Cards Against Humanity's Private Island - <AUTHOR> http://cah.tumblr.com/post/110099027175/cards-against-humanitys-private-island-by-jenn <comment><USER2> Reminds me of the Klondike Big Inch promotion Quaker Oats ran in the 1950s:

[http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1987-07-07/features/87021...](http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1987-07-07/features/8702190736_1_quaker- oats-yukon-territory-cereals)

Here's what happened:

> Ronald Bottrell, my source at Quaker Oats, said that in the early 1960s, all > the land reverted to Canadian-government ownership. The reason: nonpayment > of taxes.

> ``The individuals who had received the deeds in the cereal boxes had become > the owners of the land,`` Bottrell said. ``Obviously, none of them ever paid > taxes on it. So the ownership of the land went back to Canada. The promotion > was long over, anyway.``

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klondike_Big_Inch_Land_Promotio...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klondike_Big_Inch_Land_Promotion)

More:

> Although the deeds were a campaign promotion, many people took ownership of > the land seriously. One man wrote Quaker Oats to announce that he had > collected 10,800 deeds and was now the owner of 75 square feet of land. > Another man, accused of murdering his wife, used his deeds to secure the > services of a defense lawyer. The lawyer asked to be excused from the case > when he learned the land consisted of 1,000 inches.

[http://articles.dailypress.com/2000-04-04/features/000403013...](http://articles.dailypress.com/2000-04-04/features/0004030133_1_quaker- oats-deeds-yukon-territory)

[http://articles.mcall.com/2008-04-29/features/4064347_1_yuko...](http://articles.mcall.com/2008-04-29/features/4064347_1_yukon- act-quaker-oats-yukon-territory)

<comment><USER3> It sounds like CAH is holding the land on behalf of the people who actually "own" it, to prevent the taxes thing or something similar from happening? Interesting, either way, to see the possible ramifications. I still think it's a cool idea, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Laphroaig does something like this for their fan club. Sign up and you get a plot of land for life on their grounds. For rent they will pay you a dram whisky annually, but you have to go collect it in person. They are located on the Isle of Isley off the coast of Scotland, so unfortunately I haven't been able to collect my rent yet. Hopefully someday.

<comment><USER5> I've done this and been there to collect my dram. Scotland is wonderful.

<comment><USER6> That's not very much.

<comment><USER6> * Formally, a dram is an eighth of a fluid ounce. (Less than a teaspoon.)

<comment><USER7> Someone who used to work at the Scotch Malt Whisky Society in Edinburgh told me that the exact size of a dram is a covenant between the barkeep and their customer ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> They probably spent less to buy the entire island of Hawaii 2 than it costs to buy the average house on Oahu or Maui.

Bonus: I now own land on Maui, Hawaii 2, and Islay. Luckily two of these do not require taxes and one provides rent that can be redeemed in person in the form of a dram of Laphroaig.

<comment><USER9> I don't know the exact amount but when we got the deed, I was able to find it on an island selling website.

Now the page is down but it was archived: [https://web.archive.org/web/20140820193302/http://www.vladi-...](https://web.archive.org/web/20140820193302/http://www.vladi- private-islands.de/en/objects/usa/maine/buy/birch-island/)

I don't know if they actually paid 200 000$ but I doubt they paid more considering their budget.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm sorry if I misunderstood this article.. but they took their $70k of profit and donated it to wikimedia, then took all profit from the 'gift' idea and bought an island.

So these dudes essentially give away the vast majority of their profit yeah? What am I missing? Don't get me wrong, it's incredible.. but at the end of the day, very few forms of altruism exists and I feel like I'm overlooking some part of the equation. Where's the sinister ending? :)

<comment><USER11> I'd say nearly every move the CAH folks make is some form of nontraditional marketing. Sure, buying an island may seem like just throwing away profit, but the amount of buzz and fan loyalty generated by that sort of stunt is a big part of what keeps their brand relevant & growing.

<comment><USER12> You could argue that their entire holiday promotion is really an exercise in marketing, and that they've already written off any profit from it as part of their marketing budget. Their business is selling the boxed card game, rather than gimmicky promotions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I know there's got to be a lot more involved with buying/owning an island than just coming up with the money (a boat, for one), but it's fun to think about the fact that you can buy an island in Maine for roughly what a decent house costs around a lot of major cities in the US.

Granted, the really nice islands with really nice houses on them will cost a heck of a lot more, but it's still fun to think about.

<comment><USER14> Your comment reminded me of this HN post [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6395148](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6395148)

<comment><USER13> I remember that one! I was actually visiting Maine when it was posted, so it certainly got me thinking.

Even if buying an island isn't in the cards, it really is a beautiful place, and worth a visit.

Oh, and poutine and cheap lobster rolls everywhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This remembered me of a nobility title scam coming from Scotland.

In Scotland for some weird combinations of their laws, and UK laws that I don't remember properly anymore, anyone can get a "nobility" title by owning land there, except UK laws say nobles are only those that can be peers in the parliament (House of Lords), and that scottish title is NOT one of them.

Some scammers then sell those titles attached to a square foot of land, and charge crazy prices (ie: much, much, much more than buying a square land of foot yourself in Scotland), then claim the buyer is an actual noble (like I said, the buyer isn't, although the title IS legitimate, in UK it does not count as a nobility title)

People that work with actual nobility title frequently get annoyed with those scammers and try to convince UK government to shut them down.

</comment><comment><USER16> I have relatives in Liberty ME and we Kayak (usually on the coast) quite often.

We'll have to add this to our spots and check it out...

Also, there was an article a while back on HN about some friends who bought an island: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6395148](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6395148)

Wonder how that's going... [http://tynan.com/island2](http://tynan.com/island2)

</comment><comment><USER17> What is going on with the timezones in that email exchange? First one is in -0500, second one doesn't specify a timezone and third one is in +0000

</comment><comment><USER18> This island's shape reminds me of Corsica ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corsica](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corsica)).

</comment><comment><USER19> It was a big surprise to receive that in the mail. Wasn't sure if it was a joke or serious but after looking for it on Google maps I think I have a future trip planned.

</comment><comment><USER20> I always enjoy looking at islands for sale online. There are quite a lot of them available for purchase at around $100k. One can dream...

</comment><comment><USER21> Be nice to see more and more bits of land claimed, and just let live. I'd sign up for that.

</comment><comment><USER22> What

</comment><comment><USER23> "Hawaii 2" is one of my favorite things from 2014.</comment>


Swatch Internet Time (1998) - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time <comment><USER2> This wasn't the first time someone tried to make something better than time zones and our silly days-weeks-months-years system, and I doubt it will be the last. It probably goes back much further, but I know that the French tried to decimalize time in the revolution when they were rationalizing all the other measurements. (see _The Measure of All Things_ by Ken Alder, without question the finest nonfiction book Ive ever read.)

The reason I think it doesn't catch on is that what we have really isn't too bad. If I'm thinking locally, everything works perfectly. If I'm trying to schedule a meeting with my colleagues in Singapore, I just remember a single number, 14 and apply it to my time. I know that right this minute, it's 21:40 in Singapore, and I know that the sun is down, everyone is home and preparing to go to bed. With UTC, I have to remember that the sun rises at 23:00UTC, do a little math, figure people show up in the office around three hours after the sunrise, etc. Toss in offices in London, Shanghai, Cape Town, Melbourne, etc. and it gets confusing.

Modulo 24 math is simple enough that anyone can do it, and looking up the offset for a city is much easier than finding out a "normal" person's schedule in that city.

Yes of course it gets a little silly with edge cases around DST and strange places (good trivia question: with what city does the South Pole share its time zone? A: Auckland, NZ, where the logistics are handled or anywhere in NZ really), but it works 99% of the time.

Could we make it work if we just decided to? Of course! Implementing the metric system was much harder, and we did that (well, most of us did, of course) because there were huge benefits to being on the same measure. Are there equally huge benefits to being on the same time zone? I doubt it.

<comment><USER3> It's a near-perfect instance of Chesterton's fence: [https://www.chesterton.org/taking-a-fence- down/](https://www.chesterton.org/taking-a-fence-down/)

Also, I don't think the comparison with the metric system is apt. It took a pretty intuitive system and replaced it with another slightly less intuitive system, but which is vastly easier to use for a large number of tasks that a large number of people need to do frequently (specifically, arithmetic on measurements). Timezone abolishers will bring about benefits that only a very small number of people will enjoy, while causing very significant confusion to practically everybody.

<comment><USER4> What about customary measurements was more intuitive than metric?

