Ask HN: Four months since launch: how are you finding the iPad? - <AUTHOR>

I'm curious as to what people's thoughts on the iPad now that the dust has settled.
I use mine almost exclusively for reading blogs in the evening.  My girlfriend enjoys just browsing about on it.  That's about it - no photos, no videos, no audio.  Minimal gaming.  I also use Goodreader for technical PDFs.
Aside: It's been four months and there's not really a sniff of a competing product yet. <comment><USER3> I _absolutely_ love it.

It truly has changed huge portions of my life. I initially bought it somewhat second guessing myself thinking I was buying an over-expensive toy that I would regret, but have changed my mind drastically. Now someone would have to pry it away from me.

My laptop used to be tied to me wherever I was in my house, but now it has essentially become a desktop because I have almost no use for it. It is larger, clunkier, gets very hot in my lap, has far shorter battery life, etc. I had a netbook but almost never used it because it was so slow it was unbearable. To jump into a browser and get to GMail was a few minute endeavor which quickly left me so frustrated I'm surprised the thing did not end up out my window.

The iPad is fantastic for most of my everyday things such as checking my email, web browsing, etc. It's always on and FAST, so I am never frustrated as I was with my netbook. I no longer have to take my laptop with me on trips as the iPad will suffice in most scenarios. If I'll be gone for awhile, I bring a bluetooth keyboard and have iSSH which I can use to connect to any of my servers on the road. Once I've got an SSH session open, it is not really much different from using a laptop. When I'm on a plane, I can spin up multiple movies back to back and its 10+ hour battery life means that I'll almost never run it out by the time I land. No laptop could compare to that and it is in such a small, convenient package.

I still use my "real" computers for development, but for almost everything else, I use my iPad. In fact, it is very nice to separate my development from my time-wasting viewing. Now I do nothing but development on my laptop and have my iPad for casual browsing. That separation is very nice.

And one of the uses I did not anticipate when I first got it is the photo sharing aspect. Now anytime I am with family or friends and I mention something such as a trip I took, I can pull the iPad out (I take it with me everywhere because it is compact enough...I did not do the same with my laptop) and casually flip through photos, giving them visuals to accompany my stories.

My latest "killer app" is OmniFocus; their iPad implementation is stellar. It truly has changed my workflow and my ability to keep things prioritized. I previously was using the iPhone version of the app doubled on the iPad and it just wasn't all that great.

I would seriously recommend one of these to most family/friends looking to pick up a computer because it would do everything they need and be quite a value. My sister asked for a recommendation on a computer and was looking at some systems that were $1000+. Since all she does essentially is check her email and browse the web, I coaxed her into getting an iPad. She saved a few hundred dollars and has loved the device far more than a laptop. For more developer types, it is less viable as a replacement and more of a lifestyle augment, but it was a purchase I would make again in a second.

<comment><USER4> I'm just curious; how can you recommend it to family/friends looking for a _computer_ , since currently you still need an extra machine to sync the iPad to? Is it that they have a desktop and wanted a laptop?

<comment><USER5> You can just have them sync or activate it at an Apple store. You really don't need to do it again after that. OS updates would be out of reach, though, which are important. I'm still not sure why Apple tied the iPad to an iTunes install. It's such a brilliant device (wife and I love our 32gb wifi model) but this is a serious flaw.

<comment><USER6> Maybe because then the user is more likely to put their credit-card on file with Apple?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have read five novels ( Carpe Jugulum, Blackout, The Graveyard Book, Never Let me Go, and the Accidental Time Machine) and and find it far more convenient than my Kindle1/K2 for indoor reading - Ironically the battery is always charged on my iPad (I tend to let the kindle run down) and until the graphite kindle comes out, the ability to read at night is the deal breaker.

When I go on vacation though, I expect the Kindle will be in heavy rotation as my primary reader though - particularly out in BRC during the day.

Netflix, even with it's so-so iPad interface is frequently in rotation, and when Hulu-Plus -finally- sends me an invitation, I expect to get a lot of use from it.

Videos are in frequent rotation.

I've spent way to many hours on Games (PvZ, Build-a-Lot,BloonsTD)

DropBox/Good Reader/Instapaper get rotated every other day. Innovative Use: I have a Go program that I worship (SmartGoPro) - and every Friday Night, when I get together with a Friend for our six-hour Go session, we go through a bunch of Life-Death problems, both new and old, on the iPad.

All-in-all I really like how the iPad and the iPhone compliment each other. I use the iPhone for taking pictures, Blogging, GPS, SMS, eMail, instapaper a lot. But I find that general browsing I now typically reach for the iPad.

The Laptop at home gets very little use - only when I need to hop onto Terminal.App or use Remedy (Grrrr Flash) do I actually bother to open it up.

WSJ is killer - I open it up every morning and read it on my walk to/from work + they keep improving the App! The WSJ really, really are good. What's going on at the NYT - they've totally lamed out on the iPad.

Of the three magazines I read - Time, Popular Electronics, and Wired - <USER2> wired really wowed me, and now I actually look forward to the new magazine coming out. I haven't looked forward to the day a magazine comes out in 20+ Years (Dragon Magazine).

So, for me - iPad is a huge win. Looking forward to iPad with a retina display. :-)

<comment><USER8> > _until the graphite kindle comes out, the ability to read at night is the > deal breaker._

Could you explain this? The only thing that's been holding me up from preordering a K3 is that I'm not sure if I want white or graphite.

<comment><USER7> I said Graphite, but I really meant "K3" - the K3 has a $60 cover has support for night reading. [http://www.amazon.com/Lighted-Leather-Chocolate-Display- Gene...](http://www.amazon.com/Lighted-Leather-Chocolate-Display- Generation/dp/B003DZ166G)

I went through three (3) night lights on my Kindle(s), and was never happy with any of them. Glare was really annoying, which is tragic if you think about how well the Kindle normally handles (sunlight) Glare.

Here's hoping the Amazon Night Light solves it. Kindle + iPad have really inspired me to start reading again.

<comment><USER9> It's kind of crazy that the cover for a $140 kindle costs $60.

<comment><USER8> It has a builtin light (and some magic so that the Kindle powers the light), but still, yeah.

I'm looking at getting upsold by $110 on a $139 device. First it was "well, $50 for 3G everywhere forever is probably worth it". Now it's "$60 to keep my now-$189 Kindle nice and to have a light that doesn't suck is probably worth it."

<comment><USER10> How do you know this light doesn't suck? So far you're 3 for 3 on sucky lights, and you haven't tried this new one.

If there's a review for the new one that says, "This doesn't suck," then there's probably a review for your previous 3 that says the same thing...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I love mine. For the first time I've been able to leave the laptop at home entirely when traveling - need restaurant lookups? Map where you are? The iPad does all of that, for much lighter, and is about a million and half times more usable than your standard netbook.

It's a "laptop lite" so to speak - for most basic uses it's brilliant. When I'm on vacation and I don't want to write code (or pen long, important emails), the iPad is pretty sweet. It's also gotten me reading again, which is a nice plus.

I have the 3G version, so it's also a really nice way to just chill out somewhere and check Facebook or something without having to worry about WiFi (or carrying a dongle).

Also: as an enthusiast photographer, I find it incredibly useful to show people photos. It's an _incredible_ screen - better than most desktops and laptops have - and it's just perfect. I've had multiple pros express the same sentiments.

</comment><comment><USER12> I like it, though for as much as I use it, I can't seem to fall in love with it like I did the iPhone.

I use it principally for:

-Reading. iBooks is awesome. I love how it syncs your place so you can pick up on the phone. I haven't used the Kindle app much (which does the same) because most of the books I read are old and freely available in epub or PDF. I also use, to a lesser degree, Instapaper and Reeder. I used to use Stanza but the lack of sync is a deal breaker. Sad really because it's such a nice app.

-Playing Music. I use it as a banjo tuner with OmniTuner (an iPhone app) and I also use TabToolkit and GuitarTookit as well as PDF's with written music and tab. It's more convenient than lugging around books or loose leaf paper.

-Listening to Music. The speakers are good enough to make moving it around from room to room and using it for background music nice.

-Occasional Browsing. I really don't like browsing on it and it feels like the only browsing I do on there is wasting time. I get the nagging feeling that I should just be reading a book, or doing something off-screen altogether, rather than browsing. The tabs are clunky, the browser is slim on features and typing is too slow.

