The Ioke philosophy - <AUTHOR> http://olabini.com/blog/2009/05/the-ioke-philosophy/

<comment><USER2> It's worth looking at the philosophy behind Io (Ioke's inspiration) as well:

[http://www.iolanguage.com/scm/git/checkout/Io/docs/IoGuide.h...](http://www.iolanguage.com/scm/git/checkout/Io/docs/IoGuide.html#Introduction- Perspective)

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems like a lot of new languages have macros. Lisp is moving on to phrase four of it's diabolical scheme...

<comment><USER4> Pun intended?

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately, you won't get clojure on the pun issue.</comment></comment></comment>


Founder Collective - New $40 Million Early Stage Fund - <AUTHOR> http://foundercollective.com/

<comment><USER2> <http://foundercollective.com/people/Bill-Trenchard> <\- wonder if they could have found a bigger picture?</comment>


A Libertarian Convert to Socialized Medicine - <AUTHOR> http://andrewhammel.typepad.com/german_joys/2009/12/french-health-care.html <comment><USER2> "Need a prescription for muscle relaxers, an anti-fungal cream, or a steroid inhaler for temporary lung trouble? In the U.S. you have to fight to get on the appointment schedule of a doctor within your health insurance network ... then have him or her scrawl something unintelligible on a slip of paper, which you take to a drugstore to exchange for your medicine. ...In France, by contrast, you walk to the corner pharmacist, get either a prescription or over-the-counter medication right away, shell out a dozen or so euros, and you're done."

Unless I'm confused, this is conflating two issues. Requiring patients to have a full doctor's visit in order to get a prescription for simple but non-OTC medicines is logically distinct from single-payer/non-single-payer. If you require more visits, you will of course spend more money.

</comment><comment><USER3> From the guidelines:

"Please submit the original source. If a blog post reports on something they found on another site, submit the latter."

<comment><USER4> [http://reason.com/archives/2009/12/07/why-prefer-french- heal...](http://reason.com/archives/2009/12/07/why-prefer-french-health-care)

<comment><USER3> Now submitted at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1184642>

I was going to do so myself but thought it would be better HN etiquette to let the submitter (or someone) edit the URL here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a great example of why libertarians are not to be confused with Objectivists.

Objectivism provides the essential philosophical basis for individualism and long-term rational selfishness required to properly support political conclusions in favor of freedom. Libertarians, on the other hand, don't know or understand the philosophy from which many of their political conclusions were copied, and are thus susceptible to reverting to political conclusions that appear momentarily practical, or consistent with altruism (which many libertarians implicitly embrace).

On top of that, "libertarian" has come to means so many things that it means nothing - there are libertarians in favor of and against abortion, in favor of and against anarchy, in favor of and against anti-trust regulation, to name a few random examples.

Objectivism isn't pervasive enough yet for political change based on it to occur, and libertarianism is a political dead end (because it's not consistent with the terrible mixed bag of present-day American values, or with itself.) So if you consider yourself a libertarian, and you don't like where Welch and his ilk are heading, I invite you to read Ayn Rand and new scholarly works that examine her philosophy deeply (Tara Smith's "Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist".)

<comment><USER6> Objectivism is -- literally -- orthodox Marxism with different words filled into key blanks.

Don't believe me? Try it for yourself:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=965622>

<comment><USER7> I'm no fan of Objectivism by a long stretch, but I think that's being unfair because there's more to the (academic) philosophy than just whining about parasites. What is fair to say, is that the emotional appeal of Objectivism is similar to the emotional appeal of Marxism. "You're important because you're the only one getting any work done around here, and you should kick out those leeches who suckle on the sweat of your brow" summarizes both the Communist Manifesto and the Fountainhead. However, the ideal society that Ayn Rand would erect after the revolution is noticeably different than the one that Marx would erect. Nonetheless, the similarity of the surface appeal does bear discussion.

tl;dr I broadly agree with the main point, but I don't want to cheapen it by letting stand the fact that it is an exaggeration.

<comment><USER6> I'm happy to admit that it's a rhetorical device designed to encourage further reflection and analysis; back during my philosophy days that was a big part of what I learned to do (and this is by no means the most outrageous position I've explained -- that crown probably goes to the day I argued for post-natal "70th-trimester" abortions as a critique of expansive parental/governmental rights over teenagers).

But the similarity is beguiling, and points not only to issues in the statement of Objectivism itself but also to the emotional influence Rand's youth had on her allegedly purely-rational theories. Both of these are common enough critiques in actual philosophic circles, but depressingly absent from "internet Objectivism" (a close cousin of internet libertarianism, another troubled philosophy).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Paul Graham - office hours live at TC Disrupt - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/25/techcrunch-disrupt-day-3-livestreaming-for-you-right-here-right-now/

<comment><USER2> Turns out got I called up but wasn't there. I wasn't notified that I was included. I'm a startup so I wasn't able to fly out unless I knew I was in.

My Company is Emotely, check out the Teaser Video here: <http://emotely.com/>

Michael specifically said he thought Emotely looked cool. Here is the mention by Mike/Paul (Skip to 3:58): <http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/14951420>

It was probably assumed that I'd be there and just had to show up,

</comment><comment><USER3> This was great. One funny quote from PG _"Who would have thought that one could use recruiting as a way to make money"_

PG: Isn't that exactly what the YC program does!!! Recruit startups to find the best investment opportunities!</comment>


Buffett's "buy now" call gets lukewarm reception - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/forexNews/idUSTRE49G5Z620081017

<comment><AUTHOR> Given the essentially contrarian investment philosophy that Buffett laid out, is it any surprise that his advice falls on 'lukewarm' ears? Isn't that the point?!</comment>


Thanks, but No Thanks: Passing on an 8 Figure Venture Round - <AUTHOR> http://www.3founders.com/2012/06/26/thanks-but-no-thanks-passing-on-an-8-figure-venture-round/

<comment><USER2> I love seeing posts like these - I have no idea why its getting downvoted off the front page. Far too often the attitude on HN is that raising a big round = success. Building a profitable, long lasting business shouldn't be the exception to the rule. Good luck keeping things independent!

</comment><comment><USER3> Noise and bragging. Please come back and give advice when you are wise and know the consequences of your past decisions. In the meantime, what is the goal of blogging about this? There are an infinitude of things happening at every moment, I would much rather if on HN we only found things that were useful to better understand the world. Stuff like this is one random person's over verbose twitter feed.

<comment><USER4> How is it bragging to say that they didn't raise the round? If you care about what's going on inside the mind of a founder who choses NOT to raise a round, this post would be interesting to you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very inspiring story.</comment>


Show HN: Yack – Community Browser for Hacker News, Reddit, YouTube and More - <AUTHOR> https://yack.io <comment><USER3> It looks pretty, but I'm having trouble understanding the use case.

A core part of browsing Hacker News or Reddit is opening the links and reading the articles, which are web pages. Once I'm opening web pages, then I want to be able to bookmark them, arrange them in tabs, find them in my history, have them saved in sessions by my session manager extension, configure how they are handled by my ad blocker, search for related information, and so on. In other words, I want a web browser.

The same issue applies the other way around, too. When I follow a link _to_ Hacker News, I want it to show up consistently. I don't want to end up with some Hacker News pages in browser tabs and some in a separate app, and then have trouble remembering where to find that page I was looking at yesterday.

I get that it can be nice to have a slimmed-down UI for specific purposes. But I'm puzzled by this particular use case because there is no neatly contained navigation sandbox — as soon as you follow a couple of links, you're just browsing the Web.

So why won't there be an inexorable push to expand Yack's feature set until it is a browser? Why won't users eventually switch back to using their regular browsers?

<comment><USER4> My reaction is pretty much the opposite. This looks like what I've wanted the web to be for years now. It's the best parts of RSS, Gopher, and the web.

What's terrible about the modern web? Mountains of JavaScript, for trackers, and advertisements, and custom UI so every page acts differently (and slowly) even though they're 99% the same. This appears to cut through that crap, and just give me easy access to articles and comments.

I want _just_ a 'web browser'. What we've got today are network-native application runtimes that happen to run over the web. There are some cases where that's good, but for "reading an article", it's somewhere between "a waste" and "a channel ripe for abuse".

