Reddit app got 50M downloads by making mobile web experience miserable - <AUTHOR> https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/09/02/reddit-gets-its-app-to-50-million-play-store-downloads-mostly-by-making-the-mobile-web-experience-miserable/ <comment><USER4> Recent reddit app discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24208958](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24208958) (650 comments)

</comment><comment><USER5> I genuinely wonder if the people in charge of Reddit ever come around to places like this to read these sentiments. Hell, they actually only need to read actual Reddit posts to understand that many people are utterly disgusted by their tactics to try and force you onto their mobile app, they're upset at how slow the (default) site is, etc.

Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe people will keep using it forever. But I doubt it. They've turned Reddit from something that had potential to exist for a long time into something closer to TikTok (which, even without the current drama, was never going to be more than a fad IMO). There are more efficient ways to get low-effort shitposts and memes than Reddit. Those who want that will move on, and the people who were interested in more than that are leaving now.

<comment><USER6> I have come to the conclusion that reddit is 2 apps/websites.

The first is a tiktok-esque waste of time, instant gratification meme machine. Everyone on this app uses the reddit native app and doesn't care about dark patterns. They would never know that reddit's app is shit, because they literally don't care enough.

The 2nd is a Hackernews-esque collection of hobbyist sub-forums. These people are invested in their hobbies and sub-reddits. They use reddit to interact and discuss, but also a source of niche-news for their hobby. Every one here has a 3rd party reddit app or uses RES. (if you don't, please do). Unlike twitter, reddit lets 3rd parties offer feature complete wrappers for reddit. This group has ad-block, but will occasionally give someone gold. This group hates reddit, but also has no where to go.

If a person tries to make reddit both, then it is an annoying experience. I use reddit entirely as the latter. The front-page and r/all are garbage to me. Every super popular (barring sports) subreddit is trash. But, my niche subreddits are literally the best places on the internet to gain niche information.

Examples where the subreddit is the best source of open discussion on the internet for that niche: dota2, manga, soccer, metal, prog, civilized discourse, history, male fashion (kinda), calisthenics, small cities, fantasy fiction, niche YT channels, super authentic cooking....and that's just for me.

PSA : Use a 3rd party reddit app (SYNC is my preferred. Pay up the 2$ dollars. It is worth it). Use RES, and enforce filters strongly. Use RedditProTools to detect trolls, bias and top contributors. Use Imagus (hoverzoom has malware) for pop-image/video viewer. These will greatly enhance your reddit experience.

<comment><USER7> > Examples where the subreddit is the best source of open discussion on the > internet for that niche: dota2, manga, soccer, metal, prog, civilized > discourse, history, male fashion (kinda), calisthenics, small cities, > fantasy fiction, niche YT channels, super authentic cooking....and that's > just for me.

With the risk of sounding elitist, for some of those topics the main subreddit is overran with pointless and repetitive memes. You'd have to go to the r/true* subreddit to get the serious, in depth discussions.

<comment><USER8> Unfortunately many of the true subreddits are now alt right havens.

<comment><USER9> There are plenty of both extremes, what's mostly missing are moderate "political" subreddits that aren't full of SJW and cancel culture. That's why I only bother on the hobby/computer subs. They're generally fairly well behaved and neutral as long as politics doesn't come up and the better mods are good at shutting such nonsense down. I don't care if you're a biden or trump support if I'm in r/diy

<comment><USER8> r/neoliberal for discussion of center left politics focusing on evidence based policy.

<comment><USER10> That one confuses me because I've only ever heard the label used as a slur so I expect the posts to be like /r/EnlightenedCentrism but it's actually a boring pro-Democrat sub. Certainly not evidence-based policy, unless you consider "removing Trump" as a policy.. . which apparently is Biden's platform, so yeah it fits.

<comment><USER8> The name is a joke. Moderate democrats get labeled as neoliberals by reddit leftists so they embraced it, the sub isn't actually neoliberal. Right now there are a lot of memes, but once the election happens it'll go back to normal. You can still look at the effortposts which are pretty high quality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There is a phenomenon when older and older groups enter a social platform, the quality of that platform deteriorates for the younger generation, and perhaps maybe even overall. We saw this with facebook, We saw this with twitter, and we're now seeing this with Reddit.

(yes, there is twitter outside of tech, and it's content quality is extremely poor and juvenile)

Reddit, at one point, was just science, memes, an occasional atheist post, and and A list Celebrity AMA every other day - a platform that provided niche content mostly for age 18-30 year old Americans.

Now with the flood of all sorts of ideas from all fronts, It has become way too overwhelming to really digest what everyone has to offer - Diving deep into reddit will eventually and inevitably get anyone upset and bothered.

As Reddit builds its foundation upon favoring ad populum, it is starting to become evident that not every voice should be heard, especially when the average american individual is as uneducated as he or she is.

"Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'"

― Isaac Asimov

I'd like to one up Asimov - that it is not a false notion, but literally the core tenet of what democracy is.

That all opinions are of equal value.

And in all honesty... this is dangerous.

<comment><USER12> I've been using Reddit since 2009 (after the Digg exodus for ironically - <USER2> bad redesign.), and the biggest change I've noticed (aside from the terrible single page app they switched over to) is how massively popular schadenfreude content is now. Subreddits like "Justice Served" and "Public Freakout", "Malicious Compliance" "Entitled Parents", the list goes on and on.

It's all "This person/people/group did something bad and now are getting their comeuppance." and the site has become like a nerdy version of World Star Hip Hop.

You really can't browse the regular Reddit front page without encountering a lot of content that is designed to upset you. I've started to actually hate using Reddit. Niche subreddits are still useful in limited ways, but it's a shame to see things go this way. Reddit had a good run.

<comment><USER13> Reddit is completely infested with politics too, many subs that you wouldn't expect to be political are clearly aligned a certain way.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, I've noticed recently. For instance /r/ActualPublicFreakOuts is quite conservative, in comparison to /r/PublicFreakOuts

<comment><USER10> That happened as a reaction to PublicFreakouts becoming ProtestsAgainstPolice

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> jpe-210 From my perspective there are only two ways to browse Reddit nowadays: visiting the old.reddit.com site and through a third-party mobile app.

I'm not one to speak either about the changing dynamics on the site since it's launch, but my experience there as a whole has shifted hard into the direction of carefully curated subreddits. Avoiding anything I don't want to see is just as easy as never visiting All or Popular.

<comment><USER15> I use i.reddit.com on mobile, it seems distinct from old.reddit.com?

<comment><USER16> old.reddit serves you the old desktop interface, even on mobile. i.reddit serves you the very old mobile interface, even on desktop.

<comment><USER17> i.reddit.com serves the old mobile interface but the very old mobile interface is served at [https://www.reddit.com/.mobile?keep_extension=True](https://www.reddit.com/.mobile?keep_extension=True)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's always interesting to see how the value of communities gets concentrated and captured.

