Hacker News Redesign - <AUTHOR> http://www.taiyab.co.uk/2012/04/hacker-news-redesign/ <comment><USER2> I'm sorry, but this is a perfect example of the difference between design and eye candy. Often, people wonder why I spend $50,000 a year going to design school, when I can learn how to make things that are just as shiny by reading psdtuts.com.

The difference is that style is only skin-deep. It's superficial. It's an added bonus on top of _design_. Design, on the other hand, is the core of the product: how it functions. It's the soul: what story it tells.

Your redesign, while prettier, does nothing to improve the user experience, or to tell a story. Sure, it's easier on the eyes, but it's a much worse _design_ , in that it makes the user experience worse. It's now _harder_ to read: less information is on the screen. (11 story as opposed to 25, on my screen.) The information hierarchy within stories is less clear. The eye has to jump around more to get the secondary information (poster / point count / comment count / time posted). The flag functionality is simply gone…

You did a good job making it look better, and should be commended for that. But as for the design, try again.

PS: Take this as friendly critique. Take it in, learn what you can, try again. Rise, repeat. Don't be discouraged, but realize you have a long way to go. You'll get there!

\--

Note: Check out this redesign, which I think is quite effective, and is installable as a extra stylesheet on the current HN code: <http://akhun.com/seo/skitch/Hacker_News-20120420-180413.png>

<comment><USER3> I want this: <http://i.imgur.com/xKRkY.png>

My longer reply got lost somewhere.

<comment><USER4> So far the best. The 3 most important things are the largest: comments, link to story, upvote (though I would've moved upvote to the right of story link-- but that's just me, I don't believe in upvoting anymore).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I believe this is not a good redesign, and I'll try to explain why:

\- Where should I click to go to the comments page? If I have to click on the little bubble on the right of each article, it actually makes my user experience less pleasant than with the current design. (Did OP read "Don't Make Me Think"?)

\- No flagging button. Did OP voluntarily omit it? If so, why? If not, where would he put it?

\- The scores of the articles look likes buttons, what should I expect when I click on them?

\- Knowing the number of comments of an article and its score are both important to create a certain "I need to see this" factor for readers. Putting those numbers respectively on the far left and on the far right does not help this at all.

I really agree with SeoxyS here. This redesign does not improve the current HN experience, and it actually makes it more complex by displaying the information in a way that does not look bad but does not actually help browsing the site.

I would suggest OP to think (or learn) more about UX. That's a very good thing to do on a Friday night, and even though a lot of this knowledge can come through working with a different focus (think about your user) and common sense, there are good books to get you started.[1][2]

[1]:[http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Me-Think- Usability/dp/032134...](http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Me-Think- Usability/dp/0321344758) \- I recommend this

[2]:[http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Mind-Simple-Understanding- In...](http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Mind-Simple-Understanding- Interface/dp/012375030X) \- Not as good, but only 200 pages, and interesting.

<comment><USER6> I'd also recommend Designed For Use by Lukas Mathis <http://pragprog.com/book/lmuse/designed-for-use> .It has great chapters on the UI/Ux process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sorry, but I don't like it. I do like the top header and the color scheme in general. The texture in the header looks snazzy, in a good way.

The space wasted by the listing of stories is very excessive. That's the meat and potatoes of the site, yet I see 10 stories in the first screenfold vs 24 now. Why dedicate so much space to the wide "XX points" label? Is it even clickable (why would it be?) Arguably upvoting a story is more important and is actually actionable, yet the up vote "caret" looks way less clickable. The comment count balloons are jarring in their size and contrast and their random placement on the right side is distracting. When I glance at the page, I notice this jagged curve of gray dots, yet it delivers no useful information (other than how long the headline is, which is not useful).

So I think it's all about the spacing. When I look at that page, is the headline list easily perusable end parsable? I don't think it is. It is more spaced out than the current design, but it is surrounded and squeezed by these loud new elements. Think about the negative space created by the three new columns before the headline--I think clutters up the headline list.

Compared to the current design, this is a worse design. While the current HN design could use improvement (IMO text is too tiny), it does have a striking simplicity and focus on headlines that I love.

I apologize if I come off sounding harsh, and I certainly don't have design chops myself to pull off something like that (though I'd like to at some point in the future...)

<comment><USER8> This did inspire me to try a more aligned yet compact redesign:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/newest> (HN Aligned)

<comment> X-Istence Instead of linking to the newest page on HN, how about linking directly to the content.

In this case: <http://natewienert.com/hackernew>

I understand you won't get nearly as much "karma" for linking to website in a comment as you would if you hit the frontpage, but now I had to go looking for your article in the long list of articles on the newest page with no real gain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> All fairness, this is perhaps my favorite HN redesign that I've seen. I'm a fan of the white space, and the far more readable text.

I don't know why we're numbering the posts on HN, so I won't critique it on the redesign, but I think you could safely drop that as an artifact and then, perhaps, the 'points' section wouldn't look so large.

The only thing I flat out dislike is the number of comments floating out to the right. It's a ragged-right design, and it bugs the crap out of me (though it might just be me).

On the whole, I'd much rather be using that site than this one though, and that's gotta be the benchmark for success. I don't think it's perfect, but I definitely agree that it's a big improvement.

</comment><comment><USER10> Redesigning a popular site is a good way for up-and-coming designers to show off their skills - but it's important to consider the target audience and their priorities. Yes, HN users want speed, but mentioning page load times and moving on shows that you haven't really thought about that. We want to get into the meat of HN (which is the conversations) as fast as possible. Everything that gets in the way of that is bad.

1) Spacing - designers love adding extra space, and on first glance it looks beautiful. But too much space slows down browsing speed.

2) The numbered articles - more eye catching than the actual content. A user reading that page will have to spend concentration on not looking at the numbers.

3) The same with the bubbles around the comment counts and upvotes. Those values are important for HN readers - but not as important as the actual topic.

 _The design is less important than the content._

</comment><comment><USER11> It looks good, although I also like the current, simpler design. One thing I really like about your mock-up is that the link to the comments page has a much bigger click target. I lost count of the times I wanted to open the comments page but missed the target by a couple of pixels because it's so darn small (only 7pt).

If I were you, I'd drop the leftmost number (1, 2, 3 ... 20) which looks totally useless to me. I'd also move the points number right below the upvote button so that everyone can immediately tell what it is. No need to repeat "Points" 20 times in every page.

Also, screenshots like this should be in PNG, not JPG.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks pretty... unusable and, no offense, not well thought out...

\- Items that deserve no attention are bright and draw the eye (e.g. numbers in front of questions, what's the use, so you can refer to them in a chat?) Should be muted at best, perhaps even removed.

\- Repetition of the word Points unneeded. Takes up valuable space and adds nothing (note that I've never used that info either in deciding what to view, but some may)

\- Upvote button large, I like but does not need an attention-grabbing color (at least not until I hover over it).

\- Title is still too small in the new design.

\- "Posted by" is redundant and could be removed as well, or replaced by "By"

\- "Time since" indication which I use as my 'click-trigger' for repeat visits throughout the day I'd like that to be more prominent than the Posted by, i.e. at the from of the line

\- The comment balloons at the end make no sense. Appreciate the larger target, visually intrusive due to positioning Sub-optimal in terms of mouse- movements required. I'd put them at the front as well.

In short: I'd like something resembling this <http://i.imgur.com/xKRkY.png>

</comment><comment><USER12> \- Content is king. The density of content on HN is what people enjoy about it.

\- Focal point should be the submission title. The item's position and number of upvotes shouldn't attract the most visual attention.

\- Use color sparingly to draw focus. The submission titles should be orange, not their position in the list.

\- Style should target audience. The style and aesthetic of HN is more appealing to hackers and programmers than the iOS aesthetic.

\- Accessibility is important. Stories should be tab-key accessible.

\- Redesigns should improve. OP's redesign shouldn't be a coat of new paint, but a superior model of engineering.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think one of the reasons Hacker News has stayed this simple is that it helps filter out some of the users that don't look past design.

</comment><comment><USER14> The question you need to ask yourself is, "Does my design add value?"

The top comment already sums it up perfectly - Design is not about making things pretty or looking nice. Design is about function, design is about value.

I won't deny that the design looks good. I'd say it looks 'prettier' in certain ways, but if its not more functional or doesn't add more value to my experience on HN, what good is it to me?

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm sorry to say this, but what SeoxyS said was exactly how I felt.

Here's what I think should have been done: LINK <http://www.grooovy.me/HN.jpg>

Here are some thoughts on why I made mine this way:

1) Hacker news is read by hundred of thousands of people every month- to adapt to a completely new design would wreck the user experience the users have come to expect.

2) Your patterns and icons, while I appreciate the gesture takes focus away from the headlines. The most important thing should be the headlines on hacker news. That's how it was designed to be. Everything else should pale in color compared to it.

3) As SeoxyS mentioned, I designed mine as to not disrupt the functionality that everyone's used to. What I did was "design" the page to improve readability. I made the background color behind the text a light grey so it's not as gloomy as the current site and used a dark grey font rather than the black on current site to improve faster reading. Black on white is always tiring on the eyes, which is why I tried to adapt different shades of grey.

4) I don't like HN's top nav bar right now because it takes focus away from the logo. The logo should be consistent with the one found and recognized on YC's main site. A logo on the site should be loud and clear. I made the top nav bar a darker grey so that it would give focus back to the logo.

5) The selected links are now orange instead of white. By having tiny accents of color, it adds the kind of eye candy that you want but nonetheless tied in with functionality. UX comes first, then UI. You can make something pretty after think about how you'll first make it user-friendly.

6) To improve eye candy, I gave the bottom nav the bright color of HN to really lighten up the page. I felt that otherwise there would be too many grey areas.

