Netflix is now worth more than $100B - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/22/netflix-is-now-worth-more-than-100b/ <comment><USER2> The entire stock market feels like its in a bubble. Netflix stock gained more than 25% in the past one month. Their free cash flow (FCF) has been negative every single quarter and will be for many quarters to come. Stocks trade based on discounted cash flow(DCF). Netflix however produces no material return for investors and still majority of the analysts keep putting higher and higher price targets, its like they are collectively pushing a hidden agenda. It's as if there is this new way of valuing companies that is not based on DCF.

<comment><USER3> A lot of sophisticated financial people share your thinking.

The problem is there's no growth to be found anywhere. People are cheering for 3% GDP growth in the US. Interest rates are at all-time historical lows, meaning discount rates are lower than they've ever been.

These macro trends have added up to an environment where people are willing to pay staggering premiums for even a remote shot at growth. It's affecting every asset class from real estate to public market equity to early-stage startups to commodities, and you aren't the only one who's worried about it (I am).

<comment><USER4> To what degree does income inequality, consumer debt, and rapidly rising barriers of entry to high-income fields contribute slowing GDP growth? Is there research and evidence on the subject?

I'm just an engineer with basic financial survival skills... but blind intuition suggests fixing those problems is necessary for a sustainable growing economy.

"Trickle-down" theory and growing inequality drains economic activity since the "1%" invest their money instead of spending it. They profit when the public consumes, unless short-sighted over-exploitation by some industries strangle general consumer activity...

It sure looks like we're being strangled. Off the top of my head: urban rent, health care, high consumer debt and student debt reduce disposable income while automation, exporting jobs, poor retraining for adult laborers, and lower small-business access to capital due to banking mergers lower actual income. When businesses close, some of their ex-employees will switch to high- skill high-demand jobs... but most will increase the labor supply in less skilled industries because they urgently need money - putting downward pressure on wages and working conditions.

If I'm wrong, I'd love to learn why, and what other systemic conditions explain our economic stagnation.

<comment><USER5> I'm not saying you're wrong. I understand where you're coming from. You raise good points. I think we need to add to this list one simple idea: regulation.

Housing costs are terrible. They're getting bad even in small towns like mine. There is no way that my house is worth 172k. For many, especially in California and states that followed their lead, housing cost are largely, not solely, due to regulation on new house starts. Environmental impact and associated costs make a new housing community in California on average 1 million dollars more expensive. For many, they don't even put shovel to sod.

Health in the US has a lot of this too. Governmental regulations and the AMA drive up the cost of doctors. All of this is well documented. Interestingly, the free market is coming to a possible rescue on the price of generics: [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/health/drug-prices- hospit...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/health/drug-prices- hospitals.html)

A good chunk of student debt is due to the government printing money for loans that students can't escape. School saw this bottomless supply and acted accordingly.

Job exporting has some factors due to regulation too. As do the others in your list.

I'm not saying that regulation is bad. I believe in free markets, not unfettered markets. However, a lot of the regulation is old, duplicative, and contradictory. It makes being a business far more complex than it should be. Regulation hampers innovation. We need to remove regulatory cruft at all levels. We need to adopt evidence based regulations.

<comment><USER4> I'm a strong believer in using minimal but _sufficient_ regulations and taxes to shape market growth.

There are some absolutely unnecessary regulations, like the loopholes Tesla has to go through to sell cars because traditional dealerships don't want to lose money, or unfair taxes against green energy - protectionism must die.

There are also outdated but reasonable regulations, like Seattle's density regulations. Our housing crisis is caused by the market lagging far behind economic growth because it took years for the public to recognize the city was growing, years to change the laws, and then more years for the normal construction timeline. Density regulations as a _concept_ make sense, but we haven't figured out how to auto-scale limits to avoid falling behind.

And then there are areas where we do need more regulations. For example, we absolutely need more regulations on credit cards and loans in addition to better finance education in highschool. Consumers are responsible for being informed, but there's still no excuse for even _offering_ to saddle someone with a high-interest loan that they can never hope to pay off... some people are simply too dumb to understand the math.

I like the phrase "evidence-based regulations", but sometimes the evidence is stale or measuring the wrong thing, and the data doesn't guarantee we implement the right system of incentives.

<comment><USER6> The main problem with regulation is that it's too easy to capture by various corporate lobbies. Propose a good plan, and see it get shredded and repurposed to serve those it's supposed to regulate. Congress is cheep, and campaign committees wield the purse strings to keep their members in check on policy issues, so the election system doesn't respond efficiently to abuses. We won't be able to get good regulation until we can get the lobbyists and campaign financiers out of there.

<comment><USER7> >The main problem with regulation is that it's too easy to capture by various corporate lobbies.

This is like saying "the main problem with laws is..."

In fact, this false dichotomy between "more regulation" and "less regulation" is mainly an artefact of corporate lobby groups (plenty of examples in their propaganda of this).

It dumbs down the issue to a childlike level and lets them play two political blocs who might have fundamentally similar interests off against one another depending upon what particular legislation they want introduced or repealed.

<comment><USER8> >>The main problem with regulation is that it's too easy to capture by various corporate lobbies.

> This is like saying "the main problem with laws is..."

Is it ? A corporation that already pays employees higher than minimum wage can drive out smaller shops that do not pay much more than minimum wage by working to raise the minimum wage. This enables them to raise prices and screw customers over if the smaller shops go out of business.

'Murder laws help murders by allowing them to capture murder laws'

Does not quite seem to work

<comment><USER7> >Is it ? A corporation that already pays employees higher than minimum wage can drive out smaller shops that do not pay much more than minimum wage by working to raise the minimum wage.

If you're talking about, say, Walmart, they lobby _very hard_ against minimum wage raises and even go as far as to threaten what appears to be self destructive behavior to prevent it from occurring (e.g. threats to close profitable stores).

Minimum wage goes up -> Walmart profits go down. It's that simple. (see minimum wage across state borders by Dube, Lester & Reich).

They drive out smaller shops by using their buying power to beat suppliers down on price, using their size to get sweetheart land deals and sweetheart tax deals with local officials desperate to bring jobs to the area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My only fear: soon there will be no BitTorrent seeders left.

<comment><USER10> I feel ya.

I'm watching a 2013 TV Series, it's not on Netflix, and I can't find any seeds for it.

<comment><USER11> Your local library may carry DVDs of it, for free to checkout.

Not saying you should rip them. Or seed those rips.

<comment><USER12> Alternately, Netflix's DVD service is still around and still has a much better selection than Netflix.

<comment><USER13> Unfortunately they've been letting their back catalog rot away but I still find a minimal DVD subscription to be a good way to watch both brand new and older films.

<comment><USER14> I'm not sure if it's just me or have there been zero new releases in the DVD section in 2018? Also sometimes I found DVD's on their top 100 list before they show up in the new releases section - like they don't want to have a bunch of people ask to rent a disc if they think it's going to be popular.

<comment><USER13> Funnily enough I was just looking at that. Admittedly I've seen a number of the releases coming out about now on planes and the like but there was essentially nothing in the New Releases that I was interested in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I study stock market for more than a decade, for long term, and I perfectly now that company data should not be analysed in a isolatedly, but, any stock with P/E ratio 230.24 you need to be very careful, and put just the money you can afford to lose without disturb your sleep.

For whom that does not understand company ratios, a P/E ratio 230.24 is meaning that you need 230 years of profits to return to you the price you are paying today, of course, this does not consider that the company and profits will grow. But to have a parallel, at least in my country, really good companies have a P/E between 20 and 30, on average, and 30 is considered very high.

<comment><USER16> This is nonsense. P/E is a measure of earnings against the price of one share. A high P/E does show that current earnings are small (or negative) in relation to share price, but there's no time component inherent in P/E.

<comment><USER17> There absolutely is. For a company to be valuable, it must return more profit to shareholders than they put in. The P/E ratio indicates how long it will take for this to happen.

<comment><USER18> Not really, it indicates how long if nothing changes over the long term. Which never happens. Netflix is growing very rapidly which makes P/E all but meaningless for "how long" questions.

<comment><USER15> You are right. Today it represents just an expectation. On future, the P/E will decrease and stabilize after the company make profit and consolidate.

<comment><USER18> It doesn't really even represent an expectation because nobody expects their financials to stay the same. Forward P/E fits that bill a little better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Finding Netflix fairly frustrating these days. Despite their runaway success they haven't really done anything to change the Hollywood model. 99.9% crap with a sprinkle of watchable content. And despite the hoards of engineers and machine learning wizards they employ, discovery and interface has regressed in their product. Only reason I haven't canceled yet is avoiding the hassle of going full torrent/YouTube.

<comment><USER20> It is amazing to me that they offered a superior interface by any measure back in the DVD days. The AppleTV interface for Netflix is a disgrace. I don't understand how they have all of these brilliant engineers, yet make an interface worse than what Spectrum provides.

<comment><USER21> What exactly are you looking for?

<comment><USER20> A better layout. Those ribbons are difficult to use, and the app uses a different design language than most.

I also find the discovery experience to be lousy... I often don't hear about new shows for months, although I use the app every day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wanna see what a full blown network effect looks like, kidos — check out Netflix earnings.