1\. Communities for around disparate forums 2\. Those communities migrate to centralized service because of more eyeballs in one place, less work to maintain infrastructure, etc. 3\. Centralized service captures increasing amount of value by running more ads, closing off more open channels, etc.

This is clearly the lifecycle for Facebook, Reddit, and arguably Google. My question is: what's step 4? Are communities going to start unbundling, or does this trend just continue?

<comment><USER19> Step 4 is that communities die.

Well over half of all web traffic is from cell phones, and the mobile-first web is hostile to long text content. It is also _incredibly_ hostile to user- created long text content.

With the exception of people who need keyboards for work (tech workers, academics, journalists, writers, etc) there's no one left online to make community content anymore. Hence, HN (a community for tech workers and similarly minded people) and Twitter (where most _organic,_ non-public- relations major players are journalists, academics, or writers).

What passes for web communities have almost entirely become playgrounds for intellectual lightweights to spew memes at each other combined with a platform for entities posting inorganic content that pretends to be genuine.

<comment><USER18> > With the exception of people who need keyboards for work there's no one left > online to make community content anymore

I was about to agree with you, then I thought about Instagram. It is truly a passive consumption platform. Getting 10 comments on a post by a user with 500K followers is pretty normal.

<comment><USER20> Wow, really? That would be depressing for me.

You have 500k followers and only 10 of them comment on your posts. That's terrible engagement.

<comment><USER21> still beats the engangement of a TV advertisment

and that's what instagram is all about

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is a generally trending idea: make your users' experience miserable, improve short-term numbers, lose in the longer term.

We're seeing the same pattern with ad-loaded sites, "Your ad choices" popups with those terrible "Manage My Preferences" dialogs — I'm sure all those result in quarterly bonuses for a bunch of managers. But they are not the Right Thing to Do, and will come to bite back in the long term.

<comment><USER19> Eating the future seed corn in the hopes of higher profits now has been the business model of choice for most companies for the past 40 years, ever since compensation for senior management became directly linked to stock prices.

Allowing executives to walk away with short-term gains but stick shareholders (and/or the public) with long-term losses broke many, many things in corporate governance and society in general. It's no coincidence that quality of life measures began to stagnate when this became the normal way to do business.

<comment><USER23> How is compensation in equity short term? It usually comes with a vesting period so that the reward is in the future.

[https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/stockcompensation.asp](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/stockcompensation.asp)

[https://www.equilar.com/reports/3-equity-vesting- schedules.h...](https://www.equilar.com/reports/3-equity-vesting- schedules.html)

The only thing that could incentivize more long term performance would be even longer vesting periods, but that comes with downsides too.

<comment><USER24> In one sense it's sort of a moot point, as companies that hire this type of executive will in the long term be driven out of business by those who don't.

But I don't think you can properly incentivize people to avoid this class of mistake (short-term thinking) unless top leadership are themselves long-term owners.

Long-term owners would be very interested in avoiding this mistake, though. But it does present a bit of a tax on e.g. public companies with fragmented ownership.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I echo the complains about the default interface becoming worse with every update (especially on mobile, where it's borderline unusable) but I think it's interesting to see where this trend is headed.

It seems obvious to me that Reddit is trying very hard to transition from link aggregator to full blown social network. It's pretty wild when you remember that the original reddit didn't even have comments!

But now they self-host photos, videos, galleries, chatrooms, custom user pages etc... They're not a link aggregator anymore, they're trying to be Instagram for people who think they're too cool for Instagram.

But if you want to become Instagram you need to be an app first and a website 2nd, so they're working very hard to kill the web.

I sorta sort of look forward for the day they kill old.reddit.com and i.reddit.com, this way I won't have any excuse to browse the website anymore which will free some time for more interesting things.

</comment><comment><USER26> I want to thank the admins that made the app and the web one of the worst. You helped cure my reddit addiction. I now open it only once or twice a month.

You cannot view comment replies on the web. You cannot view any sub on the web. You cannot even read full comments.

Seriously. Thanks. I even started studying for my exams!

<comment><USER27> You can still browser old UI without any of these issues via [https://old.reddit.com](https://old.reddit.com) AFAIK

<comment><USER28> Then sometimes you click a link and it takes you out of old and into the hellscape that is modern reddit.

Can't wait until some manager decides old needs to go. They'll end up losing a bunch of long time users and some other site will finally gain traction.

<comment><USER29> If you're on desktop Reddit Enhancement Suite has an option for forcing the old version. I've never been brought back to the new design.

But yeah, old.reddit.com probably won't be around forever.

<comment><USER30> In my discussions with Reddit admins, they've said that old.reddit.com will be around forever. However, it won't get new features (or a very watered down version of new features).

After all, .compact links [0] still work, and those are super old.

[0] [https://www.reddit.com/r/hackernews/comments/imcl1h/reddit_a...](https://www.reddit.com/r/hackernews/comments/imcl1h/reddit_app_got_50m_downloads_by_making_mobile_web/.compact)

<comment><USER31> Yea sure, and Oculus will never require a Facebook account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Use

[https://github.com/Docile-Alligator/Infinity-For- Reddit](https://github.com/Docile-Alligator/Infinity-For-Reddit)

[https://github.com/QuantumBadger/RedReader](https://github.com/QuantumBadger/RedReader)

[https://i.reddit.com](https://i.reddit.com)

[https://old.reddit.com](https://old.reddit.com)

<comment><USER33> there is also [https://github.com/ccrama/Slide](https://github.com/ccrama/Slide) Its very nice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Funny how many comments on that post say 3rd party apps are better than the official one.

Reddit shuts down their API in 3, 2, 1...

<comment><USER26> It'll be a shitshow if that happens.

r/Android and r/iphone will lock the sub in protest

<comment><USER18> It sucks to say, but they'll get mad then they'll get over it. It worked for Twitter, and it'll work for Reddit too.

> July 25, 2013 – at 12:00 PM EDT US, Twitter turned off API v1 which > effectively shut down the Android, iOS, and AIR versions of TweetDeck.

<comment><USER34> It sorta worked for twitter, but not for me and others like me. I use Tweetbot on iOS and a heavily customized (adblock, custom css, "suggest_"-filters) version of the web site on Windows. If those were not options for me I'd exit the platform just like I did Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The funny thing about this tactic is that it's put me right off the idea of using the app. If this is what their engineering is like, why would I want their app installed on my phone? My assumption is that it's a dumpster-fire of trackers, dark UX patterns and be just poor quality.

I wonder what I'd do if someone from Reddit applied for a job on my team. I'd certainly be _very_ interested in their thoughts on the Reddit approach.

<comment><USER36> I actually got used to the mobile web, it's okay IMO. Certainly better than the new web layout.

What's terrible is the beta tests they constantly run on small variations of the populace, without your knowledge and without any way of giving feedback. They honestly don't give a crap.

They also actively hide the ways to give feedback and ignore it when it's given.