7) I moved the search to the top and yes, this does change what the users are used to, but in my opinion a good change. I've read many posts where people (including myself) have had a hard time finding the search button. To move it to the top nav will adapt to web standards.

Normally, I'd make the search larger and start right aligned at the end of the top nav bar and instead move the username + logout link above it, but I felt that it might be too disruptive, so I sacrificed what looks the best for a better experience (this is important).

I do give you props for trying it out, that's how we all push forward to improve.

</comment><comment><USER16> I think that it looks good, but I think that you could change how you display the number of points each post has accumulated. The design of the site does not seem to fit the culture of hacker news. Look at the current website, it looks like it was hacked together by a programmer not a designer. I think that a redesign of hacker news would include a bit of the old site's spirit. just my opinion please excuse my grammar

</comment><comment><USER17> It seems to me as though most of the critics here dislike the decreased information density more than anything else. This is a problem easily solved; make the text smaller and decrease the space between elements.

On a broader topic, though, many of the commenters appear to view style and substance as opposing forces. O hackers, can we not have both the functionality and the form? The presence and organization of information does not fundamentally conflict with rounded rectangles, smoother fonts, CSS buttons and all the other jazz that populate our startup pages.

Arguing that the ugliness of the current design improves the quality of the user base is the online equivalent of wearing coke bottle glasses because it makes you look nerdier. Let's present our services as both sexy and smart.

</comment><comment><USER18> > I know Hacker News is all about fast load times and minimal bandwidth usage, > hence the lack of much graphical work in the current version.

Actually, I believe that the simplified design of HN as it is currently helps ward off the typical Internet surfer looking for new links to click on. The last thing HN needs is to attract users who only post pictures of animals.

My single piece of design criticism for HN would be to provide a hi-res upvote triangle image (heck, why isn't it pure CSS?) for retina display devices.

<comment><USER19> _My single piece of design criticism for HN would be to provide a hi-res upvote triangle image (heck, why isn't it pure CSS?) for retina display devices._

You don't even need CSS, just an unicode character: <http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/25b2/index.htm>

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Hey, nice job!

It's a lot cleaner and more sleek.

I do have some feedback, though:

1\. With your redesign, you've brought a submission's point total into the limelight. Instead of the way it is now where the two main actions are to read an article and upvote if you like it, you're throwing in a third factor. You're saying 'this is how many times this story has been upvoted, and you should take this into consideration when deciding whether to vote on this story. Oh, and if you decide to upvote, the button is to my right.' You sort of create a problematic association between point score and the decision to upvote.

2\. Orange seems to be a highlight color, so using it for the story numbers doesn't make much sense. The number a submission is on the list is maybe the least valuable piece of information on the page.

3\. The comment bubbles are a nice touch, but they're placed in a bad spot. Look at the current HN homepage now and you'll find that all the comment links stay relatively consistent along a vertical path. It's easy to scan down the page to find the story with the most active discussion. Now imagine viewing your redesign and having to dart your eyes to the end of submission titles of greatly variable lengths just to get to the comment number.

With that's said, I do like the direction you took it in. With a few tweaks, it may turn out to be a really effective design; so keep playing with it!

</comment><comment><USER21> Hey, don't let the haters get you down. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it shows courage (if not naivete) to muck with a beloved icon.

My advice for anyone has been for years to _abolish the word "redesign" from your vocabulary_. Seriously. Most redesigns just swap a set of known and familiar problems with unknown problems. Also, as you can see, any dramatic change just pisses people off.

Solve one concrete problem at a time.

</comment><comment><USER22> Why do all these redesigns have serial numbers ? what purpose do they serve ?

Submissions to HN move up and down dynamically - remove the serial numbers and show _(302 points..25 comments)_ which should be CLICKABLE. This will bring front and center the only two things that people judge in deciding to read a submission. Plus it will make it easier to click on a mobile device.

<comment><USER23> Indeed, he added the serial numbers because he was thinking in design elements not in functionality. It's very common practice of designers who don't do much UX.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Pretty but same core mistake as other redesigns of HN that show up periodically: current HN shows me more information, in less space.

</comment><comment><USER25> \- The red list numbers are essentially glorified, distracting, bullets

\- Why does "x Points" look like a button? The word "points" also does not need to be repeated for each item, or needs to be deemphasized in favor of the number.

\- Comment links are all over the place and look like a river of grey blobs running down the page.

\- Article titles need more emphasis than the previously mentioned elements

</comment><comment><USER26> Regardless if you like this design or not, I think HackerNews does need some kind of redesign. I can remember when I first started reading there were a lot of things that just weren't intuitive to me. I always wondered why a site for "hackers" and "coders" seemed so basic in features and looked like something from the 90's. Particularly, the login and password reset seems kind of difficult to use. Is there no RSS feed? How do I know when someone replies to one of my comments? Looking at my profile I have no idea what that stuff is for... "Max visits" "minaway" "delay"... ?? I still don't know what that is. I get the speed and simplicity idea but I think there are some user experience issues that can be solved while still having speed and simplicity.

Maybe I'm the only that feels this way, but just my thoughts. Maybe there is a good reason to the current design?

<comment><USER27> There are documentation pages which explain the features you're asking about. Also, search now works. This may seem really unfriendly, but perhaps friction is sometimes a good thing? RTFM and "use search" have been the grumpy welcome of hacker communities for many years, so I guess that's something that has carried over?

The bottom of this page explains the max visits minaway stuff: (<http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html>)

Maybe years of SLRN and Usenet have spoiled me - I love the HN layout.

I would like a Usenet style scorefile.

<comment><USER26> I guess some of it is simply opinion and personal preferences. In my opinion, good UI doesn't require users to go searching for documentation pages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm oddly attracted to the existing design of Hacker News. It suits the community and purpose of the site well. It's aesthetically spartan, yet functional.

SIMPLE COLOR SCHEME: it's very simple with just one prominent color and the rest black, white, and shades of gray (I count the cream background in this).

INTUITIVE: The front page is a list of links sorted by some measurement of popularity or quality. While you may not notice this upon first glance, it's something you appreciate, and you at least take away "better stuff gets pushed up".

EFFICIENT: You can immediately see the number of comments a story has before you click through. I tend to migrate more towards stories with lively discussion, rather than the highest stories in the sort.

FAST: The whole front page is 29 KB, and I can do an uncached load in 1 second. There are only 3 images which collectively amount to less than half a KB.

</comment><comment><USER29> I always use this <http://hckrnews.com/> to browse HN.

<comment><USER30> Is that site sorted by when articles hit front page? The timestamp thing is a bit unexplained.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Not a commentary on this particular design, but rather just a general thought: I would argue that the very utilitarian design of this site is actually a feature rather than a deficiency to be corrected. Generally the point of design is to send an unspoken message. For a store, you want to send the message of "we're safe and professional and welcoming", so rounded corners and soft gradients and open spaces are of much utility there.

On the other hand, for a site designed for self described "hackers", I think having a very utilitarian as-simple-as-possible not-trying-to-impress-you design sends the message that "appearances don't matter here, the content is the focus"

</comment><comment><USER32> I'd like for these redesigns to start by listing:

#1 The problems they are trying to solve

#2 The qualities of the current design they need to preserve.

The discussion could then focus on whether the two lists are valid and how successful the redesign is in solving #1 without fucking up #2.

</comment><comment><USER33> Ah, nice try, but No.

Nothing personal, but you are missing the most important point of existing design - it's the information density and the lack of any whitespace whatsoever. Whatever the redesign it needs to preserve 20+ stories per page, it's a must.

</comment><comment><USER34> Those vertical lines in the header are dizzying

<comment><USER35> I also found them to be distracting. Also, I like the thin & sleek header bar, especially on a mobile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I like the current HN design. It's simple and elegant to my taste. I'm not a fan of eye candy (for the sake of it). Minimalist approach of HN is why I like it and what distinguishes it from others. In short, it's the focus on content, rather than design elements.

But there are a few things I would change:

* Replace the triangle image with a caret. * Remove the points to avoid the popularity bias. * Remove the comments count to avoid the flamebait alarm. * Move the search on the top. * Tone down the color.

I'm most likely in the minority here, but here's my take on it: <http://i.imgur.com/3iadZ.png>

</comment><comment><USER37> 1\. Everything is bloated. The comfy header, myriad bubble quotes, and excess space make HN look like a daycare for those that have an unhealthy obsession with Wordpress and Dora the Explorer. The precise, technical vibe that exists with the website simply isn't there.

2\. The bubble quotes are deal-breakers. They take up plenty real estate, are identical, and don't line up vertically. Your eyes are more attuned to the "wave" that's going on in the right than the stories themselves.

3\. Taking a second look I half-expected the HN logo and login button to be circular.

</comment><comment><USER38> #1 change I want for HN layout: infinite scroll. #2 change--drop the numbers for the articles. Unecessary. #3 change--make the comments click area larger.

Everything else is pretty much perfect.

</comment><comment><USER39> I feel HN does need a face lift. What with it showcasing the designs of tomorrow everyday and all!

I agree with kijin, the numbers besides the posts seem of no use. We need to use the space so as to get as many posts as possible in the view without scrolling, so I wouldn't mind narrowing the distance between the posts either. Maybe a hover can magnify the post a little. Posts that link to URL could have some distinct style or something.

<comment><USER40> I don't get what is wrong with current HN really. The site is not meant to attract customers or be beautiful - it is a news submission aggregator. The focus needs to be on maximizing information density while maintaining clarity. Titles, upvote icons, and comment numbers are sufficient to get that across, so adding "flair" will only detract from that appearance.

Also, I hate sites with huge title bars like that example. It pushes the actual content further down the page. Sure, this isn't 2002 where having 90% of your content in the initial view of page the isn't as important anymore, especially on a site like HN, but still maximizing for information density makes a users life easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I like all of it but the bubbles. I find those distracting. I do care about the comment count/links more than the points though. If it were me (not a designer) I'd stick the '114 pts' right of the arrow, no bubble.. and use the current points bubble (which looks like a button) for the comments link. This would actually severely improve my mobile experience where I often hit the article instead of the comments link.