<comment><USER5> They tend to be easier to visualise stemming from so many having root in human scale. For instance an inch is the width of a thumb - it'll match scale on many common charts so easy approximation of distance. (one of many dubious claims of the origin of "rule of thumb")

A foot consists of 4 palms or 12 thumbs (inches). A fathom is distance of arms outstretched (6') and so it goes on. Many fractions and multiples can easily be achieved without resorting to scale or rule.

You can trace all the way back to Egyptian/Roman times though many had their standard size fiddled with over the years. The German foot was a bit longer, a French pound (livre) a little heavier etc.

Of course if you're mucking about in a globalised world with software, or engines, satellites and suchlike SI units are a much better bet.

<comment><USER4> OK, I'll concede that on length measures between one inch and one fathom, customary measurements might have an intuition advantage (and indeed, I've been known to measure things with my own feet before converting to metres).

Once we get to miles, I don't think that those have any advantage over kilometres (of course, we could have a hybrid system with kiloyards, to get the advantages of both).

And what about fahrenheit and pounds?

<comment><USER3> Fahrenheit is "tighter" and has a better resolution in the "human" range -- ie. 0-100 degrees fahrenheit is roughly the range of temperatures that humans can exist in, and one degree celcius is a bit too coarse for human comfort, thermostats generally give you at least half degrees celcius precision, but can get by with only whole degrees fahrenheit.

<comment><USER6> We can discuss all sorts of reasons why one system is better than the other one but the worst situation is to have more than one system to measure the same thing. Measuring longer distances by foot instead of meters makes the error bigger. Many small feet adds small amounts of errors on each foot. One meter is an average step so less errors that adds up.

Choose one and stick to it :-) Customary xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I remember this being a minor fad around this when I had my first, handcoded website hosted on the 5MB of webspace my dial-up ISP gave me. I'm pretty sure I heard about it from one of the other regulars on irc.scifi.com, the Sci-Fi Channel's IRC server that I used to frequent.

With a little cut-and-paste of some code from Swatch's website you could have a GIF 'clock' on your site that showed the 'internet time' to your visitors. Utterly pointless, but harmless fun.

<comment><USER8> The Sci Fi channel had an IRC?

<comment><USER9> Apple had an IRC server too. It seemed to be one of the kinds of servers that many companies had back in the day, perhaps sitting next to their Gopher server.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If people want a timezone-less universal time reference they can use UTC and none of that AM/PM BS.

<comment><USER11> For trivia, one oddity about UTC is that an epoch is not finalised until about 12 days after it occurs, due to the 'C' aspect of the acronym.

Not normally an issue for average users, but yet another disadvantage of a non-absolute time scale. And a reason why people keep trying to reinvent measures of time.

<comment><USER12> I'm curious what measures you refer to. There are practical approaches that are in common use. For example GPS is synced to UTC(USNO). But nobody tries to promote that as a universal time scale.

<comment><USER13> No, GPS doesn't track UTC, it would be a huge pain to do that.

GPS tracks TAI, because TAI is an Atomic Time, it doesn't care about how the Earth moves in space. Some of the metadata transmitted alongside the GPS signal tells a device how to turn GPS time into UTC at the current moment in case you want to display that, but it's orthogonal to the main purpose of GPS which is to figure out where you are, for which you want a nice steady time system like TAI, not a civil system like UTC.

The way UTC works is, moment by moment it goes at the same speed as TAI, but every six months it might jump back or forward one second, to try to keep it roughly lined up with UT1. This is a compromise to give TAI's simplicity and reliability (atomic clocks are easy) but without gradually shifting away from UT1 over decades.

Why? Well, UT1 reflects the thing humans think "days" are about, the uneven wobbly spin of Earth, the big round thing we're almost all stuck to. If the Earth spins a little more slowly or quickly than expected, that's reflected in UT1 but doesn't affect TAI at all.

<comment><USER12> Technically GPS cannot track TAI because TAI is not available in real time. You can compute TAI from UTC, but as mentioned above UTC is only created many days after the fact.

So in practice, you have to rely on what national labs provide. They provide time that is close to UTC but is not actually UTC, in the case of GPS they use the approximation of UTC by the US Naval Laboratories.

Now because UTC is the official civil time, and it is easy enough to compute TAI from UTC, what such labs provide is UTC.

Then internally, GPS translates that to GPS time. Which differs from TAI by 19 seconds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Oh, I remember watching Discovery Channel with my dad around 1999, and some Swatch PR guy was talking about how the Internet Generation (tm) will embrace this new Internet Time (r) standard. I was around 8 years old, but I remember thinking how ridiculous of a "solution" this was for a non-existing problem. Just use UTC.

</comment><comment><USER15> Two previous threads had comments:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7046178](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7046178)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=520004](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=520004)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think the time would be ripe time for a second try at this . It's something tweaks to DST and Timezones* wont fix.

I still struggle figuring out times globally, without good reason. Local time could still be the regular 24h, but for business meetings, etc. something like Swatch Internet Time would be great.

* [https://metropolitan.fi/entry/finland-seeks-to-drop-daylight...](https://metropolitan.fi/entry/finland-seeks-to-drop-daylight-saving-time-from-eu-mulls-timezone-switch)

<comment><USER16> What problem does Swatch Internet Time solve?

> for business meetings, etc. something like Swatch Internet Time would be > great

Let's discuss this on 2018-06-07 at 04:30, UTC.

I thought Google would be the easiest source for a conversion, but for me a search for "04:30 UTC" gives a banner at the top, "17.30 Tuesday, in Denmark": [https://www.google.dk/search?q=04%3A30+UTC](https://www.google.dk/search?q=04%3A30+UTC)

So maybe one problem it solves, is the American assumption that everyone uses the 12-hour clock.

<comment><USER17> _> So maybe one problem it solves, is the American assumption that everyone uses the 12-hour clock._

I'm an American, and I was not aware of the "American assumption that everyone uses the 12-hour clock." Please elaborate further.

<comment><USER18> In Europe, most "official" times use a 24-hour clock (train schedules, etc.). This is almost never seen in America outside of the military and many Americans would need to stop and calculate what time "17:30" is.

<comment><USER19> Sidenote: AFAIK, UK also uses an AM/PM format for time, instead of the unambiguous 24-hour format.

<comment><USER20> In typically British fashion we use both quite readily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Wow, I had one of these in 2005: [https://www.flickr.com/photos/pedro/59521558/in/photolist-6g...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/pedro/59521558/in/photolist-6g4FL) Never found an use for it since no one had the watch and neither knew about 'Internet Time'

<comment><USER22> I had one! We should have been friends :'(

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm kind of surprised that Minecraft didn't take this.

Inter-continental multiplayer or livestreaming is made easier if you don't have to convert timezones.

<comment><USER24> Looking further back, it was present in Phantasy Star Online!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The last person who tried to change the calendar got his head chopped off. Literally:

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

</comment><comment><USER26> Used to have this display on my, very cool, Ericsson T20 as its clock in the year 2000. It was kinda fun to try to learn it. It also had a tiny full qwerty keyboard accessory. A true marvel...

</comment><comment><USER27> Another Negroponte boondoggle. The second is an SI unit fully integrated with the metric system.

<comment><USER28> I used to think that a few hundred megaseconds ago, but after gaining a few more tens of megaseconds of experience with the SI, I realized that, in practice, we continue using Babylonian sexagesimal units for time, not SI units.

(It may be pointless to reply to a comment that's already several kiloseconds old on here, I know, but hopefully at least a few dekapersons will read my reply and enjoy it.)</comment></comment>


MIT Finds the Molecular "DNA" of concrete - <AUTHOR> http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/09/mit-finds-molecular-dna-of-concrete.html

<comment><USER2> This reminds me of a self-healing concrete I read about not to long ago. This new stuff can take a strain of 5% tensile strain without breaking, as compared to the .01 breaking point of regular concrete.

[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090422175336.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090422175336.htm)</comment>


Is there an obsession on HN with Betteridge's Law of Headlines? - <AUTHOR> http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=betteridge

<comment><USER2> I just learnt something nice, thanks</comment>


Play a British Spy Game - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2015/12/25/gchq-play-a-british-spy-game/?comments=1#comments <comment><USER2> Why have you linked to the comments?</comment>


The funniest, most accessible book on rocket science is being reissued - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/02/the-funniest-most-accessible-book-on-rocket-science-is-being-reissued/ <comment><USER2> HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10683778](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10683778)</comment>


Palm – The best small phone for minimalists, athletes, and kids - <AUTHOR> https://palm.com/pages/product <comment><USER4> Random Thoughts:

1\. If it is shipping with Android 8 - an old version of Android. What are the chances that it will ever see any updates?

