Apple is back on EPEAT - <AUTHOR> http://www.apple.com/environment/letter-to-customers/ <comment><USER3> "All eligible products" is a key, the new iPad with its glued in battery is not among them.

The "more efficient and longer lasting" case materials he brags about are irrelevant in their disposable products made of low quality components that are not user serviceable or upgradable.

It's like bragging you made your automobile frame out of solid titanium with a carbon fiber shell, but ignoring the fact that you built the engine without any way to change the oil, so you're going to be throwing it out or sending it in for major costly service after a short time. Such planned obsolescent designs are certainly not environmentally sound, and claims of the longevity and strength of the frame materials, and even of certifications, are just PR to distract and hypnotize the marketplace into believing the opposite of the reality of the situation.

<comment><USER4> Not being user-servicable does not mean it's disposable. You can take it to Apple Stores and they'll fix it for you _(and they certainly don't tuck the entire thing in the trash, they probably have some complex machines (that not everyone has) that are able to de-glue screen/battery and case)_.

It's a compromise most regular customers will probably accept.

And I don't get ""disposable products made of low quality components"" at all. Low quality?!

<comment><USER5> But you can't upgrade them. I just added 4 GB of RAM and an SSD to my mom's 4-year-old MBP, ensuring it'll last another 3-4 years. 2 GB RAM and a 5400rpm drive just wasn't cutting it anymore. Several of my friends extended the lives of their MacBooks by replacing the DVD with a secondary SSD.

Apple's new generation design of Macs have soldered-in RAM and a proprietary disk. Will we be able to upgrade them in 4 years?

edit: Imagine if you could upgrade the RAM in an iPad. I could still have used my original iPad now instead of it being junk.

<comment><USER6> Not true, only the Retina Macbook Pro and Airs have soldered-in batteries/RAM, just like ultrabooks made by other manufacturers (ASUS, Dell, Acer).

It's a design decision. If you want an ultra thin/light machine then you have to compromise. If servicing the machine yourself is an issue then buy one of the 'regular' Macbooks.

<comment><USER7> Something's telling me the 'regular' MacBooks won't be around for very much longer.

<comment><USER8> Then the market will have spoken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The retina macbook is rated EPEAT gold.

<http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs/>

<comment><USER10> Interesting! Unless I'm misunderstanding a subtlety here, the common wisdom seemed to be that the retina MacBook's glue made it ineligible to get EPEAT certification and, since that style of design is obviously Apple's future direction, they pulled their EPEAT participation now.

<comment><USER11> I think many people misunderstand where the glue is in the Retina MacBook Pro. They say things like "The display is glued to the case." which is wrong.

The display assembly (the actual screen where the lights shine true) is glued together. I'm not sure but I think that part of the display is always pretty tightly integrated, probably even glued together. (I tried to find information on that and I would be very glad if someone could point me to resources about how laptop displays are usually built.)

The difference with Apple's design (as far as I understand it) is that the frontmost layer of that assembly is also the front glass of the screen. Other laptops with glass in front of the screen put an extra layer of glass in front of the display assembly. The Retina MacBook Pro doesn't have that extra glass. (My understanding – but please correct me if I'm wrong, I'm really not sure and I would like to know more – is that old displays had a sort of plastic outer layer, now Apple uses a glass outer layer. But that's not that a big deal, as far as I know, since on the inside all LCDs use glass substrate also – so it's not as if Apple introduced glass into the display assembly, some was always there, they just added more. But maybe I'm wrong about that.)

That display assembly is screwed – not glued – to the case. Behind it are the LEDs and light diffusers.

Here is a teardown of the display: [http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook- Pro-15-Inch-Retina-Di...](http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook-Pro-15-Inch- Retina-Display-Teardown/9493/1#.T-B6X6DrlaR)

The battery is glued to the case - but it seems to that it is eminently removable with the application of some force. If you don't care about breaking the laptop (since you want to recycle it) that should be no big deal. I mean, Apple replaces the battery for $200, no questions asked. I don't think they replace the whole Retina MacBook Pro every time they do that, so they must remove the glued-in battery, and that inside a working laptop. If Apple can do it, so can you (especially with a laptop that's beyond repair).

<comment><USER12> > I mean, Apple replaces the battery for $200, no questions asked. I don't > think they replace the whole Retina MacBook Pro every time they do that.

I'd like to point out that no one has had a RMBP serviced yet, so everything you've said is entirely speculation. As is the following:

They will replace the entire RMBP.

The only user customizable part is the data on the SSD. Why go to all the trouble of taking the laptop apart when Apple could just move the data and give you a new one? Much faster turn around time. (And fixes any other dings/dents. Yay Apple!) It will be interesting to see how they deal with unorthodox customization, such as stickers on the exterior of the case. Probably will separate those out and give them the special full service treatment.

After they ship you your new laptop, they will take apart the old one and unglue the battery - but only so the unit can be resold (as refurbished) as part of a student discount service.

They probably won't even take apart the laptop and swap the SSD - just dd the whole thing over their fast little thunderbolt port. In theory, they could offer battery replacements in the Apple Store - the sales rep just has to connect the two laptops, start the sync and wait 3.5 minutes. No skilled labor involved.

From a bottom line perspective, this makes too much sense not to happen. They'll be making money on every step of the process and the majority of customers will love it.

<comment><USER11> So you completely agree that it's possible to replace the battery in a working rMBP and that it is not in any way permanently affixed to the case? The rest are irrelevant (for the purpose of this discussion) implementation details.

Yay!

<comment><USER12> No, I think they will replace the aluminum case and the battery as a single unit.

<comment><USER11> But why the hell should that be the case? Look at iFixit's teardown. It didn't look at all like the battery was firmly glued in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "I recognize that this was a mistake." strikes me as a very un-appleish communication style.

<comment><USER14> I agree. Worryingly, it could be evidence of a move away from traditional Steve values, ie don't back down (straight away), don't apologise, don't explain. Alternatively, it could be Apple realise they made a _huge_ mistake, were about to see immense damage to the brand and/or sales, so have taken the drastic, ajobsian action they think is required.

<comment> jack-r-abbit Recognizing a huge mistake is one thing. It was the publicly admitting it that is un-Apple. They could have just silently stayed the course for awhile before announcing they had changed they're mind.

<comment><USER14> That's exactly what Steve would have done.

<comment><USER15> Yup. My first-gen white MacBook back in 2006 was one of the ones afflicted by the random shutdown issue (<http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1599>). It took over a year iirc of local Apple stores blindly trying heat sink and logic board replacements before central management publicly acknowledged that an issue existed and promptly released a firmware upgrade to turn the fans on. Problem resolved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Apple makes the most environmentally responsible products in our industry."

How is this possibly true? Nothing Apple makes can be easily opened, upgraded, or have their batteries replaced. They are made to be obsolete in 2-3 years.

When my iPad screen cracked, they made me buy a new one (at discount) instead of fixing it. I doubt they even fixed the old one I gave to them - <USER2> discarded it. How is that environmentally friendly?

I own almost everything Apple makes. But they need to better explain how built-in obsolescence and impossible-to-fix devices equates to environmentally friendly.

<comment><USER17> Pretty much everything Apple makes is obsolete within a year, but that's not due to Apple's design choices, it's due to technological progress. What you're trying to say is that Apple's products are garbage in 2-3 years, but that's obviously not true - other than batteries (which to my knowledge can all be replaced for a fee at the very least), all Apple products can be expected to have useful lifetimes in excess of 5 years.

As for your cracked iPad screen, just because Apple may not have refurbished it in the way _you_ think they should have does not mean it ended up in a landfill. It's quite possible that it's cheaper for them to recycle the case and logic board than to re-validate the machine after putting a new screen on it.

<comment><USER18> I don't know of a single product Apple makes that's obsolete in a year: obsolete doesn't mean "doesn't have latest and greatest features". 3GS phones run pretty much all the apps a 4S runs; ditto on the original iPad compared to a new one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Things that everyone seems to be forgetting

* Apple makes thin, light, durable products. Reduce > Recycle.

* Raw materials are a small amount of the embodied energy in electronics. The microchips themselves constitute many times the embodied energy. Again, reduce > recycle.

* As others have pointed out, Apple didn't do this because any of their newly-released products weren't eligible.

Putting it all together, Apple did this to send a message to EPEAT: "Disassembly isn't the end-all be-all of green." Looks like EPEAT caved.

</comment><comment><USER20> One interesting thing to note is that this is from Bob Mansfield, and not Tim Cook. When Jobs was CEO, I don't remember a subordinate ever releasing something like this.

<comment><USER21> They announced his retirement a few weeks ago too.

[http://www.macrumors.com/2012/06/28/svp-of-hardware- engineer...](http://www.macrumors.com/2012/06/28/svp-of-hardware-engineer-bob- mansfield-to-retire/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> When Apple decided to leave EPEAT, Apple Apologists/Fanboys said it's because EPEAT is outdated.

I wonder how they are going to spin this one.

<comment><USER23> "[Brand] Apologist" and "[Brand] Fanboy" are the kind of ridiculous, loaded terms which shouldn't appear anywhere on a site like HN. When people praise Apple it's not because they're fanboys. When people criticise Apple it's not because they hate everything Apple does with a passion.

EPEAT _is_ outdated. Horribly outdated. By EPEAT's own admission.

