Ask HN: Seeking thoughts on a crazy/futuristic idea - <AUTHOR>

I saw a video the other day on the New York Tech Meetup's site. The speaker (couldnt find the name/video easily) was suggesting that in the future, we'll be using gestures to use computers instead of keyboard/mice.
This makes sense given recent developments (microsoft natal, and even to a degree, the iphone). And it is really exciting to think about, because there are so many applications.
Of course, there will be learning curve, and it might take 10-20 years for this to become mainstream. But it might make sense to start thinking of specific applications that early-adopters would use. (That's us right?). That got me thinking.
Would it be possible to code via gestures? There would probably be a huge amount of AI required, but it's interesting nonetheless to think about.
Would this be more efficient? Is it possible to do as a YC company? If so, I would love to see someone attack this. <comment><USER2> My personal opinion: no.

Ideas like this (voice control as well) have been floating around for years, but I think they mainly appeal to the 'sci-fi movie' version of the future, and are not things that will achieve mass traction.

Flailing around with gestures would get tiring very fast - you could keep it up for 10 minutes, but try it for a few hours and see how you feel.

Maybe you wouldn't need to make such big gestures, waving your arms around and so - maybe just small motions of your hands and fingers would work. OK, but you might as well have some kind of a rest for your hands. Congratulations, you've just invented the mouse.

Really, outside of specialised applications (handicapped peoplem etc) I don't see this one taking off.

Although I do think that there are better alternatives to the keyboard and mouse out there in the sample space of all possible input devices, my honest opinion is that his kind of thing isn't really that innovative. I think projects like Dasher give a better sense of future directions in this area.

</comment><comment><USER3> They have been used to a limited extent at least as far back as the apple Newton. In a sense drag and drop is gesture based. Sign language is gesture based. I dont think gestures will find much use in programming because of the lack of precision and limited vocabulary. I thought for a long time that voice would be used for programming, but I havent seen a single example beyond simple commands. Even that didnt catch on. I wouldnt bet my YC on it.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would think that this would be more useful for someone searching a large database. But first we need better ways to visualize the data, only then does it make sense to use gestures (or so I would think).

No ideas on how to do that either though...

</comment><comment><USER5> It might be strenuous to lift one's hands all the time.</comment>


Show HN: The Famous reply all button now is gone - <AUTHOR> http://www.voise.co

<comment><USER2> I have no idea what this is or does.</comment>


Facebook you should start offering premium service at $10/month - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2013/07/20/twitter-co-founder-biz-stone-gives-facebook-some-advice-offer-a-10-premium-subscription-without-ads/

<comment><USER2> US$10/year is more realistic, and I bet is still more than what Facebook makes for a single user.

</comment><comment><USER3> I pass.</comment>


LulzSec: Tango down - http://t.co/2QGXy6f - for the lulz. - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/#!/lulzsec/status/81115804636155906

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/ciagov_possibly_down_lu...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/ciagov_possibly_down_lulzsec_claims_responsibility.php)

"Another hacker, known as @th3j35t3, or "The Jester," has said "Gloves off" to the LulzSec group in a Twitter statement. "The Jester" is said to be responsible for a host of DDoS attacks on Islamist sites and targeted Wikileaks after their last release. In that attack he used the military phrase "tango down" which was parroted by LulzSec for their apparent CIA attack."

<https://twitter.com/#!/th3j35t3r/status/81121623712874496></comment>


I almost died in Syria - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/09/i_almost_died_in_syria/singleton/

<comment><AUTHOR> I remember meeting this journalist in Iraq; seemed fairly "well-hinged" then, relative to everyone else, so I can only imagine how screwed up Syria must be.

</comment><comment><USER2> The Frontline video of the bombing mentioned in this article is posted now: [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/foreign-affairs- defe...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/foreign-affairs- defense/syria-behind-the-lines/the-bombing-of-al-bara/#bmb0). Be warned the footage is graphic and quite disturbing.

IMHO this video should be nominated for Pulitzer Prize, the way he captured the chaos and human response to the bombing is incredible. Rarely does a piece of journalism make me feel emotions as visceral and real as this video does. What a terrible conflict going on in Syria right now.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the link, just watched it all the way through. I felt disturbed thousands of miles away - can't imagine what it's like to actually be there, so close to death and destruction every second of every day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4>
        There's a private bar in London whose members are nearly all war correspondents.

He must be referring to the Frontline Club (frontlineclub.com). They're just up the road from Paddington. While the bar is private, they host ticketed events that are open to the public.

</comment><comment><USER5> This kind of reminds me of that journalist in the movie Das Boat, reflecting on his motives while stuck at the bottom of the sea.

</comment><comment><USER6> Between this and the Vice story on Afghan child suicide bombers, the notion of peace in the middle east seems like the cruelest and blackest of jokes. Arabs and Muslims will blow the fuck out of each other's sons and daughters without a second thought.

<comment><USER7> It is very unfortunate to see such comments on hacker news.

<comment><USER8> I think it's unfortunate that someone with a view different from the popular one is being shut down so aggressively. How can we hope to have a diverse and even discussion if we refuse to listen to any but those that we agree with?

HN is a great place and as long as politics aren't involved we can usually expect an open discussion, but the minute someone says anything that differs from the standard liberal playbook on race or religion he's shoved out the door.

The ironic part is I'll probably receive downvotes for bringing this to light.

<comment><USER7> Okay, I'll bite.

> The ironic part is I'll probably receive downvotes for bringing this to > light.

Of course you won't because you made a well thought-out observation.

Contrast that to this generic, baseless statement:

> Arabs and Muslims will blow the fuck out of each other's sons and daughters > without a second thought.

That is a not only a very simplistic view, it is also incorrect. It puts blame on some inherent personality trait of Arabs and "muslims". Anyone with a minuscule ability to critically think can see how this parallels statements like "black people have less intelligence". The OP is not bringing a new opinion; they are trolling.

I would be more interested in seeing a thought out analysis by the OP, that takes into account the complex geopolitical landscape of the last 100 years, including armament of these so called terrorists by the US, drone strikes that kill Afghan and Pakistani children, etc.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Egyptian Revolution Live [video] - <AUTHOR> http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/?

<comment><USER2> Egyptian here.

