" that take advantage of the fact that Android renamed Gallery to Photos.

People think it's missing, and download one of these ad injecting crapware things.

Google seems unaware.

<comment><USER4> > Google seems unaware

At this point I would say they deliberately allow this to happen.

There is a community of volunteers regularly reporting this sort of stuff. How on earth could Google be aware after years of this?

[https://www.reddit.com/r/BadApps/](https://www.reddit.com/r/BadApps/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's some nice work on ML detection of android malware at [http://groups.inf.ed.ac.uk/security/appguarden/Publications....](http://groups.inf.ed.ac.uk/security/appguarden/Publications.html)</comment>


Made by Immigrants - <AUTHOR> http://www.madebyimmigrants.org/ <comment><USER2> why not launch these companies outside US in first place....then you wouldn't have to bother

</comment><comment><USER3> Why not employ the people of your own country and help them. As opposed to hiring foreigners and bringing them to the US, what ever happened to supporting your country first?

<comment><USER4> Your comment reminded me of the 'Immigration, World Poverty, and Gumballs' presentation. Really eye opening.

<comment><USER3> Spot on my friend, everyone should look that up, and wake up to the reality of what is really happening.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> [https://fundersclub.com/blog/2017/02/01/each-immigrant- funde...](https://fundersclub.com/blog/2017/02/01/each-immigrant-fundersclub- founder-creates-159-us-jobs/)</comment>


Ask HN: Why can't I search in quora? - <AUTHOR>

Looks like if a user is not logged in, she can't search in quora.  Am I missing something here, or is it intentional? (I am not sure if you can search if you are logged in, I didn't try that)<p>I can see related questions, tags etc, but there doesn't seem to be a search box <comment><USER2> That's interesting. Could you post a screenshot and the URL that you are accessing?</comment>


Show HN: Vim-buffest, edit vim registers/macros and lists in a buffer - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rbong/vim-buffest <comment><AUTHOR> I shared a similar plugin with HN in the past, but it was only for registers and had some other not-so-nice things. I hope this is a lot nicer.</comment>


Robinhood: At a Play Store Near You - <AUTHOR> http://blog.robinhood.com/news/2015/8/12/robinhood-at-a-play-store-near-you <comment><USER2> Robin Hood is dangerous for the young millennial. Short term trading is really risky and if you have some cash saved up it can make a big difference in the longer term if you don't blow it up or lose it. Being young matters.

If you're in Australia and looking for something longer term access to Berkshire Hathaway shares or ETFs [https://getfirststep.com](https://getfirststep.com) is another service too [no individual shares] its more like wealthfront/betterment/acorns.

They fractionalise the investment so you don't need huge amounts which is quite nice.

<comment><USER3> Not saying you don't have a point, but there are a lot of ways to lose your ass in this world and I don't see Robinhood as a particularly egregious case that requires any more warning than Fidelity (which will jam fees).

Unless you have a gambling addiction, it is hard to get into trouble with a cash account. Margin accounts are another issue, but in the States, "pattern day trading" requires $25k minimum balance to execute more than 4 trades in 5 biz days. That is a pretty effective filter.

I really hope they add IRA support soon.

<comment><USER4> Just to be clear, unless you're in the margin account beta, "free-riding" is impossible in Robinhood, so users will never be breaking any day trading rules.

disclaimer: this is not legal advice

[http://www.finra.org/investors/day-trading-margin- requiremen...](http://www.finra.org/investors/day-trading-margin-requirements- know-rules)

>Day trades can occur in a cash account (only) to the extent the trades do not violate the free-riding prohibition of Federal Reserve Board's Regulation T. In general, failing to pay for a security before you sell the security in a cash account violates the free-riding prohibition. If you free-ride, your broker is required to place a 90-day freeze on the account.

<comment><USER3> Yup, agreed. For the uninitiated, this refers to your account showing a positive balance based on a sale that occurred but has not settled.