You talk about bookmarks, tabs, history, etc. I rarely use those for articles I see on HN. I use web browsers for a few very distinct use cases. (They just all happen to be delivered over the web because, I don't know, nobody wants to write applications any more.) "Reading an article" doesn't require bookmarks/tabs/history. I read it, and then I'm done. I mostly read HN in Private Browsing specifically so it doesn't litter up my history with some article I only want to see once. I mostly use Reader Mode, when possible, because I don't want any other junk besides the article. A full 2019 web browser for reading an article is a liability, not a feature. I rarely follow any links from them.

Saying that one needs to "configure an ad blocker" to read articles on the internet almost sounds like an admission of failure.

There shouldn't be an "inexorable" drive to make this into a full web browser, any more than there is for an email program. Email programs display HTML and let you click links, too. They are specific to one type of data, and display it using native controls. Nobody is browsing the web in Mail.app. They are browsing the web in their regular browsers, for the types of online experiences that require that.

<comment><USER5> > Saying that one needs to "configure an ad blocker" to read articles on the > internet almost sounds like an admission of failure.

But having to install a completely new browser for your desktop isn't? Installing uBlock Origin solves all your problems with trackers all over the web. Installing this electron app solves it for a few sites.

<comment><USER6> In addition to uBlock Origin, if you've got some spare hardware lying around, I highly recommend Pi-Hole. Here's a link of typical numbers from my home LAN. [https://imgur.com/YfAJUlv](https://imgur.com/YfAJUlv)

<comment><USER7> Mine are even higher, more like 30-40% of requests blocked. I have a ROKU tv and it makes constant tracking requests that get blocked. I think I'm over 100k per month at this point

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Really like the concept--I think you're on to something in creating a unified UI for all these similar services.

But..getting into the beta was a giant PITA.

1\. Enter email

2\. Check email

3\. Download client

4\. Go back to email, copy code

5\. Paste code

6\. Go back to email, click sign in link

7\. Browser asks if it's ok to open Yack

8\. Create profile in Yack (at this point I bounced)

Honestly, just let me download the beta directly, open it and have it Just Work. This is a new product and people will be skeptical. Friction is therefore your enemy.

Would it be possible to skip profile creation as well?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks for the feedback.

Will consider making the Yack profile optional. For the beta version it was necessary because the app has a "Feedback" community, which is built on top of Discourse - This is where users provide feedback and report bugs. Thought about creating a subreddit on Reddit for feedback/bug reports but for users who are on HN or YT, it was necessary to have Yack's own community.

Creating Yack profile automatically creates an account on Yack's Discourse instance but it never associates plugin accounts (hacker news, reddit, etc) with your Yack profile.

<comment><USER9> Would second that this should be optional ASAP. I understand your need and desire to collect feedback but I don't think it's a great idea to require users to create a profile for something that is a client.

There are other ways to collect feedback than a Discourse instance. Why not just stand up a contact form, Twitter account, or email address?

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely. Received similar feedback from other users as well and will consider making this optional.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The idea that web communities and content have become standardized enough to have a single look-and-feel client is an intriguing idea. And it looks beautiful.

Unfortunately, I just wouldn't install a native app for that. My browser is plenty performant to handle it, and I want to be able to call it up wherever I am -- on my home computer, work computer, friend's computer, backup work laptop, whatever -- without having to bother to install something. (And some companies don't let you install software.) Also I'd want to hide stories I've already read and want that to be synced, which necessitates a server anyways.

I'm genuinely curious what benefit a native app has here, why that direction was taken? I can honestly only see drawbacks. (I can understand an app on mobile, just not on desktop.)

<comment><USER11> Privacy? With a FOSS (or even just third-party) app, the service operator has less fine-grained tracking and behavioral data for you as a user.

The UI can also be designed with the user's best interest in mind, as an alternative to the egagement-driven dark UX patterns that have started becoming the status quo on the web in just a few years.

I use a CLI for Reddit[0] specifically for this reason - I would definitely be potential user for something like Yack. Opening links from the app in an external browser is trivial. Now that you mention it, it'd be a good idea to make it work in the other direction as well. Surely it wouldn't be too tricky to make a browser extension for this?

[0]: [https://github.com/michael-lazar/rtv](https://github.com/michael- lazar/rtv)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would focus on making the best Reddit macOS app you can, that will likely be your largest and most receptive audience. You should use the Apollo iOS app as your benchmark as far as responsiveness and feature set is concerned.

I signed up for the beta, the most glaring omissions are:

1\. Keyboard shortcuts. You'll probably want to implement arrow key navigation as well as Google Reader shortcuts (J=Next, K=Previous, see Reeder.app). RES is the gold standard you should be shooting for: [http://joeross.me/res/](http://joeross.me/res/)

2\. Expand at least a few levels of child comments by default. Apollo does a great job with this.

3\. Remove avatar placeholders for services that do not have avatars.

4\. Increase information density. In the same vertical space that I can see 14 posts on reddit.com, I can only see 10 in the compact view in your app. The comments are in worse shape, you must remove the spacing between the comment "cards".

Overall, I'm impressed with what you've built here and could see using this app. Keyboard shortcuts are a must before I would spend any significant time using it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. That is my current focus. Keyboard shortcuts & dark theme are the highest priority right now. Glad to hear you like the app. Please let me know if you run into any issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Actually, I was just thinking of something like this. In particular, I'd like to be able to keep tabs on a group of YouTube creators, without being dependent on the whims and machinations of what the YouTube team wants to promote. There are also certain creators who post to both YouTube and BitChute, but prefer BitChute, and I'd like to have a browser that will show me the BitChute version preferentially, without my having to think about it.

<comment><AUTHOR> what's BitChute? Never heard of it.

<comment><USER13> Basically, a somewhat decentralized YouTube implemented on top of BitTorrent.

<comment><USER14> In a similar fashion, there is also PeerTube. A decentralized video hosting network, based on free/libre software.

[https://joinpeertube.org/en/](https://joinpeertube.org/en/)

I have no involvement with them, but I like the PeerTube project. Might contribute to it in the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yack means throw up in many circles. Just be aware of the name.

[https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=yack](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=yack)

<comment><USER16> It also means "talk"

<comment><USER17> I've only ever seen that spelled as "yak", so it took me a while to make that connection.

<comment><USER18> I thought "yak" was the bison animal. And that's what I thought of when I saw the name of this app -- not vomiting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > One App to replace them all.

You mean like a browser?

> Intuitive UI

I understand I'm probably not the target market for this - but I'm very uninspired by the Slack-copy design trend happening everywhere.

<comment><USER20> > You mean like a browser?

I can see this being a nice alternative to a few browser options for checking the latest across multiple sites. Pinned tabs, "Open All" bookmark folder, loose tabs, etc. Not ideal, imo, so having them all in one place and unified under a single UI might be kind of nice.

Can't really speak to the UI though since this is unfortunately macOS only :(

<comment><USER21> Sounds like RSS.

<comment><USER22> I have to agree.

Nice work, and looks pretty, but Feedly scratches this itch for me almost perfectly. And it expands well beyond Reddit and HN.

The only better solution would be if I hosted my own and used an open source app. I'll get around to it.

<comment><USER23> Does Feedly/RSS right now with community sites like HN/reddit support all the comments? Do they support comments in blog posts? I may have not played around enough or missed something.

When I tried rss with Feedly before. I wasn't getting blog post comments. I don't think reddit/HN comments either but could be wrong there.

<comment><USER22> Nah, no comments.

You get the title which is a link to the submission, a picture and a link to the comments. I'm on Android so hitting either opens a webview (powered by Firefox) with an X in the top left which leads back to feedly. I also have scrolling past a submission set to mark it as read.

Admittedly something which handled unread comments and notifications for replies could be more engaging, but I feel like I get enough HN as it is and I want to remain somewhat productive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > Do more with less clutter, fewer clicks, less scroll, fewer tabs, fewer > pages, fewer buttons, fewer ads, less mess...

Looks very promising if it is really a native desktop app, but then if it is electron, then that is the equivalent to having a fixed set of Chrome tabs open with an ad-blocker on.

I hope when you say 'native' that this app actually is native, otherwise it will be yet another bloated app to add to my collection of electron apps on my MacBook.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a mix of Electron & native code (Swift). I have done so many optimizations to make it lightweight, smooth and fast. If you have an older Mac, try it on it and see how fast it is. I use Apple Mail app for my emails and for my benchmarks so far, Yack works faster and smoother than Apple Mail.

Give it a try and don't forget to report back here :)

<comment><USER25> Sweet, great work. Does it work on an ipad3?

<comment><USER26> Does _anything_ still work on an iPad 3? I would have thought a lot of newer apps target iOS 10 or higher by now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Yack! is a native desktop app built for online communities such as Hacker News, Reddit, YouTube, Indie Hackers and many more.