Apple made a mistake by opting out of it rather than working with EPEAT to try to improve it. I think that's what they are doing now.

<comment><USER24> So you are saying that putting a laptop in a shredder after removing the toxic battery easily is an outdated recycling practice?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "Our relationship with EPEAT has become stronger as a result of this experience, and we look forward to working with EPEAT as their rating system and the underlying IEEE 1680.1 standard evolve"

Reads to me like EPEAT is moving (a bit) in Apple's direction with the new future IEEE-standards.

</comment><comment><USER26> One datapoint:

Almost all power cords and extension cords in the US contain lead: the lead is added to the plastic part of the cord when the plastic is still "molten" and its purpose is to make the plastic less flammable.

Although I did not do a chemical assay on it or anything, I am pretty sure that the power cord Apple included with my 2011 Mac mini contains no lead. (The cord has a different, more rubbery feel to it that strongly suggests a completely different material, and I might have seen a claim to that effect somewhere on the web.)

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm a bit thrown by the overall tone of this announcement. I'll totally on board that Apple is doing its best to make "green" products and, apparently they're leading the way - great!

But if it's all true, why did they pull the products from EPEAT at all?

</comment><comment><USER28> But does this mean their products will now be more recyclable and whatnot? Or it just means they put their EPEAT badge on the site again, although their new devices are still not as compliant as they used to be before?

<comment><USER29> I don't think their products changed much in a couple of days. Some are still EPEAT compliant, some are not, just like last week.

<comment><USER30> Though the last paragraph is interesting that there relationship is now "stronger". I wonder if Apple was just using this to say "See, it needs updating."

Who knows....not I.

<comment><USER31> Apple realized that they needed EPEAT because some (vocal) customers cared about it.

EPEAT realized that they needed Apple on board to make their certification meaningful.

And thus an understanding was formed...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> What a coincidence! It just so happens that EPEAT is now relevant again!

<comment><USER33> The entire thrust of their response - perhaps even half of the text - is that EPEAT remains outdated. So not really, no.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Glad to see that Apple is listening to customer feedback _and_ acting on it.

</comment><comment><USER35> Well, I have less respect for Apple now, and still none for Greenpeace.

</comment><comment><USER36> > _Signed_ Bob

A middle finger, the Apple way.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm thinking about whether this is an atypical reaction by Apple and I think it's not but I'm not sure.

The pattern is typical – more or less. Some criticism appears. Apple is dead silent for a few days. Apple has a comprehensive response to the criticism. (Alternative that also happens frequently: Apple doesn't ever mention the criticism.) That's what used to happen in the past, that's what nearly happened here.

The difference is that they responded with a different message pretty quickly after the criticism (arguing that EPAT isn't such a great certification) so it's not true that they staid completely silent.

When it comes to the message itself, I don't think it's that atypical. Apple rarely responds to criticism, so there are few situations we can use to compare. It's not as big a deal as Atennagate – so they picked a less involved way to respond (basically a press release instead of a press conference) – but in every other respect it's pretty similar.

This time there is a clearer Mea Culpa but the undertone is still that EPAT is a bad certification. (During the Antennagate press conference the undertone was that it's not really that big of a deal – and it was a much more obvious undertone.) The tradition of Apple execs writing letters is also continued.

I would only say that Steve's letters tended to be more about presenting arguments. That has certainly something to do with the different purposes (explain why DRM/Flash are bad vs. admit that you were wrong and reverse direction) but I still would have preferred if Bob Mansfield had explained more of Apple's reasoning.

<comment><USER37> "Apple is dead silent for a few days." - Why is this special or even worth mentioning? You expect a multi-billion dollar company with 20K employees to discuss something like that happily in a public forum or so?

<comment><USER38> Most companies have "damage control" (PR) departments that move very quickly to respond to and contain any criticism before a story explodes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> geez apple, get it together. i was mildly impressed by tim cook when he took over, but now i'm getting the impression that he is apple's steve ballmer. this was a ridiculous and trivially preventable gaff.</comment>


For instance, poets who previously received two dollars per line now get ten. - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetry_(magazine)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is basically an off-topic submission, but what the heck. In this age when bankers are getting mega-million bonuses amid financial turmoil, let's not forget that even poetry magazines with 200 million dollar balance sheets are still paying pennies on the word.</comment>


Dropbox and Uber: Worth Billions, But Still Inches From Disaster - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/business/2014/01/dropbox-uber/ <comment><USER2> The ease with which customers can _or will_ migrate from one service to another is greatly exaggerated by this article, and many many other articles like it.

Look at web search--it's no harder to type www.bing.com instead of www.google.com (it's actually 2 letters easier), and for most common searches, the results will be exactly the same. "What time does the Super Bowl start". "Facebook login".[1]

And yet, Bing has not significantly dented Google's web search market share despite $billions of investment in technology, advertising, incentive plans, etc.

> If Dropbox accidentally destroyed just one person's file, he said, it could > erode the trust of all its users.

Ha! Dropbox destroys user files against the will of users all the time--it's inherent in the concept of a syncing service, and why we warn each other, "Dropbox is not a backup service."

And if you're thinking of just straight-up data corruption or loss, look at Evernote, which does that on a regular basis yet continues to grow.

There's nothing more to this story than the fundamental threats that face any business in any industry: if you fail to please your customers, you leave the door open for competitors. But, that doesn't mean there is no margin for error. Or even a small margin for error.

[1] [http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2051199/Facebook- Login-...](http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2051199/Facebook-Login-Fiasco- Demonstrates-Challenge-in-Competing-with-Google)

<comment><USER3> One caveat though. Out of 200m Dropbox users only 1-2% of users will be paid users (2-4m). The remaining 98% of users have not found a compelling reason to pony up yet. These users are fickle and have less inertia than paid users. So the threat is real as the article suggests.

<comment><USER4> Yes, it would be absolutely horrible if Dropbox lost their non-paying users.

<comment><USER5> I assume you're being sarcastic. Non-paying customers do server at least one purpose for Dropbox, word of mouth advertising and the fact they tell others _" I'll just share the file you need on dropbox. Go sign up, it's free"._ All these non-payers, and the people they refer, may start paying at anytime in the future for whatever reason.

<comment><USER6> > I'll just share the file you need on dropbox. Go sign up, it's free

Why would you need the other party to sign up? Isn't that the point of public links?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > _If Dropbox accidentally destroyed just one person's file, he said, it could > erode the trust of all its users. "This is like the same sort of genre of > problem as the code that you use to fly an airplane. Even if it's a little > bug, it's a big problem."_

As someone who writes code for jet engines, I find this perspective laughable. A better analogy would be if an automated baggage handling system lost your bag. You'd lose your stuff and the airline would lose your trust. You might rant about it on a blog and a few people would get upset and switch airlines with you. But nobody dies.

</comment><comment><USER8> As a frequent Uber user in Chicago, I can attest to the fact that Uber _often_ has no available rides for me when I need one. Just this past weekend at a rather busy intersection in Chicago, after requesting both an UberX and regular Uber taxi multiple times, I kept getting texts from Uber saying "we can't find an Uber for you at this time. Sorry for the inconvenience. Please try again soon!"

So the article's suggestion that "customers opening up the app and seeing no rides on the map" would be an existential threat to Uber is currently being proven wrong by Uber's success. That happens _all the time_ and Uber is still doing alright.

<comment><USER9> While in Chicago over the holiday I tried out an app called Hailo to get yellow cabs on 3 separate occasions when none were to be found. I both enjoyed and recommend the app (with which I've no affiliation).

Not sure if you'd get the same response as uber taxi. Some of the hailo drivers also had the uber app running somewhere on their dash and some did not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Startups tend to be halfway between taking over the world and bankruptcy.

That's why we love them and founders sleep on floors.

<comment><USER11> I'd go so far as to say all companies balance this act. A company can implode at any stage of its life. See: Nokia, Blackberry, etc.

<comment><USER12> Good point. But for example, in 2007 I'd say Blackberry were miles and not inches from death. They could probably have steered in another direction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Dropbox is not diversified"

How diversified was Google in its first ten years? Ads and desktop search overwhelmingly ruled. How diversified is Facebook? How diversified is Twitter? How diversified is Apple? (with the iPhone generating 75% of their profit)

This tends to apply to almost any big company in its formative years. They get big because they put all their wood behind a killer arrow that made all the rest possible. That's not to say Dropbox will have that future, but rather that criticizing them for not diversifying at this point is a low quality criticism.

<comment><USER14> Exactly. Any company has to be focused on executing one thing well for several years into it's life if they want to succeed at all.

The article struck me as being very poorly written for this reason. As if offering some generic web widget will help Dropbox diversify and survive if users lose faith in their syncing product. If the author knew anything about startups he wouldn't have made this the central point of this piece.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The ignorance and arrogance of Uber about the French union situtation is mindbogglying:

> _This is also why Uber believes it can't compromise once it begins to offer > its services in a new city, or a new country, like France. It strives to > work with regulators to accommodate its existing service rather than > changing how it works._

It's not the regulators/government that are a problem, it's the taxi unions. You're talking about a place with a very strong, and very long history of active union activity.

"We can't compromise on service". "Fine, we'll drag your drivers out of their cars and set the cars on fire. Your move."