Seems like a great app... just have to get some money in there without telling them my bank creds...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The way they market this app makes me pretty concerned. It seems like they're advocating short-term trading -- pretty risky behavior. I guess they don't explicitly do this, but the nature of a mobile-only platform, with what looks like no portfolio/risk analysis tools screams short term. Also, the only real reason a commission-free account would be helpful is if you're trading pretty frequently or in very small amounts. I'd rather pay $10/trade for something like Fidelity, Etrade, or the like, and have access to some mediocre portfolio analysis, risk analysis, and research tools, than have only a Buy/Sell button. However, I'd bet that uninformed investors would see this deal and jump right in without considering these things.

I guess my TLDR here is that a trading platform's selling point (for the general public) should be tools first, price second; not price first, aesthetics second.

<comment><USER6> > It seems like they're advocating short-term trading -- pretty risky > behavior.

No matter how successful they're, I'd argue that it is a drop in the bucket compared to high-frequency trading. I cannot see it hurting the markets.

> Also, the only real reason a commission-free account would be helpful is if > you're trading pretty frequently or in very small amounts.

Why? It saves you $10 even if you only trade once every year. It is MORE helpful with many trades, but it is helpful regardless.

> pay $10/trade [..] and have access to some mediocre portfolio analysis, risk > analysis, and research tools

Why can't people get these from third parties? A lot of other services provide these tools and information. This de-couples the bundling and allows people to shop around.

<comment><USER5> You're right on all counts. The point I was trying to make is that it caters to unsophisticated investors, and this platform indirectly encourages them to invest without understanding the risks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I just installed Robinhood. $0 commissions is a pretty nice rate, so I'll probably transfer my IRA to them. (For prop trading I'm on IB.)

But why such a user hostile interface? It's almost as if this thing is made for a techcrunch press release rather than actual use. When signing up, I can't tilt the screen into "I have big thumbs" mode. And mobile-only trading - no webapp. It also only asks me to type my password _once_ on my mobile device, with my fat thumbs. I'm sure that this sounds great to a techcrunch journalist who only has a 401k - "mobile trading for the flexible millenial workforce" \- but it's pretty terrible for anyone who actually wants to make real trades.

Also simply lovely; I look at a stock chart in the mobile app, and I can't see data older than 1 year. The default is 1 day. But I can watch SPY's last price ticking up and down in realtime, woot! I'm sure I'll also get push notifications for trades. (Disclaimer: I haven't tried to trade yet).

I really hope this is a "lean startup" only beta and will be rapidly improved. Right now, the price tag is the only good thing about it.

<comment><USER8> If the commission rate affects your IRA return, you are trading far too much.

<comment><USER7> The IRA is the place to make highly volatile investments that might incur large capital gains taxes. In contrast, your ordinary brokerage is the place for buy&hold + occasional rebalance.

<comment><USER8> Volatile \neq frequently traded; tax is not affected by commission rate.

I find it highly unlikely that almost anyone should trade anything frequently, even in the weirder corners of their portfolio.

<comment><USER7> I run some frequently traded strategies as a hobby (i.e., time spent >> my salary). My strategy is profitable (15-20% returns) though not scalable. The IRA is the perfect place for these, due to the tax implications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Does anyone else have concerns about the linked bank account? I refuse to give up credentials.

</comment><comment><USER9> I may be alone here, but I feel a little uncomfortable trading stocks solely on a mobile device. Maybe I'm just having an old man moment, but I'd rather do something like this on the desktop with easier simultaneous access to data and research.

<comment><USER10> Fidelity and its ilk have some serious advantages - but Robinhood makes it so easy and almost gamifies it. I use both - Robinhood for play, Fidelity for long-term stuff - and I found myself using Robinhood more when I had an iPhone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I read the "How we make our money" page, and if I am reading it right, they only make money on the uninvested balances? It is free ($0) to invest and free to de-vest ($0, 0%), is that right? Seems too good to be true...

Also how legal is this company? I've read about small StartUps based on the stock market who then wind up getting in trouble with the FTC.

Honestly if this is free investment, then I might start doing some micro- investment. I am been put off the stock market by the overheads of investing/de-vesting (e.g. $20/trade). Although the hassle of filing taxes might still put me off.

<comment><USER11> Interest from margin accounts is another one. They don't have margin accounts yet, but once they do, that could become a fairly significant revenue stream.

