Ask HN: Next-Generation Version Control? - <AUTHOR> I've been thinking, given that GitHub was recently acquired, now might be the right time to consider a better/new form of version control. Here's one idea, and I'm curious what people think about it.
The concept is: magic git. You just write code, and a background service handles backup/sync (ala Dropbox), assembling commits, and interacting with a git server (either GitHub or other). No more pain from wrestling with git, you can just write your code.
There is obviously a ton of complexity here: merging, code reviews, CI, etc., but the basic idea is to handle as much of the goo around versioning as smartly as possible without taking mental energy from the developer, and expose those advanced/custom controls when needed.
What do you think? Is this the right direction for version control to go? Would you use this service? <comment><USER2> Look for forms of development that are poorly served.

For instance, version control of Jupyter notebooks is deeply problematic because the data is coupled to the document. There is no answer to this that makes people 100% happy because maybe the data requires talking w/ compliance for months, then accessing it over a special network, then waiting 12 hours for the export scripts to run. (Or something like that...)

I would also look at how version control meshes with low-code, no-code, visual programming, UML-like systems, rules engines, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think data management could be improved a lot. A common pattern is to have a data object that's generated from the source and other data objects, but is too expensive for everyone to regenerate whenever they recompile. Machine learning models are a common example, but video game development also has things like 3D models, textures, audio files, etc.

You can make it all work with git, git-lfs, CI servers and lots of typing, but it's tedious and error-prone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed! Definitely something that could be improved with existing version control. I do like the "git for non-code items", including for these code- related bits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Git is already incredibly smart about merging things — what kind of improvements do you propose to make in this regard? In certain cases it simply isn't possible to automatically merge things, they require external knowledge.

In general, with the current tools provided by VSTS, Gitlab etc (Github is lagging behind a bit here), I don't think most developers on generic codebases have much trouble with versioning.

<comment><AUTHOR> Regarding merging: hard to say. Possibly, if you have the ability to check for conflicts with each file touch across machines, you could in theory resolve/identify conflicts earlier. But that's a guess.

The main premise was to remove the pain of git, and it's possible that, as you say, it's not a big enough pain point!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> To me the biggest problem github and similar platforms have is censorship. I don't want Microsoft or anyone else to have a power to remove any repository. Wouldn't it be great to have a peer-to-peer git server to share and clone git repositories via something like magnet links? UI could be just another tool that you use in addition to git, possibly eventually integrated into it.

<comment><USER6> git is already a distributed, peer-to-peer system

<comment><USER5> It's not a peer-to-peer system. You have to both publish repositories somewhere and clone them from there, not from peers.

<comment><USER6> You can clone from any copy of the repo, regardless of where it is. You can setup, push, and pull from any number of 'remote's. It could be a DNS record, ip address, or local directory.

i.e. GitHub/Lab or some centralized repo is not required.

[https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-on-the-Server-The-Protoco...](https://git- scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-on-the-Server-The-Protocols)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git)

<comment><USER5> It cannot be a magnet link. And I think you are confusing client-server with peer-to-peer communications. What can be done without touching git is some software running locally doing peer-to-peer and speaking git's protocol, git can then use local ip address as a remote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't know how I'm going to assemble commits, and while a computer can often work out what a user can't, this doesn't feel like one of those areas. After each code block that passes CI testing including documentation? The first step would be a language neutral version of Rail's Rspec + Guard.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder if it would make sense to roll the entire development environment into it: code, data schema, programming editor/config, key os settings... something along the lines of Time Machine but with "markers" which allow you to flag points of progress that can be examined and diffed later.</comment>


Ask HN: What alternatives to Powerpoint/Prezi are there? - <AUTHOR> I'm doing a lot of teaching and I've been using PowerPoint. I recently saw some people use Prezi and liked what they were able to do to map concepts visually to make them easier to understand. Unfortunately, it looks like a lot of the features that made Prezi powerful have been neutered in Prezi Next and isn't able to do a lot of what I'm looking for (no path editing, no infinite canvas, etc). What alternatives are there?<p>Some requirements for me:<p>* WYSIWIG editor * Tutorials * Infinite canvas/Path editing <comment><USER3> [https://slides.com/](https://slides.com/)

Is a commercial SaaS GUI for reveal.js: [http://lab.hakim.se/reveal- js/#/](http://lab.hakim.se/reveal-js/#/)

I'm a paying customer, and find it useful. Where possible, I create slides using standard open source reveal.js (or often some markdown format that compiles to it) but sometimes I'll want to do something that's easier with a GUI, or just run out of time/interest for _design-from-the-command-line_.

It's easy to export decks to HTML, and the auto-generated code is pretty clean and sane, as these things go.

Additionally, the CEO of the company is the maintainer of reveal.js, so buying the product saustains his work in the open source library. You can also write to him with bugs and requests, he's keen to listen and responsive. Thanks, Hakim!

<comment><USER4> I'm a huge fan of reveal.js. Everytime I've used it, people ask what I used to make the slides.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is anyone thinking beyond slides? We need to demand more from our presentational tools. I'd like to have these features:

Interactive slide elements like simulations, parametrized graphs, shells for SSH and interpreted languages.

Mobile interface served for audience so they can participate in quizzes, voting and interactive experiments.

Branching flows of presentation, so you can dive into more details on one branch, or skim through it on other branch (without running through slides franticly).

Free style presentation where some presenter zooms in and out of tree representation of our knowledge of the presentation subject.

Support for separate presenter's user interface - presenter should be able to easily cue the laughing track, or theatrically raise music volume, or see audience feedback.

Both Prezi and reveal.js and some other tools I've seen, add too much design fluff and fail to deliver any fresh approach. PowerPoint is stagnating for a looong while. Which is really the shame, because we could engage our audience so much better with right tools.

<comment><USER6> You've just described Articulate Storyline and/or Adobe Captivate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> org-mode with beamer output. For me there are a couple of large benefits:

\- You can include LaTeX directly in documents and preview LaTeX inline in Emacs. This is not restricted to LaTeX math, but any kind of LaTeX environment. I often use this for including TikZ figures.

\- You can include snippets of code in your document, execute them inline and include the results in your presentation. For instance, you can use this to include graphs using gnuplot, R, or matplotlib. Moreover, you can use tables org-mode tables as input to these code fragments.

\- You can use tags for headers/slides. I often use this to generate two different slide decks: one that I put on the website before the lecture and a second one with solutions for me to use during the lecture.

\- org-mode is a markup language that is similar to Markdown, so it is generally less work to write than LaTeX.

\- Like LaTeX and Markdown, you can put everything under version control.

<comment><USER8> Whoa. That sounds divine. Not trying to start a war here, but is there a way to do this kind of thing in vim? I've heard about evil move and spacemacs but never looked into either all that much.

<comment><USER7> I don't think there is currently something as extensive as org-mode in vim. vim can also not render equations/figures inline.

evil is a pretty good vi. I have been a vim user for ~two decades. I used Spacemacs as the gateway drug to Emacs, but have since built my own configuration from scratch (I was fed up with the general slowness of Spacemacs).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Google slides is pretty good and free, I'm surprised nobody mentioned it already

<comment><USER10> The portability and co-working capabilities just can't really be matched easily, as far as i know. It's really a great tool

<comment><USER11> The fact that it is cloud-based and therefore requires an Internet connection means it is the opposite of "portable" for me. When I go to client meetings and have to deliver a presentation, I can't assume I will be connected to the Internet. That's why I use PowerPoint.

<comment><USER9> I usually export/download Google Slides as a PDF to avoid any issues during important meetings

This avoids any issues with software not loading / messing up (powerpoint) too.

<comment><USER12> I really like using Google Slides, and whenever I had a presentation, I would just download in all different formats for PowerPoint, so that I cover the compatibility issues, but I have encountered that the PowerPoint export didn't look the same as the Google Slides one, so I highly recommend check the files before leaving your PC!

<comment><USER13> Isn't that really a problem with PowerPoint as well? If you e.g. use a font that isn't available on the computer you use to present. PDF export solves this, typically.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> After some googling, I found out how one can enable Prezi classic on an account that only has Prezi Next.

Make sure you're logged into your Prezi account, then go to this link: [https://prezi.com/instant-prezi](https://prezi.com/instant-prezi) An editor or a 404 page may appear. Either way, Prezi classic is now enabled. You can access your dashboard again on the top right and switch between the two products in a drop down on the left.

Source: [https://prezibase.com/activate-prezi-classic- account/](https://prezibase.com/activate-prezi-classic-account/)

</comment><comment><USER15> If you're demonstrating any code, I find RISE to be magnificent. It's a plugin for Jupyter Notebooks that lets you present your code via reveal.js

Project: [https://github.com/damianavila/RISE](https://github.com/damianavila/RISE) Original demo at PyCon: [https://youtu.be/rBS6hmiK-H8](https://youtu.be/rBS6hmiK-H8)

</comment><comment><USER16> Keynote for iCloud (the web-based version of iWork's Keynote) has close-to- feature-parity with the macOS/iOS versions.

Additionally, Keynote Live allows you to play a presentation and have viewers join via a URL, where they can view the presentation in sync on any device (macOS/iOS/Web), with feature parity to normal Keynote presentations.

[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206205](https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT206205)

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't know if this satisfies your infinite canvas requirement, but I've used [https://slides.com/](https://slides.com/) quite a bit. Similar to reveal.js.

edit: as pointed out elsewhere in the thread, "slides.com is a front-end for reveal.js, made by the authors of reveal."

<comment><USER18> Yea it's not as fancy, but I really like reveal.js. I do presentations at Python, Scala and Ruby meetups based on the same project, and I have a reveal.js project set up so I can easily build slides:

[https://github.com/bigsense/presentations](https://github.com/bigsense/presentations)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Spectacle is pretty nice. Supports 3rd party extensions. Supports markdown. Split presenter and presentation views. Themes.

