I no longer read long articles on my computer - <AUTHOR> http://articles.marco.org/299

<comment><USER2> I used to have to exact same problem until I found Instapaper. Simple idea, brilliantly executed. Works even better in conjunction with Calibre (<http://calibre-ebook.com/>) and an ebook reader.

I bought myself the Pocketbook 360 for christmas and it works like a charm: hooking it up to my computer has Calibre download all new articles from Instapaper, convert to ePub and transfer to the reader.

Even better, when I read on my Pocketbook I don't get distracted because it doesn't do Internet. Thank god.

<comment><USER3> This site will -quickly- convert web pages to PDF's you then save. Easy, fast, pro results. (<http://www.pdfmyurl.com/>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Using Google reader, when I happen upon items which are tl;dr for right now, I just hit 't' then type either "to-read" or "to-watch" which tags them. When I have a little more time, I hit 'g-t' and select one of those two tags. When I'm done, I un-tag it. This way I don't have to "note" it (which other people can see) or star it, and I can un-tag it when I'm done with it.

Also, Readability is a great boon.

</comment><comment><USER5> This i exactly why my Kindle has become a godsend. The primary way I use it is to load long articles on it that I find on the web for reading later.

This is also why I consider the Kindle's lack of any usable web/Internet to be a feature rather than a drawback.

</comment><comment><USER6> When the author refers to "long articles" I thought that it referred to articles as long as itself!

I absolutely agree that reading long material (as in, more than 2-3 text pages long) on a computer is uncomfortable and it's very tempting to become distracted. That's why I want an e-book reader :)

Something I suspect is that it might depend on the way your computer is set up, and/or your mindset - I have very different behaviour on my work and home computers, even browsing very different stuff - I don't browse sports, facebook, or my non-programming hobbies at work for instance, even though there are no restrictions set up, while I have my home browser set up to open said pages at startup.

</comment><comment><USER7> recently hacker news simply replaced my rss reader. if there is something new that i may be interested in, i'm sure it will front-page here, so I let other people do the skimming for me.

<comment><USER8> On a related note that is my approach on Twitter as well. I try to follow interesting people and if they are talking about a common topic or link it is probably worth reading.

Sorry for the plug but that is what we try to do with Cadmus (<http://thecadmus.com>). You give us your Twitter, RSS Feeds, FriendFeed and we will find the top articles your friends are talking about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The suggestion to print [a lot] doesn't seem well-justified. Compared to reading on a portable device, consider all the paper usage (waste?) and ink cartridge expense. For folks like me with tight budgets, there's no way I would feel comfortable printing out the same volume of articles that I currently read on the computer. With ink cartridges priced like they are, I am very frugal when deciding what is or is not worth printing.

</comment><comment><USER10> Unfortunately the result of such actions is less user engagement on those articles/sites. As a blogger this means less comments on my blog posts because Instapaper users on their phone don't want to take the effort to type a comment on their iPhone or swap to their computer.

<comment><AUTHOR> True, it's better for long articles and for users who wouldn't comment on blogs anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wrote a (poor cousin) version of Instapaper for Android. Search the marketplace for BenPaper.

I wanted to dump the iPhone for Android, but the thought of having a phone without Instapaper (or similar) was too much to bear! I wasn't sure whether to open-source the code or not, it's pretty poor quality at the moment, but gets the job done.

At the moment it pushes the content through the Google mobile web rendered to strip the unnecessary content. Does anyone know if the Instapaper parser has a public API? I assumed it didn't...

It needs _lots_ of work but if you have any comments/suggestions please let me know. Thanks.

<comment><USER11> Also, is it just me or is it crazy that there's no public URL to a specific Android app? What's that all about? The only way I can currently view feedback to the app is by borrowing a colleague's G1!

<comment><USER12> I agree, that sucks. Hopefully they'll change that soon.

iPhone App store didn't have web sites for the longest time, but I think they changed it recently. Although it is still hard to find - I have seen web links to apps, but have been unable to create them myself.

Btw another silly trap with the Android Marketplace: apparently they only show you the comments in the language of your phone settings. A friend of mine has created a German language app, but his phone is set to English. It was only a couple of weeks later that he discovered there already were several comments for his app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My technique for this is to split up my feeds into 2 folders (in Google Reader): Blogs and News/Misc.

Blogs are pretty self explanatory currently the list is at 15 but I actively add and remove. List has never been above 20 and never below 10.

New/Misc are my high volume ones. WSJ, CNN, Hacker News, Lifehacker, are just a taste. I keep this list hovering around 10 feeds.

I keep my blogs read and skim my high volume ones when I have breaks like lunch at the desk for 30 mins. I skim headlines and read probably 5 "long" articles a day. This system works well enough for me.

</comment><comment><USER14> I print long texts to read from real paper as I find that much more enjoyable. I also have a much better understanding then.

Part of this is often getting really annoyed by either non-existing print stylesheets or those filled with ads or unnecessary whitespace. Thankfully Opera makes it easy to rewrite those if you know a bit HTML (view source -> apply).

I keep track of articles to read simply with a bookmark folder.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm upset that Opera's text-to-speech feature has been busted in their recent releases. Instead of reading long articles on my computer, I prefer to have my computer read them to me. I find it to be much easier to get through wall-of- text articles that way because it requires so much less effort. However, it still requires more focus than reading because you can't skim and it's harder to backtrack.

</comment><comment><USER16> Maybe we should stop writing long articles on our computer also.

(Disclaimer: Instapaper rules... except at hacker news comments.)

</comment><comment><USER17> I used to have Opera read articles aloud to me while I worked. Sadly it's a bugged feature now, but it was good while it lasted.

</comment><comment><USER18> Looks good. I just registered for Instapaper. Thanks Marco!

</comment><comment><USER19> google reader starred items feed.

</comment><comment><USER20> I have my bookmarks on the cloud (delicious firefox extension). I have delicious show up as a bookmark toolbar instead of the Firefox toolbar. I choose Favorite Tag view and then I have three tags as favorite: 1-frequently used bookmarks, 2-less-frequently used bookmarks and 3-Read later articles. I tag lengthy articles with the third tag and they stay there in front until I'm done reading I would simply remove the tag.

The only thing missing is the reminder or stay fresh alert. Sometime it takes some effort to go back to old and lengthy articles.

</comment><comment><USER21> tl;dr</comment>


Cruise-line companies are building private Caribbean play zones - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2019/08/08/cruise-line-companies-are-building-private-caribbean-play-zones <comment><USER2> I once worked for a Cruise Company for some months. I really am shocked at how naive I was back then, when I applied and worked there.

Back then I had no idea how bad this form of travel is for the environment, for the visited cities, for the people working below deck, and so on.