2\. My wife would have been the target audience for this form factor - <USER2> Apple Watch. Her phone is her least favorite device. She will leave it in the car in a heartbeat. She won't think twice if she leaves at home.

But now, she has a cellular Apple Watch and AirPods with a third party ear clip. She doesn't have to carry any phone.

3\. The battery life is atrocious. Even the Apple Watch has better battery life for normal day to day use.

4\. I seriously doubt it has 16GB of memory - the cellular Apple Watch does. That's more than enough for local music playback without using cellular.

5\. This is the Zune of phones to me. But, yes I realize that the cheapest entry point to our setup - phone + Watch is $800 if we did get A cheaper headset. With AirPods it would be $959.

<comment><USER5> I wonder how bad the battery life is in practice.

They seem to be selling an always on battery saving mode as a quality of life feature. Which is fine for me having do not disturb activated 90% of time on my phone.

All the smartphones I had in recent years I had to charge overnight. Not because they were depleted completely, but enough so that they usually run out some point the next day. And I prefer to just plug the devices in at home insted of carrying around cables and charging banks.

And related question: How well does the apple or other smart watches do with audio interactions only? I have been playing with the tought of instead of having a phone, using a smart pocket watch. So not even wearing on the wrist. But just take it out once in a while and use headphones, for things like accepting call, dictate messages/notes and chose spotify playlist.

<comment><USER6> I have one. I charge it every night or two. Sometimes it runs out of battery but I don't care much. Web browsing, emailing, calling for a rideshare, and other straightforward stuff is fine. If you're using Google Maps for turn by turn GPS continuously in a car without a way to charge your phone via USB, you'll run out of battery in a couple hours. If you play a bunch of graphically games, I imagine it wouldn't be super great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This has already been solved... a true phone for "minimalists, athletes and kids":

[https://www.nokia.com/phones/en_gb/nokia-5310](https://www.nokia.com/phones/en_gb/nokia-5310)

It's only 3cm taller, the battery will last you a week and it has no distractions, oh and it's 34 quid.

More classic Nokia options here: [https://www.nokia.com/phones/en_gb/classic- phones](https://www.nokia.com/phones/en_gb/classic-phones) I've had a Nokia 208 for 7 years, I take it rock climbing all the time, it's been crushed and battered countless times and dropped from 60m - battery only lasts a few days now so time to get a new one (a new battery not a new phone).

These phones are great for sports because they are so rugged and they are cheap anyway so you can forget about them and focus on what you are doing. The stick phone form factor is also better for fitting into a pocket without restricting movement - I don't always want to take it on route but sometimes forget it's in my pocket.

<comment><USER8> Not available in the US?

<comment><USER9> I've been looking for dumb phones with just talk, text, and GPS in the US for years (at least two) now. The closest thing I've found is blackberry. I just want a phone that 1. can get me to my destination if I'm lost and 2. doesn't give me the opportunity to distract myself in other ways. I don't want to be beholden to my willpower - I don't want to be able to download apps at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This _looks_ really nice. I'm a fan of smaller phones, I currently own a Pixel 2, and if it was a tiny bit smaller, I think it'd be perfect.

However, saying that I think the challenge with this phone might be the battery life. It comes with a free phone case with a battery pack(making the size waaay chunkier than without the case), and the specifications don't mention mAh, just 'battery life' (which from my experience is rarely accurate).

According to [https://www.gsmarena.com/palm_palm- pictures-9290.php](https://www.gsmarena.com/palm_palm-pictures-9290.php) it's only 800mAh, and from the images it's clear that they're making the screen look much larger than it actually is. Hmm.

I really dig the concept though.

<comment><USER11> Local music playback, probably with display switched off, is only 9.5h. For comparison, modern iPhones claim >60h just playing audio.

Another indicator is that all battery life examples are for activities that typically have the display switched off.

So, I guess you are right. I like the size :)

<comment><USER12> Has something happened to iPhones recently? My iPhone 8 can barely make it a full day of sparse use without being charged...

<comment><USER13> I'm on a brand new 2016 model iPhone SE A1662. Full charge capacity is 100%. I rarely get through the day before I have to charge again with moderate use.

I've been using a iPhone SE as my primary phone since summer 2016.

If I recall, my original new iPhone SE had great battery life. It was first on iOS 9.

Up Until iOS 12, Battery life was fine on it. With iOS 12, had to get a extended battery case; that held up As a workable solution until iOS 13.

At the end of last year, after iOS 13 came out I replaced that iPhone SE with a brand new one I bought on fire sale.

That had an accident this week, which I replaced with another new iPhone SE.

For it, I set it up as a new device, without any apps, and not restoring from any backup, I still have the same battery life.

I'm going to chalk it up to iOS background process bloat and third party background app refresh, etc.

It will be I nteresting to see how iOS 14 Holds up on the iPhone SE 2016.

What can I say, I refuse to use a phone without flat sides, no headphone jack and not of a reasonable size. I could take a few of those exceptions but all three has been a no go for me. Really the new "meh" battery life is the only complaint I have about this device.

Really excited for the rumored iPhone 12 5.4 inch since it may be about the same size as the old SE; with flat sides.

<comment><USER14> "I'm going to chalk it up to iOS background process bloat and third party background app refresh, etc."

This. I've noticed my 6s is frequently warm, indicating heavy activity.

Top suspicion is Photos processing faces/recognition/etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's weird that for a product whose main selling point is its size that you have to scroll way down the page to get a clear image that shows its scale relative to something recognizable, and even then it's not super clear.

<comment><USER16> When looking at the website on mobile, the first two pictures compare it to a SIM card and a credit card, respectively

<comment><USER17> Yeah, true! If you scale your browser window to mobile-size-ish, you'll see a picture that compares it to a SIM card, that's a great comparison.

The second comparison is also visible on desktop, but it's not a very obvious one, the CC size is kind of hidden, so could be better.

Weird to display different pictures for mobiles than for desktop, especially when the mobile picture is way better than the animation desktop sees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Sadly, still on Android 8.1. If anyone is looking for small Android device with a bit more recent Android version, check out upcoming Unihertz Jelly 2 [https://www.ogadget.com/x/jelly-2](https://www.ogadget.com/x/jelly-2)

<comment><USER19> Hm, some interesting design decisions with the Jelly 2 there. In particular, if that comparison table is right, it's more than 16mm thick - I daresay none of us have seen anything like that since the flip-phone days. And the payoff is that you get quite a chunky battery for the size. I imagine there must be a few people here who would happily take that.

<comment><USER20> I have the Jelly 1 and am very happy with it. Will definitely go for the Jelly 2. Thickness isn't so much an issue because the phone is so small. It usually lives in the 'coincatcher' in my pocket and I hardly notice it's there. Only issues are battery life and low specs (and no fingerprint!) but the Jelly 2 will solve that.

But the Palm doesn't solve any of those issues. No fingerprint scanner. Only 800mAh battery (Jelly 2 has 2000). Much lower specs, 28nm SoC. Single SIM. Just nope.

<comment><USER21> I found the GPS accuracy left a bit to be desired.

<comment><USER21> UPDATE: according the promo video on their facebook page this one has "improved GPS". No tech details on what that means. [https://www.facebook.com/getJelly/videos/3438043796208898/](https://www.facebook.com/getJelly/videos/3438043796208898/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> WARNING

This device is produced by TCL that has a long sordid history of selling phones with pre-installed malware, modifying pre-installed system apps to push ads after firmware "upgrades" and customized social media apps that share low- level user data with the Chinese manufacturer and reports of TCL devices performing DNS rebinding attacks to access internal networks.

For more information visit XDA developers under "Joy launcher, no joy"

<comment><USER23> The entire mobile ecosystem is about spying, with any features these devices provide being secondary to their primary function of gathering information on their users.

Of the mobile platforms, Apple seems the least like this. They seem to actually care about user privacy to some extent, but that's also because they are the most expensive and therefore have revenue more closely tied to their users as actual customers. I still wouldn't let Apple totally off the hook though. They still gather telemetry, and apps on iOS spy as much as they can possibly get away with. Virtually any mobile app is loaded with as much spyware as can possibly be packaged with it and tuned to gather maximum data without being too annoying or visible to the user.

It would be really hard to change this as long as there is such a market for user data. It's too tempting to load apps (or the whole phone) with spyware and cash in. Add to this the fact that governments around the world are certainly in the game both financially and covertly. The only way to really have a privacy-first mobile device would be to lock it the hell down and not allow apps to do _anything_ without explicit user interaction... especially location awareness or any kind of sensor or camera/microphone use. Even with a really locked down phone apps would still try to find clever ways to gather data, and there's a lot of exploitable surface area.