That said, it's someone's day job to clock in, fiddle with the mobile web UI according to manager and C-level concerns and clock out, with the occasional "So what is it that you actually do here?" meeting. I'd probably stop giving two shits after a month or so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Reddit has some of the most obnoxious and shameless dark patterns I've ever seen.

Even if you download the app, it constantly tries to lure you into logging in by displaying a fake notification count. The good old "Hey you've got a message, login to see it" technique. If you still refuse to login, the notification count becomes 2, as if now you have 2 messages. It's quite disgusting and makes me dislike reddit. Unfortunately, I'm guessing these tactics work on the average user.

<comment><USER38> They all seem to be copied from Chinese apps though their implementations suck more. Virtual currency, awards, and gacha style encouragement is very popular in Asian countries for communication apps. That's how they extract value because there are too many competitors and free apps.

Reddit might add shopping experience or real world items for purchase through coins soon. It's too obvious to not do that.

<comment><USER39> Thinking about it I'm a bit surprised that Reddit never built a marketplace product for subreddits. Looking back a few years I could see that actually being a pretty good product for them which would have been cool. You're definitely right that if they added it now it'd use their coins or do something utterly insane to make it terrible.

<comment><USER26> Subs are already selling merch.

Look at r/teenagers mods selling cheap printed shirts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I feel like once you are on mobile you only have access to this aberration of the internet called "The consumer web" where you're treated like a dawdling toddler who taps on shiny colorful things and the service is trying to put on a circus for you in order to get ad revenue.

This is essentially the experience across the board on all major web properties. I have no idea why I use my cell phone to access websites so frequently. It's a really terrible experience.

In fact, most of these sites are the candy and chips aisle for the mind - <USER3> unhealthy diet of emptiness. It's such a waste of time.

</comment><comment><USER41> Recently I noticed that using ad blockers on iPhone will break the reddit mobile website - it will not allow you to scroll unless the annoying "use our app" popup shows from the bottom and you must click no. Some blockers like 1BlockerX or maybe Wipr block these annoyances and will lead to a broken un- scrollable reddit website. This started happening only recently and I wonder if this was a deliberate decision to also annoy users of ad blockers.

<comment><USER26> uBlock Origin can remove all those popups on Reddit, Quora, Instagram, Pinterest.

Enable uBlock Annoyances in the filter lists.

<comment><USER42> And then the scrolling wont work, if I understand parent comment correctly

<comment><USER26> It works.

<comment><USER41> It dependes on the adblocker. For example AdGuard had the same issue and they later fixed it: [https://forum.adguard.com/index.php?threads/resolved- reddit-...](https://forum.adguard.com/index.php?threads/resolved-reddit- mobile-scrolling-issue.35669/)

<comment><USER26> Yes. And it works in uBlock Origin, which is what i've been saying to enable it in from the start. I didn't mention other adblockers

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I find the new reddit UI to be terrible, and still use old.reddit.com. I just hope they continue to host it. If they shut it down at some point, I will probably stop using reddit. And that will be a sad day.

<comment><USER44> Moderator of a large subreddit here. In our traffic stats, we see 1 in 4 pageviews are from the old version.

<comment><USER45> I assume that's total, including apps? Or are you saying that between old, mobile web and new, 75% of hits are from new? If so that's quite different from my traffic stats, copying a comment from older thread:

According to my traffic stats (moderating ~400k subscribers), old + mobile web frontends make up about twice the traffic of new frontend. Apps are by far the most popular, about ~3x of all web frontends combined.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Sounds like good old corporate to me, the boss says you won't get your bonus unless there are x app installs, the product manager replies "hold my beer and watch this".

This is a serious issue for users though and should highlight the risks with handing off control over important communication platforms.

</comment><comment><USER47> Lots of justified criticism here about the mobile web Reddit, which is horrible.

But the desktop web Reddit has become unusable for me as well. My laptop heats up, the fans go into overdrive, and my browser slows to a crawl. It's the anti-HN.

<comment><USER48> I feel bad for the engineers because surely they knew the new site was incredibly slow and poorly optimised, so it must have been pushed through by management. It looks alright, but dear god the performance.

<comment><USER49> > ... because surely they knew the new site was incredibly slow and poorly > optimised...

I wouldn't be so sure. It really depends on the quality of the engineers. And if they're quality why are they working for Reddit pushing out crappy software? Could be a case of resume driven development.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> For months I thought there was no way to collapse a comment thread using the mobile site. Then one day I accidentally clicked on a comment timestamp and the thread collapsed. Which makes sense, because nothing say "hide these comments" like the text "17 minutes ago" :P

<comment><USER51> The posting time is linked on HN too (shows that comment as root of a sub- thread, and shows additional options)

<comment><USER52> I expect that to happen. it's the same on twitter for example.

but I'm not expecting the action to be to collapse the thread

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> And lost at least one user. I mostly stopped going to Reddit because of the miserable mobile experience, which is how I would normally consume the content there.

<comment><USER54> i.reddit.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> The Reddit experience overall is incredibly subpar. I can't remember the last time I opened the site without using the unofficial Reddit Is Fun app or the RES extension on desktop. They make the experience so much better and keep me wondering why Reddit doesn't implement some of the features provided in those extensions into the official version.

</comment><comment><USER56> The "dot compact" version of the Reddit website still has the best mobile UI to me, though I rarely use it.

[https://www.reddit.com/.compact](https://www.reddit.com/.compact)

<comment><AUTHOR> Also loads by going to

[https://i.reddit.com](https://i.reddit.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Am I the only one who thinks it's fine?

Let's be real: the performance of Reddit's mobile app is quite good. And when I compare it to _any_ other similar mobile _site_ feed, the sites are always slow and janky, because browsers aren't great with handling infinite scrolling full of hundreds of videos and tens of thousands of nested comments.

I know everybody here think's it's a "dark pattern" to get people to use Reddit's app instead of site on mobile... but to me it looks like it could also be legitimate performance concerns.

<comment><USER58> The site renders text and embedded images/video. That's not something that demands high performance.

They require the app purely so they can track you better and make more revenue from you. It's much harder to run Adblock in an app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> For those sick of reddit, I offer the following link (with some unintended irony): [https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/cxb2xq/...](https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/cxb2xq/list_of_active_reddit_alternatives_40/)

Also: [https://ruqqus.com/](https://ruqqus.com/)

</comment><comment><USER60> Am presuming this is distinct from the problems with the main website (i.e. they aren't trying to push people off of that too), but maybe related in the sense that it seems the strategy is to turn the website into an app instead of keeping it as a website. IMHO, this isn't a good fit for what I use reddit for, which is a collection of linked documents - where 'normal' server- rendered documents worked really well. It doesn't really need to be an app, and building it as an app bloats it for my use-case.