What I can't believe is the irresponsible behavior with taking down the Internet in a civilized country smack-dab in the middle of the World. That reckless behavior only goes to show how out of touch the current regime really is. There's no thinking whatsoever in how catastrophic (economically, politically, morally) such an action really is.

Yet beyond that, I'm just worried. I'm terrified actually. While the regime needs to change, I'm not yet sure about the future. Will Islamists seize power? Will another corrupt official do that? Will Chaos and Anarchy ensue?

The trouble with Tunisia is that we've yet to see the results of the revolution. Things are developing...but we don't yet know if it's successful or not.

Not to mention that certain events are making me very sad. I do realize it's hard to mass-protest in a very sane manner...but something like lighting up the National Democratic Party's HQ on fire, when it's across the street from the National Museum (King Tut + 100,000 other priceless treasures) and there's a huge threat of the fire spreading...just worries me. I remember when Iraq was first attacked; the first things that were looted were priceless treasures from Mesopotamia.

<comment><USER3> When we had revolution in Russia in 1917 they attacked and looted czar's palace. Then they made it into world renowned Hermitage museum.

King Tut's relics are the least of my worries.

<comment><USER2> I wasn't trying to undermine the importance of the revolution. Just explaining some of my worries of actions afterwards and using the National Museum as an example.

\</comment></comment></comment><comment>-

Also, while I get what you're saying, Russia did lose a lot of priceless artifacts from the Winter Palace.

Instead of travelling to St. Petersburg to see Raphael's Alba Madonna, I now have to go to the National Gallery of Art in Washington. The Winter Palace also lost other great works of art from Botticelli, van Eyck, Rembrandt, Titian, among others.

We've had a long history of that happening to us. The Rosetta Stone's in Britain, Nefertiti's in Berlin, and out of 36 Ancient EGYPTIAN obelisks only 9 are actually in the country of Egypt. The city of Rome, by itself, boasts 8. 9 if you count the Vatican.

So, no. I'm actually _really_ worried about our relics.

<comment><USER3> my point was that while loss of some paintings is unfortunate, the change of history which unfolded was magnitudes more tragic but also forward moving.

you should worry more that this revolution moves Egypt more on the progress path (whichever you find right yourself), than what happens to some relics (many of which you lost to colonial powers anyway).

<comment><USER4> That's like saying the wives of soldiers in Afghanistan shouldn't worry about their husbands because Terrorism is much worse. We're advanced creatures, I think we can handle worrying about multiple things at once.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Al Jazeera is more and more a resource of quality, it's gotten to the point that when you want news that is relatively spin free that you can go to the BBC or to Al Jazeera. The interesting part for me is that they are a better source of real info on the US and Europe than most local media.

The chances are though that that is because they're not reporting on their 'home turf', does that extend to them reporting on Arab affairs as well?

<comment><USER6> Absolutely. Right now on the newsfeed, the journalist is holding the US spokesperson's feet to the fire about the disconnect between the US' support for Mubarak, and it's expressed principles in favor of democracy. They are directly pointing out the hypocrisy of the US' position.

It's the kind of journalism we're just not used to anymore in the U.S.

<comment><USER7> Agreed that it is non-ideal and unpleasant that the US backs Mubarak. However, you make a big assumption. Because in reality, the alternative to Mubarak is not necessarily democracy. It might be another autocrat. And it might be something even worse. Freedom does not necessarily lead to a bunch of shiny happy people living safely on a shining hill. Sometimes it leads to anarchy or genocide or war.

<comment><USER6> _However, you make a big assumption._

I make no such assumption, but I'm not willing to support dictatorship in order to avoid dictatorship. Straussian compromises of democratic values quite honestly make my blood run cold.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> What has happened so far: A curfew was put in place, it has done absolutely nothing, the streets are full of people everywhere in the country. There are reports of dozens of deaths. The headquarter of president Mubaraks party is on fire for hours, no firefighter are there. The headquarter is next the most important Egyptian museums. The police has no control over the streets, the army was ordered in to enforce the curfew. The people are actually cheering as the military is moving in. It is still unclear what the military will do. Hillary Clinton has issued a statement to the Egyptian government to restrain security forces and avoid violence.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm an Egyptian National.

This has been a long time coming for Egypt and this revolution will most likely succeed as well.

The only concerning outcome, which is to be determined, is if Egyptians are up to the challenge of establishing a respected level of checks and balances. Without this, all is lost.

</comment><comment><USER9> There's also a liveblog going on, if you can't watch video: [http://blogs.aljazeera.net/middle- east/2011/01/28/liveblog-e...](http://blogs.aljazeera.net/middle- east/2011/01/28/liveblog-egypts-protests-erupt)

<comment><USER10> Another good liveblog from the guardian: [http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2011/jan/28/egypt- protes...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2011/jan/28/egypt-protests- live-updates)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> You know, the egyptian people want freedom and stability. The US is mainly interested in stability. Which makes stability kind of an important point.

Now everybody is asking "who will be the next president". Now that's the wrong question considering the importance of stability. ElBaradei will not grant stability. Somebody else will not grant stability. The only way to have stability is to have an institutionalized system of checks and balances where not a single member can override the system and become single leader.

The lack of such a system was what allowed the rise to power of a dictator in the first place. And without such a system it will happen again.

To really fix Egypt and bring lasting freedom - checks and balances. Because the right question to ask is: How will they implement multiple sources with power.

Let's see if the protesters can figure this one out.

</comment><comment><USER9> Another thread <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2151895>

</comment><comment><USER12> You know who else won't sleep well tonight? US leaders. Basically, the arab youth is overthrowing the US puppets and overturning US influence in middle east. Joe Biden has voiced open support for Egyptian president today, but Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama has been tactful so far.

As an American, I am glad that the arab youth is escaping the imperialistic shadow that US has casted over the middle east. As an American, I lament that this is the end of the US dominance. As an American, I fear that the revolution around the world will force US into a totalitarian government. As an American, I hope that true democracy will ultimately triumph.

<comment><USER13> Destabilizing Egypt could destabilize the entire area.

Say what you want about how repressive Mubarak's regime is (and it certainly is hostile to the world view i hold dear), but this is a burning house that could easily torch the entire neighborhood.