The people I worked with in the main office of the company were really energetic, loved their product, had a great time launching ship after ship (every year a new ship was launched). It was great working with people who loved what they were doing. Compared to other jobs I had till then. I was there when the new hyped prototype was being put into service. Quite an interesting time. We were allowed to test travel on the new ship. It was a cool experience.

From a purely hedonistic perspective. Yeah it felt nice sitting in the sauna, ten decks above see at 6am in the morning and looking out over the waves. It was purely relaxing.

But from a more conscious perspective it was doing everything I could to help destroy this world - and I was so abusing the lower deck people. The ones never being seen by guests. They work horrible shifts, are employed with contracts from the tax heaven states the ships are being registered in.

I was an employee of the same company - but I had massive employment protections and laws governing how long I work, what is considered overtime, and so on. The served me, made my bed, put coffee on my table. They prepared my food - but they were third or fourth class "citizens" on this ship.

I am ashamed looking at it nowadays.

<comment><USER3> If you had the power, would you fire them and be the one to give them their notice in person? If they asked why, what would you tell them? "For your own good"?

<comment><USER4> Instead of asking would you fire them for their own good, rather ask, do you employ them for their own good?

<comment><USER5> If they voluntarily show up, I think they are judging that I am offering them something better (or at least as good) as their next best option. That's one formulation of "their own good".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This seems like a net win for the rest of us.

If you've ever been on Roatan or someplace similar when a big cruise ship comes in, you'll know the feeling: Most of the time it's a sleepy little beach town with cheap accommodation and beers, and friendly local folk going about their business. Then one day you wake up and it's "Welcome To Jamaica, Mon!!!"

All the colorful townspeople are out in their Traditional Island Dress, doing their Traditional Island Dance to the Traditional Island Music in the streets. Everybody suddenly has piles of overpriced tourist junk to sell you, and those cheap beers are now $8 each.

Giant flotillas of inflated red kayaks bob around in the bay, carrying inflated pink tourists in inflated orange life vests. Lots of pictures are taken of another Island Paradise.

Then things pack up, heaps of garbage are swept aside, and the place goes back to its old, pleasant, self again.

Life is so good on the "backpacker" side of that experience, and so bad on the "cruiser" side, that it's good to hear that they're finally just sequestering them all away in a single place. If any of them ever want to experience the Carribbean in its actual form, it'll hopefully be waiting there unspoiled.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've been to the Disney cruise private island. It's interesting, there's almost no full time employees there. The ship crew gets off and works the island while you are there.

But even if you go on say an Alaska cruise, which is entirely in the USA, the "towns" that you stop in exist solely for the cruise ships. The stores are the same junk at every stop, often owned by the cruise lines, unless you walk to the edge and maybe get something local or family run.

<comment><USER8> Countries around the world seem to slowly be waking up to this - Cruise ships pollute like hell, make destinations crowded and less pleasant for residents and 'regular' tourists, and also attempt to capture all of the spending of their passengers anyway, limiting any economic benefits.

European cities they frequent are some of the worst for SOx and NOx pollution on the continent and a single line, Carnival, emitted more than all of Europe's cars last year (by a factor of 10 IIRC). Barcelona has started to realise that hoards that rush off the boat, have lunch and rush back on are not worth the meagre boost it gives them.

The cruise industry needs to clean up its act.

<comment><USER9> The Baltic Sea and the North Sea are Sulphur Emission Control Areas (SECA) and Nitrogen Oxide Emission Control Areas (NECAs). Ships in these areas required to use SOx scrubbers and NOx, reducing devices in new ships. Limits have been gradually tightened. I think they are now as low as 0.10% m/m.

Carnival Cruise Lines has ships outfitted with scrubbers and they operate in these Emission Control Areas. Lower emissions are gradually coming to other areas as well when scrubbers are retrofitted into older ships.

<comment><USER8> Sounds good, and can't come soon enough!

Personally I'd like it if my home city (Southampton, UK currently) would stop them idling their engines in port for power.

Apparently we don't have the power infrastructure for them to plug in and run their systems from the local grid, so they just sit there churning this stuff out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A question interesting to me: Are cruise ships worse or better than package, tour or individual holidays?

We have millions of people all over the world who want to travel and see the world and enjoy themselves. Assuming we don't ban individual travel we probably want to work out the most environmentally friendly (and socially responsible) way of enabling this.

A network of railway lines across the northern hemisphere connecting to a fleet of wind powered cruise ships? But paying staff a socially responsible wage might push the cost of a holiday up above the once a year point. And figuring in the real environmental cost would cause issues as well.

</comment><comment><USER11> A cruise ship always strikes me as being a slightly more upscale caravan holiday. You're stuck in a metal box with either a lot of old middle class people or a load of drunk lower class yobs. Only unlike a caravan you're stuck on it.

<comment><USER12> Perhaps, if you shared a single caravan with hundreds of other people. But other than that I do not think it's alike at all as you are not dependant on a crew for subsistence nor is your freedom to move/explore restricted in a caravan. Either way both can be very fun holidays if you are willing to see past class prejudices.

<comment><USER11> It's not so much the class prejudices, it's the booze prejudice. I don't socialize with my wifes upper-middle-class colleagues because they like their wine a little too much.

My worst ever holiday memories are being stuck in a caravan in the late 1980s in wet Wales with way too little room and way too many loud drunk people who kept going until 4am every single night.

Cruise ships are like that only you're completely at the whim of the cruise line. You have 0 freedom and you have to deal with all the tax-evading fake- flag BS which seems to rule the sea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It means tourist pay money to cruise line. Cruise line keeps most of the money. Local economy benefits a lot less from tourist. Cruise line ships is often registered in tax havens.

</comment><comment><USER14> Going on a cruise is like a whirlwind tour of the Caribbean as it is. You get, like 6 hours to try to cram in as much of Jamaica, Grand Cayman, Cozumel, etc as you can and then it's back to the boat and on to the next stop. If you really want to get to know a country it's not the best way to travel.

<comment><USER15> For some people that's OK. They don't want just a short tour of the Caribbean, they want a diverse recreationally holiday. a day doing all the cruise activities, a day in the Caribbean, a day just taking it easy in the ship, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The Economist seemed to miss the "private island" angle. The MSC cruise line just announced one:

[https://www.msccruisesusa.com/en-us/Cruise- Destinations/Cari...](https://www.msccruisesusa.com/en-us/Cruise- Destinations/Caribbean-Antilles/Bahamas/Ocean-Cay-MSC-Marine-Reserve.aspx)

(video player window pops up)

<comment><USER17> That video looks like the intro of a Black Mirror episode.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The Patriot Act recently did a nice episode on cruise-line companies. Just watched it last night.