<comment><USER6> True. But if you're interested in them for micro-investing, that seems incompatible with borrowing to do it. Although I'm sure someone will want to borrow to invest...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It says this is incompatible with all my devices, I have a Nexus 4 and a Nexus 7. Is it because I'm in the UK?

<comment><USER13> Likely... Robin Hood is not in the UK yet.

<comment><USER14> Yup, says to me "not available in your country" (UK).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have an HTC One ( the first one ) and this app is listed as incompatible. How do I find out why?

<comment><USER16> It's probably because you're running an old version of android. I don't know that you are but that is a likely reason.

<comment><USER15> Perhaps because I am in Canada. I would have thought it would have said that rather than "incompatible".

<comment><USER17> It does say "not available in your country". Robinhood is only available in the US for now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Robinhood is limited to users in America right?

</comment><comment> quiet-observer best app ever</comment>


Sprint store "temporarily unavailable" in advance of iPhone launch - <AUTHOR> http://shop.sprint.com/maintenance/index.html

<comment><USER2> I hope it works out for them.

As a former customer, I like how Sprint stores often have repair counters so the phone doesn't have to be sent away, and I was always happy with their customer service.

As the #3 and always foundering, they really did seem to work harder.

I still can't imagine the calculations behind the rumored "4G" WIMAX iPhone. I would assume it has to be a WIMAX upgradable to LTE.</comment>


Telefonica Is Target of $600,000 Bitcoin Ransomware Attack - <AUTHOR> https://cointelegraph.com/news/telefonica-succumbs-to-600000-bitcoin-ransomware-attack <comment><USER2> IMO, it should be illegal to _pay_ ransomware. Bad actors only deploy ransomware because enough people pay the ransom for it to be worthwhile. Raise the minimum risk-adjusted price (chance of getting caught paying * fine) by enough, and people will make the rational decision to not pay it.

Combine with an advertising campaign to make it common knowledge that paying ransomware gets you fined, and that you should have good backup-and-restore ability instead, and the problem should become much less intense.

(side note: paying ransomware has negative externalities, since it funds ransomware operations that hurt others. If criminalizing it offends your libertarian aesthetic, think of it as a Pigouvian tax instead.)

<comment><USER3> > Raise the minimum risk-adjusted price (chance of getting caught paying * > fine) by enough, and people will make the rational decision to not pay it.

You don't need to make it illegal to pay ransomware to use this type of logic to stop ransomware. Here's an alternative version:

It should be illegal to deploy ransomware. Raise the minimum risk-adjusted price (chance of getting caught deploying * fine) by enough, and people will make the rational decision not to deploy it.

But it doesn't work. The chance of getting caught is (currently) so infinitesimal that it is ignored, and ransomware is rampant.

In your system, the chance of getting caught paying would be equally infinitesimal, with the added problem that anybody involved with prosecuting or convicting would fully understand that they are harming the victim rather than the perpetrator.

<comment><USER4> That definitely is not true. If a company has to pay $1m for ransomware, they would likely need to disclose it publicly, and at least privately to auditors. Making it illegal as in jail time would prevent any corporate employee from agreeing to do it so it would effectively stop it.

<comment><USER3> Fair point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "The success of the attack is thought to be due to a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows" It's really 'good' day for Microsoft. Europe realizing that Microsoft is not that good and cheap: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14314713](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14314713) NHS in England is under attack due to Microsoft bug: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14325213](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14325213)

<comment><USER6> The NHS one was posted on Slashdot earlier. A bunch of companies and governments seem to be affected and it's spreading across much of Europe. Whoever started this is probably going to make a killing.

The trouble is, it's not unreasonable to open en e-mail attachment if it looks like it comes from someone on your work network. You may be expecting spreadsheets or PDFs every day, and the most recent MS issue was due to the scanning process itself; you didn't even have to open that attachment.

I feel like several things need to happen here. Non-tech jobs need solid white listing. A lot of white listing software is crap and at B-sides 2016, there was a talk on how to bypass a lot of them. Solid white-listing based on application hashes and complete paths of the binary needs to become the defacto standard.