<comment><USER16> Could it be that, given the existing setup of the market, Uber is a good guy in the US, but a bad guy in France? This is probably not a popular opinion here, and I'm neither USian nor French, but hear me out:

In the US, there is a system of taxi medaillons whose result is that rentiers get rich [0]. The tl;dr: the right to operate a taxi is bound to license of which there is an artificially limited supply. These licenses typically do not belong to drivers but to rentiers, who rent them out to drivers. The drivers lose, the passengers lose, the rentiers win.

France has unions, which makes it unlikely that there are third party rentiers who profit off the system in the same way as it happens in the US. Perhaps the passengers still lose, but the drivers probably don't.

That makes the framework in which Uber is trying to enter _very_ different, and it means that Uber just may not be the good guy there. After all, pretty much everybody can agree that "rentiers = bad". On the other hand, "workers = bad" has far less support.

[0] [http://blog.priceonomics.com/post/47636506327/the-tyranny- of...](http://blog.priceonomics.com/post/47636506327/the-tyranny-of-the-taxi- medallions)

<comment><USER17> In France we do have a limited supply of taxi licences. But they are usually owned by the driver.

Since they worth a lot (~250k€) and that taxi driver is a liberal profession, they acts as a retirement plan / life insurance.

This is why taxi unions gets really upset when there is a governmental plan to raise the amount of licences, or when any unregulated competition shows up (motorbike taxis, "private drivers", and now Uber).

<comment><USER18> > they are usually owned by the driver

Yup. Especially in SF, the medallion owner just won the lottery and rents it out. No one is going to risk going to jail to protect their boss' monopoly.

<comment><USER15> So what happened when the bosses protest and go to jail?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've personally never found Dropbox to be what I want in a file-sharing device.

Ultimately, I think its really a shame that the OS vendors haven't made 'cloud-based auto-discovery and user-control over publication' a major feature of their OS. The reason we need/want/love Dropbox is simply that the mainstream OS vendors dropped the ball, imho, and got lured away into Web2.0 land when they should simply have been adding these features - a distributed, cloud-based networked filesystem - directly to the OS. Why do I need another custom extension for this, from an unknown startup, when it could as easily be implemented as an OS feature? I think the reason is, the vendors are asleep at the wheel.

I've enjoyed the process of setting up my own cloud services for things like filesharing, using whatever tools I can .. but I sure wish it were just something to 'turn on' in OSX or Ubuntu, or whatever .. without requiring a third-party involvement (Ubuntu One or iCloud = no thanks!).

So I see Dropbox's future as being pretty cloudy, personally. I think the repercussions for American cloud providers, especially, are coming .. the desire for a private cloud is a big itch.

</comment><comment><USER13> "Uber could make the recent complaints go away fairly quickly. It could drop surge pricing. And it could acquiesce and change its service in cities where government and industry have come out against it."

This is false. If Uber gives an inch, their competitors will go for the kill and move on to targeting the jugular. What they want is for Uber to not exist, and for there to be no new competitor or revolution in their business. There is no way to appease their competitors that results in Uber surviving as a useful service.

What Uber's competitors want is very simple: 1) they want to not have to compete with any innovation; 2) they do not want to have to change or improve their services; 3) they want no new, fast growing entrants allowed in their markets

Basically what they want is a frozen, guaranteed market with zero market forces. That's why their response is: violence, regulations, political leverage, etc (anything but innovation or actually competing with Uber).

</comment><comment><USER20> If all startups face the same problem then the strongest startup wins. Simply naming a risk that all startups face and then saying the strongest startups in their respective domains are more at risk isn't really cutting it for me. If there's anyone that would figure out how to store my files in the cloud reliably it's probably dropbox and if there's anyone that's going to solve the math, science and cs problem of moving cars around...it's probably uber and not lyft or any of the other competitors. For now, their $ Billion valuations are safe and sound.

</comment><comment><USER21> The alternatives are either running your own service or switching to a dropbox competitor.

Even at huge companies with resources dedicated towards IT infrastructure, systems still go down with regularity. Dropbox is probably still more reliable than what many large companies use.

</comment><comment><USER22> The real strength of Dropbox comes from the ecosystem of apps that use dropbox to store data. It is hard for newcomers to challenge that network effect. But competitors like Tonido are doing interesting stuff by focusing on the security, privacy and the private aspects of owning your own cloud. If they are able to change the narrative from utility to trust and security then newcomers have a fighting chance.

Finally it comes to what wins the customers: Trust or Utility or the Balanced of Both.

<comment><USER23> Which apps are using Dropbox to store data?

<comment><USER24> Tons of mobile apps do this. 1password is probably the best example, but just the other day I decided I wanted to be able to view a Sketchup file on my phone and the app I found ( [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sightspace- free-d/id56721967...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sightspace- free-d/id567219670?mt=8) ) had the option to load files from Dropbox.</comment></comment></comment>


The Edge of Reason? - iPhone game developer's trademark battle - <AUTHOR> http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/the-edge-of-reason

<comment><USER2> Tim Langdell is well-known for being a total dick about the use of the word "Edge" in games. He's also on the board of the Independent Game Developers Association. There's a recall effort afoot as a result of his pigheadedness: [http://corvus.zakelro.com/2009/07/its-fun-to-stay-at-the- igd...](http://corvus.zakelro.com/2009/07/its-fun-to-stay-at-the-igda/)

</comment><comment><USER3> What about the game Mirror's edge? No, wait, that's published by a large company with a legal department. Not easy target there.

<comment><USER4> But they tried to leech off of it: [http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2581/3724300173_2680b2c023.jp...](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2581/3724300173_2680b2c023.jpg)

<comment><USER5> Am I imagining it or is their logo exactly the same as EDGE magazines logo.

<http://www.edge-online.com/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> TIGSource has been tracking Langdell and Edge Games for a while now: <http://www.tigsource.com/pages/edge-games>

The guy sounds like scum.

</comment><comment><USER6> [http://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/v?qt=adv&procstatus=All...](http://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/v?qt=adv&procstatus=All&pno=&propno=&qs=&propnameop=&propname=&pop=&pn=&pop2=&pn2=&cop=&cn=langdell)

Well, he's been feeding lawyers.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is a good lesson as to why it's a good idea to spend a little time doing some quick trademark searches on uspto.gov

<comment><USER8> The lesson is that it should not be possible to trademark dictionary words. Or maybe the lesson is that someone should trademark "The" and then proceed to haul in settlement profits?</comment></comment>


ZCash not anonymous due to a bug - <AUTHOR> https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/zcash-bug-prevents-private-transactions-soon-after-launch/ <comment><USER2> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY0WxgSXdEE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY0WxgSXdEE)</comment>


The Market War Between Traders and Investors - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703793804575511990102886132.html

<comment><USER2> There is absolutely no reason anybody should be able to buy information about order flow.

High freq traders like to pretend that they make money because they are so smart and so fast, but the real reason they make money is because the exchanges are willing to sell them information about somebody else's orders before those orders are executed. That of course is highly unfair to the person whose orders are being sold.

Selling order flows is basically an act of greed by the exchanges which screws over most of the stock trading/investing population in favour of the high freq traders and also dramatically destabilises the markets. This is terrible because it is the ordinary investors that perform the function that the market was created for (providing capital to business) and this high frequency trading stuff appears simply as a huge tax on ordinary investment.

Congress should simply ban the exchanges from selling any information about incoming orders. If I order to buy or sell a stock the only thing I want from the exchange is to buy or sell the stock for me. I do not want the exchange to tell somebody else about my order before it is executed so that other person can screw me over.

If the high freq traders are really smart they should figure out how to make money without getting the order flow info.

<comment><USER3> You don't know what you're talking about, unfortunately. No one buys order flow. The only time your order won't receive price time priority on the US equities markets is when your broker internalizes the order and matches or improves the price as compared to the NBBO.

And if you're thinking flash orders then you're also wrong. Not only is the practice not used anymore, but even if you're order is flashed it will only match if the price is improved.

<comment><USER4> Why do you think flash orders are not practiced anymore? The SEC hasn't banned them, and AFAIK some brokers still flash their clients orders before executing them.

> but even if you're order is flashed it will only match if the price is > improved.

I don't think you understand how flash orders work -- flash orders tell some 3rd party what YOU will be doing in the next second, enough time for that 3rd party to snatch all offers at that price, raising the price for you. Of course if you had a limit order it wouldn't match; but now, if you still want to buy those shares (which most flashed clients do, for whatever reasons), you have to pay a higher price. Incidentally, it's almost always that 3rd party which offers those shares to you -- guaranteeing their profit.

<comment><USER3> There is a __huge __nuance in what you just said. Folks, the markets are complicated. There are a ton of rules. Make sure you understand them if you want to play this game.

Brokers currently have a right to internalize customer order flow. They can match that order amongst other standing client orders. They can route that order however they please. They can seek liquidity in dark pools before sending the order to the broader market. Or they can even trade against that order if they want. The only rule they must adhear to is that they must match or beat the prevailing NBBO price.

Flash orders are when an exchange receives an order from a participant and then asks other participants if they want to fill it __before __sending it to their matching system and into the national market.