More Subscribers ⤵ More Revenue ⤵ More $$ for Original Content and Licensing ⤵ More bids won against networks ⤵ More content on Netflix ⤵ More Subscribers

<comment><USER17> Strictly speaking, these are scale economies, not network effects.

<comment><USER22> That is orthogonal to the network effect you see at play here, not contradictory

<comment><USER17> Network effects occur when usage increases the value of the product, as with Google or Facebook. With Netflix, usage does not increase value. It instead creates more revenue, enabling Netflix to invest in fixed costs, creating scale economies.

To illustrate, if Netflix were boundlessly funded in their early days, they could create a product that's just as valuable as it is today, even though they had no customers, and therefore no network effects.

The one caveat is that friends talking about shows with each other does create real network effects, but not what you're describing here.

Cheers

<comment><USER23> Could also view it as... more usage == more data == more value

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Surprised Netflix hasn't branched out into more content types or more dynamic content. You now have this two way communication channel seems kind of boring to not try and use it even just for mostly video content.

Some of their shows run 7+ million an episode. If you look at the development costs of simple mobile games and cut out all the stuff related to IAP it seems like they could create a lot of value for customers for pretty cheap by making some simple popular games without the IAP BS.

<comment><USER25> Are you talking about their shows sometimes costing $7M an episode? Do you know which ones besides House of Cards and The Crown?

<comment><USER24> Sense8, The Get Down, Marco Polo. They are planning on spending 8 billion on content this year. Lets say they spend 10 million on a couple puzzle/king/angry bird style games. That's .125% of their content creation budget.

<comment><USER26> All three of those examples have been canceled.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> There's a bubble. A bubble of desperation. You can't put your money in the bank due to the low interest rates. Traditional businesses are not doing well. Investors are desperate to put their money to work. So we see bubbles in tech, bubbles in cryptocurrencies, bubbles in startups.

Best to watch what the legendary investors are doing. People like Warren Buffett, Prem Watsa, and the likes.

<comment><USER28> Netflix generates $8B revenue with 3k staff, when Time Warner generates $28B with 25k staff. Both net income are equivalent ($3B). Both valuations are equivalent (100B). Dividends are equivalent. I don't see any bubble.

Given the right amount of capital and assets, Netflix sounds like way more capable of growing than Time Warner in the next 5 years. Time will tell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The price-to-earnings ratio is now 230, meaning that if an acquirer were to buy the company for cash at its current market capitalization, absent any growth in earnings, it would take the acquirer 230 years to earn the money back, all else remaining the same.

However, the 230-year figure might be optimistic, because Netflix's cash flow from operations, before capital expenditures, has been negative for the past three years, largely due to fast-growing spending on content. Operations burned almost $1.8 billion last year. It could take longer than 230 years.

In theory, Netflix could stop aggressively investing in content _any time now_ , and it would become more profitable. In theory, they could find other ways to monetize the content at some unspecified time in the future, to generate additional profits. _In theory_. In reality, it remains to be seen if they can and will do those things at some point in the future, and whether doing them will justify today's market capitalization.

It is, how shall I say this, _questionable_ whether Netflix will be able to generate sufficient cash flow in the future to justify today's market capitalization. That said, I _love_ the service and think the management team has done an _amazing_ job building it, so I hope and wish they can pull it off, for the sake of their current investors, who must be relying on similar hopes and wishes.

BTW, Netflix is far from the most optimistically valued company today in terms of current earnings. Amazon's price-to-earnings multiple is currently 335, and Salesforce's is 14,796. These are not particularly unusual examples in today's stock market. There quite a few companies trading at high-double, triple, quadruple, and quintuple multiples of earnings.

In other words, there are currently many companies whose earnings-payback period, for a would-be cash acquirer, all else remaining the same, is in the many decades, centuries, millennia, or even greater. It makes no sense to me.

Source for all figures: [https://finance.google.com](https://finance.google.com)

</comment><comment><USER30> Wonder why Q4 had such a big bump but Q1 2018 seems to be dropping back down to prior levels. Is this just people purchasing subscriptions at the holiday? Discounts? Special content?

<comment><USER31> Netflix doesn't have discount for holidays. They recently up the subscription price. My bet is the increase has to do with the holiday effect (more time at home), and the fact more collections are added. A good number of recent movies are available online (Amazon, YouTube, Netflix) as soon as they leave the box. Though the mote interesting graph would be views. During major sport events I can bet there is a big dip.

The family subscription is a bargain though.

<comment><USER32> > Though the mote interesting graph would be views. During major sport events > I can bet there is a big dip.

I was looking in my archive but I can't find the graphs right now.

Yeah, during big sporting events, there is a flattening of viewing. But what is really fascinating is that if you dig in, you find that it only affected devices that were typically connected to TVs. So streaming was normal on portable devices like iPads and Phones and the 3DS, but down on the big TVs.

However, the biggest dip of all happens during the Oscar telecast, second only to the Golden Globes. :)

New Year's eve was pretty flat too, but again only on the big TV devices (kid's devices were unaffected).

<comment><USER31> Wow! Really really interesting indeed. Love to hear this from someone who ran SRE there. Thank you for sharing!!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Can we infer from this that at the end of Q3 they had ~25 million subscribers?

I am not planning to cancel Netflix but I am frustrated at how terrible most of the content is, and how hard it is to find anything with the current interface. I hope they're rethinking their UX and reconsidering their current approach of "License a bunch of really cheap awful content to make it seem like there's a lot of stuff to watch."

<comment><USER34> The thing that bothers me is how long it takes for content to come to Netflix. For example, in NZ, I still don't have access to season 2 of The Expanse. Remind me again why I'm paying monthly for this service!?

<comment><USER35> To be fair, you are paying what? 11 dollars? Netflix isn't meant to be "all access to everything." If you wanted access to everything immediately it's going to cost a lot of money.

For a while, it was "access to nearly all old TV." a few years ago. But that was when old TV had little value. Nobody was paying for old TV and you couldn't even find it elsewhere.

Now, Netflix has made old TV valuable and has made new TV less valuable. Shows like The Expanse need to monetize on the reruns because the "first run" isn't enough anymore.

<comment><USER36> First run hasn't been enough for years before Netflix. Most shows lose money during their original run and made it back via syndication. Most shows on TV are sold by the production companies at a loss or the production company and network or owned by the same parent company.

That's part of the reason that people are asking what will happen to the Fox Network after Disney buys the rest of Fox. That also explains why relatively low rated scripted shows can survive on the CW - Warner owns half of CW and all of DC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Netflix is going to tank if Disney makes their stuff (including Fox) exclusive to hulu or a new service.

<comment><USER38> Disney is pulling/will pull out a lot of stuff from Netflix[1] and will also start its own streaming service[2]... and Netflix' catalog had already shrunk a lot before that news[3].

1.[https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/08/disney-will-pull-its- movies-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/08/disney-will-pull-its-movies-from- netflix-and-start-its-own-streaming-services.html)

2\. [https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/tv/disney-start-own- stre...](https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/tv/disney-start-own-streaming- services-remove-content-netflix-n791001)

3\. [http://www.businessinsider.com/netflix-catalog-size- shrinks-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/netflix-catalog-size- shrinks-2016-9)

<comment><USER37> Thanks for doing the heavy lifting!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> And still uses gibberish, machine-translated subtitles. (Bulgarian)

</comment><comment><USER40> These days I prefer Amazon video content. It's also significantly cheaper. 5 bucks instead of 20. Then you add the fact that their Android app is bad and that not even Netflix Originals are available globally, Netflix doesn't seem to be that great.

<comment><USER41> My biggest problem with Netflix is discovery. I don't want to watch a new show because I don't want to commit myself to 50 episodes. And I don't even know if I'll like the show.

I just want to channel surf, like on TV. Just let me press a button and let me go through a bunch of videos so I can decide which one I like by watching it

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> $100B?! That's like Dogecoin X 50 back in the day.*

(* which is to say last week.)

<comment><USER43> Difference being that there is actual depth in the books for nflx vs doge

<comment><USER21> My guess is that he was being sarcastic about cryptos.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> How do they make money?? I mean - seriously? And how will they stand up now that NN is gone and any company/website using much more traffic will be force to pay more?

Please help me with the math -- at any given day, me, my wife and 2 kids are streaming netflix on multiple devices in HD; most likely pulling tens of gigabytes of data per day. How is that all covered under $10.99 per month?? and on the top - they make solid profit?? HOW??

<comment><USER45> The problem is that if you're big enough business-wise you don't care that much about NN. It's like in Germany when Google has to pay for content in Google News and they just tell the publishers they will not include them if they don't give it to them for free despite these new rules (which are stupid). But if you're a small startup or company and you want to do this you have no chance doing this. Same goes for NN. If someone wants to block Google or Netflix now they can't really get that much from them because they need them to sell their own product or otherwise people will leave. If you're small no-one cares and your can't do anything about it. So it hurts innovation from new companies but doesn't hurt any big established players.

Besides that they also have enough revenue to invest in their own fiber infrastructure like Google does and really everyone wants to get good access to their content so they connect to them.

<comment><USER46> That might change when you are in competition with the ISP, as Comcast does with a ~30% stake of Hulu. Then you might start to care about net neutrality a lot.