[https://github.com/FormidableLabs/spectacle](https://github.com/FormidableLabs/spectacle)

</comment><comment><USER20> How about Sozi? its an extension for inkscape - [http://sozi.baierouge.fr/](http://sozi.baierouge.fr/)

<comment><USER21> This is pretty fascinating, the about page sums it up [http://sozi.baierouge.fr/pages/10-about.html](http://sozi.baierouge.fr/pages/10-about.html) .

Guessing it may also be possible to do some of the heavy lifting in another vector drawing app (e.g. sketch) then finish the presentation aspects in Inkscape/Sozi

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Figma ([https://www.figma.com](https://www.figma.com)) is probably a perfect fit for your use case. It's an interface design tool but it can also be used for presentations. Benefits:

* Free for individual use

* Completely cross-platform (browser-based)

* Has an infinite canvas

* Has advanced path editing

* Has a presentation mode for slides (the play button)

* Supports simultaneous real-time editing if you need to work with someone else

<comment><USER23> Looks really interesting. Thanks for this. How do you make it useful for slides? Each slide is one UI mockup?

</comment></comment><comment> Ruud-v-A While it does not solve your use case, others here might find it interesting: I built a domain-specific language for designing slides ([https://github.com/ruuda/pris#readme](https://github.com/ruuda/pris#readme)). It is superficially similar to LaTeX/Beamer/TikZ, but it has first-class graphics that are reusable. More motivation in this blog post: [https://ruudvanasseldonk.com/2017/04/27/a-language-for- desig...](https://ruudvanasseldonk.com/2017/04/27/a-language-for-designing- slides). It is still basic, but I have used it a few times to do slides nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER24> I remember seeing this on product hunt a while back and it looks awesome: [https://ludus.one/?ref=producthunt](https://ludus.one/?ref=producthunt)

<comment><USER25> did you test it? how is it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> BigPicture might be what you're looking for: [http://bigpicture.bi/demo](http://bigpicture.bi/demo)

* Infinite canvas

* Infinite zooming

* WYSIWIG

* Demo

* Opensource: [https://github.com/josephernest/bigpicture.js](https://github.com/josephernest/bigpicture.js)

If you zoom on some vegetables here [http://bigpicture.bi/Legumes](http://bigpicture.bi/Legumes) you'll find the recipe :)

<comment><USER27> that big picture website is hardly usable on an iPad.

<comment><USER26> Mobile not supported for now.

But on the other hand, there's nearly no equivalent tool available nowadays ;)

<comment><USER28> What about sketchboard.io?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> There's Strut, which is WYSIWIG and has path editing: [http://strut.io/](http://strut.io/)

I'm running a fork with some very minor improvements at [https://www.airbornos.com/demo#open=strut](https://www.airbornos.com/demo#open=strut). If you make an account there, they're saved in the cloud.

</comment><comment><USER30> If you want LaTex, then take a look at this tool @ LucidChart LaTex support- [https://store.office.com/en- ca/app.aspx?assetid=WA104380118&...](https://store.office.com/en- ca/app.aspx?assetid=WA104380118&sourcecorrid=095ef28a-a06c-4e6a-8396-6900a894e26d&searchapppos=5&ui=en- US&rs=en-CA&ad=CA&appredirect=false) \- Word (free & paid) Lucidchart is an HTML5-based visual collaboration tool that makes drawing diagrams fast and easy. Easily create and insert flowcharts and other diagrams in Office documents. One of the supported "chart types" is LaTex equations.

I've only played with it a little and was really impressed.

I've been reading about Tableau, have not tried it [http://www.clearlyandsimply.com/clearly_and_simply/tableau/](http://www.clearlyandsimply.com/clearly_and_simply/tableau/)

How about Sway? It is still very much in development. And the last I heard it has one serious shortcoming. The sway files must stay on the internet,no downloading. (that may have been fixed ...?)

Office Sway is a presentation program and is part of the Microsoft Office family of products. Generally released by Microsoft in August 2015, Sway allows users who have a Microsoft account to combine text and media to create a presentable website. Users can pull content locally from the device in use, or from internet sources such as Bing, Facebook, OneDrive, and YouTube. More at "Wikipedia"

Take a look at Ellen Finkelsteins site. She does some amazing stuff with PowerPoint [http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/](http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/) \- Ellen Finkelstein is a PowerPoint MVP

[http://www.pptalchemy.co.uk/Hidden_pivots.html](http://www.pptalchemy.co.uk/Hidden_pivots.html)

</comment><comment><USER31> [https://godoc.org/golang.org/x/tools/present](https://godoc.org/golang.org/x/tools/present)

</comment><comment><USER32> Overhead projector + transparencies

<comment><USER33> finger in sand drawing with circle gathering (almost not joking at all)

<comment><USER34> This style of communication was super common when I was in the infantry. "Sand Table Terrain Modeling" and "Rock Drills". IMO it's very effective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> \latex with beamer.

</comment><comment><USER36> No one has mentioned LibreOffice?

<comment><USER37> I'll second LibreOffice. It's much more polished than OpenOffice, and it's quite functional and mature. It has definitely gotten the TLC that OpenOffice so desperately needed about 10 years ago. I'm not sure if it has the infinite canvas that the OP is looking for, but it's definitely nothing to sneeze at.

<comment><USER38> It's more polished because the (almost) entire team of OpenOffice left and created the LibreOffice project, AFAIK.

Same as what happened with MySQL -> MariaDB.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Have you looked at MS Mix? [https://mix.office.com/en- us/Home](https://mix.office.com/en-us/Home)

Since you talk about teaching, are you aware of the MS Education offering? It includes subsites specific for teachers. That would be a good place to ask your question

OFFICE 365 EDUCATION / STUDENT ADVANTAGE - <USER2> [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/education](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/education) This is home site for ongoing contact/training/features of Office 365 Education for: • School leaders • Educators • Students • Products • Training & Events • Stories • How to Buy

[https://products.office.com/en-us/student/office-in- educatio...](https://products.office.com/en-us/student/office-in-education) \- Home Page / FAQ Check if you can get Microsoft Office for free by trying out your valid school email address at the Office for Students page. [https://products.office.com/en- us/academic/office-365-educat...](https://products.office.com/en- us/academic/office-365-education-plan#ProplusQuestion) – Describes the Education plan and how to get it [https://products.office.com/en- us/academic/office-365-educat...](https://products.office.com/en- us/academic/office-365-education-plan) \- Home page

</comment><comment><USER39> Org Mode + Beamer (a LaTeX package).

Although personally, these days I tend to use Reveal (using org-reveal).

</comment><comment><USER40> Hope you take a look at [https://www.breakdown- notes.com](https://www.breakdown-notes.com)

It has a pretty big map (though not infinite) for you to add shapes and text to, has support for adding and editing paths, plenty of tutorials and you can make slides in the paid version (free 2 week trial). Disclaimer: I made Breakdown Notes

</comment><comment><USER41> As others have said in this thread, reveal.js is good. I've used it via slides.com where I put an overview presentation about my xtopdf Python toolkit for PDF generation from other formats:

[http://slides.com/vasudevram/xtopdf](http://slides.com/vasudevram/xtopdf)

S5 by Eric Meyer is good too - web-based, uses HTML, CSS and JavaScript:

[https://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/](https://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/)

Online S5 intro / demo using S5 itself:

[https://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/s5-intro.html](https://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/s5-intro.html)

Edit:

Sorry, missed seeing your requirements for the tool, not sure if S5 has them, but leaving my comment up since I think S5 is interesting and definitely a presentation tool.

</comment><comment><USER42> Google Slides ([https://slides.google.com](https://slides.google.com))

</comment><comment><USER43> I've put together Slide Show (S9) [1] that lets you use plain text with markdown formatting convetions for putting together your slides / talks. Incl. a starter tutorial / repo. For infinite canvas (prezi-style) you can use the impress.js theme/template pack [2], for example. For wysiwig use your (visual) markdown editor of choice :-)

[1] [http://slideshow-s9.github.io](http://slideshow-s9.github.io) [2] [https://github.com/slideshow-templates/slideshow- impress.js](https://github.com/slideshow-templates/slideshow-impress.js)

</comment><comment><USER44> If you're familiar with LaTeX, Beamer is an option for scientific/math slides.

</comment><comment><USER30> Some more ideas: POWER-USER – EURO 200 (FREE TRIAL) [https://www.powerusersoftwares.com/](https://www.powerusersoftwares.com/) With dozens of features, Power-user is the most complete add-in for Microsoft PowerPoint, designed to assist you in every step of the process of creating a presentation. With dozens of features, Power-user is the most complete add-in for Microsoft PowerPoint, designed to assist you in every step of the process of creating a presentation.

</comment><comment><USER45> Here's a radical thought: don't use a presentation deck! Hand out a collection of images, printed or via pdf file, give the student a couple of minutes to quickly become familiar with it, then just talk about each of the major figure in the handout. This was my solution to 'powerpoint hell' when sharing results in grad school, I don't know if it really applies to your case (non-expert students), but it may be worth a shot. Hell, its better than reading off slides! Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER46> Lucidchart has a slides/presentation mode, along with mind maps, a wysiwig editor, tutorials, and an infinite canvas.

(Disclaimer, I used to work there, and helped build the presentation mode.)

</comment><comment><USER47> I want to suggest that WYSIWYG is a really bad formula for presentations.

For my part, I really like Hovercraft (makes impress.js using RST): [https://github.com/regebro/hovercraft](https://github.com/regebro/hovercraft)

If all you are looking for out of WYSIWYG is ease, then I think something like this is just as easy.

