Help save 17 years of PC game modding history - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/04/help-save-17-years-of-pc-game-modding-history/ <comment><USER2> I worked in Filefront's news department for almost two years, worked closely with the file guys and had a small staff under me. I hope they save everything, lots of oldschool mods and whatnot on there. I remember when we covered E3, we got a video of Gary Coleman, someone asked him to say "Hi Filefront!" and he just said "What's filefront..." LOL.. ahh good times.

<comment><AUTHOR> It looks like the Archive Team has already got to that: [http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=GameFront](http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=GameFront)

<comment><USER3> Yes, we started archiving them last year when news updates stopped with no explanation. We've saved 28 TB so far[1] and we plan to do a final pass to grab anything we missed. All the files we've archived should be available to download through the IA's WayBack Machine at their original URLs (for example[2]).

[1] [http://tracker.archiveteam.org/gamefront/](http://tracker.archiveteam.org/gamefront/) [2] [https://web.archive.org/web/20151030203630/http://www.gamefr...](https://web.archive.org/web/20151030203630/http://www.gamefront.com/files/20888016/Grand_Theft_Auto_IV_Mod___GTA_Ultimate_Vehicle_Pack_v5)

<comment><USER4> Thank you! It is always so upsetting to try to play an old game, and find that the mods have been lost to history.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


CloudFlare SSL Issues Again - <AUTHOR>

My first thread about this a few day ago was killed. This is not a support forum for Cloudflare and I absolutely realise that.
I merely want to point out that after the launch of Universal SSL (great idea) we're seeing a ton of SSL related issues from CloudFlare, especially out of their Singapore POP.
I'd just routed around the issue and CloudFlare's dashboard broke on me with a message indicating a possible DB issue.
There's a bit of irony in here somewhere: http://imgur.com/YRaheQU.
While I love their service, it's worth bringing this up for discussion if nothing else. <comment><USER2> We had a temporary issue in our Singapore data center related to a very large attack targeting a site reporting on the protests in Hong Kong. The issue was limited to that data center. We mitigated the attack and resumed serving HTTPS traffic for free customers from the region.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ouch. I'm sorry to hear that. Given that we're located in Dubai, we seem to generally be routed via your Singapore data centre.

It would be nice if HTTPS traffic for paying customers was re-routed automatically to an alternative location.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Good thing I setup a secondary SSL certificate, so I just have to pause my CloudFlare and my site is back. But few days ago the same thing happened and lately I've been thinking of switching from CloudFlare, any recommendation?

<comment><USER4> I have tried CDN77, MetaCDN and CDNify in the past. All of them were good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> CloudFlare is currently completely down for me.</comment>


Ted Nelson's Junk Mail (and the Archive Corps Pilot) - <AUTHOR> http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5206 <comment><USER2> Mine experience might not suit other's, but I kind of find an echo with skimming through product flyers and catalogs, aka junk mails in this case. This might partly be due to I am in academy, where quick development of new equipments often could help cut cost and speedup studies. This is why I still signup junk emails from those companies, ask for paper copies of catalog, and take some time read those product promotion pages of academic journals.

<comment><USER3> Talk to people.

If you go to just one or two trade shows a year and talk to people during "unsociable hours" you've just saved yourself a year of reading ads. Especially the niche-companies are low on staff and usually volunteer their knowledgable geeks for the graveyard shifts at trade shows and if you have a good standing with them stuff is virtually free.</comment></comment>


Structural OCaml Editing in Emacs - <AUTHOR> https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/introducing-gopcaml-mode-structural-ocaml-editing/5310 <comment> dan-robertson Extract expression looks amazing.

These days I write a lot of ocaml. I used to write a bit of Common Lisp though I don't write much of that nowadays.

The thing I miss most when writing ocaml is paredit, a mode for emacs to edit sexps keeping them balanced. There is a more generic mode, smartparens, which can be used in other modes but it doesn't work super well for ocaml: it can't automatically add the required delimiters (though it isn't clear that would always be wanted) and it struggles with multi-char delimiters, eg:

      (* comments *)
      [| arrays |]
      {| unescaped strings |}
      {foo| harder unescaped strings |foo}

And because the structure of ocaml involved other delimiters that smartparens can't cope with, you miss out on a lot of structure editing.

But that said, maybe it is hard to edit structure that is less plain to see. Swapping two lines like this:

      let foo = x y in
      let bar = a b in
      ...