<comment><USER45> Yes. That could be a problem. But in for most areas customers will be annoyed with Comcast and blame them for poor performance and switch. Still there are lots of areas in the US where you don't have a choice. But they would also loose a lot of customers in denser areas with more choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Please, sell half of it; we could have a Mars _and_ Moon base at the same time for that money...</comment>


Boston Globe columnist: "Cyber-bullies" are criticizing Aaron Swartz' prosecutor - <AUTHOR> http://bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/01/17/vennochi/ZcdoqRwgIMW7Tam2q7mKMJ/story.html

<comment><USER2> >But defending principle was not [his lawyer's job]. It was to provide Swartz with the best legal advice, given the charges and the government's refusal to back down.

...</comment>


Ask HN:Please review our Android app idea,DHA,Cell cam video surveillance - <AUTHOR>

We have released a paid Android app,Digital Home Angel,http://market.android.com/details?id=com.altech.DHA
It would be great if you could suggest some ideas or feedback on the app. Specifically:
1.Do you think that there is space for apps like these?
2.Do you think the pricing is right or too high?
3.Could you suggest some features that could be added to this.
4.Any suggestions on how to market this.
Thanks for all your help. <comment><USER2> >4.Any suggestions on how to market this.

The page at that link is not specific enough. Tell a _story_ about how to app makes a purchaser's life better.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes a user story is missing. Thanks for pointing that out</comment></comment>


Facebook tracks where you connect from in order to determine who you live with - <AUTHOR> http://www.adweek.com/digital/facebook-will-soon-let-brands-target-ads-at-entire-families-or-specific-people-within-households/ <comment> King-Aaron It seems quite intrusive, but also surprising that it's only just now being discussed as a new feature - I was under the impression this was already happening at some levels.</comment>


Ask HN: Is writing text-based games a good introduction to programming? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> The very first CS class I took in college was based on SICP (taught in Scheme, for reference). By this point, I had already been programming for a while, but there were plenty of students with very limited exposure to programming as well.

One of the projects we had was writing a text-based RPG. This was to highlight the ideas behind OOP, which we learned _after_ functional programming. Initially, the idea seemed to have merit--writing a game seemed to be a fun thing to do. However, I got quickly bogged down in boring detail; it turned out that writing a text based game has a lot of boring, repetitive work for each of the cool bits. It was the most tedious project in the class overall.

The final project we did was implementing a Logo interpreter. This was completely different--the ratio of cool and insightful stuff to boring fiddly bits was much, much better. Also, unlike the text-based game, even a barely working final result felt brilliant. Being able to program in a language I had just implemented was magical. Playing a text-based game with a working engine but a poor story line did not measure up.

So far, this has been my favorite course. However, I remember the text-based game as annoying and not particularly illuminating; it does not compare at all with the logo interpreter.

Overall, I think that too much of a text-based game is repetitive and boring, and it relies too much on non-programming bits (the dialog, the setting, the story) to be consistently inspiring to a new programmer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that's really helpful. Though at my current level of ability a text based game is plenty challenging:)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you like text-based games, it is a good introduction.

Otherwise, only really tiny self-contained examples are good. You need to break it down into more 'atomic' pieces - at which point you are no longer developing a text game.

You could use a really trivial VERB NOUN parser instead of the usual RPN calculator example. You can use a directed-graph world as a showcase for linked lists. TCP is often learned by writing a simple chat server.

Higher-level languages might make it easier to constrain this sort of project to a few hours.

But most people do not like text games and doing a proper job is probably an order of magnitude more complex than you imagine it to be. So actually writing or modifying a text game is only a great idea if it is motivating to the learner.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would say "yes" if you're learning a language that has a REPL (such as the Lisp languages.) A REPL is already basically an interface for a text-based game and learning about one helps you learn about the other.

That's why I create a text adventure game in "Land of Lisp" and on my website: <http://lisperati.com/casting.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> That's awesome. Thanks very much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> <http://learnpythonthehardway.org/>

This book takes takes this approach with a number of its examples and projects.

And I think the book is a good introduction to programming and Python.</comment>


How to kill your tech industry - <AUTHOR> https://logicmag.io/05-how-to-kill-your-tech-industry/ <comment><USER2> Someone, before now, for some reason, flagged this thread. (And I'm wondrously curious as to why - because the flaggers clearly saw something objectionable about this rising thread (as opposed to 'wrong') that I am apparently too insensitive to see...)

The article is what it is, but I am curious about the community's discussion about the article, the topic and the point, before it gets flagged to death again...

<comment><USER3> "The massive waste of human talent rippled upward, eventually destroying the British lead in computing and the British computer industry."

It was probably flagged because the central claim seems highly dubious. The only thing the article really proves is that history is at least partly made by whoever is telling it. And that if you hold a viewpoint strongly enough (or are a professional promoter of a viewpoint), absolutely everything, however tangential, will look like an instance of it, be caused by it, etc.

<comment><USER2> > that history is at least partly made by whoever is telling it

Absolutely. I am not a relativist, but I find that any narrative that challenges mine (while wrong, haha) is interesting. I'm not going to call it alternative history fiction (which I also find interesting), but it is a point-of-view that I had not considered (and maybe ought to have - esp. here where many if not most of the underlying facts are true).</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: SpiderFoot, the open source footprinting tool - <AUTHOR> http://www.spiderfoot.net

<comment><AUTHOR> Note: I'm the author. I wrote the first version of this in 2005 in C# as a way to learn C#, and figured completely re-writing it in Python would be a fun way to learn Python, so here is the output of that effort.

I'd certainly appreciate any feedback. Lots of plans to extend further and capture even more information about targets - there are an incredible amount of sources out there.</comment>


Programming Book Profits - <AUTHOR> http://ejohn.org/blog/programming-book-profits/

<comment><USER2> "No one buys E-books."

Nobody buys ebooks when the publishers set a high price relative to printed books and have limited outlets for purchase. Also, there isn't a rendering device for the written word comparable to a book or an ipod. Then there are DRM issues for some ebooks.

1) Price -- You can get the printed book with free shipping for $29.69 from Amazon. I can only find the e-book at Apress.com. It costs $22.50. So I get a $7 discount when there's no shipping cost, no printing cost, no retailer cut, and no distribution cut. There's no ebook alternative, from what I can see, at Amazon for Pro Javascript Techniques on Kindle or basic PDF. Is the author getting any more royalty from an ebook sale even though a lot of the overhead is cut out?

2) Rendering device -- This is less of an issue for a programming title, because most of the readers are tethered to a computer anyway. Still, there's very little consumer penetration for very portable ebook devices like the Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle. (I'm talking eInk devices that you can treat like a book.)

The digital music market took off because the portable rendering devices are awesome relative to the traditional systems. A little ipod delivers music just as good (to my ears) as the big stereos a decade or two before it. It's small, easy to use, and allows easy random access.

Ebooks have to compete against the book, which has great random access by flipping pages, no battery issues, and is easy to mark up. If they had an ebook reader with flexible display sheets like a page, you'd see a lot more ebooks getting sold.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ha, he should have mentioned that most publishing contracts allow you to hire outside auditors to track how many copies were sold and for how much. I'm actually considering doing that for mine.

</comment><comment><USER4> Book authors get screwed worse than musicians with their CD deals.

<comment><USER5> He's getting between 10 percent to 20 percent per book. That's pretty good. Some really bad book contracts will specifiy 15 percent royalties on a book's _profit_...thus maybe $2.00 x .15</comment></comment>


A First Look At Echobox, An Analytics Tool For News Sites - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/17/echobox/ <comment><USER2> Fuckers, saying sign up in the homepage and after you "sign-up", we'll be in touch.

Good luck trustin them with your data.</comment>


Ask HN: How Founding Engineers Comp Works? - <AUTHOR> Coming from being a senior eng at a BigTechCo, I am exploring being a founding engineer "with a path to leadership" at a seed company based in Expensive Coastal City.
How much of a decrease in comp should I expect?  Are there ever any other forms of comp to make up for the temp decrease in total comp beyond waiting for an exit?  e.g. bonus structure after new funding round or $X in revenue?
The work is interesting, I'm just worried where I live is too expensive to justify a steep total comp pay cut for over 5 yrs, esp since I'm in mid 30s <comment><USER2> Honestly, too many unknowns to answer this with any real specificity.

In general though, comp will depend on a lot of factors, some key ones are the amount raised, the runway needed to get to the next round or milestone, your personal experience, # of founders, and your percentage of ownership. The general rule is as a founder you will take the smallest salary possible to live for the first year or two until you reach some milestones, then usually during one of the funding cycles you can take a pay raise and if things are going well it usually opens some other options like leveraging some of your personal ownership. Bonuses are usually fair game if the team is hitting milestones (especially to retain people), but remember, if the company is taking investors money they want their money to go to making the business successful more then lining founders pockets. No one at a startup should be stuck at the same salary for years on end (outside the first year or so), that is generally a sign of a stalled or failed company, this includes the founders IMO. Of course, that said many founders will choose to take the smallest salary possible for as long as possible to keep that money in the company to grow faster, but is a choice and not because the company can't do better.