These two items are hugely different. Flash orders are effectively gone even though they did nothing to harm any market participant. The only result was order flow that was permitted to flash would receive price improvement. Unfortunately, the uninformed tempest in the teapot created by Schumer and Congress prompted the SEC to propose a ban and the exchanges to eliminte the order type. It's gone.

Broker/dealer internalization is here to stay. Don't expect it to get eliminated ... ever. Brokers make a ton of money doing this and there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. Why do you think there are so many sub-penny fills? If a market is 100 bid for 10.01 and 10.02 offered for 500, and you submit a order to E _Trade to buy 100 at market, E_ Trade will do all sorts of funny stuff with your order to improve price. These days, they will hit dark pools and you might fill at 10.015. Why can they do this? Well, you got a better price and the dark pool isn't limited to penny increments because the order flow is non-displayed.

> I don't think you understand how flash orders work -- flash orders tell some > 3rd party what YOU will be doing in the next second, enough time for that > 3rd party to snatch all offers at that price, raising the price for you.

Go read about the national market system. Go read the old rules about flash orders and price improvement. Then reconsider what you've just typed.

<comment><USER4> > There is a huge nuance in what you just said. Folks, the markets are > complicated. There are a ton of rules. Make sure you understand them if you > want to play this game.

Having built systems that traded quadrillions in notional value (and in the process made a small percentage of that in profit), I think I have an idea what I'm talking about and how to play this game.

Everything you said is true in theory, except practice is quite a bit different:

ETrade will flash your order in order to get a better price; and one second later, will go to the NBBO. But some of the players they flash to will go and BUY the NBBO within that second. So when ETrade, after not having able to improve your price, goes to the NBBO, they found they can no longer fill at the price that was available just a second ago. That's unfair advantage for the flasher -- a second ago, the ask was at 10.02 and bid was 10.01, which means the fair price is somewhere in between, but definitely not more than 10.02; Now, the flasher knows there's a buyer at 10.02 -- so they buy it themselves at 10.02 and offer to sell at 10.03; In many cases, the buyer will still want to buy, making the flasher a profit of 0.01; In the worst case, the flasher can offer it again at 10.02, paying only commission on his failed trade, and is likely to sell to the same buyer.

I know of institutions who actually made money that way, lots of it, with ridiculously low risk. And it's legal, because the broker is allowed to flash the order to anyone they want for one second before going to the NBBO, and the flasher has no commitment not to abuse that.

> Go read about the national market system. Go read the old rules about flash > orders and price improvement. Then reconsider what you've just typed.

The NBBO system is broken and has been for years. The flashing technique I highlighted above is one example. During the flash crash of may 6, the CQS (and NBBO) was 20 seconds delayed, meaning you couldn't fill at the NBBO prices.

<comment><USER3> > Having built systems that traded quadrillions in notional value (and in the > process made a small percentage of that in profit), I think I have an idea > what I'm talking about and how to play this game.

You continue to confuse a flash order as used by the exchange to broker/dealer internalization.

<comment><USER4> I stand corrected -- "flashing" used to mean all that. It goes back at least 10 years, when I started trading (and, according to Wikipedia, as far back as 1978). Now it only means what the exchange side does, and what brokers do is called "internalization". But it's the same thing. I know it's being exploited for frontrunning on the broker side, and I see no reason why it wouldn't be possible on the exchange side (even if its just 30ms -- that's more than enough to frontrun the client in the NBBO exchange at the time).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's absolutely nothing stopping the big institutional players setting up a private secondary exchange between themselves which doesn't allow short-term traders (even using something like a dark pool if they want to keep sizes quiet). The reason they don't is because exchanges that have short-term traders have more liquidity and better prices.

<comment><USER3> They do set up off-exchange venues. Any of the block trade matching services, for example. There are also sources of liquidity that require non-trivial amounts of capital to access like dark pools. Regardless, each of these venues provide additional service that compensates for their reduced liquidity. Posit, for example, helps you match large, anonymous block trades at prices that might be inferior to the NBBO, but only inferior within limits.

The benefits to you, the user of posit, are clear. Get very large orders crossed with some bounded market impact. For this, you're happy to pay the price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Conclusion:

"Whom should the market be designed to serve: Short-term traders or long-term investors?"

<comment><USER3> The concluding question from the article is fundamentally flawed and completely invalid.

The market functions because people who want to buy are matched with people who want to sell. This fundamental concepts requires there be an asynchrony in market participant motivations. Leaning the market to one type of participant (let's say, long term value investors) will disincent others to participate. By doing this, the market will find it harder and harder to serve those it deems most important because no one will take the other side of their trades.

People seem to think that markets are there to serve them. In reality, markets are there to serve two people at once. The unique pairing of a buyer and seller is required for the market to function and by definition requires the market to cater to no one. It simply must provide a service that is deemed fair by all participants. Fair to the point that they are not disincented to participate.

From the article, if the mutual funds actually stand up and say, "You know what, I'm not trading Tape C securities anymore, especially not on BATS or Nasdaq. I will now only trade Tape A, NYSE listed, specialist controlled stocks" you can bet that the other exchangse will listen and do what's required to maintain their order flow. Of course, the mutual fund managers WON'T do this precisely because they know whatever disincentive they are faced with by participating in venues where automated trading is prevelant are far outweighed by the benefits they receive by trading there.

This is nothing more than a group of people wanting the good old days back. Times change, to keep up you must adapt. Those mutual funds need to invest in better execution. They need to learn to play in the new world and stop trying to introduce misleading rules into the system to fix the game like it's 1993. Markets change, if you want to keep playing you change too.

<comment><USER4> The system right now significantly favours whoever can invest >$50000/month in infrastructure (regardless of trading volume).

For example, in the recent flash-crashes (e.g. 6-may), anyone using the "standard" feed had a lag of several minutes on price data, whereas anyone using the newer interfaces (at $10K "pay-to-play" minimum) got up-to-date prices. While this was extreme, it did happen 4 times in the last 6 months; And it happens every single day to a lesser degree.

Also, "flash orders" which got everyone raging last year are still permitted. Their only purpose is to let the faster players profit at the expense of the slower players. The regulation here is broken.

Markets change; that does not mean the market today is operating properly. If anything was game, you wouldn't need the SEC or the huge amount of laws and regulations to make it work.

Insider-trading laws were needed because some people were able to take advantage of others. The details have changed, but still -- a lot of what is not illegal today should be.

<comment><USER3> > The system right now significantly favours whoever can invest >$50000/month > in infrastructure (regardless of trading volume).

You're drastically overstating the costs. I can put a server at the Nasdaq data center using Lightspeed Trading as my broker for $1,000. For no additional fee apart from paying the standard Nasdaq professional market data fee I can have access to the multicast Itch data feed. The rawest form of market data available from the Nasdaq. These aren't hypothetical numbers. These are real.

If you want to form a broker/dealer and buy a membership and host your own infrastructure, etc yes you might pay more. But for that the only added benefit you get is the ability to access the market rather than just access the data feed. You get your own MPID or you trade through someone elses. Regardless, you're execution might be about 300 microseconds better than using a broker that caters to this stuff like Lime Brokerage or Lightspeed.

> For example, in the recent flash-crashes (e.g. 6-may), anyone using the > "standard" feed had a lag of several minutes on price data, whereas anyone > using the newer interfaces (at $10K "pay-to-play" minimum) got up-to-date > prices. While this was extreme, it did happen 4 times in the last 6 months; > And it happens every single day to a lesser degree.

Go read about why many of the high-frequency firms pulled out of the market. They pulled out because the exchange's data feeds themselves were starting to fall behind. Their data was suspect, just as was everyone elses. If your data feed is lagged 4 times out of the last 6 months then you might want to go look at DTN's NxCore product. It doesn't lag and it's costs are quite reasonable for anyone who might need data at that level of fidelity.

> Also, "flash orders" which got everyone raging last year are still > permitted.

Where? Please cite a specific exchange and point me to the specific order type in their documentation. I've read the specs of nearly every major futures and equities liquidity venue in the US, so I doubt this is a true statement.

> Their only purpose is to let the faster players profit at the expense of the > slower players. The regulation here is broken.

Wrong, the purpose is to provide incentive for participants to trade at a specific exchange by giving them an opportunity to trade before the broader market does. For this they must improve the NBBO to match the flashed order.

<comment><USER4> > You're drastically overstating the costs. I can put a server at the Nasdaq > data center using Lightspeed Trading as my broker for $1,000.

Prices have dropped then. When NASDAQ bought INET, my payment came up for $400/month to $6000/month without any change in the service I was receiving (and it did come with onerous reporting requirements that I didn't factor into the $6000 above). I've been out of the game for a while. (But these $6000 was just payment to nasdaq -- hosting and comm line to my office was a few grands more; and that's just NASDAQ. each of the other exchanges had similar costs)

> Go read about why many of the high-frequency firms pulled out of the market. > They pulled out because the exchange's data feeds themselves were starting > to fall behind. Their data was suspect, just as was everyone elses. If your > data feed is lagged 4 times out of the last 6 months then you might want to > go look at DTN's NxCore product. It doesn't lag and it's costs are quite > reasonable for anyone who might need data at that level of fidelity.

I have actually been out of the game myself recently, so I didn't actually experience the flash crash. But friends still in the industry told me that the ITCH feeds (and the other exchange direct high-speed feeds) weren't lagging, only the CQS and NBBO feeds were.