Egypt's current regime is secular and not hostile to Israel, which are two things we can not take for granted for whatever regime replaces Mubarak.

In so far as the entire world has stakes in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the revolution in Egypt poses a variety of very real risks both in terms of foreign policy for nations like the US, and in terms of potential for lives lost.

<comment><USER12> Good, let it destabilize. I can't wait until $5/gas forces US to mandate electric cars as a policy. I can't wait until US pulls out of the middle east, and the government cuts all sorts of debt so that we don't burden our children with a miserable future.

And converting a government to democracy always comes with a price. I am sure the arab youth is ready and willing for that result.

<comment><USER5> > Good, let it destabilize.

That's like wishing for an avalanche to start. The problem with avalanches is that you do not know when they'll stop, potentially you're talking about thousands or even tens of thousands of people to die. If the end result is worth it or not can not be known at this point in time. Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.

<comment><USER12> 1.) The destabilization is due to youth overthrowing dictatorship in order to establish democracy. You're saying that's a bad thing?

2.) The avalanche has already started, despite our massive meddling.

3.) US should not have a say in middle east, period. What gives us the right?

<comment><USER5> > 1.) The destabilization is due to youth overthrowing dictatorship in order > to establish democracy. You're saying that's a bad thing?

Don't put words in my mouth. If democracy is the outcome then that's good. There are many other possible outcomes.

> 2.) The avalanche has already started, despite our massive meddling.

I don't know who 'our' is but I had no part in that, not even by proxy. The avalanche may have started, it may not have, it may be that this will burn out or it may be that regime change in Egypt is now inevitable. If it is I hope for it to happen quickly and in a way that will be a model for other states to follow, if it turns out that it gets messy (or even very messy) with a bad or worse outcome than the current situation then I would hope for the avalanche to be restricted to Egypt. Beware of exchanging the devil that you know for one that you haven't met yet.

> 3.) US should not have a say in middle east, period. What gives us the > right?

I agree with that, but again, I'm not a part of 'us'.

Chances are that there will be no democracy in Egypt but that a little sideshow called 'the Muslim brotherhood' will seize power.

I remember Persian students taking to the streets to overthrow the dictator and to improve things. That's called "The Islamic Republic of Iran" today and I every much doubt that people in general think that is an improvement over the arguably very bad regime of the Shah.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Preconditions of Revolution in the USA Today [http://www.phibetaiota.net/2011/01/reference- preconditions-o...](http://www.phibetaiota.net/2011/01/reference- preconditions-of-revolution-in-the-usa-today/)</comment>


Introducing AgentBase, for Agent Based Modeling from the Browser - <AUTHOR> http://agentbase.org/

<comment><AUTHOR> A side-project that came out of my (ongoing) thesis work at Oxford. I model social movements, and how the Internet and Social Media might affect them.

You can try a template model here: [http://agentbase.org/model.html?9d54597f7aafc995d227](http://agentbase.org/model.html?9d54597f7aafc995d227)

AgentBase uses:

* HTML canvas, jQuery, etc

* CoffeeScript browser library, for compilation of CoffeeScript

* ACE editor for code editing

* GitHub gists, mini-repositories for storage of models

* NodeJS + Mongo for keeping a list of models

Comments most welcome!

<comment><USER2> This is really good. It is not receiving the deserved attention/upvotes on HN...

<sarcasm?> Make a game of it, maybe with flock, and you'll be on the front page for days... ;) </sarcasm?>

<comment><USER3> Yea this is great. As an applied math major in college, modeling was my favorite class with so many variations of ABMs with Monte Carlo randomness. Like you, I was focused on social sciences, specifically economics so love these methods to better simulate and understand our world.

My friends and I have taken similar shots at putting this functionality online, and turning it into a game is a great idea! Especially a game that helps teach/learn different concepts. For example, we had a previous project that allowed folks to learn Javascript by programming the AI for your different units in a RTS game. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough money/time to support it - hopefully we can bring it back online soon - but you can see more info on this reddit thread: [http://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/1alfd9/jav...](http://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/1alfd9/javascript_learn_by_playing_rts_game_where_you/)

Similar to you, we were using HTML5 canvas with a CodeMirror editor so users could modify and republish their own version in real-tim. I think you could do something similar where users had to modify the code (to different extents which could be levels) to get it to flock in certain ways. And then actually give the flock some real world story/context. That would be really cool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Great! Excellent work. I'm mesmerized with the flock example...

To try: # A more inestable flock [http://agentbase.org/model.html?82ef4f46d2a05838dc5f](http://agentbase.org/model.html?82ef4f46d2a05838dc5f)

        @population = 55      # agents
        @setVision 4           # patches & set patch rect
        @minSeparation = 3 # patches

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool to see the tinkering works for you! It is mesmerizing :)

Do save your model as a new one if you want, makes it a one-click experience for visitors.

(in an ideal scenario AgentBase would do this automatically, and for each edit provide a link to that version... gists don't fork, sadly)

<comment><USER2> Anyone not understanding what the three lines are, and how to apply them, has not the knowledge required to fully appreciate what you've done: Beauty from simplicity.

        @population = 55   # agents
        @setVision 4       # patches & set patch rect
        @minSeparation = 3 # patches

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> this is not working for me... (Chrome v39.0) [http://agentbase.org/model.html?d10d06e31f41874b982c](http://agentbase.org/model.html?d10d06e31f41874b982c)

</comment><comment><USER2> What is exactly the difference with agentscript.org ?

<comment><AUTHOR> AgentBase.org as a website allows the in-browser editing and sharing of ABMs. These ABMs make use of the AgentBase library. This library is quite similar to AgentScript.