To be a little more specific, I have seen everything from minimum wage on up for founders. Investors know you need to eat and live, so as long as the company plan seems reasonable and they fund it then you are good to go. I don't think you can say there is a one size fits all rule. That said, from things I have seen personally, many founders take minimum wage (typically young college age founders), while others typically with more experience take $50k-75k. When you start going over $100k and you own any decent percentage of the business it usually will require more justification to investors, at least that I have seen. In the end though, it all comes down to the deal economics, the founding team and the initial investors.</comment>


The ReMarkable Tablet: A Review - <AUTHOR> https://blog.liw.fi/posts/2019/09/22/the_remarkable_tablet_a_review/ <comment><USER2> I'm a fairly early adopter of the RM, and bought it for keeping handwritten notes. I don't produce a great amount of notes as a student might, but I find that the experience of writing really helps me think. Some thoughts on the device:

* The writing experience is top notch. It feels like pen and paper. I recently had the chance to try Onyx Boox Max 2 (very briefly), and it's nowhere close to the RM as far as the tactile feeling goes. This is the main selling point of the RM, and it's very good.

* It's an open-source Linux-based device but not entirely. The actual UI application isn't open source. But as others have said here, it has pretty good hacking potential, and it's definitely more open than most commercial devices. The company's support of open-source was another reason for me to buy it.

* The on-tablet software started out really bad but has improved. The first version had a bug that dramatically reduced battery life. It took a few more updates to get essential features like inserting a blank page in the middle of a notebook.

* The off-tablet software is bad. There's a file manager webapp with remarkably poor UX, the cloud sync API isn't particularly convenient for automation, and so on.

* As a reader, it's mediocre at best. PDFs formatted for large screens look good, but rendering is slow, navigation is poor, etc. I would absolutely not replace my Kindle with the RM.

To summarize, I think the RM is a very good device if you treat it as a digital paper replacement. That's what it is for me, and I'm happy. But if you want a good e-book reader, or any advanced software at all, this isn't the right device.

<comment><USER3> > * It's an open-source Linux-based device but not entirely. The actual UI > application isn't open source. But as others have said here, it has pretty > good hacking potential, and it's definitely more open than most commercial > devices. The company's support of open-source was another reason for me to > buy it.

Can you tell us a bit more about this? Took a look at their website and searched around a bit, but don't find anything about it. What makes ReMarkable more open than most other commercial devices? Seems any device running Android and alike would be more open to hacking.

Also can't find anything about the company's support of open source.

<comment><USER2> For one, unlike most Android devices, you don't have to root the RM. It comes with SSH running and you have the root password. The company's Github [1] has most of the source code, from their Linux kernel to the software update daemon.

Their CTO, Martin Sandsmark, is a long-time KDE developer.

Unfortunately, xochitl (the device's main UI) isn't open. It's a major miss in their open approach, and frankly I don't get why they would keep it closed - the RM's competitive advantage is in the hardware design, the xochitl software is merely okay and could only benefit from user patches.

[1] [https://github.com/reMarkable](https://github.com/reMarkable)

<comment><USER4> Can you use the device locally (no cloud or "activation" or account, etc)

<comment><USER2> You can - if you don't do the cloud setup, the RM won't try to sync anything. Then your file management options are the device's built-in software (which is viable prototype quality, not shipping quality) or some custom scripting. Given that this is HN, you're probably better off writing some small scripts to manage the device via SSH or curl.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've stopped using mine. It's gathering dust in a corner somewhere. The hardware is pretty decent, and the writing experience is good. The software, on the other hand, is not good. There have been a couple of updates since I bought it, but they've been few and far between. Everything about it is mediocre. The file manager, meh. The note taking app, meh. The sync, meh. Getting stuff on it automatically is all but impossible. And I haven't been able to read some DRM books on it.

It's too expensive to use as just a notepad, but it's not good enough to use for anything else.

Additionally: the writing experience on the ipad pro is at least as good, and with just a bit less lag.

<comment><USER6> I had the same experience, unfortunately - although I recognized early and returned it a few weeks after getting it. At the time the software was bad across the board: on device and off. But the clincher for me was the price of the device was as much as you'd spend on an iPad and it had no backlight. I'd go back to considering ReMarkable on next generation if they've learned from gen 1. My use case was 50% book reading and 50% note/idea pad. I didn't feel it excelled at either of those. And while I don't enjoy reading on a tablet the writing experience on the iPad with a tactile screen cover is actually very good. I realize many would disagree there and I'd agree with that without the screen cover. I hope ReMarkable keeps going though. In the end it seems like they've left the platform open enough compared to the locked down ecosystems. I refuse to buy any Amazon branded eReader because of how limited in use they are without the Bezos ecosystem.

<comment><USER7> To each their own, I've found with my ereader that backlight (or are they frontlights?) are pointless. During the day, I always use no backlight and I find it easier on the eyes just to turn a lamp on at night.

<comment><USER8> Turning on a lamp at night is great when your SO goes to bed later, or doesn't mind light when going to sleep.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am actually wondering to see I buy one. Here is some links that I find interesting to consider before buying (some of those do answer some previous comments) :

* Here is a [previous occurrence on HN]([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16321531](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16321531)).

* Here is a ["curated list of (code) projects related to the reMarkable tablet"]([https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable](https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable)).

* Here is a [framework]([https://github.com/canselcik/libremarkable](https://github.com/canselcik/libremarkable)) for "developing applications with native refresh support for Remarkable Tablet " (with a growing Rust APi if you fancy that).

Some notes :

* As you will see by exploring some the links, the tablet is Linux-based so it is definitely possible to piggy-back on some API (see [https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable#apis](https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable#apis) for examples)

* A bunch of alternative synchronization tools have already been implemented (see [https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable#cloud-tools](https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable#cloud-tools))

* The company seems really attached to software updates to improve the device (see [https://blog.remarkable.com/](https://blog.remarkable.com/)).

* From all above, I think that the device _could_ reach a critical mass of adoption and blossom in uses and third-party development but only if enough people engage with the device. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

<comment><USER10> There's a pretty active developer community!

Main community resources are on Reddit and Discord:

\- [https://www.reddit.com/r/RemarkableTablet](https://www.reddit.com/r/RemarkableTablet)

\- [https://discord.gg/n89uDN](https://discord.gg/n89uDN)

You can use the tablet without the proprietary cloud platform by using the built-in web interface to transfer data.

<comment><USER11> I perused these before and didn't feel like they are much for developer resources.. do you have some favorite posts to link to as opposed to the sub reddit entirely? (Which seems to consist of people wondering which update they got)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm a happy user of this tablet.

I also created a [Go app]([https://github.com/juruen/rmapi](https://github.com/juruen/rmapi)) to interact with the cloud API.

I mainly use the tablet as a "virtual printer". Using the app I just mentioned above, I print directly to the device from my Mac. Yeah, this just saves me a couple of clicks and one drag and drop :)

Here's a [tutorial]([https://github.com/juruen/rmapi/blob/master/docs/tutorial- pr...](https://github.com/juruen/rmapi/blob/master/docs/tutorial-print- macosx.md)) on how to set it up and an actual [demo]([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOGTYI15VxY&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOGTYI15VxY&feature=youtu.be)).

When I was studying, it was also great to use it to solve math problems on it when I was traveling without having to carry too much paper with me.

<comment> m-p-3 I hope the idea of a virtual printer catches on for these type of devices. It would make the switch to a paperless environment in the corporate world so simple.

<comment><USER13> OneNote uses the virtual printer on Windows. It is actually really helpful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was thinking about buying it, because the stylus seemed to be much better than the one from the Sony DPT-RP1. However, I decided to buy the DPT-RP1 mainly for its size (13" is just perfect to read papers and taking notes!).

The writing experience of the DPT-RP1 is not great, but I have been using it for almost a year now and would never go back. The amount of paper that I have laying around at work now is minimal. I have created a virtual printer to just sent whatever file I am reading to the DPT-RP1.

Although there is no official support for Linux there is a very good python API developed by some guy, which works perfectly. Color e-ink would be nice to have for the next version, but I'm ok if only the stylus gets an upgrade.

<comment><USER15> Problem with Sony for that amount of cash is the lack of ePub support. This is why I bought iReader Smart. The biggest nuisance with iReader is the Chinese only interface.

<comment><USER16> i hadn't heard of this one before. do you have a link with more info? where did you purchase from?

<comment><USER15> See these:

[0] [https://item.m.jd.com/product/100000118023.html](https://item.m.jd.com/product/100000118023.html)

[1] [https://www.ifanr.com/1096368](https://www.ifanr.com/1096368)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I bought the tablet for two reasons:

\- I write research papers. I suffer from writer's block when using a computer for a prolonged period of time. I thought that writing by hand would be different enough so that when I get a block on the computer, I could write by hand. This was true. And with the OCR engine built-in, I can easily convert my notes to a format ready to be pasted to Overleaf.

\- SVG support lets me draw illustrations for my academic papers. This turned out not to work as well as I imagined, but still good enough to get the point across and recreate the SVGs by hand on a separate software.

I still read books on a Kindle, and I still read papers on the computer. This has more to do with how much easier it is to take and export notes on the devices.

The reMarkable is expensive, but if your job is writing or illustrating, I think it makes sense to invest in your capability to do it more.

</comment><comment> j-pb I agree with the assessment that opening up the remarkable software stack would be a huge selling point.