I'm not sure if it's due to odd FE architecture choices or if this specifically helps increase bottom-line KPIs, but there are some bizarre things like the fact that clicking on the background of a post takes you back to the subreddit via replacing history (?), which kind of breaks the idea of how you expect a website to work.

What confuses me from an architecture POV is there are glaring high-value things they could fix - like subreddit search, image hosting etc. - that get left.

<comment><USER61> Most Reddit users now seem to think Reddit _is_ an app, not a website.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> I'm kinda surprised nobody has said this about Instagram.

Formerly, without an account, you were able to easily browse all content for an unlimited time.

Now, after a certain amount of actions or time, it asks you to log in.

<comment><USER26> If you use uBlock Origin, enable the 'Ublock Annoyances' Filter list.

Removes all the login crap on Insta, Pinterest, Quora and imgur.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Reddit app on Android is one of the worst apps that I've ever used.

1\. It doesn't refresh content. A lot of times you need to manually swipe down to force it to refresh,and sometimes even kill the app to get it to refresh. Even if Reddit is using cheaper http 1.1 servers , they can use background data notifications to force the app to do an update.

2\. Videos randomly switch to the lowest quality and stay there. I have a 300mbps fiber connection which can play YouTube and Netflix on 4k. But Reddit gives me 240p at best sometimes.

3\. Worst messaging experience period. Not only is the chat pretty bare bones, it doesn't even have support for images or GIFs. So usually once I find someone to chat with on Reddit , I ask for their discord id.

<comment><USER64> I use Boost for REddit which is miles better than the original app

<comment><USER65> Boost is a brilliant app, never use the desktop site because it's junk in comparison.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> To be fair, desktop web experience isnt much better

<comment><USER67> old.reddit.com still works

<comment><USER68> Hope it won't be dumped forever

<comment><USER69> They did say it'll stick around long term when the change was made. Whether that's a promise that will be kept remains to be seen

<comment><USER70> The rule of thumb: if the corporate says something, they lie.

<comment><USER71> That goes double for the statements by the C-suite, and triple for Ohanian and Huffman in particular.

There are numerous principled statements of theirs that were chucked to the wayside when there was money to be made or power to be gained.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Those maintaining the web app must have a miserable existence. It's never fun having your work undermined like this, especially when so much care has gone into it.

</comment><comment><USER73> It is ironic that reddit achieved much of its success on the back of the complete failure of digg.com to recognise that the people who use your site don't want a bunch of radical changes shoved down their throat. We will probably see the whole thing happen again. Long live the new king.

<comment><USER74> AIR: Slashdot redesigned, people moved to Digg, Digg redesigned, people moved to Reddit (was MySpace in there too?), Reddit ... let's redesign (actually they've partially reinvented themselves a couple of times to my recollection).

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Reddit is the poster child of single page applications. It is slow, consumes more resources, and is visually overloading. I'm not surprised that it has difficulty with mobile browsers. It doesn't even do well with desktop ones.

</comment><comment><USER76> I think it's funny how on iOS (at least for me) whenever I come across a reddit link it'll ask me whether I want to continue to view in whatever webView it's using or switch to the app. I usually prefer the app, so I click on it and 9 times out of 10 it'll take me to the app store for the default reddit app WHICH I ALREADY HAVE INSTALLED AND REGULARLY USE and it won't open in the app no mater what I try. Like this should be pretty basic functionality, especially if they're trying to drive users to their app, but nope.

<comment><USER77> Idk if this is necessarily Reddits fault because we've had tons of problems implementing universal links on iOS both via 3rd party and natively ourselves so I lean towards blaming the ios platform than the developer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> Even when you get past the annoying pop-ups, reddit on mobile is still a pain, slow and misses a lot of taps.

My solution to this has been to use old.reddit.com, which is (IME) a much nicer experience, faster and more responsive.

<comment><USER79> I think reddit have forgotten about old.reddit.com. Maybe we shouldn't talk about it in case they notice and shut it down...

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> I like reddit for the niche groups that center around some topic. I haven't really found another source of this type of niche content. Maybe Facebook has groups or whatever but I have never used Facebook so can't comment.

On Android, I like Redreader which, to my mind, is simple, open and free. It was the my first experience using a mobile Reddit app and I really thought it stayed out of the way and let me read and comment in various reddits. I started using an iPhone and decided to give the official reddit app a whirl. This app is clunky and confusing and doesn't feel simple in any way. I have tried a few other apps (everyone seems to like Apollo?) but I haven't really found my home yet. I still really appreciate RedReader for its simple uncluttered ability to read and comment.

In the browser, I like using old.reddit.com. Their default version of the site is horrible. I can't stand it. On a computer, my preferred way of browsing reddit is using ttrv. It is the latest incarnation of rtv. It is command line, which might turn some people off, but is simple and easy to setup. I use feh to view pictures and mpv to view videos. I can comment using vim which makes it very cozy.

I guess it is good that reddit provides an api that allows hackers to develop alternative ways to access their site depending on their own personal preference. For now, their mobile official app seems to comprimise in too many areas to make it work for me. The new site (not the old.reddit.com) is pain to use.

</comment><comment><USER81> Metrics driven design, if you hit your metrics even if the experience is objectively awful you're still rewarded as an employee.

Thankfully this is the beginning of the end for most companies.

</comment><comment><USER82> I'd respect Reddit more if it simply said "Reddit on mobile is only available via our app".

At least then I wouldn't feel in a world of sleazy manipulation.

</comment><comment><USER83> No one mentioning Facebook? Them forcing you to use the messenger app to be able to communicate on the mobile is using the same strategy. I have to use a different browser and use desktop mode to see messages. Writing then becomes horrible too. Not using fb messenger at all anymore an complain to people who text me on there.

<comment> c-fe Just fyi, you can use mbasic.facebook.com ... Still horrible, but at least you can communicate to some degree without any app, I used it for a month while being stuck with an old phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> My preferred way of consuming Reddit content is now finding a mirror of the sub on Telegram. [1] This greatly refined my experience by distilling the endless pun chain comments and dramas away. If, unfortunately, the OP content made me want to read the comments, I change the URL from [https://reddit.com](https://reddit.com) to [https://i.reddit.com](https://i.reddit.com) as soon as possible. Even though I clicked it 5 seconds too late, the new smartphone site is so slow that it was still a blank page.

[1] Here's one of the more used bot with a long list of interesting subreddits. [https://github.com/Fillll/reddit2telegram](https://github.com/Fillll/reddit2telegram)

</comment><comment><USER85> There are many better third-party reddit apps out there than the official reddit app. Although seems like Android has more options than on the IOS side. Apollo is the only one I found so far on IOS that is fairly decent and feature rich matching the ones on android. Any other recommendations?

</comment><comment><USER86> I still use reddit but less and less than I did, and the main reason for this is that the ui is getting worse and worse. I won't be installing the app as it's pointless.

I probably won't choose to stop using it, but as I use it less and less the gap will eventually reach "forever".