Seems like a natural operation but the same thing in lisp is quite an unnatural operation (the indentation style of ocaml hides that the second let is really nestled inside the first). Incidentally paredit has an operation to do this but it's pretty confusing (something like, take the sexps backwards from the point to the start of the smallest list strictly containing the point and swap them with the sexps going backwards from (excluding) the smallest list strictly containing the point to the start of the smallest list strictly containing the smallest list strictly containing the point.

Another ocaml operation would be merging/splitting lets into a let ... and. But this would be even more unnatural in the equivalent lisp structure (perhaps one reason is that parallel lets are idiomatic in lisp but sequential lets are idiomatic in ocaml so it isn't really a common operation to do in lisp).

There are a few structure editing features that sort of work in the normal ocaml modes of Tuareg with merlin. One is a "select more" operation which understands the syntax a bit. Another is a forward/backward defun operation which works a lot of the time and can be useful. Merlin also offers the ability to expand patterns based on the type they are matching (eg to expand _ into (_,_,_) or to the names of the record fields). There is also a "construct" operation which I've not really been able to figure out (I usually just abuse the destruct operation somehow) and some kind of type hole syntax (like this: (??)) which only merlin understands and which really confuses the compiler proper.

I'm pretty excited to try out this structure editing improvement, or indeed any structure editing or type-directed editing features.

<comment><USER2> > The thing I miss most when writing ocaml is paredit

Have you tried smartparens?

[https://smartparens.readthedocs.io/](https://smartparens.readthedocs.io/)

<comment> dan-robertson I describe it in and after the paragraph you took that quotation from.

<comment><USER2> Oops

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very cool.

We built a structural editor for an OCaml-like language (Darklang). Our first version was very AST-based, with all movement using the AST. The feedback we got was that AST-based editing is hard to grok and that you need line-based editing too. So we re-implemented and now we have both (although we broke and are re-adding a bunch of the editor refactorings).

<comment><AUTHOR> That makes sense - I'd assume restricting movement to just ast-based edits would be too constrained and would ultimately just limit the types of transformations users could perform (especially important when the syntax is wrong, or when making the AST temporarily invalid).

Have you had a look at the various Emacs plugins for editing lisp? Given the simplicity of the syntax, it would be fairly simple to make a lisp editor only performs AST-based transformations, however most lisp plugins support a mixture of both AST and line-based transformations. I find this approach to be very natural, allowing me to rely on the AST when I need it, and then being able to ignore it when I don't need it. My main motivation for gopcaml-mode was just to achieve a similar editing experience for OCaml code.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I was mostly influenced by paredit, though I had looked at parinfer and a few others.

Question about your approach: what happens if the code is syntactically invalid? Dark prevents code from being syntactically invalid cause it's AST only, but for example ocamlformat just refuses to run if it can't parse the whole file.

<comment><AUTHOR> At the moment, it just gracefully disables itself so the movement commands revert to calling the corresponding Tuareg and Merlin operations. This is mainly because I currently rely on the vanilla OCaml parser to build the AST which doesn't handle recovery from syntax errors.

In the future I plan to move over to the Merlin parser, which has partial support for syntactically invalid buffers (I believe it wraps invalid regions with another syntactic construct), so it should still be possible to move around in other parts of the buffer.

As an aside, as I mentioned on the OCaml forum, I haven't found this to be a major issue as I find that most of the time when I'm moving around (i.e not inserting text), the code is usually syntactically correct - I've also bound M-RET to insert a type hole (??) to easily allow movement even when I haven't completed a function definition, and overall this leads to quite a natural editing experience.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Magic - <AUTHOR> http://www.getmagicnow.com <comment><USER2> Besides questions about revenue and such, can I just say that I absolutely love the landing page. No gimmicks, no parallax, no videos, no fake testimonials, no hero images, no marquees. Just good copy.

Not sure if this is because of how quickly this blew up, but well done.

<comment><USER3> Thanks! Yeah, honestly, after deciding to launch this we released a really minimal landing page which I saved here: [http://getmagicnow.com/index- old.html](http://getmagicnow.com/index-old.html) \- As you can see I made that in about 20 minutes, and was not expecting this. After someone posted it on Product Hunt I spent whatever time I could polishing it up. In general though, I agree, simple websites are much better. Thanks for the kind words.