<comment><USER19> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nCT8h8gO1g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nCT8h8gO1g)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've known people to go on these cruises. They love it. Reading some of the HN comments - why not rather discuss concerns with the business owners who enable the "utter turmoil". Vote with what counts - not soapboxes.

</comment><comment><USER21> I really hope that these ships will get banned in the next 10 years.

</comment><comment><USER22> As long as customers are informed and locals are not ripped off it should be ok imo

</comment><comment><USER23> [https://outline.com/Sm9UCL](https://outline.com/Sm9UCL)

</comment><comment><USER24> This author is just realizing this now? After decades? Newsflash, buildings grow beyond 10 stories!

</comment><comment><USER25> > paid for in US dollars, never the Haitian gourde

Presumably the government is getting paid in US dollars too, which is a nice fx source

> Haitians not employed by Royal Caribbean cannot enter.

Can Haitians generally roam free on private property?

> Caribbean countries are "basically giving away parcels of land"

What now? Do we call all foreign private ownership "giving away"? Poor article from The Economist telling us nothing other than rich travelers to Haiti don't want to deal with the downsides of it, which is a story as old as time.

<comment><USER26> Most western countries don't allow beach ownership, and technically the US doesn't either but has its loop holes. Some European countries even have the "right to pass" over private land if required to access to public land.

I suppose the question worth asking is the average Haitian better off from the economic activity generated from the private parcel.</comment></comment>


OneWeb to Consider Bankruptcy as Cash Dwindles - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-19/softbank-s-oneweb-is-said-to-mull-bankruptcy-as-cash-dwindles <comment><USER2> Spacex is going to crush all of it's competitors. It get's the launches for the cost of a tank of kerosine and lox. It's manufacturing its own satellites. These are cost advantages that no one else can match.

Once Starlink is operating, the first customer to knock on their door will be the US military. They will spend any amount to get world wide internet/ip availability.

Softbank's only hope to rescue their investment is to merge OneWeb with another satellite player.

One advantage Starlink has is that the satellites have a fixed lifetime and need to be refreshed. Future generations of satellites can have additional capability added (ADS-B tracking for aircraft, for example)

But in the end, there can only be one.

<comment><USER3> I don't think it's a given that SpaceX and Tesla necessarily have the cash to ride out this crisis. Castles in the middle of two major capital projects and two smaller ones, spaceX is in the middle of two capital intensive projects.

Their odds are much better than any other competitor right now, but they're still at the whims of the market.

<comment><USER4> They'll get a bailout if necessary. From China, most assuredly, from the US maybe a bit less so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The whole satellites-for-Internet space is like Global Crossing 2.0. I mean, business 101 is that high fixed costs + commodity business + high likelihood that technology that will decrease future fixed costs + no ability to repurpose fixed assets = no profit.

Good for society. Bad for investors.

<comment><USER6> On the flip side I would argue that low marginal costs + high fixed costs = a natural monopoly, there is no room for a competitor to step in. A monopoly + lots of demand = lots of profit.

It doesn't surprise me that OneWeb is going bankrupt, but that's because SpaceX is doing it better, and there is only space for one (profitable) company in this space.

<comment><USER7> For most of the people in the world, Internet is already available through land lines or cellular service. OneWeb has very little ability to extract monopoly rents from them.

But both sides are not relevant to the article - whether the business case is solid or not in the long run, they are running out of money in the short term.

<comment><USER6> Properties served by land lines and cellular service just aren't potential (highly profitable) customers for oneweb. That's ok, there are plenty of other customers. Ships, air planes, the military, even more remote places, backbone for remote cell towers, and so on.

It is very relevant, if the business is solid they should be able to attract more investment in the short term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Oneweb's sat's supposedly have incredible bandwidth if you beleive the CNN/CEO hype. "Steckel said they have performed better than expected, 'demonstrating speeds that could rival 5G internet'."

They also have made a number of claims about being the leader in the effort etc (they launched six sat's a year ago.) Not sure I fully buy their hype.

SpaceX has launched 360 sat's and is explicit that speed may NOT be high bandwidth (but may be low latency) which seems a more credible baseline given the theory (one sat covers a reasonable area).

I personally would love 4mbp/s ultra low latency to my parents across the country for video calls.

</comment><comment><USER9> > is mulling a possible bankruptcy filing to address a cash crunch as it > grapples with high costs and stiff competition, according to people with > knowledge of the preparations.

Blaming competition in an industry that doesn't exist is a bit much.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is a bit of a surprising day for this article to come out. In only a few hours there is going to be the third launch of OneWeb satellites. If successful, it will bring their total launched from 40 (34 of operational design) to 74. As far as I can tell they need 600 in orbit to start offering service.

</comment><comment><USER10> Why do I frequently see SoftBank in a lot of the bad news these last few months? Do they operate differently than most venture firms?

<comment><USER11> They were central to WeWork's drama

<comment><USER12> WeWork is going to be substantially affected by the COVID-19 pandemic too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> That would be too bad. Their constellation would have looked pretty cool: [https://space-search.io/?search=OneWeb](https://space- search.io/?search=OneWeb)</comment>


Why we're going back to NYC to build Tutorspree - <AUTHOR> http://www.aaronkharris.com/post/4597607168/alley-vs-valley-or-why-were-coming-home

<comment><USER2> I also think it will help that NYC has a very competitive private education environment. Many parents will do almost anything to get their kids on track to the Ivy Leagues, which obviously includes tutoring. Also, the fact that you are from there so your networks are more established there makes it a good choice. Best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> _We look at what we need in order to develop the next stage of Tutorspree - high density of students, focus on education, willingness to experiment with new technology and methods, design talent, engineering talent, etc. and we put that on the scale. For us, those factors all point to NYC as our optimal first market to conquer._

Funny, I look at those factors and think, "Boston".

<comment><USER4> I look at all those and think bay area or Boston. NYC has Columbia, NYU, CCNY/CUNY and some spill over from SUNY's versus Berkeley, Stanford, SFSU, CCSF, SJSU, UCSC, and a bunch of other smaller colleges.

Also, I can't imagine the living cost in NYC is really that much than SF/Silicon Valley. I mean, I pay $950/mo for a nice room in a decent house in SF, and even in Menlo Park I payed $750.

[http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/19/real_estate/housing_affordab...](http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/19/real_estate/housing_affordability_improves/index.htm?postversion=2009031607)

<comment><USER5> It really is that much more expensive here.