The point is, if you don't have the ITCH/ARCABOOK/MDP/EBS data today, you are already at a disadvantage. 10 years ago, a $1500/month Bloomberg or Reuters terminal gave you the same info as everyone else. Today, if you're looking at multiple markets, you need to spend $50000/month to not be disadvantages. Those are real numbers as of a few years ago. I'm surprised prices have dropped, because they were constantly going up all the time.

> Where? Please cite a specific exchange and point me to the specific order > type in their documentation. I've read the specs of nearly every major > futures and equities liquidity venue in the US, so I doubt this is a true > statement.

Flashes are done by brokers, not by exchanges!

A broker gets your order; they are allowed 1 full second before they must fill it at the NBBO at that time. EXCHANGE ORDERS ARE NEVER FLASHED.

at time 0ms, you send a "BUY 100 INTL, LIMIT 110.13" to your broker. The broker must fill that at the NBBO if possible at 1000ms at the latest. So at 1ms, they say to all their "flash" partners "WOULD YOU LIKE TO FILL 100 INTL AT 110.13 OR LOWER?". Now, theoretically, those partners should just check their own book and reply. But practically, these partners also rush out to buy 110.13 at the Philadelphia Stock Exchange (where the NBBO is), so now the NBBO is no longer at 110.13. They do offer to sell it at 110.14 on ARCA. But at 1000ms (1 second later), the original client order which WOULD have been filled if the broker just went to PSE and NOT flashed it, CANNOT BE FILLED.

What the average client will do is probably say, "well, ok then -- I want Intel at 110.14". The broker now flashes this order, and our flashee guy from earlier is happy to fill the order -- locking a profit of 0.01 with essentially zero risk. And if the client doesn't come back for 110.14? They'll just update the ARCA order to be 110.13; They're almost guaranteed to sell it to the same guy.

So, with some (small in practice) probability, the flashee pays a small commission; with large probability, they get free profit minus a small commission.

> Wrong, the purpose is to provide incentive for participants to trade at a > specific exchange by giving them an opportunity to trade before the broader > market does. For this they must improve the NBBO to match the flashed order.

That's theory. Practice of flashing is different. Note that exchanges DON'T wait this whole flashing second -- they either fill it locally immediately or route it to the NBBO. But brokers are allowed to do it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Twitch's New Brand and Logo - <AUTHOR> https://blog.twitch.tv/en/2019/09/26/nice-to-meet-you-again-for-the-first-time/ <comment><USER2> The font seems a little thick from my layman perspective but I'm sure I'll get used to it. Besides the typical advertisement fuckery game that everyone has to play, I trust Twitch with its platform development. Over the past 5 years they have consistently added user friendly features that I didn't know I wanted, but now can't imagine twitch being without. The only thing I can really think of that I would like is better multi-stream watching support. But yea great job guys and gals

</comment><comment><USER3> This is "re"branding done right. Building on accumulated brand recognition instead of dumping it for something trendy or edgy. One of the worst recent redesigns is Dropbox. I still don't understand what their ugly art deco color scheme is all about: [https://www.creativebloq.com/news/dropbox-redesign-is-a- fant...](https://www.creativebloq.com/news/dropbox-redesign-is-a-fantastic- midlife-crisis)</comment>


Polynomial Time Algorithm for Graph Isomorphism Testing - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/abs/1004.1808 <comment><USER2> This would be big news if true (though not P=NP-big; graph isomorphism is an apparently-hard problem that isn't known to be NP-hard).

From a cursory glance, it doesn't look terribly promising, but I haven't made a serious attempt to see what he's doing and how it might work. Examples of not-terribly-promising things:

1\. He proves what he calls "Assertion 1", then says that it "suggests" some other propositions that he calls "Conclusion 1", "Conclusion 2", "Conclusion 3". He doesn't offer any proofs of these; they don't seem to be obvious consequences of Assertion 1; they don't even seem very likely to be true. In particular, Assertion 1 has the form "if graphs G and G' are isomorphic, then [linear algebra stuff]" and Conclusion 2 (which he uses later) has the form "if [linear algebra stuff] then graphs G and G' are isomorphic".

2\. He then defines this thing he calls a W-matrix, which seems like it basically encodes for a given vertex of a given graph which other vertices are at any given distance from it. He then appears to claim -- I'm not quite sure, because his notation is eccentric and it's late at night -- that equality of W-matrices is basically the same thing as similarity of vertices (i.e., whether some graph automorphism carries one to the other), and that doesn't look right to me.

I repeat that I haven't looked at this carefully, and I'm not an expert in the field anyway. But it's not compelling enough to make me want to spend much more time on it; I expect that if it turns out to be valid someone smarter than me will check it over and let the world know :-).

<comment><USER3> Anyone can post to the ArXiv. So now wait a few weeks. One test: does his algorithm work for bipartite graphs? Another test: his algorithm uses real numbers. This is sketchy, as real numbers can't actually be represented in a computer.

The paper is pretty poorly written for two reasons: English is clearly not this guy's first language (no crime there, as it is said that the language of science is "heavily accented english") but he is also using a little too much handwaving for my comfort. This is a pretty math-heavy result, and this is not an airtight proof in any sense.

Basically: I agree with everything you said about it not being compelling enough for me to spend more time with it.

Fun fact so that I'll say more than "I agree": if GI is in P, the the polynomial hierarchy collapses to a level that I forget, and if GI is NPC it collapses to a PI_2! Neat!

<comment><USER4> > does his algorithm work for bipartite graphs?

Please, download the program and test any graph you like ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> The author appears to have done a fair bit of self-promotion in Wikipedia, which seems like a bad sign (though of course it doesn't prove anything): <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Tim32> and [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Graph_isomorphism&...](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Graph_isomorphism&action=history) (see, e.g., a reversion from David Eppstein, who most certainly knows his stuff, saying "Persistent long-term self-promotion; blocking may be indicated.").

<comment><USER5> I can't help comparing this to the extreme _absence_ of self-promotion in the most prominent example of somebody doing this who turned out to be the real thing (Perelman).

<comment><USER2> Yeah. But you've got to be careful; lots of people dismissed Louis de Branges' claim to have proved the Bieberbach conjecture because he also had a long history of self-promotion (and, indeed, of claiming to have proved things when his proofs really had holes). But he really _did_ prove the Bieberbach conjecture.

Then again, he also keeps claiming to have proved the Riemann hypothesis and no one believes him :-).

<comment><USER5> You obviously know more about this than I do. That's a very interesting case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One thing particularly interesting about this is that Graph Isomorphism is in a hypothetical category of problems sometimes dubbed "NP-intermediate": they are _believed_ to be hard, but nobody has proven they're NP-complete. Linear programming used to be one of these, but was proven (rather brilliantly) to be in P by Leonid Khachiyan in 1979.

Notably, as far as I know, it hasn't been proven that NP-intermediate _even exists_. It's quite possible that all problems believed to be in that category are actually either P or NP-complete. If this proof is on the right track, this possibility may be all the more likely.

</comment><comment><USER7> Context: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_isomorphism#Algorithmic_a...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_isomorphism#Algorithmic_approach)

tl;dr: Graph isomorphism recognition is an old and well-known problem that is in NP. It was not known whether it was NP-complete or in P, but this paper suggests that it is in P. This is kind of Big, assuming the paper's correct.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hi, I'm Michael Trofimov, the author of this preprint.Thank you for your interest, you are welcome to ask your questions. More info about me you can find, for example, in Intel site: <http://software.intel.com/sites/blackbelt/hall_of_fame.php> (see Top Community Masterminds section). Is it self-promotion? ;-)

Yes, I am not native English speaker, so I would be very thankful if somebody will mark unclear statements in the paper and will suggest his/her version. Very important: this is preprint only! It is not final result, the investigation is under the progress. During discussion in other web-sites and via emails: one minor bug in the proof and one bug in program had been found. The program bug was fixed, also some time later I will upload the second version of the paper to arXiv.

All the best, \-- Michael.

</comment><comment><USER8> This makes me nervous: Further, without loss of generality of the task, we will consider undirected connected graphs without loops.

Tree isomorphism is polynomial. It's not obvious to me how you cut the loops out of two graphs and ensure you end up with similar trees. Quick scan didn't show that in the paper. I guess i'll have to read in more detail after dinner.

<comment><USER7> Loops as in "edges from vertex a to vertex a", not cycles, were discounted.

That's fine because you can ignore them until the end, and then just check your vertices for any loops, in O(n) time.

<comment><USER8> ah! that makes a whole lot more sense. thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm not buying this until it's peer reviewed by someone like Brendan McKay.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Check out the acknowledgments.

<comment><USER10> What about them?

<comment><AUTHOR> At least two of the people acknowledged are world famous algorithms researchers.

But it's not clear how much of the paper they looked at and whether they think it's correct.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I'd be curious what the opinions of other researchers in this area are. There have been a number of debunked polynomial time algorithms for GI, so it's one of those things people are always skeptical of; but that of course doesn't mean this one is wrong too.