</comment><comment><USER48> [http://impress.github.io/impress.js](http://impress.github.io/impress.js)

<comment><USER49> If some people are still using impress I am dropping this small library I made a few years ago.

[http://frantzmiccoli.github.io/Chillin.js](http://frantzmiccoli.github.io/Chillin.js)

<comment><USER50> That is so annoyingly slow that I closed the tab after "completing" the first 2 slides.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I just started using GitPitch.com which is backed by reveal.js It integrates seemlessly with GitHub, GitLab, etc. Feed it markdown and graphics and it produces beautiful slideshows. The author is incredibly responsive (I just commented on a feature I needed and it was done in < 12 hours and done right). Freakin' amazing!

</comment><comment><USER52> I work in Powerpointing and even Prezi is just too obscure for most of our clients. Nobody wants to learn a new tool or download anything just because the new tool has a few silly layout improvements. But if you don't need others to work with it, it probably doesn't really matter.

</comment><comment><USER53> I recently discovered Vizzlo ([https://vizzlo.com](https://vizzlo.com)). Those guys are going to develop smart templates for all common concept charts. Pretty fast, pretty slick. Basically, the opposite of Prezi but worth a trial.

</comment><comment><USER54> Deckset is awesome. Markdown is easy to write and Deckset can export to PDF. It's my choice nowadays

</comment><comment><USER21> [https://infinitekind.com/syncspace](https://infinitekind.com/syncspace) is an infinite canvas app, though I'm not sure how well it works for sharing/teaching usecases

</comment><comment><USER55> Crosses some reqs (tho doesn't have full features object editing), handy if you want interactive presentations [https://awwapp.com/](https://awwapp.com/)

</comment><comment><USER56> Take a look at [https://www.mindmeister.com](https://www.mindmeister.com) \- it is mainly for mind maps (and is very good at that), but also has a presentation mode.

</comment><comment><USER57> I use Marp, quick and dirty. But it allows for Markdown to PDF presentations.

</comment><comment><USER58> Reveal.js used with R's version of markdown makes for a really nice setup. Fully contained html if you want, online/offline. Lot of support from community and slick features.

</comment><comment><USER59> [https://tiled.co](https://tiled.co)

We've built Tiled to be a versatile presentation tool with a focus on interactivity and analytics.

</comment><comment><USER60> Open source JSON editor: [https://github.com/tantaman/Strut](https://github.com/tantaman/Strut)

</comment><comment><USER61> Try Zoho Show. [https://www.zoho.com/docs/show.html](https://www.zoho.com/docs/show.html)

</comment><comment><USER62> A jupyter to power point converter would be huge. I work in a typical organization where power point is expected, but my results come out of jupyter.

</comment><comment><USER63> Can someone care to explain what infinite canvas means

<comment><USER64> Your canvas isn't limited to the screen size or any other fixed size, instead you can keep adding things on all four sized forever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> PowerPoint can still replicate a lot of what you are looking for. Look into Morph. Granted, I prefer Keynote and Magic Move for this.

</comment><comment><USER66> You should give a try to Ludus --> [https://ludus.one](https://ludus.one)

</comment><comment><USER67> Sway is good. Very different than PowerPoint.

[https://sway.com/](https://sway.com/)

</comment><comment><USER68> just created an awesome repo for presentation libraries as there doesn't seem to be one yet: [https://github.com/Dowwie/awesome-presentation- libs](https://github.com/Dowwie/awesome-presentation-libs)

</comment><comment><USER69> reveal-md if you like markdown!

</comment><comment><USER70> I think you can make presentations with Omnigraffle, which has an infinite canvas.

</comment><comment><USER71> Emacs org-mode w/Beamer or reveal.js export.

</comment><comment><USER72> beamer, marp

</comment><comment><USER73> Reveal-MD: write in markdown, compile/output a good looking reveal-js HTML presentation.

Demo: [https://mankash.bitbucket.io](https://mankash.bitbucket.io) Reveal-MD source: [https://github.com/webpro/reveal- md](https://github.com/webpro/reveal-md)

</comment><comment><USER74> reveal.js wins every time.

<comment><USER75> Yep was going to say Reveal.js too. Earlier today someone posted an integration of Jupyter Notebooks with Reveal.js which looks pretty cool. [https://github.com/datitran/jupyter2slides](https://github.com/datitran/jupyter2slides)</comment></comment>


Asymmetric proof-of-work based on the Generalized Birthday problem [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/946.pdf <comment><USER2> With all hard problems out there, genomic queries, keyword auction allocation, aerodynamics simulations, etc.. I still can't believe there's not a solid a main-stream crypto currency whose computation is an actual problem (at that point, if you want to create ASICS for it, it would be just great). More on topic, the guys are killers, I loved also their article "bitcoin over tor isn't such a good idea".</comment>


12 Graphs That Show Just How Early the Cryptocurrency Market Is - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@mccannatron/12-graphs-that-show-just-how-early-the-cryptocurrency-market-is-653a4b8b2720 <comment><USER2> Good piece. Going on his info, it's amazing what a change 20 to 30 million people can effect when given the right tools.</comment>


Anatomy of Gmane v2 - <AUTHOR> http://home.gmane.org/2016/09/14/anatomy-gmane-v2/ <comment><USER2> The beauty of Gmane v1 from a user persepctive was its simplicity.

[http://gmane.org/lists.php](http://gmane.org/lists.php) <\-- a simple gzipped list of all the groups and their corresponding gmane category prefixes

ftp -4o lists.gz [http://gmane.org/lists.php](http://gmane.org/lists.php)

zgrep and a little bit of sed was all that was needed.

[http://download.gmane.org/gmane.[listname]/[start]/[end]](http://download.gmane.org/gmane.\[listname\]/\[start\]/\[end\]) <\-- bulk download list messages in the range [start] to [end]; no brackets needed of course.

There was no JSON or other nonsense. No pages upon pages of "API documentation". A user could figure it out in a matter of minutes.

This was an easy way to retrieve chunks of a mailing list, from circa 2002 onwards, in a format that was easy to work with, using only basic UNIX utilities.

It was like dumping a mail spool.

Given the Sirens of gratuitous complexity that never stop singing on today's web, I fear for the future of this project.

But the point of this comment is to say thanks to the author of _Gmane v1_. Great project, great execution.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I still don't know why Lars wouldn't let them have the existing front- end code. I understand that maybe it wasn't pretty under the hood, but who cares? It worked great for many years and was extremely useful. It could always be cleaned up and refactored a bit at a time.

Now they're having to reinvent the wheel. And while I shan't presume to tell them how to do it (especially since it's at their expense), I wonder if the infrastructure they're cooking up will be as future-proof. It certainly won't be as simple to reimplement if Gmane changes hands again someday, and it won't be conducive to setting up other instances of Gmane on a smaller scale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Any chance of donating a full dump of all the data to [https://archive.org](https://archive.org) to preserve this treasure trove for future generations? Imagine if the dejanews newsgroup archives had not ended up in Google's horrific JS interface but open for anyone.

</comment><comment><USER5> borderline unreadable.

[http://contrastrebellion.com/](http://contrastrebellion.com/)

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately, quite true. Look what a difference simply disabling the stylesheet makes:

Before: [http://i.imgur.com/xXLyKgD.png](http://i.imgur.com/xXLyKgD.png) After: [http://i.imgur.com/DhBXUNA.png](http://i.imgur.com/DhBXUNA.png)

I'll take the second one every time. The first one is like some kind of artsy poster design, except it's supposed to be an article for reading.

<comment><USER6> The latter is also a lot more in the spirit of gmane and less in the spirit of new hipster web design. Unix tradition places utility before form.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder why they'd choose to mix Python and PHP and not just pick one language for EVERYTHING. Seems like you'd risk having to implement some functionality twice.

Also does anyone know how much data GMANE has?

<comment><USER8> Suprisingly, not that large. My archive of NNTP messages has about 10M messages in only 5.6GB of space, with no compression. SMTP messages accumulate far more header cruft (in particular, chatty Received headers and often times DKIM as well in practice), so I'd expect 10M SMTP messages to be about 2-5 times as large as the same number of NNTP messages.

The total size of gmane is only on the order of a few TB at best. I think the author said that it was only 2TB--for 14 years of history!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't care what they do with the front end so long as the core nntp-email gateway remains intact.

<comment><USER3> I almost feel the same way: I love reading mailing lists and RSS feeds with Gnus via NNTP.

But the Web interface to mailing lists and groups is also extremely useful. Nothing like clicking a Gmane link in LWN and being able to instantly browse the thread like a newsgroup.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does it help moderators if we report kittens? - <AUTHOR> Hi everyone,
Ok, it's Friday and the question will sound very silly but I was wondering what the community would think about it.
You might be aware that big social medias platforms (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter..) are getting their content moderated by farms of people, causing a lot of mental health issues. It's pretty sad to see people being payed with minimum wages with no decent working conditions and no health support, especially from companies promoting the fantastic working conditions. You can find a lot of content online about this topic.
I assume the content reaching their screen is the one that is reported by the community. So, if we all report one or two content a day, something very cute to see, will we make moderator life better by dilluting the quantity of horror they are meant to see?
I think about these 3 scenarios, I feel the number 2 is the most plausible.
1. This will just push them to decrease the time allowed to moderate a content, so making their conditions worse. 2. Platforms can easily use algorithms to prioritise content that really needs to be moderated. Also by checking the success rate of "content reported"/"content violating guidelines" per user can help. 3. Too much content to moderate, the moderators are seeing less horror and more kittens.
My point here is not to start chaos, but find a way to push these big corporation to offer decent working conditions to moderators. <comment><USER2> It's a nice thought, but you're trying to improve someone's life who exists in a septic tank by spraying in some air freshener. At best, you're slightly delaying the inevitable. At worst, you're making the cognitive dissonance worse and lowering the signal-to-noise ratio.

