Cheaters never win. : reddit blog - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/elqgs/cheaters_never_win/ <comment><USER2> Interesting take on the other side of the story from the linked article, and a response by someone at RasiFranks:

[http://blogs.forbes.com/elizabethwoyke/2010/11/10/240-to- pla...](http://blogs.forbes.com/elizabethwoyke/2010/11/10/240-to-place-story- on-digg-front-page-one-marketing-firms-pitch/)

[http://blogs.forbes.com/elizabethwoyke/2010/11/11/digg- manip...](http://blogs.forbes.com/elizabethwoyke/2010/11/11/digg-manipulator- rasifranks-responds/)</comment>


Facebook lied: its' in-home "Portal" cameras will collect your data - <AUTHOR> https://boingboing.net/2018/10/17/releasing-on-time.html <comment><USER2> "Collecting data" isn't really avoidable though, or is it? it has to store and display your call history. The beef I have is "We may use this information to inform the ads we show you across our platforms"

</comment><comment><USER3> Except for very specific niches of people who care about their privacy. Most people I have interacted with, don't care about this at all. I think that the real problem is how to make people more aware of the importance of their privacy. They only care about the usability and utility of the solution they're using. Which is unfortunate. But until they're more aware, nothing is stopping Facebook from doing this and lying to their teeth about it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Obviously! They make money running ads, that shouldn't be a secret anymore at this point. So of course they will collect information to inform them.

If you don't want that, then you and the other 3B internet users need to start paying for the services you use

</comment><comment><USER5> Really? Who would have thought!

</comment><comment><USER6> Discussed yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18231963](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18231963).

</comment><comment><USER7> TL;DR: The Portal gadgets are built upon Messenger infrastructure and therefore collect the same kind of metadata which presumably ends up in the same big pot of information to be mined. That really doesn't sound unreasonable to me and is actually kind of what any reasonable tech-savvy person would likely expect (it certainly matches my preconceived notions on the issue).

</comment><comment><USER8> We've been duped. It's a dupe! _rimshot_

</comment><comment><USER9> Is the Pope Catholic?

<comment><USER10> Depends on which Pope you're referring to. The Bishop of Rome is Catholic, the Orthodox Popes aren't: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_(disambiguation)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_\(disambiguation\))</comment></comment>


What System Do You Use to Manage Your Life? - <AUTHOR> http://www.thinkingserious.com/2007/10/22/what-system-do-you-use-to-manage-your-life/ Specifically, I am posing this question to tech entrepreneurs who have one or more early stage companies to manage and demanding personal responsibilities. Following is a description of the current system I am using. <comment><USER2> good lord that process is so complicated.

i use gcal and rainlendar's todo list.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would love to use such a simple system, and the system you describe would probably work if I were just working alone and were single.

How many are on your team and how many projects do you typically have in the pipeline?

How do you use rainlender in the context of running a startup?

How do you collaborate and manage?

<comment><USER2> you know what is hilarious is after reading your article i looked into a few of the apps you discussed.

we're now incorporating basecamp into our project management, what a powerful app.

:)</comment></comment></comment>


Calculating Color Contrast for Legible Text - <AUTHOR> http://particletree.com/notebook/calculating-color-contrast-for-legible-text/

<comment><USER2> Sweet! They developed this and used it in Wufoo. I love it when research/lab work is immediately useful for live systems.

A while ago, I wrote a little library to give a new random palette of colors using the ColorMatch.dk <http://colormatch.dk/> algorithm - 7 color random palette: <http://chir.ag/tech/download/7-color-random-palette/> (php). I used it a while for my tech blog and it worked pretty well. There is some code in there to make sure the foreground/background contrast is handled well, though I don't think it's as optimal as in the linked article. Still, could be interesting for others who like colors.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is also a good resource: <http://colorfilter.wickline.org/>

Lets you see what your site looks like with various forms of color-blindness.

</comment><comment><USER4> Where were you a while ago? I had a long discussion on wikipedia trying to find a formula, but was unsuccessful: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archiv...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Mathematics/2008_January_22#Inverse_color)

And BTW, just black or white is not enough. There are some colors that are hard to read with either black or white. See the the wiki archive for some examples.</comment>


My Master Plan to Destroy the Internet as we know it - <AUTHOR> http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2010/09/my-master-plan.php

<comment><USER2> Yes, we pay by tolerating ads and nosy engagement ploys, but we receive in exchange, _curation_ of the raw news. On places like HN, we can participate in that curation process, which, if the community is a good match for our interests, can do a far better job than the mass media. How is the Magic Brick going to replace that?

<comment><AUTHOR> The current curation model is client-server. Magic Brick is taking that P2P. This wasn't mentioned in the article. Sorry about that.

One of the realizations of the brick project was that there are only 4 ways you respond to material: I like it, I don't like it, Reply, and Save-for- later. This is indicated by the buttons on the right.

As each button is pressed, the system categorizes the material and your response, sharing and aggregating those responses among thousands of users.

<comment><USER3> Save-for-later is a statement that what I'm reading doesn't benefit me, but I predict it will benefit future-me more than a random article will benefit future-me.

If the magic brick works well and I can find articles which benefit me well, then I wont need save-for-later.

If I hit reply then suddenly I'll need a keyboard full of buttons which don't seem present.

And what goals does Magic Brick help the user achieve? I lament on HN and Reddit the lack of distinction between "i like/dislike it" and "it's a good/bad contribution". The reason I care is because I want to follow interesting debates and encourage a place where they happen instead of "you're wrong" rebuttals. Magic Brick means there is no place and I can't go somewhere good or avoid somewhere bad, whatever my definitions of good and bad are. If I can't choose where to go, I can't subscribe to sites that are good either, to give them deliberate revenue.