The author of the paper recently posted a blog comment in which he says he submitted to a few journals, and complains that "referees did not find any fatal error in my proof, but all the journals rejected this paper": [http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2009/05/04/an-approach-to- grap...](http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2009/05/04/an-approach-to-graph- isomorphism/#comment-3156)

I'd take that as evidence that the referees at least didn't think it was a successful proof. The comment is attached to an old blog post about the problem from a well-known theoretical computer scientist (R.J. Lipton), but since it was posted about a year after the initial post, it hasn't gotten any replies.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Using Obsidian to manage goals, tasks, notes, and software dev knowledge base - <AUTHOR> https://joshwin.imprint.to/post/how-i-use-obsidian-to-manage-my-goals-tasks-notes-and-software-development-knowledge-base <comment><USER2> After having used Bear, Notable, and Atom + plugins, I'm realizing I don't really want an app to manage my notes. I just want the notes, plus a tool to traverse them that's got a bit more beef to it than Finder.app.

I'd like to use a more powerful app like the one promoted here, but I feel desperately uncomfortable tying my notes [in] to a piece of _proprietary software_. I feel like that was a mistake I made already, and don't want to repeat.

It's almost like Obsidian et al are highly featureful filesystem browsers, but where the only files one can have are markdown files.

What about if I want to style a real PDF in Asciidoc? It's really common for a note to evolve into a document. An idea becomes a lesson plan for a class, which morphs into a handout with tables, admonitions etc.

What about if I want to represent some idea with a quick spreadsheet? Or a sketchup? It would be fantastic if those were somehow all represented as first class documents in the filesystem, as markdown is inside the current wave of proprietary markdown editors.

<comment><USER3> I'm using VS code and the markdown preview plugin, with a private repo on github. Works pretty good and would support other filetypes besides MD.

<comment><USER4> I am doing the same thing, additionally I have a cron job running which auto- commits every 5 minutes.

For mobile viewing I use the app GitJournal.

[https://gitjournal.io/](https://gitjournal.io/)

<comment><USER5> > GitJournal

Thanks for this

\--a fellow git + markdown + cron note-taker

<comment><USER6> Hi. I'm the author, please feel free to contact me if you have any issues and/or feature requests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was initially skeptical of Obsidian, but...

(1) It's not proprietary - it's a browser +/\- IDE for markdown files. I point it at the folder in my Dropbox directory where I already keep all my md files. It's a new front-end, but doesn't lock me into anything.

(2) As an extension of 1, I can continue using NotePlan as my calendar/todo on my phone (which builds everything into md files), and Kiwi to access all of the above on my phone as a personal wiki.

(2) was already my workflow and knowledge base; Obsidian just made for a nicer editing/browsing tool on PC.

The key is that, as what is essentially a wiki, both the files/notes _and their interrelationships_ are conserved/non-proprietary, regardless of what happens to the chosen software in the future. No lock-in for any part of my calendar, workflow, or knowledge base, and all three can point to one another because it's all just md in the same folder.

<comment><USER5> > (1) It's not proprietary

I would call requiring a paid commercial license if you plan on doing commercial use "proprietary." That was the deal breaker for me, as I'm more than happy to continue using Foam until a free Obsidian-like client comes along.

<comment><USER7> I meant to convey it's not a proprietary format - no lock-in of my data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think what most people don't see coming is that Wilker Lúcio was hired by Roam Research he is the author of Pathom and gave this talk recently:

\- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS3i3DTUnAI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS3i3DTUnAI)

It's about connecting many graphs together, the killer app in this space is to figure out how to connect these graphs together such that teams and communities can grow connections on a massive scale

There will be many challenges in doing that particularly around selection, per edge permissions likely leveraging Clojure's namespaced keywords to get global attributes

This will mean a major re architecture of Roam Research, I predict most Roam clones are going to get absolutely blindsided by this

Roam today is ~just~ a datascript database on the client being kept up to date with firebase

For now if you want open source Roam keep an eye on [https://github.com/athensresearch/athens](https://github.com/athensresearch/athens)

</comment><comment><USER9> One question for all users of knowledge-bases like this:

How often do you write something down and look it the next day and realize it's not relevant anymore because of reasons like:

• you memorized it

• it's not as important as it seemed yesterday

• it's a todo and having it there actually nags you and prevents you from completing it

• it creates some other kind of mental load: while skipping over it, it grabs your attention, which then prevents you from attending to other tasks on the list.

I have a theory that GTD helps only few, for most people it just makes them feel better because they are now spending time creating lists instead of doing what's on them.

<comment><USER10> > it creates some other kind of mental load

Agree with raytracer, that it works contrary to this. Writing things down in a system that you can reliably go back and check, tells your brain to calm down about this thought. If required, you can always reference it later.

You will need to classify points as either tasks or general information you want to store for later.

The cool part of tools like Roam, Obsidian, is that you can create bi- directional links. So if you are intentional about this and if you're referencing something related later, you will come across this point and it may be useful then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I moved my notes out of Apple Notes and into Markdown inside text files last year due to the bugs I encountered. This means I can sync them with whatever product I like (currently OneDrive) and open them on any system (currently macOS) with any app that can parse Markdown (currently iA Writer). It also means whenever any new app comes along, I can play around.

Usually what I want is something that loads very quickly and has a minimal UI that allows me to focus on writing, but also allows me to search all files quickly. iA Writer ticks all those boxes, and also has support for simple #hashtags so I can organise the notes.

Where things become more difficult is if the app adds a lot of custom functionality that is either specific to that app or adds lots of custom metadata to the files. Then you start to lose some of the above benefits, particularly cross-platform.

I looked at Obsidian but found the UI to be heavy and slow, and lots of extra functionality I wasn't interested in. I've tried a lot of apps[1] but always come back to iA Writer.

[1] [https://davidmytton.blog/the-best-note-taking-apps-for- mac-m...](https://davidmytton.blog/the-best-note-taking-apps-for-mac-markdown- open-format-cross-platform/)

</comment><comment><USER12> I tried using Obsidian, but I could not resolve the uncertainty of what should be a separate note file vs several items inside a note file.

I then tried various 'outliner' applications (Dynalist, Roam, Workflowy). With these kinds of apps, there is hardly any friction between document and content granularity levels; everything can be just one big tree / directed graph.

I finally settled with Dynalist [1] -- it recently introduced backlinks and is the far more mature, sleek and feature-rich option compared to Roam.

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

<comment><USER13> Btw, obsidian is from the same makers of dynalist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This was crossposted to the todoist subreddit and and I already said this there:

The overhead that these systems need is my worst nightmare.

I tried obsidian, because I saw how people use notion, roam and obsidian ro manage tasks and as knowledge base... but I just can't imagine me doing this.

I programmed a Bot for todoist and at one point I developed a github > Todoist sync, to manage my work on the Bot... at on point it almost was comical how many additional tasks I ended up with, just to make it happen.

I tried obsidian and quickly tried to use Typoda for markdown, because even writing markdown comes with an overhead... additionally I always need to install 3rd party apps to even access my knowledge..

I'm still looking for the perfect system, but always to back to Todoist for tasks and a simple static file generator for my knowledge base(docsify).. I can edit and access it from everywhere and dont have much overhead.

What I also dont get is the lack of API of theses systems. Afaik notion still don't have one, and even roam doesn't.

For journaling and brainstorming, I build a Todoist function that creates and links a Dropbox Paper directly to the task in Todoist... this way I already have a task and it's out of sight when I'm done... and it only requires a browser.

I envy everyone who can use these apps though. It does seem to be a nice way of offload stuff of the brain.

</comment><comment> francis-io For me, I'm unwilling to invest time in an app thats not open source. Other key things for me would be a web gui, mobile gui, self hosted and easily backed up. Trilium notes is the best thing I have found so far.

<comment><USER15> I suppose "self hosted" and "easily backed up" works fine since Obsidian is supposed to work on local MarkDown files which you can store and backup in any way you want.

Not sure why you'd need a WebGUI since the app appears to be cross-platform; personally, I tend to view web interfaces more as a last resort when there is no native app available. I'm not sure a WebGUI makes sense either if you're storing your data in a local folder.

As far as I know, they don't have a companion mobile app though, and that's a deal-breaker for me too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Canceled Evernote a month ago. To many bugs. Using VIM at this point. Honestly thinking of going back to a notebook. Only issue is I cannot read my own handwriting sometimes ;)

<comment><USER17> A knowledgebase is for storing thousands of notes and quickly retrieve them when needed. Searching dozens of notebooks for the relevant info is not scalable.

<comment><USER18> With plain text formats such as Markdown search is just one grep away. Using ripgrep it's also quite fast.

<comment><USER19> I think parent was referring to this:

> Honestly thinking of going back to a notebook

<comment><USER17> Yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I tried Obsidian but prefer Foam[0], just because I enjoy using VSCode. Once it gets materialized backlinks I suppose it will be similar enough.

[0] [https://foambubble.github.io/foam/](https://foambubble.github.io/foam/)

<comment><USER21> Can't you already navigate with the tree view instead of materialised backlinks? What's the benefit?

I prefer to link my sites organically inside of text in the page. E.g. on a page about Linux I'd write

GNU/Linux is an [operating system](../os) based on the Linux [Kernel](../kernel).

Tada, two backlinks without having to list them. If there's no link on the page it's not important.

Do you see problems with that approach?