It has an open source plugin architecture which allows anyone to build a plugin for their favorite communities. If you're interested in helping out, shoot me an email at hello[at]yack.io

Looking forward to your feedback :)

<comment><USER27> > is a native desktop

What does native mean in this context? Looks like Electron from the screenshots.

<comment><USER28> Its a native cross platform app. Not a native Mac app or Windows app.

<comment><USER27> It would be better to say it's a cross-platform app then I think. For me native app means it's a native Mac or Windows app.

<comment><USER29> I'd guess it's written for the normal person rather than someone who understands that cross-platform means.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> If anything, the biggest inadvertent feature is that its resemblance to Slack means you can browse those things at work and look like you're being productive.

<comment><AUTHOR> it's best when you're working on it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I just tried it and i agree with some of the comments here, not as fast or smooth as a native app should be. Now, as far as I understand HN only has a readonly API but reddit can be made completely native. Apollo for ios is the best example there. Personally, i am tired of electron or the mix of electron and native apps that end up using more and more electron code as they grow.

</comment><comment><USER32> Mac only? Isn't this built with Electron? Why not have a Linux version?

Or is this just for the cool kids in the exclusive Apple community?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a mix of Electron and native code (Swift). Focusing on perfecting the macOS version for the time being. Will release both for Linux and Windows very soon.

<comment><USER33> I will be eagerly awaiting the Linux version. =)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Not related to the app, but I really hate the sliding pages website UI. I almost closed the site because I thought it was broken at first. My problem is that I don't have my browser at full screen and it starts flipping pages before I can get to the bottom of the current page. And its not like I just had a little slit of a browser either, it is 2/3 of my screen down and 95% the width. Although the only reason I don't have it smaller now is because all the websites with fucked up banner ads and popups that don't scroll at all.

But my screen is large, I don't want or need my browser to be at full resolution, it shouldn't be assumed that it will be.

</comment><comment><USER35> Let's chant it together: dark theme, dark theme, DARK THEME.

<comment><AUTHOR> if this comment gets 200 replies, will stay up all night and release it this morning.

<comment><USER35> I conjure you, my HN brothers, reply as thou hast never replied in thine life.

<comment><USER36> Dark mode is not a option but a feature... or it should be marketed as such...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Looks just like Shift [1] which more-or-less promises the same thing for social media and communication (but is just an Electron skin anyway).

[1] [https://tryshift.com/](https://tryshift.com/)

</comment><comment><USER38> Building on IH is brave. From what I can tell @csallen is basically constantly changing its core interactions. It went from posting articles to both articles and tweet-like "posts" to just posts.

In fact, just looking at the screenshots now, I can see Yack is showing hash tags which were a highly use feature... but Courtland just ripped them out of the app last week!

[https://www.indiehackers.com/product/indie- hackers/-LlYr9ORN...](https://www.indiehackers.com/product/indie- hackers/-LlYr9ORNwC8KT2rLu14)

</comment><comment><USER39> This looks nice but "Many Communities, one UI" just doesn't work for me. The way I use hacker news is different than the way I use youtube. And it is different than how I use reddit.

<comment><USER40> How do you use HN and Reddit that makes them so dissimilar? From a UI standpoint, not a 'quality of the discussions' standpoint.

<comment><USER41> There are many posts on Reddit where I don't particularly care about the comments, and others where I'm just looking for a specific answer. In contrast, I'm actually far more likely to open an HN link in the first place if it has some comments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I think the implications of an open source API-only access method for these services are huge for user privacy. Taking reliance off of company-provided JavaScript will result in truer control over what actually gets sent to their servers. Advertising would have to be fought for through client acceptance at the API level. The tradeoff for users is access to new features and accepting more responsibility for upgrading/maintaining the interface.

</comment><comment><USER43> > _If your work isn 't ready for people to try out yet, please don't do a Show > HN. Once it's ready, come back and do it then._

> _Blog posts, sign-up pages, and fundraisers can 't be tried out, so they > can't be Show HNs._

Read the "Show HN" rules please: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks for the heads up. The app is ready and can be downloaded and unlocked via the landing page. It's beta at the moment but is very stable based on the feedback we've received from over 1.5k beta testers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I was thinking recently about video streaming sites. There is only one, really, that creators can use. Youtube creators are very vocal about how frustrating YT is becoming. What if creators could use any video streaming site (vimeo, tiktok, whatever) and a single app or site could bring all this together.

This could be the answer, this could solve the problem of monopolies like YouTube.

</comment><comment><USER45> Remember RSS readers?

Pepperidge Farms remembers.

<comment><USER46> I use feedly with over 100 feeds and an ifttt hook that saves the article to instapaper when I click 'read later' and it works great.

<comment><USER23> Can you see comments with RSS feeds? Also do you pay for Feedly?

<comment><USER45> Comments are supported in the RSS spec.

And Feedly is free.

<comment><USER23> Feedly isn't free. Site says basic/free is limited to "100 sources and 3 feeds". It's freemium. OP says they have over 100 feeds (which would be sources in this case, no clue what feeds are).

Sorry, I meant if comments are actually available in a majority or even a strong minority of RSS feeds. Last time I tried them, rarely were comments included. And def not for HN, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I can see some issues with trying to unify disparate communities / features for power users, but I would love a streamlined HN / Reddit comment browser with better nesting that sits on my Mac desktop. Signed up for the beta.

EDIT: Oof, not so interesting in making a profile for it, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Will consider making the Yack profile optional. For the beta version it was necessary because the app has a "Feedback" community, which is built on top of Discourse - This is where users provide feedback and report bugs.

Creating Yack profile automatically creates an account on Yack's Discourse instance but it never associates plugin accounts (hacker news, reddit, etc) with your Yack profile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I'd be interested if this were browser based.

</comment><comment><USER49> Looks good. Please make another Show HN once you release for Windows, will use for sure.

<comment><AUTHOR> will do, thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> That makes my procrastination so efficient you can't even call it procrastinating

<comment><AUTHOR> :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Looks cool! Reminds me of (YCs) Station with a focus on online communities. Hint: Says "0 beta users signed up since August 1st 2019" in the bottom left corner. Maybe refresh the cache?

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the feedback. Yep, currently looking into the issue. There're over 1.5k beta testers so far.

Didn't know Station was from YC. Yack is a native app with a custom UI/UX built specifically for browsing online communities. As far as I remember, Station was another wrapper that points to actual websites, no?

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> This reminds me of a browser I tried out years ago called Raven. It had a similar interface with icons for different sites along the side. It doesn't look like the website is still online though. [https://web.archive.org/web/20111124103600/http://raven.io/](https://web.archive.org/web/20111124103600/http://raven.io/)

</comment><comment><USER53> I would suggest optimizing the images, or lazy loading them. I have relatively fast internet but the images were taking a while to load.

I'd also suggest using JPEG 2000 or WebP images, as they can be faster to load.

Considering this is shared here, I am willing to wait but usually I would click out if the images are taking too long to load especially considering that images provide major info in terms of whether I want to use this or not.

</comment><comment><USER54> This is really promising and I'm fully set up and using it.

One question I have for the author is about keyboard access - there seem to be no keyboard shortcuts at all right now, or even basic navigation (up/down, etc.)

Is there any timeline on those sorts of things being available (or possible to add with a plugin)? Once those are in place it'll be far more practical for me to use Yack day-to-day...

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the feedback. Yes, keyboard shortcuts will be in the next release. It's the highest priority item on the list right now.

</comment></comment><comment> eric-hu Feedback: I jumped at this headline because HN, YouTube and Reddit are the main social media sources I consume now. I left the front page because I tend to browse these more on my phone or iPad. I do browse Reddit on my computer more than on iOS, but only because the Reddit mobile webpage is so terrible.

Wish youR Mac app blows up and you make an iOS app one day.

<comment><USER55> > I do browse Reddit on my computer more than on iOS, but only because the > Reddit mobile webpage is so terrible.

Have your tried Apollo[0]? It's a much better Reddit experience on iPad or iPhone than their official options, whether it's the website or their app.

[0] [https://apolloapp.io/](https://apolloapp.io/)

<comment><USER56> Apollo on ipad is torturous. I use it on mobile, but narwhal blows it out of the water on ipad.

<comment><USER55> What's the problem on iPad? I used Narwhal briefly, before Apollo, but it never particularly impressed me, though I can't name any specific faults either - maybe the design language, which doesn't feel very native or in line with iOS' overall appearance.