It's a lot like an iPad if it only had apps and no web browser.

<comment><AUTHOR> Save-for-later is used when the material is too involved for a simple reply, such as if your boss wants your analysis of a report he sent over. Some small percentage of communication involves this type of work, but not much. You'd probably go to a regular browser for this work.

To reply you just hit the reply button and speak. The system will try to do voice-to-text recognition and then it will send out both the initial message and your voice reply to an overseas service that would QA the voice-to-speech conversion. This allows you to train your system without having to do all of that stupid setup work. It also eliminates a keyboard. It's 2010 already. We might not have voice-to-speech worked out, but it's not like we can't just talk and have the system work it out, either. This also provides seamless integration with cellphone devices by use of voicemail.

"Going somewhere good" and "sites" are concepts that are only about 20 years old. You want material that interests you, wherever the source. The internet doesn't have to be some huge virtual city, with the browser taking the place of the tour bus, where you drive from site to site participating or observing. The model doesn't have to work that way, and it's fundamentally broken if only from an efficiency standpoint.

The system can keep track of all the sites you might like, your responses, and even aggregate you in groups with other like-minded folks. You don't go to a site, the material comes to you. Which is as it should be. The brick would handle whatever subscriptions were required behind the scenes, allocating traffic to and from perhaps millions of sites based on your preferences over time.

Look at it this way. Let's say you participate in 3 aggregation sites. Each site has article X. For each site to function correctly for you, you'd really have to consistently upvote or downvote article X on each site. In a P2P system all of that nonsense goes away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My friend's car is an automatic. He likes it because it takes away from him something he doesn't care about (control) and saves him something he thinks of as hassle (changing gears). But me, I hate automatics because they take something I value away from me (control) and saves me something I don't think of as a hassle (changing gears).

Please don't destroy the internet for everyone - some of us like the control we have in choosing our sources, and are not particularly bothered by the hassle of having to choose which bookmark to use to do so. Much as I can see the value a magic button would have to a lot of people, it would be a torture to me.

</comment><comment><USER5> "It's a magic box. A box where you push a simple button to get a category of information you are interested in..."

Actually, there would be no box and what you want would just be there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome observation.

Neural interface would be the end result, of course. The project can also be restated as "what is the minimum amount of stimulus needed in the brain for it to do most executive functions"

Neural interfaces are still a ways off, though.

I really don't want Facebook running in my brain in 20 years time. And as much as I love you guys, I really don't want HN running up there either.

UPDATE: Now that I think about it, no, we are both wrong. Information should not just appear in my brain waiting to be processed. At least not in any fashion I can conceive right now. A physical abstract, such as a tablet, is probably a handy way of addressing technology and separating the inner from the outer world. At least for the next few decades, I think. An external device would be a critical part of this. Sort of training wheels for the mind. I'm not sure our sensory-processing capabilities are up to snuff with receiving something like a real-time news feed, at least not without massive filtering and pre and post processing. There's just too much noise, as I point out in the article.

The key issue here is whether technology use is a passive or active activity. If it were a passive activity, like watching a movie, yes, things could just "play" in my mind. Whatever I wanted would just be there. But if it an active activity, which I think it is, then technology's role is to distill things down and prioritize things into chunks my mind can work with.

I think sometimes we use the wrong metaphors.

We'll get there, however.

<comment><USER5> "Now that I think about it, no, we are both wrong. Information should not just appear in my brain waiting to be processed."

Taking it one step further, something like "Skynet" will realize that humans have inefficient brains compared to whatever technology it is using, and attempt to eliminate us, completely resolving the issue. However, then it will realize it was destroying information that it should keep, so it will then morph into something like the "Borg" to start collecting info, until it realizes that is too "high-touch" and interferes with the processes it is trying to study, at which point it will just watch us from a distance and only interfere when needed or when we fail.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're spot on in that we're in a system that is seeking equilibrium.

Both extremes are really bad, so let's work on things that determine where the line between being a caveman and being a Borg is. It's fine if people want to set their own boundaries, but we shouldn't let the system itself determine where they are. Nor should we let societal pressure. Nor should we let commercial businesses hacking the limbic system just so they can make a buck.

One could make the case that biological entities aren't really very interesting or significant in the universe, that until you find the balance and evolve into some kind of symbiotic being you're really just so much carbon-based noise. Don't know if I'd go that far, but it's a fascinating thought.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: Can you control the lizard-spit function? - <AUTHOR>

Underneath your tongue there's a gland (I think) that will occasionally fire a reptile-like spray of saliva. It's happened to most people I've talked to.<p>Does any of you know what this strange anatomical feature is actually called and/or how to fire it at will? <comment><USER2> This seems totally off topic for YC.

But, strangely enough, a handful of friends and I discovered this anatomical feature when we were kids...maybe seven or eight years old...and developed it to a pretty predictable art form. We called it "skeet". Which, in modern/adult terminology means something altogether different (though also involving bodily fluids). I haven't done it, or tried it, in over 20 years. So the ability seems to be completely atrophied, but I remember what it felt like now that I'm thinking about it. I reckon I could make it happen again with a bit of practice.

And, so I don't actually know _how_ to tell you to do it at will, but I know it can be done, because I've done it, and seen a few other kids do it. Some were better than others (much longer range, and dramatically better accuracy), but I don't know if that was a factor of more practice or if some people are built significantly different.