</comment><comment><USER23> I honestly don't think HN needs a redesign in that sense (if at all). The mockup proposed here is a nice design for another kind of application, it's kinda safe and soft. My bet is that HN would benefit more from a data oriented redesign where users see the stories and their stats more like a work sheet than a pretty web page. Dynamic data is what users would be interested in, not bubbles and double spaced rows.

</comment><comment><USER42> I actually like this design, it's clean. The only thing I don't like is that each row is doesn't seem to be vertically aligned. The index number and number of votes are vertical-middle aligned. The article title seems to have too much padding at the top. Then the number of comments speech bubble seems to be bottom-aligned with the article author.

If it was all middle-aligned or top-aligned I think it would look pretty cool.

</comment><comment><USER43> I like it, but it feels like the gmail redesign with too much space. Some people like that, I'd prefer to see a maximum number of articles on one page.

<comment><USER44> +1 I really hope this trend of adding uber whitespace is short lived. On a site like this, I feel like the designer's goal should be to get as many links on the screen as she can without me feeling the site is overly cluttered. Solving that problem by blasting me with whitespace frustrates me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> A few people have mentioned information density as being important. I've got the 'Stylish' chrome extension installed with a userstyle for hn which looks like this:

table > tbody > tr:nth-child(3) > td{-webkit-column-count: 2; }

2 column layout is v.cool. Makes the front page as well as the comments section much more readable for me.

example: <http://imgur.com/a/oidEM#1>

<comment><USER46> It is easier for a user to scroll down a long continuous list than to hop back and forth between two columns. This is particularly true for ordered lists (as is the case with HN).

The only thing I strongly dislike about HN's current design is that comment line lengths are far too long[1].

[1] <http://baymard.com/blog/line-length-readability>

<comment><USER45> It reads like a newspaper. You read one column at a time. No hopping between columns.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I really like it. However the simple UI seems to work and appeal to the audience.

Posted this link earlier in the week. Beautiful is not always better - sometimes ugly works better in attracting people! [http://sparknlaunch.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/keep-it- simple-...](http://sparknlaunch.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/keep-it-simple- stupid-kiss-ugly-websites-that-went-viral/)

</comment><comment><USER48> A lot of things people said are right. While reading the post, I hoped for something very clean. But it's not. There are elements and bits that are unnecessary and/or redundant. All already mentioned in previous comments. And the solution doesn't need to be "eye-candy". Just go for better type choice and a effective color palette. Basically, a no fuss, no frills solution.

</comment><comment><USER49> First impression (5-7 seconds): no, this does not work.

In the current incarnation the page has just the right font size and just the right amount of vertical space. Strictly speaking it is a bit tight, but since every other line is grey and in a small font, the spacing of the headings becomes perfect.

The new design is prettier. But it negatively affects the usability of the site.

</comment><comment><USER50> Nice design but it doesn't add anything to the site experience for me. The header seems too big for orange. I used the option to turn the color of the header on HN from orange to white to further simplify the look of it. I do kinda like the number of comments bubble though. I'd love to see a link on the 404 pages.

</comment><comment><USER51> Thanks for putting this together.

Would you be interested in doing a custom theme for <http://ribbot.com> ?

It's an open source HN clone that lets your create custom themes (much like Tumblr). <https://github.com/barmstrong/ribbot>

</comment><comment><USER52> It seems the site is distracting me towards the design elements, and I can't focus as much on the content. At the very least the text font should be larger and make the comment bubbles smaller. Everything else could be smaller, too. The focus should be the content not the design itself.

</comment><comment><USER53> *How about something a little more mobile friendly?

At the very least, a pad on clickable areas would be much appreciated (seeing the comments on a post or upvoting takes a lot of skill to hit that link with a finger point).

The vertical 'information density' will drop a bit but people don't have much trouble scrolling.

</comment><comment><USER39> There are other functional things with HN that need improvement. For instance, when you edit a comment, and hit update, you should be taken back to the post. Although I have to edit my comments to fix typos, maybe editing comments shouldn't be allowed at all?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Been reading the feedback here and on my blog over the last few hours, and I have to say I agree with most of it. This was intended to be an initial concept that was going to be iterated on again and again, so I guess I have plenty to do to make this better!

</comment><comment><USER54> I like the design of this website; it's fast, easy to use and works both on my laptop and mobile. It's also something I'm trying to achieve at my startup, <http://lion.co.uk> though I'm still not there yet.

</comment><comment><USER55> Like the design over all but one change I would make is to remove the post numbering eg. 1 through 20, and then integrate the upvote with the points button and likely do the points button in the style of the post number. eg. orange on white.

</comment><comment><USER56> Much harder to scan the headlines, which is the main job to be done.

I always appreciate people putting their thoughts out there and I hope that Taiyab will not take the criticism here too literally but instead will try to learn from the input. Nice attempt!

</comment><comment><USER57> I'm much prefer Georgify (alternative CSS for Hacker News) : [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ofjfdfaleomlfanfeh...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ofjfdfaleomlfanfehgblppafkijjhmi)

</comment><comment><USER58> This is what HN looks like for me: <http://i.imgur.com/FAElk.png> <http://i.imgur.com/KqnGO.png>

</comment><comment><USER59> I guess with HN it's a good idea to stick with the old design. A new (fancy) design would only attract more mainstream users which is not in the interest of HN in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER60> What's most telling about this situation is that something that is clearly not that good nor interesting is at the top of HN. Perhaps this is just 'good' inasmuch as its HN bait.

</comment><comment><USER61> IMO, most important design value for HN should be readability. But this design? I don't think so. It just distract viewer's focus.

Current HN has too wide with respect to font size neither. :(

</comment><comment><USER62> This is great. Seems like it's too fancy. And some people would not like it. And the comment bubble is distracting. Give it a change. I might gonna use it.

</comment><comment><USER63> Your design is nice but not very mobile device friendly. and theres no point in putting the post position in orange background, its unreadable/invisible.

<comment><USER64> For iOS devices,u can try hackernode or newsyc. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> I find the number of comments are a better indicator of how interesting an article is than the number of points. I don't even look at the point values.

</comment><comment><USER66> The larger comment links sell it for me. I use a touchpad, and opening comments is painful to do with such small font and minimal margins.

</comment><comment><USER67> I'd like a termlib interface for HN.

> fp

1\. Meteor is now MIT licensed (meteor.com) 209 points by nim 6 hours ago | flag | 66 comments

2\. Another story

> up 1

<up voted>

> 1

<opens up tab>

<comment><USER68> How about halfway? <http://diesellaws.com/hacker-news-clean-redesign/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Who says we're a bunch of "old farts?" I feel surrounded by "young whippersnappers" around here.

</comment><comment><USER70> To me, a good design at least has 16px font size! ;)

And easy to scan, easy to find what I want, fast...etc

Effective Design.

</comment><comment><USER71> I'm surprised none of the redesigns I've seen try to create a better mobile experience.

</comment><comment><USER72> It's more like you put new style in there, not a redesign.

</comment><comment><USER73> check out, stylish userstyle WIP: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3871817>

</comment><comment><USER74> feel like if you squish it a bit. make the header less dizzy, and make all the comments line up on the left -- you're set.

</comment><comment><USER75> you say adobe when i think you mean abode.

</comment><comment><USER76> One of my observations about software and websites has two parts and is seemingly paradoxical: design matters; and design just does _not_ fucking matter. For every one beautiful polished friendly UI you can cite that made it's owners wealthy I can also point you at another app/site which is ugly/painful and yet it also made it's owners wealthy. I love design, I do -- but fuck design. You're right and you're wrong about it. Make something people _need_ , that does something that matters for them, and get them to pay for it, whatever it takes, and you're gold. Plus I increasingly suspect that "design" matters most precisely when what you're providing is ephemeral or not really needed. I don't know about you but I sleep better at night thinking I'm providing something people need or that materially improves their lives, and not just hawking a commodity pig with lipstick. There are hipsters but also housewives. There are artists but also managers. There are problem spaces with dozens of pre-existing software solutions which are all friendly, effective and pretty -- and you want to stand out from them, so that's hard. And then there are other problem spaces with no software solution, or no affordable one, or nothing that runs on the particular platform a certain segment of customers wants, etc. You're free to pick which of these opportunities to take a whack at addressing.

Design sometimes matters a lot; but often design just does not matter much.

Automate someone's pain away and get them to pay you for it. There are lots of opportunities out there with this quality. Don't worry _too_ much about design.

</comment><comment><USER77> > _Often, people wonder why I spend $50,000 a year going to design school, > when I can learn how to make things that are just as shiny by reading > psdtuts.com._

How is this relevant? Also, no one wonders that.

</comment><comment><USER78> well, it sucks

<comment><USER79> Yeah. During several years i visited HN from time to time, frowning at the old-school layout. And promptly left. Until one day, i matured enough, and realized that simplicity is elegant.

Though, i _dislike_ the low-contrast browngray background. It's annoying for reading.

Make the layout user-customizable to each login. Let users choose. Is that too hard?</comment></comment>


Netflix, Amazon: Is This What 'Peak TV' Looks Like? - <AUTHOR> http://www.barrons.com/articles/is-this-what-peak-tv-looks-like-1482507378?link=mktw <comment><USER2> To expand on the topic anecdotally, my parents still watch TV and all its ad- laden glory for the local news. Sure, there's DNA info, but for whatever reason it still doesn't replace a local broadcaster - maybe it's just habit?