<comment><USER56> It's not optimized for tablets, just scaled. Narwhal displays a normal ipad- oriented layout like mail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> A great looking app. Just signed up for Beta :-) Went through the website but couldn't find a piece of info: Keyboard shortcuts (preferably vim-like). Is it already there or something in the works? I've been using a plugin for HN for sometime now and would love the same experience on a desktop client as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> keyboard shortcuts is in the works :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Super cool, but why would you limit yourself to mac users even in alpha? Oh well.

Anyway, we need more of this sort of thing. Most social websites only have value as endpoints and relying on their own UI is just a vertical trap. CSS and designers have done huge damage to the web; a lot of the blame lies with marketing departments.

</comment><comment><USER59> I like it. All of my procrastination sites in one app so my browser history doesn't get cluttered by non work stuff.

One of my biggest fears is when I start to type in a URL during a screen share with a client who's website is REGEX.COM, and they will see my auto fill trying to take us to Reddit.com/SEXY_TOE_PARTY

</comment><comment><USER60> I'd love a way to interact with each site using many users. E.g. "Comment" button has a dropdown for all the registered users for that site.

I've found having more purpose-driven usernames for some sites to be helpful, but the burden of switching between those users is immense and doesn't feel great.

</comment><comment><USER61> I love the idea...when is the Linux beta?

<comment><AUTHOR> Focusing on macOS version and building more plugins at the moment, thinking about Stackoverflow and StackExchange next, but also open to suggestions. Let me know what you think :)

Linux and Windows support will be added with the final release.

<comment><USER62> Will be waiting for Linux :D

PS: you mention Windows in the landing page, but not Linux.

<comment><AUTHOR> will update the landing page now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I'm guessing this is proprietary? Couldn't find any info about the licensing from the website.

</comment><comment><USER64> I would like to know the amount of ram it uses since it's gonna be a long running application

</comment><comment><USER65> Looks cool. But it should have a Python API letting you wrte your own source drivers so you could add other blogs.

PS: If only everybody were implementing ATOM and doing it properly - <USER2> wouldn't have to implement any site-specific clients then.

<comment><AUTHOR> It has plugin architecture that allows anyone to build plugins for Yack. Once out of beta, users will be able to install custom plugins directly from GitHub. Plugins must be written in TypeScript though.

<comment><USER65> Great. TypeScript doesn't feel as great for this kind of task (I mean content processing) as Python does but still feels a sufficiently reasonable alternative.

Will you also release Linux and Windows versions or is it meant to be Mac- only?

<comment><AUTHOR> Why do you think Python is better than TypeScript?

<comment><USER65> Does TypeScript have BeautifulSoup? TypeScript seems very appealing to me (a C# programmer) but it also seems like Python lets you write more concise text/XML/HTML processing code and already has particularly helpful libraries for this. Also, virtually everybody writes at least some Python which makes it a perfect language for user-developed extensions.

I don't mean TypeScript is much worse. Python just is the first thing to come to my mind as "right tool for the job" when it's about textual content processing. I'm not saying "please implement Python support instead", I'm just explaining why I've mentioned Python first. TypeScript is great too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Do you really need "Beta Signup" at 8 different places on a single webpage? Sounds being a little desperate to me.

Not nit picking here, but may put off some of us with mild OCD. :)

Otherwise, great concept! When are sign-ups for Mac opening?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks for the feedback. Sign-ups are open for macOS. As soon as you sign up, you'll receive an email with the invitation code and download link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This was all very cool up until I needed to create a Yack account. Yeah, nah.

</comment><comment><USER67> What is your business model?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks for the question. Haven't really thought about monetization yet. Want to focus on building the best desktop experience for online communities. Would love to be able to focus on it full time at some point (would be a dream). Maybe will introduce some paid features in the future, but everything in this version will always stay free.

<comment><USER67> Ok. I will consider adopting this in my life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Feels like multiple tabs in a browser window already solve this - at the UI part... Maybe there is a part of this that allows for easier cross referencing between sites?

</comment><comment><USER69> Like always centralization seems nice at first except that it is just not possible to have an app that speaks every API fragmenting the user experience even more.

</comment><comment><USER70> I'm sorry, but Why do I need this? This honestly seems harder to have meaningful interactions on the web and likely more difficult to find things.

</comment><comment><USER71> Wishful thinking, I'm sure, but I'd love to see Quora support. But that's probably totally unfeasible.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's feasible and already thinking about Quora plugin. Yack has an open source plugin architecture. Each community in the app, Hacker News, YouTube, Reddit are a plugin. Once out of beta, users will be able to install custom plugins directly from a GitHub url.

<comment><USER71> Godspeed. As far as I've been able to tell Quora is actively hostile to anyone trying to improve the experience of using their site. Drives me bonkers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Why does it look so much like Slack? :D

<comment><AUTHOR> you can use it at work all day and look productive :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Is there any support for extensions like Reddit Enhancement Suite?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, Yack is not a full blown browser. It's a community app, but will support almost all features RES does out of the box. It already supports multiple accounts across all networks. Few things on the roadmap:

Keyboard Shortcuts Dark Theme Notifications Chat Curated Feeds (Curating posts across multiple networks into a single feed) Plugins for Stackoverflow & StackExchange.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> Wasn't there an anonymous app called Yack as well?

<comment><USER75> I think you're thinking of yik yak [1].

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yik_Yak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yik_Yak)

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> All I get is a 404 from the download link.

</comment><comment><USER77> How is this different from using a browser?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question. Yack started out as a native macOS app for Reddit. As I was working on it, I realized most communities are the same, but provide different and somewhat clunky (especially on desktop) experience.

This lead me into building an open source plugin architecture which allows anyone to bring their favorite communities to Yack.

Plugin architecture, with the help of some really talented engineers helped me quickly build plugins for my favorite communities (Reddit, YouTube, Indie Hackers and Hacker News).

As to answer your question, same argument can be made against Apple's Mail app (which has been a big inspiration for designing Yack). People have multiple email accounts, imagine they all had different UI and you had to have multiple tabs open at all times, switching back and forth, each with different UI/UX. That would suck. Even with a single email address, lots of people, including myself use Apple Mail instead of Gmail's website.

I'm a member of multiple Slack teams, it would suck if each looked different and provided different experience and I'd have to use a web browser to talk to my coworkers. Do you think Slack would take off if it was just a website and didn't provide a desktop experience?

Yack! combines multiple communities into a single, unified desktop experience and takes full advantage of the desktop platform, including native OS level notifications, keyboard shortcuts, and many more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> A version for Linux would be nice.

</comment><comment><USER79> this "desktop app" somehow doesn't want to run on my linux desktop?

<comment><AUTHOR> Focusing on the macOS version for the time being, but will release for Linux & Windows very soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> great idea, definitely seems like something I would use.

<comment><USER81> Completely agree julien kervizic, it does seems like something that any devout hackernews reader could use.

<comment><USER82> Something is weird with all these new accounts with few comments on this thread supporting this.

Are you using a bunch of secondary accounts just to comment on your post?

<comment><USER83> I have my tinfoil hat on as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> Sweet idea! Looking forward to trying this out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Don't forget to report back here :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> Looks incredible!

<comment><USER81> Agree, Kat, the interface reminds me a bit of slack and having it as a desktop app makes it quite easy to browse when you have a couple of minutes of free time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> Sweet! Pretty good idea.

<comment><USER87> You created an account to post this comment, how incredibly noble of you.

<comment><USER88> Most people create an account to post a comment

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> You broke my heart with Mac only. I won't forgive you.</comment>


Ask HN: What if SOPA passes? - <AUTHOR>

We've talked about how to stop SOPA from passing.
But what measures are you taking now to make sure that, even if it passes, you have access to an open Internet?
Will you use the Firefox alternate DNS plugins? Will you route your traffic over TOR? Have you archived TOR and its documentation in case you do need it?
What preparations should we, as a community, take to counteract SOPA? Should countermeasure software be stored in a private torrent tracker that won't likely be blocked?
Tell me your strategies for the worst case. What will you do if SOPA passes? <comment><USER2> Probably not what you are looking for but I plan to shut down my personal site, actively campaign (politically) against candidates/office holders who support(ed) SOPA/PIPA (even when it means crossing traditional party lines).

I've been on the fence about a business idea and may well either kill it entirely or develop it outside the US should SOPA/PIPA be enacted (though with the EU going along with much of this copyright crap I'm not sure _where_ I'd develop it).