Anyway, if a bunch of seven or eight year olds can figure out how to do it without guidance, I'm sure a grownup with a hackers mindset can handle it.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleeking>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! That's exactly what I was looking for.</comment></comment>


Python Challenge - <AUTHOR> http://www.pythonchallenge.com/

<comment><USER2> Are there similar "challenges" in the closed source world? Say, C#? And are there similar, say, Scheme or Haskell challenges?</comment>


Peter Thiel heads to campus - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/11/us-stanford-thiel-idUSBRE82A0EO20120311

<comment><USER2> I notice the writer doesn't actually quote any specific things Peter has said that would make this a hypocritical move.

<comment><USER3> The writer certainly doesn't quote Thiel's actual views:

"The elitist view in the U.S. is that even if people concede that college is not for education, the caveat will be that, well, surely it's for all the smart people. What we want to suggest is that _there are some very smart and very talented people who don't need college._ "

[http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/257531/back-future- pe...](http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/257531/back-future-peter-thiel- interview?pg=5)

"...are there 20 of those 60,000 who should perhaps not go to college--that does not seem like a terribly controversial statement. _That the more talented you are, the more narrow the set of choices you should make?_ And that if you're a really smart person, the only thing in the world you can do is to go to Harvard?"

[http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20114584-281/talking- tech-...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20114584-281/talking-tech-with- peter-thiel-investor-and-philanthropist-q-a/)

<comment><USER4> > are there 20 of those 60,000 who should perhaps not go to college

And he presumes he and his staff are uniquely qualified in identifying those 20 out of 60,000?

<comment><USER5> He isn't saying "There exist exactly 20 people out of 60k who should not go to college and I have oracular ability for identifying them." He is saying "It is arrogant to assume that, out of 60,000 people attending college, it is impossible to find so many as 20 of them who would be better served by another alternative." Presumably, he thinks the actual numbers is substantially higher than 20, but he doesn't have to get locked in to the extremist position of saying "60,000 of 60,000 people should not go to college" to believe that. It could plausibly be that 99% of people are served perfectly adequately by college and identifying only 20 of the remaining 600 isn't really rocket science compared to the _actual rocket science_ that other Paypal alums are doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I haven't followed _everything_ he has said about college education, but I do believe he doesn't hate universities so much as their current value proposition.

The amount of debt students have to take on now to get a degree, in contrast to what a motivated person can learn and do on their own now with alternative educational sources and a cheap computer, means that most of that debt is paying for just the credential, whose value is being increasingly undermined while its cost continues increasing.

So he believes student loan debt is the next big financial bubble due to collapse, given that there is more of it than credit card debt [1], and that it's being loaned for any major regardless of its expected ROI, among other things.

1\. [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/college- inc/post/student...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/college- inc/post/student-loans-surpass-auto-credit-card- debt/2012/03/06/gIQARFQnuR_blog.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> A few things:

\- Thiel really hates that college puts undergraduates in serious debt. Stanford doesn't -- take a look at its financial aid.

\- When someone decides to drop out to pursue a startup or stay in school, it's often not just about the "value" they think education has. Travis Kiefer is the entrepreneur's entrepreneur: he can survive on the adrenaline of his company until it succeeds. He lives for this. I considered senior year with my best friends a once in a lifetime opportunity and didn't drop out. I live for this.

\- This startup class shouldn't surprise anyone from Stanford's perspective. It has encouraged entrepreneurship forever -- there will even be an entrepreneurship themed dorm next year -- and Thiel is as good as any to teach it.

\- Zuckerberg routinely appears as a guest lecturer in CS106A, the introductory CS class.

\- As an aside, Stanford can sell out a football game, and the stuff about Khosla's daughters is way exaggerated (I was quoted).

</comment><comment><USER8>
      "Would Noam Chomsky object to his works being sold at Barnes & Noble?
      No, because that's where people buy their books."
      - Tom Morello

Seems like Thiel is finally willing to work within the system to bring about change, rather than quixotically working outside of it.

</comment><comment><USER9> He doesn't hate college, he just wants us to think more deeply about whether we should go to college. It's gotten more pricey over the years, yet enrollment has increased. College has become the default option for anyone who has the intellectual or financial ability and he questions whether that is good

</comment><comment><USER10> Maybe he will convince a few Stanford students to focus on their startup before the end of their graduation and drop out! What is for sure is the more you spend money on your education (with college, an MBA, etc...), the higher the opportunity cost of starting a Company (vs. getting a well paid job). When you drop out, you have nothing to lose, and so you are "all in", which allows you to take bigger risks.

<comment><USER11> _the higher the opportunity cost of starting a Company (vs. getting a well paid job)_

I know that my education, and work experience will payout huge when I start a company. The emotional and intellectual development learned in school and working for companies afterwards will be an amazing asset and would be for anyone.

 _When you drop out, you have nothing to lose, and so you are "all in", which allows you to take bigger risks._

Using the poker example, when you have nothing to loose you are effectively playing "on tilt". When I was broke (limited commissions coming in), and I didn't know what to do I started a wedding photography business. I made a profit, but I wasn't making real money and there was no real big opportunity. The next thing I work on will be massive in ambition since the opportunity cost would be leaving my insanely awesome job.

Having nothing makes most people focus on survival, having some income and confidence that there is another job out there if it doesn't work has to help people more than it hurts them.

And, as you read this, you are probably thinking about your friends working at big companies that would never leave to start a company. I would argue that the vast majority of people are not entrepreneurs and not going to school wouldn't change that. They would just have a worse job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm a little confused as to why this is offered as "Computer Science 183". Is "Computer Science" used as a heading for anything computer-related at Stanford, or is this an exception?

<comment><USER13> Classes at Stanford are offered by a particular department. They also have a course number and a title. They can be described as "DEPT ### - Title". In this case, it will be "CS 183: Startup".