The AgentBase library actually was a fork from the AgentScript library. See here for why I forked it (basically to keep it simple and to be able to apply basic minimum coding standards and add automated tests): [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/agentbase/4NicEY8B6W...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/agentbase/4NicEY8B6WI)

Happy tinkering!</comment></comment>


Game Console Makers Feeling the Heat from Apple - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2009/09/25/apple-threat-to-game-consoles/ Will internet enabled TVs hurt video game console sales too? <comment><USER2> I just downloaded Need For Speed: Undercover for phone, and I must say it is every bit as addicting as it is on Xbox 360. It has a career mode, multiple cars to be unlocked and upgraded, and a whole city's worth of tracks. Considering that more and more people are carrying smartphones, it makes sense that we're seeing the move away from console gaming.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Will internet enabled TVs also hurt video game console sales?</comment>


Yahoo Turns To The Enemy To Simplify User Registration - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/18/yahoo-turns-to-the-enemy-to-simplify-user-registration/ <comment><USER2> Sounds like we're hearing the last steps of a political struggle which might have gone something like this:

PM for Delikr: Our conversion rate sucks. Why is that? Oh, mandatory signup for an email account with all Yahoo products causing capcha and other badness. Well, no problem, we'll just get them to allow us Yahoo accounts without mail.

VP for Mail: Hah, no.

PM: But this is killing our unit.

VP: Not my problem. We're the stickiest unit in Yahoo. We are the first service used by 90% of the people with Yahoo set as their home page. You guys, meh, who cares.

CEO: Ordinarily this would be where someone might exercise leadership in the service of our strategic priorities... but we're Yahoo, so, yeah.

PM: Could we at least use other OpenID providers?

VP/CEO: Whatever.

<comment><USER3> You forgot the 3-year gap between "Why is that?" and finding out why, and the 4-year gap between the PM asking for and receiving the "Whatever". :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why not OpenID? Google is an openID provider if I remember correctly (probably not facebook though).

<comment><USER5> Because as much as hackers like to toot the OpenID horn, no normal person has a clue wtf that is.

<comment><USER4> Well, sure, and if big websites like yahoo keep not using it, it will stay that way.

Most people already have an openID without knowing it, if yahoo wants to let people log in with external credentials, why "turn to the enemy" when you could use an open and unique solution that will probably cover more ground?

People don't need to know what openID is to use it, just tell them they can use their google/yahoo/wordpress/whatever credentials.

EDIT: I would also remind everybody who _doesn't_ even have a facebook account that the login/like/etc... widgets embedded in so many webpages these days can be used to track you across the internet. I would really appreciate if facebook didn't become more ubiquitous than it already is.

<comment><USER6> _"if big websites like yahoo keep not using it, it will stay that way"_

Not true - openid never took off because it has severe usability issues, not because major sites didn't try to implement it. It's not just an open source/standardized version of Facebook Connect, even though that's how hacker types perceive it.

Here's the Yahoo research report on it:

[http://developer.yahoo.com/blogs/ydn/posts/2008/10/open_id_r...](http://developer.yahoo.com/blogs/ydn/posts/2008/10/open_id_research/)

<comment><USER7> "severe usability issues" my ass. Nearly all current implementations, absolutely, they are _horrible_. But would people be saying the same thing if Facebook let you use your profile URL to log in elsewhere? From that point on, the user-visible mechanism to log you in is _exactly_ the same as the "log in with Facebook" buttons that people are now used to using, clearly without "severe usability issues".

The implementations haven't been made for the average user. The _user-facing implementations_ have severe usability issues, not the spec.

<comment><USER8> if the spec has only led to implementations with severe usability issues, what does that imply?

<comment><USER7> Absolutely nothing.

We interpret sound via air waves colliding with our eardrums causing tiny hairs to vibrate in our inner ears causing electrical signals in our head. What does this imply about what a piano looks like? Or a stereo system? Or a flashbang?

It even only _extremely slightly_ implies how sound-creating things function, given that they could inject themselves at any point in that process. They could vibrate air. They could vibrate our jawbones. They could cause electrical impulses directly. And this discounts future creations - maybe we discover a way to induce momentum, vibrating our eardrums without doing so by vibrating the air. And it _entirely_ ignores synaesthesia, whereby we could create sound by looking at a light or smelling a cookie.

Or lets take the programmer approach: the spec is an interface. What does that imply about what goes on behind the interface?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One of the reasons why I have never signed up to del.icio.us is the need for a Yahoo! account.

<comment><USER5> Not if you've been using it from before they were bought out like a lot of us here :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does adding "Login with Facebook" really increase signups that much? Anyone here with experience with that?

I'd imagine people are not so keen to share their FB-identity, even with sites like Flickr.

<comment><USER11> I have a Yahoo account. In fact I have several. I couldn't tell you their usernames though, let alone log in to them, since I was forced to add a long unmemorable number to the end.

On the other hand my Facebook username is just my email address. Never going to forget that.

<comment><USER12> "On the other hand my Facebook username is just my email address. Never going to forget that."

For the audience Yahoo serves it isn't as plain and simple as that. They probably don't own their own domains and run a mail account through that domain - so it's more likely that they'll have an email addresss 'given' to them by their ISP when they signed up for internet access.

So although their email address will be easily remembered during the point they signed up, things get very confusing when these visitors move to a different ISP for a variety of different reasons, and thus lose their previous email address with their previous ISP, and gain a new email address with their new ISP.

You, here, are more of an exception to the rule of the typical Yahoo audience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Seems like Yahoo is giving up on competing with Facebook the same way MySpace did, and we all know how well that worked out.

<comment><USER14> MySpace isn't dying because they gave up on competing; they're dying because they didn't compete fast enough.

MySpace was like the Titanic. Big, and thought to be unsinkable. They saw a Zuckerberg in the distance, but refused to change direction. They hit it head on, and began leaking users too fast to recover - they were sinking. How did they react? They built the Titanic 2.

But the brand's destroyed, and everyone is left with a bad taste in their mouth. No one's running to hop on the Titanic 2.</comment></comment>


Apple Speeds Up App Store Approval Process - <AUTHOR> http://www.gaiagps.com/news/article/Apple%20Speeds%20Up%20Approval%20Process

<comment><USER2> I noticed the same thing, my latest release was submitted late two nights ago and approved the next day.

</comment><comment><USER3> just got the 'ready for sale' email from apple, for an app i submitted about eight hours ago! if they can keep this up, we might be able to approximate the release cycle that web programmers enjoy.</comment>


The depressing reality of your startup failing - <AUTHOR> http://spotbloq.blogspot.de/2012/05/depressing-reality-of-your-startup.html

<comment><USER2> Look - your startup hasn't failed. First of all, it's not a startup, it's just a project you've been working on. You haven't spent savings or taken debt or investment to do this. It sounds like you are maybe still in school.