I bought one for my girlfriend and she's super happy with it, but having a mosh console on there would allow her to ditch her macbook.

Being able to code on it would also cause me to get one and ditch my iPad Pro.

<comment><USER18> > [...] but having a mosh console on there would allow here to ditch her > macbook. [..] Being able to code on it would also cause me to get one and > ditch my iPad Pro.

Not officially supported or endorsed in any way, shape or form, and I don't even know if it even still builds, but I did a quick proof of concept porting fingerterm; [https://iskrembilen.com/fingerterm+vim.jpg](https://iskrembilen.com/fingerterm+vim.jpg)

[https://github.com/reMarkable/fingerterm](https://github.com/reMarkable/fingerterm)

I don't think it's very usable in practice, though, but it was cool for about five minutes to muck about in a terminal emulator on an e ink display.

<comment><USER19> I didn't realize it until visiting your HN profile but I see you are one of the people behind reMarkable!

And you guys are based in Norway too!

A few questions if you don't mind.

How many people are in your company?

What are the current and future plans of the company in terms of product? Keep improving the software for the current hardware? Make new models with different hardware?

Where in Norway are you located?

Are you looking to increase the number of people working in your company? Planning to hire more software developers?

And in terms of the open source parts of it, I don't have this product, nor have I really heard about it before, so I haven't had a chance to try it but, is everything that the community would need available in order to create a fully open source alternative "firmware" (or really, a "distro" might be a better name for it since it's running a Linux kernel and all) that can run on your hardware?

<comment><USER18> We generally have a policy of not communicating externally by default (way too many startups have failed because of loose lips and over-promising), but I'll answer with what's already known publicly. :-)

> How many people are in your company?

Around 70¹.

> Where in Norway are you located?

Oslo¹ (or you can search for reMarkable on google maps).

> Are you looking to increase the number of people working in your company? > Planning to hire more software developers?

Yes, yes and yes. :-)

[https://remarkable.com/careers](https://remarkable.com/careers)

> [...] is everything that the community would need available in order to > create a fully open source alternative "firmware" (or really, a "distro" > might be a better name for it since it's running a Linux kernel and all) > that can run on your hardware?

It's just a completely standard Linux system, and as required we publish the source code for u-boot and Linux and whatnot, so yes.

I originally wanted to just run plain Debian on it (or ALARM), but it was easier to just start with a minimal system and put on as little as possible, especially when you're a single person trying to keep track of everything.

Now we've expanded the team a bit, and ideally we could upstream at least the kernel patches so we don't have to forward-port everything ourselves, but it's not a high priority unfortunately.

And we're still a relatively small team, it's a bit hard to find a lot of good kernel developers who want to switch jobs in Norway.

¹: [https://www.dn.no/teknologi/teknologi/nettbrett/remarkable/r...](https://www.dn.no/teknologi/teknologi/nettbrett/remarkable/remarkable- har-solgt-norske-nettbrett-for-400-millioner-kroner/2-1-562312)

<comment><USER20> Have you considered hiring remotely? (I read your recruitment pages and while it does not say that you don't explicitly your hiring process looks as if you are recruiting only for on-site positions).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've been using reMarkable for more than a year now. It's a very mediocre product with major software problems, BUT, I still will not trade mine with anyone for one simple reason: it allows me to disconnect and think. iPad, surface are all better in terms of features, but I get easily distracted. When I have to write something I am having real difficulty with, reMarkable works much better. Can't precisely explain why, but my guess is that it allows me to focus more deeply, like a blackboard or notebook.

<comment><USER22> Does it do a good job of recognizing your handwriting?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> A good alternative seems to be Onyx Boox Max2 which seems to be more open (android based and can use all the normal apps including sync etc), have similar functionality and can also work as an external hdmi screen.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSv0g-pYMAk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSv0g-pYMAk)

<comment><USER24> I wouldn't recommend any of the Onyx Boox products. Sure they may run android, but:

* They run an ancient version of android (Android 6 or Android 5, I don't remember)

* This ancient version of android runs a kernel that is susceptible to multiple vulnerabilities (like DirtyCOW)[0], and the developers have disabled selinux

* Kernel sources are not released, in violation of the GPL and the last time I checked, it seemed like there was evidence of ripped off applications/IP theft in bundled but hidden applications.

* The bootloader is locked

* Access to the wacom digitizer is only possible through a proprietary blob, which has to be incorporated into an application that wishes to use it. Therefore, the stylus support has a tremendous lag for any application that is not an onyx-made application.

* Handwriting recognition requires connection to their cloud services

Their forums are down right now, but people have been begging them to at least comply with the GPL and release kernel sources for years now [1,2]. The last time I checked, there were 3 separate threads about this on their front page.

It's a really tragic situation for such nice hardware. I can't think of any reasons why the company wouldn't want to open the source unless they were hiding something or were afraid of getting ripped off by other OEMs. The only thing that the onyx devices had over the ReMarkable is storage, but seeing as how the RM can be modded to accept an SD card[3] and has first-class linux support, it's the better choice IMO.

[0]: [https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?s=42e53ed5d56...](https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?s=42e53ed5d56f02832e3d471f6144513c&p=3788060&postcount=40)

[1]: [https://web.archive.org/web/20190122063838/http://bbs.onyx-i...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190122063838/http://bbs.onyx- international.com/t/please-provide-source-code-for-kernel-and-bootloader/237)

[2]: [http://bbs.onyx-international.com/t/install-linux-or- alterna...](http://bbs.onyx-international.com/t/install-linux-or-alternate-os- and-gpl2-kernel-source/698)

[3]: [http://www.davisr.me/projects/remarkable- microsd/](http://www.davisr.me/projects/remarkable-microsd/)

<comment><USER25> All of what you say is true, but I'd still recommend the devices. The nova pro has been the best ereader device I've had. The software has gotten quite good as well. They said they will release android 9 for other devices than the Max3 but I believe it when I see it.

I know that they actually submitted requests to incorporate changes into third party apps like evernote to support better rendering for their devices, which was denied. I think this is a limitation of android which they work around with their "SDK", but I could be wrong.

The GPL thing, judging from the forum discussion to me seems like whoever is responding is a middle man. And the Leadership quite literally doesn't understand it. IP theft doesn't really matter for China in the way it does for the US anyway. And it doesn't really matter for the kernel anyway. Actually it doesn't matter in most places unless you're big enough to have big license issues and even then even when strings match historically it was hard to make a case in court. What I'm trying to say is that I don't think they're hiding it because of IP theft but rather because they don't understand the GPL or the value of open source. The flip side is that you can easily root the device because of the exploits.

I've used the Max 2 both with termux and vim to ssh outdoor and as a monitor for a one mix 2s laptop I had at the time. 2GB Ram(the original max 2) wasn't really enough for my emacs setup so it would crash emacs when I was using org mode. I think the Max 3 is probably nice, but at the same time it's not really that big an upgrade that I would pay for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Here's my use case: as a scientist, I'm often in the position of needing to review multiple 20+ page grants or manuscripts, resulting in hundreds of pages at a time. I find it far easier to read closely and retain info when I can write directly on the documents, then circle back to collect my comments, vs typing directly. At a certain point, looking at reams of paper coming out of the printer made me feel slightly sick to my stomach. Plus, I appreciate that I'm not left with those stacks of paper sitting on my desk.

(Before someone does the inevitable HN calculation about why the materials used to make the Remarkable are far worse for the planet than all the trees killed to print grants - yes, you're probably right. YMMV.)

I had tried the various ipad and equivalents, and the RM's big advantage is that it feels like reading/writing on paper, mostly - something about the matte screen and stylus, though the stylus is sort of craptastic.

As others note, the software is clunky with annotations moving around on the page, and there's a bit of lag. But, I have yet to find anything better. I do wish there were an easy way to collect all the annotations in one place, but my handwriting as an MD is appallingly bad so that may be an impossible task.

<comment><USER27> > I had tried the various ipad and equivalents, and the RM's big advantage is > that it feels like reading/writing on paper, mostly - something about the > matte screen and stylus, though the stylus is sort of craptastic.

I have a few artist friends who said the same thing about the iPad and Apple Pencil, but then they started buying paper-like non-glossy protective sheets and said it improved the experience immeasurably. I don't know how appropriate that would be for you, but they're apparently relatively cheap, so maybe you could give that a shot if you still have an iPad sitting around?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I bought and returned one a year ago.

I found that the two use cases I wanted most...:

* quick note taking

* syncing and reading long books

didn't work out that well.

As the author says, APIs for syncing are no fun. I also found that the tablet didn't keep up with my writing quickly enough at all.

It also didn't really allow for "let me just jot this down and then check it out later on my PC". Like, all I wanted was a "notes-<timestamp>.png" automatically in a folder on my PC to look at later, and that seemed completely impossible.

<comment><USER29> The writing experience improved a lot with an update this autumn. Doesn't seem slow at all for me, makes me wonder if you had a flawed or early version.

[https://blog.remarkable.com/software-update-1-8-improved- bru...](https://blog.remarkable.com/software-update-1-8-improved-brushes- better-syncing-and-a-smoother-reading-experience-ef0cc581a77a)

<comment><USER28> I bought mine in May, so that sounds like I just missed it.