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A lot of misinformation in this article regarding Peter Thiel's position on higher education in America, but the posters here have addressed that. What I find surprising is that this course, at least from what I read, will not be available online. I know that an online option would require a greater effort on his part, and that he would also have to be a little less personal/direct in his lectures to make it work, but if Peter Thiel believes that self- learners using online educational resources are the future, he should do his part to contribute to that future by doing something like this (a class on startups) in the future for a virtual classroom, perhaps through Udacity.

</comment><comment><USER15> He doesn't like universities because he thinks they're too costly and not good at preparing students for the real world. He now intends to teach a class that prepares students for the real world and will not increase the marginal cost of their tuition. There doesn't seem to be a contradiction.</comment>


What to Bring to the Gun Fight - <AUTHOR> https://crooked.com/article/bring-gun-fight/ <comment><USER2> >The Second Amendment is in many ways an anachronism, framed before the age of drones and cruise missiles, when a well-armed civilian militia have actually been capable of turning back a foreign invasion. Times change. This is not Red Dawn. You are not Patrick Swayze. Chill out.

Mmm, yes. Rifles are obsolete, as proven in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, where the US invaded and swiftly crushed all opposition, won a lasting victory, and installed liberal democracies which persist to this day.

<comment><AUTHOR> Weird, I think you might have misspelled "IED," there.

<comment><USER2> [https://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/why-do-bullets- ki...](https://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/why-do-bullets-kill-more- soldiers-in-iraq/)</comment></comment></comment>


Call to Action: Tell Patent Office Not to Reopen the Software Patent Floodgates - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/02/call-action-tell-patent-office-not-reopen-software-patent-floodgates <comment><USER2> Save _Alice_ . Why does the PTO feel the need revive the broken world of abstract software patents?</comment>


Apple Reports First Quarter Results - <AUTHOR> https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2018/02/apple-reports-first-quarter-results/ <comment><USER2> > We're thrilled to report the biggest quarter in Apple's history, with broad- > based growth that included the highest revenue ever from a new iPhone > lineup. iPhone X surpassed our expectations and has been our top-selling > iPhone every week since it shipped in November

This is interesting, as the majority of the publicity I've seen about the iPhone X has painted it as lackluster.

> The Company posted quarterly revenue of $88.3 billion, an increase of 13 > percent from the year-ago quarter and an all-time record, and quarterly > earnings per diluted share of $3.89, up 16 percent, also an all-time record.

As much as I see people deride the touchbar or the iPhone X notch, it seems consumers are at least willing to take a chance and try out something new.

<comment><USER3> We see this over and over - People guess how many iPhones Apple is selling, and predict a big problem. ([https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2016/10/03/iphone-7-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2016/10/03/iphone-7-sales- first-two-weeks/#114ba6362342))

Later, Apple releases numbers which suggest that it's selling great ([https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-iphone-7-tim-cook-first- quar...](https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-iphone-7-tim-cook-first-quarter- sales/))

I think maybe it's time to stop listening to "analysis" on their sales until there are real numbers.

<comment><USER4> There are people who successfully predict how many e.g. iPhones are being sold. But they're not publishing this information, because it's very valuable. They're mostly selling it to hedge funds and market research firms (or they work internally at those companies).

In other words: when you see someone publish a "forecast" that a particular company's product isn't doing well, the analysis is usually flawed. If it weren't flawed, the market price of the analysis probably wouldn't be "free."

I'm speaking from experience - I know a quantitative researcher who successfully forecasted Apple's iPhone sales to a fraction of a percent a few years ago (very clever method!), and I've personally done this with Tesla model sales/production.

<comment><USER5> Makes sense! I would love to hear more about that method (if it's something you can talk about)

<comment><USER6> Couldn't you use the German tank problem to solve these?

For Tesla auto sales couldn't you just look at tesla vin numbers?

For iPhones, sample mac address's?

<comment><USER4> _> For Tesla auto sales couldn't you just look at tesla vin numbers?_

You've definitely intuited some of the method, yes :). The rest of it entails:

1) how to get all VINs both authoritatively and legally,

2) how to distinguish between valid VINs and assigned VINs,

3) how to reverse the actual revenue projection from the set of all assigned VINs.

The first requirement is the hardest. Tracking self-reported VIN delivery from users isn't rigorous enough. You could use an endpoint and scrape from it, but how would you do it legally and reliably?

The second requirement is also difficult. Assuming you've found an authoritative source for valid VINs, how do you distinguish which VINs are assigned?

Once you have those two, the third requirement is mostly straightforward. You can implement your own VIN decoder using public NHTSA documentation, map each VIN field to options and prices across models, and track sequential VINs using the distinguishing method of requirement 2 on the data you're getting from requirement 1.

Naturally, there are other ways to do this that don't involve VINs at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is an emerging pattern of analysts pushing out negative outlook on Apple's performance shortly before they announce earnings. This quarter it was the whole Apple X production cut thing.

Why do I feel this is actually some sort of gaming of the system which ought to be investigated by authorities? Clearly, there are players are constantly doing this to drive share price down, buy the stock and wait for it to bounce back up again after earnings.

<comment><USER8> You can only fool people so many times though, before they start catching on (as you have). No edge lasts forever in financial markets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > We've also achieved a significant milestone with our active installed base > of devices reaching 1.3 billion in January. That's an increase of 30 percent > in just two years, which is a testament to the popularity of our products > and the loyalty and satisfaction of our customers.

My personal example of my contribution to the raise of the installed base was: I've used the Christmas sales to buy a new iPhone for me and a new iPhone and new iPad for my parents. I've considered buying cheaper Android devices for the parents, but the ease of use of iOS and the better security compared to Android still won.