Second, you put it on HN and on person signed up. This doesn't mean you failed. It is merely the first in a very long line of setbacks that every startup, both great ones and not so great ones face along the way. Figure out why no one was interested in this - talk to potential customers, tweak the product/landing page/distribution channel and tr again.

I hope this doesn't come across as harsh because projects become our babies and it hurts when no one else cares, but hopefully you can take a step back and realize there's a lot you can do to remedy the situation.

<comment><AUTHOR> This did not came across harsh, this came across as a reminder to not give up so quickly. I still think that what I said about sharing more stories of failure is true, but maybe the reason for my post was more of an impulsive reaction :/

<comment><USER3> It ok - user acquisition is tough! It takes a lot of work, and submitting your link to Hacker News is not really work.

I'd start out by doing some user testing. Have people look at your site and tell you what they think. Then maybe a bit of usability testing - tell people to perform actions (like signing up or adding a product to their list) and see where they get stuck. This is called funnel optimization.

Then you can focus on finding channels - ways people discover you. You'll probably want to spend some money on google adwords, but definitely also try to get some press through traditional media and blogs.

You haven't failed - you just started!

<comment><USER4> if I am not mistaken, pinterest and many other success stories had long phases of slow user growth..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a horrifically dumb article. If you care about the first day, you didn't launch a startup, you launched a _project_. Submitting an article to Hacker News isn't a launch strategy, it's showing off a cute project you did.

A startup is something you fully commit to until you're convinced you tried every reasonable permutation in a scalable market opportunity.

The average startup takes 7 years to get to liquidity. That's 2,520 days. You got _one_ day in before throwing in the towel.

<comment><USER6> Stephen R. Covey once said something along the lines of "In any given situation, you can be right or you can be kind. It's better to be kind."

What you said is correct. Said differently (i.e. in a more kind manner), it also would have been a good example of really helpful mentorship.

<comment><USER7> One advantage of being harsh (vs. kind) is that it forces someone to think before they act for fear of looking like an idiot and wasting everyone's time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The name isn't related at all to your product, it's rather confusing. "Ranking" is in no way relevant to your service. Either choose a random name with no familiar meaning associated or choose one that is more appropriate for what your app does. I also agree that the tagline should be more clear. Also, you got some things wrong: \- A HN post (or 2) isn't a launch, how could you expect people to flock to your app if they don't know it exists. Promote it properly; \- Launch =/= your first day, first days usually suck.

Keep going anyway, the idea is not so bad, although i think there are some other services out there that do pretty much what your app does (but again, that can be said for pretty much every startup :P)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, very valid points.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> A bit early to declare something a failure no? If I had declared some of the App Store stuff I've done to have failed the same day they went up for sale purely based on watching analytics data, I would have totally missed the media coverage, chart rankings and word of mouth exposure (not to mention the loads of "thank you" emails from users) that occurred 1,2,3+ weeks later.

In any case from what I can tell this is exclusive to Amazon right? I'm guessing they have an API for this sort of thing or a way for you to scrape specific products.

Can Amazon notify users when prices drop? What makes this system you've setup unique? Pitch me, because it's not over yet :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the encouragement :)

I tried using Amazon's builtin wishlist feature, but never recieved a notification (I had the items in my Rankique wishlist at the same time and got one).

Jep, this is exclusive to Amazon, but I planned to implement BestBuy and whatnot if the concept seems to work (the backend is designed to manage multiple data sources).

What makes this system unique is, that I have no interest in squeezing everything out of a customer (that may be because I don't need to make any money from this). I try to minimize the time you spend shopping and I wan't you to pay the lowest price.

The replies here got me thinking, this is the first time I'm doing something like this, and I think I overinterpreted what Eric Ries has thought me about pivoting...

I'm increasingly feeling naive here... (which may very well be)

<comment><USER10> FWIW, I wrote that same feature for Wishpot (price alerts) including the infrastructure for scraping thousands of stores that don't have APIs.

It's a pretty interesting problem, but to be honest I never could see it as a product in and of itself. A lot of people have tried. Some spun it as a way to track things you've already bought in case you might be able to get a refund/rebate when the price dropped, which was a nice spin on the idea. But, to my knowledge none of these services have taken off.

Fundamental to all of this is that if you want to launch a consumer service and have it "take off" you need to figure out distribution first. If the idea doesn't have "social built in" and if you don't have lots of money to spend on advertising and marketing (which, in the consumer space is considerably more than if you're in the b2b space) it's Really Difficult to get attention.

That's the biggest thing I'd recommend to anyone in the consumer space... before you build it, figure out how people are going to hear about it. Most of the consumer business models require millions of users to pay off (ads, freemium, affiliate, etc). So, no million users, no business. Andrew Chen wrote a great article about how programmers can (and should) mitigate that problem these days: [http://andrewchenblog.com/2012/04/27/how-to-be-a-growth- hack...](http://andrewchenblog.com/2012/04/27/how-to-be-a-growth-hacker-an- airbnbcraigslist-case-study/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The value proposition of the site when you visit rankique.com is not clear enough. Changing the headline to "Track products and get notified when the price drops" and making the headline bigger will help a bit.

Driving traffic to the site may be harder. There is no built-in customer acquisition channel as having one user does not lead to more exposure. It might be something that gets some word of mouth once it has made a user happy but that's something you should test.

<comment><USER12> I have to agree that if the headline was "get notified when a price drops" I might consider signing up, or at least be intrigued to learn more. However, "save money and time, while shopping online"... sure it rhymes but its a vague value-proposition that's being offered by a thousand other sites right now. It could be anything from a store aggregator to another etsy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Changing it right now, absolutely makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> 1) as many have mentioned, submitting to a news site like this does not a launch strategy make. Look into strategic partnerships, try to get some legit press, figure out how to incentivize people to share it etc., virality etc., all the typical stuff that it seems like you haven't put any thought into. It's easy not to, and is perhaps one of the pros of talking to investors actually, they will remind you of your woefully inadequate customer acquisition strategies and get you rethinking them.

2) hackernews is a reflection of silicon valley, which is a bit of an echo chamber, keep that in mind. The common behaviors of people using this site are so drastically different than the average person that you shouldn't read much into its success, either way.

3) don't give up so easily.