The only other way to fix it would be legislation. One way would be to legislate HIPAA-like protections for intimate user data such as passive audio recordings or location information. Leak a users' location info or sell it without their permission? That will be $10,000 per violation, where a violation is a single location data point for a single user. This would instantly convert user telemetry data hoards from assets to liabilities. Of course what would probably happen is all this stuff would just move off-shore and into shell companies that can't effectively be fined or sued. Legislation might not even work and might make the industry even shadier than it already is. There's too much incentive to spy.

<comment><USER24> Apple is a hardware company, they don't earn a cent knowing who you are.

This is why they can lean hard on the privacy aspect, Google (an ad company) can never follow them there all the way.

<comment><USER25> But the app store allows that apps that collect all sorts of data on you, and doesn't apple get a cut of the sales from apps? Just because its a few steps transient doesn't mean apple has clean hands here.

<comment><USER26> True, but arguably they are making spying harder with each ios release. If profiling and ads were their bread and butter, they would act differently.

<comment><USER27> It may not be their "bread and butter", but that doesn't mean they don't do it. Every time I see somebody talking about Google spying on users but 'X' company doesn't do it, I start to think there just a fanboy to Apple or whatever the company in question is. You should just assume EVERYBODY is spying. Just because it isn't their primary source of revenue, doesn't mean it isn't a source of revenue at all or isn't of value to them.

<comment><USER24> There are levels of "spying".

There is "enable microphone, listen in on conversations and adjust ad preferences" and "upload all photos in the background for analysis" and "check the clipboard for interesting stuff every few seconds"

Then there is just normal telemetry, anonymised and used for internal product development.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> IP68 does not mean you can swim with it [1] yet the web page says:

 _IP68 water and dust resistance means Palm is as rugged as it is elegant so it can stand up to the most strenuous activities—whether you 're running, swimming, biking or hiking._

Unqualified IP68 just means water resistant to a _static_ pressure of at least one metre and the manufacturer is supposed to qualify it saying how deep it can go which the page does not do. But also note the word _static_. If you dive in then the momentary pressure could be significantly higher.

So I think this is quite clearly misleading advertising.

[1] [https://www.trustedreviews.com/opinion/what-is-ip68-ip- ratin...](https://www.trustedreviews.com/opinion/what-is-ip68-ip-ratings- explained-2947135)

<comment><USER29> As someone who bricked an iPhone XS after swimming with it (in freshwater, at depths < 1m), I can confirm this. Certainly took me by surprise. It was a $99 fee with AppleCare+ to replace it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is this related to Palm Inc. (Palm Pilot PDAs) of the 90s and 2000s?

[edit: Looks like the answer is yes, TCL bought the Palm brand and is funding this]

<comment><USER31> Quoting from their page:

> December 11, 2018

> Meet the new Palm

> Back in 1996, Palm released the PalmPilot and forever changed the mobile > handheld game. Today Palm is back—same name but a whole new company. We're a > small San Francisco-based start up harnessing that same innovative spirit to > help bring people out of their tech and into their lives.

It looks like they bought the rights to the name.

<comment><USER32> Slightly disappointing, but hopefully they be able to carry on the legacy. Even if it's only by name.

Might not be too bad if they managed to hire some veterans from PalmOS

<comment><USER33> AFAIK they have not hired any Palm veterans (I worked at Palm but obviously only know a small fraction of all the people that worked there)

<comment><USER34> When I saw the headline, I had a moment of hope they did something minimal, efficient, privacy-respecting, and secure, looking a lot like touchscreen PalmOS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Is this a new model, or the same one that sells on EBay for 80$? (Many were made to be sold as Verizon-only "secondary device" and are now surplus).

If so, reports are that the battery life is extremely short.

<comment><USER36> It is the same one they released back in 2018 from the specs: [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/12/palm-phone-review- fu...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/12/palm-phone-review-fun- endearing-and-bad-at-everything/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I have been using this as my daily minimalist phone for over 4 months. I love it, with some caveats.

I bought it for a few reasons:

* Tired of lugging around a monsterous phone.

* Not allowing my Internet/web addiction to follow me everywhere.

* Wanted something small and waterproof for outdoor water sports emergencies.

I bought mine (an original Verizon edition) on ebay for 60 dollars. After that you will want to run it through some debloat scripts which improves battery and declutters the phone. Root it if you like, although I did not as I am satisfied with the mods you can make without root. [https://forum.xda- developers.com/android/development/release...](https://forum.xda- developers.com/android/development/release-palm-debloat-fixes-script-t4052477)

I have purposefully crippled the phone and removed Google Chrome, Youtube, as well as the Play Store.

Basically adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.google.____

I personally ripped out the Play Store so that I couldn't be tempted to download Chrome/YouTube again. I downloaded every app I thought I would want and now I sideload new apps with adb if I find other use cases.

I have considered the alternative use case of sideloading the store, downloading the new app, updating my existing apps, and then removing the store. However given the continuous obsolescence that occurs with phones, my plan is to only update things as they break rather than constantly pushing myself to the newest versions until eventually my phone becomes clunky and unusable.

The phone does everything I want (Uber, Maps, phone, text, whatever!) and I have 0 access to the web. I love it. You can't do this on an iPhone, I tried many times and the closest is with parental locking but it doesn't work how you'd like.

The downside is that the battery life kind of sucks, however I get a full day of use out of it. I plug it in every night, I plug it in my car when I'm driving and use Android Auto, and without the Web to distract me I only use it for calls, texts, note taking, and to briefly look up maps, kitesurfing forecasts, or to call an uber.

I can't wait for the exact same form factor with a 2x bigger battery. I'll never go back to a mega phone for daily use.

Happy to answer more questions.

<comment><USER38> My biggest problem with owning an Android phone is losing security updates after a few months/years. Has happened to me before, even on a Google branded phone (made by HTC).

Are you still getting security updates on this device? Do you think you're likely to lose them in the near future?

Edit: I'm asking because I'm really tempted to buy. Sold on everything else.

<comment><USER37> I don't think I'm getting security updates but frankly I haven't checked. I'm not able to open web pages with my version so I think my risk is pretty minimal aside from some exploitable silent SMS or Gmail bug.

The phone works for me, and I did a HUGE amount of research into my options before buying. The Jelly 2 which I was previously unaware of looks to be pretty slick, but for 60 bucks off ebay I don't think you can go wrong. YMMV

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I bought one from eBay for about $100 to try it as a minimalist phone. The camera is bad. The battery life is abysmal. It is super duper slow but still gets too hot to hold. It doesn't fit in any phone caddies like for driving. In life mode, it keeps turning off bluetooth when I pause the audio on a podcast or audiobook, which is really bad when you are driving and want to focus on the directions for a second: now suddenly you lost your audio entertainment (and possibly your turn by turn directions being read loud enough for you to hear) until you can safely fiddle with the phone.

Overall, it was a pretty bad experience. I lost it in my car (probably under a seat) and did not feel compelled to search for it.

Maybe it was worth the $100 to break the habit of reaching for my phone all the time.

</comment><comment><USER40> Good to see there is a market for tiny phones. That gives me hope there's a market for sub 5 inch screen phones as well. Or something not bigger as a Samsung Galaxy A3 2017.

<comment><USER41> I don't know. All I want is an Android between 5 inch and 6 inch, something the size of a 2016 iPhone SE.

But all I see is either gigantic phones, or 3 inches phones like this one so tiny they're barely usable as a smartphone. At that point why not just buy a dumb phone?

<comment><USER42> > All I want is an Android between 5 inch and 6 inch, something the size of a > 2016 iPhone SE.

That's much larger than the SE (4" screen, 125x60x7.5 mm, 110 g compared to 5" screen, 140x70x7.5 mm, 150 g for the 2020 SE). Which is a really nice form factor, and well suited for apps, but not so good for web browsing.

<comment><USER43> > That's much larger than the SE

Not necessarily if they're talking about the diagonal of the phone: the SE1 has a ~138mm diagonal, which is ~5.4".

At 156mm the SE2 is a bit above 6.1".

Though by that measure the Palm here is hardly "3 inches", it's 4.2".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> For anyone looking for another alternative for a minimalist phone, I've been following this for a while:

[https://mudita.com/products/pure/](https://mudita.com/products/pure/)

<comment><USER45> There's also the Light Phone 2, and arguably, a smartwatch is a "minimalist smartphone". Personally, I own a Fairphone 3. The ThinkPad of smartphones, as you can easily open/repair it.