But, dear Apple, dear anybody from the company who maybe reads this: please don't let your current management levels dilute the old clear vision, the "ease of use" goal. My parents are especially annoyed, for example, by not being able to permanently disable the additional "Apps" buttons in the Message app that get in the way. Ditto for not being able to have the former "simple mode" of Notes. (And I'm personally annoyed by "a" looking too much as "o" in the Notes). It's hard to keep the focus that Jobs was able to reach, but please understand that that legacy is still something that motivates at least these older users that I know.

And one more detail: the iPhones I've bought are with the earphones jack, still! I'm not sure I will want these without it. Keep that feature somehow or this may be the drop that moves the writer of these words to the actions of the guy from the Samsung's "Growing Up" ad.

<comment><USER10> Hate how they've complicated notes and messages and am not elderly!

<comment><USER11> I totally disagree with you on the Notes app. It's not complicated at all, and it's much more useful than it was prior to the redesign. I'm still not sold on Messages "apps", but I do use the "Digital Touch" feature when texting my wife and kids.

<comment><USER10> I use it while grocery shopping and such. Now half the time it wants to know if I want to edit a note locally or in iCloud or folders. Never have saved there so total waste of time. Don't need fonts or brushes or any of that either. Notes MFs!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> They sold 77.316 million iPhones for $61.576 billion. If I do the calculation right, that's an average revenue per iPhone of $796.

That seems extremely high to me. Also, iPads bring in _less_ revenue per unit sold (13.170 million sold for $5.862 billion of revenue, or $445 per iPad)

What do they count in iPhone revenue? "deferrals and amortization of related software upgrade rights and non-software services." according to [https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/Q1_FY18_Data_Summary.pdf](https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/Q1_FY18_Data_Summary.pdf), but what are those, and why would they be different for iPhones vs iPads?

<comment><USER13> An iPhone X is almost twice the cost of a Samsung S8. Is it really twice the phone? Is the FaceID hardware really that expensive?

<comment><USER14> 1.6x is not "almost twice" and that's comparing the larger storage X to the base S8.

<comment><USER13> Samsung S8 64GB - 499 GBP -> [https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B06XYMCMHD](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B06XYMCMHD)

iPhone X 64GB - 897 GBP -> [https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B076GQZRR9](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B076GQZRR9) (there is one seller for 800 GBP, but it has 0% positive ratings and looks like a scam)

1.8x for the same size

<comment><USER15> It's not really a like for like comparison. The S8 has been out for a while and has had its price cut down as a result. You always get better value for money if you stay slightly behind the curve and don't buy the fanciest, newest thing going.

The iPhone X price is still ridiculous, don't get me wrong, but Samsung phones are pretty damned expensive on launch, too.

<comment><USER16> Also, the S8 is the smallest (even though it's got the same size screen as the iPhone X) and cheapest of the 8-series flagships from Samsung (the other two being the S8+ and Note 8).

The Note 8 launch price was pretty close to the iPhone X.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I still get caught on the UI/UX of my iphone X. FaceID is great but the whole swiping up from the bottom etc., is still hard on my muscle memory. Also, not a lot of apps gracefully deal with with being in wide mode. It's super annoying, and this cycle I am more and more willing to go to a Pixel phone than ever before. I won't, but I am not absolutely certain I won't jump ship the next round.

I guess what I am getting at is how long can they keep milking mobile? iPhones and iPads... are meh now. Now what?

<comment><USER18> I feel like the strategy forward for AAPL is to move to acquire a big name.

I hear a few retail investors talking about apple acquiring Netflix. I believe that this is an acquisition that makes sense, and that it would complement nicely their other content distribution revenue streams.

<comment><USER17> Yeah buying Netflix over Tesla* makes more sense. (I know you didn't mention Tesla but Apple has car ambitions it seems.) Netflix has a lot of debt but the chops to make really good content. No brainier there I think. They should have bought Waze, too. And Here maps to make their maps a ton better.

And they should invest more into making their macbooks better imo, but they keep selling more and more year over year so they likely won't.

I wish they would buy a smaller telco like sprint or tmobile, hell buy both, invest 100B into getting the cell coverage up and then move then incentivise people to move to the Apple telco plan.

* Telsa's cash burn would likely scare investors.

/end arm chair CEO'ing

<comment><USER19> I don't think they could buy a cell phone company. As much as Apple likes vertical integration that would immediately piss off all the other cell phone companies and they have a much harder time selling things. And that's assuming that the Justice Department would even let them.

Netflix makes plenty of sense, I'd be happy with that.

I doubt they'd ever by Tesla, but if anyone could sort out the production issues they were having I imagine Tim Cook and his team would be quite good at it.

<comment><USER20> Apple has already pissed off every telco there is by refusing to let them put their branding on the iPhone.

Don't pretend these people are playing nice. Telcos hate Apple, and Apple doesn't care. You either get to sell the iPhone or you don't.

And the DOJ doesn't give a rat's ass about any company with ~20% of the market.

Unless it's e-books and Apple involved. In which case they do.

<comment><USER19> Apple does not have friends in the government thanks to the whole thing a year or two ago about unlocking an iPhone.

The DOJ's current thoughts on antitrust seem to be "anything that might lower prices is good". Apple certainly didn't have a big chunk of the e-book market but it still got in trouble anyway.

The phone companies HAVE to put up with Apple because the phones sell too well. They tried hardball years ago and it didn't work. Then they tried promoting competitors and it didn't work. I think android being big was a foregone conclusion, but the promotion of things like the Droid didn't push Apple to a marginal player like they wanted.