4) props for having the balls to put yourself out there like this. Too may people in silicon valley have this facade of success all the time. They are always "killing it." This is somewhat necessary as when we are looking for funding we aren't about to publicize any setbacks, but they are there and good to remind people of.

</comment><comment><USER14> Jason's comment (as well as others) is spot-on. It's only a project. However, projects are how many sustainable businesses begin.

Your project is based on your assumptions on what customers wants. You now need to discover whether those assumptions are true (facts) or completely wrong. If they turn out to be true, then you're on to something.

Don't give up. Even if your assumptions turn out to be wrong, 'failures' are part of the process, and you can use what you learned on your next quest for a sustainable business.

</comment><comment><USER15> You article, while it have been hard to write, probably helped many others who are facing the exact same scenario (or at least will be upon launch). Take a second to think about why you started the site in the first place? Was it to revolutionize shopping? Or more to bring something to life? colinplamondon makes a good point about this being 1 day into your startup, but i'd also add that you're not even 1 day into being an entrepreneur. Failure is good! FAIL MORE ! Every great entrepreneur does, at some point

</comment><comment><USER16> Upvoted for content but please read this: <http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/621/01/>

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sorry :/ Will keep this open while writing...

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> You should give it more than a day before calling it a failure.

<comment><USER18> Saying it's a failure at day one is a bit like saying "I built it, and they didn't come. That movie was a crock."

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Hey, this isn't a horrible failure. You might actually have something here. It's kind of like Pricenomics actually, they just went through YC. They're hiring, you should send Omar an email with this link, I'm sure he'd be impressed.

They take the approach of price researching plus subscribing to low prices like you. If I were you I'd look into this.

</comment><comment><USER20> I think there is a site that does this already. Try camelcamelcamel.com

Having said that, I appreciate your zeal and effort. No amount of education would have prepared you as much as the workk involved in creating a fairly complicated website.

Good job. I might just be using it. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd be delighted (:

But I also can't deny that camel^3 looks like a (much bigger) competitor. I've some ideas to improve what bugs me about Online Shopping, maybe one of them can differentiate me enoguh.

As I learned today: No reason to give up

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Are you a solo founder? You may want to surround yourself with other founders. They will make sure to give you a pat on the back when your real-time Google Analytics dashboard shows 0 active users. Hang in there...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm absolutely blown away by a)the hn community b) my naivity.

I'd like to thank you all for re-encouraging me and giving me a lot of great input.

</comment><comment><USER22> Change its name. It's awful. The idea not so much.</comment>


The Unlambda Programming Language - <AUTHOR> http://www.madore.org/~david/programs/unlambda/ <comment><USER2> My favorite thing about Unlambda is that the creator added a new feature, in order to make the language harder to use. Let that be a warning to the rest of us.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've got no idea what you're talking about. Unlambda is almost self documenting code, it's one of the first times that I'm not using 'literate programming' because there is no need for it.

All these newfangled languages hide what is actually going on under the hood. Unlambda is refreshingly clear and totally transparent.

Until you've programmed at least one 50,000 line project in a language you shouldn't be commenting on how hard it is ;)</comment></comment>


Show HN: latexresu.me – A LaTeX Resume Generator - <AUTHOR> https://latexresu.me <comment><AUTHOR> Hey all! latexresu.me is a website for generating LaTeX resumes easily.

Basically, you just choose a template, fill in as much (or as little) info as you want, and click "Preview Resume" at any point to see your current generated PDF. You can switch your template on the fly at any point and once you're happy with your results you can download the PDF or the generated LaTeX source code. Please let me know what you guys think!

Source Code: [https://github.com/saadq/latexresu.me](https://github.com/saadq/latexresu.me)

</comment><comment><USER2> I love the idea, however:

\- Dark colors on black don't work that well, just makes the UI-text hard to read. Couldn't you add some more contrast? Or even better, switch to a white background and just use black text.

\- I'd also love to see some more appealing templates. I recognize the templates you have from open source Latex CV templates, too bad I don't think any of them looks very good.

\- Would be nice if I could sign in with LinkedIn and have it import my data.

Great idea, looking forward to seeing it improve.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestions! I'll try to improve the contrast. As you mentioned, most of the templates I chose were the popular ones from sites like ShareLaTeX and Overleaf. I am happy ot add more templates, if someone were to open a "Template Request" issue on the repo.

And yeah, I was hoping to add import/export to json as well as an "import from LinkedIn" functionality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice work. Should also add sections for summary, languages, & interests.

Any plans to add an option to import/export your resume to jsonresume format ([https://jsonresume.org/](https://jsonresume.org/)).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I was definitely planning on adding an import/export feature so that you don't have to keep starting from scratch, so I can try to see if I can make it compatible with jsonresume too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> At least on iOS (mobile safari) attempting to download the source of a generated resume produces a binary blob of some kind, rather than anything that looks like Tex... (maybe I'll go file this as an issue...)

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks nice!

</comment><comment><USER6> Can't get past template page on mobile. Android chrome.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, maybe it isn't completely intuitive. You actually need to click on the menu at the top right to navigate between sections on mobile.

<comment><USER6> Oh that's a very odd UX. I'd suggest at least a previous next button on each page. But keep the menu for global navigation.

Nice site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, that's a good idea. And thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tell HN: Elon Musks donates $1 million for Tesla museum - <AUTHOR>

Since HN has probably marked the oatmeal as a banned domain, I thought it would still be something the community would want to read[1].<p>Matthew Inman wrote a review about owning a Model S recently. He thought it was only fair for Elon Musk to be a contributer to the museum he raised money for to honor Nikola Tesla.<p>[1]: http://theoatmeal.com/blog/musk_tesla_museum <comment><USER2> More explanation: [https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19073535/one_problem.png](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19073535/one_problem.png)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7741170](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7741170)

</comment><comment><USER4> Should be "Elon Musk" (not plural) up there in the title.</comment>


Show HN: TLDR This – Auto summarize any article or webpage in a click - <AUTHOR> https://tldrthis.com/ <comment><USER2> Nice landing page. If you Google "summarizer", you will find dozens of similar services for free. The mechanism behind it is very simple. A couple a years ago I built one from scratch in about 2 hours, then I accidentally deleted it and rewrote it in 15 minutes. Here's how most of them work:

1\. Split the text into words

2\. Rank each word based on how many times it appears in the text. For example, a word that appears 10 times gets 10 points, and so on.