Many PCs need to stop being PCs. If it's order entry for a doctor or nurse and the software already has a web interface, a Chromebook or Linux box that just boots straight to Firefox/Chromium or something else that's very simple/kiosk is a much better and cheaper solution. You don't need a full blown Mac/Win laptop for most of the applications we use them for. (Maybe Win 10 S could even be an option in this situation, if you can connect it to a domain and offer only company apps instead of store apps?)

Large organisations need solid backup strategies, snap-shoting storage systems for staff, backup verification (would suck of that storage rack had a ransomware timebomb waiting to encrypt your backups) so they're never out more than 24 hours of date.

Even though a lot of this is a "less is better" approach, it does increase costs, it is a learning curve, it does add some limitations and, for public organisations like the NHS, it will be a burden on already taxes IT departments.

It sucks, but I wonder if we'll start to see better practices due to this and if these types of ideas will become common practice in the next decade.

<comment><USER7> Absolutely we need to decrease the attack surface. We can't expect for each of those doctors to make sure they always have the latest version of Windows, etc. I'd also go so far as saying that we can't even trust IT to always update the systems because large corporates loose track of boxes all the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> More info on the attacks. From the horse's mouth, who broke the story, and not from an article with 3 paragraphs.

On Telefonica: [https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/telefonica- te...](https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/telefonica-tells- employees-to-shut-down-computers-amid-massive-ransomware-outbreak/)

Globally: [https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/wana- decrypt0...](https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/wana- decrypt0r-ransomware-using-nsa-exploit-leaked-by-shadow-brokers-is-on-a- rampage/)

</comment><comment><USER9> I would like to read someone's educated guess on what is the % of bitcoin transactions that have a direct purpose of paying illegal activities (drugs, guns, black hat hacking, ransomware, etc).

I am not capable of giving such a guess. I would be happy to read even about the order of magnitude of said %.

<comment><USER10> Drugs are probably a big share of all btc value and maybe it's "gold standard" since it's one thing you can find people wanting to trade stuff for it anywhere in the world. The rest of the illegal activity would probably need to be calculated separatedly because I'm almost sure drugs would dwarf them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ransomware is a bug bounty program you didn't know you were part of.

<comment><USER12> haha

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > "The origin of the infection is not confirmed at the moment, but sources > close to the company point out that it is being treated as an attack > originating in China," El Mundo writes.

It's amazing how any organization can get away with poor security and backup practices by blaming either Russia or China, without showing any evidence to back their claim.

<comment><USER14> To my mind, there's a difference between "blaming Russia or China" and saying the attacks originated in Russia or China. The former is a reference to the nation state itself (i.e. state sponsored cyber attacks), while the latter is broader and can also mean private individuals within those respective countries.

<comment><USER15> And, in fact, given that by now news reports are indicating that the greatest number of affected machines in this wave of attacks is in Russia itself, it's probably private criminal groups.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is, of course, actually _good news_ for Bitcoin, because

</comment><comment><USER17> 'Succumbs' makes it sound like they payed the ransom, which they haven't

<comment><USER18> Agreed. Mods, could we please change the title to something like "Telefonica Is Target of $600,000 Bitcoin Ransomware Attack"?

I know the current title is the actual title of the article, but it's misleading.

<comment><USER19> "Victim", as there's nothing to suggest it's targetted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> That website seems to hijack back button history...

<comment><USER21> You can get it back, for 1 Bitcoin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> > Hackers are demanding a payment of $300 per machine, roughly equal to 300 > Bitcoins currently worth around 510,000 euros.

EDIT: nvm. Apparently they mean to imply they have about ~1759 infected machines.