I'm shutting down my personal site because it's a blog with 12+ years of entries plus non-blog pages dating back to the 1990s. I have zero interest in reviewing the links in each entry to see if they link to potentially infringing content. The language in SOPA/PIPA is so vague that even if I removed all suspect links it's unclear that that would eliminate the chance for being taken down.

On the flip side: I have already cataloged many sites which have misappropriated content which I theoretically have the copyright on. Several are SOPA supporters. Should SOPA be enacted I plan to file takedown notices with their service providers until the copyrighted content is removed.

If the media companies are going to declare war on consumer generated content then we might as well fight back using their own weapons against them.

<comment><USER3> Somehow I doubt anybody will go after a personal site that isn't directly distributing copyrighted material. There's just no financial incentive. And if you play that scenario out to the extreme, _every_ site would have to be shut down because there are extremely few sites that do not link to anything, and eventually one has copyrighted content.

However, I like your idea of lining up takedown notices for SOPA supporters. I would love to see their Oh-shit faces when they realize what they've done.

<comment><USER2> Taking down the site may not seem to have financial incentive, but using the site as a vector to litigate against the owner of the site for infringement just introduces too much risk/liability against my personal financial assets. I mean, these bozos have gone after unemployed stay at home mothers for hundreds of thousands of dollars (and won). I just don't have the interest in intentionally being a litigation target for the copyright goons.

But to your point: yes, if you play the scenario to the extreme, _every_ site would have to be shut down. But if you read the text of the proposed laws and the existing precedents, as well as the statements of the proponents of these laws, I think that's the very point. They say the laws are targeted at foreign sites, but the text of the laws and existing precedent would lead to the shutdown of any consumer owned/generated site. The point of PIPA/SOPA isn't to stop piracy, it's to stop consumers from publishing their own content.

And to the media HNers out there: better make damn sure you have written copyright releases for every piece of user generated content on your site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am at the point of needing to set up a few new or reconstituted personal (non-business) sites. One had substantial traffic in the past and consisted of user contributed original content. (But long experience has taught me that no amount of rules, guidelines, and policing will stop some users from copy/pasting content from other sites, posing dubious links (all the more pertinent, these days), etc.)

I'm considering the merits and risks of setting them up outside the U.S. (Domain registration and hosting, with a longer term perspective towards establishing and routing payments through offshore accounts. Initially, I might pay in advance for a year or two (or several, if the outfit and local law/regulation looked stable enough), to avoid the risk of future cutoff of payment.)

Since I've mentioned that, I'll add that I'm uncertain as to suitable locations/providers.

\+ The Swiss response to the Wikileaks debacle, some recent rulings there, and the general attitude towards privacy has put Switzerland on my list.

\+ I have read about some non-logging VPN providers in certain favorable Caribbean countries (though I'm not sure about stability and resistance to real pressure).

\+ Sweden used to seem attractive (bomb proof data centers, hmm? ;-), but it seems increasingly apparent that their government is more or less pwned by U.S. interests.

\+ I don't have the knowledge to and wouldn't want to attempt the "Wild West" of hosting in some other geographic regions.

I'm not into infringing. I just don't want the hassle and the risk attendant to spurious accusations and prosecutions (something epc mentions in another comment). Then again, as I reside in the U.S., I'm not sure I'd escape the risk, even if the site were less subject to a takedown action.

Longer term, if this goes through, I'll be looking to move my communications activities abroad. The U.S. is becoming a bad place to do business, if you're part of the tritely termed "99%".

(Granted, much of the world has it worse off, both specifically and in general. But the local delta is negative, and it's best to be/act in advance of the changes if possible.)

</comment><comment><USER5> The only people that _really_ need to worry about SOPA are the little guys with personal connections/local businesses in the USA. If the USA kills their golden goose then it is their own damn fault and business will move elsewhere.

To access the internet all you have to do is get swissvpn or a proxy and you're set. If the .gov makes VPNs/proxies illegal then the USA suddenly is more oppressive than china/saudi Arabia.

<comment><AUTHOR> So SwissVPN is a trusted way to go? I'll have to look into them. I thought the only secure option would be TOR.</comment></comment>


The New York Times Told Me To Take This Down - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/meta/503b9c22080b/ <comment><USER2> I want to address the common demonstration of "it took you N * X hours to make something, but I replicated in N hours".

We see this statement very often. When Pinterest got popular, how long until we saw replicas? When Medium and Svbtle were introduced, wasn't it just a matter of hours to me-too replicas came along? There was one fellow who's name escapes me that came up with the hidden-left interface menu that you swipe into view from the top that's now commonly used in the Facebook app and many, many mobile sites.

None of this is new, and there's nothing wrong with it. Copying is the biggest form of flattery as is often said, and its a validation of your idea.

What happens very often is that we see great ideas in their finished, polished form. Someone's showed us the path.

When you show me how to build a bridge, I don't have to invent a bridge. In many cases, I see your awesome bridge and figure out even better ways to build it. But coming up with that first bridge, doing the engineering and testing and iterations on it, that's hard.

That's _really_ hard.

So yeah, you can recreate what someone else made in a lot shorter time than it took them to invent it. But invent something new and you'll see it takes you a long time too.

<comment><USER3> The point that majority of the work goes to figuring out how to execute well, and only a tiny amout towards the execution itself can be generalized to more than just copying website ideas. It applies to formulating hypotheses when solving problems. Most of the work is spent on figuring out the right question to ask, and only the little part is needed to actually answer it. It was nicely described on LessWrong:

<http://lesswrong.com/lw/jn/how_much_evidence_does_it_take/>

<http://lesswrong.com/lw/jo/einsteins_arrogance/>

Relevant quotes from the second post:

 _(...) you need an amount of evidence roughly equivalent to the complexity of the hypothesis just to locate the hypothesis in theory-space. It's not a question of justifying anything to anyone. If there's a hundred million alternatives, you need at least 27 bits of evidence just to focus your attention uniquely on the correct answer._

 _At the time of first formulating the hypothesis - the very first time the equations popped into his head - Einstein must have had, already in his possession, sufficient observational evidence to single out the complex equations of General Relativity for his unique attention. Or he couldn't have gotten them right._

<comment><USER4> > _Most of the work is spent on figuring out the right question to ask, and > only the little part is needed to actually answer it._

That sounds like operative part of the Feynman Algorithm:

 _1\. Write down the problem.

2\. Think real hard.

3\. Write down the solution._

Where the harder part is in actually defining the problem which you're trying to solve, then writing that down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Catchy title, but:

" I used their images/video to make a point. I can see how the video could fall under Fair Use"

Frankly I don't see _at all_ how that would fall under Fair Use, and The Times is absolutely right to C&D him.

Also, "A statement of fact about a company is not a copyright infringement."

No, but a statement of fact about a company that is not backed by public data is slander. NYT doesn't even claim that the reference is copyright infringement, the author just assumes that.

edit: ok, I actually thought he had put a demo _website_ online in which he used the images, so it would look like the NYT's page (but with lorem ipsum for text or something) but he just made an educational video of it, I can see that could be fair use. So I retract my absolute statement. (as should be done with absolute statements in general! (absolutely)) I still think the 'hundreds of hours' remark isn't cool, but perhaps the law is on his side there too.

<comment><USER6> The use of copyrighted material for criticism or comment (e.g. "to make a point") is, in fact, considered fair use:

<http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107>

Additionally, the video was _educational_ (it demonstrated how to create something), further bolstering the claim of fair use. The NYT is entirely out of line with the C&D, and it is particularly troubling that a newspaper -- which _frequently_ engages in fair use, _frequently_ reproducing material as part of their journalism and their criticism -- would send such a letter.

<comment><USER7> I disagree, this video was educational about _his product_ , so there was a commercial interest behind it.

As such, this isn't a fair use case; there have been cases in the past where copy-shops copied parts of books for educational purposes, but because there was a commercial intent behind it US courts ruled that _not_ to be fair use.

See: Princeton University Press v. Michigan Document Services, Inc., 99 F.3d 1381 (6th Cir. 1996).

[http://copyright.columbia.edu/copyright/fair-use/case- summar...](http://copyright.columbia.edu/copyright/fair-use/case-summaries/)

Of course, that one sentence they told him later to take down is a different thing I can't understand.

<comment><USER6> The difference is that his product does not compete in with the New York Times; it may be valuable to the Times' competitors, but nobody will watch his video and then _not_ read the Times article as a result. The criteria for judging fair use include the potential impact on the market value of the copyrighted work; in this case, it seems that the impact is basically nil, because there are two separate markets. It is not about commercial _intent_ , but rather about the _effect_ in a particular market (and even that is not cut-and-dry).