If you really want to improve these people's lives, organize a Union, and find a way to get everyone on board. Without that, no employer will take the issue seriously, as every dollar they expend on maintaining worker's will-to-live is another dollar off the bottom line. It's sad, but that's the way it works.

I know there's the overwhelming push to do _something_ at least; I've felt it many times. Unfortunately, you have to work your way into a central point of the causal nexus to alter the overall situation, or else you're tying to plug a leaky dam with your fingers. Believe you me, down that road lies madness, heartache, self-loathing, and pain. The same thing you're trying to alleviate them of.

Save yourself the trouble and start the long journey by aiming for the right goal now. Help them organize in their own interest. It'll go leagues further than what even the rest of us can do for them.

</comment><comment><USER3> It would probably get reports from any accounts doing this flagged as automatically ignored at best or the account banned for false reports at worst.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's a nice thought, but I think I'd rather be able to consume nice stuff in my own time without it being added to the wokload of the stuff that I _have_ to look at.

</comment><comment><USER5> No. It doesn't dilute anything - they still have to wade through and moderate exactly the same amount of garbage - it just creates extra work and wastes their time.

</comment><comment><USER6> ok this is ridic adorable and sweet. i like you, human.

</comment><comment><USER7> so, a send a mod a kitten app?</comment>


Leaked screenshots of Xcode 10 on macOS 10.14 - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/1002893737037582336 <comment><AUTHOR> The source video hosted on the Apple servers:

[http://apptrailers.itunes.apple.com/apple-assets-us- std-0000...](http://apptrailers.itunes.apple.com/apple-assets-us- std-000001/PurpleVideo115/v4/6a/de/53/6ade53cf-d36a-0f2f-6b10-d0aecc417887/P53788383_default.m3u8)

<comment><USER2> HTTP ERROR: 410

Problem accessing /apple-assets-us- std-000001/PurpleVideo115/v4/6a/de/53/6ade53cf-d36a-0f2f-6b10-d0aecc417887/P53788383_default.m3u8. Reason:

        Gone

<comment><USER3> Goodbye, Dave

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I could not care less about the colour scheme. But oh God please could we get stable, fast, reliable syntax highlighting and code completion, reliable refactoring, non-joke continuous integration support, collaborative editing, better testing tooling?

<comment><USER5> Appcode is a little better than xcode in that regard but still haven't found a solution to the typechecker problem that xcode has.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Really hope it's not just Xcode 10 but system wide dark mode.

<comment><USER7> I do believe the greater leak here is macOS dark mode.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> As someone who looks at Xcode all day, I'm very happy to be getting a dark mode. But really I have my fingers crossed the syntax highlighting issues get fixed.

<comment><USER9> TL;dr: Bring dark mode to the web, please.

In the last five years or so, there has been a push in pro-level apps to include a dark mode.

While some may understand this change as an aesthetic choice, it's also an assistive technology, one that mitigates the visual fatigue that comes from staring into a screen for upwards of 10 hours per day.

It is a welcome change for professionals to have dark mode (visually assistive) interfaces and I wish that web sites would also make this shift or, at least, add the option.

By way of explanation, if one spends a lot of time reading the web or interacting with the file system (macOS, I'm looking at _you_ ) the computer display is blaring its full luminous force right into your eyes. (There are small exceptions in the tiny carveouts for text and the patches of darker colors in photos and graphical elements). Though I don't have data at hand, I suspect this is a design flaw that exacerbates eye fatigue, mental exhaustion, and scattered concentration.

Personally, bright white screens blaring in my face all the live long day exhausts me, especially when those screens are 27" times 2.

For this reason, I invert my screen using assistive technologies. The primary side effect is that photos and graphical elements in web browsers are inverted and, for the most part, I used a custom style sheet in Safari, Chrome (now a plug-in), and Firefox to invert images and background images for sites I frequent often (e.g. NYtimes and YouTube).

With Safari 11.1, macOS automatically inverts most images when the screen is inverted. The solution is not perfect as the branding palettes of web sites and their background images are inverted, but I am pleased there is vendor acknowledgement that high luminosity visual fields can be mitigated. (To be clear, lowering screen brightness does not adequately address the issue because it reduces the visibility of all elements.)

My plea to web portals (Hi HN!), business units, design agencies, independent contractors, and hobby bloggers is to offer versions of their web sites that have dark backgrounds with light text and naturally-colored graphical elements.

The increasing availability of dark mode in professional applications forces users using assistive technologies to reduce background luminosity (while preserving glyph and foreground luminosity) to frequently switch between assisted and non-assisted modes.

If web sites (and, ahem, macOS Finder) shifted from bright backgrounds to dark backgrounds, users such as myself would be able to stop inverting their screens altogether.

EDIT: add missing verb "is" in 9th paragraph.

<comment><USER10> This is subjective and as old/unsettled an argument as vim vs emacs or spaces vs tabs - although what you're saying is true for you there are many people who argue the opposite. I must have spent at least a day's worth of hours over the years reading long threads with people debating over which is 'correct', 'safer', 'healthier' etc: dark on light or light on dark. People are different. Having a preference is normal but framing it as assistive tech is too much as there are people out there who feel a strain looking at light text on a dark background.

[https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/15142/whic...](https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/15142/which- is-easier-on-the-eyes-dark-on-light-or-light-on- dark?utm_medium=organic&utm_source=google_rich_qa&utm_campaign=google_rich_qa)

[http://www.terminally- incoherent.com/blog/2010/05/20/i-hate-...](http://www.terminally- incoherent.com/blog/2010/05/20/i-hate-websites-with-light-text-on-dark- background/)

[https://www.wordpress-web-designer- raleigh.com/2015/04/16/4-...](https://www.wordpress-web-designer- raleigh.com/2015/04/16/4-special-usability-concerns-of-dark-websites/)

[https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/8153/what-are-the- neg...](https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/8153/what-are-the-negative-and- positive-aspects-of-dark-color- scheme?utm_medium=organic&utm_source=google_rich_qa&utm_campaign=google_rich_qa)

<comment><USER11> It depends largely on the ambient lighting. Dark themes are hard to read on my bright sunlit train journey and bright themes are often too much for a dimly lit room. I switch between both.

<comment><USER12> Yes. Healthy eyes depend on natural light or bright near-natural (but low UV) artificial light. Ambient light levels affect pupil dilation and focus, and screen brightness/colors should be matched as ambient light changes. At night, an hour or two before sleep, the blue content of light should be reduced (or lights dimmed) to trigger melatonin production for circadian cycle and sleep.

Summary: use light mode near daytime windows or quality indoor lighting, use dark mode or inverted colors in the dark.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> All I want this WWDC is an Apple sponsored Swift language server built on top of SourceKit. I cannot stand XCode, it's a constant source of frustration.

<comment><USER14> As someone that had mostly worked in Eclipse with a smattering of CodeWarrior/NetBeans/IntelliJ/Visual Studio, having to work on an iOS project using Swift in XCode was a big surprise to me.

Just a terrible, terrible IDE. Even the default font felt wrong (presumably I could change that). I grew used to it crashing constantly, locking up, going off into the weeds when it felt like it.

I feel like Microsoft made a huge mistake in gating their IDE behind a big $$ cost back in the day (in so far as getting fresh new developers on board), I feel like Apple might be making the same mistake with XCode and their lack of attention to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I really hope this is delivered.

I recall an old beta of iOS having a much reported preview of dark mode. Several versions later it's still not on actual phones. I want a dark mode on my iPhone far more than on my laptop!

<comment><USER16> Doesn't this exist in iOS? (Settings/Display Accomodations/Invert Colors)

<comment><USER17> That's very different. For instance a Dark Mode does not replace blue with orange, whereas Invert does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wow this looks really good. Apple still the master of eye candy IMHO. Not gonna install the beta tomorrow though, you just know by now it's gonna be unusable at first.

Also I hope the editor gets a lot of improvements. I'm convinced now that one large reason why Kotlin feels so much better then Swift is simply the IDE. It's just magic compared to Xcode.

Doing some Objective C recently, I was disappointed to notice Xcode was much snappier and less buggy handling large ObjC codebases then Swift ones.

</comment><comment><USER19> Dollars to donuts this will get the loudest cheers from the audience at either the Keynote or the Developer Tools State of the Union.

On one hand, rightly so - my eyes _need_ this feature. On the other hand, it's kind of ridiculous we had to wait until Xcode 10/macOS 10.14 to get this.

</comment><comment><USER20> I wonder: Does this let you scale between colors or is it just light or dark? On systems that support it, I always end up deciding on a sort of light gray appearance that's still darker than the typical Mac OS look. (And on CDE, I like the sand and teal ;-))

</comment><comment><USER5> They should have conference just for the bug fixes in xcode. The schizophrenic typechecker is horrible.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is nice, but please Apple, let us have proper plugins/extensions for Xcode

</comment><comment><USER22> MacBook Pro with OLED Display?

</comment><comment><USER23> Ok.</comment>


Startup's 'nomadic engineer' program lets developers work wherever they want - <AUTHOR> http://www.geekwire.com/2013/marissa-mayer-startup-launched-nomadic-engineer-program-developers-work/

<comment> hivemind-wa There's a huge amount of value from the serendipitous interactions you get co- located. Sounds like a deliberate approach to ensuring these kinds of interactions "virtually" can work, though.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Definitely. It's been super interesting developing a culture that thrives in both the world of the startup and the world of traveling. When you get it right, it's fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER2> I work for pathable and live in Belize. It's pretty rad.</comment>


Macroscop – interactive medical infographic based on Google searches - <AUTHOR> http://www.soft32.com/blog/features/news/macroscop-an-interactive-medical-infographic-based-on-google-searches/

<comment><USER2> cool</comment>


Color Illusion - <AUTHOR> https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EAeosEOUEAEa9SP?format=jpg&name=medium <comment><USER2> What illusion should I be seeing?