<comment><USER23> You misunderstood. The article claimed

300$ dollers per machine ≈ 300 Bitcoins ≈ 510,000€</comment></comment>


One Year of Stack Overflow - <AUTHOR> http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/08/one-year-of-stack-overflow/ <comment><USER2> Interesting; they have slightly less than 2x as many page views per day as HN, but more than 10x as many unique visitors. They must get much more of their traffic from searches.</comment>


Lessons Learned Building the Raspberry Pi Dramble - <AUTHOR> https://servercheck.in/blog/lessons-learned-building-raspberry-pi-dramble

<comment><AUTHOR> Short summary:

      - Constraints give more clarity to the decisionmaking process
      - Small problems are magnified—and easier to analyze
      - The network is *never* reliable
      - Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong
      - Cheap/free servers free you to have fun and experiment
      - Building hardware is fun</comment>


N2 Smartpen – Writes on Paper but Also Mirrors into Smart Devices - <AUTHOR> http://superbcrew.com/n2-smartpen-writes-on-paper-but-also-mirrors-into-smart-devices/

<comment><USER2> This is genius. It dwarf's the stylus in style and user-friendliness. I think this is a step towards permanent storage for humanity. With further advancement on this technology we might never need to worry about what happens to papers after we're done writing. So many applications.</comment>


Apple Shortcuts User Guide - <AUTHOR> https://support.apple.com/guide/shortcuts/welcome/ios <comment><USER2> Given other people's response, I'm clearly the odd one out here, but I found it buggy and infuriating to use. I wanted what I can't imagine is a unique shortcut, "Good Morning", which should:

\- Set the volume to 50% on my home pod

\- Start playing an ambient radio station in Apple Music

\- Start a slow fade in on my bedroom lights

It's been a nightmare, and I finally gave up altogether. I got my shortcut configured and set up with Siri. It's pretty simple, being only 3 steps, so I don't see where there's that much room to go off the rails, but oh boy does it.

The HomePod responds, and says "okay, running your shortcut". It then sets the volume on my _phone_ to 50% and starts playing music there instead. It then tries and probably 80% of the time fails to set the home scene to turn on the lights. When it fails, it says "Please continue on your iPhone", where Siri's output states that it doesn't understand, as if I misspoke something to it... but it's running a set list of commands, there's no room for me to misspeak when setting the HomeKit scene. And clearly the shortcut triggered since it's now playing music at half volume a foot from my head.

And there's no way that I can tell to have it specify an AirPlay speaker to play out of. I don't get why the home pod, which responded to the request in the first place, can't play the music. If I tell it to play the exact same playlist directly it does so just fine. Maybe I'm "too advanced", being a tech person myself, but this really feels like basic stuff, and it seems to have missed the mark by a wide margin.

<comment><USER3> You may be speaking to the HomePod, but the phone is the thing actually running the Shortcut. And the list of Shortcuts actions does not include controlling the music output of a HomePod. I would encourage you to file a bug report with Apple at [https://bugreport.apple.com](https://bugreport.apple.com) to request the ability to instruct the HomePod to play music.

As for the HomeKit scene, that sounds like a bizarre error to get from a Shortcut.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Shortcuts is the most exciting release of iOS 12.

Every time I run into a recurring task on my phone, I can usually make a shortcut to do it for me. For example, when I get an email saying my build failed, I open it and click "view logs" but need to scroll to the bottom of a very long page to see why the build failed. Now I just run "Scroll to Bottom" [1] and then I'm looking at what previously took a solid 15-20 seconds of scrolling.

I can only imagine how many thousands of hours are lost per day on similar recurring tasks across all mobile users that could be saved with a shortcut. I'm really excited Apple is taking iOS in a direction where anyone can be a developer.

[1] [https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/e1daf0c6017e4db382272390f89...](https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/e1daf0c6017e4db382272390f8910646)

<comment><USER5> Yes it is the most exiting feature but booooy is it buggy.

I have couple shortcuts in the widget. 80% of the time I click the shortcut in the widget it does like half of the stuff. I have workflow that does:

\- Find one song in Apple Music, start playing that \- Find all other songs by that artists and play them after the current one \- send a message to my wife "I'm leaving the office"

Messages works all the time, 80% of the time music simply don't start playing. And when I try to hit that shortcut button several time in the widget, widget itself fails and stops showing any shortcuts, only an error message.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For those who also just started playing around. I just found out yesterday that you can write full blown python programs with packages and everything in [http://omz-software.com/pythonista/](http://omz-software.com/pythonista/) and trigger it from Shortcuts. That's pretty powerful, especially if combined with Slack webhooks and other external services.