-Mindmaps, Mockups. I don't think it's the ideal tool (yet) for either of those activities, but I sometimes do both if I don't have the laptop handy. iMockups is pretty nice. I'd put OmniFocus on there if I hadn't already spent so much on it for my Mac and iPhone. I'm not dropping another $40 for it.

-Etc., Games, Email, Evernote, Netflix, YouTube. I play Carcassone and Settlers. I use Flashcard apps to try to teach my baby to read. I respond to emails and write notes in Evernote. I'm not a big fan of typing on the iPad (I prefer the iPhone keyboard) so I use it for email less than I expected, but still, it's nice to have it there. I thought I'd use it for video all the time, and the times I do, it's wonderful. I'd guess I watch a movie on it twice or three times a month.

Overall, I'm glad I have it, I'd probably miss it a lot if it was gone and, as you can see from the list above, I've integrated it many areas of my life. Strangely though, I don't have a strong emotional attachment to it. I don't get excited to defend it and I don't sell it to friends/family. With the iPhone I couldn't wait to recommend it to everyone I know.

<comment><USER13> iBooks is easily the best PDF reader I've used on any platform. I find myself syncing PDFs to it to read instead of scrolling through them in my browser, even when I'm at the computer anyway.

We use it for a lot of browsing. I have a laptop and a Mac Mini connected to the TV, so when my girlfriend is over (often) she uses it to browse, browse YouTube clips, catch up on news, Twitter, etc. it's quite handy.

I got a copy of Air Video and the associated free server for Mac, and we use that to watch TV or movies in bed (we watched Lisa's Wedding the other night to celebrate Lisa's wedding).

For games, I finally got her into PvZ by loading it up on the iPad, and then putting the thing down for a few minutes. There's also Dig It HD, stick golf, and a few other casual time-wasters. Also planning on getting Scrabble and the Scrabble word tile iPhone app for myself and my girlfriend (and other friends), to try that out. Interesting use of technology.

I started reading comics as well, though I only browsed through a few free or cheap issues available on Comixology. I also found myself getting frustrated with books, so I loaded up digital copies of Scott Pilgrim on it, and found myself reading much faster than I normally would.

Likewise, I read more on the iPad (and now, my iPhone 4) than I have in recent years, mostly because of the convenience of having books anywhere. I mostly use the Kindle app, just because the iBooks store was devoid of non-free content when the iPad launched in Canada, and Amazon has a better selection (plus I can shop from my laptop).

Losing it wouldn't be devastating, but it's incredibly convenient. I take it with me most of the time when I leave the house (I have the 3G version) and it's nice to be able to just load something up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Game changer for me. Somehow, the format lends itself to reading "properly" in a way a desktop computer does not. So I've actually started reading e-books instead of print and have gone through a ton of academic papers. I also no longer take my MBP out with me. I can present and do most things I want on the road with the iPad. It's also great for getting the "silly" browsing of the news, Reddit, etc, out of the way in bed or at the dinner table.

<comment><USER15> I like to keep the dinner table sacred... But it occurred to me the other day that's where speech recognition would be really useful. Prop the iPad up and tell it what websites to visit, dictate emails etc. Could be a viable mass market opening for voice recog tech (cause otherwise I tend to agree with that recent Spolsky blog - who _really_ wants speech recognition interfaces?)

<comment><USER14> See, I would find that makes the table a lot less sacred because it's where a lot of conversation goes on, and barking orders at my iPad isn't going to be popular ;-) Not only that, I'd rather my wife didn't know I was goofing off instead of working, ha!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I know HN is US-centric but I would just like to point out that it's only been about 2 months since the iPad is available in large EU countries like France and Germany and 2 weeks since it's available in other (Austria, Belgium, New Zealand, etc). It doesn't even sell world-wide yet.

The same about the iPhone 4 which although available in the US for almost 2 months, has just been released to some other countries.

<comment><USER6> It's not just the devices that are US-centric, it's the whole iTunes experience. I find the selection of Movies & Books available through iTunes Germany to be sub-par insofar that I've bought all of my eBooks in Amazon Kindle format.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> My mother (almost computer-phobic) has been using it for months and now loves it. She uses it for e-mail, loading up pictures from her camera, and some music. Since she has poor satellite internet bandwidth, the iPad isn't very useful for video at her location.

I've been using my iPad extensively. My main apps are:

\- Evernote with auto-sync to my MacBook Pro. It's great for simple note taking. Still wish it had a stylus and sufficient touch resolution.

\- iAnnotatePDF and Goodreader for PDF reading. I use the former if I need to markup the text.

\- Netflix. The streaming video is awesome if you have good Wifi.

\- Dropbox. I loved my Dropbox account before, but with the iPad it's now irreplaceable. My 50GB dropbox account serves as my extended iPad disk system. Any paper, ebook, etc., can be opened in my iPad app of choice.

\- E-mail and Safari, of course.

\- Flixster, IMDB.

I have the cheaper 250MB 3G account and only use it when I'm away from decent WiFi.

<comment><USER18> My mother is also computer-phobic yet adores her iPad. Every week she's telling me about some new app she's figured out. Apple has inadvertently nailed the Seniors market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wow. I'm certainly in the minority here. I returned mine after about 3 weeks of use.

For me it's just a very expensive browser. I spend 10 hours a day in front of a computer screen at work. When I come home in the evenings, I like to minimize my screen time. I usually limit myself to checking email/facebook/twitter for about 5-10 minutes only. On weekends too, I like to spend less time in front of a computer. And if I do, it's work, so I have to use my work laptop.

So the iPad did not really make any sense. Check email, check out CNN, HN and check out twitter. 5 minutes a day and $600?

The other thing I noticed is that there are significantly fewer apps for the iPad as compared to the iPhone. And iPhone apps look plain ugly in the iPad.

Basically seems like an overkill for me. I know, different strokes...

<comment><USER20> So you're surprised that there are significantly fewer apps for a device that's been out for 4 months versus one that has been out for 3 years?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Considering how many people here seem to be using it for simple browsing and book reading, perhaps a better question is, is it a $500-900 value or would a lower price point make more sense considering the typical use-case?

<comment><USER13> The high point is the versatility. It makes a great eBook reader, but it also makes a great comic reader, a great web browser, a great YouTube watcher, a decent twitter client, a remote control for my home theatre, a game console, a Skype phone, an interactive map, a Scrabble board, an image editor, a newspaper, an RSS reader, the National Film Board of Canada's digital archives, an IM client, a way to stream video to anywhere in my home, an iPhone locator (MobileMe), a dictionary…

The point is, it's incredibly versatile, and it does a lot of things very well. On top of all that, it's light (but feels sturdy), it's small (but not too small), it can go a few days of casual usage without a charge (so I can plug it in whenever is convenient), and it's easy to use.

I paid $850 Canadian or so for the 32 GB 3G version, and other than the first day, when I was trying to get a hang on what to use it for and where it fits into my life, I've never wondered about the purchase. Using it to read news articles and RSS feeds, then switching it over to recipes so my girlfriend and I can make truffles before we curl up in bed and watch a movie on it, it's really a wonderful device. I could do all of that on my laptop, but it would be more cumbersome, take up more space on the counter, run out of battery faster, weigh more, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It'd glorious. I would much rather do any casual net browsing on the iPad because it's easier to read. Then throw in the fact that you can be much more comfortable, take it more places, and not feel like a dork sitting with a laptop while everyone else is watching TV. I loaded a whole bunch of family photos onto it which really becomes 'magical' when you're visiting relatives etc. It's also easy to pass around or crowd around.

Makes consuming academic papers and online lectures much more palatable (that's the main reason I bought it). I'm pretty fast at typing on it only problem is often I hit N instead of spacebar.

Not into the handheld gaming scene but it's got me back into online chess - iPhone screen was too small for that.

Not done a lot of book reading but on the other hand I installed a pagedump of Wikipedia for offline access, so as a reference tool it's brilliant (I also have a Python Docs app). Makes a good compliment to desktop computers for when you need a second screen for something. Or use it as a TV/radio.

And of course I'm sure many great apps will be invented in the future.

P.s. It's worth stressing just how great the battery is - genuinely lasts all day, greatly enhancing the portability factor

<comment><USER22> _often I hit N instead of spacebar_

I often hit spacebar instead of N! Perhaps meeting like this will cancel out our habits... :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Mine has become the place I _prefer_ to do my evening reading. Twitter, RSS, Instapaper, eBooks; my iPad is my coffee-table/bedside computer.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's where I'm at too. It doesn't cook your nuts like a laptop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I absolutely love it. I use it for everything but development/work... and I mean everything: browsing, email, reading, ordering pizza/food, as a reference when _making_ food, buying stuff online, researching stuff to buy _offline_ , listening to music, sharing photos (like, physically I mean), checking the weather, playing board games (and other multiplayer stuff) as well as single player games like Osmos and Angry Birds. I use it to keep up on Facebook and Flickr happenings as well as managing twitter accounts... The list never ends, really. If it broke I would absolutely go right out and buy another one immediately.