</comment><comment><USER87> Am I crazy when I say I don't see these popups on the mobile web version of reddit anymore? I don't see what the fuss is about. It's pretty much the same as what the gif in TFA is showing, except no blinking 'use app'/'open in reddit app' buttons. No 'open in reddit app/continue with mobile site' popup -unless- I end up on the AMP version of the reddit (by following a link from Google search). And even then once I do anything on the AMP page (click on a reply, navigate to the main page) I get redirected away to the normal web version, which is less cancerous.

Someone please back me up or refute me.

Also I am logged in to the site, might make a difference.

</comment><comment><USER88> that's cause they push it like a crack dealer pushing crack.

wanna play a video, open it in the app. wanna look at risky content, open it in the app.

and btw, their app IS THE WORST. my biggest gripe is that i CANNOT COLLAPSE CONVERSATIONS grrrrrrrrrrrrr. i'm not gonna waste my time listing all the other annoyances and bugs that are riddled through out the thing.

fact of the matter is that the reddit app is the poster child that just because something has that many downloads doesn't mean it's a good product. i would be willing to bet that 75% of those download are people uninstall and reinstalling it because it LOCKS UP EVERY 5 MINUTES grrrrrrrrrrrr.

<comment><USER89> You can collapse conversations by clicking the small blank space to the right of a user's name at the top of the comment. Bad UI but it's there.

<comment><USER88> been trying that on the app and it doesn't work. works on the site but not the app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> Surprisingly, its when I'm logged in to the mobile website that I wish the 'Open in app' button was there (to make commenting easier), but I'm only harassed to open the app when I'm logged out.

<comment><USER91> While not exactly a fix for your case, Firefox on android has a prompt for opening sites in their apps if it's installed on your device. Match that with its extension support and it makes most of the mobile web far less obnoxious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> Imgur, the Reddit image hosting offshoot, did precisely the same thing. They slowly began stripping features from the site starting with direct messaging and eventually prevented mobile users from logging in at all.

<comment><USER93> What is Imgur's business model these days? The app doesn't have any (obvious) ads. There's a small banner on the bottom, but for me it's always just advertising Imgur's own features. There was a time when they were pushing ads heavily on the app (like full screen ads you had to swipe away), but that apparently didn't work out.

<comment><USER94> "Growth and engagement" is the "business" model. I'm assuming they're pushing their own features to inflate their subscriber numbers so they can try and sell out to a bigger fish.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER95> This is exactly why I started working on 20-things.com with a firm stand on not doing what Reddit has been doing - pushing people to mobile app in order to be able to track and show them ads (adblockers won't work in the app of course). How can I achieve this? By limiting the community size to a certain number of people so that it can stay self-sustainable. This could be a few thousand users, and then the door gets closed to new registrations.

<comment><USER96> Seems down for me ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER97> If Apollo on iOS wouldn't be around I'd just not use Reddit. I'm not even logged in in the browser as just opening the website makes my fans spin.

<comment><USER98> Apollo is fantastic and the only reason I still read reddit. If they try to shutdown the API or try to acquire it and kill it (alien blue) I think I'd lose interest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> old.reddit.com all the way. Everything they've changed since that "upgrade" has been user hostile cancer.

They're at real risk of becoming another digg I think

</comment><comment><USER99> I haven't used the Facebook app either and now they are going out of their way to make the mobile experience miserable. Facebook now looks like reddit and the marketplace is now pushing unblock able ads mixed in with the listings. Also marketplace took away the ability to sort items from lowest price to highest so you have to search through many listings to find what you want. The experience is worse every day.

</comment><comment><USER100> Sometimes I wonder what the Reddit dev team even does.

Their search is crap, their app is crap, their new design is crap, their home page algorithm is crap that keeps showing stale content, their video player is utter crap that shows you 144p videos even on 100 Mbps connections. It's like they stopped giving a shit a long time ago.

(I use Reddit for 2-3 hours every day, despite all that. But of course I use RES and the RIF app, and stay away from politics subs. There's a lot of interesting communities that I learn from.)

</comment><comment><USER101> That app is the worst. As a mod, I need mod features. The official app doesn't have enough mod features to be useful.

Reminder: every mod works for reddit for free.

<comment><USER102> How much time do you spend being a mod / working for free? Genuinely curious.

<comment><USER101> Sorry didn't see this. I don't really see it as time spent being a mod, it's time spent "being on reddit". Instead of just looking at the latest posts, I get to act on the ones that break the rules. When reading comments, I do the same with comments. It's just a parallel cycle to consuming it, I think. And we're talking of one click to remove things here, not a complicated workflow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER103> Not only are the obvious things miserable, but they also introduced a memory leak to their post/comment creation interface (I did report, ironically using the same interface). Today I discovered that the website will crash in Firefox if you try to find in page—presumably after a certain point it triggers a conflict with their infinite scroll implementation.

</comment><comment><USER104> I've stopped using Reddit. The inability for the web interface to actually play videos reliably was a deal breaker in retrospect.

</comment><comment><USER105> An unfortunate U-turn. For a long term they declined to offer an official mobile app, and were purely focused on the web.

</comment><comment><USER106> I largely agree with this. On iOS, I can't actually get past the pop-up on their homepage, which (infuriatingly) prevents me from scrolling.

It might be my adblocker, but IMHO whomever did that to their mobile homepage ought to be given at least a very stern talking to.

And whomever got them to code it ought to be fired.

<comment><USER41> Yes, it's the adblocker. I had the issue with 1BlockerX - I had to turn it off for reddit on iOS :-(. Other adblockers either have the same issue or the developers added specific code to battle this (e.g. AdGuard [https://forum.adguard.com/index.php?threads/resolved- reddit-...](https://forum.adguard.com/index.php?threads/resolved-reddit- mobile-scrolling-issue.35669/)). This must be a deliberate tactic from Reddit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER107> I thought this article would be about the desktop UI's infinite scroll.[1]

If they ever remove the ability to opt out of infinite scroll I'm out. There has to be that natural stopping point or know I can't even start.

[1] well, and everything else that makes the new design absolutely unusable.

<comment><USER42> tbh, I never understood the hate for the infinite scrolling in a domain of natural stopping point.. I have this problem with pages too.. "Just one more page..."

My main issue is when I accidentaly dont open link in new tab, and pressing back makes the page reload and I loose my scrolling progress..

<comment><USER107> Yeah, it's awful for multiple reasons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER108> Native app are better than mobile web for complexe application / website. Get over it.

</comment><comment><USER109> I actually like the Reddit app, but its search engine is so awful that I almost always start on Google/DDG and refine my results through there. If they could improve their search experience I would be all in on the app.

</comment><comment><USER110> LinkedIn makes communication between users miserable unless you pay. Copyright holders make distribution miserable unless you pay etc.

Not judging any of those as bad, just saying that it's not uncommon for providers of products or services to limit them.