<comment><USER4> Hm, well here's a startling difference between the HN and Product Hunt community.

The PH comments:

      This website looks extremely untrustworthy, purely from a design standpoint. I feel a lot of potential users would be put off by this!

      Interesting idea. Terrible site design. Unclear if they're charging for this added convenience.

[http://www.producthunt.com/posts/magic](http://www.producthunt.com/posts/magic)

<comment><USER5> ProductHunt is just a useless hype machine for starts that don't hold any real value at all.

<comment><USER6> Not true, Product Hunt delivers quality traffic, with high-level people who are hungry for products and convert very well.

<comment><USER7> I was under the impression a lot of people use it for idea generation/competitive intel & that (in marketing terms) PH is a (small) traffic/link hack...

In other words I'd be interested to find anything on the quality of its traffic.

<comment><USER8> Hi!

We launched one of those landing-only email-catching product pitches on Product Hunt and Designer News. It went amazing. We never even topped #1, yet we got lots of useful feedback and more than five hundred emails of potential customers, some of them high-profile (think @google.com or @abc.com)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I love the idea, and the execution, but just one nit -- you say "no hidden fees", but I think bundling the fee into the total price is the definition of _a hidden fee_. If your examples itemized the fee it would be a different story. Other comments here express a similar anxiety, e.g. how much [extra] am I actually paying for this?

Also, I know you're busy, but FYI CA state law requires you have a Privacy Policy. I would like to know how long you retain records and who you are sharing them with before doing business with you!

<comment><USER10> Well it's not hidden because they tell you up front, before the order is placed, how much it will cost. If they told you $20 and asked for $25 when they got there, that would be a hidden fee. Like AT&T saying you can get cable for $20/mo, but your cable bill always ends up being $32.88.

<comment><USER11> Getting someone to push back on ATT bill errors would be an amazing feature if Magic could make it work.

<comment><USER12> We're happy to call ATT on your behalf :) Try us out!

<comment><USER13> The last time I had a problem with ATT I had to make multiple calls and spent over an hour in total on hold. How would you charge for that?

I'd have gladly paid for someone to take that pain away. There's probably a viable business model in there somewhere if someone can independently put a competent customer service layer in front of companies like ATT.

<comment><USER14> There's a service that will negotiate with them to reduce your bill. I remember reading about them last year, it's some Berkeley MBA who likes to practice negotiation, he might handle this too:

[https://www.cabletipster.com/](https://www.cabletipster.com/)

<comment><USER15> This looked quite interesting and useful right up until it asked me if I /really/ wanted to close the page.

That's very poor negotiation in my books.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hey everyone - this is insane. My friends and I created Magic a few days ago as a side project and it's completely blown up by accident since then. We're getting stormed with messages and orders.

We thought we'd launch it ourselves later if it did well, and other people have been posting it on Product Hunt, Reddit, HN themselves...

I'm here to answer any questions, although we've hardly slept!

<comment><USER16> Are you OK with people using Magic for things that don't result in a purchase? Something like "Is the 4:30 train from Greenwich to NYC late?" or "What hours are my local DMV office open?"

"Anything you want" makes it sound like people can use it like they'd use Siri.

<comment><USER17> There was a UK service called AQA that would answer questions for £1 back in the mid 2000s. They started off super super useful, but quality degraded enough as they scaled that it was no longer worth it. Used to be able to say "which shops in a 20 mile radius have xus in stock", or "who should I complain to about the service in xyz bar" and get great answers, but as they automated it more and more you'd just get back vague info

<comment><USER18> I was briefly an AQA employee. You were paid per question, so all you really cared about was how quickly you could send an answer and move onto the next question. The quality of the answer didn't matter, unless the customer complained and got a refund, which virtually never happened.

<comment><USER19> Poor metrics win again!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I discovered this through a Facebook thread that has a ton of comments on it from non HN or techie peeps. Thought you might want to know what normal non- techies think.

"I think it is a great idea that has potential but I personally wouldn't use them because I can't find anything about them on the website. Looks like a scam."

"They need to re-design their website so it doesn't look like it was slapped together in 10 minutes and add an about page so we know who they are."

"Not even a business at this point."

"This stuff kind of annoys me actually. I get the minimal product concept to test the market but when stuff like this is pushed out there it makes consumers very wary."