With stats like the ones in the article posted, you're incorporating a really geographically diverse area for NYC. Do the SF ones include Oakland? Here they're talking about way out in East New York, or East Flatbush BK, or the South Bronx. So sure, CNN says you can buy a house for $455k, but in any neighborhood you'd feel safe living in it's more like $600k for a smallish 1 or 2 bedroom co-op, and that's in the neighborhoods going through gentrification.

Rent is generally around $1500/month for a 1 bedroom in bed-stuy or up in east greenpoint. You can easily pay double for Manhattan.

Then there is the cost of everything else in the city. It really gets expensive quick!

<comment><USER4> Cheapest you get a 1BR apartment is maybe $1000-$1200 in Oakland or closer to the valley you can get some deals in East Palo Alto, but you'll probably be held up at gun point some time in your life (Two friends in North Oakland have been held up at gunpoint) In general though, $1700 for a decent 1BR except in SF, where it's probably closer to $2k.

Cheapest homes in East Palo Alto for sale will run $350k. Everywhere else is at least $500k for anything. The government locality pay difference for the GS pay scale in SF is 35% vs. 28% in New York/Newark.

I'm sure the city of SF is very comparable to NYC, although you can find some cheaper areas here, but you'll be living further away and commuting, same thing probably goes for NYC (and New Jersey for that matter)

<comment><USER5> Yeah, it seems like SF is very comparable to Brooklyn in prices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great post, glad you are coming back to NYC! Wanted to make a comment about your website. I think you overstate cost as a deciding factor for parents. Right now, visiting your website and searching for a tutor the cost and picture are the most highlighted factors about each tutor. From my experience tutoring for 5+ years, most people who seek a tutor for their kid (especially in test prep) care far more about the tutor's capabilities than price.

I've been meaning to write a blog post about this, but when I started my tutoring business I was very worried about what I charged. Nervously, I would bring it up at the beginning of early conversations with prospective parents. Later, I realized that parents really use those calls to establish competency. If they believe you are really competent they will pay double or triple the "average" price for your help. People consider tutoring, and especially test prep as investments, and like anyone else they care more about their ROI than their exact cost.

I think the focus for the search on Tutorspree should be on emphasizing competency. Especially for test prep. So, in the big box where price is now, it could show their applicable SAT/LSAT/GMAT score, and perhaps the number of students they have tutored before. Then it could have a one-liner like "Graduating cum laude with degrees in Mathematics and Economics" or whatever. This is addressing what the parents want (especially in ultra affluent and educationally attuned uptown Manhattan).

Even more importantly, it makes the tutors feel like they are competing on quality, not on price. This will encourage better tutors to come to your site. Top LSAT companies will pay a tutor $100+/hour and charge $250+/hour. In order for a great tutor to use your site they must feel like they have a chance to get paid at least equivalently. And, I think in the end the most likely way Tutorspree succeeds is by matching parents/students with incredible students.

</completely_unsolicited_advice>

Good luck again! I will be NYC based soon, and have worked as a tutor for many years. If you guys would like to bounce ideas off someone with that background, my email is in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER7> If you know of any exceptional engineers or designers, please let them know that we're hiring: jobs (at) tutorspree.com.

</comment><comment><USER8> Hey Aaron, loved the article, although my comment is unrelated. If you press cmd+ on your computer, it makes the font the perfect size. Might be good to increase it by 2-3px? Makes it a lot easier to read.

<comment><USER2> +1 I was going to post the same thing. I thought maybe it might just be my old age.

<comment><USER8> I'm 16, so I don't think so :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> solid advice. just fiddled the css over to make it easier to read. now i can stop squinting as well.

<comment><USER9> Also, for your post title to display properly, it looks like you need to make your h1 {line-height: 1.2em;}

cheers!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Seems like Tutorspree could really start in any city. One could use the same argument about AirBnB (a high density of available apartments), but it's still worked out well for them. However, if NYC is your personal preference, that's great. I'm in the area, and although I don't know what the tech scene is going to look like 5-10 years from now in the city, I'd love to see it grow and have NYC viewed as something other than the Capital of Finance (or Financial Wizardy).

<comment><AUTHOR> Agree that it could start in any city, but the question is more around what gives you the highest chance of success. AirBnB did focus heavily on particular places (NYC, in fact). Makes sense as they'd want to understand the dynamics of how they would grow, what would work, etc. on a knowable playing field before repeating that success in place after place.

At least, that's how we think about it.</comment></comment>


Show HN: A tiny Frinkiac and Morbotron client, written in Swift 3 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/KevinVitale/Frinkiac <comment><AUTHOR> In addition to the framework, the repo includes a fully working iMessage app that let's you send memes to your friends; and a macOS application that can search for, edit and send memes. Enjoy!

"A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man."</comment>


The Seattle Minimum Wage Study - <AUTHOR> http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/06/seattle-minimum-wage-study.html <comment><USER2> [http://www.epi.org/publication/the-high-road-seattle- labor-m...](http://www.epi.org/publication/the-high-road-seattle-labor-market- and-the-effects-of-the-minimum-wage-increase-data-limitations-and- methodological-problems-bias-new-analysis-of-seattles-minimum-wage-incr/)

[quote]The study excludes an important group of workers, representing roughly 40 percent of the workforce: those working for employers with businesses in multiple locations. By omitting all multi-location businesses, such as chains, in Seattle, the authors bias their results toward showing job loss if there has been a shift in employment from small, single-location establishments toward larger firms with multiple locations.[/quote]</comment>


Introducing HelloWorks - <AUTHOR> https://www.hellosign.com/products/helloworks <comment><USER2> It's interesting that the new thing that Dropbox, Box, and a bunch of enterprise companies are focusing on is the idea of automated workflows, smart data integration - turns out NO ONE wants the problem of PDFs, Excel spreadsheets, and integration with Salesforce - probably the same reason why there's so much focus on Cloud at Adobe. To be fair, ten years ago, the promise of the open web was supposed to solve all this... at least someone is moving into this direction. Congrats HelloSign team!

</comment><comment><USER3> As a satisfied HelloSign customer, I've been waiting for what seemed like an obvious addition to your product for a long time. Single forms and agreements are fine, but having those conform to our internal process flow makes for a much more useful tool.</comment>


Draw your own circuits with liquid metal - <AUTHOR> https://chembites.org/2019/09/10/draw-your-own-circuits-with-liquid-metal/ <comment><USER2> Very cool, though presumably very expensive given that it uses an alloy of indium and gallium!

</comment><comment><USER3> Will hydrogel absorb moisture from the environment?

</comment><comment><USER4> I want this yesterday!</comment>


Apple is reportedly building a '16K' VR headset - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/27/apple-is-reportedly-building-an-insane-16k-vr-headset/ <comment><USER2> I watched this rumor get bounced around the internet today, it's pretty hilarious how the facts get stretched every step of the way.