It'd be cool to see a platform where local people could theoretically start their own micro-station and report the news as such.</comment>


World's Ocean circulations revealed by lost ship load of toy ducks - <AUTHOR> http://www.350resources.org.uk/2011/02/27/worlds-ocean-circulations-revealed-by-lost-ship-load-of-toy-ducks/

<comment><USER2> This is a copy of the article linked at the end:

[http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/lost-at- sea-...](http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/lost-at-sea-on-the- trail-of-mobyduck-2226788.html#)

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, and I'd like to delete this and submit the original. But not sure that's reasonable, so I've submitted that original from the Independent, and please, people, go there, not to this one.

Unless it's too late ...

<comment><USER3> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2267970></comment></comment></comment>


Photograph of light as both a particle and wave - <AUTHOR> http://actu.epfl.ch/news/the-first-ever-photograph-of-light-as-both-a-parti/

<comment><USER2> "Photograph" light?

Photons are bosons, thus they don't interact, right? So you can't bounce light off of light to photograph it?

Edit: Okay, so I was being pedantic.

Anyway, if the wave is propagating through a wire, and waves have duration, then aren't you really capturing a picture of a wire propagating an old wave, and a new set of photons acting as particles?

That's like taking a picture of a boiling pot of water and saying you got a picture of water simultaneously as a liquid and a gas, because there is liquid water in the pot and steam rising off of it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am trying to figure out if the image in the link is actually the resulting photograph. The reason I mention it is the published paper in Nature does not contain it: [http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150302/ncomms7407/full/nco...](http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150302/ncomms7407/full/ncomms7407.html)

It also seems to not be light, but something similar.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9131758](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9131758)

</comment><comment><USER4> The camera has be the interesting part.</comment>


VPN Websites Track Their Visitors - <AUTHOR> https://vpnpro.com/blog/vpn-provider-websites-tracking-their-visitors-online/ <comment><USER2> I'd go with AirVPN probably now.... since it's in the list

<comment><USER3> I've heard from fellow HN'ers that AirVPN is run by actual hacktivists, and their mission page seems to reflect that.

Not having trackers and the awareness that goes with that adds credit to the assumption.

EDIT: What's this, almost all comments here so far are from fresh accounts created 48 days ago?

[https://airvpn.org/mission/](https://airvpn.org/mission/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> PIA? Astrill?

</comment><comment><USER5> am i surprised? no. trust no one.

</comment><comment><USER6> Pick one of these that have no trackers, according to article:

12VPN

AirVPN

ConfirmedVPN

CryptoStorm

Disconnect VPN

DotVPN

Mullvad

ProtonVPN

Psiphon

Thunder VPN

VIP72 VPN

VPN.ac

Zorro VPN

<comment><USER5> 80% of these providers are unknown to me

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> loool how unexpected

</comment><comment><USER8> jesus christ</comment>


Does a Startup Business Plan Really Matter? - <AUTHOR> http://roachpost.com

<comment><USER2> Don't confuse a "business plan" with a "project plan". A project plan tells you exactly how you (think you) will get from A to B. A business plan is how you explore the problem space. It shows the strengths and weaknesses of your vision, resources, competitors, people, finances etc. You can be successful without thinking through that stuff, but it does help and it does matter.</comment>


DSP Inside TI Radar Puts AI on Edge - <AUTHOR> https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1333330&_mc=RSS_EET_EDT <comment><USER2> I have programmed for the same c674x chips they mention as doing machine learning ... Let's just say the have a mere fraction of the FLOPs that a nvidia GPU or other "AI" processor would have.

Granted, good machine learning is not all about compute power, and you can certainly do interesting things with less power. But this is not bleeding edge deep learning for sure :)

On the other hand, TI is a company you can actually count on to work with you to be able to build a product that can be verified to be dependable, in a mission-critical, hard real time sense. TI open sources most of the software stack.

NVIDIA, well, not so much. I've run into serious issues with their binary blob drivers and their engineers have a rather DGAF attitude about the whole thing. Secrecy and bluster are the name of the game. Torvalds' opinion on the matter rings true.

TI just seems friendlier and less cutthroat. Their support of the BeagleBoard etc is telling.

<comment><AUTHOR> You certainly won't want to train on a DSP, but running them shouldn't be too much.

I too have nothing but great things to say about TI.

<comment><USER3> Would it be plausible to train slowly on a DSP, if the data is also being collected slowly, at the edge?

By the time you have a reasonable dataset, you've also had a reasonable amount of training... of course, with only a little training on the complete dataset.

<comment><USER4> Depends on your model - in the majority of cases training is a separate act from using the model, and just because you trained it doesn't mean it's well fitted. You end up caring about training speed because you don't know how many training runs you may have to do, grumpily fiddling with the model and hyperparameters after each training session trying to get a good model. Technically possible but probably not practical

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The chip isn't very novel. There are various different configurations of dsp/fpga and arm/powerPC/x86 used for RF.

Typically, the dsp or fpga is used to handle the time critical pieces, i.e. generating RF, and the pc is there to command and collect data.

There are a variety of vendors you can choose from for this type of setup. From SoC to PCIe fpga for a server, all depends on your applicatio.

The application to the automotive sector might be novel.

<comment><USER6> Disagree. mmWave on generic CMOS is very impressive. Sure, you can take a SiGe or III-V front end, and marry that up to CMOS back ends, but then you don't meet the price point. Put in an FPGA, then you are way over price.

The baseband bandwidth for FMCW RADAR is not that much, so they are able to pull this off with a DSP. It's the RF integration that impressed me. I'm presently using some ADI SiGe mmWave ICs (impressive themselves), and those are close to $300 for the TX/RX pair, and that's only the RF to analog baseband. The TI part is $55 for a fully integrated chip. Just need a PCB/antenna and supply regulators.

Short white paper here:

[http://www.ti.com/lit/an/swra592/swra592.pdf](http://www.ti.com/lit/an/swra592/swra592.pdf)

<comment><USER5> I can see that.

I'm curious what kind of Rx sensitivity they can get for the HF range.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Woah: its < 80 USD at Digikey quantities. Nice to see tech like this that us mere mortals can actually buy.

</comment><comment><USER8> Just wondering, the last time I touched DSPs was in EE school. How can I keep up interest in the field if I am working in a seperate field? Any good resources and projects worth undertaking?

</comment><comment><USER9> I never thought it would be possible for a buzzword to annoy me more than "cloud" did, and yet here we are.

<comment><USER10> Whats annoying you more than cloud?

<comment><USER9> "Edge", being "the edge of the cloud". It's the new buzzword for "Internet of Things".

<comment><USER10> We need to understand that as platforms start offering different services which serve different purposes, they start spawning platforms which become independent of their predecessors.

They may be new buzzwords, but it's important to differentiate them so that the use cases and end users they are targeting become more narrow and specific.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If these are required for self driving is this a type of admit of defeat when it comes to computer vision?

</comment><comment><USER12> Just what I want - millimeter wave radar blasting at me everywhere I go. Sure, it's non-ionizing radiation, but where are the long term safety studies?

<comment><USER6> You'll get more radiation standing in front of a microwave oven.

<comment><USER13> Seriously? I thought those were pretty well shielded.

<comment><USER6> They are adequately shielded, but also have 1 kW resonating inside. They have enough to meet the OSHA standard of 1 mW/cm^2.

The chip in question only emits 20 mW, and coupled into a 10 dB gain antenna, the EIRP is still only a few 100 mW. Now spread that over a few 1000 cm^2, and it's not much at all.

For a fun experiment, put your phone in a microwave. Notice the WiFi bars go to zero, but the cellular bars don't change (much).

<comment><USER14> As long as you don't turn on the oven. Then the phone goes "bzzzzt-POP!" and lets the magic smoke out. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Desktop Applications are not dead - <AUTHOR> http://antoniocangiano.com/2007/08/05/desktop-applications-are-not-dead/

<comment><USER2> _"... C++ with MCF or WCL ... Microsoft .NET 2.0. C# 3.0 and LINQ ... Visual Studio and Delphi ...native Objective C and Cocoa ...'fat clients' ..."_

I've been watching this thread ( <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39259> ) notice the reply (by Antonio) is all tech (the original article by _Eugueny_ user focused) but no mention of users wants or needs.</comment>


Not the enemy: The advantages of public markets for startups and their investors - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21722646-closer-scrutiny-more-liquidity-and-stronger-defence-against-reputational-risk-advantages <comment><USER2> I don't think there is any secret as to why companies stay private, and again, it has nothing to do with Dodd Frank or Sarbanes Oxley.

this is one of my pet peeves. Someone long ago said Sarbanes Oxley would kill IPO's and it has forever been regurgitated even thought there is plenty of evidence to put that theory to rest.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-06-24/where- hav...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-06-24/where-have-all-the- publicly-traded-companies-gone-)

> The study also looked into the old argument that "regulatory and legal > changes in the early 2000s, including Regulation Fair Disclosure ('Reg FD') > and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act ('SOX'), made it more expensive" to list. These > played little or no role because the decrease in new listings was "well on > its way before these changes took place." At worst, the regulatory burden > accounts for only a small portion of the decline.

When you are private investors can only either love you, and invest, or pass on you.

When you're public people can bet either for or against you, which means you get a very real and not usually merciful view of what exactly you are worth due to the shorts and longs having to come together to agree on what your company is worth.

<comment><USER3> It seems like a tough sell to say that increased transaction costs categorically don't affect the frequency of IPOs. In 1986, Adobe raised $6M at their IPO. Whatever other factors have contributed to a decline in IPOs, it's hard to deny that Adobe-sized offerings don't really happen anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This felt like a pretty weak argument. Oversight will help you? Okay, then, we'll just do as the quoted examples of Slack and AirBnB, and regularly perform rigorous 3rd-party audits.