<comment><USER20> I actually do like the 'explore backlinks' pane for Foam so it would be of some navigational use for me. They list reasons for adding it as:

> Make every link two-way navigable in published sites

> Make Foam notes more portable to different apps and long-term storage

(via [https://foambubble.github.io/foam/materialized- backlinks](https://foambubble.github.io/foam/materialized-backlinks))

Though I may be getting confused between the backlink differences that Foam, Obsidian, and Roam offer. A list of forward links per document would actually be useful as well, which IIRC neither Foam or Obsidian offer at the moment. Obsidian also shows the user 'unlinked mentions' along with explicit backlinks, which is also a nice feature that Foam lacks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> My current working model (WIP).

1\. Write in Markdown. Stay as less markup as possible and tend towards plain text.

2\. Organize/Categorized into folders; such as -- parenting, entrepreneurship, startup, homelab, books, etc.

3\. Choose a really simple publisher (Jekyll for now). I sprinkle the least front matter in the header of each file. So, I can publish the selected ones online for me, friends, and family.

4\. Let Obsidian look over it (it drops just one folder .obsidian), write with it sometimes. I don't want any tool taking over, chewing it and making smart decisions for me.

My focus are those files inside the folders. I should be able to just replace Jekyll or Obsidian in future without losing the integrity of my content.

<comment><USER23> My favourite thing about obsidian is it made folders redundant. Now my notes structure is more like my thinking structure. Scattered but organised via bi- directional linking and tagging. It's a great way to discover new insights from your own thoughts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> if you are looking for an open source version of obsidian, I would check out [https://dendron.so](https://dendron.so) (disclaimer, I'm the author)

it supports all the same features and built on top of vscode. use it to manage my personal knowledge base of 20k md files

</comment><comment><USER25> My problem with apps like these it's that they are always working on almost everything but not really. Lately I've been testing a few things and then I got back to Org-mode. Works on my desktop, works on Android with Orgzly and works on my iPad with Beorg.

</comment><comment><USER26> I've tried Obsidian, but the data structure is far inferior to Roam Research and not worth wasting my time with it. With Roam I know that my notes are building a rich forest of hierarchies and networks that will be more useful in the future.

<comment><USER27> Did you read the linked article? Sounds like some people are having some issues with stability of Roam. It's one of the things first talked about in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I just started using MindForger which is very similar. I will definitely give Obsidian a look because I love these ideas - thibkjng notebooks.

check out MindForger - it is open source and quite simple to review as it's mainly one maintainer.

<comment><USER28> GitHub repo is here: [https://github.com/dvorka/mindforger](https://github.com/dvorka/mindforger)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Seems to be down? WebArchive can't access it.

Google Cache - [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://joshwin.imprint.to/post/how- i-use-obsidian-to-manage-my-goals-tasks-notes-and-software-development- knowledge-base+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=in)

Google Cache seems to be just a proxy thats loading resources from the main site.

</comment><comment><USER23> I use obsidian and dropbox with markdown mobile apps (text editor on desktop)> It's teh best setup. Way better than roam.

</comment><comment><USER30> I am still using Simplenote because mobile works really fast and the sync stays up to date. The approach here of syncing markdown files with icloud seems like it might work well enough.

The lack of linking between notes is definitely the missing feature of Simplenote.

I like the approach here of trying to sync markdown files with iCloud

</comment><comment><USER31> I think I almost dedicated the last ten years to try to solve my own problem about taking notes for tasks/goals. In the end I come back defaulting to paper-and-pen for day to day projects related notes, and cherrytree for reorganizing them weekly in a digital format.

</comment><comment><USER32> Obsidian is a fantastic app and completely free. You also store the data yourself.

<comment><USER33> "The SOFTWARE PRODUCT is licensed, not sold."

It looks to be non-free software, with a $-free licence tier for personal use.

<comment><USER34> I personally use all my software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I wish Obsidian (or an alternative of some sort) could pick up Devonthink's "AI" and work through both my markdown and my PDF files.

No task management, planning, etc. Just plain reading, thinking and writing.

The quest continues...

</comment><comment><USER36> Just installed Obsidian to give it a quick test, and I must say I am impressed. I've been using Gollum for my personal wiki, but may just move over to Obsidian.

Does anyone know if you can write your own plugins for it?

<comment><USER37> Soon. [https://forum.obsidian.md/c/developers- api/14](https://forum.obsidian.md/c/developers-api/14)

</comment></comment><comment> Maha-pudma Never heard of this before. Sounds like Zim-wiki, which is what I use. Does pretty much everything this can do plus is completely free.

</comment><comment><USER38> this is the setup I keep going back to(I've tried Roam, Obsidian, Tiddly) - VimWiki + TaskWarrior + TaskWiki.

<comment><USER2> Could you elaborate as to why?

<comment><USER38> The reason is mostly I couldn't replace my current workflow using other tools.

1\. open-source. 2\. One command away from my editor(I only use desktop for taking notes), also synced to my dropbox in case. 3\. Amazing extensibility with plugins and custom scripts. Eg: bugwarrior + pomodoro(using Timewarrior, I've used this a lot when freelancing, not so much now) + some custom scripts. 4\. Journaling - custom generated template of what I need to records/daily tasks etc. 5\. Viewports in taskwiki are amazing, eg: for any project related notes I can do write `# Task | project:Pro1 and +PENDING` to list pending tasks in Pro1, you can also configure to use tags like development, bug reports etc.

I couldn't find another tool that is as extensible. The downside is you need to dedicate a weekend to understanding and setup!

<comment><USER39> Happy to hear you find it useful!

<comment><USER38> thank you for you work!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I just want a simple kanban board with dependency graph. Like Trello but with dependencies.

<comment><USER41> I gather you mean an actual dependency graph, since that's what you said. :) Most task software with dependencies don't support graph data structures.

I regularly use Flying Logic for this sort of thing - I make a huge dependency graph, and then I create a collapsible group that encompasses the stuff that is active. The part of the graph that is "below" that window is stuff that is already done, and the stuff that is "above" that window is stuff that can't be started until I do stuff in the active window.

("below" and "above" can be reoriented to "left" and "right" if you prefer)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Does anyone have a working org-mode setup with back-links?

<comment><USER43> Not me, but this guy[1] seems to have a pretty interesting setup using backlinks with Org. Other than that, org-roam[2] is becoming popular nowadays.

[1]: [https://karl-voit.at/2020/07/22/org-super-links](https://karl- voit.at/2020/07/22/org-super-links) [2]: [https://www.orgroam.com/](https://www.orgroam.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I'm a mathematician who scripts everything I can. I've been thinking about mind-mapping for decades.

My breaking point: I have DropBox folders for 1770 math papers, that I periodically read on computers and tablets. The significance of most of these papers is lost to me. I want to be able to browse this collection in a "supermarket shelf" topology. Most of creatitivity is not planned; planning tends to stifle creativity. Rather, a frenetic mind is fortunate enough, after months of fruitless wanderings, to encounter the right set of ideas in close enough proximity to notice. For example, a PCB protoboard has the correct 0.1" spacing to guide a router jig for making a pasta guitar. Who knew?!

Ideally one traverses a private web site with links to every asset. The associations need to be both manual and automated, logical and accidental. For example, time of creation or visits is critical data for determining proximity. Looking at each PDF in plain text to attempt to infer proximity would be a great application of deep learning tools, leveraging existing proximities as training data.

On a larger scale I have repeatedly urged the American Mathemetical Society to open up its MathSciNet cash cow to be a premier playground for machine learning. Unlike computer science, mathematics does have a detailed index of all published research, through the efforts of many volunteer reviewers. However, math is crippled by many archaic beliefs: That ideas are organized by fields such as number theory, and there is a single global worldview specifying this organization. That the value of MathSciNet is its hand-curated organization. I believe that we're crippling a generation of mathematical progress by not allowing mathematics to be at the forefront of mind mapping efforts, with many competing voices/tools describing its organization and facilitating idea browsing. Autocomplete is still at the "pager" stage of development, with "smart phones" yet to come. We could all benefit from the cloud autocompleting each of our mind-maps. Mathematics is a relatively small, constrained domain where shared mind-mapping and autocomplete could first flourish.

I've separately used a text file as scratch paper many days for the last fifteen years, saving every file. I can retrieve much useful information through full text search. I am reminded however of Don Knuth's adage "Premature optimization is the root of all evil," and the smaller optimization problem of how to best organize physical receipts. Excessive organization is wasted effort and a form of neurosis. I scan lots of documents but not every receipt; they all go in boxes dated by quarter, vacuum packed after a year. When I really need a receipt I can find it, but the effort to file has been properly balanced with the effort to retrieve. Same with text files; full text search works. It would be a mistake for me to put more effort into the structure of these files. Rather, through scripts and AI tools, I can evolve an indexing exoskeleton around these existing unstructured raw materials.

I need mind-mapping to manage assets, not to create a private web site of my thoughts. And there cannot be a user/programmer dichotomy; we each need to script additional associations into our mind maps. That belongs in exoskeleton, not cluttering up primary text.

</comment><comment><USER45> HN hug o death.

anyone got a link to what this "obsidian" is?

<comment><USER29> Note taking app. It's good. Missing a couple of features.

[https://obsidian.md](https://obsidian.md)

<comment><USER45> before i go trying it out... it looks a lot like a personal wiki?

RTF etc?

<comment><USER29> Yes. Offline notes in markdown. So cross-platform.