<comment><USER7> Pythonista is amazing if you want to do any programmatic graphics twiddling on an iOS device (which Workflow/Shortcuts really doesn't do at all well.) Dr Drang (leancrew.com) has a whole bunch of good blog posts up about his Pythonista use that's been extremely helpful for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Neat, so it's like scripting but for normal people. This is honestly a good idea for making phones more useful without extensive programming knowledge.

<comment><USER9> > _scripting but for normal people_

It looks like they took a page out of the macOS Automator, and an encouraging sign that OS automation hasn't been abandoned at Apple, despite the fears after they fired the person responsible for some of the impressive automation in macOS [0].

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17218080](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17218080)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I just tried Shortcuts for the first time then opened the "Play Favorite Albums" to see how it works and now it feels like I'm dumb. It took me a long time to understand; start from a empty text (I didn't event know I need to fill texts here) , separate lines, set variables, and count. The visial representation was not obvious at the first look.

I doubt "normal" people would understand and create new shortcuts.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. "Normal people" _might_ be able to get a shortcut pre-written by somebody else working correctly on their phone, but even that is doubtful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This should probably be titled 'iOS 12 Shortcuts User Guide' instead.

I'm a relatively new Macbook user, so I was looking forward to reading about all the keyboard shortcuts and touchpad gestures I'm missing out on.

I only buy Android phones, though, so :(

<comment><USER9> > _Macbook ... keyboard shortcuts and touchpad gestures_

There are many guides/"cheat sheets" about those, and macOS has always had great discoverability and customizability:

• System Preferences -> Trackpad or Mouse: Shows you [some] gestures, with videos.

• System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts: Shows you all the system shortcuts, and also lets you modify or add custom shortcuts for any Apple or third-party app.

• Help Menu -> Search Field: Start typing the name of any menu command you expect an app to have, and it will show you the menu items matching it along with their shortcuts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Shortcuts was the most exciting thing from the WWDC Keynote this year, but I still haven't really found a killer use for it yet. But I do have some simple ones, such as a Shortcut I use on an image that prompts me to rename it before triggering the "Save to Files" flow (as Save to Files doesn't let you rename the image before saving).

Federico Viticci over at MacStories.net did post a pretty cool one though, which adds iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max frames to screenshots you take. [https://www.macstories.net/ios/adding-device-frames-to- iphon...](https://www.macstories.net/ios/adding-device-frames-to-iphone-xs- and-xs-max-screenshots-with-shortcuts/)

I'd love to see a version that just adds the rounded corners and the notch, instead of the full frame, but I'm a bit too lazy to figure out how to adapt his shortcut to do that (the idea being to share a screenshot that represents what's visible on the screen, rather than trying to make it actually look like the phone).

<comment><USER13> > but I still haven't really found a killer use for it yet

I think the main "killer feature" is that it allows you to optimize the way you interact with your phone. It's obviously more useful for power users than casual users, but both could benefit since shortcuts are so easy to share.

I have two Shortcuts that stemmed from real-life problems.

[1] - When I'm in a bookstore, I tend to go through dozens of books looking at the GoodReads reviews for each one, trying to discover new authors that might be worth a read. I made a shortcut to turn this into a single-tap barcode scanner, instead of me typing the name of the book into Google each time.

[2] - I was recently suggesting my favourite spots in NYC to a friend, and was trying to remember the streets and addresses of some of the places I took photos of. With a shortcut, I was able to easily geolocate photos in a map, and even get a nearby 360º panorama to remind me of what else was in the area.

Videos/code:

[1] - [https://www.reddit.com/r/shortcuts/comments/9jnhc5/scan_a_bo...](https://www.reddit.com/r/shortcuts/comments/9jnhc5/scan_a_book_to_get_its_reviews/)

[2] - [https://www.reddit.com/r/shortcuts/comments/9klosk/find_near...](https://www.reddit.com/r/shortcuts/comments/9klosk/find_nearest_google_maps_360%C2%BA_panorama_from_a/)

<comment><USER3> Wow both of those are very cool. I had no idea Shortcuts could even scan barcodes. I don't buy physical books any more, but I wonder if I could get the same info from whatever Books.app provides in the share sheet for the bookstore? I'll have to play with that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'd like to use this for making a shortcut to connecting to a specific Bluetooth device, but it seems that changing the iPhones settings is not part of actions that you can choose from. My stereo does not connect automatically, so I have to always go to Settings -> Bluetooth to connect them. Would be nice if I could just push a button / ask Siri to connect it.