Edit: More information here: [https://www.patreon.com/posts/color- grid-28734535](https://www.patreon.com/posts/color-grid-28734535)

<comment><USER3> The colored lines are visible. And the non-lines are gray-scale. If you look at the entire picture rather than individual gray patches, the surfaces/textures seem to have the proper colorization even though the lines have much greater spacing than our color visual acuity.

It's more impressive with thinner colored lines in the more info link.</comment></comment>


Close Votes Are A Feature, Not A Bug - <AUTHOR> http://rc3.org/2009/11/08/close-votes-are-a-feature-not-a-bug/

<comment><AUTHOR> Forget the politics, and note the parallels with pricing.</comment>


Barack Obama Publishes Defense of the ACA in the New England Journal of Medicine - <AUTHOR> http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1616577 <comment><USER2> _Thanks to the ACA, a larger share of Americans have health insurance than ever before_

because its compulsory. this shouldn't an argument for the ACAs effectiveness. I have to buy car insurance if i choose to drive a car on public roads. i have to pay income tax if i have income. now, by birth, i automatically owe the state. i'd like my freedom and right to choose back please.

the fact this isn't the main argument from GOP shows their incompetence.

<comment><USER3> You pay for private insurance or you pay for public insurance via taxes. Any other solution is unworkable and you are a free rider.

<comment><USER2> i'd like the choice to not have any insurance

<comment><USER4> That's not a sustainable choice for our economy, it leads to too many people living like nothing could possibly go wrong until they need a doctor. The point of insurance is to distribute risk, not participating in that effectively negates the effectiveness of the industry.

<comment><USER5> The whole idea of health insurance is backwards and inconsistent with a free market in my opinion (fraudulent). The problem is that the government has enshrined it as the gateway to healthcare.

Insurance is a useful product for mitigating risk, so accident insurance could be a very constructive concept (protecting against accidental injuries, broken arms, falls, car crashes, etc.). However, health problems are not a risk; they are a guarantee with probability approaching one as you age. The whole point of insurance is that you mitigate risk by paying more than you take out on average, but that doesn't make sense for healthcare, where almost everyone ends up going over their limit near the end of their lives.

If we didn't have all of these subsidies everywhere and inflated demand from Medicare/Medicaid/restrictive occupational licensing/FDA-granted monopolies/ACA, then perhaps we could pay everything out of pocket, which would make a lot more sense.

<comment><USER6> The basic concept of health insurance works fine. Yes, your probability of dying approaches 1 as you age, but the costs you incur along the way can vary enormously. Somebody who's wonderfully healthy until they instantly die in bed of a heart attack will cost the insurer basically nothing, while somebody with a chronic condition can easily cost millions of dollars over decades. Costs can vary enormously depending on your luck, which is just the sort of thing insurance is good for.

There are big problems with running the whole system using insurance, of course. It's fairly easy to predict future costs for a lot of people. Given free reign, insurers will charge completely unaffordable premiums to those people, effectively excluding them from the system. You see the same thing with other types of insurance: if you have a horrible driving record, or if your house is in an area that gets a devastating hurricane every ten years, your premiums will be huge. The difference is that those are optional activities, and if you can't afford the premiums then you can walk, bike, hitch a ride, buy a different house, etc. A sick person can't switch to a healthy body.

That's why the ACA has the mandate. If you require everyone to pay in, then you can also require insurers to ignore certain predictors of future risk when determining premiums.

Fundamentally, there are only two choices. One choice is to have lots of people dying of easily treated conditions because they can't afford the treatment, and the other choice is to have government step in and socialize the system to some extent. The system was already socialized before the ACA with the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which requires hospital emergency rooms to treat all patients regardless of ability to pay. This was horribly inefficient, of course, but that's how it was.

So: choose your poison. If you think the advantages of going full free market in health care outweigh having poor people die of easily treatable diseases, then that's a valid opinion, but you should acknowledge the negative consequences. If you want poor people to be able to obtain treatment, then you'll need to accept some interference, the only question is how you'd like to have it be structured.

Edit: rather than "poor people," I really should say "people whom the hospital thinks are poor." If you get beaten up and mugged and left for dead, the ER won't know if you have money, and might decide not to take the risk. There are good reasons for even a selfish wealthy person to want some form of universal treatment.

<comment><USER5> > If you think the advantages of going full free market in health care > outweigh having poor people die of easily treatable diseases, then that's a > valid opinion, but you should acknowledge the negative consequences.

How does one lead to the other? Social safety nets are not mutually exclusive with removing a lot of other market barriers. See my prior comment on this thread -- our healthcare market is the most distorted in the world (even when compared to 'universal healthcare' countries). Freer market means 'easily treatable' conditions are cheap, as opposed to our current system where they are expensed behind oppressively occupationally licensed practitioners selling monopolized medical products, where a 10 minute checkup with a dermatologist out-of-pocket is nearly $500. But regardless, it is certainly an interesting, quantifiable argument (albeit hypothetical) that a 20% speed increase medical innovation in a free market could be measured against lives saved with today's medicine in a socialized system, assuming that system makes services as affordable/accessible as intended.

Here's the reason health insurance as an industry can be considered fraudulent, especially when it's generally the gateway to all healthcare access -- and why ACA fails to fix it. Pre-existing conditions and re-adjusted contract rates.

If there was one company and one client, they could certainly craft a perfectly sound insurance contract to pay a set rate with steady increases over X years in exchange for coverage in the event of future, currently unascertainable medical services. But if you are responsible and get insurance BEFORE you get sick (by the way, not much sympathy for those who do not and demand that insurers take them, since that's the whole point of insurance), you are effectively tied to this contract and can never again negotiate another of equal value after you have been diagnosed with a condition, even though your initial/current contract already priced in the risk of getting those conditions. In fact, the rates to cover your risk, which need to be higher on average than the amount of healthcare you actually use, become ridiculous quite quickly. This problem is amplified by the fact that the government thought it was a good idea to tie healthcare to employers, so people switch very frequently and therefore are forced to renegotiate contracts frequently, robbing them of lost value that would be acquired if they were able to ride out the original contract.

So to say health insurance is inherently fraudulent is hyperbole, but in the current setup, it functionally is, because it is non-transferrable. ACA attempts to address this problem by subsidizing those who do not make much money and forces insurers to take everyone, but this just adds artificial demand (due to the subsidies especially) up to the amount of the maximum subsidy and raises everyone's rates (although those who are subsidized will see somewhat lower rates), and does nothing to address risk renegotiation, especially since it includes people who never had a contract. Similar economic effect as student loans/student aid. Each dollar increase in student aid raises tuition by over 40 cents... the rest is probably distributed across student housing, amenities, textbook prices, concert prices in college towns, etc.

A better way to eliminate the fraud, while still limiting ourselves to an insurance-dominated system, would be to legally codify standards for contract negotiations, which would allow contracts to be traded/transferred between companies, effectively locking in your risk at the time you first get uninterrupted insurance (and perhaps some protections for temporary uninsured periods).

<comment><USER6> "But if you are responsible and get insurance BEFORE you get sick (by the way, not much sympathy for those who do not and demand that insurers take them, since that's the whole point of insurance)"

So, screw people who are born with a chronic condition, or people who lose coverage due to poverty and then want to get back on later?

<comment><USER5> > So, screw people who are born with a chronic condition, or people who lose > coverage due to poverty and then want to get back on later?

I don't think insurance is necessary in the system I propose, but to the first point, nature already screwed you, life isn't fair, etc. To the second, I actually addressed that in my comment as something that could be eligible for protection for some period.

But let me know if you take issue with the main points -- not trying to get into a battle of details.

<comment><USER6> How long is that period of protection? Anything less than infinity seems deeply problematic.

I consider these questions to be among the main points. If you don't, that would explain our difference of opinion. I really can't understand shrugging off screwing over people born with chronic conditions on the basis that life is unfair anyway. I mean, you can use that argument to justify nearly anything. Why outlaw murder? Sure, it sucks to get murdered, but life is unfair.

<comment><USER5> > How long is that period of protection? Anything less than infinity seems > deeply problematic.

Our current system of infinity is clearly problematic. But I really don't want to get into an argument of defending any implementation of health insurance (even one which I think would be better than the current) because I don't think there's a good way to do it period, as per my first comment.

> Why outlaw murder? Sure, it sucks to get murdered, but life is unfair.

Two completely separate things, not even on the same spectrum. Outlawing murder is preventing a violation of a person's rights, i.e. aggression. You maximize society's net freedom by outlawing it. Forcing society to try to make life "equal" for someone who was born with some terrible condition inherently violates freedoms through mandates, taxes, etc. And of course there's the whole thing about it not being practical. Everyone dies, and almost everyone would benefit from an extremely expensive heart transplant/frequent blood transfusions late in their life. But unfortunately, we can't give it to them (yet). However, there will always be some new and great medicine that is too scarce for everyone to have. Fortunately, private individuals are very charitable without the government and create institutions to treat and study chronic diseases.

<comment><USER6> A lot of people consider health care to be a basic human right. Taxing people to provide health care is, from that perspective, not fundamentally different from taxing people to prosecute murder.

I get that you probably don't think health care is a human right, but "not even on the same spectrum" is not a simple statement of fact.

If your preferred outcome involves screwing these people and various others because you think overall it's a worthwhile tradeoff, then so be it, but I want to make sure we're clear on that consequence.