<comment><USER111> "Here is another point that helps put the problem of proprietary information in a social perspective. Think about the liability insurance crisis. In order to get any compensation from society, an injured person has to hire a lawyer and split the money with that lawyer. This is a stupid and inefficient way of helping out people who are victims of accidents. And consider all the time that people put into hustling to take business away from their competition. Think of the pens that are packaged in large cardboard packages that cost more than the pen—just to make sure that the pen isn't stolen. Wouldn't it be better if we just put free pens on every street corner? And think of all the toll booths that impede the flow of traffic. It's a gigantic social phenomenon. _People find ways of getting money by impeding society. Once they can impede society, they can be paid to leave people alone._ The waste inherent in owning information will become more and more important […]" (emphasis mine)

— Richard Stallman, 1986 [https://www.gnu.org/gnu/byte- interview](https://www.gnu.org/gnu/byte-interview)

</comment></comment><comment><USER112> I don't like the new reddit I always use old.reddit and I see no reason to use the app. I hate now that all link load in new reddit. It's a hundred cuts of annoyance.

As a longtime user (13 years) I get the feeling reddit is being Digg-ified.

</comment><comment><USER113> Horrible reddit behavior fixed my reddit mobile browsing addiction.

Horrible firefox update fixed my hn mobile browsing addiction.

Forced slowness on my phone fixed my addiction to play games there.

Forced windows updates fixed my laziness to switch to linux full time.

</comment><comment><USER114> My worry is that some exec will think of this as a success story, that making the web experience miserable is a totally fine way to drive engagement on their mobile app and will push other sites to do the same.

<comment><USER115> They absolutely will. They will also look at the interaction and engagement rates on those awful popups and nag messages and consider them a huge success too.

People clicking on those garbage dialogs either by accident or to try to make them go away = Number Go Up = Users must like this UI element.

</comment></comment><comment><USER116> The mobile web experience is so intentionally bad. Yet I refuse to switch to the app and play their game. When needed I request the desktop version mobile to fill the missing features and that's it.

</comment><comment><USER117> I see the title has been re-written. Got to protect that YC investment.

</comment><comment><USER118> Apple has taught us well.

</comment><comment><USER119> I mean I have a 3rd party reddit app so it should bounce me to that app, but the UI pops up still it wants me to use their app only. So that's a move that made me use it less.

</comment><comment><USER120> Reddit has become pretty terrible.

I'm gonna call it, that's a perfect opportunity for other projects to arise and take Reddit's share of users and IMO it's gonna happen.

</comment><comment><USER121> The worst thing is that the official app isn't even that great, at least on Android. Every time I try it, I quickly go back to a 3rd party (Boost at the moment).

<comment><USER122> if it was great, they wouldn't need to push for it this much.

This is about getting access to more tracking and more immersive ads than what a web browser allows, not about offering a good user experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER123> Yeah, by making the browser experience awful.

No thanks.

I'm weary of installing apps for things I should simply be able to view a browser.

I learned my lesson with Facebook and all the shady things it does.

</comment><comment><USER124> In my opinion Reddit UX is miserable even on desktop. Whenever I see a Reddit link in search, I try to avoid it. It is in a way similar to Pinterest experience.

</comment><comment><USER125> Firefox on android had a plugin that would remove the nags and redirects which made reading Reddit acceptable, until Firefox removed all (but 6) plugins.

</comment><comment><USER126> Am I right to assume that the reason developers prefer users to use apps vs websites is because there is no adblocker there and no way to flush cookies?

<comment><USER38> Yes, part of it. Web is more constrained environment than native. Many seemingly normal APIs and features aren't available. Apple is hostile to web as well so you don't even have features from the standards such as push notifications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER127> I like the new Reddit. Originally I kept using the old style, but was semi forced onto the new design and now am used to it and quite like it.

<comment><USER128> Yeah, I complained about the redesign at first, but now I can't go back to using old Reddit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER129> Well it worked - millions of people could be bullied into downloading an app for a website like this. Why wouldn't companies do what works?

<comment><USER130> I would think those who create the content reddit is living off are less likely to get bullied into downloading an app. Long term, the content becomes garbage and the regular users leave too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER131> Post title before the mods inevitably change it: "Reddit app got 50M downloads by making mobile web experience miserable"

<comment><USER131> Oh look at that... the title changed. How predictable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER132> I've recently got a new MacBook. Top of the line, i9 cpu, 64 gbs of RAM.

Reddit desktop site still lags on it, client-side.

<comment><USER98> I wonder when the reckoning for poorly built single page javascript apps will come. Or are we already seeing it with users switching to native apps for social media?

</comment></comment><comment><USER133> That title is wrong for at least one user, me.

I think the mobile app is great, if you only look at its features and its ability to deliver Reddit content and discussion.

I volunteered for the Reddit beta, even though I am a proponent of minimalistic and simple websites.

To be honest it is very resource heavy. Even selecting text has a 1.5s delay in the WYSIWYG editor.

But overall it's not much different than other content heavy websites online.

<comment><USER103> I did some digging into the WYSIWYG editoe and found a memory leak they introduced. This was quite a while ago, but there's a good chance it's still there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER134> Facebook is going down the same road with forcing you to install messenger if you have messages.

</comment><comment><USER135> Reddit app stopped working for me long time ago, I wrote to devs, but no luck (

</comment><comment><USER136> I just use old.reddit.com on my phone. I find the experience much better.

</comment><comment><USER137> I really do find it infuriating. Some of us just hate mobile apps

</comment><comment><USER138> It is insane how bad the web interface is for something this big.

</comment><comment><USER139> Maybe users could retaliate by giving the app horrible ratings?

</comment><comment><USER140> Reddit was never good

</comment><comment><USER141> Why exactly do they care whether you use the web or app?

<comment><USER142> My guess would be they have more access and control of you on the app. They can prevent you from blocking ads, for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER143> I just use old.reddit.com. Yes my eyes hate me.

</comment><comment><USER144> Proof Google Play doesn't check for malware.

</comment><comment><USER145> Bacon Reader is a good app for their platform

</comment><comment><USER146> RedReader is much better experience though.

</comment><comment><USER147> What are the best third party reddit apps?

</comment><comment><USER148> Any subreddit suggestions for AI and ML?

</comment><comment><USER149> LinkedIn and Yelp: hold my beer.

</comment><comment><USER150> Redreader for Android. Free and Open Source. It's on fdroid and playstore

<comment><USER151> I don't want an app for Reddit. I don't care which one it is. It's a simple website, let me use it in my fucking browser.

Lightweight! Easy to block ads and tracking! Multiple tabs! You can leave pages open in your browser and read them later! Bookmarkable! No proprietary app! No app updates! No spammy notifications! No use of Google Play Services! No taking up of dozens of GBs on my phone! RES!

<comment><USER152> > dozens of GBs

Hyperbole detracts from the point you're trying to make. Everyone reading your comment knows how much space apps take on their phones.