From iOS 11 it is no longer possible to develop widgets that does this: [https://forums.imore.com/ask-question/376402-no-widget- conne...](https://forums.imore.com/ask-question/376402-no-widget-connect- specific-bluetooth-device.html)

<comment><USER11> Same for me, but I want to join a particular wifi network. Was hoping I could do it via shortcuts. Oh well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does anyone have example SSH, Javascript or Python shortcuts? e.g. would be nice to have a shortcut for Textastic to push a file over SSH then run Jekyll build on the server.

This shortcut will put a video into PiP mode for iPad multitasking: [https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/dda08a01a17d41feb3e887a4a12...](https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/dda08a01a17d41feb3e887a4a12a7621)

</comment><comment><USER16> I thought this would be a document listing all the hidden UI shortcuts that you never use because you don't know they are there

</comment><comment><USER17> I have been able to piece together some simple shortcuts that I use frequently.

My biggest complaint so far is that they do not run in the background.

</comment><comment><USER18> So, what are some usable shortcuts HN has come up with? I fail to find a single one that I could use. Looking for inspiration.

<comment><USER19> This one is pretty useful:

[https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/2d68cb1ee7b84f08ace2fd600b9...](https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/2d68cb1ee7b84f08ace2fd600b9855b5)

Article link below, but here's the relevant description:

 _Petersen's command "Hey Siri, I'm getting pulled over" will pause music if it's playing, turn down the brightness, turn on "Do Not Disturb" and sends a message to a chosen contact. It then activates the video recording on the front camera.

Once the user stops recording, according to Petersen, it sends a copy of the video to your specified contact. It also brings up the brightness and turns of "Do Not Disturb." His shortcut already has drawn hundreds of comments on Reddit._

[https://www.cultofmac.com/578615/shortcuts-siri-traffic- stop...](https://www.cultofmac.com/578615/shortcuts-siri-traffic-stop/)

<comment><USER18> It's interesting to see how this gets so much attention in the US. In Europe, specifically NL, I haven't been in a single situation the past 32 years of my life where I would have needed this. I do not expect I would need it the coming decades either. These are stories we catch from Russia where each and every cop seems to be corrupt. To see a similar thing in the US is mind blowing to me.

Thanks for sharing though! Might help another reader in this thread. I guess I must be happy to pass on this one.

<comment><USER20> It's not corruption, but a lack of professionalism. I'll assume police in the Netherlands see their job as just an occupation rather than an identity. Some people in the U.S. imagine police officers as this 'lawman' figure like a young Clint Eastwood in a poncho rather than just a citizen with a shift job to work like a garbage man. This notion ends up normalizing the artificial 'us vs them' thinking that leads to so many of these escalated situations and tragedies. It doesn't help that movements like blue lives matter seem to be actively engaged in supporting this thinking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I downloaded "Calculate tip" from their library and it returns total garbage. Most of the time it adds some random percentage to the total I enter instead of calculating 20% of it. Maybe it has to do with my regional settings, but I already stopped bothering.

</comment><comment><USER22> I've a great shortcut to download YouTube videos.

[https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/c2997c4bcd0a4a01a470ac7f6c1...](https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/c2997c4bcd0a4a01a470ac7f6c1476ec)

</comment><comment><USER23> I use shortcuts to do time tracking at work, which works great.

I do hope though that they bring back Shortcuts for the Apple Watch - with the old Workflow app I could do everything on the watch, now I have to grab my phone every time.

<comment><USER24> Just add your shortcut to Siri and speak it to your watch - it's faster than launching the workflow app used to be...

<comment><USER25> No it's not. I used to have button prompts for some actions in Workflow, which is faster. Also, there are many instances where speaking to your watch is ridiculous (such as meetings, public transit, etc.)