Frankly I think the current administration would be happy to put up a fight against Apple just put up a fight against Apple. I don't think they should be allowed to become a phone company anyway, although I'm sure that wouldn't be the real reason for the suit.

Realistically I think the shareholders would slaughter them due to the risk that the cash cow that is the iPhone would be injured in any way.

<comment><USER20> I'm not sure how anything you've said disagrees with anything I've said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Do we know the split between iPhone X and iPhone 8? It was a risky strategy to launch both but it looks like they made a good transition. Next year, they will take the notch out, increase the size and sell it as an upgrade.

<comment><USER19> Apple never gives that kind of information away. All we know is that since it's launch Apple said that they sold more iPhone X's per week then they sold iPhone 8s or 8+s (not combined).

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think this time, really, Apple is doomed. Trust me. This is the end.

<comment><USER23> Beleaguered.

<comment><USER24> That word is a blast from the past. I can see by your username that you also remember those days :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> At these rates, Apple crosses a billion dollar annual revenue in 9 years:

        ln(1000/(4*88.3))/ln(1.13) = 8.51531

<comment><USER26> Two corrections: (1) I think you meant trillion, (2) you don't get 4 holiday quarters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Another year, more record profits, maybe they can finally pay the fucking tax they owe.

<comment> inspector-g When has Apple not paid tax(es) they're legally obligated to have paid? Genuinely asking for sources for this claim.

<comment><USER27> Literally whenever they pull the "here's a shell company we made (and own) and we totally owe them all this money for developing this product. Oh no we didn't make a profit, guess we don't have to pay any tax."

Let's all just ignore the fact that the entire strategy is them saying they owe themselves all this money and for some reason we all just _go along with this_.

They're obviously not the only company that does this, most, if not all multinationals are guilty of this and people like to brush it off as "oh but it's not illegal", as if somehow the fact that they've managed to get a legal method of tax avoidance somehow makes it all better.

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/23/apple-paid- no-...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/23/apple-paid-no-tax-in- new-zealand-for-at-least-a-decade-reports-say)

[https://www.theguardian.com/australia- news/2017/dec/07/austr...](https://www.theguardian.com/australia- news/2017/dec/07/australian-tax-office-says-36-of-big-firms-and- multinationals-paid-no-tax)

[https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/25/eu-to- probe...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/25/eu-to-probe-uks- anti-tax-avoidance-schemes-for-multinationals)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Apple guidance says their tax rate next year will be 15%. I thought the US rate was 20%. Is apple still planning to park their cash overseas?

<comment><USER29> They are making one of the biggest tax payments in history ($38 billion). Let's stop with the Apple being a tax dodger outrage.

<comment><USER30> Darn. Us working class tax paying Americans sure will miss paying taxes for them! Glad they have had a change of heart. Perhaps I can sit idle and not pay taxes for a few years while they keep the country running for me.

<comment><USER31> Apple _employees_ pay taxes just as you and I do. The idea that it makes sense to tax the company separately is what should be under scrutiny.

<comment><USER30> Companies are persons (legally). Persons pay taxes (legally). Seems pretty reasonable in my book, all the complex legalize aside.

<comment><USER31> Then we had better prepare ourselves for them to assert _all_ rights of personhood.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> They added another $6.7 billion in long-term debt in the quarter, bringing the total up to $103.9 billion.

With the tax changes now taken care of, I'd like to see them begin reducing that immense pile of debt. You do it while times are good and you're pulling in $50b in net income, rather than getting caught in a very bad position later (which is overwhelmingly what most companies do).

In a very short amount of time, several of the leading tech companies have gone from being among the least indebted companies, to among the most indebted. Microsoft as another example, is carrying $76 billion in long-term debt, up from $27 billion in 2015. Their cash exceeds their debt, I consider that a very low bar to be setting though. Instead of bribing shareholders with buybacks (an indicator of lackluster growth opportunities in the business, when it comes to capital deployment opportunities), and artificially boosting EPS growth, that capital should all be going into paying down debt.

<comment><USER33> When you're a company like apple debt is not a problem, in fact you can even sometimes get paid to issue debt if you're very very profitable. This is nothing like your monthly credit card payment, it's more of an accounting convenience.

<comment><USER34> Can you explain what the benefit of this would be? While I disagree with the parent (if you're sitting on a mountain of cash, debt is not a problem), what _would_ the benefit be of having debt when you also have a mountain of cash?

Certainly made sense before when Apple had cash overseas that they couldn't touch, but what would the benefit of it be now?

<comment><USER35> There have been major tax advantages. The impact is lessened by the recent tax reform, but consider Apple has hundreds of billions of dollars in wholly-owned offshore subsidiaries. Up until recently, if they repatriated that cash, they had to pay 35% in taxes. Much better then for an Aa1-rated company like Apple to take out debt at a very low interest rate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Interestingly Apple spells out their overall revenue (88.3 billions) but not their profits (they only mention profits per share). This is obviously not a coincidence. I wonder why...

<comment><USER37> They don't spell it out where? It's in the consolidated financial statements linked from that page [https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/Q1_FY18_Consolidated_Fin...](https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/Q1_FY18_Consolidated_Financial_Statements.pdf) (under Net Income). There is nothing to wonder about.</comment></comment>


Jeff Bezos says this is how he plans to spend the bulk of his fortune - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/30/jeff-bezos-says-this-is-how-he-plans-to-spend-the-bulk-of-his-fortune.html <comment><USER2> I long for the days when someone who realized they were rich would say, "I'm going to spend 90% of my money on sex and drugs, and waste the rest."

<comment><USER3> He's got enough money to have sex and do drugs in space.