Great UI, 'Mind-mapping' thing that everybody wants, backlinking to other notes, markdown, offline (so private notes).

Other alternatives - roam research, notion, etc

<comment><USER46> I've tried it, I liked it. But I can't help but feel like I'm one of the only people who doesn't need an app for 'mind-mapping'. Am I missing something? Asking honestly, this comes up at work a lot. I feel like I can access things in my mind at will. Why should I need to transcribe it in some way?

<comment><USER47> I think the problem with general notetaking is, you take note and you'll almost forget about it completely in a couple of day.

This style of notetaking software help 'resurface' those information you even forgot you jot down long time ago and make the process of 'discover' new idea much easier, something like that.

Well, I mean it behave like our mind, just more tangible, in software form. Also, people forgot much more nowadays because of information overload...maybe that's why some people need to transcribe it into something and relieve their brain's load.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Scientists Found a Compound That Reverses Aging in Mice - <AUTHOR> http://time.com/5209427/aging-nicotinamide-mononucleotide-nmn/ <comment><USER2> Two great podcasts to hear David speak about this and some other things.

He was on JRE last week.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOTS0HS7aq4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOTS0HS7aq4)

And Peter Attia's Podcast (Peter is probably the Number 1 guy atm when it comes to information on Longevity, The guy is absolutely amazing).

[https://peterattiamd.com/davidsinclair/](https://peterattiamd.com/davidsinclair/)

Both David and Peter have books coming out soon. Can hardly wait.

<comment><USER3> Heard the JRE podcast, will have to check out Attia's. Tons of good info.

Just starting to take a look at this. I've recently had a crash course in biology due to a cancer diagnosis in the family. One of the creepy behaviors of tumors is that they (through mechanisms that I don't understand) signal the body to create new blood vessels to feed tumors as they grow. To combat this, one of the drugs administered during chemo is bevacizumab/Avastin, which has an anti-angiogensis effect and suppresses this behavior in the body (which has some side effects as well).

Based on what I'm reading in the article, NMN seems to promote the development of new vessels. I'm curious if this would tend to promote/accelerate the development of tumors. It's of course possible that the two mechanisms would not intersect at all, or even possible that the increased blood flow would reduce senescent cells and other places where things go awry to begin with.

Was some other interesting stuff about resveratrol and metformin on the JRE podcast. Need to dig into that too (different family member with Type 1 diabetes, interested in potential theraputic effects of metformin for her as well)</comment></comment>


How Tier 2 cloud vendors banded together to cope with Spectre and Meltdown - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/06/how-tier-2-cloud-vendors-banded-together-to-cope-with-spectre <comment><USER2> The more I know about how Intel has managed the information, the less I trust them. What a disaster. CEO and all the Press and Communication team of Intel should be fired

<comment><USER3> It's not clear to me what the best approach is here. The wider the circle of those who know, the more likely it is that there will eventually be a leak. Three can keep a secret if two are dead and all that.

<comment><USER4> Exactly. I assume if one of the smaller providers like Linode found an internal vulnerability that they thought was a big security risk to have widely know and had 3 giant customers and a large number of smaller customers, they'd work directly with the giant customers in advance in the same way.

<comment><USER5> I was a Linode customer back when there was a security incident where everyone found out on Reddit before the company bothered to tell anyone. And then once news did come out they never said (a) what happened or (b) what steps were taken to prevent it happening again.

I am very reluctant now to trust the little guys with anything remotely mission critical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Saved you a click: by starting a shared Slack for their teams to collaborate.

Neat factoid but this article is not exactly information-dense.

<comment><USER7> I don't think the actual technical "how" is of much importance so the article doesn't spend much time on it. They communicated effectively, and more important openly, over company boundaries. Many tools would have worked for that.

This is about "how" they banded together to reduce their disadvantage compared to the big cloud providers that had advance warning and insider knowledge/access to the vendors long before the rumors started.

<comment><USER8> Correct. It's the ability to share documents and conversation snippets provided by vendors, as well as curating and summarizing the significant amount of information available.

I've never seen an exploit that involves microcode updates, compiler fixes, kernel patches, and KVM/Xen updates all together. The number of moving parts is staggering.

Being able to filter and summarize that across company boundaries has helped me both understand and more effectively work to mitigate this problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Prgmr.com has been participating on the Slack channel this article mentions. Being able to share notes gleaned from reaching out to vendors and sort through the information and mitigations for Spectre and Meltdown has been a huge help.

<comment><USER9> I work for a cloud computing company that would have benefitted (and hopefully contributed) from being on that Slack. If you have the time, would you mind reaching out to me with details? My email is in my profile.

<comment><USER8> Here is where I asked to join:

[https://twitter.com/prgmrcom/status/949023633581592576](https://twitter.com/prgmrcom/status/949023633581592576)

Following up to @scaleway on Twitter in the same manner would hopefully work out.

I've sent you an email with a bit of elaboration on this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've said many times this is the best way to deal with the large monopolistic companies - group up.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is a great example of collaboration between competitors where there is much to be gained and nothing to be lost!

</comment><comment><USER12> All this seems like a pretty compelling reason to move to using VMs and type safety to provide process isolation instead of using the hardware, e.g. [https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and- death...](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of- javascript) or Microsoft's Singularity and Midori projects.

It's a shame there's so much inertia behind the current setup of hardware memory management etc that it seems it'll be a long time before anything actually happens here.

<comment><USER13> How would this approach have helped in this case?

As I understand it, the flaw in question allows reading kernel memory by executing user space code. How can a layer of software, on top of this type of buggy hardware, fix this issue?

In one sense, the issue has already been fixed by a layer of software on top — which restricts a bunch of stuff, and reduces performance — but I assume this isn't what you're looking for.

<comment><USER12> Those systems don't use the buggy aspect of the hardware (memory protection) at all. Instead, all code is run inside a VM which provides memory protection and process isolation - there is no 'native' code at all.

Not using the hardware memory protection provides a ~20% performance boost, which makes up for the ~20% overhead of running everything through VMs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> FYI, the submitter is someone from Scaleway, so he perhaps would also answer some questions on what infos they had or something.

<comment><USER15> everything we have at Scaleway is on our blog [http://blog.online.net](http://blog.online.net) things are calming down now, we known what are the fixes for the known bugs and their limitations We can probably expect more OS patches in the coming weeks to improve performances and potentially fix new variants of these bugs that could come in the future

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Then suddenly he said, "I have it! We are going to swim all together like 0.1% of the biggest fish in the sea!"

~ Leo Lionni, Swimmy

</comment><comment><USER17> Note that Google released information a week early, giving attackers a leg up in attacking these cloud providers, as opposed to Google giving the cloud providers the information immediately, which would have helped them defend themselves. But, surprise: Google is their competitor.

Google is basically the new Microsoft, except Microsoft could actually design working products when it was evil.

<comment><USER18> What's with these random jabs at companies, you are just trying to create a culture of irrational dislike. I don't even care if you attack Google but everytime you do so, you have to cite exactly why you are doing it. Not some nebulous "oh they cant even make a single working product" which is objectively false and just provocation.

<comment><USER17> One, you're attributing something I never said, and two, my actual claim is not objectively false. Three, I don't _have_ to do anything, much less prove what is otherwise easy to find out via Googling. And four, it's not irrational dislike, it's dislike based on personal experience and observation. Five, it should be pretty obvious exactly why i'm attacking Google, it doesn't need citing (unless the reader can't put two and two together, vis a vie "Google uses its privileged embargo status to disseminate sensitive information in a way that harms its competitors")</comment></comment></comment>


HP Play goes beta, iTunes for the TouchPad using Songbird - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/articles/gadgets/hp-play-goes-beta-is-itunes-for-the-touchpad-2011078/

<comment><USER2> This is exactly the sort of thing HP needs to do. If they want the TouchPad (and Veer and Pre3) to be successful as well as compete in the "cloud" offering space with Apple they need a service like this. The app imports your iTunes library data and you can then proceed to syncing all or parts of your music to your touchpad. As a webos fan I'm really excited about this and hope they roll out the wireless syncing very quickly.</comment>


Ask HN: I can't get on my email and I have no host yet - <AUTHOR>

On my pc, can't connect to my live account. On my mobile, can't connect to my live account either. I'm not sure what the problem is so that is one of my questions: anyone else getting this problem and what do I do about it?
The hosting is my next problem. I signed up (and paid) for hosting at HostGator and last I checked (yesterday) I hadn't gotten an e-mail of verification, and receipt. This was done and paid the past Saturday, Sept. 3. So yeah, if you have any words of wisdom, please share.
Cheers. <comment><USER2> Not sure where you should go, not sure HN is the best place to put out problems like this. Especially because most people use Gmail vs Hotmail. <http://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/> is a useful place.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wish I could help other than saying don't waste time here, try another forum. HN isn't really a troubleshooting site in most cases. :)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> True, well thanks guys for commenting. :)</comment>


Zillow-West Coast Home Sellers Cashing in the Most on Record Home Values - <AUTHOR> http://zillow.mediaroom.com/2017-09-06-West-Coast-Home-Sellers-Cashing-In-the-Most-on-Record-Home-Values <comment><USER2> 24% in 7.5 years? Stock market returned 100-150% over the last 7.5 years.

Seems pretty close to break even when you consider interest rates, upkeep, commissions.</comment>