</comment><comment><USER24> I use mine to read books, mostly, though I'll sometimes play games on it when I finish a book and don't have another lined up.

There was a week or so where I used Instapaper a ton, and I also read a series of comic books on it.

I'm decidedly meh. You could steal my iPad and it would likely take me several days to notice.

Reading on it is not my favorite, I much prefer the Kindle. My wife has the same problem. :) When I get a new Kindle the iPad will likely be relegated to its dock for reference PDFs.

</comment><comment><USER25> Have had mine for a month or so. Love my 3G iPad for mobile use as I don't have a modern smartphone.

Haven't synced any photos, music or videos as iTunes is atrocious and I really don't care to deal with it at all (except for OS updates)

App store organization and usability is also atrocious. I I have yet to be able to find games applicable to my pre-school aged kids. The process is completely random now, trial and error which is great when you have an impatient 4 year old and a crying 2 year old.

I've bought 1 app for $0.99. A Craigslist app which I like but it feels silly considering I can browse the same data via the web.

I'm now traveling so I wish I did have some photos and video that I could use to entertain the kids (since I can't find good games!) and also myself as I have no TV late at night.

I expected some dual use for business/sales meetings (I'm a web developer) but have yet to pull it out for that reason.

Also feel kinda douchey telling/showing people about it so that has me concerned as most see it as a very expensive toy (which it is).

Have to say not having Flash has been somewhat of an issue. Also some web apps like Google Analytics don't seem to work at all.

</comment><comment><USER26> My wife and I fight over it. She for games (Plants v. zombies, Super 7, etc.) youtube, and magazine reading; I for ebooks/pdfs, surfing, and listening to Podcasts (thanks to the HNer who recommended "A Life Well Wasted" podcast, friggin' brilliant) and NPR before bed. We both use it to stream our episodes with Air Video during mealtimes.

When I was on vacation back in June, I was floored that I needn't even take my laptop with me. An iPhone and iPad was all that was required (the iPhone was the GPS, too), and we could plot out stuff to do, read restaurant reviews, and check with work stuff all without feeling like "work", if you can understand that.

It's like the mythical "third place" of computing technology. That thing between the little smartphone and the big smart computer: A "smart" thick client, a mainline into exactly what you need. Even the fact that it doesn't do multitasking (yet, but even when it does, not really) makes you focus on what it is you're doing at the time, stopping "wikidiction" and other time sinks that persist when using a computer and all its multitasking splendor (and horror).

</comment><comment><USER27> My macbook is my new desktop machine and my iPad is my new laptop.

Dropbox + omnigraffle + numbers + keynote + safari + mail means I basically have all the information I need when I'm out in usable form.

I do have a ridiculously large case, though. I've been wondering if I should go for the apple case as opposed to this incase thing that makes the footprint larger than my Dell mini 9.

</comment><comment><USER28> I find it to be a spectacular device. The best part about it is that I don't feel it to be "forced" in any way -- sometimes with new gadgets you'll use them even if you don't necessarily need to. The iPad just fits at certain times.

For example, I was sitting and waiting for a friend outside of JFK yesterday, parked in a long line of cars. I wanted to go through some emails and resumes that had come in. Sitting in the driver's seat of the car, I found the iPad to be absolutely perfect for this task -- it was too cramped to pull out my MBP, and no reason to squint on my iPhone.

I hate to sound compromising, but the iPad really is the ideal "in between" machine. There are times when you only need the phone (on the go), and there are times when you need a full-sized machine (MBP or a desktop). The iPad is letting me discover those random times when an in-between device just fits.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm loving mine. I mostly use it as a reader and a convenient way to get around the web without pulling out my notebook.

Shameless plug: since you mention GoodReader, I'd like to point out that we've written a PDF reader called Folio ~ The PDF Reader, more details about which can be found at <http://ballisticpigeon.com/folio>, which does an excellent job with technical PDFs. In particular, we do up-front fulltexting of your whole library and let you search across it as well as providing very fast results (with context, highlighting, etc.) inside documents. We do the usual family of things you'd expect (Dropbox and MobileMe integration, integration with iTunes and Mail, etc.), but you can find out more about that on our website.

Bonus: iPhone version (as a universal binary, free upgrade) coming soon.

<comment><USER30> Folio is nice, but it's missing what for me is the killer feature of GoodReader: the ability to crop the white margins for all pages of a PDF. This immensely improves PDF readability in portrait format.

The Folio Fit-to-width functionality (only available in landscape mode) is already able to detect and automatically crop white margins at the top and at the bottom of pages, so why not create a mode that automatically crops all 4 margins in portrait mode?

Another much needed feature is text highlights and text notes. Since Folio already has the ability to select text, it should be no big deal to add this to the app. Make the highlights and notes syncable a-la Kindle, and I'm sold.

One minor nitpick: Most apps seem to place their Back/Up button in the upper left corner. The Folio "Library" button should be on the left and the search button on the right.

<comment><USER29> Thanks for the feedback. I agree with almost everything you said, and most of it is coming. You can probably stop here unless you care about details, I rambled on a bit :).

Your killer feature for GoodReader is an important one, we're agreed on that, but I _hate_ GoodReader's implementation. I don't like the idea of making the user do something manually that can be done well heuristically. We're hoping to ship a smart crop feature that does good margin detection on most PDFs in one of the next couple point releases. With the iPhone/iPod Touch version coming soon this feature goes from "really nice to have" to "necessary".

Highlights and notes with syncing between Folio instances is coming soon (which will make more sense when we introduce the iPhone/iPod touch version). We've also got plans for syncing with things like SkimPDF and exporting plain old annotated PDFs, but syncing between Folio instances will come first.

> One minor nitpick: Most apps seem to place their Back/Up button in the upper > left corner. The Folio "Library" button should be on the left and the search > button on the right.

Done in 1.0.2, showing up in the App Store when Apple feels like getting around to it. I had reasons* for putting it where I did that, at the time, I thought were good ones, but you're right that it really is a back button and we should just treat it as such.

Again, thanks for the feedback. It's always nice to hear ideas from people actually using the app, especially when they confirm that we seem to be on the right track for future direction of the app.

* In case you're curious as to how it ended up where it is: I wanted the "Import" button in the library to be in the same place as it was in the iWork apps, and I wanted the search button to be in a consistent location between the two views. Also, I saw the "Library" button as more of a "Done" than a back button (in fact, it sends the doneReading: selector to our reading view controller), and Apple is somewhat inconsistent about where those go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I own my iPad for almost 2 months now, and I still love it.

I use it primarily for email (default app) and reading (Kindle + GoodReader) during my commute to work. I watched a couple of movies on it during some recent long flights, it was a much better experience than watching on my laptop mainly due to the amazing battery life. I also play some games on it - FlightControl, RealSoccer, some Chess app.....but not a lot.

I do not use it at all for photos (due to the pain of copying pics over, and no real use case) or music (my iPhone is much more useful for that).

Strong positives: Great reading device, amazing battery life, very good screen, much lighter than my laptop.

Complaints: Can't do any real work on it (the touch keyboard is a pain), and it could have been a bit more lighter (~0.5 kg ideally)

</comment><comment><USER32> I read the middle third of _Infinite Jest_ on it while I was on vacation. It was outstanding. The footnotes were hyperlinked, it was trivial to refer back to the bookmarked page that lists what all the years are, and every time I came across a word I didn't know, I could just touch it on the screen and get a definition.

I've also found (and this is goofy I know) that because an iPad page is shorter than a book page, I have an increased sense of momentum reading long- form books; pages are flying by faster than they did in the actual book, and I always know how far I am from the end of a chapter.

This probably would have been true for the Kindle as well (I don't own one), but the Kindle didn't come with an excellent web browser or a zillion games my kids like, so I was disinclined to buy one.

</comment><comment><USER33> Anyone bought the WiFi only version and regretted not getting the 3G?

<comment><AUTHOR> Opposite for me, bought the 3G and have used it twice out of the house. Maybe just that I'm not travelling much - I'd be getting a mywi though I think as then I could use the dataplan across multiple devices.