Bummer!

Unfortunately, retailers in Switzerland don't stock it, otherwise I would like to check out the improvements to confirm that my experience was just blemished by being an early adopter.

<comment><USER29> Mine is a couple of years old. It was a software update.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> As someone who use pens with 0.38mm tips, most touch screens and graphics tablets I've come across simply don't have enough resolution to write comfortably. Reading this review made me go down a rabbit hole of various E-Ink tablets but it's becoming increasingly frustrating to find that literally none of them list the LPI of the touch screen. I can't even find any measurements on how big the nibs on the styluses are. Can anyone else who uses fine-tipped pens comment on the writing experience for this tablet?

</comment><comment><USER31> I put a paper feel screen protector on an iPad Pro. Using GoodNotes feels just like writing on paper with a pen now.

</comment><comment><USER32> > While the tablet keeps up with writing just fine, it's a little slow when > jumping around a long document.

I haven't found a good tablet analog for a sense of "place" within a document and fast indexing. With a book, I can flip through the pages by bending the pages and sliding my thumb over the edges (like a deck of cards). On a laptop, ctrl+F is approximately the same speed as thumbing through physical pages (sometimes better, sometimes worse, depending on how unique the search term is). My iPad is intentionally set up for handwriting, [1] but I still find searching through documents on a tablet pretty tedious.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20271316](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20271316)

</comment><comment><USER33> Does anyone have a way of setting up the ReMarkable to run Emacs with an external keyboard? If so, the device might be able to satisfy 2 disparate needs in my life for a more portable and readable outdoors coding environment as well as for note-taking as a paper replacement.

</comment><comment><USER34> Bought mine a year ago, and love it. It's fundamentally changed how I read and write —no more papers, easy to get PDFs and textbooks onto it through my Mac or phone. If you're an academic and read a lot, it's an invaluable way to do your eyes a favor and also eliminate distractions. Had an Ipad and disliked the backlight. Also, not sure what people are saying on here, but the writing fidelity is some of the best I've ever seen (used to work in pen-based interfaces). It's not a glossy screen like ipad, it's matte, there's friction. The size of it too makes it perfect for reading academic PDFs and textbooks galore. Yes it can be slow, but I'm not on it to play games or whatever. I'm on it to read.

<comment><USER35> > Yes it can be slow, but I'm not on it to play games or whatever. I'm on it > to read.

Ok, but what about zooming and panning, or flipping pages?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I bought one from the early campaign. As a thinking/planning device I write tens to hundreds of pages per month on paper and was intrigued by the focus on the writing experience of this product. And it is a good product- between the surface, the plastic pen tips, and the device software, provides a good enough writing experience. However, I found that my recall when using the device became zero. The loss of the physical process of reviewing and paging through written pages was unexpectedly significant, and "paging" through the digital pages did not help. So it sits unused. I should sell it.

</comment><comment><USER37> Bought one, returned it within their 30 day window.

It wrote well, but the software supporting it is terrible. The only way to get your scribbles off the thing is by having it do some attempt at OCR and then it EMAILS you the text.

</comment><comment><USER38> I have a reMarkable and I'm really happy with it. I can't recommend it for everyone yet but if you like to tinker it's really really nice.

I wrote a small script that downloads the articles from news websites and puts them on the device using 'wkhtmltopdf -a5' and it has become my morning newspaper.

The software isn't perfect but it works well enough (and getting better all the time) and the fact that you can write your own makes it perfect for me.

<comment><USER39> Does the script run on the the device or externally?

Is there shell access on the device? If so, what packages / distribution does it run / use?

<comment><USER38> For now the script runs on a computer and transmits the files to the device using wifi or a cable but there isn't really a reason why it can't run on the device. I do plan on making something like that work on the device eventually.

I'm pretty sure it's a Yocto based Linux image based on the toolchain they distribute.

<comment><USER39> Thanks.

What's the WiFi transfer mechanism? Push or pull?

<comment><USER38> For now the computer pushes to the tablet but it would be simple to write a program to pull.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Theoretically it's good but I wonder how much market there is for it at that price.

Tablets themselves are used a subset of population, compared to the phones. On top of that for people wanting to read ebooks only amazon already sells a reader for far less than this one. The iPad for example offers all these features on top of the 100s more. What is special about this and Where is the market for this?

<comment><USER41> Science, engineering, medicine. There are tens of millions of folks who would use this over an iPad.

<comment><USER42> Is willingness to pay part of the definition of a "market"? (Honest question; I didn't go to business school.) I don't doubt there are "tens of millions of folks who would use this over an iPad" if it were free -- I'm one of those people -- but to buy this in addition to, or instead of, an iPad? No way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> did anyone ever try the sony's digital paper ? It is super pricey but I am yet to find someone reliable to get an honest opinion of the device

link - [https://www.sony.com/electronics/digital-paper- notepads/dpt-...](https://www.sony.com/electronics/digital-paper-notepads/dpt- series)

<comment><USER44> I have one (DPT-S1) for years after a kindle DX screen felt too small, and still use it for reading technical papers and books. Papers are a pleasure to read. The weight is light-feather. The price was extravaganza-level but haven't repented, I love this gadget. It synchronizes via web-dav with (for me) a box.com account, perhaps slowly. Is a superb reading device, battery lasts more than a week. Is not a tablet, web browising is enough for landing in a specific blog post or wikipedia article, but anything cpu consuming will be slow. After the years the stylus cilindrical holder came apart. The writing experience is functional, but lags to a point compared with pen and pencil (but is workable). Mine has SD-card with 32 gigs. Page flip on scanned books makes you wait. The software is minimalist but not buggy. No sound.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I've had one of these since 12/18 and like it quite a bit. I use it as a sketchbook and to take notes. When I first got it the stylus felt a bit too slippery however after some use it feels more like a normal writing instrument. My only suggestion is that they should sort templates so that recently used ones appear first.

</comment><comment><USER46> I bought one for myself for Christmas a few years ago. I disliked it so much I ended up returning it. My use case was to use it for notes (bullet journal) and as an eReader. It was ok for taking notes, but for the money it needed to be amazing. I personally wouldn't recommend it. Also their customer support was terrible.

</comment><comment><USER47> What I need in my work life is an e ink tablet and the software to draw diagrams.

I have terrible legibility. Using mouse based draw apps feel so tedious for rough iterative sketches that it's hard to ever justify.

The app would ideally be like the Newton in the way it autocompletes the shapes. The tablet would likely be something like this one.

</comment><comment><USER48> I wish someone did a light A4-sized eInk device with these software features:

* PDF reader

* epub reader

* well-maintained paged-media mode Web browser (well-maintained meaning timely security patches for the browser and the base system)

* no app, just standard MTP over USB and whatever the Bluetooth file transfer protocol is called

* reasonable privacy stance (not collecting what documents are read)

When looking for the above, which doesn't exist, I settled on Sony Digital Paper (DPT-RP1) instead of ReMarkable. (My recollection is that the Sony device had a larger display and didn't assume a cloud component, which could shut down.)

Sony has the hardware side solved albeit in U.S. Letter size instead of A4. However, of the other points, it only does PDF.

Sadly, despite being based on Android 5, which meant they could have gotten the standard file transfers for free, Sony disabled that stuff and forces the use of their Windows and Mac app to load the PDFs onto the device. At least back when I bought the device (which was before the GDPR came into effect), the terms of service for the app were unreasonable: The terms claimed the content of the PC running the app as fair game for telemetry. Nope, nope. I've never connected the device to the network and I run the app in a manner that blocks it from accessing the network. One shouldn't have to take steps like this. The app and the terms for the app make even less sense considering that the marketing target of the device is doctors and lawyers, who even in the U.S. have specific document confidentiality obligations.

Sadly, I have no idea what kind of business model would enable a well- maintained paged-media mode Web browser. Taking an existing Web engine and making its print-oriented paged-media capabilities work well in the interactive case would be a major project in itself. And top of that, actually keeping up with security patches would be hard work. (I have used a continuous-media Web browser on eInk, and it's not a good experience.)

Anyway, I wouldn't go back to not having a Digital Paper device, but I feel dirty about Sony having gotten my money despite me having to deal with their PC-side app and its terms.

<comment><USER39> My wishlist is comparable, though I'd also very much like to see document management tools scalable to 1,000s to 10,000s of items (yes, really, and yes, I've well over 5,000 docs on my current tablet, and no, I can't organise them anywhere near as I'd like).

The Web browser is a danger (distraction) but also useful utility.

Someone's web clippings / bookmarks / downloads manager (Pinboard, Pocket, etc.) or equivalent or export manager would be another hugely useful addition.

The option to source content from third-party sites, including Gutenberg, Wikisource, Sci-Hub, and LibGen.

Adding email and messaging is another distraction risk, but with appropriate disturbance controls, possibly within spec.

And, because I find shells hugely useful, some sort of extensive Linux shell (like Termux for Android, or better). A minority want, but a powerful one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I also have one of these and price aside it's amazing. It's not android which I think is a positive as it aids the "get out of my way and let me read/write" ethos. It's expensive and it has had some really basic bugs, but if they make a version 2 I'll buy it in a heartbeat.

</comment><comment><USER50> The hard work of syncing kill me.