<comment><USER153> > Everyone reading your comment knows how much space apps take on their > phones.

The problem here is caching, as in-app caches have different caches than the global system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER154> what's reddit ?

</comment><comment><USER155> Antitrust anyone?

</comment><comment><USER156> Why has the title been editorialized? The "mostly by making the mobile web experience miserable" part is the focus of this report (and true).

<comment><AUTHOR> It wasn't by me!

Maybe it's over a character limit for titles?

Maybe done by mods.

<comment><USER157> Yes. Tons of titles are changed all the time.

[https://hackernewstitles.netlify.app/](https://hackernewstitles.netlify.app/)

<comment><USER158> I understand mods edit titles and have said so to "de- editorialize/sensationalize" them but I'm seeing a lot of purely style changes; capitalization removal. Some are changes entirely from perfectly fine and comprehensible titles that aren't even sensationalized headlines

Others still add or remove a word that don't really do anything for the title except change the inflection slightly to one the author may not even _want_ perceived from their writing.

Whom does that sort of edit serve? Merely curious.

<comment><USER159> It serves the will of HN according to justifications I've seen. It's debatable if it is always is helpful in any individual instance, but it's usually well- intentioned from what I can tell. Yet it also seems to turn the volume down on topics that are of outsize influence or import on society, to my reading. It second-guesses the intent of the author, and second-guesses the reading comprehension of the reader. It treats us all like clickbait vote bots.

<comment><USER160> I'm seeing things being changed in a lot of directions here:

It's not just cars that make pollution. It's the roads they drive on, too

↓

Study suggests that fresh asphalt is a significant source of air pollution

and

Atul Gawande on COVID and healthcare logistics

↓

We can solve the coronavirus-test mess now if we want to

and

The problem with C compatibility in C++

↓

The problem with C

\---

(Sorry for formatting) Idk it seems a bit more than trying to de-editorialize.

<comment><USER158> These edits are especially weird to me:

20:30 A woman who gave the world antiviral drugs

↓

21:40 Gertrude Elion, a woman who gave the world antiviral drugs

↓

22:40 The woman who gave the world antiviral drugs

Like, at what point is well enough alone for a headline that was already succinct, descriptive and well formed and why keep coming back an hour later- after presumably more people have seen the article and may want to come back later-to change the title _again_?

@dang (if you come across this): is HN remotely interested, for the curiosity satiating edification of the community-if no other reason-in sharing the decision calculus for these kinds of title edits?

<comment><USER161> But you've omitted the last title in that sequence, which is the one we ended up with (Gertrude Elion's "antiviral odyssey"). There's a partial explanation here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24359017](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24359017)

What you're seeing in that sequence is trial and error. Sometimes it takes a few tries before we find a solution that feels like it balances the different concerns. That's not particularly common, though, plus most of those exploratory edits are quickly overwritten by later edits, so Peter's app doesn't pick them up.

I'm happy in principle to satiate anyone's curiosity about this kind of thing—the only trouble is that it takes a surprising amount of time to write out such explanations in details, and unfortunately that time is just not often not available. What I can tell you is that (1) there is nearly always a specific reason for every title edit we do, and there are probably at least a hundred different considerations that come into it, based on 10+ years of experience at this point—this is a surprisingly complex subdomain!, and (2) we're highly responsive to user complaints about titles (or mod edits) in specific cases. Not just because we want users to be happy, but also because this has proven to be the only way to minimize the dreaded title fever ([https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22title%20fever%22&sort=byDate&type=comment)) —which, btw, has had an outbreak in this very thread.

I've written longer explanations in the past about how we approach title editing in general. One is [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20429573](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20429573). If there are questions I'd be happy to answer them—but again, the more general the question, the more time/energy it takes to answer, so I may not be able to.

Actually I enjoy engaging with users about HN title edits because, of all the things we do, it's by far the best worked out. It's far more consistent than people think it is. Why does something consistent appear so inconsistent? Because it's more complicated than it seems. Why is title editing so complicated? Because titles are the biggest single influence on the site, and users are astonishingly passionate about them.

<comment><USER158> Taking all of that in-and thank you for offering what you've been able to this far-will HN moderation team consider making time to the community for a "town hall"/"AMA" going over some of the more opaque or otherwise commonly misunderstood elements of what informs the moderation strategies and tactics deployed in the community?

Given that you've stated doing so presently would be an unwieldy and rather involved affair, opening the opportunity for such a transparent display of community engagement at a later date seems like a charitable ask of you?

<comment><USER161> Such meta threads tend to be rather blah. Also, when dealing with large internet audiences you eventually come to realize that _everything_ is "commonly misunderstood", because no matter how often or how thoroughly you explain things, the vast majority of users don't see it, and the percentage that did see it shrinks over time as new users flow in. So the idea of explaining things to the bulk of the community is sort of a fantasy. The sum of all explanations has measure zero. I'm not happy about that but it is as it is.

I'm happy to answer questions and do it every day, but it's better to stick closer to where actual examples come up. What else do you still want to know?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Before you comment on technicalities, remember that reddit's management consciously caters to the emotional people, and managing such a platform is very different than HN. I'd even admit the possibility that the plain and dry UI of HN would look unappealing to the reddit folks.

<comment><USER162> Being interested in tech and startups probably doesn't mean you are less emotional than people who aren't

<comment><USER70> Well, it does. If we make a random sample of 1 million people that are interested in tech and startups, then another million of those that aren't, measure the average "emotional charge" of both groups, we'll notice a huge statistically significant difference between the two averages.

<comment><USER162> Can you back that up with some research or are you just basing that assumption on your emotions? What even is "emotional charge"? I bet that emotional capability of people isn't tied to their interest in startups and tech</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Screedbot - make your own scrolling typewriter text (powered by Common Lisp) - <AUTHOR> http://wigflip.com/screedbot/

<comment><USER2> For the curious, this is Common Lisp from end to end.

Web serving by Hunchentoot.

TrueType font parsing/loading by ZPB-TTF.

Curve rasterization by Vecto (which uses CL-VECTORS).

GIF animation by Skippy.

Geometry and layout are application-specific, not part of any released library yet.</comment>


Show HN: VMPower – Shutdown/Startup/Backup/Resize VMs with a Calendar - <AUTHOR> https://vmpower.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone! I'm Steve, co-founder at VMPower. I built VMPower because while working at Microsoft with Azure I noticed there really wasn't an intuitive way to schedule power on/off VMs and detect unused ones. It quickly grew into having automations like resizing and taking snapshots as well as detecting basic unused resources.

We wanted to keep the following in mind:

1) Scheduling VM actions should be easy like dropping events a calendar

2) It should be pluggable to any cloud. We work with AWS, GCE and Azure

3) Plugging in your cloud subscription should only take 2 minutes

Would love to hear what you think!