<comment><USER33> That's my fear over getting the 3G - thinking I need it but then never actually needing it. Good point about a mywi device.

I now have to decide whether to get one or not _now_ or wait for v2

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love it for reading, I never expected to spend more money on books than on apps. And I'm using the Kindle app, not the iBooks one (not enough selection in Germany). I'm swapping my WiFi one for a 3G version in 2 weeks. Love it love it love IT!

</comment><comment><USER34> I've become rather accustomed to my netbook setup actually: [http://paulstamatiou.com/thoughts-on-netbooks-part-2-asus- ee...](http://paulstamatiou.com/thoughts-on-netbooks-part-2-asus-eee-pc- edition)

</comment><comment><USER35> Like others have said, I too use it in the morning and evenings, either in bed or at the couch. It's not a device for the office, but it excels at casual web & email (which is probably what 90% of the Internet population uses their computer for anyway).

Non-techie adults seem to be proficient after <5 min of explaining basic operations and I liken the intuitiveness of its interface to that of an elevator - once you've got the basic concept you're good to go.

I don't think the current iPad is itself a revolution, but I do think it's the first step.

</comment><comment><USER36> Pilots love using them for mapping. There are a couple of very nice apps for it too. I'd bet you could make really good money if you can ferret out more niche markets that it's perfect for.

<comment><USER35> Lots of great aviation possibilities, but overheating has been an issue for several I've talked to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> It is brilliant. It is better than a laptop at just about every thing I use it for and has incredible battery life Serious video editing writing and storage are not so easy which will mean I won't get rid of the tower anytime soon but it is well worth the price. The size is a little troublesome though. A smaller benzle would do a world of good. Even with my xxxl hands I type faster on the 4G. Websurfing could be smoother on picture lad end sites but if for reading content it can't be beat.

</comment><comment><USER38> Honestly, I don't think the iPad becomes truly useful for a couch surfing thing until iOS 4 is released for it.

I started out using it with a bang, but the flow of iOS 3.x was no where as smooth as just using my laptop. Reading in Safari, switching to email, switching to the iPod, etc. it's still clunky and mildly frustrating.

Also, my fingers are getting fatter as I get older, so I'm constantly tapping the wrong fricking thing which is uber frustrating.

<comment><AUTHOR> Even with iOS 4 I think multi-tasking will be crap. Copying and pasting from a web-page to an email is a real slog. The power of multi-tasking comes from having multiple windows visible at the same time and this will never happen.

<comment><USER13> After using the multitasking implementation on my iPhone in iOS4, I can heartily disagree here. Copy/pasting back and forth wasn't too much of a chore before, but it's lightening quick on iOS4.

The reason for no 'multi-tasking' is that people generally do one task at once. You read twitter, you click on a link, you post it to Facebook, you play a game, etc. Most people I know fullscreen their apps on computers anyway, so switching back-and-forth to copy/paste something is already the normal use- case. It's really not that big of a deal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> My parents loved theirs so much they bought two. I used it for a few days when I was at their house - I thought it was unparalleled for browsing the web. Swipe, swipe, touch, swipe. And I could hold it in positions that were far more natural. More like holding a book than holding a laptop.

My parents bought one because they are both recently retired, and wanted a computer they could bring on the many trips they take.

</comment><comment><USER40> I don't love it anymore. I don't thrill every time I pick it up. It is no longer an idee fixe. It's ... simply there. I use the hell out of it; like my laptop and cel phone (and my bathtub and car.) A part of life.

And no, you can't have mine.

I'm sure Steve will be along in another few months to sprinkle a little magic dust on the product and start up the waka waka machine...

</comment><comment><USER41> I love it. So much so that I think the next time I upgrade, I'll get a desktop not a laptop as my main machine; the iPad meets all my on-the-move needs.

I use it for media access (movies/tv shows), documents (books/PDFs) and a little web browsing. Email stays on the BlackBerry tho'. Actually even at work I'm using it, as a third screen for reading documentation on.

</comment><comment><USER42> Bought it for reading papers in pdf, does that reasonably well, though there is no good annotation software yet (with smooth ink). Not bad for movies. Cool feel of "100% interface." Completely lacks a viable input method (keyboard too small for touchtyping, too big for thumbs, and the pen apps just aren't there yet); input on the iPhone is far more comfortable.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've found the complete opposite - I can hardly work an iPhone keyboard now. I'm amazed at how fast typing on the iPad is - although I've still not worked out where I should be looking keyboard (for finger placement), or text (for typos)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I use my iPad every day for email and browsing. My wife and I pass it back and forth to play Small World and "still-iphone-only" Carcassone. My daughter swipes through photos and mashes on the piano app Virtuoso.

It's a purchase that I feel no regrets for making, even though it's a first version and the next iteration will be better.

</comment><comment><USER44> Mine's a WiFi-only 16GB model that I've had since day one. It's a pleasure to use but it hasn't really become indispensable to me.

The things it does really well are:

\- Cooking using recipes from the Web \- Instapaper \- Tumblr (reading, that is) \- Watching ABC TV programs \- Reading eBooks (I've only done Kindle stuff so far) \- Catching up on missed TV shows via iTunes \- Reading instruction/repair manuals from the Web while using/repairing stuff \- WeatherBug \- Reading Apple's developer documentation

The things it doesn't do:

\- Flash video, audio, and games \- Objective-C/Cocoa Development \- Multitasking (but soon, probably iOS 4.2)

If I weren't occasionally developing iPad apps I would consider selling it, simply because I probably have more useful things to be doing with $500.

</comment><comment><USER45> Still love it (had one since release day). I use mine several times a day. Common usage:

\- playing simple games

\- watching video's on YouTube

\- reading websites or magazines

\- listening to NPR or Pandora radio

\- weather reports

\- calendar

\- email

Stuff I thought I'd use it for but really haven't that much:

\- reading PDF programming books (still prefer hard copies)

\- reading eBooks

My brother and parents got one each too. The other week my Mom told me she was Googling all over the internet. She's semi-computer novice and really hasn't been online much since getting the iPad. Its opened up her eyes. All of my friends who have one love them too.

</comment><comment><USER46> The iPad has been out for two weeks here in the Netherlands, I bought it on release-date.

I now read all my feeds on my iPad or iPhone. Reeder makes this _awesome_ and syncs between the two. This frees up a lot of "check for new feeds" time on my main pc, a.k.a. procrastinating.

Reading, using stanza or Kindle is great.

What I'm disappointed about is the app offerings. No facebook app? No spotify app? No skype app?! As you said it's been four months since it's out. The lack of apps is just...wtf. (That being said, the available apps are top notch: Flipboard, Reeder, IMDb, Eyewitness etc.)

</comment><comment><USER47> Love it. We use it as the primary entertainment (education?) device for our 6-month-old daughter. She'll pay attention to the flash card app whereas she's quickly distracted with paper flash cards. We also have a few sing-along book apps that highlight the words as they are sung. She's just starting to figure out that she can touch it but her fine motor skills aren't quite there yet.

My favorite app is a purple dinosaur that repeats anything you say in a higher-pitched voice. She'll spend ten minutes alternating between making baby sounds then pausing for the dinosaur to repeat them.

<comment><USER25> I'm glad you found apps for your kids because I haven't had luck. How did you find these apps? Research via the web, random searching via the app store or what?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Is there a market for a screen darkening overlay? Even with brightness right down it's too bright for me at night, and I think it disrupts my sleeping slightly.

</comment><comment><USER48> There was a lot of talk about how you couldn't use the device for ergonomic reasons prior to the launch. Anyone care to share experiences about that? An Gorilla Arm experiences? How/Where do you use it?

<comment><USER13> I use it:

      - Sitting on the couch
      - Lying in bed, on my side or back
      - Sitting at my desk, holding it or with it sitting flat on the table
      - Walking down the street (if I need to look up something)
      - At cafes, etc.

Perhaps I just have large hands (~9 inch handspan) and can get more leverage to hold it properly, but I haven't had a problem. Your arm will get tired eventually if you're not being ergonomic, but generally I haven't had a problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I use it on the muni/bart ride every day. Games, occasional video, reading a book or something saved on Instapaper. I think it suffices to say that it does what I wanted it to do when I bought one.

</comment><comment><USER50> Netflix streaming is awesome. It even works okay over 3G, which shocked me (and my data usage).

I _really_ wish there was a VLC client that could stream all video/audio I have on my LAN.

<comment><AUTHOR> You tried Air Video? It's good but you need to have Air Video Server running on your PC (free and painless enough).