The case of textbook publishing is different, because the copies compete with the original in the same market.

Really though, my point was not about the educational nature. Even if we assume there is _no_ educational value to the video, it is still a case of criticism/commentary, which is still fair use. The author is not in any way reducing the value of the Times article. The article was not copied in full. These are all things that support the claim that this is fair use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If this isn't a "native advertisement" for scrollkit, nothing is. I can't believe a piece of content marketing has gotten the #1 spot on HN.

<comment><USER9> Yeah really. Way too self-promotional and "hey everybody get mad at how I was wronged by BigCo" for my tastes.

As others have noted, the hundreds of hours vs. one hour claim is very disingenuous. Cutting and pasting an existing work into your toolkit is not even close to designing and creating an original piece of investigative journalism.

And, at the end there, actually calling on the NYT to advertise this scrollkit on panels? Because...why? The creator thinks it's really cool?

<comment><USER10> Use of succinct language requires context and common sense. Would anyone actually think he was describing a magical content generator?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is equivalent to a Youtube video where someone demonstrates how to play a popular song on a guitar.

Anyone against that is not on the same team as me.

<comment><USER12> I don't agree at all because the scrolling effect isn't the issue. The content is the issue.

The guy could have used any generic content in the world to demonstrate scrollkit. He could have used "lorem ipsum" and random Creative Commons images from Flickr. He could have done his own investigation about the avalanche and created his own article. He could have made an article about some other event. He could have written an article about scrollkit and used it to demonstrate scrollkit. There are practically an infinite number of ways he could have avoided this.

Instead he used very specific copyrighted content from an article by a huge media company.

I almost want to say the guy is just trolling for page views. He copied an entire NY Times article, and he's surprised the NY Times has a problem? Who is that dumb?

<comment><USER13> Did you stop reading after the first couple sentences? He took down the content. The NYT then came back and said even having the text "The NYT spent hundreads of hours hand-coding "Snow Fall." We made a replica in an hour." on his site was copyright infringement.

<comment><USER14> > The NYT then came back and said even having the text "The NYT spent > hundreads of hours hand-coding "Snow Fall." We made a replica in an hour." > on his site was copyright infringement.

No, they didn't. They took issue with the fact that he merely set the video to "private" instead of taking it down and with the continued use of their name. They did not make the claim that the use of their name was copyright infringement: in reality, the new claim they make in the second C&D is trademark infringement. It's still specious (nominative use of trademarks is generally fine), but not nearly as absurd.

<comment><USER15> That's only the first part of the request. The highlighted part of the email says they need to remove all mention of them from the site, and specifically calls about that bit of text as something that needs to be removed.

<comment><USER14> > That's only the first part of the request. The highlighted part of the email > says they need to remove all mention of them from the site, and specifically > calls about that bit of text as something that needs to be removed.

What I wrote in my comment is in reference to the entire request, including the highlighted part of the email. Asking someone to remove something or cease and desist is not solely the domain of copyright infringement. The only part of the second C&D that deals with copyright infringement is the first sentence, where they state that changing the video status to private is unacceptable.

The _other_ claim they make, starting at "Further, you need to remove any reference..." and ending with "...We made a replica in under an hour" is a claim of _trademark_ , not copyright, infringement, contrary to GGP's belief. Nowhere in the C&D does the NYT assert copyright over the use of the quoted text: they only made a claim of copyright infringement in the first C&D with respect to "any New York Times _content_ ", not the text referencing their name.

This situation really isn't that hard to parse and requires no speculation: just read all of what the New York Times sent instead of relying on the OP's misinterpretation that everything the NYT is claiming is all just something absurd about copyright infringement.

<comment><USER15> Only the first letter even mentions copyright. The second letter does not mention either copyright or trademark. I think the claim wouldn't make any sense under either set of rights, and since the letter doesn't specify, you're basically just guessing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> When lawyers make demands they often don't have the law backing them. When there's no consequence for making spurious and vague legal threats, the system is going to be abused.

Edit: It's unfortunate, but ... yeah. It might be worth forwarding your story to some legal blogs that specialise in free speech I suppose, but other than that. _shrug_ I'm afraid I'm not sure what you can do if you don't have the money to fight them.

<comment><USER17> If there were non-criminal consequences for making spurious and vague threats, lawyers would just make legal threats involving those consequences as a response to threats made to lawyers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This Daft Punk article might be a suitable replacement for the author.

<http://pitchfork.com/features/cover-story/reader/daft-punk/>

<comment><USER19> I wonder why we haven't heard as much from the development team at Pitchfork. The masthead lists Development team as:

Matt Dennewitz Neil Wargo Andrew Gaerig

They do amazing work with the Cover Story series. A blog post from them showing off their techniques would gain a huge amount of traction, at least here on HN

<comment><USER20> hey, matt here. we (pitchfork's dev and design teams) have traditionally kept a low profile, but that time is quickly moving behind us. i'd love to talk about how we build our cover stories, our philosophies on integrating _tasteful_ advertising, etc. what would you like to hear about?

edit: here are our cover stories: <http://pitchfork.com/features/cover- story/>. we've been at it for a while, and you can see where the idea grew legs, learned to walk, and took off. pretty neat.

<comment><USER21> Hey matt, thanks for that story, it is truly beautiful (both in content and container)... just wanted to mention it!

<comment><USER20> thanks for the kind words! my team is nothing w/o the incredible teams -- design, editorial, biz -- we work with every day. few names make it into the bright parallaxing lights of the final product, but really, everyone touches it, even if indirectly or tangentially.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Bad writing. Bloggers that start talking about something as if I know what it is, and never even take 2 sentences to describe it, really grind my gears. I _still_ don't know what the story is about or why newsrooms would refer to it.

On top of that, the piece is the most vain attempt at generating controversy for the sake traffic i've ever seen. Please, can't blatant attempts at advertising be taken off HN?

<comment><USER23> I prefer this style. For those that don't know what it is there is Google. For those of us that do, we don't have to skip over it and find the start of the article.

On your second point, I can concur.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> About ten years ago I was working for a company that was featured in a (fairly glowing) article in the NYT. We linked to it from our media page, and a month or two later received a similar letter from their legal department instructing us to either remove the link, or pay them some outrageous amount of money (something like $4500, if I recall correctly). So we changed the link to an "I'm feeling lucky" search on Google that took you directly to the article. Never heard about it again.

</comment><comment><USER25> Surely if the tool is good, it can stand on its own?

The author could easily have used greeking or content promoting ScrollKit to fill the site. Ripping off NYT's material is a dodgy way to start things IMO. Hell, write your own feature about a pet, or your grandparents' legacy or soup up a page of Wikipedia content with Creative Commons and attributed Flickr photos.

I almost don't care what happened after that (the private YouTube video, the leveraging of their brand, etc). The reaction to the initial contact could've been overwhelmingly apologetic - complete removal of the video, no leveraging of Snow Fall and so on - but instead makes for linkbait.

Even now, going to the demo gives the big "they made me do it" message when any text could've replaced their content very easily. You know, replicated in an hour...

This story might've got the tool excellent publicity, but I don't view it positively as a result.

</comment><comment><USER26> It is especially ironic that a NEWS organization would claim that facts are protected by copyright, and one needs someone's permission to report factual claims. Such a legal theory is rather inimical to the business of news.

<comment><USER27> No - they claim Snow Fall is protected by copyright and that it us being used to promote a service.

<comment><USER26> No - the copyright in the Snow Fall article indeed protects him from _copying_ the Snow Fall article (unless it is fair use). Yes, he may have violated copyright by doing so.

The copyright in the Snow Fall article does not give anyone the rights to prevent someone from saying "The NYT spent hundreds of hours hand-coding 'Snow Fall'. We made a replica in an hour." That quote from their letter is the part I was referring to.

<comment><USER27> Gotcha. My bad. I'll re-read the post

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Snow Fall (video/images) is protected by copyright, but 'The NYT spent hundreads of hours hand-coding "Snow Fall." We made a replica in an hour.' is nominative fair use. He might have to say something about not being affiliated with the NYT in any way, but he should be able to make that claim. Truth is a perfect defense.

<comment><USER26> You are confusing your legal theories.

It does not violate copyright, it is true, to say "The NYT spent hundreds of hours..." It is not 'fair use' though, because it is not a use of copyrighted material in the first place. 'Fair use' means fair use _of copyrighted material_, it is a defense against using copyrighted material without permission.