<comment><USER2> Why not just use Azure auto-off (or just script your VMs to shutdown)?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a fair point. You could do that.

Azure does have auto-off today but it still doesn't make it easy to change that time per-day. It also doesn't have auto-start. You can also group VMs between resource groups and subscriptions since we flatten all the VMs across cloud providers, regions & resource groups.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> what kind of savings do you expect a small-medium size company to see by using this?

and what are the advantages over just trying to just script a simple scheduler myself?

<comment><AUTHOR> Depends on how many development VMs they have (CI boxes, jump boxes etc) and when they're off.

Typically you can save a third of those costs. We also can save a bunch of time from maintaining scripts, notifications, managing backups and sharing subsets of VMs with groups of users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hi Steve, can you give me some more info...I mean it isn't _that_ hard to script a cron job to just power off your EC2 Vms...

</comment><comment><USER5> What % cost savings are customers seeing?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're seeing a lot of random VMs people are scheduling to shut off. From jenkins and other CI stuff to servers running things like Tableau.

Typically these people are turning these VMs off during non-working hours so they're saving about half the cost of those VMs.

Although we're trying to stress that we save lots of time vs writing automation scripts.</comment></comment>


HOW ANTS TURN INTO ZOMBIES - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/plight-of-the-living-dead/amp?__twitter_impression=true <comment><USER2> I'm curious as to whether the variant of Ophiocordyceps that makes the ants cling onto twigs instead of leaves will make its way back down south. It seems that the mutation would still be favorable in the winter, even in tropical climates.

As an aside, on Firefox the article's formatting is screwed up for me with the submitted link, but when I remove "amp?__twitter_impression=true" it appears normal.

</comment><comment><USER3> COOL ARTICLE, THANK YOU FOR POSTING.</comment>


How to Increase Website Traffic by 250,000+ Monthly Visits - <AUTHOR> http://www.siegemedia.com/increase-website-traffic <comment><USER2> Awesome guide, thanks for sharing this in so much detail with all the steps (including email templates, etc). Ton of work, but huge payoff.</comment>


'Unprecedented' Wildfires Burned Across the Arctic Circle in June - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qv79b5/unprecedented-wildfires-are-burning-across-the-arctic-circle <comment><USER2> I'm going to reveal my own ignorance here, but also suggest that I'm not alone with this specific ignorance.

To my monkey-brain, Arctic Circle = ice. Fire is bad for ice. Fire in Arctic Circle = We all die.

That is _not_ the case, as pointed out in the article:

> Though fire is a natural part of some Arctic ecosystems, scientists are > calling the wildfires "unprecedented" for the month of June based on their > size and carbon dioxide emissions.

So while this isn't good news, it's also not a doomsday omen as my initial emotional reaction (and surely the emotional reaction of many other people) would suggest.

<comment><USER3> And my first reaction was that a research expedition to the Arctic discovers that a melting polar ice cap has released a deadly prehistoric parasite [1]. A resourceful helicopter pilot and the camp doctor lead the camp crew in a desperate, gory battle against vicious creatures [2]. Until the CDC arrives, in a last ditch effort, and starts 'wild fires' in an attempt to destroy the pathogen [?].

[2]: [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084787/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084787/)

[1]: [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1235448/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1235448/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Related article: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20446645](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20446645)</comment>


Bubble Blinders: The Untold Story of the Search Business Model - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/29/bubble-blinders-the-untold-story-of-the-search-business-model/ <comment><USER3> I think there's a good connection to be made between Ali's comment that "the dynamics of a bubble can make it virtually impossible to eschew easy money and focus on building lasting value" and this recent post and discussion on cash or equity businesses - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1589808>

Essentially, if you find yourself in a bubble filled with easy money, it may be prudent to build a highly profitable cash business that won't last - <USER2> hay while the sun shines. And that's a legitimate choice over growing an equity-based, sustainable business that may not actually survive the bubble's bust anyway.

Of course, knowing whether you're in a bubble or not is much easier in hindsight. I'm reminded of the AA Serenity prayer requesting, above all else, "the wisdom to know the difference".</comment>


Tom Kiefer documents lives via items seized by border patrol - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2019-12-02/tom-kiefer-exhibition-el-sueno-americano <comment><USER2> They threw away insulin as "potentially lethal or nonessential"? I don't understand this. Did they replace the thrown-away medication with other, whose provenance they could check or did they just leave those people without it? For diabetics, that would mean they just left them to die, no?

Edit: to clarify I don't believe that diabetics were left to die without insulin and I sure haven't heard anything like that in the news. I'm wondering what is the process in place for people with chronic diseases.

<comment><USER3> possibly they didn't want them to profit from selling the insulin in US [https://khn.org/news/americans-cross-border-into-mexico- to-b...](https://khn.org/news/americans-cross-border-into-mexico-to-buy- insulin-at-a-fraction-of-u-s-cost/)

<comment><USER4> Doesn't the US have a free trade agreement with Mexico? Then surely such _free trade_ would be covered, no? It couldn't _possibly_ be limited to just corporations?

<comment><USER5> You still have to bring those products in through legal channels

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why throw away that girl's music CDs? They are harmless and probably brought her a lot of joy.

<comment><USER7> There's a saying: "the cruelty is the point".

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The country and its people have a punitively cruel side to them. Many would make fantastic authoritarians.

(I'm from there.)

</comment><comment><USER9> What's the hacker news angle on this article? I was happy to discuss it on other sites this morning, but it seems like a purely political article without any unique appeal to Hackers.

<comment><USER10> Because travel over boarders unmolested and ability to transport data are important both philosophically and practicality. Much of the appeal of the internet is the casual reach - these actions are the exact opposite.

In addition to concerns about human rights which are succinctly described as "everyone's problem" and not to be dismissed because of whose team would look bad.</comment></comment>


Show HN: I'm building the one stop destination for resources for web development - <AUTHOR> Hey there, I'm a self-taught web developer and I need your help in gathering resources that helped you learn from scratch or improve your web development knowledge. I think this is the best way because what worked for me maybe won't work for you, but when you have a lot of resources coming from different people with different learning styles, I think it's the best curation ever.
I intend to take all those resources and put them online on an website, so they will be accessible to as many people as possible. I made a google docs spreadsheet and put already a couple of resource types: from ebooks to online courses and from blogs to podcasts. Feel free to add other categories. The link is here -> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12TYwr_L9yigSK-640TYa62eqiOCJKV5gTUleqRPI8D8/edit#gid=0
So, what do you say? Would you like to help me out? Thanks in advance for all of you who will take the time to share the resources that helped you.
Best, Alin R. <comment><USER2> Google Docs lags a lot with too much data and too many users connected. If you're expecting to have some sort of popularity, I'd use a different medium.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for feedback! Could you give some suggestions?

<comment><USER2> Github: [https://github.com/sorrycc/awesome- javascript](https://github.com/sorrycc/awesome-javascript)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot!</comment></comment></comment></comment>