<comment><USER51> Second that. I use Air Video on a Mac. It was painless to set up and it converts video on the fly while playing. There's a free version of the app, too. (The "crippling" appears to be that it only shows up to N files per folder.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Can someone with both the iphone 4 and an ipad comment on how the screens compare? The iphone 4 screen is so great that I'm worried the ipad screen will seem disappointing by comparison.

<comment><USER53> The iPhone 4 screen is, without question, vastly superior to the iPad screen. The difference is so plainly obvious that there is no comparing the two. That said, the iPad screen is still beautiful and is perfectly suitable for reading. My Kindle has been all but abandoned in favor of the iPad so I can read in the dark.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> For me, it's just an appliance. I read stuff off the web, e-books, comics, and light gaming though I do watch movies and TV shows on it. For everything else, I've got my XPS laptop.

</comment><comment><USER55> "I would by an iPad if..."

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1579062>

</comment><comment><USER56> I don't have an ipad and it sounds to me like everyone uses it like I use my cell phone. Is it just the screen that makes it better?

</comment><comment><USER57> Like it a lot... dislike braindead simps trying to make jokes about it which they read online.

</comment><comment><USER58> A question: how do you use delicious/ffffound on an iPad?

</comment><comment><USER59> 99% reading blogs, managing emails, quick checking calendar on couch, in kitchen, in bed.

Killer app is the start-up speed / always-on state for those uses above.</comment>


Astronomical Software Wants To Be Free: A Manifesto - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/abs/0903.3971

<comment><USER2> Or wants to be a lucrative commercial niche offering, like Neurolucida is for neuroanatomists?

(<http://www.mbfbioscience.com/neurolucida>)</comment>


Guide to Apple iOS 4.3 - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/221805-2/apple_ios_43_a_guide_to_getting_started.html

<comment><USER2> Wong in the first paragraph. The Personal Wi-Fi hotspot is an iPhone 4 only dealie.</comment>


Show HN: Artificial Intelligence anchor that tells you news about space - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/beyondearthtv <comment><AUTHOR> Hello, I am the sole developer, designer and founder of the project.

We are a two-person company that has bootstrapped the project so far.

I hope you like it. Do not hesitate to ask any questions.

Some technical nuggets:

\- We spin up and down a K8s cluster based on load

\- We use Tacotron and WaveGlow

\- We use a "tweaked" version of Pix2Pix

\- We use forced-aligners

\- We have a speech-to-text DL model

\- We have around ~30 discrete parts including microservices and cloud functions in an event-driven architecture

In broad terms, we manually select news from RSS feeds and then an automated system takes the text out from the news or blog post and generates a video.

</comment><comment><USER2> Great.</comment>


Has goto fail been fixed yet? - <AUTHOR> http://hasgotofailbeenfixedyet.com/ <comment><USER2> This is absurd and unconscionable. There is no excuse whatsoever for not having a 10.9 patch ready to go at the same time as iOS. There is _especially_ no excuse for _still_ not having a 10.9 patch five days later.

I would love to see a detailed postmortem about exactly how this bug happened in the first place and why it's taking so long to fix it on the Mac side. Unfortunately, given how secretive the company is, I'm sure we'll never have more than speculation.

<comment><USER3> I'm a little naive when it comes to SSL/TLS. I've been wondering whether the reason for the delay is that because with this compromise Apple's update service is no longer a secure channel through which to distribute a fix. So now they're scratching their heads trying to figure out a way around the issue, possibly coding up something that uses OpenSSL. Is this line of reasoning unfounded?

EDIT: Great points about the checking of the signatures. Let's hope there's not a second bug that can bypass this in some cases.

<comment><USER2> My understanding is that the update system checks digital signatures on the downloaded data separately from TLS, rather than simply relying on the integrity of TLS. If that understanding is correct, then there shouldn't be any issue there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If the bug affects Software Update, couldn't we use it to patch it ourselves? We could basically MITM our own machines to apply our own patch.

The above just made me think: This is a great datapoint in support of RMS and his rants against the dangers of proprietary software. Should we really be clamoring to some company for a fix, when we should just be able to patch it ourselves? (Should we choose to take the risk.) It's times like this when I feel like I don't quite own my own machine.

<comment><USER2> No need to MITM anything. You can just patch the binaries on disk. People have already done the legwork for it: [http://www.sektioneins.de/en/blog/14-02-22-Apple-SSL- BUG.htm...](http://www.sektioneins.de/en/blog/14-02-22-Apple-SSL-BUG.html)

<comment><USER5> I enjoy that they're serving the patch over HTTP with no signatures or anything. So their patch may be just as useless or maybe make things even worse due to MITM

<comment><USER2> And they go out of their way to give you a version that's all scripted up for you so you can apply it without knowing what's going on!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You can always switch from Safari and Mail to Firefox and Thunderbird which do not suffer from this bug. As a bonus, they are also cross-platform, making it easier to switch to Linux or Windows later should the need or desire arise. As for Facetime, switching to Skype or similar will get you around the bug and permit you to chat, talk, and videochat with people that own technology from all sorts of companies... not just other Apple users (which is silly).

</comment><comment><USER7> Right after reading this thread, I fired up Software Update, and OSX Update 10.9.2 is available for me.

Links to here [http://support.apple.com/kb/HT6114](http://support.apple.com/kb/HT6114) but nothing's on the page.

Edit: big update. 460M (I think), and took about 10 minutes on an Air.

<comment><USER8> There's now content at the support page you linked, but the security content of the patch still hasn't been published [1]. See the new thread about it here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7299287](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7299287)

[1] [http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222](http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> For those who can get their way around a terminal, here's a temp fix:

[http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/unofficial-patch-for-the- app...](http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/unofficial-patch-for-the-apple- securetransport-55741-bug/)

I applied it this morning. It works. The one on gotofail.com can't be signed so it doesn't work.

This patch still doesn't solve the real problem but at least it doesn't fail silently.

</comment><comment><USER10> If my debian system were to break, and noone was around to fix it... I could fix it myself. Free software ftw.

<comment><USER11> The security flaw is inside a library that has been released under a bsd style license (otherwise, the "goto fail;" hilarity would never have ensued). You're free to download the source of the 10.9 library, patch it, compile it and replace the vulnerable binary with the one you fixed.

<comment><USER12> Apparently someone tried it and the publicly-available source is incomplete and doesn't build.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> OSX machines are now iOS development workstations; nothing more.

<comment><USER14> What do you mean?

<comment><USER13> Apple can't be trusted to do point releases for major security bugs in a timely fashion.

OSX development can only be done on OSX.

Because Apple security procedures are now known to be so horrible, the reasonable thing is to only use Apple hardware when you absolutely must -- iOS dev.

I say this as someone who currently has _only_ Macs except for servers; I'll probably not buy another one, and switch back to Linux. I might Linuxify the Macs I currently have, except for when I need to do iOS stuff.

<comment><USER14> Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're almost completely abandoning an OS just because of 1 security problem?

<comment><USER13> I don't actually care about the original bug much. It happens.

That Apple's internal code review/static analysis/etc. doesn't exist is a bigger problem, but still not a showstopper.

That Apple's incident response and prioritization is horrible is the reason. Look what they did with the dev center over the summer. Various past bugs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Am I the only one who despairs over redundant hashtags being appended to everything?

<comment><USER16> ... am I the only one that thinks "pound" would be a better phrase than "hashtag" when saying these out loud ?

Cuts syllable usage in half ... has worked for decades with irc channel names ...

<comment><USER17> '#' is commonly called either "hash" or "pound", and "tag" as a suffix just describes this tagging use in context. For an apples-to-apples comparison you'd be saying "poundtag", but good luck getting that to catch on. :)

<comment><USER18> Octothorpe FTW

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Tossed an email to my AppleCare contact expressing my frustration... You should too if you have one!

</comment><comment><USER20> I love how people keep making excuses for why their favorite cult leader just fed them cyanide.

</comment><comment><USER21> Looks like this should be updated - 10.9.2 was just released.

[http://www.macrumors.com/2014/02/25/osx-update-ssl- facetime-...](http://www.macrumors.com/2014/02/25/osx-update-ssl-facetime- audio/)

</comment><comment><USER13> I blame the security community on this one, for not releasing an apocalyptic weaponized exploit for this vulnerability over the weekend, instead of stuff like agl's checker.

If end users were on fire, Apple might be more motivated to push a fix.