<comment><USER5> > I get that you probably don't think health care is a human right

Correct, I consider human rights to be more fundamental than a new product/service -- health care didn't even exist a century ago. It is expensive, scarce, and difficult to define, as it is constantly changing. The only thing that is guaranteed is that there will be a point where a patient cannot be given any more healthcare, because of the diminishing returns (measured in hours of added lifespan per dollar).

> If your preferred outcome involves screwing these people and various others > because you think overall it's a worthwhile tradeoff, then so be it, but I > want to make sure we're clear on that consequence.

Yes you've mentioned that point before and I addressed it. To recapitulate: there is definitely an interesting argument to be made for the tradeoffs involved, and I think it would be worthwhile if measured in terms of average lifespan. However, as I said, I am not as convinced as you are that people with pre-existing conditions are going to be "screwed" in a more free-market, insurance-free system. Their costs of treatment goes down, and by the nature of insurance, they would typically be paying more than the cost of their treatment anyway (over time) to the insurance company, so....

<comment><USER6> Costs might come down in a free market system, but many chronic conditions will remain unaffordable to treat even after, say, an order of magnitude reduction in costs.

As for paying more in insurance premiums than you'd pay for treatment, that's only if insurance companies are allowed to account for your chronic condition when determining premiums. If you forbid insurance companies from charging more for existing conditions (as the ACA does) then that doesn't apply, and healthy people subsidize the costs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I miss having a President that can write in complete sentences.

</comment><comment><USER8> _will likely be true with President-elect Donald Trump_

Is it still proper to refer to him that way?

<comment><USER9> Looks like the article was first published prior to the inauguration:

 _This article was published on January 6, 2017, at NEJM.org._

Admittedly it's a bit confusing, given the online article is dated January 26, and includes "SOURCE INFORMATION: Mr. Obama is the former President of the United States." Likely inconsistency when repurposing content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Related discussion, JAMA paper published last summer:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12081314](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12081314)

</comment><comment><USER11> I doubt anyone in Congress or the White House working to repeal the ACA reads the New England Journal of Medicine.

<comment><USER9> It's a pretty prestigious journal. It's likely that aides to senators and representatives in key positions, as well as it being forwarded from interested constituents will make sure that the article makes the rounds. And it's generally good political practice to keep informed on the moves made by major players. Likely people in the White House know about it as well.

<comment><USER12> > It's a pretty prestigious journal...

It is but these days it can hard to know going by past reputation alone.

There seems to be a push by some sleazy publishers to buy prestigious medical journals and then take money to publish questionable studies.

Even the watchdogs who have tried to warn everyone have given up (or were forced to shut up).

[http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/website-tracking-so-called- pred...](http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/website-tracking-so-called-predatory- publishers-taken-offline-1.3251792)

<comment><USER9> While I appreciate the skepticism, and it is sad that there is an apparently increasing number of questionable journals out there, do you have any evidence that NEJM is one of them? They're currently run by the NEJM Group, which is controlled by the Massachusetts Medical Society.

[http://www.massmed.org](http://www.massmed.org)

<comment><USER12> No I'm not saying NEJM is I was trying to raise awareness of the situation.

That's good to know NEJM is run by a stable group.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> No peer review?

<comment><USER9> It's a Perspective piece, similar to an editorial. It's not a paper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> For 8 years, this man had the option to walk humanity back from the threat of hair-trigger, launch-on-warning nuclear armageddon. An armageddon that would either destroy humanity in a single day...or perhaps merely starve a few billion in the resulting nuclear winter. From these facts alone, I know everything I need to know about his, and all US presidents, commitment to the health of their citizens, and humanity at large.

<comment><USER15> Or Armageddon simply isn't profitable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's a wonderful idea. Free healthcare for all. Sadly, it simply isn't sustainable financially. I think in the next 10 years alone it was supposed to cost tax payers 10 trillion and that money can't literally be printed fast enough and the debt our country holds, extremely unsustainable. If they did it cheaper or more cost effective, I would say yes, but financially, you can't.

<comment><USER17> Do you mean the $10 trillion cost from repealing?

Here is republican senator Rand Paul on the huge budgetary expense of ACA repeal

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6AuIwR00T5g](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6AuIwR00T5g)

<comment><USER18> At 1:20 he says he's in favor of repealing ACA He doesn't like how it's being done.</comment></comment></comment>


Launching my bootstrapped start-up. Please cross your fingers for me. - <AUTHOR>

Launching my bootstrapped start-up. Please cross your fingers for me.
I just launched my start-up and am a little freaked out.  Everything works (so far) but I've been so focused on getting the app up and running that I'm feeling a little lost on what to focus on next and second guessing some early thinking/research.
Anyway, I could use some advice (and/or moral support).
  1. Does this app have legs?
  2. Do I need to tweak/change anything?
  3. Where do I go from here?
Thanks in advance for your help.
Link: https://www.TheWisdomofOthers.com <comment><USER2> This is a classic holiday gift item. Holiday season is approaching. Get on ProfNet and respond to every inquiry that comes in from a press person about the holiday gift guide.

Second, make it a snap, from start to finish. For holiday gifts, I want to make it a quick gift to send to my parents, not have a summer project on my hands.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks abbasmehdi! I checked out ProfNet and will create an account first thing tomorrow. Great idea!

As for making this a snap, the content of each book comes from a social network (yours or someone you're giving the book to) so the speed with which that network contributes content is likely the biggest driver of project duration. So while it's possible to make a book in a day and have it on your doorstep in a week, it all comes down to how quickly a social network responds.

If you have time, please create an account, take the app for a test drive and let me know what you think.

Thanks again!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like it and I agree that there are other niches you could target - weddings, baby showers, graduation, confirmation, retirement, etc. Anything that's sort of a life-changing event or entering a new stage in life would be a good time for this as a gift.

I've see us do a similar thing (but low-tech) at church. A bunch of parents contribute stories or advice and then copies are handed out to each graduating student. Or I think we've done something similar with a collection of a bunch of favorite Christmas traditions, then copies were handed out to the whole congregation. Or it's similar to recipe books where a couple dozen families contribute their favorite recipe then copies are sold as a fund-raiser. Not quite the same as what you're doing but it could be an easy follow-on product.

Curious why ePub is 50% more than PDF.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks ja27 for checking us out! I think you're spot on with selecting the target market. Now I just need to figure out the best ways to get on their radar screens...

There are a few reasons for the PDF/ePub pricing but the biggest one was this: I wanted the PDF to be really accessible so that someone that contributed to a book could buy it just to see what other people wrote without having to spend too much.

What do you think of our pricing? Would you price things differently?

<comment><USER4> I strongly recommend looking at Patio11's posts on this sort of subject -- also, he did an eBook sort of presentation on how he markets Bingo Card Creator that was sold on AppSumo that will likely apply directly to your business as well that I strongly suggest you find / get.

The gist of it was that he creates a TON of landing pages and SEOs the hell out of them (he talks more about how in the book) so that people searching for things like "custom wedding book" will find your page specifically targeted to weddings, and other people searching for "custom christening book" will find you with targeted copy for christenings, etc.

I think you have a slightly less niche market than BingoCC, and this is definitely a product that people will pay a semi-premium price for given the keepsake / memento vibe to it, so long as the product looks like quality (and it does), but otherwise, I think the two business models overlap more than they don't.

<comment><USER3> Yes, exactly. He also did a talk about targeting the female market. This might be a big help for you. Here's the thread, talk, and blog post: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2371965>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> First off, I am really impressed with your design. Where did you derive the inspiration for it? It seems like a nice service to me, quite unique. Have you considered a white-label service for wedding/event planners? I imagine that is where your market will be, just as your anecdote indicated. The other area where this might be cool is for seminars and/or self-help type events where the crowd's wisdom and shared experiences might be leveraged to provide meaningful takeaways from the event. I'll noodle on it more and report back if I think of anything else. All in all, looks good so far, keep us updated!

<comment><AUTHOR> Great ideas! I'm meeting with several VCs this Thursday and may suggest those as additional market possibilities. Thank you!

I'm really glad you like the design but I can't take any of the credit. I lucked out and got Colleen Palmer from 12 Spokes to do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice! I like it.

Couple of thoughts perhaps on how you could better close a sale.

It wasn't immediately clear to me what exactly I'd do with this. Would I create a book for myself with things other people have told me? Would I put my wisdom in a book and give it to someone else?

Lets say I've got my mind around it and I think this is a good idea that I plan to do. You need to convince me pretty quickly that I shouldn't go and look for other online book publishing sites that are cheaper/easier.

</comment><comment><USER7> Very cool. A few weeks ago my friends and I put together something like this using google docs for a friend's 30th birthday and had it printed. This would have been perfect!

A few suggestions: 1. It wasn't clear to me what you do right away. The book image is what helped me. Then I still wasn't sure if this was a digital book or not till I read the "How it Works". 2. I think having an example for a wedding book would be useful.

Good luck!!

Edit: Just found the examples :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Great thanks!

Any ideas for what I could do to make what we do a little more clear?

Also, there's a wedding book example but you have to access it via Book Examples on the home page. Is it too hidden?

Thanks again!

<comment><AUTHOR> One more question for you: How would I have gotten on your radar screen when you were putting together your gift a while back?

(Trying to figure out the best market strategy) Thanks again :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is really cool! Very good website design. I noticed on <https://www.thewisdomofothers.com/how-it-works> in firefox 6.0.2 that step four wraps around in the right column. Here's a screenshot: <http://imgur.com/KAstV>

I especially like that you donate some of the profits. I'm looking forward to doing exactly the same.

<comment><AUTHOR> THANK YOU!!! A few users emailed to tell me they were having that same issue but I couldn't recreate it to save my life. A fix is on the way...

Glad you like the app and thanks for letting me know. Now please go tell a few thousand of your friends about it. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Very good idea! The topics Baby, Graduation and Marriage are well chosen.