<comment><USER5> It also seriously discounted how destructive the focus on short-term gains can be for a firm, without ever fully addressing that influence from the market.</comment></comment>


Rate my app: 3Things - Complete 3 things a day and live your life - <AUTHOR> http://threethings.heroku.com

<comment><USER2> Congrats on launching. From a non-hacker currently learning rails and with a new found respect for developers, respect.

My thing is I'm afraid to log-on, especially with my twitter account. For example, I would never type the 3rd to-do item into a browser! Heck, if I was to type that 3rd to-do item as an intention in an email I would be proof- reading the recipient list like I have OCD.

</comment><comment><USER3> Drive to work. Work. Drive home.

<comment><USER4>
      Get to work.  Work efficiently.  Leave work at work.

Optimistic-alized for you =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would like to try it, but I have no idea what you are going to post to twitter. Could you explain somewhere exactly what gets posted and when. Also, can I control what is private and public? I get that a totally public to-do list might make people do them better, but I just need to understand exactly how public it is before I type my to-dos into it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Nicely done. Can you please shed some light on what did you use to make this? It'll be really helpful for a beginner like me.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is quite good. I love the 3 item limit. Forces you to pick what's important, and get it done.

I currently use TeuxDeux list, but only to track my "One important task" for the day. I rarely need to see anything other than today's tasks, though, so I might switch to this.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is 'Rails for Comedians' a real thing? I tried to google it.

</comment><comment><USER9> Will be helpful if it takes Time Zone of user in account. It is already Monday afternoon and your app is asking me things to do for Sunday.

</comment><comment><USER10> Rowan Simpson of Southgate Labs made an iOS app, Top Three, which does this a few years ago [http://itunes.apple.com/nz/app/top- three/id377629136?mt=8...](http://itunes.apple.com/nz/app/top- three/id377629136?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4)

</comment><comment><USER11> Let's see if it can make me even a tad more productive..

</comment><comment><USER12> I can imagine this using some sort of "somethingnew" list (from e.g. www.reddit.com/r/somethingnew) or maybe you can feed it a list of things you always wanted to do but (typically) never got around to... so you give it some tasks, maybe specify a condition (weekends or during the week?) and next thing you know, it tells you to do that task the next time those conditions are met.</comment>


MathsJam - a weekend to geek out about cool math stuff - <AUTHOR> http://www.mathsjam.com/confindex.html

<comment><AUTHOR> A brief explanation is in order here, but I'm no good at "brief." Here's why I've submitted this to HN.

In an earlier submission (by someone else) [1] it was being discussed how the organisers of a particular conference had recalculated the price points and decided to lower the price, appropriately refunding any who had already paid.

People commented on how the price was already pretty low, were impressed with the honesty and transparency, and added that the organisers shouldn't be too reluctant to get recompense for their work.

I'm organising a conference [2], and thought the price comparison would be interesting, but that's pointless without saying what you get. So I gave the price and listed what you get for it [3]. I then added a link in case anyone was interested, but given that it's math, and in the UK, I figured the interest would be low, and didn't think twice.

It got down-voted into oblivion. I was, and still am, stunned, but a couple of people have provided an insight into possible reasons. One said:

        Your post is clearly intended solely
        to generate interest in your event. [4]

Well, that's simply wrong, but if that's how it was perceived, I guess the down-votes were justified.

However, both replies mentioned making a separate submission, and that's this one. I still believe that for this audience the most interesting and relevant thing is the pricing and content, and not the event itself, and hence that the original comment was more appropriate, but maybe I'm wrong.

And so here it is as a separate submission. I watch with interest.

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>==

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2804115>

[2] <http://www.mathsjam.com>

[3] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2804792>

[4] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2805905>

</comment><comment><USER2> If the puzzles on the website are representative of what level the course is aimed at, you can hardly advertise this as a "conference". It would seem more appropriate for interested sixth-formers, which makes it an admirable and worthwhile event, but probably of less interest to the majority of UK HN readers.

<comment><AUTHOR> The puzzles on the web site are old and not representative, but I've not had time to update them yet. With nearly 50% of the attendance already booked, I've had very little time to go back and address the inadequacies of the original site.

But thanks for the reminder - I need to go and address that. As a stop-gap - here's a list of talk titles from 2010. Not all of these made it - we had 50 x 5 minute talks, and some of these didn't make the cut:

<http://www.mathsjam.com/MathsJamTalksOffered_2010.html>

But the talks and puzzles were really a starting point. The main purpose was to get people together to talk about what they are interested in. The talks only accounted for 60% of the time, the rest was in coffee breaks where people talked about maths at _all_ levels. We had PhDs talking about their latest difficulties, and industrial mathematicians talking about the applications of the latest results from various areas to their work. We had teachers finding new ways to present concepts, and we had retired people lending their expertise and thoughts to students.

And there were puzzles, demonstrations, magic, and other stuff that geeky people like.</comment></comment>


Sunrise is shutting down - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sunrise.am/post/144196642739/its-almost-time-to-say-goodbye <comment><USER2> From their announcement of acqusition: [http://blog.sunrise.am/post/110577824529/sunrise- microsoft](http://blog.sunrise.am/post/110577824529/sunrise-microsoft)

> Today, we're excited to announce that Sunrise is joining Microsoft. For > Sunrise, this is just the beginning.

> Sunrise will remain free and available for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Android and > Desktop – we're not going anywhere.

<comment><USER3> It was amusing that Sunrise was bought by Microsoft, but still could not connect to either of the Exchange servers I threw at it. Support basically just shrugged at me via email, rough translation being 'it works on my machine.'

Sort of unrelated, but Outlook for Android also still cannot handle recurring all-day events. They will appear in the calendar on incorrect days. Also tested this across multiple servers.

I use Nine for email, which blows Outlook for Android out of the water. Business Calendar 3 is the only Outlook (Desktop) equivalent calendar I've found for Android.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Once a startup gets bought, I look for alternatives.

If they don't shut down, I still learned something new! But usually they do.

In this case, I landed on Fantastical [1] — it's a little pricy but completely worth it. (Mac/iOS only.)

[1]: [https://flexibits.com/fantastical](https://flexibits.com/fantastical)

<comment><USER5> > it's a little pricy

We should appreciate when its pricey. That's motivation for the product to continue to exist. Otherwise, "OurIncredibleJourney".

<comment><USER6> I agree but the current model is broken. I buy FantastiCal, don't like it, I've just thrown money down the toilet. Yeah yeah you can go through iTunes and get it back but that feels like a dick move, and how many actually know the procedure anyway? It's not exactly advertised.

I throw a quid down the toilet? That's fine, I don't mind. I throw a fiver or a tenner? Woah dude, that's like, a Starbucks latte! Totally different (or not, but hey, that's what it feels like).

I wish Apple would start allowing time-limited trialware. The IAP machinery is already there, they just have to allow apps that stop working after 30 days if there is no payment. After 30 days, I have a pretty good idea whether an app is worth £1, £10, £50 or 0.

<comment><USER5> > I throw a quid down the toilet? That's fine, I don't mind. I throw a fiver > or a tenner? Woah dude, that's like, a Starbucks latte! Totally different > (or not, but hey, that's what it feels like).

[http://theoatmeal.com/blog/apps](http://theoatmeal.com/blog/apps)

<comment><USER6> Well spotted. Note how that strip is from 2011, it was a bit of an old joke at the time already, and nothing has changed. Or rather: app-developers now route around this perception with IAP-whaling, which makes everyone sad and doesn't really map to "real" apps anyway. A trialware model would be better for everyone.

<comment><USER5> > A trialware model would be better for everyone.

I agree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The overarching lesson I'm slowly learning is to not get too comfy with any saas products. Who knows how long they'll stick around, regardless of if they're great / popular / profitable.

<comment><USER8> I still prefer to use desktop-based products that I own as much as possible for this reason. Rather than think of it as being behind this swing of the pendulum, I prefer to think of it as being ahead of the next one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> They must have had amazing self-control to restrain themselves from titling this "Sunrise is sunsetting".

<comment><USER10> Ha, our inner pun masters are in alignment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is becoming a tiring pattern.

I've just gotten used to the UI.

Can anyone commit to building a proper business? Is Sustainability no longer a virtue of creating a service/application?

<comment><USER12> > Can anyone commit to building a proper business?

How about we users commit to building the tools we need, and forget about relying on businesses to do it for us?

That's what free software is all about — head on over to the Free Software Foundation and pitch in today!

<comment><USER13> Another angle...

It's sad when we pay $5 for a coffee made in 5 minutes that we'll drink in 3... but not $5 for an app that took 5 months that we'd use daily for a year.

<comment><USER14> Well, if coffee shops started offering up free coffee with ads on the cup, people wouldn't pay $5 for coffee either.

<comment><USER15> Most coffee cups already do have ads on them. They have you paying $5 for coffee, AND running around with free ads for them in your hands. And you don't even notice you're a walking billboard for them! Not to mention all that juicy data you're giving them with every CC purchase, or loyalty card swipe...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Well, this is disappointing. I was late to the Sunrise party, so I've barely been able to use it. I'm not thrilled about heavily integrating Outlook into my future work, so I guess it's off to find another solution.

<comment><USER17> It's a bit unexpected, but I've found Outlook to be the best iOS email client these days. It's bloated and has quite a few rendering bugs, but for the basic email-as-task-list workflow pioneered by Mailbox et al I haven't come across any current players that are better.

Kind of sad that the explosion of clever email and calendar apps a few years ago has collapsed into a handful that aren't as good as we used to have.

<comment><USER18> I wish there was something like it just for Calendaring though. Especially on the desktop. For email I'm already using Polymail full time and it's a hassle to have two email clients just for calendar.

<comment><USER19> What do you use for calendaring right now?

What do you wish it did?