I went to the website of Mudita Pure and found the following:

> Ultralow SAR value

> Mudita Pure is designed to reduce SAR (Specific Absorption Rate) value as > much as possible, without compromising on the signal strength. In order to > achieve this, we've made our antenna with in-house shielding, using patented > technology that we developed.

> Good reception and ultralow SAR thanks to a custom antenna

> There are plenty of antennas on the market but none of them allowed us to > maintain good reception while minimizing our exposure to radio frequency > energy. We spent quite a bit of time and money (2 years, nearly $1 million) > to develop and patent our own solution. We built our unique antenna in- > house, using this patented technology (patent US 9,900,411 B2, EU 3185352).

I wonder what exactly their patent consists of, and how SAR matters. I also wonder if the device is rugged, which OS it runs, and how good its gonna be regarding software updates. Light Phone 2, in comparison, runs Android with e-ink display.

<comment><USER46> Fairphone looks like exactly what I want. Why do all the cool phones not work in the US?

<comment><USER45> There are reports about it working (till various degrees) in USA. Till what extend, I do not know. Consult the forums for more information. Its a friendly community.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I personally don't buy this premise of 'Improving your lifestyle, by including friction in our products'. Screen size is not limiting someone from not leaving Facebook, Instagram, TikTok etc. If they don't want to use it, they can uninstall it on their existing device. These kind of devices just prey upon compulsive buyers hoping 'If I buy X, my life will magically get better'.

Buying such tiny screen phones at this point of time would just limit the productivity as an when needed, if that's all one needed they could dig up their 10 year old android device with 2.5" screen or better buy a current feature phone with 4G and 30 days standby time for fraction of the price.

IMO, If a new smartphone manufacturer wants to enter the space with the premise of 'improving lifestyle', then perhaps they should build devices for pure Linux smartphone OS like these[1][2] where productivity is available when needed via web apps, supposed lifestyle culprit apps aren't available anyways and help build a better ecosystem.

[1][https://store.pine64.org/product/pinephone-community- edition...](https://store.pine64.org/product/pinephone-community-edition- ubports-limited-edition-linux-smartphone/)

[2][https://postmarketos.org/blog/2020/06/15/pinephone- postmarke...](https://postmarketos.org/blog/2020/06/15/pinephone-postmarketos- community-edition/)

[3][https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/](https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/)

<comment><USER48> I kind of agree. I've experimented with every gray screen/app organizing/focus blocker technique on the hype train, and in the end it's mostly window dressing: the hard part is breaking bad habits.

<comment><USER4> I had some really horrible habits and distractions with my phone. Anytime that I should be focused on someone else or something else, I leave my phone at home - or in these days in another room since we don't go out and just have my Apple Watch on me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> It's rather irritating that you either have 6 inch behemoths which simply do not fit my pocket (and imo promote unhealthy smartphone addiction), and the only alternative is a ridiculously small phone with loads of practical drawbacks.

Where are the 4 inchers?

<comment><USER50> [https://www.nokia.com/phones/en_int/nokia-1-0](https://www.nokia.com/phones/en_int/nokia-1-0)

<comment><USER51> I bought one of these (Nokia 1) earlier this year and love it! It was available in the US from Amazon, but I think it's been discontinued, replaced by the much larger Nokia 1 Plus.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> This came out a couple years ago and it got bad reviews: [https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/6/18212311/palm-phone- review...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/6/18212311/palm-phone-review-time- well-spent-life-mode-lite-verizon)

</comment><comment><USER36> I think this is the same phone that has been out since late 2018 [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/12/palm-phone-review- fu...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/12/palm-phone-review-fun- endearing-and-bad-at-everything/)

</comment><comment><USER53> Well done Palm. I thought you were dead! Shake up the phone business with your waterproof spotify player. Count me in.

Seriously though, most of the reasons I need a phone are covered by a tiny device. NFC pay, music, camera, phone calls, oncall alerts...

<comment><USER54> I was hoping this was made py Palm, Inc (sold to HP?); but It is a different company: Certificate by Letsencrypt, and the TOS say somethong about "Palm Ventures Group".

<comment><USER55> Afaik the olde Palm sold the software, i.e. the OS—while the hardware business remained with someone else, as if it would do any good by itself.

I seem to remember the logo, even.

<comment><USER4> Not the hardware business - just the name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> They could afford to make this a bit thicker and more rounded. At this size, its ability to fit snugly into your palm (no pun intended) is more important than any perceived benefit of thinness. I personally believe such "egg-shaped" devices will become the dominant hand-held form factor, with tablets as supplementary devices.

<comment><USER57> I'm eyeing Unihertz Jelly 2. It has soap form factor with 2000mAh battery, but sadly it has Mediatek SoC.

[https://www.ogadget.com/x/jelly-2](https://www.ogadget.com/x/jelly-2)?

<comment><USER58> The first one was not great, the display specifically. Maybe that changed? I'd wait for a review on that.

That Android does not work well with a device that small should remains as an issue, but at least the gesture controls it has now could help a bit.

<comment><USER57> There is a preproduction unit review and it looks promising: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxUDmGHl7Eo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxUDmGHl7Eo)

<comment><USER58> Looks a lot better :) The hardcoded buttons at the bottom are a pity though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> We need the ability to switch phones more easily than a SIM swap.

Getting a paper clip or equivalent out is too fiddly, and the cards are too easy to drop or lose.

If we can get to a place where your phone number is an account that your phone is logged into, then your choice of phone can become more like a fashion accessory for the day, and be selected on the basis of events, rather than needing to be all things for all occasions.

<comment><USER4> From a practical perspective, if you have multiple devices with a cellular data plan you could do this with third party voip services. But you are paying for multiple data plans.

Of course on iOS devices, you have to have at least one phone as the central device with a voice plan but then someone calls your phone, your iPad and your watch will ring. But you still have to have multiple data plans.

Ignoring the cost, my watch ($10/month), phone ($35/month), and iPad ($20/month) all unlimited plans serve the purpose.

My watch when I don't want to carry my phone or take it out of my pocket, my phone for the normal use case, and the iPad when I want a larger screen or do lighter productivity by just pairing my BT keyboard and mouse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> John Gruber prefers the feel of the 2.31" classic width iPhones [1]:

> Feel matters. And to me, the classic 4-inch display form factor shared by > the iPhones 5, 5S, and now SE [1st Gen] feels the best in hand. This is > obviously highly subjective, but in my mind it's not even a close call. > There are obvious reasons to prefer the larger 4.7- and 5.5-inch models, but > how they feel in your hand isn't one of them.

The ultra-mobile Palm is 2" wide with a 16:9 720p screen and almost half the weight of the 1st Gen iPhone SE (63g vs 113g) but half the battery capacity.

[1] [https://daringfireball.net/2016/03/the_iphone_se](https://daringfireball.net/2016/03/the_iphone_se)

</comment><comment><USER61> I have very good experience with Elari NanoPhone. Only 30 grams and 5 days battery life. It can serve as a standalone feature phone with mp3 player.

But it can also work as bluetooth headset and dialer for bigger phone. In this case it synchronizes contact list.

</comment><comment><USER62> I bought one of these on eBay for like $75 and use it as a running companion, which I pretty much love. Using Google Fi, I throw a data only SIM in and it runs Spotify and acts as an emergency phone. After an hour run with next to no screen time, the battery is usually close to 50%, but definitely beats carrying a jumbo phone along. I wish they could improve on the battery, even if it was 10-20% larger (typing is really tough), but I don't know of anything else like this save for the Pebble Core, which never saw the light of day.

</comment><comment><USER63> > OS: Android 8.1

Ops.

> Security: Face unlock

Hopefully not the only method.

> Dimensions: 50.6 X 96.6 X 7.4mm

Wonderful.

> Weight: 62.5 grams

More than wonderful.

> GPS Workout: Up to 4 hours and 45 minutes

My old Sony Xperia Compact records GPS all the day long. I used it to record a 8:00 to 20:30 bicycle ride one year ago. Sorry for the Palm.

<comment><USER64> What do you mean by "Ops"?

<comment><USER17> Android 8.1 was released in August, 2017, so it's very old. Although, it did have it's latest update just one month ago, so hopefully the security would be alright, even if it doesn't have the latest features.

But my guess is that the target market for Palm doesn't really care about the latest features, they care about gear that works and fits normally in a hand. So probably not a big issue really.

<comment><USER65> The device was released in Oct 2018 though, so at the time it was the newest Android version (9 was just released, probably too late in the Palm dev cycle).