"These guys will take this to some bay area VC's and probably get funded because it blew up on Reddit and HN with a bunch of other techies. Meh!"

"It is going to take some serious $$ to get a service like this going. The support alone for handling inbound texts and having reps look for and book deals is a very big undertaking."

"Yay! Another useless service that creates more low wage service jobs that cater to the wealthy."

<comment><USER21> >"Yay! Another useless service that creates more low wage service jobs that cater to the wealthy."

... What.

This just doesn't compute. In what mindframe does this ever make sense as a complaint? If you're creating new jobs, even if they're low wage, you're just giving people more choice - they can now work at one more place than before, no one's forced into that, it literally can't do harm. And direct transfer of wealth from the wealthy to the poor is a positive, right?

I'm so confused.

<comment><USER22> I think that's a bit naive. In the micro, one new task economy startup might be a net gain, all other things being equal, but if it's part of a macro trend where skilled jobs are disappearing and being replaced with commodity task work, we might be sliding down a dangerous slope. Your final question sound kind of like the slightly more extreme argument that yacht factories enrich otherwise unemployed people. To me, that argument always rang hollow because how much wealth is really being transferred when demand for such things is fundamentally limited. I think ideally you want a broad base of jobs that can actually provide people with a middle class livelihood.

<comment><USER23> In addition to all this, let's be clear. The only wealth being "transferred" here is that of the minimum wage to workers. Everything else is making someone else rich, likely already rich investors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I just decided to try this out in Seattle. Here's how it went! [http://brianbeck.com/images/magic.png](http://brianbeck.com/images/magic.png)

(the minimum was from the sushi place, not Magic)

<comment><USER25> This is horrible compared to my daily experience using Seamless. Why would a person craving sushi want to exchange 8 text messages and then click on a web link and get sushi 2+ hours later?

<comment><USER26> They had to click a web link because it was their first time using the service so they had to add their credit card. How else are they supposed to charge you?

<comment><USER25> Well right. But my description of the experience still stands. It doesn't seem like an improvement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This reminds me of an opinion that I have which I've been looking for an opportunity to flesh out and share. Despite all of the research and engineering that's gone into the user interface (and "experience") of smartphones, text messaging as an interface has one massive advantage: the perceived cost of sending a text is _miniscule_ in comparison to other operations. I don't have units, but it's probably an order of magnitude lower in any reasonable ones.

Maybe I'm projecting onto "the general public" when I make this generalization, but performing operations on a smartphone (aside from call/text) are oft accompanied by the very real risk of squandering your time away. Especially when a browser is involved.

There is something elegant about the interface of a dumb phone, especially a flip phone: You pull it out of your pocket, whip it open, type your text, send it. And then crucially, you _flip it closed and stop thinking about it_. This is the key. You're using it when you're using it, and you're not when you're not.

Even grander generalization and possibly controversial opinion: I hope that consumer technology begins to cater more to those of us who wish to use technology in this way - as a tool that you pull out of your pocket and promptly put away upon achieving your ends.

<comment><USER28> Yes! More along these lines:

[https://usv.com/post/an-idea-about-texting](https://usv.com/post/an-idea- about-texting) [https://www.ouvre-boite.com/messaging/](https://www.ouvre- boite.com/messaging/) [https://medium.com/@chrismessina/conversational- commerce-92e...](https://medium.com/@chrismessina/conversational- commerce-92e0bccfc3ff) [http://blog.dilbert.com/post/109389515411/your-phone- interfa...](http://blog.dilbert.com/post/109389515411/your-phone-interface-is- a-legacy-train-wreck) [http://dangrover.com/blog/2014/12/01/chinese-mobile- app-ui-t...](http://dangrover.com/blog/2014/12/01/chinese-mobile-app-ui- trends.html#chatasui) [http://www.nngroup.com/articles/anti-mac- interface/](http://www.nngroup.com/articles/anti-mac-interface/)

A text based or "messaging" UI is often simpler _and_ more effective than fumbling with some complicated direct manipulation UI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Do you know what would really be magical? An on-demand service that provided a guarantee that all of the humans involved were beneficiaries of living wages, unemployment and workers comp protection, health insurance etc. I really enjoy the convenience these services provide, but ultimately that's all it is - convenience. To me, no convenience is worth watching an entire class of people get 1099-ed into poverty, at the expense of the social safety net that so many people struggled to establish.