<comment><USER20> Not the OP, but on my Android device I have an easier time of calendaring since basically any app I choose will show all of the calendars I want (personal, my work calendar, my manager's calendar, my team's calendar) in the same space. For desktop, I did have Sunrise's desktop app until I noticed I wasn't getting a proper sync of some (apparently random) appointments from desktop to cloud/mobile, and even more so because I accepted an appointment via Sunrise and it changed my email alias in the response from my actual address to Sunrise's generic "email@example.com" so that people then started emailing me at the generic email rather than my actual address.

Most of my calendars are Google Apps. Outlook was my backup for the work calendar using the Google Apps Outlook Sync app (although I've noticed a few sync failures there, too), and just adding additional calendars to Outlook without having all of my email there too looks like it requires some kind of arcane magick. Thunderbird+Lightning got rotated out of the mix quickly due to a lot of issues syncing and getting multiple calendars into it.

Probably because everyone we're communicating with is mixing between Google Apps/webview calendar and Outlook or Office 365, I also find that I regularly can't see an appointment that is emailed to me in my email client as it shows up as an .ics file attachment instead.

So featurewise:

\- Most important for me: Easy addition of multiple calendars, where I can just select which calendar a new appt should be added, as easily as I can in my Android clients- I hate using web clients for calendaring, and they never really show multiple calendars well. NOTE: I mean that the calendar has a direct sync to each of the calendars online, not having one main account to which I have to share all of my other calendars. I want one place where I can go to view and create appointments and then have them also show up in their respective accounts. \- Supports open standards like CalDAV/CardDAV as well as syncs to Google or Office 365 (I can select a provider like Fastmail that uses CalDAV for my personal calendar, but I'm stuck with Google or O365 for work) \- Desktop client, multiple views (agenda, today, week, month) \- drag-and- drop of items into the calendar to create a new appointment \- "Send to calendar" from an email as an option \- Categorization/tagging on an appointment would be nice - Outlook allows this but Google doesn't seem to allow tagging appointments like you can email

A bit of a data dump, but a desktop client that handles multiple calendars well is surprisingly difficult to find in Windows. I happily pay for a number of otherwise free services (Pandora, Evernote, Pocket, Lastpass, etc.), but there really isn't even a pay option.

<comment><USER21> Did you try eMClient? One of the rare clients that does *DAV on Windows.

<comment><USER20> Thanks, I hadn't heard of it but I'll see how it works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I hope this ends up on Our Incredible Journey: [http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/](http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/)

</comment><comment><USER23> The best part about Sunrise was Meet, its quick little method of booking meetings with someone: [https://sunrise.am/meet](https://sunrise.am/meet)

You'd choose some available times, it gives you a link which you send to whoever you want to meet with, and the recipient books a time slot with a couple of clicks. It updates in real time so if you book something new, the slot disappears. It even has a little iOS keyboard to generate these links.

Does anyone know a similar replacement service? Nothing beats just pasting someone a link and letting them pick one of three times you chose.

<comment><USER24> I've used calendly.com with some success.

<comment><USER23> Nice, thanks! And I can pay for it, that's a comforting change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > On August 31st, we'll officially shut down the app and it will stop working > all together.

So based on this, I assume that all access to your calendar server (iCloud, Exchange, Google Apps, etc) was managed through a centralised server(s) that Sunrise used... for something.

Maybe the next time someone claims to be a funky new take on <boring office task> just do a little checking. We've had desktop and mobile device clients for mail, calendaring, contacts etc for literally decades. Why _now_ , when we have more computing power available to us than ever before, do we need _another_ server (operated by a company that's more likely to disappear than not) between us and our mail/calendar/contacts?

</comment><comment><USER21> That's why paying for mail, calendar and contacts hosting is worth it in the long run.

</comment><comment><USER26> Sunrise, sunset?

</comment><comment><USER27> This is lame, Sunrise has been awesome for me over the years.

</comment><comment><USER28> Super bummed by this. The integrations were priceless. Taking recs on any alternative.

</comment><comment><USER29> Will Wunderlist shut down too, I wonder?

<comment><USER30> Were they bought?

<comment><USER31> Yes, by Microsoft

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is getting ridiculous. We need like n founder manifesto canary before we start using the products of all these startups. The canary should contain:

1\. Their business plan

2\. Long term vision for the company

3\. How they plan to sustain themselves in the short run (1-2 years with no/little revenue).

4\. What they would do if they get acquisition offers.

etc.

The startup can remove the canary once they decide to change their direction.

<comment><USER33> Or you could consider purchasing from open source businesses. Like Nylas, GitLab, Sentry, and others.

<comment><USER34> Sentry is absolutely fantastic. Use it daily at work and it's really good

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'd like to say THANK YOU to the Sunrise team for the incredible work you've put into the app! You've made my calendar experience very enjoyable and I know that you got a proper reward for that as part of the acquisition. It's great that there are people like you, working on software these days.

<comment><USER36> They don't deserve any thanks for remorselessly fucking over their users.

<comment><USER37> Their users don't deserve anything as they were enjoying the use of a free product. They've given everyone a good amount of notice to move on.

<comment><USER36> Without their users they wouldn't have gotten this nice cushy acquihire.

<comment><USER37> So, everybody wins. The users got a free product for a few years, Sunrise got acquihired.

<comment><USER36> "Everybody wins" would involve everyone walking away with equal or more than they had at the time of parting, which could be done by opening the source of the product instead of letting it die of bitrot.

<comment><USER37> Sunrise walked away with an acquihire, users walked away with several years of free service of an app they liked.

I get what you're saying here, but the Sunrise team owe their users nothing.

<comment><USER36> They owed them the honesty of saying at the start:

"We never intend to make this an actual product. This is only here to get us attention and hired. If you use this, be aware we'll kill it as soon as anyone hires us."

<comment><USER37> But who's to say that's what they intended at the start? They may well have entirely expected to make it a successful startup, only to find themselves unable to make the profit required to do so, so they got acquihired.

If you wanted to use an app with open source and a permanent future you should have installed an open source app. Installing a closed source app created by a business and depending on them open sourcing it when the business closes is folly.

<comment><USER36> I don't even use it and keep away from software like this. I just recognize the morality involved. But hey, thanks for going the expected route. :)

<comment><USER37> > I don't even use it

Ah OK, so you don't have any skin in the game, you're just here to argue on the internet. Makes sense.

> thanks for going the expected route. :)

Which is to say that you're aware of viewpoints alternative to your own, but you have no interest in hearing them out, you just want to shout until you win.

If that's what you need to get through your day, congratulations on your great victory.

<comment><USER36> > Which is to say

Nope, i expected you to attempt victim blaming. But hey, jumping to more conclusions is not unexpected either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Sunrise is the only calendar app that has ever worked for me. I tried others like Google and the integrated outlook calendar, this is sad news.

Is it impossible to have apps that don't go either Microsoft or google? I don't want to be locked in an ecosystem.

</comment><comment><USER39> Well this sucks. anyone found a good alternative?

<comment><USER40> They're not being dishonest in characterizing this as more than a simple acqui-hire; most of the functionality of Sunrise is faithfully replicated in Outlook for iOS now (which, if you're not aware, was actually itself born out of the acquisition of a multi-protocol email app called Accompli, and still includes support for a variety of non-Exchange mail services). Unfortunately, missing features include the long-press natural language "quick-add" input box, and setting multiple reminders on events.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Drat, the best calendar app I've used on Android (except for the 46 notifications it gave for Easter Monday, and 58 for the last English Bank Holiday).

I will miss it.

</comment><comment><USER42> Just saw the notification on my app this morning. Very unfortunate - I've been using it for as long as I remember, it was my favorite calendar app.

Any alternatives?

<comment><USER43> Well, Outlook on Android/iOS has most of Sunrise built in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I'm sure this has been asked and answered before, but why do companies acquire startups just to shut their product down within a year so often? Is this just an acquihire? Or do big tech companies just play whack-a-mole with startups, buying any out with interesting products just to make sure they don't one day turn into competition?

<comment><USER45> For the $100+ millions Microsoft payed,they got the team, the tech and the opportunity to move the sunrise users to use their products.

Sunrise best capabilities are likely being built into outlook, they have a team that they know can execute and a percentage of sunrise users will move to outlook.

I only installed sunrise last week (when I moved to Android) but I found it a bit odd that I was using a different calendar app. I came from Windows Phone where messaging and calendar was baked in really nicely. So far my Android experience isn't as good but maybe outlook with sunrise will complete this circle for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Great time for competitors to get users me thinks. I'm ready to jump ship, where to?

</comment><comment><USER47> As good as Outlook is on iOS, the calendar portion doesn't work well. It constantly misses timezones.

</comment><comment><USER48> Just when I finally was happy with calendaring and got organised. So annoying

</comment><comment><USER49> Submitted this to Our Incredible Journey [1] which documents a long string of services shut down post-acquisition.

[1]: [http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/](http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/)

<comment><USER50> Why is this site so hard to read?

<comment><USER51> Because some of the screenshots are JPEG format. JPEG compression has trouble with sharp edges.</comment></comment></comment>


Share HN: A messageboard for Startup School this weekend - <AUTHOR> http://startupschool.herokuapp.com/

<comment><USER2> Events like this sound like they'd be great things to attend. Too bad we (my teammate and I) are without the resources to attend. Are there any HNers attending who are not from the valley? Unfortunately the only time I've been in the valley was working for a company that didn't want employees going to these types of events.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are usually many people who attend who are not from the area.

The talks have been livestreamed on justin.tv in the past; I'm not sure if they are going to be this year or not.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hopefully this will be useful for people looking to ride-share, coordinate meet-ups or just as an easy place to keep track of things that are going on this weekend.