</comment><comment><USER22> ...and it's fixed. [http://www.macrumors.com/2014/02/25/osx-update-ssl- facetime-...](http://www.macrumors.com/2014/02/25/osx-update-ssl-facetime- audio/)

</comment><comment><USER23> I can't afford to switch environments at the moment. I don't however use any apple applications such as calendar/reminders/safari. Does this mean I have a modicum of relative safety?

[https://www.imperialviolet.org:1266/](https://www.imperialviolet.org:1266/) produces an error for me. And from what I gather that means I am at least safe using google chrome on OSX.

</comment><comment><USER24> Regardless of the fact that you, and I, realize that two separate teams are working on these things, it looks really bad (well, at least to me) to have your flagship OS vulnerable to an amazingly easy to exploit security hole for multiple days, widely and loudly publicized ...

And nothing comes out. Oh, except for iBeacon, a specification for pushing ads on you based on your location.

</comment><comment><USER25> Tim Cook had better make a public statement and make it soon.

Think antennagate.

It's one thing if your maps application is wrong ... but it's quite another if suddenly people feel like using your product puts their banking information at risk.

</comment><comment><USER26> I really hate these long-url one-word-of-content sites. Doineedajacket.com was clever, but the swarm of copies are unaoriginal and annoying.

</comment><comment><USER27> Looking at the details of the bug, I'm surprised it wasn't flagged with a warning. Why don't we warn on unconditional gotos?

</comment><comment><USER28> Just curious, what Linux distro is everyone switching to? At this point I am seriously considering it, because this is pathetic. (I suspect I'll remain with Apple hardware for the foreseeable future, because they still have the best laptops IMO, but running another OS is not out of the question.)

I like elementaryOS, but it really doesn't feel as polished as OS X. Things like their choice of font don't help IMO.

<comment><USER29> If you're seriously considering switching to Linux, then be aware that nothing you find is going to feel as polished as OS X. Linux developers tend to be more focused on security and under-the-hood improvements while Apple focuses on user experience, plus Apple is a business that can easily afford to hire as many developers as they need while most Linux distros are community-driven.

That said, the Linux user experience has improved dramatically over the past several years, and my recommendation would be openSUSE (what I run), or Ubuntu if you're completely new to Linux.

<comment><USER28> Yeah, this is what I was thinking. elementaryOS seems to get the closest but still isn't ideal. I have to think about it. Thanks.

I use Linux on servers, but I've always found the options lacking in some way for desktop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> opensourceapple.com ? If it's an open source part in apple code, then couldn't I fix the issue on my own machine? (by removing the second goto fail; and recompiling)

<comment><USER31> In theory yes (especially since it's a framework, as it's dynamically linked against), but download [0] and see the README: you'll be missing some proprietary algorithms so some things depending on them are bound to fail.

[0]: [http://opensource.apple.com/tarballs/Security/Security-55471...](http://opensource.apple.com/tarballs/Security/Security-55471.tar.gz)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> IOS 7.0.6 This security update provides a fix for SSL connection verification.

Just notified on my iPad.

<comment><USER33> That was 5 days ago. OSX 10.9.1 is still vulnerable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Since all of the computers in question are Intel-based, I suspect it would be possible for people to use bootcamp to run Linux or Windows. Are people switching over?

EDIT: apparently I have to spell it out: if people are bothered by the situation, they will switch to a different OS. And since we are talking about OSX on computers with intel chips, that is an option.

<comment><USER35> Yes. Everybody has switched.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Advice on Liquid Mercury Disposal - <AUTHOR> I have approximately 1/4 cup of liquid mercury in my garage here in Alabama that I prefer was <i>not</i> in my garage. Can anyone give advice on safe and legal disposal? <comment><USER2> [https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/dontmesswithmercury/disposal_info....](https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/dontmesswithmercury/disposal_info.html)

> There are many state and local programs for recycling or disposing items > that contain mercury. Some states have laws that cover hazardous waste > disposal. To find out how to get rid of the mercury in your school:

[http://www.adem.state.al.us/default.cnt](http://www.adem.state.al.us/default.cnt) has this page which says small spills can (WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK) go in the household trash to the municipal landfill, but recommends household hazardous collections instead: [http://adem.alabama.gov/programs/land/landforms/HouseMercury...](http://adem.alabama.gov/programs/land/landforms/HouseMercury.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> I would contact my nearest university physics and/or chemistry department and offer it to them.

</comment><comment><USER4> I had this situation in the '90s and called the city, and a fire marshall picked it up. Now my city has a hazardous waste center that handles all sorts of things including mercury.</comment>


US economy adds only 142,000 jobs, raising doubts about interest rate rise - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/oct/02/us-economy-adds-only-142000-jobs-raising-doubts-about-interest-rate-rise <comment><AUTHOR> Of particular note is the admission that wages are actually losing ground in real dollars. Also notable is the admission that labor force participation is at 1977 levels-- pretty damn bad.</comment>


Bitcoin Miners Are Racking Up $150,000 A Day In Power Consumption - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/13/the-cost-of-a-bitcoin/

<comment><USER2> It's easy to calculate a number for the waste of Bitcoin, but it's not easy to calculate a number for the waste of the awful, archaic systems it could replace. Transferring money is done today with mainframes, paper forms, and middlemen galore. If Bitcoin replaced all that there's no doubt in my mind we'd all be better off.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, my understanding is that miners are not just mining, they're also powering the distributed transaction engine of bitcoin. Is that correct? In which case the power consumption needs to be compared to (per $ or whatever) consumption for Bacs, swift, visa etc

<comment><USER4> They are doing a make-work exercise which only needs to be time consuming, in order to prevent cheaters. It's mostly throw-away work. The actual computation that _needs_ to happen is pretty trivial. I think it would be possible to fix Bitcoin so that "proof of work" is something that doesn't consume all that electricity, but I'm not sure what it would be.

<comment><USER5> If somebody could explain what the new thing Ripple means by resolving things by consensus instead of proof-of-work, maybe that would work.

But as far as bitcon presents it, proof of work is needed to resolve the problem of keeping a honest transaction log in an untrusted environment.

<comment><USER6> As I understand it, Ripple's trust system works by selecting multiple third- parties that are unlikely to collude against you, and checking that they agree on a transaction before considering it "confirmed".

<https://ripple.com/wiki/Consensus>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The power numbers cited by this article are very inaccurate when considering current mining hardware and software.

"* Electricity consumption is estimated based on power consumption of 650 Watts per gigahash and electricity price of 15 cent per kilowatt hour. In reality some miners will be more or less efficient."

Most serious miners pay less than $0.15/kWh.

An Avalon ASIC does 65Gh/s on 620W (9.5 J/Gh)

A BFL Single FPGA does 800Mh/s on 80W (100 J/Gh)

Even a dual ATI 5970 rig will do 1300Mh/s on 600W (461 J/Gh)

Currently over 1/3 of the network is ASICs (300 * 65Gh/s of Avalons + 7Th/s from ASICMINER) and another 1/3 is probably FPGAs.

<comment><USER8> Are these ASICS going to be good for anything after mining coins? I can't help thinking they're like a shovel that only works within a goldfield and has no utility (other than as a doorstop) once superseded by faster technology or obviated by the last Bitcoin being mined.

<comment><USER9> After the last Bitcoin is mined (and actually much sooner than that), the profit from mining will have shifted away from new coins and into transaction fees.

Mining new coins and processing transactions are the same thing. So the hardware can remain useful as long as Bitcoin stays in use.

(Could it get obsoleted by better hardware? Of course, but that's true of every piece of electronics.)

<comment><USER8> I guess what I am confused by is that the transaction processing is much easier than mining (ie it's not going to get more and more difficult to do do over time) so you'd need to be processing a very large number of transactions before you'd need an ASIC. If you're a bank or BTC exchange then it's a no- brainer, but I wonder if more than a small number of these devices will be able to do enough work to justify their power consumption as time goes by.

<comment><USER10> By easier, do you mean less competitive?

The transaction fees are won in the same fashion as the mining rewards, so given a high enough level of paying users there should be incentive to run nodes (the transaction fees might even overtake the mining rewards before the last new coins are awarded, if things play out in a bitcoin friendly manner).

<comment><USER8> But if you are mining, there are fewer and fewer new coins to be discovered over time, so you have to compute more and more hashes in hopes of finding a new one. My (possibly incorrect) understanding is that processing a transaction 1 year from now will be no more difficult than processing one today, whereas in the future you'll have to mine for longer to have the same chance of getting a BTC.

In other words, doesn't the workload for processing each transaction stay the same over time?