Claiming dual 8k displays (remember, 2 8k displays does not turn into a 16k display headset, because you need to double the height as well). From MacRumors: [https://www.macrumors.com/2018/04/27/apple-ar-vr- headset-8k-...](https://www.macrumors.com/2018/04/27/apple-ar-vr- headset-8k-displays/)

Further rumors claims it'll run a custom 5nm processor ([https://www.macworld.com/article/3269471/consumer- electronic...](https://www.macworld.com/article/3269471/consumer- electronics/report-apple-is-working-on-a-wireless-ar-vr-headset-to-release- in-2020.html)), even though there are currently NO fabs that can get 5nm.

Apple might be working on a VR headset, but I doubt these rumors are true.

<comment><USER3> > remember, 2 8k displays does not turn into a 16k display headset, because > you need to double the height as well

Do you? I suppose everything that doesn't match the traditional 16:9 aspect ratio we use _now_ is incorrect then? What about the fact that our displays were all 4:3 prior to that?

I guess it depends on whether we are considering 16k and 8k as something denoting specific _sets_ of height and width that are standardized, as we have started to do with 4k (which is usually talking about 3840x2160, to my knowledge, because nobody wants to say 2160p).

<comment><USER4> That wasn't an aspect ratio point, it was about the stereoscopic requirement of display headsets.

Both eyes see mostly the same "8K" of content, just from a different perspective.

edit: Actually that's not quite right, even if you forgo a stereoscopic mode, the same content has to be shown to each eye. It's not like having dual monitors on a desk.

<comment><USER3> > That wasn't an aspect ratio point, it was about the stereoscopic requirement > of display headsets.

Regardless of what's being shown, if the unit can display that many pixels in a row (possibly bifurcated), I don't think it's out of the question to refer to it that way. From a device-centric perspective, it's more accurate. From an "end-user that will use it primarily as a stereoscopic headset display" it's less accurate, even if that user may not be able to see all of the display space at once anyway(?).

> edit: Actually that's not quite right, even if you forgo a stereoscopic > mode, the same content has to be shown to each eye. It's not like having > dual monitors on a desk.

It's not the _same_ content if used for 3d. It is very similar content tough (possibly verging on being identical in what I suspect are rare instances).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well at 8k per eye (horizontal?) and 57pix/deg (retina resolution) that would be 140deg, which seems a bit of overkill (although it's close to max FOV). This is made especially difficult since latency is so critical to preventing VR nausea (120-180Hz). However, the bandwidth required to drive such (a pair) of displays would exceed 200Gbps (5 Thunderbolt per eye) so I assume going over the air there'd be a lot of compression? That's ignoring the GPU requirements which also scale... so seems like overkill.

More likely it's 8k total (4k per eye foveated rendering), and a single 20x9 display, but that's just a guess. You can do lots of things for a demo.

Edit- note the pictures are from MagicLeap and the idea that there are miniaturized high resolution microLED displays is pretty funny... perhaps they mean microOLED? Those top out below 8K even for max reticle size (30mm) die with 8um sub-pixels.

<comment><USER6> 8K with H.265 compression over WiGig could work.

And as for driving the displays it's possible today for a single 8K monitor. So maybe Apple has internal technology (or assumes the technology will improve) to drive dual displays.

<comment><USER7> Also, just because the screen is 8k doesn't mean the entire image needs to be rendered at 8k. They could track the eyes and render the focus point at native resolution while the periphery could be reduced (foveated rendering).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So it seems to me that Apple's MO is to wait for market proof before releasing anything. The iPod wasn't the first MP3 player. Ditto the iPhone and the iWatch.

I totally believe they're working on the technology. But I would bet that they'll wait to release anything until other people have demonstrated that a real, non-novelty market exists, so that they can come in with a much more polished solution than everybody else.

(Unless I'm missing something, of course. I keep looking for a user base where a VR headset is a daily driver. But as far as I can tell, it's still in the early adopter realm. Which is fine, but I don't think it provides a situation where Apple can polish something into a mainstream hit.)

<comment><USER9> If a VR headset could replace my monitor I'd use it for programming.

<comment><USER8> That's an interesting hypothetical use case. But my point is that Apple doesn't really build for hypothetical use cases. What they're really good is finding niche existing use cases and then making great consumer products out of them.

So I wouldn't expect Apple to enter the "VR as monitor replacement" market until there's already a bunch of early-adopter types who are wearing goggles 8 hours a day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Rumor has it that it'll work seamlessly with your Apple Car and Apple TV set as well.

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't think Apple would release a VR headset until they could call the resolution "retina". I don't know what that translates to in terms of pixel resolution but with the screen only a few centimetres away from the eyes, it would need to be pretty high.

<comment><USER12> Retina has as much technical meaning as high res

<comment><USER13> Apple gave it a specific definition. It means you can't see the pixels, and for the average human, you can calculate it per a given screen distance.

<comment><USER12> I can't see individual pixels on my 1080p screen 18" away although 4k screens certainly look sharper. Also the term retina has been used on ranges of dpi even on the same category of device.

Because retina is a brand meaning nicer display anything else is purely marketing kool aid having nothing to do with reality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> One thing for sure: they are working on something really big, and have been for some time now. Apple believes in focusing on things that matter, often to the exclusion of everything else. When they get real quiet and only release minimal spec bump upgrades you know something big is coming. That said, there's no way this will be 16k right off the bat. By third gen, maybe, but not right off the bat.

<comment><USER15> IMHO, they have simply bought Vrvana and let them work further, for who knows which time targets. And even if those working on the experiments have fixed and shorter-time goals, it doesn't mean that a finished product will actually be delivered to the market. But the rumors spread, which is in the interest of a lot of media:

[https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/21/apple-acquires-mixed- reali...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/21/apple-acquires-mixed-reality- headset-startup-vrvana-for-30m/)

Additionally, typically the "other players" in the given field like to support the rumors that what they want to deliver is also "the next thing from Apple" too. More than once I've read claims that "Apple is producing" the features of iPhone that more matched the short-time next that was released by Samsung then what Apple actually produced, typically much later, even some years later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've read that reality is around 88 million pixles. This gives you around 33m pixels per eye. Getting close, although I think you also need some fantastic frame rates and contrast ratios, the obviously some pretty powerful computers rendering all of this. It seems like we have to make 4-6 major technology steps to get where we want to be, each taking 2-3 years.

</comment><comment><USER17> Believe it when I see it.

<comment><USER18> that's not really hard to believe...

<comment><USER17> Like the car and TV and the new thing each couple of weeks that never happens?

<comment><USER18> I think that you meant the new battery with 10x the capacity of lithium-ion batteries...

But in this case I have no trouble believing...