</comment><comment><USER3> Do you plan to publish the source code anytime soon?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, it's actually already available:

<https://github.com/pmn/noir-messageboard></comment></comment>


Records Point to Credit Card Fraud By Silicon Swindler Shirley Hornstein - <AUTHOR> http://betabeat.com/2012/08/shirley-hornstein-shirls-credit-card-fraud-records/

<comment><USER2> The TC article made her look like a scheming fraudster, but this deeper dive makes it sound like she has some serious mental/emotional issues. Perhaps it's time to stop tweeting hate messages at her, and time to persuade her to sit down with someone and talk through her mental state.

Interesting that the TC article made no mention of her living with a TC employee, however.

<comment><USER3> It's all seeming a bit overblown though, no? Like someone is butthurt over it and they're going to tear her down no matter what. Was there even any real harm from her actions?

<comment><USER4> I think that's it. I think it's embarrassment on behalf of the media folks who should have known better but who were duped. A lot of the journalists in the space enjoy the feeling of being on friendly terms and hanging out with the movers and shakers in the industry. It's understandable I suppose. They're only human. So there's a heavy internal bias towards believing you're special and these people want to hang out with you, rather than here's a phony trying to leach off you.

<comment><USER3> The scorn of hangers-on is vicious indeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> She clearly has deep-seated psychological issues. Her behavior reminds me of another impostor, Azia Kim, who fooled her parents that she was accepted into Stanford a few years back.

She packed up her things and went to Stanford.

She subsequently enrolled in NJROTC at Santa Clara University to explain why there were no tuition bills.

Once at Stanford, she fooled a couple RAs and students to crash for 8 months in a dorm.

What is most intriguing about impostors is the need to build lie upon lie. Forge a Stanford report card to enroll at Santa Clara? Sure.

Photoshop your head into a photo with a celebrity? Yes, I think I can get away with it.

I'm not sure if it can be said they're pathological liars, or they get so wrapped up in their lies they must continue the farce.

Edit: of course, it should be noted that stealing is an unrelated (yet still serious) issue. That just makes her a really awful person. A really awful person who needs help.

</comment><comment><USER6> "First, she told acquaintances she was engaged to NHL player Ryan Clowe..."

Seriously? WHY? That's one of the easiest facts to check.

<comment><USER7> I don't know why, I do know that confidence people use the technique of telling a lie that would be trivial to cross check because it shows authority. The way it works on the human brain is that if you just said something that is something is true, that a simple fact check would prove you to be a liar, and nobody wants to be a liar, thus I can be confident what you said actually is true because it would be stupid to lie about something I could so easily verify. Oh and I won't verify it right now because I'll feel stupid if it is true.

Now people do go off to get a drink or use the facilities and do a quick check on their smartphone :-) And I know I tend to get snarky with folks who lie to me if I'm aware and not minding my manners (its a weakness I am working on).

This story reflects a much more troubled person. Hope she can work it out before it consumes her.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: feature request - page cache - <AUTHOR> Very often, small websites are linked on HN and end up down in a few minutes. This is frustrating for HN readers. It would be nice if HN could store a cache of submitted links and propose it along the original link. Maybe that could be restricted to the front page. <comment><USER2> you have google cache...</comment>


Withdrawal of the UK and EU rules on .eu domain names [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/notice_to_stakeholders_brexit_eu_domain_names.pdf <comment><USER3> Summary: don't use .eu domains for anything.

If your country elects to leave the EU or possibly just gets into a spat with it, you will have to abandon your domain name and thus all accumulated pagerank, external links, email addresses on business cards etc. Although the EU could easily just block registration of new domains to non-EU homed businesses, they are choosing to go much further and take away existing domain names that are live.

This is entirely consistent with the EU's behaviour in other areas - <USER2> whatever bureaucratic mechanisms it has at its disposal to cause as much annoyance or chaos as possible to any country that decides to leave, in the hope of dissuading the others.

<comment><USER4> It's a bit senseless to use the eu domains when you're no longer affiliated with it...</comment></comment>


Salt - Python remote execution - <AUTHOR>

New system to replace Func, MCollective and Func, github: https://github.com/thatch45/salt screencast: http://blip.tv/thomas-s-hatch/salt-0-8-7-presentation-5180182 <comment><USER2> <https://github.com/thatch45/salt>

screencast: [http://blip.tv/thomas-s- hatch/salt-0-8-7-presentation-518018...](http://blip.tv/thomas-s- hatch/salt-0-8-7-presentation-5180182)

I can see that you're a newbie, but out of interest, why did you not put in the links for yourself? Have you been trying to find out how to do it? If so, where did you try? If not, why not?

And why did you not put the URL in the text area for the URL?

I'm intrigued by how and why people use the interface the way they do - I'm keen to learn why the same mistake is made so often.</comment>


First look at Garmin's new FR620 & FR220 GPS running watches - <AUTHOR> http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2013/09/garmins-running-watches.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely liking the direction that Garmin is going with their devices. After initially sticking solely with ANT+, they are starting to incorporate Bluetooth Smart and wifi</comment>


HN Discusses: Lets talk about replacing HTTP in the browser. - <AUTHOR>

HTTP has been a solid workhorse for, what, 20 years? It can pretty much be considered ubiquitous -- any platform worth its salt has a robust HTTP client. HTTP is reasonably light weight and extensible and is generally well understood.
But is it still appropriate for "modern" uses? As web apps become more and more interactive, larger, and have different constraints on connectivity is there a better alternative to base our stack on?
We have a few interesting solutions to those problems that have been built on top of HTTP. Comet, for instance, overcomes the interactivity bit and web sockets could be cool if it ever get full support but those both seem like hack-y solutions -- solutions that required a lot of energy that likely could have been mitigated if we used a different protocol in the first place.
Lets just consider, for the purposes of this discussion, what the ideal technology would be. We don't necessarily need to talk about adoption or deployment or feasibility -- obviously its pretty damn infeasible to ACTUALLY replace HTTP thanks to its ubiquity -- but just ideally, what would you like to see?
Anyone know if any feasibility studies or scoping of a technology has been done on this topic? <comment><USER2> The SPDY protocol is a potential replacement: <http://www.chromium.org/spdy/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that is kind of what sparked this thought in my mind...there are a couple of things that are good here. Multiple files per request is a pretty cool idea and server-initiated requests could solve a lot of problems.

One thing that immediately comes to mind as a bummer about SPDY, though: Lack of native full-duplex duplex communication.</comment></comment>


Ask PG: Bursts on HN (the number of users online) - <AUTHOR>

Could we have a new feature / just a hint how the number of users online are changing a day?
There are many interesting posts not hitting the frontpage posted at the wrong time of the day.
For example there is a burst around 1PM(GMT+2 timezone) when there are many new submissions and heavy upvoting.
For sure there are other bursts too important for the "natural selection" of posts hitting mass audience. <comment><USER2> "There are many interesting posts not hitting the frontpage posted at the wrong time of the day"

here's what i noticed - there seems to be a surge of new users since last week or so and not a good "burst" at that. I gather from what I see - these karma conscious users picking links straight from reddit and few friends bring it to the first page.

I still cannot believe I clicked on "you think you are a rockstar programmer"....when i came back - for a few seconds I was hallucinated by the thought - was this HN?

...and of course, when there are no interesting topics on the front page and all we have is links like "are you a rockstar" - what better time to go into long discussions about flag this or flag that. This usually happens during this phase of onslaught of new users (my perception).

when there are a few interesting topics, we tend to ignore/overlook the link baits.

..sorry if my response is away from your question's context...i had a "bad" HN week'

</comment><comment><USER3> the algorithm for voting should look at the percentage of votes that articles are getting in a given time span to correct this.

also, votes received from the "new" page should have more weight.

<comment><USER4> > also, votes received from the "new" page should have more weight.

No contest there, the homepage is feeding back on itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> My articles seem to do best when I submit them early on Monday morning. People get to work and don't want to do anything useful, so they read my blog instead.

<comment><USER6> monday morning, which timezone?

<comment><USER7> I'm certain that Pacific has the highest density of HN readers, by a large margin, but I would think anything that would put it on the page within a couple of hours of that would work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> we could also show how many users are online at any given time, like in forums.</comment>


Photos of sunset with the sun replaced by other stars - <AUTHOR> http://www.halcyonmaps.com/sun-replaced-with-other-stars/ <comment><USER2> This is what, the fourth time this has made it to the front page? I'm not complaining, I always like seeing it. Seems to lose more and more pixels every time, though.

</comment><comment><USER3> How difficult is it to predict how different light sources would interact with our atmosphere? In all these photos it just looks like the colors were shifted, but I don't know if that's not how it would look like if it was a more sophisticated method (for all I know it could have been)

<comment><USER4> That was my impression, too. It looks like it's just scale and general color. Also what's the source image and why is it so pixelated? Would love to see simulated alternate night skies from other parts of the galaxy.

<comment><USER3> mef found the original if you want higher quality: [http://www.halcyonmaps.com/sun-replaced-with-other- stars/](http://www.halcyonmaps.com/sun-replaced-with-other-stars/)

<comment><USER5> Maybe the mods will be kind enough to replace the OP's post URL with this one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I suppose there's no point in asking what some of the largest stars would look like from Earth, since many have a far larger diameter than the diameter of Earth's orbit. VY Canis Majoris would extend past the orbit of Jupiter.

</comment><comment><USER7> my guess would be that all stars would look about the same but be at different distances because of size (otherwise, no life)?