3\. Rank sentences based on the sum of the scores of each word inside them.

4\. Return the top N sentences by score (N is up to the user), in the order in which they appear in the text.

For extra fancyness, exclude the most common articles and prepositions and give 2 points to proper nouns.

Works surprisingly well.

<comment><USER3> You can use tf-idf [1] to achieve step 2 and that extra fancy part of excluding commmon articles and prepositions: count the frequency of words in the article, but divide it by the sum of frequencies from past articles.

Text summarization works as a good toy problem, because it leads to two harder problems: 1. text extraction (how to distinguish content from non-content like ads) 2. q&a (given text and a question about the text, how can you produce an answer).

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tf%E2%80%93idf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tf%E2%80%93idf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really want to like this. My points -

1\. From the articles I tried, the summaries seem to be very basic. They don't seem to capture the essential points of the articles it is trying to summarize.

2\. I tried the 'advanced summarizer' too. Here again, it seems to have the same problem. Worse, it seems to skip parts of the article, especially if they are beyond a certain length.

3\. The landing page is nice. But the product seems to be targeted towards people who want to share a summary of a random blog post rather than try and save time reading the article.

In my opinion, SMMRY, as mentioned in another comment and which I've used since whenever, seems like a much better product. Additionally, SMMRY also gives you the capability of expanding the number of lines of the summary in case you've found the article interesting and want to read a few more details of it, rather than the full thing.

SMMRY: [https://smmry.com/](https://smmry.com/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Is there any thought put into considering if this type of service is actually beneficial?

Of course on it's face it seems nice that it saves us time. But it's no secret that the reduction of complicated topics into simplified one-liners leads to less understanding and more misinformation spread.

In my opinion, this just makes that problem worse. There is often a reason that texts aren't already shorter. If the author didn't intend for you to read the details of something and instead wanted you to just read bullet points, they would have just made the bullet points themselves.

</comment><comment><USER6> Didn't do a great job on this AP News article on coronavirus - only four bullet points, two of them repeated: [https://apnews.com/545af824f44a22f7559c74679a4f1f53](https://apnews.com/545af824f44a22f7559c74679a4f1f53).

<comment><AUTHOR> The Basic Summarizer has its restrictions. Try Advanced summarizer. It will give better results.

<comment><USER7> If the Basic Summarizer is meant to convince me to sign up for the Advanced Summarizer, that's not gonna happen with the former providing unconvincing results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> While I didn't have high hopes to get a summary of a technical paper, since I spend a good chunk of time every week reading some related to exploits and mitigations for a podcast I host, I hoped this might help reduce time spent trying to get an overall understanding before diving into the details.

It actually did better than I expected with the paper "Bypassing memory safety mechanisms through speculative control flow hijacks" [0]

I copied and pasted the text from sections 3-7 (Case Studies - Conclusion) and Section 2 on its own (describes the attack)

It did pull out some important statements, better than I expected. Probably won't save me much time, but I was quite disappointed by the fact that the Advanced and Basic versions were the same for both which kinda felt a bit cheap to get the same results especially since it still cost to get that advanced result. Maybe including information about how the basic version is restricted and what the advanced does better would make it easier to know when the advanced version won't be useful.

I also tested with a random write-up I'll be covering tomorrow "Breaking the Competition" [1] I had higher hopes for this since it was more of a blog-ish post. I did get different results for basic and advanced with this one, but the result was basically non-sense, worse than expected, and worse than the paper summary.

Overall, probably not something that I'll end up using, but technical content also isn't the intended use-case which is totally fair. I'll also add that one feature that I looked for immediately was API access as I'd have wanted to integrate this into an app I use to plan episodes.

\- [0] [https://arxiv.org/pdf/2003.05503v1.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2003.05503v1.pdf)

\- [1] [https://medium.com/ctf-writeups/breaking-the-competition- bug...](https://medium.com/ctf-writeups/breaking-the-competition-bug-bounty- write-up-ca7cb7bc53f5)

</comment><comment><USER9> I did try to run it four times, and in each case the result was semi-random: it looks like picking 4 random sentences that open paragraphs. There was not a single case when I would consider the output useful-ish.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you please let me know the article that you tested it on? Maybe you could try the advanced summarizer and see if it gives useful results.

<comment><USER9> [https://p.migdal.pl/2020/03/02/types-tests- typescript.html](https://p.migdal.pl/2020/03/02/types-tests-typescript.html)

[https://p.migdal.pl/2017/07/23/dating-for- nerds.html](https://p.migdal.pl/2017/07/23/dating-for-nerds.html)

[https://p.migdal.pl/2016/03/15/data-science-intro-for- math-p...](https://p.migdal.pl/2016/03/15/data-science-intro-for-math-phys- background.html)

[https://medium.com/@szopa/train-for-a-mars-mission-how-to- su...](https://medium.com/@szopa/train-for-a-mars-mission-how-to-survive- social-distancing-while-working-from-home-with-your-kids-c9874ad0922a) (here I admit that the first two are good)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Yes, it doesn't work that well on technical articles. We will try to keep improving it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You could try selling it to yahoo for a few billion dollars like some other kid did with exactly the same thing

<comment><USER11> Link: [https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/26/business/media/nick- daloi...](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/26/business/media/nick- daloisio-17-sells-summly-app-to-yahoo.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I love the idea. The implementation did not produce the expected results ( article shown on HN - [https://amp-economist- com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/amp.economi...](https://amp-economist- com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/amp.economist.com/science-and- technology/2020/03/12/nuclear-power-plants-are-coming-to-the-battlefield) ).

That said. Keep at it. It seems like a viable and valuable service.

<comment><USER4> Using the advanced summarizer, I got this -

On March 9th America's government awarded a trio of firms $39.7m to design "microreactors" that can supply a few megawatts of power to remote military bases, and be moved quickly by road, rail, sea and air. The idea of small reactors is as old as nuclear power itself.

In July 1951, five months before a reactor in Idaho became the first in the world to produce usable electricity through fission, America began building USS Nautilus, a nuclear-powered submarine.