The $280 price tag is a biggest show-stopper IMO (and according to the Palm website that's a "sale" from the $400 price tag, although I never quite trust that). I paid $70 for my basic Android device (Samsung Core A2) and that works just fine as well (with some minor caveats/limitations of Android Go, such as the screen not lighting up when there's a notification).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> That's the one, right? [https://www.gsmarena.com/palm_palm-9290.php](https://www.gsmarena.com/palm_palm-9290.php)

</comment><comment><USER67> If it had an SD card slot, I'd be likely to buy one. But without expansion, I don't see the benefit compared to my iPhone 4S + Third Rail case.

[https://palmsupport.zendesk.com/hc/en- us/articles/3600345300...](https://palmsupport.zendesk.com/hc/en- us/articles/360034530092-Does-Palm-have-an-SD-card-slot-for-memory-expansion-)

</comment><comment><USER68> I was obsessed with this phone a couple years back, but was annoyed that it was only available as a companion and locked to Verizon. I'm a Google Pixel lover because of the simplicity, software, and size. But I have always wanted a phone that was super small and was for essentials.

I think I might buy it!!!

</comment><comment><USER69> 1) my NoScript and my PrivacyBadger lit up on this website, wow!!! The amount of crapware/scripts running on this website is top shelf tracking!!

2) financing for $280?? Why would someone get into debt to buy a phone? This is an insult to minimalism

</comment><comment><USER70> I found a bunch of old cellphones, and the smaller form factor was really a delight (also the inherent sturdiness due to less complex design and less glass).

Good on them to try.

ps: also for the non young and average person, android is just a bit too deep

</comment><comment><USER71> I really miss my first smartphone - a Galaxy Ace 2 that I got in final year of undergraduate. The difference between "I can send this email/check this wiki page" and not is massive. No newer phone has improved on the Ace 2 for that, but they are _much_ more distracting.

Oh, and it played music to headphones. Through a simple, reliable, well- supported port that _also supplied power_ , whilst consuming far less.

That said, 3.3" is pushing it. Nor do I have any confidence of support, or - outside the US - proper 4G (it might work - I'd have to check).

65 mm wide phone with stock android please.

</comment><comment><USER72> Love it!

I for one leaving my iPhone XR at home during my vacation. Taking an old iPhone 5s with me.

The XR has become my always with me office. Where it is, work is, too. So I will not bring it with me.

I might be crazy, but I don't think I am alone.

Love the PALM idea.

</comment><comment><USER73> You know what minimalist phone I want to see?

One that has calls, sms, an online chat and video app (like Whatsapp) and a navigation app (like Google Maps or Citymapper).

No browser, no games, no social media, nothing else.

<comment><USER74> You can uninstall the browser and social media on most Android phones (sometimes you can only "disable" them, but the effect is almost the same).

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Is this a Palm branded device by TCL? Who actually made this device?

</comment><comment><USER76> Really nice concept the size should rejoice people looking for a practical, streamlined and small smartphone...

BUT

Why on earth did they have to rippoff both original iPhone design and the watchOS appscreen??? I hope for them that Apple have learn yet that it's not worth the energy suing a small player. But still it's maddening that they can't thing of something else than such obvious copy-paste approach. Next time hire some designers to produce something more original for the love of earth!

<comment><USER77> Because back in the day, iPhone have ripped off both home screen and Today application's designs (which was a very useful third party tool which provides an overview of your day with relevant notifications) from PalmOS.

In other words, design goes both ways. There's no ripoff from my point of view.

If you ask me, they've applied the paradigm in a pretty neat way, which was Palm's strong point back in the day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> What's the point of having a small, minimalist phone if it's going to be roughly the same price as a normal phone anyway?

<comment><USER8> Exactly. I seriously considered buying to replace my iPhone 6 but at $350 it was too costly. I would have bought two for $149 though. I also didn't like how it seemed like an Android "dead end".

<comment><USER6> The full price is a ripoff, but you can buy them refurbished on Amazon for cheap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> If the Palm is the only device I have on hand, I want the camera to be very good or great and his was my deal breaker. It is also V1 hardware which I never buy because there are always unfixable issues and sometimes companies don't survive their first product (this is a startup that licences/bought the brand).

</comment><comment><USER80> The quality of the site usually reflects the quality of the product because they both share the same mindset.

Linking to 15 external sites, most of which I not have seen before and reddit for a single promotion page gives me the impression its less about the product and more about the clicks.

</comment><comment><USER81> I wrote a review of the phone after using it as my primary device for a while

[https://www.justingarrison.com/blog/palm-companion- review/](https://www.justingarrison.com/blog/palm-companion-review/)

</comment><comment><USER82> I've been thinking of buying one of these, but waiting for the V2 - <USER3> battery life and large bezels on these isn't great.

But if they keep the size, reduce the bezels, and bump the battery up they'll definitely have my money.

</comment><comment><USER83> As someone with the iPhone SE, i am waiting (and will forever wait) for a 4', no bezel, iPhone SE (what should have been the actual successor to the iPhone SE, rather than the iPhone 8 body)

</comment><comment><USER84> 2 x 3.8 inch = 5.08 x 9.652 cm

</comment><comment><USER85> Looks nice, but I just want an iphone 5 sized iphone with a decent battery.

</comment><comment><USER86> I was expecting some type of non smart phone. Apparently minimalist just means take the usefulness out, by making the screen size prohibitively small.

</comment><comment><USER87> I thought it'd have been a joke, showing nothing, since we don't need smartphones, especially kids, minimalists and people doing exercises

<comment><USER82> Minimists still need to.meet their friends and athletes still need to measure their distance or reps.

<comment><USER88> They already did that before smartphones existet. And minimalists probably should choose a less technical way to meet friends?

<comment><USER82> Maybe. But a whiteboard, marker, stopwatch, GPS, and a map seem like a bit much for a minimalist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> Is "Life Mode" basically, "we conserve our small battery's life by not having any processing while the screen's off"?

</comment><comment><USER90> The "life-mode" is nice, does anyone know if it is possible to create something like it for Android phones with the current tooling?

</comment><comment><USER91> What is with the font on this site? It's like looking at an out-of-alignment CRT, and nearly impossible to read :/

</comment><comment><USER92> Life Mode needs to allow calls, but turn everything else off.

I suspect I'd buy one of these if I could play with it in person first.

</comment><comment><USER93> I want a new phone with a slide out keyboard that doesn't cost $600, has a good camera and a large battery.

</comment><comment><USER94> Nothing says "we're lying about the battery life" more than including a free battery case...

</comment><comment><USER95> That is a pretty bad font they use, at least on my old monitors, parts of some letters are almost missing.

</comment><comment><USER96> It does not seem to have NFC? Ahh, I would definitely buy it if it does.

<comment><USER6> I can confirm. It does not have NFC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER97> I wonder if this kind of form factor would work as an action camera.

</comment><comment><USER98> Is there any relation to the old Palm, e.g. Palm Pilot/etc?

</comment><comment><USER99> Is this paid placement? How did this get on the front page?

</comment><comment><USER100> Is this from the company that did the Palm line of PDAs?

</comment><comment><USER101> From a quick skim, it seems like just another phone?

<comment><USER102> It is, except it's about the size of a credit card - that's a really appealing size for some people, either to replace their current behemoth, or as a second phone when you want something tiny.

</comment></comment><comment><USER103> Plam needs to think about a better logo.

</comment><comment><USER104> The best phone for kids is your old phone.

</comment><comment><USER105> It it available worldwide or only in USA?

</comment><comment><USER106> The best according to the salesman

</comment><comment><USER107> Pretty sure it's pronounced PLAM

</comment><comment><USER108> They should reissue the treo650

</comment><comment><USER109> > OS: Android 8.1

Nope, thanks for the effort.

</comment><comment><USER110> If it runs Strava and fits into the back pocket of my cycling jersey, it's sold.

</comment><comment><USER111> Why not Android 10 ?

</comment><comment><USER112> So... another Android knock off of an iPhone, but also it's tiny?

</comment><comment><USER113> does it support contactless payment?

</comment><comment><USER6> I have a Palm Phone. I've been using it for a year or two now. Full disclaimer that 80% of my phone activities are timing things, emailing notes to myself, and informing my friends I've arrived somewhere or will be late (although I do use other features as well).

The positives:

\+ The small form factor. You can't really comprehend how small and light it is unless you see one in person. It's almost comical when you first hold one.

\+ Because the screen is tiny. it's incredibly easy to use one handed. You can use swipe text and swipe from the top for notifications and such with your thumb very conveniently. It also fits in my pocket effortlessly.

\+ The home screen is kind of like Windows Phone in that you have a bunch of icons and you swipe down to view them.