When I discuss these issues with my peers (I live in the SF Bay Area), I find that many of them share my concerns, to varying degrees. Does anybody know if such a service exists?

<comment><USER30> I think this sentiment comes from the notion that employers should be the basis of the social safety net, which I find odd. Employers will never fully serve this role. It's relying on organizations (corporations usually) to make the trade off between profit and employee well being, two things that are almost always at odds.

It seems to me that it shouldn't matter where your income comes from, the social safety net should be there regardless. The ACA was a step in that direction by requiring people self insure if the did not get that benefit from their employer. I think we need to go even further and separate safety net benefits from employers. Then people would be able to choose whether they want the job security of a W-2 position or if they prefer the flexibility of a 1099 position without having to sacrifice the safety net.

(Side note: I'm a 1099 contractor who self insures. I have a lot of difficulty imagining going back to a W-2 job.)

<comment><USER31> Right on. If we as a society want to help those whose skills don't command a high monetary value in the market, we should pay for that help as a society (through taxes)!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wow, everyone! This is truly amazing. We released Magic under 48 hours ago as an experiment and a side project, and now the traffic and requests are streaming in faster than we can handle.

Don't worry - we have a plan to handle it. For now we are closing down free registrations so that we can focus on delivering the product to the awesome people who have signed up so far and who are using the service.

I've replaced the phone number on the page you see here with an email opt-in waiting list where you can sign up to be notified when Magic is available to you.

In the meantime, I have added a Stripe button for $20 after the email opt-in where you can gain access now if you want to get in right now.

Thanks everyone!

<comment><USER32> Well, but you forgot that you posted a link to your old page version, which still shows the phone number :], or did it change?

How could you create a solution like this in less than 2 days? Training operators (who where how many, paying a call center?), how are you managing customer data together with those operators etc. Sounds like a logistic nightmare to me, unless you and 10 friends are sitting day and night in your apartment..

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is exactly what Siri should be.

Apple has 800m credit cards on file (1)

In one fell swoop Apple could own the local delivery market, shocking how perfect of a concept / execution this is.

(1) [http://www.businessinsider.com/credit-cards-on-file-apple- vs...](http://www.businessinsider.com/credit-cards-on-file-apple-vs- amazon-2014-4)

<comment><USER34> The very fact that Apple has 800M credit cards on file is the reason why they know better than offering a service like this.

Even if 10% of their users started using their service to require "magic", there is no way in hell even a company like Apple could scale an operation like this that's bottlenecked by humans.

<comment><USER35> Why not? 80m users is probably in-line with what some of the larger banks and insurance companies deal with. They're big call centers, but we're not talking entire cities here.

<comment><USER36> A concierge service is a lot more intensive than responding to the clients of a bank.

If Apple did this at their scale, they would probably end up very quickly having an (hopefully public) API for every business around, rather than having their agents call the same restaurant 10 times a day. That would really be a revolutionary way to consume.

<comment><USER37> Sort of like Just-Eat? [http://www.just-eat.co.uk](http://www.just-eat.co.uk)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Loving the simplicity of it all. I just need to text a number. No app to install and grant access to my phone, no website to go and sign up to with my facebook account. Nothing.

Just text a number and get what I want. It solves my problems by giving a path of least resistance to getting what I want. A company doing a similar thing was handing out fliers over the summer and they had an app to install. I thought the idea was cool but never got around to installing it.

I just added this phone number to my contact list for when I'm reading to use it.

<comment><USER3> Thanks. Please let me know how you like using it. That's exactly what we were going for, and I hope that the experience persists throughout.

<comment><USER39> Just want to chime in that I also think having a number to text is more convenient than using an app that I'd surely forget about within days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Idea to scale:

As a non-coder, I love reading the responses of programers here. "Automate this!" "There is no way to scale." "This needs AI."

As an outsider looking in, my idea to scale is similar to Uber. Have workers that can sign on to work whenever they have the time. The workers handle the orders and receive a cut of the fee you charge. It would be great if you could have some kind of rating system where the consumer could choose who they work with, but I'm not sure how to make that happen with SMS.

I'm not saying this is better or more cost efficient than automation. I just see it as a solution to their current problem.

Uber is looking to automate, but check out their current valuation. They can afford to do so all by scaling with humans.