A report by the army in 2018 said that Holos, a prototype mobile nuclear reactor, would be 62% cheaper than using liquid fuel.

NASA is developing smaller "Kilopower" reactors for space missions, designed to power small lunar outposts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It sounds like a joke, I tried to reduce a technical manual but it didn't... well... I don't really know how to expect anything. This however: [https://www.latimes.com/world- nation/story/2020-03-13/china-...](https://www.latimes.com/world- nation/story/2020-03-13/china-japan-korea-coronavirus-reinfection-test- positive) worked really well.

<comment><AUTHOR> It isn't really built for manuals etc. It is mainly for blog posts or news articles.

<comment><USER13> I didn't expect it to work for either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Interesting stuff. Have you succeeded in getting paying customers for such a service? I've seen some similar free alternatives online, i.e. resoomer, smmry

<comment><AUTHOR> v1 of our service was free as well. v2 includes a basic summarizer which is free and an advanced summarizer which requires payment. Just launched the premium version, so waiting to see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've noticed an increase in services like this lately. What gives? Is there some sort of ML serverless offering made available on GCP?

<comment><USER16> Not exactly "serverless" but I built something similar with AWS SageMaker, which has elastic inference abilities. it's rather fast to spin up and down.

Also, when it comes to summarization- you don't really need to infer each run, you can throw up a pretty simple caching system. Which means repeat requests are far cheaper and faster.

I used cloudflare workers as a proxy / caching layer with KV in front of an AWS lambda to do article extraction and SageMaker spinup (with a small cache on the AWS side too- to catch in progress jobs)

<comment><USER15> That's really interesting. Cool idea

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Awesome product! I was quite surprised at how good it summarized Dutch articles as well.

Are you planning to launch an API anytime soon?

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you liked it. Let me know if you have any feedback/suggestions. Yes, we do plan to launch an API soon. Please message us here - [https://tldrthis.com/contact](https://tldrthis.com/contact) and we will let you know when we launch it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Did a fairly poor job on this Ars article [https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/03/what-monty- pythons-m...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/03/what-monty-pythons- ministry-of-silly-walks-can-teach-us-about-peer-review/)

<comment><AUTHOR> You could try the advanced summarizer. It gives better results.

<comment><USER19> Basic

* It's intended in part as a commemoration on the 50-year anniversary of the sketch, but also to draw attention to the need for a more streamlined peer review process for grants in the health sciences.

* "So, put together a Monty Python fan with a creative scientific mind and an expert in gait analysis, and this paper is what you get," Butler told Ars. Or, as they wrote in their paper, "It really is the silliness of the sketch that resonates with us, and extreme silliness seems more relevant now than ever before in this increasingly Pythonesque world."

* First aired on September 15, 1970, on BBC One, the sketch opens with Cleese's character buying a newspaper on his way to work—which takes him a bit longer than usual since his walk "has become rather sillier recently." Waiting for him in his office is a gentleman named Mr. Putey (Michael Palin) seeking a grant from the Ministry to develop his own silly walk.

* (Note: the name is spelled "Pudey" in the paper but we're going with the Wiki spelling.) Mr. Putey demonstrates his silly walk-in-progress, but the Minister isn't immediately impressed.

Advanced

* One of the best-known sketches from Monty Python's Flying Circus features John Cleese as a bowler-hatted bureaucrat with the fictional Ministry of Silly Walks.

* Waiting for him in his office is a gentleman named Mr. Putey (Michael Palin) seeking a grant from the Ministry to develop his own silly walk.

* For their own gait analysis, Butler and Dominy studied both Mr. Putey's and the Minister's gait cycles in the video of the original 1970 televised sketch, as well as the Minister's gaits from a 1980 live stage performance in Los Angeles.

* Butler and Dominy found that the Minister's silly walk is much more variable than a normal human walk—6.7 times as much—while Mr. Putey's walk-in-progress is only 3.3 times more variable.

* The sketch might be satirizing bureaucratic inefficiency, but Cleese's Minister is essentially engaging in a hyper-streamlined version of the peer review process in his meeting with Mr. Putey that (the authors concluded) resulted in a fair assessment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I tried this on three of my own articles. It worked very poorly. There's a lot of room for improvement before asking people to pay for it IMO.

I may try my hand at writing one with the reqs outlined in the top comment just for a fun coding project.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, you are right. There is still room for improvement and we will keep trying to make it better. The reason I added paid plans was to test whether people would be willing to pay for such a service so that I can spend more time in adding more features to it and making it better.

<comment><USER20> Fair enough, decent business strategy!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I get an error. I'm on Safari mobile on iOS 13.4. I use content blockers, BlockBear and Firefox Focus - not sure if that's relevant or not.

Method Not Allowed

The method is not allowed for the requested URL.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for letting me know. Are you using the extension or the web app?

<comment><USER21> We app from the Show HN link

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Hugged to death? Entering a url to summarize just results in an error for me.

</comment><comment><USER23> If you Google "summarizer", you will find dozens of similar services for free. A couple a years ago I built one from scratch in about 2 hours, then I accidentally deleted it and rewrote it in 15 minutes. Rank each word based on how many times it appears in the text.

</comment><comment><USER24> some of the results had me laughing out loud. it would be super useful if it worked though. its a Hard problem.

</comment><comment><USER25> How did you make the landing page?

</comment><comment><USER26> This thing understands Finnish? Very strange. TLDR from this was quite excellent: [https://sarastuslehti.com/2020/03/12/koronaviruksen-kayra- on...](https://sarastuslehti.com/2020/03/12/koronaviruksen-kayra-on- murskattava/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it works on quite a few languages. Glad you liked it. Let me know if you have any feedback/suggestions.

<comment><USER26> The article was a translation from English. The English summary was less good, as it repeats same sentence twice. [https://www.takimag.com/article/crushing- the-coronavirus-cur...](https://www.takimag.com/article/crushing-the- coronavirus-curve/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that's because that sentence appears twice in the article. Advanced summarizer gives a better summary for that URL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It would be more useful to me if the authors of articles would provide the tl;dr themselves.

</comment><comment><USER28> How does this work?

</comment><comment><USER29> not bad, not bad

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you liked it. Let me know if you have any feedback/suggestions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Works great!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!</comment></comment>