Apple need an edge somewhere... they were the first to come up with retina display, afterall...

<comment><USER17> Apple did not create the retina display. They purchased the displays.

Still true today they buy them.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Your opinion of Bootstrap - <AUTHOR>

Reading the other HN posts about boostrap there seems to be a divide in the community that I struggle to understand.
Some love it (https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap 52k stars!), others hate it. Reading these posts does nothing in helping me decide whether my next projects should use it.
Whats the current consensus of bootstrap among the HN community? <comment><USER3> 6 years ago, in a pizza restaurante with many developers on Barcelona I said we needed a Bootstrap project. I said we needed this as a foundation to develop things without to deal the countless hours of fixing vendor stuff, calculating things and such. Everyone looked at me annoyed.

I remember one guy said to me "that's for gays". "A developer must do all from 0 or he will not learn". And also "I don't need that kind of help".

6 years later I created over these years around 5 HTML/CSS frameworks using the same patterns, maybe changing the classes names to avoid propietarie code jealousy and all the yada yada. I did what Bootstrap is, over and over again.

Now I use Bootstrap when I start a new project. I know Bootstrap like if I've made it. I have no regrets of this. The framework is friendly named, it's well documented, maybe it's a bit over designed (I have to kill buttons styles over and over) but in the end it's a solid foundation of semantic HTML with cool LESS stylesheets.

We can argue many things about frameworks, but in the end, HTML and CSS are piece of cake languages and anyone who's working seriously and know the problems of code maintenance know well the pains of not having a good code foundation, a good documentation and a fixed process to make something and not making a big spaghetti code ball.

I've been in projects with CSS files that defined at least 4 layout grids. I'm so happy not dealing that again.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've loved Bootstrap since 2011 - it's well established, it fulfills it's purpose and adds some extra niceties on top. Lately though; I've started to appreciate semantic HTML.

I'm not a purist, but I definitely don't want to be seeing '.grid-x' style class names in my markup. Markup is meant to explain the content, not the presentation. That's one reason.

Here's another: While it is presumably simple to just use their LESS mixins to achieve a more semantic and customized site, Bootstrap's main target market is not those who use preprocessors - their call to action is a download button for the .zip of the compiled CSS, so that developers who don't necessarily use CSS preprocessors still have access to the tools.

This gives Bootstrap a competitive edge of some sort, as more developers can easily get started using it. As a result of this decision, though - <USER2> developers have to resort to overwriting the actual CSS to customize anything, and even then, there are still traces of the Bootstrap default styles left over, making it very easy to spot a Bootstrap website. Due to the project's popularity - a lot of these websites end up looking remarkably similar to each other.

If I'm working on a huge project, I will use a different kind of CSS framework (my favourite one at the moment is [http://roots.cx/axis](http://roots.cx/axis) in combination with [http://jeetframework.com](http://jeetframework.com)). If it's a quick hackathon project, a mockup/wireframe or simply just a weekend project for fun or learning, then I'd use Bootstrap.

<comment><USER5> I have to agree. I couldn't have said it better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Bootstrap's initial intention was both not to lose time with webdesign when building _back office_ applications and to have a consistant design in _back office_ applications.

This is the reason why I think it's a great tool for any back office need, but not so great for front.

To me, Bootstrap feels like it's supposed to be used as-is. I love Bootstrap, it saves be a lot of time. But when I need a framework for front, I much prefer Foundation, which was meant to facilitate designing websites for Zurb's clients.

</comment><comment> workhere-io Be sure to check out alternatives such as Foundation ([http://foundation.zurb.com](http://foundation.zurb.com)).

</comment><comment><USER7> From my view it had a very large impact. Every new project I see, regardless of the background of the people, it bootstrapped with Bootstrap.

In addition, sites like Wrapbootstrap make it very cheap to get away from the default look.

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't know if there is any consensus. I think that mastering it will improve the average developer's CSS skills and taste. After that, a developer should be creating custom builds of Bootstrap and only using it where it is needed. No one should ever use it as the front of a website unless they are committed to completely reskinning it.

</comment><comment><USER9> As SteveJalim below said, don't bother asking, just do it :) I personally love bootstrap as I am not a great designer and can save lot of time, which is my main priority since I am building a one man company. If this means, having a site similar to thousands other with same buttons and login pages, I can live with it.

</comment><comment><USER10> > Reading these posts does nothing in helping me decide whether my next > projects should use it.

No snark intended, but asking HN probably isn't going to give you a useful answer anyway. Why not just build something simple/disposable with it? It's more about bootstrap + you than bootstrap + random HNers

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, I appreciate the advice. I was considering switching the front end of my site over to bootstrap for compatibility and to save time (its custom css/jqueryui at the moment). Maybe I'll create a clone of it in bootstrap and see how it goes before making a decision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I find it great for prototyping. Once things start to get more detailed though I start writing more of my own CSS to fine-tune things.

</comment><comment><USER12> I dig bootstrap but hate when sites use that blue focus on text fields.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've seen _so_ many sites that are just the bootstrap template, vanilla CSS. It looks terribly ugly. I mean it's alright if you're prototyping, you don't want to waste time coding boring ole html and css if your focus is entirely on something else.

I hate it when people use it lazily. I love it when people customize it and truly make it beautiful to a point where you can't tell its bootstrap, which is the entire point seeing as its a framework.</comment>


Ask HN: Best password manager for teams? - <AUTHOR> I've been tasked with researching password managers for my team. I would appreciate thoughts and recommendations from fellow techies.
We have over a hundred customers, each with their own various account/server/infrastructure credentials. Currently, each engineer assigned to an account stores credentials in their own password manager (1Password or LastPass, up to the individual's preference). However, we ran into a few situations where the engineer was on vacation and their customers ran into support issues, and lack of access to credentials caused delays. So we decided we need a way of storing credentials in a shared vault.
We are a team of 6, but growing. We use Windows and Macs. Security and usability (in that order) are the most important factors. Price isn't a concern.
Also, I'd be interested in hearing the challenges and "gotchas" people have experienced when migrating to and using these types of solutions.
Thanks in advance. :) <comment><USER2> Similar thread from recent: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18381386](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18381386)

1Password would get my vote, just use shared vaults for client access.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://1password.com/teams/](https://1password.com/teams/)</comment>


Amazon Cracks Down on Sales of Shoddy USB-C Cables - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcmag.com/news/343304/amazon-cracks-down-on-sales-of-shoddy-usb-c-cables <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11387212](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11387212)</comment>


Show HN: Online Accounting Software with End-To-End Encryption - <AUTHOR> https://vaultaccounts.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Lead developer here. This is Windows/Mac desktop software which encrypts data locally using a symmetric AES/CBC cipher before storing it to the cloud. In addition we use Secure Remote Password protocol so the server never has access to the user's password.