Maybe you could also function as an personalized news aggregator of other sources such as bloggers: pay them royalty and publish "emagazines"... imagine you could have emagazines on sports, coding, medical topics, politics etc...I would be your first customer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks nurik! I'll have to noodle the personal aggregator idea :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Clickable: <https://www.TheWisdomofOthers.com>

</comment><comment><USER11> Awesome idea. A really good market you could hit could be students heading off to college for the first time. College is a scary place and having some really good advice about going to college (even better if it is about your school specifically) helps a ton.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Thanks! I was planning to advertise in High School newspapers around graduation time and hoping to get picked up in some graduation gift guide stories/blogs. Got any other ideas for hitting that market?

<comment><USER11> Well there are certain websites a lot of people tend to visit before they go to school. Advertising there could be helpful. For example Rate My Professor is really big. As is roomsurf.com Also Bed Bath and Beyond is a hugely popular place for people to go to buy supplies for school.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good stuff. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One suggestion already: Describe what your startup actually is in this post, I've got no idea what its about until I visit the link :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks plasma. I'd held off on describing my startup to get a better sense for whether I got the execution of the idea right. I wanted to know if users coming to the site 'got it' without biasing things too much. But, that said, here is the gist of what we do:

The Wisdom of Others is an online personal publishing service that makes it easy to create book-store quality books filled with the practical advice and useful wisdom of family and friends.

Think of our books like a personalized Life's Little Instruction Book written for someone you care about by everyone that cares about them.

For example, say you have some friends expecting their first child. You could make a book of parent survival tips and how-to's by asking their family and friends to answer the question, "What do you know now that you wish you did before having kids?"

Or, maybe you're heading to a wedding and are hunting for the perfect gift. You could make a book for the new bride and groom that asks, "What's the secret to having a happy marriage?" and fill the pages with answers from everyone invited to the wedding.

Or maybe you know a recent graduate that's getting ready to launch out into the world. You could make a book filled with advice and instructions for succeeding in life written by their family, friends, teachers and coaches.

Hopefully you're getting the idea. Our books make it easy to give the gift of experience and encouragement to someone you care about. Because life, after all, doesn't come with instructions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is a really nice review of our site by Web.AppStorm that came out today if you want a little more info about what we do.

Link: [http://web.appstorm.net/reviews/media-reviews/the-wisdom- of-...](http://web.appstorm.net/reviews/media-reviews/the-wisdom-of-others- turning-your-favorite-quotes-into-a-book/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not a big book reader but I liked your idea. Anyways, the site was very fast and I liked the look and feel. Good Luck..

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a bunch for the feedback! Quick question for you: Did you get what our service does/how it works fast enough or did you feel like you had to hunt for it?

<comment><USER5> It took a moment for me to grok. It would be good to get your anecdote on the home page if possible, that really brings it home.

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you think would be a good anecdote? Been noodling that for a bit...

-Books of advice for the people in your life

-Books filled with the advice and wisdom of family and friends

-Books of wisdom from family and friends

Any ideas would be much appreciated!

<comment><USER5> I think the story that you told in the other section of the website about the wedding would be ideal. That is something that nearly everyone can relate to, and it makes the value proposition crystal clear. I would put that content front and center.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool. Thanks again!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


JetBlue to offer inflight Wi-Fi by 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2010/09/internet-jet-blue-viasat.html

<comment><USER2> 2012? Seems a bit far off in the future to be plugging it now.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's pretty aggressive. I hope nobody beats them to it.</comment>


On issues like global warming and evolution, scientists need to speak up - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/31/AR2009123101155_pf.html

<comment><USER2> Actually, scientists do a great job speaking up about evolution.

It's topics like vaccines causing autism, wifi/depleted uranium/breast implants/etc causing cancer and "alternative" (unproven) medicine where scientists really need to speak up.

</comment><comment><USER3> Profoundly dishonest: if there's one thing "ClimateGate" has made clear to all it is that there is no "consensus" and there are serious scientists all through the spectrum less alarmist than the CRU crew.</comment>


Applications open for Winter 2011 YC Funding, Deadline October 19 - <AUTHOR> http://ycombinator.com/apply.html <comment><AUTHOR> I encourage would-be applicants to read this before applying.

<http://ycombinator.com/howtoapply.html>

It's odd how many don't seem to.

<comment><USER2> Can I ask a question?

When do you expect companies to move to the bay area? Further, what time frame do you work in for the interviews etc.?

<comment><USER2> In retrospect, that sounds so dumb.

I should have specified what I meant by the time frame. My co-founder is still in school. So I was wondering if you has something like a block of time you scheduled it in so that if he had any issues at all I knew 100% whether or not he would be able to come.

So, what I wished to ask is if there was some flexibility in the dates just in case someone throws a fit (we are still monetarily dependent).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Will we see any news RFS posts? (<http://ycombinator.com/rfs.html>)

Do the existing ones still apply?

<comment><AUTHOR> There's at least one big new RFS in the works. Existing ones still apply.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you're on the fence about applying, do it! YC is without a doubt one of the most transformative experiences in my life. Even if you don't get in, you will learn a lot about yourself by going through the application process. Just do it!

</comment><comment><USER5> So HN comment history contributes to the application process? It makes sense, but as a lurker I have to admit I'm a little unsettled by it. It makes me wonder if my tendency to take a backseat and only raise my hand if I'm sure what I have to say is relevant and has not already been said, is somehow an indicator about my likelihood of success as an entrepreneur?

<comment><USER6> I wouldn't sweat it. I think I had almost no karma when we applied.

I don't think it hurts you as much as it can possibly help you. If you have lots of intelligent comments, it's one more reason to put you in the "interview" pile. I think only a few people in our round had notable HN records.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Two questions:

1) Is there any process for investing in a company already incorporated in Canada? Could we apply with the assumption we would move it over to the US if accepted?

2) Would YC consider applications for a team with an existing early-stage product on the market?

<comment><USER8> We had an established company incorporated in Australia. When we got into YC we set up the company in the US same as all the other YC companies, and transferred our IP to the US company.

Many YC companies already have products on the market.

<comment><USER9> Isn't this risky with regard to visas? Or are there no drawbacks to running and owning shares in a US company as a non-US residents?

<comment><USER8> No, there's no problem with a non-US resident owning a US corporation.

18 months on we still don't have visas as we haven't found it necessary to be based in the US - or not important enough to subject ourselves to the expense and distraction of the visa application process. We come and go from time to time on VWP. Only now the company's becoming more solid will we look at obtaining visas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Could anyone from outside the US give advice on the process for getting a visa? I'm from Israel, and am wondering how difficult the whole visa situation is, and where I should start researching about it.

<comment><USER11> People have done it before on a WT visa. I'm not sure that the INS would treat you kindly if they found out was was going on though.

Other than I'm not aware of any good options unless you have a company to back you (L1/H1B), serious money (7 figures), family in the US (7+ year queue), or a Nobel prize (not kidding - take a look at the 'alien of extraordinary ability' visa).

<comment><USER12> It's not as difficult as one might think to get a O-1 visa or EB-1 green card. Lack of a Nobel prize does not preclude one from successfully obtaining these visas, although having one probably increases one's chances.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How would YC read second, third and so-on submitted application form? Should I submit as much as I can whenever I fill a chunk so that they would have more time reading("Early submissions have a significant advantage"), or would this just make them read less on further submission?

<comment><AUTHOR> We don't do a lot of re-reading, so I'd wait till you're pretty near done to submit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> SongKick founders moved back to London after YC's 3 months ended. Is it perceived as a generally good strategy for people from the UK?

<comment><USER15> depends on the company. since the songkicks were working on live music, it made sense for them to be somewhere with an active live music scene e.g. london.

if you're working on something completely location agnostic and you're getting a lot of valley investor interest around demo day, it probably makes more sense to stay in the US than return to the UK (that's what we did).

<comment><USER9> This sounds great in principle, but the visa situation seems rather daunting.

"Running a business" is specifically forbidden for visa waiver or B1/B2 visa visitors; besides, I suspect they won't be too happy if you repeatedly "visit" to the extent that >50% of your time is spent in the US. H1-B seems to be a lottery and infeasible if you own the company _and_ are employed by it. I have no idea if we'd qualify for an EB-1, and E1/E2 seem more geared for owners/employees of bigger companies than recently-formed startups.

There seems to have been a string of originally European YC-funded companies that successfully moved to the US, yet there are examples where founders are "stranded" in Europe (e.g. Dailybooth). I vaguely remember an article written by one British founder of a YC startup some years back who got in via an E2, but I can't seem to find it. It would be extremely interesting to hear about past experiences with this; I realise it's possible that there's a good reason why everyone keeps quiet about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> _We'll review applications and get back to you at the end of the day on November 2._

I've seen others mention a rejection email (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11495>), but I didn't get one last round. Are rejection emails only for those who had interviews and got rejected or should everyone receive an email? I searched for the answer, but didn't find it.

edit: I searched my email and found a rejection from '09, but definitely didn't receive one from Summer '10.

<comment><AUTHOR> Did you apply under this username?

<comment><USER16> Yes, the 2010 application was this username. The one from '09 was a different username which I abandoned because it was the name of the business.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just went and looked and your 2010 application was a late application. We didn't send individual "no" emails to late applications; we just posted something on HN saying that we'd now talked to all the people we were going to from the late applications.

Incidentally, the odds of getting accepted are much lower for applications after the deadline.

<comment><USER16> Thanks for taking the time to check, much appreciated.

 _Incidentally, the odds of getting accepted are much lower for applications after the deadline._

I was working on something else when the application period opened and wasn't considering applying. A few months later, I was free and started working on the idea when the application period was extended, so I applied knowing the chances were low.