'Truth' is not in fact any kind of a defense against copyright. If you really _do_ copy someone's copyrighted work without permission, and it is not fair use, then it is completely irrelevant whether the text you copied was 'true' or not. But if did not copy someone's copyrighted work, then you can't possibly have violated their copyright.

For instance, if someone else had first written an article that began "The NYT spent hundreds of hours...", and went on, and you copied that entire article yourself without permission, and you did not have a fair use defense -- you would be violating their copyright, regardless of how true or false the article was.

'nominative fair use' is a legal theory of _trademark_, and what you say may actually be more applicable to trademark, aha, okay. Important to be clear though.

<comment><USER14> > 'nominative fair use' is a legal theory of _trademark_, and what you say may > actually be more applicable to trademark, aha, okay. Important to be clear > though.

This part is the only part that matters here: the second C&D about the use of _New York Times_ mark is entirely about whether it's fair use to use it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> How Snow Fall was Made: A Q&A with the NYT team

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5747788>

</comment><comment><USER30> This is an interesting question, I can see the argument that the NYT has the rights to do what ever they want with the Snow Fall story material but it seems an over-reach to ask Scroll kit to remove a reference to them in their description.

That last bit seems like fair use. If I write a book "in the style of Rudyard Kipling's 'Just So Stories'" by what reasoning would the Kipling estate ownership of that style?

<comment><USER26> It is not 'fair use', because it is not copyrighted in the first place.

'Fair use' is a legal defense to make copies of copyrighted material. Yes, it is copyrighted, but it is a fair use anyway, if X, Y and Z.

Facts and factual statements are not copyrightable in the US in the first place. Nor does copyright, in the US, prevent someone from comparing something to Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories. So you are correct that there is no legal basis under copyright to prevent such a comparison, but it's not about fair use.

<comment><USER14> > It is not 'fair use', because it is not copyrighted in the first place.

> 'Fair use' is a legal defense to make copies of copyrighted material. Yes, > it is copyrighted, but it is a fair use anyway, if X, Y and Z.

> Facts and factual statements are not copyrightable in the US in the first > place. Nor does copyright, in the US, prevent someone from comparing > something to Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories. So you are correct that > there is no legal basis under copyright to prevent such a comparison, but > it's not about fair use.

This is simply incorrect: I wish you'd stop replying to everyone who mentions "fair use" with this. _Nominative_ fair use is the ability to use someone else's _trademark_ for the purposes of comparison. Thus, NYT's second demand, to cease referring to "The New York Times" on Scrollkit's website is _entirely_ about fair use. It has nothing to do with NYT's copyright claims.

<comment><USER31> But according to the three criteria described in this article on nominative use[1], it looks like using the New York Times' trademark in this case would be perfectly legitimate:

 _The nominative use test essentially states that one party may use or refer to the trademark of another if:

1\. The product or service cannot be readily identified without using the trademark (e.g. trademark is descriptive of a person, place, or product attribute).

2\. The user only uses as much of the mark as is necessary for the identification (e.g. the words but not the font or symbol).

3\. The user does nothing to suggest sponsorship or endorsement by the trademark holder. This applies even if the nominative use is commercial..._

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_use>

<comment><USER14> Oh, I totally agree this appears to be prima facie nominative fair use: using a competitor's name for the basis of comparison has a strong history in US trademark law. It'd be interesting to find out why The New York Times thinks otherwise.

My issue was with GGP's insistence that it had nothing to do with fair use or that people talking about fair use were necessarily talking about NYT's copyright claims. Fair use also applies to trademarks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> _> 'The NYT spent hundreads of hours hand-coding "Snow Fall." We made a replica in an hour.

It's an unreasonable and baffling request for the New York Times to tell us to take down this statement. A statement of fact about a company is not a copyright infringement._

Can something like this be considered defamation? (or did NYT come out and publicly say that they spent hundreds of hours hand coding this?)

<comment><USER14> The main reference I found to the amount of time it took came from a Q&A[1] that appeared after it was published:

> [...]I spent much of the summer getting to know the people involved > (sometimes with the photographer Ruth Fremson and the video journalist > Catherine Spangler in tow) and the loved ones left behind, and attended the > 2012 International Snow Science Workshop in September to help understand the > world of avalanches and snow. And I started writing, which took a few weeks. > By then, The New York Times had committed to telling this story through > multimedia. And, as I hope people see in the credits at the bottom of the > article, it was quite a team of graphic artists and designers and editors. > Unlike me, they all had plenty of other duties this fall — the presidential > election, Hurricane Sandy — but really devoted much of the past month to the > publication.

Based on that, it seems the NYT is claiming it took a team working part time—in an unusually busy news time—about a month to complete. The credits for Snow Fall list 11 people on the design team: to get to 200 hours, the minimum needed to qualify as "hundreds", it'd be 18 hours per person. Plausible, but it would be better if he could cite that claim.

I couldn't find any claim to the part about "hand-coding" (whatever that means). In fact, in a different Q&A[2], they mention using a mixture of prior custom work and off-the-shelf components:

> We used a number of custom components that we've used in other projects in > the past like the modal slideshows. But some tools/libraries include jQuery, > underscore, jPlayer, HTML5 video, jQuery Reel, and jQuery address. In > triggering scroll-based events, I took inspiration from Remy Sharp's inview > jquery plugin.

[1]: [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/22/sports/q-a-the- avalanche-a...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/22/sports/q-a-the-avalanche-at- tunnel-creek.html) [2]: [http://source.mozillaopennews.org/en-US/articles/how- we-made...](http://source.mozillaopennews.org/en-US/articles/how-we-made-snow- fall/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Does the NYT have a right (before we get into fair use or w/e) to demand that a video be deleted off youtube rather than made private? I thought copyright was (roughly) about limiting distribution, so even if NYT's copyright claims apply to that video, can they control what the OP does with it if its not being published?

<comment><USER34> If it were uploaded to YouTube servers, and shared across CDN's around the world, would that not be distribution in the finer sense? Additionally, "private" is different than unlisted, and the video can still be shared publicly, just in a limited sense.

<comment><USER33> Ah, I thought youtube only had public/"only with link"/none sharing. Cheers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Well played sir! You've managed to take a run-of-the-mill little David vs. the Big Media Goliath story and use it as a sales pitch for your _scroll kit_ and made the front page of HN to boot!

</comment><comment><USER36> The fact that their website still doesn't have a viewable demonstration of their software suggests it actually isn't so easy to make interactive content like _Snow Fall_.

The only thing I could find was this very annoying video: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUA62gHzVpA>

</comment><comment><USER37> "but we don't have the resources to fight the Times's legal department"

My personal opinion (based on years of observation of this type of thing) is that it is well worth the money to invest in an IP lawyer to review and to see if you have a leg to stand on with respect to fair use.

The reason being is that this is a tempest in a teapot [1] and has the potential to deliver gross amounts of publicity to the startup as it is discussed and dissected ad infinitum. As such if the IP attorney decides that there is a basis for fair use I would go with it if at all possible and keep the page up. In the end the Times isn't going to want the negative publicity over this (even if they have a reasonable case) and may very well end up backing down. Could end up being a Streisand effect as well.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_in_a_teapot>

<comment><USER38> _invest in an IP lawyer to review_...

The problem I have with that is that only a trial can tell "fair use" from "not fair use". A few billable hours with a lawyer probably won't tell you anything more than that. Review is great, but it's not an absolute, as an IP lawyer is most definitely not the final authority.

<comment><USER37> All I am looking at is whether there is a basis to hang a hat on.

And if that is the case then people will come to the defense of the accused and the complainant may back down or reevaluate their position. _All with the resulting publicity_ (which actually would happen even if he was wrong but that's much more risky so I wouldn't advocate w/o some leg). In any event you have to ask yourself what their game is and whether they would seek damages (can't get blood from a stone you know) and whether they even want to spend (they aren't exactly super profitable or anything) resources on this.

Consequently I don't care what would happen at trial because there isn't going to be a trial. The NYT isn't going to spend resources on this.

This is all strategy based on my experience.[2] You ask 10 people you will get 10 opinions. All I'm saying is that it pays to have someone review before backing down in "3 days". [1]

[1] Absolutely inconceivable that the NYT won't allow someone to locate an attorney to review which in no case is 3 days reasonable. There is no imminent harm to them. This is on the face the standard "scary lawyer letter" intended to cause exactly the reaction that it did.