End-to-end encryption is enabled by default - this provides a very strong layer of security but the downside is that we cannot recover the user's login credentials if the user forgets them. We recommend users write down their User ID and a password hint on a piece of paper and store it somewhere safe (or alternatively disable end-to-end encryption, which allows us to reset the user's login credentials).

The current version is designed for the UK market, but we are looking at producing a US version soon.

Feedback welcome.</comment>


360 Video and Photo Capture in 4K for Three.js - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/imgntn/j360 <comment><USER3> You might be interested in some code I wrote to write the image meta data for Facebook/Flickr etc. directly via JavaScript when you save the image instead of using something external like exiftool.

I capture scenes from Second Life and let you view them using three.js - <USER2> added an option to export an equirectangular image that has the embedded meta- data I mentioned so you can upload it directly to Facebook etc. and it;ll work.

Example here: [http://callumprentice.github.io/apps/360_snapshot_viewer/ind...](http://callumprentice.github.io/apps/360_snapshot_viewer/index.html) \- click on the "twirly arrow" icon at the top :)

Code is here: [https://github.com/callumprentice/callumprentice.github.io/t...](https://github.com/callumprentice/callumprentice.github.io/tree/master/apps/360_snapshot_viewer)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, definitely! I'd love to remove the manual metadata step for the photos. I looked at writing the exif XMP data but had trouble sorting it out -- your code looks great, thanks for the lead!

<comment><USER3> hey james - have a look around here: [https://github.com/callumprentice/callumprentice.github.io/b...](https://github.com/callumprentice/callumprentice.github.io/blob/master/apps/360_snapshot_viewer/js/jpeg_encoder_basic.js#L600)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm continually amazed at the things you can do with three.js. It's such a robust library, and to me, it's the empitome of open source JS done right. Keep up the good work.

</comment><comment><USER5> Amazing what webgl can do, my computer is still an absolute piece of crap I was only able to capture like 7 frames in the span of a few minutes trying to get something to happen.

<comment><USER5> Awesome, then just bridge it with Google Cardboard, I don't know when VR will be the next must-have appliance like a TV or Computer.</comment></comment>


Differentiable Programming for Image Processing and Deep Learning in Halide - <AUTHOR> https://people.csail.mit.edu/tzumao/gradient_halide/ <comment><USER2> I don't understand differentiable programming. If conditions and while loops, they are not differentiable, right?

How to handle those?</comment>


Oracle ejb cloud - omw - <AUTHOR> http://www.oracle.com/newsletters/information-indepth/fusion-middleware/nov-09/cloud.html?msgid=8308548&eid=3915289699&lid=2

<comment><USER2> Oracle Weblogic Suite 11g, Identity Management 11g, Webcenter Suite 11g, JDeveloper, Fusion Middleware, Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition and SOA Cloud

Sucking all the joy out of the cloud experience(TM)

</comment><comment><USER3> What happened to Larry Ellison and his recent cloud related statements ?

If it's the 'cloud' hosted by the competition it's bad but if it is Oracle and hosted on your own hardware it's good ?</comment>


And for His Next Act, Ev Williams Will Fix the Internet - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/09/business/ev-williams-twitter-medium.html <comment><USER2> > In social media's early days, Mr. Williams said, "addiction was the goal."

> "Not in the cigarette sense — it wasn't as cynical," he added. "It was just > a game, like: 'This is fun. How do we make it more fun and addictive?'"

> But he is not convinced that the problems with social platforms can ever be > fully solved, nor does he believe it's entirely incumbent upon tech > companies to solve them. Ultimately, Mr. Williams said, it will be up to > users to choose, and stick to, their own information diets.

Sounds a lot more like cigarette companies than Williams thinks.

They, too, tend to operate under a philosophy of, "Hey, we're just giving people a CHOICE to smoke tobacco. Why blame us if people take us up on it?"

<comment><USER3> You can't make big money on the Internet by being honest.

<comment><USER4> Optimistically I'd like to think you can but there's always more to be made if you're not.

<comment><USER3> We have 25 years of .com history to reflect upon, surely there should be some obvious examples by now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oh, now he's fixing it, not salvaging it?

May last year in NY Times: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/technology/evan- williams-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/technology/evan-williams- medium-twitter-internet.html)

<comment><USER6> Ev Williams is one of the great entrepreneural scammer of our time. He is gifted master of bootstrapping same old run of the mill blogging web sites slapped with ultra-gradios vision and then sell it to deep pocketed buyers while leaving his user base high and dry. His tech is almost always subpar, ideas half backed, business model broken but he gets billions anyway for his ability to generate massive followers out of thin air. I suppose Medium is up for sale. The idea of paid premium content has been tried so many times... Someone needs to make a case study of how he does bootstrapping.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Fix"? With Medium? They replace free blogs with a site where you have to pay to read them.

 _People like you helping people like us help themselves._

<comment><USER8> Not to mention Medium is reader hostile with all the _stuff_ they put on the screen.

<comment><USER9> Since I started using the Web Annoyances Ultralist[1], sites like medium blogs became extremely minimalist. I recommend it

[1] [https://github.com/yourduskquibbles/webannoyances](https://github.com/yourduskquibbles/webannoyances)

<comment><USER10> Firefox Reader View works well for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's worth noting that this profile was published at about the same time Medium started cutting off publisher memberships: [http://www.niemanlab.org/2018/05/medium-abruptly-cancels- the...](http://www.niemanlab.org/2018/05/medium-abruptly-cancels-the- membership-programs-of-its-21-remaining-publisher-partners/)

The NYTimes author's response: [https://twitter.com/kevinroose/status/994634637451415601](https://twitter.com/kevinroose/status/994634637451415601)

> Gotten a lot of smart criticism since this piece ran. Agree that @ev's grand > plans should be evaluated in light of Medium's history of sudden strategy > shifts and the writers/publishers who get hurt by them.

</comment><comment><USER12> >As a co-founder of Blogger and Twitter and, more recently, as the chief executive of the digital publishing platform Medium, Mr. Williams transformed the way millions of people publish and consume information online.

>But as his empire grew, he started to get a gnawing feeling that something wasn't right. High-quality publishers were losing out to sketchy clickbait factories.

How anyone can write these three sentences in that order without their head exploding from irony is beyond me. Medium is just Upworthy with a shave and a breath mint.

<comment><USER13> Not an irony

Seems a perfect example of modern media...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Like many tech executives, Ev's view is that it's up to users to demand more from social media algorithms and tech products:

> But he is not convinced that the problems with social platforms can ever be > fully solved, nor does he believe it's entirely incumbent upon tech > companies to solve them. ... [It] will be up to users to choose, and stick > to, their own information diets.