<comment><USER23> Also the old workflows ran directly on the watch (for example calling a REST api) which gave you the result right away.

Now they can only run on the phone and take a lot longer (usually it says "I'll tap you when I'm ready...").

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Why on Earth did they tie it to Siri? Why can't I drop a shortcut on my home screen and tap it? Why does Siri have to be enabled? This feels like just a ploy to get Siri usage up.

<comment><USER27> In addition to sibling comment, you can do just that, add it to the Shortcuts widget, or (as I just did an hour ago) add Shortcuts to the Share sheet and it will show up there. This is particularly important because I have shortcut for sharing a web page with my wife. If I use Siri, it doesn't get the URL because Siri is in the foreground and no URL is obtained. But it works fine as a Share sheet object.

<comment><USER20> Can you only look at your widgets from the springboard?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> TIL that Apple is using Facebook's React. Thought they were using Ember before.

</comment><comment><USER29> It's really innovative how they were able to add all these features but still prevent customers from creating an action like "Play I am the Walrus on [competing music service]."

<comment><USER30> Isn't it up to [competing music service] to implement this? Podcasting apps work with Shortcuts, so I don't see why [competing music service] wouldn't work.

<comment><USER31> Apple has not been clear about the capabilities of Shorcuts and still has limits[1] that prevent "competing music service" from working as OP suggests:

> Apple may have been slightly coy about this API (extensive documentation was > not available at all during the iOS 12 beta)... There are caveats in the > API, which may also be a turn-off for the likes of Google and Spotify: media > shortcuts don't enable full-blown integrations with third-party audio > streaming services. You can only ask Siri to play items you have previously > assigned a custom phrase; this suggests that most users will only record a > handful of phrases for entire playlists, charts, or artist pages. The > ability to ask Siri to search and play any song or podcast episode is still > exclusive to Apple Music and Podcasts.

[1] [https://www.macstories.net/stories/ios-12-the-macstories- rev...](https://www.macstories.net/stories/ios-12-the-macstories-review/7/)

<comment><USER29> Exactly, thank you. Apple is absolutely prioritizing short-term profits and their own ambitions before customers' feature requests in this area. Spotify, and every other music service, would've had integrations ready to go well before the iOS 12 launch if that was all it took for them to be given first- class music player status on iPhone.

<comment><USER32> Spotify has been given a number of APIs that lets them act similar to a first- party app in iOS 12. As far as I'm aware, they haven't really used them yet.

<comment><USER29> So you're saying every third-party music app has the ability to be run with "Hey Siri, play [song] on [spotify/tidal/etc]?" and Spotify is blatantly lying? Because on their support forum they straight up say this can't be done.

<comment><USER32> That _particular_ example isn't possible (so they're technically right): Shortcuts can only detect constant phrases. But there's a easy way around this: split it into two parts, the first one detecting "Spotify play a song", asks "which one", then listens for the song name and plays that. A bit more cumbersome, but still fits the fixed-text restriction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Useless app. They rebranded it recently. It is not deeply rooted with iOs. I gave up a while ago.

Side not: This title is helluva misleading. I thought it is a list of shortcuts for OSX.

<comment><USER34> Assuming I understand what you mean by "deeply rooted with iOS," then that is in fact a crucial difference between the new Shortcuts and the Workflow app that it replaced. Shortcuts triggered from Control Center or the share sheet run the way Automator actions on the Mac do; there's no more of this "switch to Workflow, switch to an app Workflow is calling, switch back to Workflow" stuff.

I don't think the title "Shortcuts User Guide" was particularly misleading; the name of the app is Shortcuts. If it were a list of keyboard shortcuts for macOS, it would probably have a name like, I don't know, "macOS Keyboard Shortcuts."

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> One of the nice and quite innovative features of IOS 12 update, however I can't feel good about this update because it has completely ruined Apple News. Apple News used to be a very nice slick news browser - I used it a lot, until some retard UI designer, decided to steal 1/3 of my precious screen estate - why?? for a horrible ugly useless navigation bar, with no way of collapsing it in landscape mode - I NEVER use Portrait mode on iPad.

<comment><USER32> The navigation bar hides for me once I scroll.</comment></comment>