[2] I had two situations where both American Express and the NCAA came calling with scary lawyer letters many years ago and was able to keep them at bay with a reply letter from my attorney. And other things like this. Law and strategy are two different things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> view-source on "snow fall" and you'll see that it's bloatware underneath, through and through.

so i am pleased to see any kind of tool being offered to creative individuals that will help to simplify the matter of creating such sites.

if i did a replica, i would scramble the text, and dummy the images and video, so as to avoid any copyright issues. but that's a side-issue.

the important point is big-money corporations usually employ cost-inefficient methodologies. it'd be a mistake for individuals to think that such wasteful methodologies are the only route. so don't let the n.y. times bully you into the incorrect perception that only it can create a lush presentation a la "snow fall". you can too.

-bowerbird

</comment><comment><USER40> Is it just me or has medium.com begun to dominate HN in the last month?

<comment><USER41> It's not just you. It's done by people who, apparently, hate the iPad pinch- to-zoom gesture --- since medium.com does not permit that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> This is the first time I have heard of Snow Fall - and no wonder - it's nothing new. A bunch of moving pictures and some text. I don't see how this is any different than sites with irritating flash video ads (or just video) on them - text plus video/moving pictures.

If I were someone at NYT, I would be flattered that someone took the time to replicate my stuff since it seems someone seems to think it's worth stealing/borrowing/copying/etc

</comment><comment><USER43> They feel so outdated compared with the internet culture of open source and sharing. You can almost feel the dinosaurs crumbling and dying!

</comment><comment><USER44> I thought Snow Fall was great -- but I'd much rather tip my hat to Pitchfork.com for their "Cover Story" series when it comes to compelling online content publishing:

<http://pitchfork.com/features/cover-story/>

<comment><USER19> Their technical lead Matt Dennewitz seems to post here too. It's high time for a blog post about Pitchfork Cover Story, Matt!

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Did it really take NYT hundreds of hours to create that story or did he pull that out of his hat?

<comment><USER46> Hundreds of hours coule be reasonable if you included conception, explorations of alternatives, etc... Just think of multiple designers being involved.

It's incredibly easier/quicker to code something when you're just copying someone else's end result.

<comment><USER45> I agree that it is reasonable, and the level of polish that they had in the final result is worthy of their time. I am sure that scrollkit has spent much more than 100s of hours creating the scrollkit toolbox and presumably the NYT did it from scratch.

I am mostly wondering where he got that number from, was it a guess, did they quote it at some point?

<comment><AUTHOR> God took centuries to write the bible; Gutenberg reproduced the work in a few days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> This "medium.com" site causes the "pinch to zoom" function to not work on the iPad. This sucks. I refuse to read sites that break things like this. Why do they wish to disenfranchise iPad users?

<comment><USER47> I've seen quite a few sites which prevent zooming on mobile browsers. I think it's to do with:

"Mobile Safari often just zooms the page when changing from portrait to landscape, instead of laying out the page as it would if originally loaded in landscape. If web developers want their scale settings to remain consistent when switching orientations on the iPhone, they must add a maximum-scale value to prevent this zooming, which has the sometimes-unwanted side effect of preventing users from zooming in." [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Mozilla/Mobile/View...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Mozilla/Mobile/Viewport_meta_tag)

Whatever the reason, it's pretty annoying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I wonder if it's reasonable to put the snowfall replica back up now as it has become closer to an element of a fair use political speech over copyright overreach.

</comment><comment><USER49> seems news papers resemble entertainment companies closer and closer. Sad to see NYT - respectable News publication stoop this low. It is that or legal makes the company look like that.

</comment><comment><USER21> just post it back already</comment>


4 Reasons Why Microservices Are Climbing the Hype Cycle - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/4-reasons-why-microservices-climbing-hype-cycle-david-simmons <comment><USER2> On the downside, microservices are separated by fallible networks, introduce network latency throughout the system, make referential integrity much harder (eg, no foreign keys), make debugging and logging more complicated, and require more resources to boot than a single monolith.

As we're all exhausted from saying about every single coding and architecture paradigm ever: "there are tradeoffs".</comment>


LiveUSB builder with ROS (Robot Operating System) installed - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rdbox-intec/rdbox/blob/master/utils/live-ros-builder/README.md <comment><USER2> At Elementary we're working on [atom]([https://github.com/elementary- robotics/atom](https://github.com/elementary-robotics/atom)) which is a ROS- like OS for your robot in which each element (effectively a "node" from ROS) is docker containerized. Docs [here]([https://atomdocs.io/](https://atomdocs.io/)) It also gives you more powerful serialization options on the wire (no serialization, msgpack and arrow currently supported) and has some nice data APIs due to using redis streams as a message brokering backend.

It's still pretty early and doesn't have nearly as many features or open- source packages but it's helped us be nimble and avoid a fair amount of the build/maintenance headaches.

</comment><comment><USER3> Recently I needed some ROS code for a four wheel steering controller. Someone has this really neat steering controller package that lets you define a wide variety of robots and interface them with ROS, and it does nice things like calculate the odom values for you.

But I ultimately found that setting up and running ROS was sort of more complex than I needed (I'm running on raspberry pi). I pulled the snippet of C++ from the steering controller that I needed and converted it to python. I use python multiprocessing to launch multiple python files as processes that run independently, and use multiprocessing pipes to communicate between the parent process and the sub processes.

I've got a whole pure python robot with RTK GPS, four wheel steering, a live server interface, and GPS path-following. It's all working fine and I haven't really needed ROS yet.

I feel like I never would have learned how to build this software if I hadn't learned ROS first though. ROS shows you how all the pieces fit together, and after learning that I started to see how to build it from scratch. For simple applications in resource constrained environments there may be times where building it from scratch is easier. I sure am glad that ROS code and steering controller were there for me to borrow from though!

EDIT: The USB package in TFA looks nice. It's tricky to run ROS on anything but the exact distro they recommend and this seems to be a useful tool for getting it running quickly without messing with your system.

</comment><comment><USER4> That's useful, in a way. ROS is a collection of several hundred academic software packages which share an interprocess messaging system. Installing ROS tends to cause package problems on Linux due to excessive version pinning.

So, add another level of indirection with Docker! Now ROS has its own versions of everything.

<comment><USER5> I just use ROS in a ubuntu VM. Installing/Maintaining ROS on Arch is a hell of a time

<comment><USER6> Debian/Ubuntu maintainer here; it sucks for us, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Only at important times, such as tournaments and business talks, I couldn't debug ROS because my PC was out of order or the battery ran out. . . Isn't that so? In such a case, if at least rviz can be started using someone's PC, So, I made a script to create ROS LiveUSB using Docker and chroot.

</comment><comment><USER6> At one point, ROS documentation touted its ablity to support multiple "ros_distros" on a single host. That developers are reduced to isolation via live USB is some pretty stark irony.</comment>


Active-Shooter Drills Are Tragically Misguided - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/active-shooter-drills-erika-christakis/580426/ <comment><USER2> The most ironic effect of school shooter training is that it encourages more school shootings.

I was surprised that "you look like you'd shoot up a school" is becoming a relatively common insult in middle school kids.

The more society thinks about school shootings, the more mentally troubled people will think about school shootings.

Shooting up schools is a fad. Just like many other types of murders have gone through fads (mail bomber). Copy cat murderers are our biggest problem, and becoming hysterical when school shootings happen is why copy cats are so prolific.

<comment><USER3> > The most ironic effect of school shooter training is that it encourages more > school shootings.

It has a normalising effect, but then if schools didn't do it, perhaps they could be sued by parents when something happened?

<comment><USER4> Perhaps now they could be sued for giving a future shooter ideas? You are probably right, but it just doesn't make sense to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If ever there was a time to unschool / homeschool your children, today is it and this article has a clear and concise picture of why.

"Adultification" is a good word for the problem, of which shooter drills are a small part.

I appreciate the comparison between "duck and cover" in the 50s to the "active school shooter" of today -- the latter being equally ineffective and as terrifying than the former (if not more).

<comment><USER6> "duck and cover" is effective. People who did that in Hiroshima were more likely to survive.

<comment><USER7> this can be incredibly effective as most "bullets" intentionally discharged toward a human, travel a path above knee level. This is the reason i was given to drop to the ground and stay flat while moving toward concealment and cover

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> better to have a basket of spears and some bows & arrows in every classroom and have active-shooter bayonet and archery practice. Nothing like practicing cowering in fear. Fight back with _something_.</comment>