I have to switch from these kind of paper device as it is hard to manage info across them. Pad like devices are paper to me and kindle. It is more like in Star Trek you see captain use a few pad devices as if there were separate books/doc. It would be better if the two New iPad Air can manage the files in their app. As it can't, I bought new old stock of macbook 12". It is all portable and all work together.

as background I own kindle, boss the pad size and the huge one (max 2). Once the ipad has the paper like screen protector i did the switch. The newly bought 15" i9! Is not portable. Hence the macbook 12

</comment><comment><USER51> Like the review says this device is most useful for reading PDFs. Tablets aren't an option because 1) too heavy and 2) not enough battery life, whereas most e-book readers do a poor job displaying PDFs because they're too small. There's only a handful of large screen e-ink devices and this tablet is one of them.

</comment><comment><USER52> It is a perfect device for those of us who spend a lot of our days reading and annotating scientific papers. The refresh rate on the screen is not relevant at (at least my) paper reading speed, and I can email marked up documents to collaborators and students.

</comment><comment><USER53> How does this compare to a kobo libra? I have one Kobo Libra, use it for PDFs, as the screen has enough DPI and is big enough, but it's not the best experience.

Absolutely love the Pocket integration and KOReader, though. Also, the lights.

</comment><comment> shaded-enmity I'm still waiting for the ability to quickly share my drawings/writings with others over the internet. Really wanted to use it in architecture/design meetings instead of wonky jamboard.

<comment><USER39> ReMarkable does allow emailing content. That's not directly Webable, but you might set up something to collect/publish, if you wanted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> IMHO, $500 is a stiff price for such device.

[https://remarkable.com/store/reMarkable-and- marker](https://remarkable.com/store/reMarkable-and-marker)

<comment><USER55> Agreed. As I scrolled through the Web page, I was thinking to myself that it looks cool and that I'd buy it on a whim if it came in around $200. But when I saw the about $500 price point, I was more like, hmmm, let me read the HN comments. The comments look to be fair but meh. So, it gets put on the someday wishlist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> I have bought both the Remarkable and all the Onyx Boox Max devices.

I ended up selling the Remarkable since I stopped using it after University.

For most textbooks a 13 inch e-reader is _much_ better.

</comment><comment><USER57> Do any of these tablets sync with Endnote? I am an academic and organize research using Endnote, and I would need the tablet to pull and sync with my endnote.

</comment><comment><USER58> Any support for Microsoft office apps (even if via third party)? docx, pptx and xlsx?

</comment><comment><USER59> As a musician I am really interested in this to stop wasting paper on lead sheets.

</comment><comment><USER60> After reading this article I was all set to look into the ReMarkable as a big e-reader. Then I read this thread and I'm glad that I don't!

I have no use for writing in a tablet. Can anyone recommend a big e-reader suitable for textbooks? I'd like a 13" Kindle or something...

<comment><USER39> One of the larger iPads might work for you.

I've been using a 9" Android tablet, which has a pretty good form factor, but is abysmal in virtually all other regards. Extensive notes:

[https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/lqgtwy_rhsfbdh5cdxb1rq](https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/lqgtwy_rhsfbdh5cdxb1rq)

Having an integrable folio-style keyboard is a hard requirement, and Apple seem to be filling this niche, though their manufacturer (Logitech) is the same company I've had an horrible experience with myself.

at 9", _almost_ all PDF-format texts are readable, though _good bookreading software_ is hard to come by. I've mostly settled on PocketBook, which is reasonably inobtrusive for reading, but which makes large-scale document management (10k+ items) impossible. The metadata fields, as an example, lack an author field, and updating content metadata is cumbersome to the point of being all but impossible.

I've been hunting for alternatives, but to date, no joy. Apple's devices look superior based on hardware, though I have concerns for the actual usage experience.

[https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/lqgtwy_rhsfbdh5cdxb1rq](https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/lqgtwy_rhsfbdh5cdxb1rq)

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I can't wait until I can browse the web on a device like this

</comment><comment><USER62> How close is the "e-paper" screen to real e-ink?

<comment><USER63> there are a bunch of video reviews that cover this. The consensus seemed to be "close enough" for your average person but "not even remotely" like paper for people who pay attention to different paper types, and care about the tools they use for drawing / writing and how they interact with paper.

That is to say, you'll be happy if you don't pay any attention to the paper or writing implements you use normally. If you _do_ it's nowhere close but much better than writing / drawing on glass.

<comment><USER62> I've seen a lot of reviews comparing the writing experience to paper, but I'm more interested in the _reading_ experience, and particularly how much contrast the screen has vs an e-ink Kindle.

I've seen a few reviews actually refer to the screen as "e-ink"—but that must be a mistake, or the official website wouldn't use the more nebulous term "e-paper"... right? If it is e-ink, why is the refresh rate for drawing so good?

<comment><USER64> It is e-ink.

The refresh rate is good because they have come up with a clever method of only refreshing regions of the screen at once. Eg if you draw a line, it will only refresh the axis-aligned rectangle enclosing that line.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> OP and ReMarkable users, what ebook stores do you use?

</comment><comment><USER66> I signed up to ReMarkable during the beta/pilot announcement having gone through decades of testing Palms, iPads, eReaders, pen scanners in search for that analog experience.

I didn't pull the trigger after the early adopter review having seen so many of these devices rushed to market with half-baked file i/o or UI issues with crippled hardware/software slowing that "pen/pencil and paper" experience down. This marketing desire generation is usually coupled with amazing incredible first impression reviews [https://youtu.be/RGsWLeHZT8Y](https://youtu.be/RGsWLeHZT8Y) that only scratches the surface of total ownership experience.

So far the iPad with Pencil has come closest but who wants to lug that heavy thing around?! From my experience, customers really have to buy the company/platform not the device in hopes that they have staying power. Remember Livescribe? [https://www.youtube.com/user/nevermissaword/featured](https://www.youtube.com/user/nevermissaword/featured) Well they're baaack ... again.

I can only hope the best for ReMarkable and that they sustain the ecosystem to continue on with "your" notes. +1 for the open source we direly need it and that may be enough to support them and buy their 3rd gen model.

Currently I'm really enjoying analog fountain pens and paper, although more expensive! (14K nibs with custom grinds) they're pros on interface pleasure, offset power consumption, privacy and well ingrained UI. Search is waay slower but it helps brain power.

My later tech bet is on paper journal digitalization like Google Books with data capsules: [https://wiki.htrc.illinois.edu/display/COM/HTRC+Data+Capsule](https://wiki.htrc.illinois.edu/display/COM/HTRC+Data+Capsule) and doesn't everyone use MyScript API for handrec anyways? [https://developer.myscript.com/](https://developer.myscript.com/) or more openly I'm hoping on improvements to the tessaract pipeline: [https://github.com/tesseract- ocr/tesseract/wiki/ImproveQuali...](https://github.com/tesseract- ocr/tesseract/wiki/ImproveQuality)

As for current digital solutions, sadly it's going to the big gorillas via market share like MS with Onenote, or Google with chromebook tablet [https://chromeunboxed.com/chrome-os-78-tablet-mode-ui- overvi...](https://chromeunboxed.com/chrome-os-78-tablet-mode-ui-overview- google/) (termux Evil Org-mode with your fav Android pdf reader for papers!?) and Apple iPad pencil. Does it have to be this way? It would be ReMarkable if they can pull this off!

</comment><comment><USER67> these devices are just lovely for weiting and sketching.

</comment><comment><USER68> does this device have nextcloud integration?

</comment><comment><USER69> For the price it has, you could as well buy an iPad Pro, which will do literally anything the ReMarkable will do, but better.

<comment><USER70> Except display text on an e-ink reflective screen. They're fundamentally different for most people.</comment></comment>


Show HN: MacBook Alarm – Secure your laptop with an alarm - <AUTHOR> https://www.macbookalarm.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN, I'm working from coffee shops with my laptop and I'm going to the toilet time to time. I was worried that someone can steal my laptop while I'm away. So I built a macOS app. It will detect If someone will disconnect the charger or close the display and the app will sound an alarm and send a push notification to Telegram.

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm looking forward to visiting South Africa and South America, but that's kinda scary at the same time. A question though: what happens if a thief turns off the macbook sound?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a good question. Right now if there is at least any sound (not muted) it will increase sound to maximum automatically but if someone will mute the sound it will be muted. I'm working on it right now to prevent mute the sound.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> revival of the good old [https://www.google.com/search?q=i+alert+u+mac](https://www.google.com/search?q=i+alert+u+mac) ;)

It had some funny features like shooting a picture of the intruder and so on :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes this is classic :) Sudden Motion Sensor or SMS not supported anymore due to switching to SSD.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sounds amazing dude. Does it connect to the gyroscope/accelerometer aswell?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think gyroscope/accelerometer is deprecated in MacBook started from ~2012. It's called Sudden Motion Sensor or SMS. There is a command called "sudo pmset -g" and if SMS, if is exist, will show "sms: 1" or "sms: 0". Reference: [https://www.lifewire.com/manage-mac-sudden-motion-sensor- sms...](https://www.lifewire.com/manage-mac-sudden-motion-sensor-sms-2260756) My MacBook Retina 2014 do not have any SMS record.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> btw. why do you need admin rights on first launch - the app should work without as well</comment>


Same domain name, company name necessary? - <AUTHOR>

I have come up with a lot of great names for my company, but common consensus seems to be that before you settle on a name, you need to make sure the domain name is available, the twitter handle is available, etc. There are certain startups like Square (squareup.com) that get away with having a different domain name, when do you think it's appropriate to do this?<p>Thanks! <comment><USER2> It is preferred that the name you want is available (especially as a .com) and in other areas (such as twitter or facebook) as you have mentioned. It is particularly important to make sure it isn't trademarked.