<comment><USER10> Yeah, actually adding a transaction to a block is trivial. But that block still has to be added to the block chain, which is exactly what mining is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> jb- So that is about 55 million dollars a year to completely secure the network and process all transactions. I am not entirely sure how it will scale, but I predict that it will scale logarithmically with the number of transactions, especially considering that mining equipment will become more efficient.

Meanwhile the United States will spend 797 million dollars [1] this year in simply printing and transporting physical currency, not including all the other obvious costs in maintaining a modern currency.

[1] <http://www.federalreserve.gov/foia/2013newcurrency.htm>

</comment><comment><USER11> Funny that they link to butterfly Labs, who still hasn't shipped, instead of Avalon.

<comment><USER12> BFL has (edit) not been (/edit) know to ship -but I can confirm that people have gotten their orders!- becuase It's taken some time as they've had problems with getting ASIC's. They supposedly will start sending them out at mid april (15th) which is tomorrow, so I'm going to wait and see what happens. If they do ship then I'll place my order. They probably mentioned BFL because they're currently accepting orders and also have had more media attention because of the whole scam controversy.

<comment><USER13> They've been accepting orders for 7-8 months and almost always state they'll ship 'any day now'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I just take my ASIC into Starbucks.

Free BTC for me...

<comment><USER15> I keep mine at school.

<comment><USER8> ...which makes a pretty case for the school to confiscate it/sue you for the BTC generated using their power.

<comment><USER15> Ahh, that's the HN I know and love... making the trivial a "thing" ;)

<comment><USER8> It's an economic phenomenon that I am interested by: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coase_theorem>

<comment><USER15> Sounded more like you were interested in slapping my wrist.

<comment><USER8> I was just surprised you'd admit it in public, and thinking about what could happen if the school found your ASIC and knew what it was. Of course, you could make a counter-argument that you were entitled to use the school's electricity in partial exchange for your tuition fees :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In a perfect mining market the total amount of money spent by miners each day (cost of electricity/bandwidth + amortized cost of hardware) will always tend to converge on the value of the mining rewards (minus some profit margin), which for the next 4 years is about 3600 BTC per day (25 BTC/block * 6 blocks/hour * 24 hours/day).

If the value of Bitcoins go up, so does the number of miners securing the network, which makes sense. It's pretty ingenious.

</comment><comment><USER16> Interesting, but I'm curious, does anyone know how that compares to something like SETI, or folding at home?

<comment><USER17> Check out the BOINC combined stats, which includes SETI@Home and lots of other volunteer computing projects: <http://boincstats.com/en/stats/-1/project/detail/host>

It says the network has about 9 million hosts, which at about 200 watts (ballpark, GPUs can consume a lot of power) would consume about 2 megawatts of electricity. Bitcoin consumes 892.54 MWh/day = 37 megawatts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder what that translates to in carbon emissions. At Palo Alto energy prices, it looks like order 1 GWh/day, or about 41 MW.

Edit: oops, I see that some of this is stated in the linked article. My bad. I was just working backwards from the info in the title.

</comment><comment><USER19> Imo the Bitcoin Goldrush is long gone. In mid 2011 you could make a couple of hundred $ per month with a decent Rig that had 3 decent GPUs. Todays numbers are far from that.

<comment><USER20> Last week mining profitability was back to 2011 levels but then somebody Goxed it up. <http://www.bitcoinx.com/charts/></comment></comment>


Apple Heist Empties Store in Just 31 Seconds - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/09/apple-heist-empties-store-in-just-31-seconds/

<comment><USER2> The commentary makes it seem like ESPN meets a game show.

In Miami, people steal laptops and they just shrug it off, turn the alarms off, and go back to work. Saw two get stolen while waiting for a repair a few months ago. Eventually they called a guard to write it up.

<comment><USER3> I used to work at an Apple Store and although while I was an employee I was absolutely forbidden to discuss this (apple PR wanted to pretend it didn't happen), I can at least somewhat anonymously divulge somewhat the information now: My apple store was robbed during Christmas when the power went out.

The store was literally packed to the point where it was a fire hazard, the power went out for 10 to 15 seconds, and when it came back on, we were missing nearly every demo iPod and iPhone.

They never found the culprits.

I was impressed.

<comment><USER4> That's an impressive heist: sneak people in where they won't be noticed in a crowd, cut power to the store, and in the momentary scuffle of people leaving you'll never be caught.

Either that, or there was an ordinary power outage and quite a few people got the same idea at the same time. That's probably more likely since they only grabbed the pocketable stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article reads like a viral ad:

 _The magsafe cords detached instantly, offering no resistance and leaving power sockets undamaged._

 _Finally, the stiff unibody shells means that the villains could grab the notebooks one handed from a corner with no flexing, and no risk to the internal circuitry, the tough aluminum bodies resisting the jostling clanks inside the sacks._

<comment><USER6> That's hilarious! Now, to jive with the rest of Apple's marketing, it'd have to conclude with "The heist was pulled off 2.8X faster!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Aren't laptops in stores usually attached with more than just power cords?

<comment><USER8> iirc, yes. i even remember playing with an ipod that had a security cord on it that i pulled too hard by accident and it set off an alarm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Empties store"? I suspect the writer has never worked in retail electronics or even bought anything from an Apple store. Display models are a fraction of merchandise on-hand.

</comment><comment><USER10> iPhone developers are getting pretty desperate these days. :)

</comment><comment><USER11> Funny that this other heist came up on rolfe-winlker's blog. Quite a contrast.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vk-1O31r1Q8&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vk-1O31r1Q8&feature=player_embedded)

</comment><comment><USER12> heh, reminds me of the nvidia prototype video device thing they demonstrated at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this year. It had a power cord and a tv cord attached and nothing else. It was kinda around the corner from where the nvidia employees were and there was nobody around. I stood opposite thinking how easy it would be to grab and run... :-P

Obviously I didn't, but it would have been interesting to own a prototype handheld video thingy. (they were using it to demonstrate their embedded gpu for smartphones, it was coool)

</comment><comment><USER13> Holy crap, I used to work at that store!

<comment><USER14> And I bought my macbook there! Man, I remember when the only place worth stealing from in Marlton was K-mart...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Flagged. This is YouTube video material, it's not even interesting in any way other than fluff.</comment>


American consumers prepared to pay more for clean energy - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/05/american-consumers-prepared-to-pay-more-for-clean-energy/ <comment><USER2> The survey has an altruism bias. While most Americans would be willing to pay extra if they had the extra money, most Americans don't have the money.</comment>


Why The Lean Startup Changes Everything - <AUTHOR> http://hbr.org/2013/05/why-the-lean-start-up-changes-everything/ar/1 Steve Blank's article in the Harvard Business Review is free for a month!  Announced at his blog ( http://steveblank.com/2013/04/16/when-hell-froze-over-in-the-harvard-business-review/ ).
I'm not so sure that I agree with his forward-looking statements about large corporations adopting his methods... business plans are still needed to decide which direction to go into, and product development times are long for a reason in established industries.  The GE example is really just more about "understand your market" than lean start-up principles.
That said, I'm glad he's in HBR, and I especially like how he plays up the other people who helped articulate the framework he's pushing. <comment><AUTHOR> Steve Blank's article in the Harvard Business Review is free for a month! Announced at his blog ( [http://steveblank.com/2013/04/16/when-hell-froze- over-in-the...](http://steveblank.com/2013/04/16/when-hell-froze-over-in-the- harvard-business-review/) ).

I'm not so sure that I agree with his forward-looking statements about large corporations adopting his methods... business plans are still needed to decide which direction to go into, and product development times are long for a reason in established industries. The GE example is really just more about "understand your market" than lean start-up principles.

That said, I'm glad he's in HBR, and I especially like how he plays up the other people who helped articulate the framework he's pushing.

</comment><comment><USER2> Great stuff, as always. Here the one-page view: [http://hbr.org/2013/05/why- the-lean-start-up-changes-everyth...](http://hbr.org/2013/05/why-the-lean- start-up-changes-everything/ar/pr)</comment>


Coinlab sues Mt.Gox over bitcoin customers - <AUTHOR> http://www.cio.com.au/article/460869/lawsuit_halts_us_bitcoin_exchange_partnership/?fp=16&fpid=1

<comment><USER2> Why didn't Mt.Gox try to set up a division in the USA?