</comment><comment><USER8> Original [http://www.halcyonmaps.com/sun-replaced-with-other- stars/](http://www.halcyonmaps.com/sun-replaced-with-other-stars/)

<comment><USER3> Can mods edit link to this one? The tumblr has nothing more to offer than the halcyonmaps, and the halcyonmaps has better quality

<comment><USER9> Ok, url changed from [http://brucesterling.tumblr.com/post/131294850803](http://brucesterling.tumblr.com/post/131294850803).</comment></comment></comment>


Free Yahoo username wishlist becomes paid ($1.99) watchlist - <AUTHOR> https://watchlist.yahoo.com/

<comment><USER2> ... Or you can just make an API call and find out for yourself:

Available: [https://edit.yahoo.com/reg_json?AccountID=mister_popular@&Pa...](https://edit.yahoo.com/reg_json?AccountID=mister_popular@&PartnerName=yahoo_default&ApiName=ValidateFields)

Unavailable: [https://edit.yahoo.com/reg_json?AccountID=test@&PartnerName=...](https://edit.yahoo.com/reg_json?AccountID=test@&PartnerName=yahoo_default&ApiName=ValidateFields)

Step 1: Create site offering 10-email watch list for $1.99

Step 2: ...

Step 3: Profit?

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder why they decided to do this. Is there enough interest to warrant charging?

<comment><USER4> most of the yahoo mail users I know are getting hacked and spamming links to all contacts.. looks like they are trying reduce the number of user requests they are getting (it would be pretty easy to create id's and request novel usernames multiple times).. Yahoo mail is the most insecure mail I have every used.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Anyone use Insurance to cover Legal Liabilities? - <AUTHOR>

	Does anyone have experience with or advise getting insurance to cover the liability of potentially getting sued? Would General or Professional Liability or even IP liability insurance cover all the legal costs? I'm thinking that insurance in addition to corporate structure is a way of establishing a known cost as a way of handling the unknown (but significant) risks of potential suits -- not that I have any now or even in the foreseeable future, but I'm scared to death that after we start getting traction, some disgruntled client or some random schmoe will cause trouble, or some random patent troll will surface. It's a crazy litigious world out there and legal fees alone can kill a startup. <comment><AUTHOR> Looks like no one is using insurance at all to cover risks?</comment>


DIY Scanning Electron Microscope - <AUTHOR> http://hackaday.com/2011/03/23/diy-scanning-electron-microscope/ <comment><USER2> I built this electron microscope. Let me know if you have any questions.

<comment><USER3> About a zillion :-) Building one has been one of my "wouldn't it be neat to do ..." projects for a long time.

Can you say a bit more about the lenses? The Heathkit oscilloscope I built as a kid had electrostatic plates that were used to focus the beam rather than anything lens like.

Have you considered using bits of lead type as your test target, they have the advantage of being asymmetric and recognizable, could help with linearity measurements.

The SEM I used at Intel a couple of times had the electrons coming in at an angle and the detector at an angle. have you considered something like that to improve the signal pickup of your optical tube?

<comment><USER2> Most commercial SEMs use electromagnetic lenses because they provide higher power (more drastically change the path of electrons) in a smaller space. The problem is that they require custom iron pole pieces. It's easier to build electroststatic lenses, which are just metal conductors and the geometry is not extremely critical. Search for Einzel lens for details. The condenser and objective lens in my scope are Einzel lenses made from copper pipe from the hardware store. I like the idea of looking at lead type with the SEM!

The angle of the incoming electrons toward the specimen is what creates the viewing angle in the image. The angle of the secondary electron detector is what creates the apparent illumination direction. It's true that setting the specimen to split the beam and detector angles will provide a good image, similar to having a good key light in photography.</comment></comment></comment>


Elon Musk is now the fourth-richest person in the world.He's about to get richer - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/26/investing/elon-musk-pay-package-tesla-stock-options/index.html <comment><USER2> Stock market valuations seem to no longer be correlated to fundamentals. Why is this?</comment>


Negative News Distorts Our Thinking - <AUTHOR> https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-modern-brain/201909/how-negative-news-distorts-our-thinking <comment><USER2> I subscribe to a handful of positive newsletters to help counteract the barrage of daily negative news. Some of my recommendations:

1) The Guardian's Upside [https://www.theguardian.com/world/series/the-upside- weekly-r...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/series/the-upside-weekly- report)

2) Future Crunch [https://futurecrunch.substack.com/](https://futurecrunch.substack.com/)

3) Positive News [https://www.positive.news/](https://www.positive.news/)

4) The Good Newsletter [https://www.goodgoodgood.co/goodnewsletter](https://www.goodgoodgood.co/goodnewsletter)

<comment><USER3> Putting this front and center: the constant outpouring of negative news has and is having a negative impact on my worldview and my mental health. Most of this is due to "news", which is not the same as news. Headlines no one needs to hear about but are only printed because 24 hour media needs a constant flow of content.

A big problem I've had in seeking explicitly "positive" news is a lot of it is actually negative "news" just spun in a positive light. Articles like "5 year old cancer patient has successful GoFundMe to pay for chemo". That's not positive (nor is it news), it's just highlighting the societal problem that unexpected medical costs in America can bankrupt entire families unless their case is sympathetic enough to get random people to pay the cost.

The other kind of positive news I see often is things that sound great but aren't actually real. Like "New breakthrough battery technology means batteries last for 1000 years" but there's never a follow-up (I guess it would be negative news then) that this "breakthrough" only exists in the lab and can't actually be turned into real batteries.

After spending a few months going out of my way to read explicitly positive news, I find it worse than ever. Because a lot of explicitly positive news isn't actually news, and a lot of it isn't actually positive either.

Edit - I guess this was just a bummer with no positive, and I apologize for that. What I've ended up doing right now is limiting where I get my news from and dramatically _slowing down_ my news consumption. The reason we commonly think the 70s/80s/90s had such better music than today is because we've already let time filter out the bad music so we only remember the good stuff. I treat news the same, if it's something I need to know I will still hear about it tomorrow or the next day. Seeing "news" happen in real time with _BREAKING NEWS_ slathered across the page makes it seem more important than it actually is. Seeing it as a footnote a few days later often doesn't change the store but changes your perception of that story. And it also filters out the unimportant things that aren't worth talking about because they're not going to be talked about tomorrow or the day after.

The news app TheSkimm has actually been helpful, it's not explicitly positive news but it's important news slowed down and explained properly, while everything else is just a headline or not even mentioned at all. Finding a slower news source would be my recommendation rather than filtering yourself to explicitly positive news.

<comment><USER4> The idea of scheduled dissemination for entertainment is going out of fashion with all the streaming options available. This works well because you pay the streamer directly and advertisers aren't part of that. I like this, because the service has to answer to me as a consumer directly.

I somewhat think that the idea of scheduled dissemination for news and world events needs should go out of fashion in a similar way, as it would be less "corrupted", but don't think it will for a long time at the very least.

The idea of news is not purely about information delivery to most people. People really want opinions about news far less than raw reporting of events. Also people find comfort, meaning, and connection in the ritual of scheduled content. For that emotional need to be fulfilled, they seek content aligned with their social and economic bubbles.

It's silly, and as a result I keep my consumption of news to an absolute minimum.

<comment><USER3> On the topic of on-demand streaming news, I used to listen to a couple of daily news podcasts. With my new mindset around news consumption, I'm listening to weekly or bi-weekly podcasts instead (and oftentimes not listening to them the day they were released). Even still it's amazing the amount of news content they cover that (if you listen to it the day after it was released) is already "out of date". Things like "Amazon is expected to announce plans to buy AMC theaters" on Thursday and when I listen to it on Friday it's already been announced.

Now if only I could just filter HN to only show me tech stories instead of "news".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Look, I am all for self-care and not overexposing yourself to terrible news all day every day. But to act like negative news is making us think the world is worse than it is is just sheltered.

The reality is the world has a lot of terrible things happening all day every day and humanity is basically not doing anything to stop it as of now. Here are a few:

(1) in the US, a lot of people don't get enough healthcare because they can't afford it, and just go bankrupt when they get cancer

(2) black people are still terrorized and murdered by police, who largely get off scot-free

(3) the US and its business partners perpetrate crimes against humanity in the middle east on a regular basis

(4) the daily gruesome reality of poverty in the US

(5) We continue our slow but sure march towards climate apocalypse which will largely affect the most vulnerable among us.

This idea that "the standard of living" is higher... well sure, if you have a certain amount of money. But many people don't get healthcare, don't have any leisure time, don't have money to travel. And yeah, there's peace here, but what about in Yemen? What about in Honduras? Iraq? Afghanistan? So what, because we have iPhones we're supposed to think everything's amazing?

<comment><USER6> The police only kills about 1000 people per year in the USA, and some of those kills are justified. Including it in the same list as global warming is IMO an example of 'Availability bias means that after we see negativity, we overestimate its significance' mentioned in the article.

<comment><USER7> You're downplaying the damage those murders do black communities. And for every black person murdered, 1,000 more are terrorized with less than lethal force.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Conversely, happiness appears to raise IQ: [https://www.bbc.com/news/health-19659985](https://www.bbc.com/news/health-19659985)

</comment><comment><USER9> There is so much more to happiness than negative news.

A friend escaped Bosnia during the war. She chose to live in New Zealand, because the top news story of the day was about a cat that was lost. She figured if that was all New Zealand had to worry about, then New Zealand was the country for her. She found gainful employment, raised a kid, and she went to the beach every weekend during the summer. She hated it. She is back in Europe now.

</comment><comment><USER10> The issue I have with my relationship to the news is less so the negative slant in and of itself, moreso never being disconnected from it. Most of it is banal or fluff. You can keep track infrequently and be a well informed voter.

I follow tech news aggregators more but could use less of that as well. There's just too much time spent on mindless bullshit.

<comment><USER11> What gets me about it is that it's always stories that I can't do anything about.

Like, sure, someone got stabbed. That's terrible for them and their family, but I didn't stab them and I don't know the victim, so in what way does being informed of this enrich my life? I was already aware that people got stabbed sometimes. Can I have that five minutes back please?

So I don't watch the "news" anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I guess it is a case of self-fulfilling prediction.

It is an article about negative things and how they are negative for us. And it distorts our thinking, at the very least, it tried to distort mine's by imprinting "the fact" that negative news distorts our thinking.</comment>