This echoes FB's VP of Ads, Rob Goldman, who blamed lack of media literacy and Benedict Evans at a16z, who argued that engagement must be king at FB.* To me, this feels remarkably self serving.

Regardless, I made an engineer media literacy guide to encourage a shift in user behavior, and contributions are welcome:

[https://github.com/nemild/hack-an-engineer](https://github.com/nemild/hack- an-engineer)

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

* [https://twitter.com/robjective/status/964680128092504065](https://twitter.com/robjective/status/964680128092504065)

* [https://www.nemil.com/s/benedict-evans.html](https://www.nemil.com/s/benedict-evans.html) (my response to Benedict Evan's post)

</comment><comment><USER15> Theres an interview (iirc) with him in Tim Ferris's Tribe of Mentors. He said something that stuck with me, that made me think slightly less of him.

I'm trying to recall from memory here since the book isn't in front of me.

He's talking about selling his first company, its all about making hard choices and such. The company is dying so he had two options either sell the company now (for a smaller amount) or fire most of the staff and sell later. He mentions how he had to let go of the staff but later sold it for a larger amount of money. He then says something to the degree of considering it a "win".

I don't know that I consider laying off a ton of people for a greater exit a win. I consider it a move to get more money, but I doubt anyone chasing money is going to "fix the internet".

<comment><USER16> Business is business, it's not personal. What should concern you is his attitude in thinking that he knows best for everyone. He's created a lot of toxic environments, most notably Twitter, that would go a long way in cleaning up the internet.

<comment><USER17> "Business is business, it's not personal."

OK, Laurie Bream...

Culturally, thankfully, it seems the negative outcomes from this attitude are on display right now. Mainstream life is very partitioned, dissociated, maybe. I think of my parents who can't stand BLM protests at football games because "there's no place for politics at work." #metoo is somehow related here, too.

The walls are coming down; I believe we need to take a more holistic approach to life to truly survive, succeed, and thrive. I'm sorry if this sounds a little scattered to the more thinking-oriented type, as I'm more of a feeling/intuitive personality myself.

<comment><USER18> I'm explaining this to myself as much as anyone else, but the end-result of "Business is business, it's not personal." is AI / Machines continuing the business at the expense of all human employees resulting in massively efficient business and corporations that slowly congeal into a single mega- corporation that does all products end-to-end, and then attempting to sell these products to the humans who no longer have any money because none of them have any work to earn it.

Heyyyy, it's just Business. Capiche?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why don't he fix medium or twitter first? This guy talks a lot.

<comment><USER20> Twitter is kind of amazing as an example of something that was never fixed and never will be fixed [0], yet has managed to survive for many years.

[0] e.g. the problems with harassment that existed in the first year still exist and indeed have never been curtailed in any way...

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This article rings hollow with how Medium has slipped down in to the pit of unending, user-hostile A/B tests meant to increase "engagement" and sign ups. I absolutely _hate_ medium now.

</comment><comment><USER22> Each time I end up on one of the medium-based articles I get dizzy - I get bombarded with full-screen nag screen and after closing it roughly 1/3-1/2 of the screen is hidden behind fixed navbar (often) and another nag-bar to sign- up.

Really - I do miss old days where blogs/articles were, to put it weirdly "simplistic" (tech-wise)

</comment><comment><USER23> > High-quality publishers were losing out to sketchy clickbait factories. > Users were spending tons of time on social media, but they weren't > necessarily happier or better informed. Platforms built to empower the > masses were rewarding extremists and attention seekers instead.

In order to believe that technology will solve the problem, you have to also believe that technology is the problem. It's not, though. We are the problem.

We were already extremists and attention seekers. Social media just amplified that. Any platform, no matter how set up, will be gamed to take advantage of human nature.

</comment><comment><USER6> Ev Williams personal paid PR piece aside, it is actually possible to solve the problem: have it done by large company as in "free parking" model.

</comment><comment><USER24> This highlights the dangers of booking your future on the back of another company. Enthusiasm for partnerships comes and goes.

Could it be that Ev's best moments are behind him?

</comment><comment><USER25> "It [technology] creates feedback loops that can fundamentally change the nature of how people interact and societies move (in ways that probably none of us predicted)."

1) Marxists have been writing about this for decades...

2) Ev Williams seems to think that moving (back) to a subscription model is the right move. It's not, and it's kind of an archaic model (even though it's still widely used). I'd argue the best business model for authors and content creators at this point in time is the Twitch model. While it shares similarities to a traditional subscription model, it goes above and beyond that. The biggest difference is that a subscription is optional though is incentivized through other means (ie: access to a creator's Discord server, custom emojis, merch giveaways, etc). There is no barrier for access to content. Users get to opt in to financially supporting creators, but are not required to. It combines the best of both an ad-based model and a subscription model by allowing ads on free content and removing them for subscribers.

This is similar to YouTube Red, but I think where YouTube went wrong is that a subscription is for the whole platform, not for specific creators. Many would rather individually support the creators that they enjoy and not support the one they dislike (which is why many creators on YouTube get financial support from consumers through other platforms such as Patreon, tours, MAGs, and merchandise sales).

3) Look at how other companies are changing their business models and the way they publish content and how it affects the way they are perceived. You have networks like Viceland that started out posting a bunch of web series on YouTube and then they decided to try being a cable network and in the process alienated a large number of their viewer base. They are becoming perceived as a network for millennials run by your grandparents. Myself and many others that I know used to watch many of their web series, but now don't because we don't want to pay for a cable subscription just to watch a few shows on a single network. At the same time, you have traditional cable networks posting clips and sometimes full episodes of their shows on YouTube making a cable subscription even less exclusive or valuable. Lastly, you have other services that allow users to illegally stream copyrighted material for free. These services wouldn't exist if there wasn't a barrier to entry from the source of the content they are streaming.

</comment><comment><USER26> I think social media critics forget the days when everyone felt like they were wasting their life obsessively checking their email or refreshing the news. This has been there from the beginning. The only difference now is that we pretend there's someone to blame other than ourselves. As evidence, here's the history of Randall Monroe dealing with internet addiction in his comics.

[https://xkcd.com/862/](https://xkcd.com/862/) [https://xkcd.com/597/](https://xkcd.com/597/) [https://xkcd.com/187/](https://xkcd.com/187/) [https://xkcd.com/77/](https://xkcd.com/77/)

</comment><comment><USER27> Read "Ev Williams" and thought of "Evan Williams" the bourbon and was like I don't see how the maker of a cheap alcohol is going to help fix the internet.</comment>