\+ It never bothers me, ever. Like Windows Phone (prior to 10), it simply never notifies me about much of anything. It is designed to be a device that serves me, rather than actively demand my attention. Nothing changes unprompted. No notifications that cannot be dismissed, and rarely a notification at all. Because it runs Android 8.1, I can disable all the useless notifications that Google added in Android 8.0. Honestly I rarely even get chat notifications unless I have those programs in the foreground, which I find to be fantastic. If the screen is off, I can live in peace. It doesn't even have one of those little lights that many other Android phones have on the front to insist upon notifying you about about SOMETHING.

The neutral:

~ People in public will ask you what your device is if they see it. I find it fun but others may not.

The negatives:

\- Verizon. Everything about Verizon. It sells them for some absurd price like $250, but you can buy them on Amazon refurbished for under $100, which is how I got mine. Also for some reason they marketed it as a "companion phone" and for a good chunk of its life you could not buy this as a standalone phone. I do not use Verizon, but I am not 100% sure if it works as a standalone device on Verizon's network (which is a general failing of Android in that your phone provider can somehow control how your device is used). Also because I have mine unlocked, there is one notification upon restart that tells me I am not using Verizon that I have to swipe to dismiss, and there is no way to disable this notification (another failing of Android in general that any notification exists that one cannot permanently disable).

\- Like most (all?) Android phones, you cannot uninstall a bunch of the useless shovelware it comes with, like Google Play Movies.

\- Swipe text is a bit harder to use accurately.

\- If you swipe to the side on the home screen, it brings you to an entirely useless news page. There is no way to disable this (I suppose I could investigate changing the launcher entirely, but I imagine most won't work well on a 3.3" screen). If there is a way to disable it I missed in the 15 minutes of mucking around, there's no community large enough to have discovered it and posted the solution online. Not something I think about often but something to keep in mind.

\- Battery life is not great. If you're a heavy phone-user, you won't like this device. If it were a little thicker, you could get more battery life out of it with the same form-factor benefit. Also, the little hole to eject the sim card is so small that no needles I have will fit in it. But honestly I sometimes let my phone die for a day even when I had a phone with longer battery life, so I don't really care.

\- The screen resolution is 720p. Some programs are designed for 1080p or greater, so there will be overlapping text or icons.

\- There will probably never be an update. Nobody knows what it is.

Conclusion:

For me, it's easily the least bad Android phone I've ever had, possibly better than Windows Phone. I'll be bummed out when it no longer works with the modern web and programs, but hopefully I'll get a few more years out of it at least.

<comment><USER68> Thanks for this write up. I have also been nervous about the companion part. I was annoyed when I first learned that and it was locked. I've been wanting a small phone that was android just for things like Spotify, taxi, Gmail, gps, and text/phone. just essentials virtually.

<comment><USER6> It absolutely functions without the companion part (at least on non-Verizon networks) and can be bought unlocked online. I haven't tried smattiso's debloating options, but there is a "fold" in the launch screen, where I put all the useless apps so I don't have to see them often (except when I go past the fold to look for rarely used programs like the Play Store or Settings).

Overall, it's about as close as I've gotten to Windows Phone on an Android device, with the bonus of Android ecosystem for some essentials like Lyft, plus the tiny size.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER114> These will certainly be popular in prisons

</comment><comment><USER115> Unfortunately it's running a system designed to profile and track users, so you can hardly call it "the best" for anyone.

</comment><comment><USER116> I can't see anything I'd choose in this over an iPhone SE. The smaller size doesn't sell it. I imagine it'd be an inconvenience.</comment>


Y Combinator's 2005 Summer Founders Program: A Complete Dud - <AUTHOR> http://web.archive.org/web/20060222012259/http://tech.rufy.com/articles/2005/08/10/y-combinators-2005-summer-founders-program-a-complete-dud

<comment><USER2> Don't judge Lucas Carlson too harshly for something he wrote almost _three years ago_ , in the throes of dealing with his own YC rejection. Take a look at his credits at <http://rufy.com/> and I think it's clear he's an accomplished developer, author of multiple Ruby gems and the _Ruby Cookbook_ (O'Reilly, July 2006). I don't know Lucas, so I can't speak from experience, but anyone with his hacking credits (and a physics degree from Reed College to boot) _has_ to fall into the "smart and gets things done" category.

</comment><comment><USER3> YC's been iterating on this model for 3 years now and are getting even better at identifying promising ideas and entrepreneurs. I suspect its going to take one or two more cycles to absolutely nail the model.

In terms if lessons learnt, YC has the most experience of any micro seed fund.

This is its competitive advantage.

<comment><USER4> That first batch was actually great. It had both Reddit and Loopt in it, plus Firecrawl, which morphed into Textpayme, plus Justin and Emmett, who went on to do Justin.TV after selling Kiko.

Reddit was a merger of 2 startups from that batch, so if you count Loopt as a success (a fairly safe bet), 4/8 succeeded: Reddit, Infogami, Textpayme, and Loopt. I'd be delighted if we managed to achieve a 50% success rate ongoing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love reading old opinions and predictions.

 _"During my summer, I created Print Promotion, worked on a top secret project with Adaptive Path that will soon change the way you feel about blogging, and am now working with O'Reilly on an amazingly innovative project. Quite productive for 3 months."_

I wonder what his "top secret" project was?

</comment><comment><USER6> This is what happens when you confuse technical complexity with product success. A complex product, or one that takes "more than a weekend to build" will not necessarily be successful, and a simple product will similarly not necessarily be successful.

It has much more to do with demand. The wheel isn't terribly complex, nor is it original. Yet, if I came out today and started selling wheels, I could probably sell a few thousand. There's a demand for wheels, and so it makes sense to sell them. I think that in this age we forget this part of the equation way too often.

</comment><comment><USER7> Guys, relax.

this guy wrote the post when most people did not know about the YC program. Give it up to him for knowing about the first funding cycle. I think a few 150 applicants knew about it.Most of people here did not hear about YC or PG until after their first demo day.

The author's opinion was the result of a rejection. If you read thoroughly,you will see that he is not dissing YC or PG. He felt that his idea was better than those funded, and frankly any entrepreneur who truly believes in his idea would think the same. Ask any YC rejects and they would show you at least 5 YC funded who they believe have an idea less creative/profitable than theirs.

That is their mistake. Most investors ideas do not mean as much as the team ability to execute against them, and YC is not different as far as that.

I am certain if you contact the author today, he would laugh and simply say "I thought I knew it all back then"

</comment><comment><USER8> Thanks for posting this.

It kind of confirms why I don't really bother to read blog posts that are just rants. I wonder what he has to say about Reddit today...

<comment><USER9> I don't know what he's saying, but personally I'm still not sure why anyone paid money for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think it's pretty clear that Reddit started development before digg was well known. So it's hardly a rip off though perhaps not the winner in that battle.

</comment><comment><USER11> It seems this guy was wrong and his own link is dead. If he didn't have enough faith in his product to continue why would he expect YC to.

</comment><comment><USER12> This was pretty light and fluffy when it was written in _2005_. How is this relevant now? His main example is how _reddit_ is a failure. Say what you want about reddit (I don't like it), but it sold for money. Of the stuff that came out of 2005, it's the one everyone remembers (although I imagine Loopt will be a household name soon enough with the Verizon deal).

Seriously, where is my down arrow?

</comment><comment><USER13> Has anyone else noticed that the level of YC bashing upped a notch this time around?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is from 2005. I posted it to show the crazy things people _used_ to write about YC in the past.</comment></comment>


Andy Hunt on AWS: The Cloud is just a computer in Reston with a bad power supply - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/pragmaticandy/status/1168916144121634818 <comment><USER2> As per the docs on the front page of the EBS product site, they experience an annual failure rate of 0.1-0.2%.

Amazon are very upfront about this and provide multiple means of ensuring data is resilient.

If you're not using those, it's on you. The cloud is not magic.

<comment><USER3> This just sounds like a bad architected solution, nothing else. The same problems that can happen in your own datacenter can happen in the cloud; it's just not your responsibility to fix it. If you lack that knowledge as an architect, rethink your title.</comment></comment>


Fend Off Trolls, Bots and Jerks With 'Empathy' Test - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/10/empathy-captcha/

<comment><USER2> Your post advocates a

(x) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which vary from state to state.)

( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses ( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected ( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money ( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks (x) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it ( ) Users of email will not put up with it ( ) Microsoft will not put up with it ( ) The police will not put up with it ( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers (x) Requires cooperation from too many of your friends and is counterintuitive ( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once ( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers ( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists ( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business ( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever worked ( ) Other:

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it ( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email ( ) Open relays in foreign countries ( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses (x) Asshats ( ) Jurisdictional problems ( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes ( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money ( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP ( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack ( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email ( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes ( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches ( ) Extreme profitability of spam ( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft ( ) Technically illiterate politicians ( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers (x) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves ( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering ( ) Outlook ( ) Other:

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable ( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation ( ) Blacklists suck ( ) Whitelists suck ( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored ( ) Countermeasures cannot involve wire fraud or credit card fraud ( ) Countermeasures cannot involve sabotage of public networks ( ) Sending email should be free ( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers? ( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses (x) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem ( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome ( ) I don't want the government reading my email ( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough ( ) Other:

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

(x) Nice try, dude, but I don't think it will work. ( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it. ( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!

<comment><USER3> I like these, but it doesn't really work this time.

The problem is that their idea won't work. "emotions" is too small a search space. A spam bot could just answer "terrible" to every question and still send a good amount of spam.

reCaptcha works because there are a lot of words in English and a lot of source material that needs to be digitized. That makes it infesible to guess one word, let alone two words at the same time.

This emot-i-captcha requires a human to come up with an unbounded number of unique questions and answers, which is impossible.

<comment><USER4> I think the bigger problem is that the questions are currently in plain text, which, since they require a human to write and once solved are solved forever, makes the approach as implemented a sort of quixotic reverse captcha.

If they switch to image based questions, the potential problems for human solvers are magnified.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My first reaction to this is "that's dumb." But then, I remember a few studies I've heard of. Basically, if people are made to write an essay in favor of a position (like for or against abortion), even if it's one they initially disagree with, their opinions will be measurably more sympathetic to that position afterwards. So maybe this isn't entirely dumb after all.

Obviously, there's a big gap between writing an essay and typing a single word. Supposedly, the trigger was having to consider the reasoning behind a position, which you don't have to do to type just one word. But who knows, maybe the cumulative effect could actually do something.

Note also that this isn't a real captcha, in the traditional sense. It doesn't work by keeping the trolls out. It works by making them slightly less troll- ish, through repeated exposure. While outwardly similar, it's a very different model, and you would not expect any immediate effect.

<comment><USER6> Right, the term for this is psychological priming.

e.g: [http://livinglifewithoutanet.wordpress.com/2010/08/17/honest...](http://livinglifewithoutanet.wordpress.com/2010/08/17/honesty- and-priming/)

I think it's interesting that you could A/B test this; prime only some users and see if it reduces trolling in that group.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Trolling is the art of feigning one or more of the following: empathy, ignorance, sincerity. You're really only fending off non-native speakers and spammers who give up very quickly (one could guess and ultimately get many correct answers). Not to mention that there will be a finite and probably short list of question/answer combos. Most of the variation will be in the questions I imagine and it will be in the form of noise (synonyms and different sentence structures).

They make it very easy to scrape too. The question text is plain text (no need to OCR that) and you can run that through your favorite NLP package to extract useful structure to work from. The answers are each displayed as individual images on the page, making it trivial to know how many possible answers there are. That also makes it easier to run your favorite OCR package on the individually sliced images.

Always glad to see people cracking away at this problem though. It's great fodder for machine learning enthusiasts.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Trolling is the art of feigning one or more of the following: empathy, ignorance, sincerity._

\-- They are, in this way, like terrorists. The more you let them in, the greater the damage.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are all kinds of uses for social engineering.

We should not be surprsised not all of the are pleasant.

Nor should we be surprised, that some are more (or: less) _transparent_ than others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _> "How does that make you feel"_

Mu.

Obviously it's dead simple to guess the _'correct'_ answer.

But wrapping it in a faux test of one's humanness is an off-putting premise, that can come across morally condescending (which probably wasn't the intention).

While I support civil rights and the group behind it is probably well intentioned, it doesn't follow automatically that this instance of execution is a good idea.

Also, it's probably fallacious to assume only 3 emotions (or any at all for that matter), are occurring in the user.

 _"meh"_ , _"bored"_ or _"mildly annoyed"_ etc, are perfectly valid answers too, and does not mean we are jerks for feeling that way :p

<comment><USER9> I agree. It's a pretty shallow idea. Is it a terrible thing to be "fascinated" by something that is supposedly terrible? Fascination doesn't actually necessitate a polarized reaction. And, really, exclusionary tactics/gatekeeping with opinions? These seem like awfully short-sighted solutions to a deeper problem.

And, what's more, trolls aren't hard to mobilize if provoked. Start implementing this and I wouldn't doubt seeing a small movement devoted to going the extra mile to offend people with "humane" sensibilities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Oh look, a Voight-Kampff test for the interbutts.

Fun fact about people with no empathy: they are often profoundly skilled at feigning empathy when they feel they are being tested for it.

<comment><USER11> Apparently, that's one of the marks of a psychopath:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/otl8z/iama_diagnosed_p...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/otl8z/iama_diagnosed_psychopath_im_female_ama/)

<comment><USER12> _Post hoc ergo propter hoc_ ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This whole idea is repulsive to me, chairman Mao would probably welcome it, but that is all. It is dumb idea made by people who are not interested in solving captcha, but pushing their own vision on how morals should be. If in the age of internets we can't stand people with differing opinions and all have to be beaten into same mold, then we are really screwed.

</comment><comment><USER14> In addition to the questionable morals of such a system, I think it is technically flawed.

Most captchas work because the words they present to users are mostly random assortments of letters. This one, however, presents real dictionary words. It is pretty conceivable that a bot, armed with a dictionary file, would have a pretty high rate of success correctly identifying at least one of the three words.

If it then randomly chooses one of the identified words, it would have a rate of success at solving the captcha nearing 33%. This is extremely high when your bot is trying to solve thousands of captchas per minute.

</comment><comment><USER15> I can see this idea used to keep out people who don't conform to groupthink. You could ask questions about abortion, god, taxes, etc.

The problem is that the questions need to be very clever to avoid giving away the site's bias (and thus the answers).

</comment><comment><USER16> Hmm. No involuntary dilation of the irises...

<comment><USER17> The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping...

<comment><USER18> What's a tortoise?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> To be honest I don't think this will stop trolls, or at least not the ones that actually believe what they say. There will be still some trolls that will fill in the correct word in the captcha and say stupid shit in the comment. Asking for someone to think morally for a brief second is not going to stop people. This is "just another captcha" to most.

I don't think it's effective against bots either. If a bot can read the three options it has a 1/3 chance of getting it right (assuming that the bot would choose randomly). In fact from the sample captcha it looks like one of the words is not like the others and therefore you could possibly eliminate that making it a 50:50 chance (again assuming it picks it randomly, that there's an odd one out, and that the odd one out is unrelated to the text above).

Although, I suppose that the idea of the captcha is to show awareness, rather than actually stop spam or trolling. It's neat, but not a great spamkiller.

<comment><USER12> > _or at least not the ones that actually believe what they say_ //

I thought the point of trolling was to say things [that you didn't necessarily believe] simply to provoke an emotional or forceful response from the reader.

If you believe it you're not trolling; possibly flame-baiting?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is it ethical to use this form of mind control? Who decides how you should be reprogrammed?

<comment><USER21> Oh come now. This is hardly less ethical than the methods used by e.g. Fox News or the Daily Mail, but we seem to be mostly comfortable with that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Obligatory xkcd reference: <http://xkcd.com/233/>

Anyways, point is, although it's a good idea, I don't see it being either wide-spread or significantly more effective than re-CAPTCHA, et al., nor do I see it 'aiding' in emotion, so to speak.

But, I would love for someone to prove me wrong on this, because it is an interesting approach.

</comment><comment><USER23> Not a serious attempt at implementing the concept. They only seem to have a few different questions in total. About 6.

Also even with a serious question DB, it would be extremely easy to crack, because of the small pool of answer words and the fact that it's always the negative one you're supposed to pick. With such a low entropy problem, some basic ML and it would be over.

</comment><comment><USER24> How would Steve Jobs have fared on these empathy tests?

What if they asked questions about workers in Chinese factories?

D'oh!

</comment><comment><USER25> "This enables a simpler and more effective way of keeping sites spam free as well as taking a stand for human rights."

Over-stating the security implications of their system for the purposes of getting press for an upcoming event is short-sighted.

</comment><comment><USER26> What about sociopaths?</comment>


Darpa funds $11M tool that will make coding easier - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2014/11/09/darpa-pliny-coding/

<comment><USER2> > fta: Once it finds the nearest fit, the tool will clip any unnecessary > parts, polish the code further to come up with the best solution it can, and > make sure the final product has no security flaws

if this alone were possible (and imho, that's a huge if) it would be money well spent. perhaps, doing it over an existing code-base might be a good measure...</comment>