They make far more than enough money to fully comply in the states I don't understand why they wanted to join with someone else in the first place.</comment>


Understanding Duolingo's quiet $10M raise - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/27/understanding-duolingos-quiet-10m-raise/ <comment><USER2> Duolingo recently introduced a dark pattern where ads are shown after completing every exercise. Before, we were given the option to not see them (or see them for some "gems"). Evaluating Duolingo, I find it is not the most effective language learning app anyways, instead teaching pattern matching for some of the lesser popular languages like Chinese

<comment><USER3> If I may ask, what do you find more effective? I've dabbled with Duolingo before and am not a paid user, but it seemed to kind of work for me. But open to alternatives (modulo, "move to the country where <x> is the native tongue" type stuff.)

<comment><USER4> I completed Spanish, Portuguese, and Chinese on Duolingo (as in level 5/gold completed) and feel like I know the equivalent of _at best_ a 3-month one- hour-a-week type entry level class.

The stuff that works better for me are actually online classes (for example Coursera has 6-part HSK Mandarin classes) since they are well structured, they have lots of video with natives speaking, and they deal with relatively useful topics. Duolingo taught me to say things like "the book was eaten by the yellow horse" before I could even ask someone how old they were.

That said, I feel like they've been going in the right direction by adding things like duolingo stories. If they expand those and add more interactive stuff it could get more interesting.

<comment><USER5> My experience with russian or swedish is that the comments give a lot more insight on many excercises and what it is they are trying to teach and the grammar part of things. If you just chug along without taking the time to browse around then very little remains with you. I am not sure this is a compliment to Duolingo though as I am mostly praising the usefulness if their users...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Huh, I had no idea Duolingo was this successful. Anybody with insight into General Atlantic that could speculate on what changes they could bring? I've read their Wiki page but it's pretty barren, although they seem to be enacting some curious initiatives like: "In 2018 General Atlantic invested in UK investment start-up Greensill in an attempt to challenge traditional lending systems"

<comment><USER7> I knew they were successful, but I didn't know they were valued at 1.5 billion.

<comment><USER8> I can see this.

I moved abroad in 2018 to a non-english speaking country and just about everyone I met had Duolingo on their phone. You'd be surprised at how many would cough up for a Premium membership just to keep their streak from breaking and making the cute green owl cry.

That said, apparently their biggest market is actually people trying to learn English, which... checks out. In our modern times, english is the lingua franca. There's a bottomless pit of people who want or need to learn it.

<comment><USER9> It's weird, because it's not very good at understanding the need of the users. If you are Chinese and want to learn English, you have to show the contrast between the grammar-points from a Chinese perspective in an meaningful way.

It really feels like: how can I, as an english developer, teach language? Instead of: -How can I, as an elite teacher, create an app to teach language?

Now that I think about it... is there any teachers with SF-developer-salary? Is there any language-teachers that talk about being the 10x teacher?

Duolingo has done some cool stuff with AI: [http://sharedtask.duolingo.com/](http://sharedtask.duolingo.com/) they just don't seem to use it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What's weird about this round is that they gave away a board seat to a new outside investor, who has ownership of under < 1% of the company.

Is this common? I thought board seats were prized, and only given in deals where the investor is capitalizing the company and owning something like 20% post-money.

<comment><USER11> The new seat is an "observer" seat which doesn't have a vote.

<comment><USER12> I have never understood the value of an observer seat as you get exposure and concomitant liability without the ability to actually vote on something. Plus observers are not included in the usual D&O package.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hopefully they'll be able to afford some more support staff.

I sent them an email asking for a simple feature request, and they never even acknowledged receiving it. A simple, "We will pass this along to the appropriate team to consider" would be sufficient.

Otherwise great app! (I am a paying user.)

Edit: If I'm doing something wrong, please let me know. Downvotes are fine, but it doesn't let me know how to improve.

<comment><USER14> [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

I'm not one of your downvoters, but since you asked for feedback, I will try and inhabit the mind of one: a complaint about duolingo's non-response to your email isn't terribly interesting. (And neither is a comment replying saying that your complaint isn't very interesting, sorry everyone who sees this before it disappears from the front page)

<comment><USER13> Fair point, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> enahs-sf I wonder who got liquidity here. C suite? Rank and file employees? Early team members?

<comment><USER15> > In this case, an existing investor in Duolingo sold a small portion of their > existing stake to allow General Atlantic to have a bigger stake in the > company.

Looks like it was an earlier investor.</comment></comment>


Applications Now Open for Canada's Startup-Visa Program - <AUTHOR> http://startupvisa.ca/2013/04/01/applications-now-open-for-canadas-startup-visa-program/

<comment><USER2> At a high-level, I love the idea of lowering visa barriers. However, a designated list of approved investors sounds like the stuff of nightmares.</comment>


SproutCore: Introducing GreenHouse - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sproutcore.com/post/535950751/introducing-greenhouse <comment><USER2> Why not ship a self-contained demo where all you have to do is double click it to try it out, like Atlas?

I have to admit I am having some trouble installing this and setting up a sample project.

</comment><comment><USER3> _"Some will even charge you for their beta releases."_

I love the SproutCore versus Cappuccino battle. Two frameworks enter, one framework leaves.

<comment><USER4> Not really sure what that means. I don't think there has to be one winner, and we're glad to have more people in the market trying to realize our goal of desktop class web apps.

But let's not kid ourselves. Cappuccino has two interface builders, Atlas and nib2cib+IB. Both of these have been used to ship commercial software. nib2cib is completely free and open source, it's been out about as long as Cappuccino has, and it runs together with Interface Builder, the best in breed tool for designing interfaces for the last 20 years.

Greenhouse isn't even playing in the same game at this point.

<comment><USER5> I've already chosen which side of the fence I'm on, so with my bias in mind I'd like to say that I evaluated Cappuccino and nib2cib+IB before I settled with SproutCore. IB _is_ the best of breed tool for creating interfaces, but the fact is nib2cib is nowhere near complete and many widgets failed to translate correctly or at all. I eventually gave up on it.

<comment><USER6> This is of course a function of when you tried it. Its been out for over a year now, and in that time we've built out support for a lot of the built in widgets, especially for our 0.8 release. Things like TableView work very well now (which last time I checked is a class that isn't even that well supported in SC at all). And again, the proof is ultimately in the pudding: most of the apps that are shipping today have used either nib2cib or Atlas, and we have very few users who don't begin development today straight from our nib2cib based projects.

<comment><USER7> The choice between SproutCore and Cappuccino is largely philosophical (port something that works, or build fresh with new perspective), and based on limited data. The way I see it, either choice is still a choice for a client side web framework, and that's a step in the right direction. For instance, Narwhal/CommonJS/SeedJS came out of these efforts, and benefit all involved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's so much cool stuff coming out for building web apps. If you started your project more than a month ago, it seems to mean that you're using old, outdated stuff which is going to make you less productive.

I console myself by realising that the lack of extra abstractions makes my application faster and lighter.

Seriously though, how does one take advantage of new stuff without rewriting too much or ending up with an inconsistent and messy codebase?

<comment><USER9> I think you will have a tough time building something that is faster than SproutCore. Its built for speed and cloud computing. We are working with ~7 million object and getting it to work great.

<comment><USER8> The serious part of my comment was the last paragraph.

But it's certainly an interesting question: When should you adopt the latest and greatest for an existing project?

<comment><USER5> When you find the existing project cumbersome or find yourself severely hampered by your exiting tools.

In other words, when it makes sound business sense, I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Seems half baked at the moment, but so did Atlas and nib2cib when they came out. I definitely prefer Sproutcore to Cappuccino and Objective-J. In my opinion Javascript is an excellent language for web development, where Objective-C (in Javascript form) is not. I really hope they pour a lot more work into this to make it great, as I'd really like to use it on an upcoming project!

Good work so far!

</comment><comment><USER11> Seems like this is going to be the best way to build a certain class of polished apps w/o bothering with the app store. I was impressed that an app deployed this way can present custom launch images as well as present content in such way that the user cannot access the browser address bar.

With Mobile Safari support for HTML5 storage and HTML5 workers this is capable stuff.

<comment><USER4> MobileSafari doesn't support web workers.

<comment><USER11> yet ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I feel it is kinda sad that only nowadays we are seeing all the work that was done on Destkop ui Frameworks emerge on Client Javascript. I wonder how many MVC server-side frameworks (or hybrid ones like GWt) would have been invented if such tools existed 10 years ago...</comment>


Donald Trump: US must greatly expand nuclear weapons - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38410027 <comment><USER2> His tweet is alluding to nuclear deterrence. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deterrence_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deterrence_theory)

Doesn't do squat against terrorists though, which is the most prominent threat (as far as the government sees it) of the 21st century.</comment>