Anyways, I commend him for spending it on the commercial space race and not by spending it the way many ye ol' rich people did (donating to universities, etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> SYAC: "getting to space"</comment>


World's consumption of materials hits record 100bn tonnes a year - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/22/worlds-consumption-of-materials-hits-record-100bn-tonnes-a-year <comment><USER2> > The report's authors warn that treating the world's resources as limitless > is leading towards global disaster.

This is the same fallacy that lead people to fear "peak oil" every decade for the past 50 years. Nobody treats resources as if they're limitless. The reason we don't coat everything in gold is because it's rare (and thus expensive), leading to producers only using it when it's absolutely necessary. Wood is abundant (and therefore cheap), so it's used in everything from packing materials to building houses. If these conditions changed and wood for some reason became rare and expensive, it wouldn't be used in the same way we use it now. People would choose to build their houses out of a different material, and tree farmers would choose to plant more trees.

The idea that we're "running out" of resources doesn't make sense. Resources are and have always been scarce. When something becomes exceedingly rare, people choose to consume less of that resource.

<comment><USER3> > _This is the same fallacy that lead people to fear "peak oil" every decade > for the past 50 years_

It's not a fallacy that we treat resources as limitless, and neither is peak oil. This or that peak oil announcement might be premature, but oil is limited and not renewable, so peak oil is inevitable long term, period. Already we have started to resort to hacks like fracking and lower EROI oil to get by.

> _Nobody treats resources as if they're limitless._

Plenty do. We consume and build stuff like there's no tomorrow. That we will adjust prices and production when we hit hard limits doesn't mean that we already take those into account and shape our use accordingly (based on actual priorities).

And of course we have tons of local (not overall market) cases where resources are treated like limitless without going into peak oil and such. E.g. a river that a factory uses as a dumping ground until the waters are toxic and everything in it dies is exactly an example of a resource treated as limitless.

As long as X resource is cheap, we use it for whatever BS we make. When it gets rarer and pricier, sure, higher prices will regulate its use towards more serious stuff. But by then we'd already have lost huge, non recoverable, and often non recyclable either, quantities of it to BS uses.

> _If these conditions changed and wood for some reason became rare and > expensive, it wouldn't be used in the same way we use it now._

Which is a moot point, if by then we have exhausted say 80% of a resource for the previous frivolous uses, and we still need it for more serious uses going forward.

<comment><USER4> Taking things into account and shaping our policies accordingly means making a prediction about future supply. Predictions of impending supply exhaustion have historically had a very, very poor track record. Distrusting them is not a predictive failure, even if they are guaranteed to come true eventually, because timescale matters.

As for "we may find a better use down the road" \-- sure, but for the purposes of resource planning, that statement is completely useless. You have to pick a probability, time scale, and value for your position to have meaning from the perspective of resource planning, and not coincidentally those are the exact prerequisites for taking a market position on the subject.

There are many things markets do poorly, but cutting through the bullshit, forcing you to formulate a meaningful position, and rewarding/punishing you appropriately is something they do very well.

<comment><USER5> GP mentions that "a river that a factory uses as a dumping ground until the waters are toxic and everything in it dies is exactly an example of a resource treated as limitless." In your opinion, is the market properly functioning to correct these behaviors? Where is the market when all the world's trash are getting dumped in our rivers and oceans?

<comment><USER4> That's an untaxed externality, which is one of the many things that markets do not handle well. There are others.

Here's the difference: the river is not being treated as an _unlimited_ resource, it's being treated as a _free_ resource. Nobody genuinely thinks the river can dilute unlimited toxic waste, but someone does genuinely think they won't be held accountable for killing the fish. In contrast, nobody in the oil business could expect to "get away with" ignoring peak oil, because they could not expect their customers to buy products that they were unable to produce from oil that did not exist.

Markets do _not_ address global warming, but markets do address "peak oil," and the staggeringly bad suggestions that get passed off as wisdom every time people start talking about "peak oil" type problems remind me why we put up with markets in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > It shows that, on average, every person on Earth uses more than 13 tonnes of > materials per year

I'd like to see my ~1 ton of waste, per month, please.

Even as a wasteful American, this number is so staggering that I'd like to understand more about what all that waste is. Mining tailings? Coal ash?

Certainly, my trashcan that I bring to the curb every week only has a tiny amount of my waste footprint.

<comment><USER7> Wastewater, perhaps?

<comment><USER8> I wonder about that. Is excretion considered a form of waste?

My usage of water shouldn't exceed 400 kgs per month. That includes drinking, bathing, flushing, cleaning, cooking and washing hands (I even have a weird habit of doing that excessively). You can't get that much wasted water from that usage.

Actually, I noticed the word average just now. I am packing my bags.

<comment><USER9> _> You can't get that much wasted water from that usage._

You also need to factor in the wastewater to produce all of the other products you consume. That produce you bought at the store and rinsed yourself was also likely washed several times along the supply chain before it got to you. That one bottle of beer you drank? The bottle has been washed several times, inside and out, along with the vat the beer was brewed in, every single pipe and tool that was used to process or shunt it, etc.

<comment><USER8> If I did that with everything, not just water. It would be way more waste than 1 tonne.

What about frequently checking replies page out of FOMA?

What about the content I watch or read? The anime I watched last took lot to produce and there is no doubt, people wasted shit ton of paper along with other things are?

That is quite a lot of waste in terms of energy.

<comment><USER9> Those are different because that waste gets amortized across a large number of consumers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > "and nearly a quarter is discarded into the environment, such as plastic in > waterways and oceans."

That piece of the graph showing that 22 billion tons is discarded into the environment almost seems unbelievably high. There must be some caveat to that figure right?

<comment><USER11> What most graphs showing garbage being thrown into the environment won't show is who is doing the discarding.

China, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam dump more plastics into the ocean than all other countries combined. That's because these countries have large numbers of people in poverty or under economic or political stress, who typically are far more concerned with the immediate needs of survival than with hypothetical environmental concerns.

What makes it worse is that the garbage doesn't all come from those countries... a good part of it comes from industrialized western nations because those nations find it cheap to make their trash someone else's problem.

The reason this isn't discussed is that fixing the issue would require the wealthy western nations to intervene economically in those places to change the situation, something which would be resisted by the governments who find advantage in having a population that's not educated and remains under stress.

On top of that, climate change is happening.. those countries and people are going to be under more stress soon, not less... what will happen if, one day, those people have a choice between surviving another year by dumping toxins into the environment that will sterilize the oceans or dying?

<comment><USER12> > because these countries have large numbers of people in poverty…

Its probably going to be a surprise to you then to learn that Kigali, Rwanda is absolutely spotless. Somehow they manage to come together every month to clean the city and have banned plastic

I know it makes 'sense' that poor people don't care about the environment, but you really should include all the data in your hypothesis.

<comment><USER13> >> China, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam dump more plastics into the ocean than all other countries combined.

> Its probably going to be a surprise to you then to learn that Kigali, Rwanda > is absolutely spotless.

GP enumerated the countries they were talking about, they didn't imply all countries with poverty are to blame. It's well documented that those countries are the source of a large portion of ocean plastic and that US and other western countries ship their recycling and garbage to those countries.

<comment><USER12> So what's their plan when the plastic gets to them?

1\. refuse it (China did)

2\. process it (pyrolysis → diesel ?)

3\. clean it and resell it (clothing, furniture)

4\. do nothing, let it wash into their environment. Shame.

As I showed, the desperately poor folk of Rwanda managed to get their government to make a plan. Their is no reason why hundreds of millions of these less-poor folk can't do it.

I suggest we stop handing out free-passes for poor behaviour.

<comment><USER11> >Their is no reason why hundreds of millions of these less-poor folk can't do it.

Rwanda doesn't have the same problem with poverty and garbage as the countries I listed, and it's tiny compared to them. Specifically, the issue contributing to pollution here is that the countries in question have:

* Lots of people in poverty, and an upper class that are not

* Industries offshored from richer nations

* Significant amounts of trash being produced locally or taken in from other countries (usually via barge or sea traffic)

* Lax environmental enforcement that either doesn't restrict or is overwhelmed by the number of people polluting who are just trying to survive

It's not about having a plan... it's more about being able live another day. The problem isn't that they want to be poor, it's that their governments keep them that way and don't care about the environment or their welfare as long as their power is maintained.

The best option for a lot of the poor is picking through garbage from richer people, either from other countries or their own. There are so many people in the Philippines who literally eat food made from the remains of other people's meals they find in the garbage and re-use that it has a name - Pagpag. If you're poor enough to eat that way, disposing of other people's garbage in an environmentally sound way is pretty far down the priority list.

The best solution apart from common sense measures and laws controlling what waste can be exported and what has to happen to it is probably to buy plastic bottles from those poor people... they get money and live better, we get plastic sorted into types for recycling processes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> That's 28000lbs (14000kg) for every human on Earth. Mind-boggling. The technosphere (aka Anthroposhere) is estimated at 30 _trillion tons_.

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

<comment><USER15> This is impressive, but just one meter of dirt covering the surface of the earth is about 1.2 million trillion tons. 30 trillion tons would create a layer about 0.03mm thick. Invisible in a geologic sense.

<comment><USER14> My calculations don't match yours.

Here [http://www.bluebulbprojects.com/MeasureOfThings/results.php?...](http://www.bluebulbprojects.com/MeasureOfThings/results.php?p=1&comp=area&unit=m2&amt=148940000000000&sort=pr)

That says there are 148 trillion square meters of land area on earth. So the technosphere (at 30 trillion tons) is about 1/5ton per square meter, or about 200 kg. If you use the all of the Earth's surface, it's 510 trillion square meters, so about 1/17th of a ton per square meter, or about 58 kg per square meter.

<comment><USER16> Assuming the dirt weighs about 2 tons per cubic meter, this corresponds to 58 kg/m^2 / 2000 kg/m^3 =~ 0.03 m, so it seems like the gp just used the incorrect unit.

<comment><USER15> You are correct. I had 1000000000 as a trillion. Scientific notation is a much better way to calculate things. At 30mm that is a big enough layer that a geologist could see it in the rock record, if it looked different enough.

<comment><USER17> I believe that we've spewed enough radiation that no visual distinction would necessary for detection, at least for the next several tens of thousands of years.

<comment><USER14> It's true that atmospheric nuclear testing has produced trace elements that were basically never on Earth before 1945, like Strontium-90 [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strontium-90](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strontium-90)]. Strontium-90 has a half life of about 29 years, so it will be detectable for a few thousand years or so. Some others last longer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> 100 billion tons/7 billion people = 14 tons for every person.

<comment><USER19> That's the average, for people in the West this is bound to be significantly higher ... yikes

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> But I thought that the US was experiencing dematerialization in that weight of inputs was decreasing in absolute terms despite economic and population growth. Is this not the case or is it that the US's decrease is overcome by increases elsewhere globally?

[https://reason.com/2001/09/05/dematerializing-the- economy/](https://reason.com/2001/09/05/dematerializing-the-economy/)

</comment><comment><USER21> This is what I think is wrong about the current economic system. We consume to much and recycle to little.

</comment><comment><USER22> Luckily there is an automatic system for accurately distributing resources based on scarcity, and it has worked for millennia: markets and prices.</comment>