That said, it's preferable, not required. Obviously a lot of companies don't use a .com, don't necessarily have the exact domain (delicious being an extreme case originally) and can still make it work. It's all about branding. The main thing you would lose is organic type-in traffic.

There's still room for creativity though.

</comment><comment><USER3> Have you ever heard of Obvious Corporation?

No? Well they've got a little web app I can guarantee you you've heard of and probably use.

<comment><AUTHOR> that's irrelevant though, Obvious is an idea incubator, but they launch separate companies/entities (dunno the exact legal structure but that also doesn't matter), and one of them, Twitter, has its own domain name. Unless you are referring to something else . . .

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The major issues are avoiding confusion and SEO. They don't need to be identical, but there needs to be a strong mapping.

[http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-choose-the-right-domain- na...](http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-choose-the-right-domain-name)</comment>


Self Organising WS2811 LEDs - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cmgresearch.com/2020/06/05/self-organising-ws2811-leds.html <comment><USER2> The video here when each LED is being lit up reminds me a lot of Ryoji Ikeda's works [0]. Specifically the visuals that accompany his audio/soundscape/"sound art" stuff

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

See "Test Pattern" for example: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfcN9Qhfir4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfcN9Qhfir4) (at around 1:20 is what I'm thinking of)

</comment><comment><USER3> I had spent a bunch of time trying to do the exact same thing with self powered esp8266s (one rgb led per device), but never finished. This captures the essence of the coolest part which "learns" how to use randomly placed pixels as a display. I do think there's a faster algorithm for the calibration step though...

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you are right, one pixel at a time is a pretty slow way of doing things. The current image processing is pretty naive at the moment as well, gets easily confused by large reflections and splashes of light.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Since LED can also work as light detector, I wonder if it would be possible to calculate a similar positioning map by detecting the flashes of nearby LEDs.

<comment><USER5> In theory, if you had individual leads to each LED, possible. However, I don't think the way WS2811s (and similar) are addressed would allow this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A few steps away from a randomly sparse pixel display you can just string up and display things bounded by density.

<comment><USER7> Unfortunately, even a 64 x 64 grid uses a surprisingly large amount of power and you'll find yourself working with high current DC power supplies.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, you need to start injecting power along the strings of LEDs to keep it working properly and the power demands do add up pretty quickly. Fortunately it's low voltage (5v) so not shock worthy, but definitely capable of starting fires!</comment></comment></comment>


Target is plotting a big move away from AWS as Amazon takes over retail - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/29/target-is-moving-away-from-aws-after-amazon-bought-whole-foods.html <comment><USER2> I don't know how strategic that move is in this case. It's not going to slow down Amazon's retail growth, and it'll just cost Target more to transition. They should have sound reasons to move away, like if they found cheaper and better alternatives. I don't know, it feels a little desperate from my point of view.

<comment><USER3> It seems more defensive than strategic. Seems like you wouldn't want your competitor to be your infrastructure provider and be in physical possession of potentially differentiating assets.

<comment><USER4> Don't want to because it hurts your pride, or don't want to because it has a practical impact on your ability to compete in your actual market?

Amazon/AWS is not going to fail because Target took away their business. But Target could easily screw up transitioning to another provider, and end up paying a lot in terms of money and wasted effort. Money and effort that would have been better spent improving their core business. Target should concentrate on build a better retail business than Amazon, not worrying about whether that business is built on top of AWS or some other cloud provider.

It's like how Apple compete with Samsung in the smartphone market, but still relies on Samsung as a central component supplier for many of their devices. I'm sure Apple execs would prefer not to give Samsung any money, but they're also smart enough to realise that using only non-Samsung suppliers simply for the sake of it would ultimately be a self-defeating move.

<comment><USER5> Amazon could also cut service to Target and it could take months for Target to react properly through the courts.

<comment><USER6> But when they eventually did, and proved that AWS had... targeted them.. then the financial penalties and the loss of confidence would cause enormous harm to AWS.

Which is why AWS would never do this in the first place.

<comment><USER7> Imagine the field day Microsoft's Azure Marketing team would have with that revelation....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article missed one huge factor: date farming by AWS/Amazon.

If one has data on pricing and sales across retail and online channels on a national scale, how risky would a purchase of a retailer really be? Not much, as you can pivot towards high sales, high profit products without doubting your strategy

Target, Walmart & other retailers de-risked Amazon's purchase of wholefoods

<comment><USER9> Do we know Amazon's policy on "peeking" into people's AWS data? I feel like they would have something against that in their ToS/Privacy Policy.

<comment><USER8> They're the system admins on all their managed databases. Think about it

<comment><USER10> Not that Target is well-known to be good at security, but if AWS was discovered snooping on their data that would probably be the end of their business. Not to mention the tsunami of lawsuits launched by other companies spooked by the scandal.

I can't imagine any manager or engineer willing to risk their career doing so.

Then again, a director at Volkswagen agreed to intentionally cheat emissions tests, so perhaps an Amazon employee would be foolish enough to snoop on Target's data.

<comment><USER11> I can't imagine an engineer creating a Diesel engine designed for fraud. But it happened. I'd say that in a company with an aggressive business culture like Amazon this is only more likely.

<comment><USER12> What's the cost/benefit of them doing that to Target? On the upside they could see what's selling well, what margins they have, etc. What's the net value of that information to their retail unit? I'd say it's probably very small.

On the downside, they could lose their most profitable business unit.

Check out all the audits they go through. If you're an enterprise customer with this concern you can get access to those audit reports and see if it's one of the things being looked at by an independent third party.

Besides, all Target has to do is encrypt the data. Boom, non-factor.

<comment><USER13> > What's the cost/benefit of them doing that to Target? On the upside they > could see what's selling well, what margins they have, etc. What's the net > value of that information to their retail unit? I'd say it's probably very > small.

It doesn't have to be a careful CEO decision. It could just be a curious engineer and someone in strategy who appreciates the data. That's probably how it started at VW, not with the board deciding that this is a wise strategy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Who remembers when Target's website was hosted by Amazon.com (not AWS)? Probably 6 or 7 years ago now. IIRC Toys'R'Us was also but left earlier.

<comment><USER15> [https://www.geekwire.com/2011/target-finally-parts-ways- amaz...](https://www.geekwire.com/2011/target-finally-parts-ways-amazoncom- retailers-web-site-launch-starts-outage/)

I remember when the new Target website launched, and they had a 'Credits' page on the website (or a press release?) that listed over 50 partners that made the launch possible, kinda crazy and not surprising that the website failed on launch day.

Additionally, Target partnered with a popular designer to launch their product line on the same day to celebrate the new website, adding insult to injury with a huge traffic spike.

Their inexperience in operating a retail website was painfully obvious. For example, the search results were accurate when really you want to optimize for the customer experience and not accuracy - the first couple pages of search results for an item were all the right items but also all out of stock, so it looked like a very empty store as you clicked through page after page of unavailable items. The search results should have sorted in-stock items to the top by default.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't understand the synergies of AWS within Amazon. Amazon.com is probably one of the biggest clients, but probably not even the biggest. If they were to split up AWS from Amazon, the entities could be worth more than combined. AWS would lose restrictions of companies that don't like Amazon while Amazon.com could still access the systems.

<comment><USER16> AWS generates cash and lets the rest of Amazon operate less profitably. Investors are sufficiently impressed by Bezos's innovations (Prime, AWS itself, Kindle books and Amazon Video+Music, recent price shifts at Whole Foods) that they're willing to go along for the ride.

And I don't mean that necessarily negatively: they see Bezos as a visionary in a market he's helping to define.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Somewhat of a side note: Looking at the market share chart, I found it surprising that IBM was substantially larger than Google. Although they lumped IaaS, PaaS, and 'hosted private cloud' together, I still expected Google to be well ahead of anyone else besides AWS and Azure. Can someone confirm the accuracy of these numbers?

</comment><comment><USER18> If they are just doing this out of spite it is so silly. Do they think Amazon is going to go broke now and pull out of retail?

If they are paying more to another provider, they are making themselves _less_ competitive in contrast to Amazon, although maybe Microsoft lured them with a discount on Azure.

<comment><USER19> I don't think it's silly at all. Why help find another branch of a competitor's business? Do you not think that Amazon doesn't use money generated by AWS to help expand their retail business? I'm actually shocked at the number of companies that use AWS even though Amazon is a direct competitor. Netflix comes to mind.

<comment><USER18> Yes but Targets contribution is hardly going to make that big a difference.

OTOH the cost of moving cloud providers, if significant, is going to be an additional operational expense that would make them less competitive.

It's like Apple buying chips from Samsung.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Previous discussion on Walmart doing something similar (vendors can't run on AWS)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14602836](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14602836)</comment>