Is there any merit in reapplying a late submission (with some improvements in my case) or would you say those applications have already been vetted? I imagine it's the latter since it seems to be more about the team than the idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What about the VISA situation for Canadians (to stay longer than 3 months)?

<comment><USER18> I wouldn't worry too much about Visas for Canadians, especially if you have a Bachelor's or higher in tech. I think there are several different strategies that can work to get a Visa. (This is coming from someone who was once denied a TN Visa at the US border.)

I think a B2 is good for six months; that's what I was planning to seek if our team was ever accepted, and I haven't had a problem getting them in the past whenever I traveled south on business. Of course, I would still be very interested to hear from any successful YC teams from Canada.

<comment><USER19> How long in advance should someone start to look for their visa? Before applying for YC funding?

<comment><USER18> From Canada and for a B2, it's more of a wait until you've bought your tickets. Even with a TN (which I don't believe you can get with YC Funding), you just show up and hope for the best.

Of course, your mileage may vary, but this is what I've read from other people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I am still in the customer discovery/ideation phase... am I a good candidate for your program? Also, I'm going to be in Mountain View for the Founders Conference on 8/17 coming from Austin, TX... is it possible to tour the YCombinator offices?

Let me know and thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> As long as you're ready to work fulltime on the startup it's not too early for us.

We can't do tours, unfortunately; we're just not set up for it.

<comment><USER20> Sounds good. Thank you for the prompt reply.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Hi, I wanted to know what the procedure was for bringing on potential team- members during the three month funding period? In other words, if they are not the founders then how will they be incorporated during our time with YC? Thanks in advance.

<comment><AUTHOR> If they have cofounder equity we treat them as de facto cofounders.

<comment><USER21> Appreciate the prompt reply.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Do we _have_ to travel for interview if selected? I am thinking of applying for Summer 2011 and if me/co-founder have to travel then it completely changes cash management as we are currently based in India. Also does it make sense to apply to YC if the product we are building in very India centric and solves a local problem? I mean I would definitely like to get some advice from pg/rest of YC but for a India centric product will we get relevant advice?

<comment><AUTHOR> You have to meet us if you want to get funded. We might be able to reimburse you more if you're coming from somewhere from which plane tickets are very expensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hi, I was interested in knowing how the 3month funding period is structured? Since, each group might be at a different level of startup cycle (fresh epiphany for an idea, idea->bplan, idea->bplan->dev, etc), will each group be assigned a mentor or scheduled topics are discussed on tues. meetups? Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> The only rigid structure is demo day at about week 11. Otherwise it's mostly one on one at office hours with individual YC people.

<comment><USER21> Great. Is there anywhere on HN or YC that elaborates on the general day-to-day activities? I did a fairly thorough search and was unable to find anything.

Is it correct to assume "one on one" means that there will be someone from YC that will be helping each start-up with their respective issues on a day-to- day basis? Thanks in advance, pg.

<comment><AUTHOR> Harj and Jessica and I schedule blocks of office hours for individual startups to talk to us about whatever problems are most urgent for them. There hasn't yet been one that needed to talk to us _every day_ , but they can talk to us as much as they want.

<comment><USER23> Sounds great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In any way, would YC consider the language barrier if the applicants were outside the English-Speaking countries?

<comment><AUTHOR> We don't worry about language barriers except to the extent they make founders incomprehensible in the application or interview.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for that comment, I'm relieved a bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is there a way to get to the previous application form? I had an unsubmitted application that I'd like to copy-paste from.

</comment><comment><USER25> Why is California such a big place for startups? Is it "just the way it is" since Silicon Valley started?

There are other places in the United States that are much cheaper to operate (live), and in a much less aggrivating political climate, than California.

<comment><USER26> On my phone so its easier to paste this than the three essays: <http://www.google.com/search?q=paul+graham+silicon+valley>

<comment><USER25> Rich people and nerds. Makes sense. Well, hopefully somewhere in Texas will catch on: Cheap living, plenty of space, cheap housing, cheap power, has coastal area...

Then again, I think video conferencing, VoIP and presentations, etc., could substitute for this rich man mandating people move to work on the Internet. Why should programmers have to relocate?

<comment><USER27> I like how you accuse him of being rich. In the future, make your posts relevant to the thread.

<comment><USER25> I was quoting the essay when I referred to rich people. Also, my original post was relevant to the article posted.

Looks like a lot of karma-flaming on my posts. Awesome, guys.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Readability bookmarking service will shut down on September 30, 2016 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@readability/1641cc18e02b#.usur1230j <comment><USER2> I will miss this one. Used it for at least 4 years.

Other than wanting a highlighting feature, I've been completely satisfied with this abandoned product (last update at least 2 years ago?). They nailed it for me, especially with design aesthetics.

And it had the absolute best send-to-Kindle parser: It sent an actual personal document, not a Kindle magazine, and they even managed to include article images most of the time (which other services struggle with).

:'(

<comment><USER3> > They nailed it for me, especially with design aesthetics.

#1 reason I stopped using Readability was their "designs".

The web app had constant bugs, especially right after their big redesign and the Android mobile version was terrible. It would pop up a notification every 5 minutes to tell you it's checking for articles, and there was no way to turn that off.

Didn't change for a year, so I dumped them and said "guess this is an abandoned product".

<comment><USER4> The Android app has been similarly insanely buggy, and seems to want to completely re-download the article database every few uses. That was actually a big part of what pushed me to Pocket.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I worked on Readability for its launch. I remember they had difficulty monetising it. But more importantly, the firm that built it, Arc90 (now Postlight), was acquired by SFX a few years ago who has no interest in that space. I'm surprised it has stayed up this long.

<comment><USER4> I suspect it coasted purely on momentum -- hosting fees or such.

The parser/converter has actually stood up amazingly well considering it's seen little or no updating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sad, but hardly surprising. I would really like to hear the backstory on this.

I'd run across Readability a few years ago and found it useful. There was an update to the application about 2012/2013, which as is typical, offered a few things, but also took away others which had been useful.

And then .... nothing. The Facebook page hasn't been updated since Januarey 23, 2014. The blog is ... offline. Twitter actually seems active, though I'd thought that hadn't been active either.

I really liked the concept, had issues with the execution, loved the bookmarklet (for rendering pages within a browser in "readability view"). But this had obviously been abandoned for a long, long time.

I've been slowly schlepping articles to Pocket. I guess I'll have to speed that up....

Hrm. I find this about the design firm behind Readability joining Facebook, a year ago: [http://thenextweb.com/dd/2015/01/16/design-partners- behind-m...](http://thenextweb.com/dd/2015/01/16/design-partners-behind- medium-readability-shuts-firm-join-facebook/)

<comment><USER6> When readability started it had an innovative business model: collect monthly from each user, and share out 70% to the owners of the pages viewed.

However, a number of bloggers and content owners objected to this, and made bug fuss about it, and pretty much poisoned the "with it" tech croud on the idea of Readability.

Readability then pivoted to a more conventional read-later app and read-now service. But it never seemed to recover from its original bad press.

<comment><USER4> I vaguely recall that. Pity, all 'round.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm working on a bookmarking service right now (literally, open in the other window).

Instant search, highlighting, a UI that encourages 'rediscovery' of articles that are saved but not read ("hey you, here's what you bookmarked 7 days ago") and a reading feature similar to readability. There's space here to build a product that people love and that sticks around.

Parsing web pages is proving tricky in some cases, if anybody has any library suggestions, shout.

<comment><USER8> will it be self hostable?

<comment><USER7> Launching as a service to begin with, however considering people's justified concerns with bookmark services folding I'll look at that.

Key feature will be easy import from every other popular bookmark service. Pull in your data in seconds, see if you like how we treat it, and make a call on switching.

<comment><USER9> would love to try it. what's it called?

<comment><USER7> Unnamed as of yet but I'll send the link your way once live. A week or so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Will they just trash their code? It is hardly going to be an asset for them and probably is unmaintained for the last couple of years.

It would be great to see them opening the code to the community.

</comment><comment><USER4> As I mentioned earlier, I'm using Pocket ([https://getpocket.com](https://getpocket.com)), which has worked out pretty well.

Pocket _do not_ have a Readability import tool, but there's a third-party tool their support desk just provided a URL for, caveat emptor, etc., etc.

[http://hsablonniere.github.io/readability2pocket/](http://hsablonniere.github.io/readability2pocket/)

Among other alternatives, I'll suggest giving [https://pinboard.in](https://pinboard.in) from @idlewords (Maciej Czeglowski) a look as well. I actually think that might have a few other features I'd want, but am parking for now at Pocket (inertia, too many damned articles, the simplified reader view is really appreciated).

________________________________

 _Edit:_ Corrected "in" for "io" as Pinboard's TLD.

</comment><comment><USER11> If you're looking for a bookmarking alternative BookmarkOS has been awesome so far ([https://bookmarkos.com](https://bookmarkos.com)). Also, Instapaper ([https://www.instapaper.com/](https://www.instapaper.com/)) recently got acquired by pinterest, so it looks like it has a future.

<comment><USER12> Being acqui-hired doesn't spell well for its future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This was the main service I've used for the past 2+ years to deliver individual articles to my Kindle. It worked great and I would've paid good money to keep it. Instapaper has a similar feature, however it was never quite as good as Readability's.

What are you using to send & read web articles on your Kindle?

</comment><comment><USER14> For just the readability aspect, Stylish is an excellent alternative (with custom CSS).

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylish/fjnbnpbmke...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylish/fjnbnpbmkenffdnngjfgmeleoegfcffe?hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER15> Advice as a URL: [https://getpocket.com/](https://getpocket.com/)

</comment><comment><USER16> Figured this was coming after Readlists closed down a few months ago. Damn I miss them.

</comment><comment><USER17> how sad, I loved readability. I tried to port their javascript code to c++.</comment>