I'll now wait to get hammered by HN. :)

<comment><USER41> You're basically describing ODesk, Elance, Mechanical Turk, etc... Not saying this execution will/won't work, but there are lots of firms that seemed to have make it work to solve a similar / the same problem set.

<comment><USER42> Things like Mechanical Turk are just creating minimum wage jobs and we were better of without them, I think.

Magic will create many call-center like jobs...

<comment><USER43> Call-center jobs in US are not minimum wage?

<comment><USER44> Not in Canada. I work in telecommunications and technical support starts at $17/h. Sales starts at $12/h I think plus commission. Lots of sales reps in our call centres are easily clearing $50k a year. Everyone gets full extended health benefits. Minimum wage is around $10.25 I think?

<comment><USER43> Good to know, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Does no one else consider the idea of this horribly decadent? They give as an example, ordering a delivery pizza for you, which is already a decadent activity and something you can accomplish with a single phone call anyway. Maybe for the rich high-flying silicon valley types, your time and brain space is so valuable that this service makes sense. But if that is the case maybe you should re-examine your lives.

<comment><USER46> This isn't interesting because of pizzas. This is interesting because of the potential to centralize and offload all decisions of a certain type. It's like a pay-per-use secretary.

What I do find.. "decadent"... is people like you, judging masses of other people on the basis of what they find interesting or useful. Especially when you can't see past the low hanging fruit and aren't able to grasp any potential a service might have.

Piece of advice: If a majority of people are interested and finding use in a service, re-examine your own evaluation skills before telling everyone else to re-examine their lives.

<comment> UVB-76 A service like this simply isn't economical for the overwhelming majority of people.

If you perceive your time to be so valuable that you can't bear the five minutes it takes to order a pizza online or by phone, you probably should re- examine that valuation.

Especially when five minutes ordering exactly what you want directly from your preferred supplier is replaced by a fifteen minute exchange with a stranger who has to interprets vague inputs, has misaligned incentives, doesn't know any of your preferences beyond those you expressly state, etc. all of which you then pay a premium for...

<comment><USER47> My first thought was that if your time and effort really is so valuable that it economically makes sense to use a service like this one, then you probably can afford and should have a real concierge/personal assistant. It seems to me this hinges on an emotional (i.e. economically irrational) need of (upper?) middle class people to _feel_ rich and too "important". Which is actually not a bad business model at all, tapping into people's feelings. It's actually one of the best things to base a business on.

But I could be wrong. Maybe there's a sweet spot in the price-utility ratio where this makes sense for people who are not technically rich and busy maintaining the wealth. It's interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> From someone who's tried and failed: performing a large amount of high-quality labor for cheap is not a sustainable business model in the West, and riding hype can make you oblivious to that fact.

That said, I do hope this team has some amazing trick under their sleeves that has eluded everyone else, because I do want this service to exist.

<comment><USER49> Agreed, this has obviously got some nice buzz, but never would I want to be the person having to run this business.

Lots of manual work for little fees. They could hire/ outsource, but the quality will drop and prices will hike.

They might be able to find a niche of people willing to pay a lot for simple things they could probably do easily themselves (like ordering food, or booking a flight), and use that extra money to outsource, but something tells me that market is pretty small.

It's interesting, I'm curious to see if this can turn into a company.

<comment><USER50> I guess beause it's SMS they can you employ machine learning and simple classification, and internal tools to automate whatever is requested the most. Requests that require manual work will probably cost a little bit more. They also seem to pass requests down to backend providers, which you can probably do very cheaply.

<comment><USER49> I couldn't disagree with this characterization more. They will need human intelligence overseeing the majority of the cases, and those that they try to automate will be fraught with difficulty and take a long time to iron out. Even the examples I've seen posted of people using it so far would not have been able to be automated and required extended conversations.

(And just in general stuff that is actually easy to automate will mean a ton of middle men already exist to make it easy, or more likely, the person could just do it themselves quickly)

The founders can either outsource to someone for as cheap as they can manage and target clients who don't care about likely significant middleman fees (and who are most likely on the lazy side), or they can spend all of their attention each day doing these little tasks for people.

Since it was a whimsical side project, as they described it, I imagine this will go on for a little while longer, but then they will wind it down and/or maybe try to sell it like the glitter envelope guy who didn't want to do all the work, and then have something quite nice for their resumes, plus some PR to go towards their next project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Arthur C. Clarke famously said _any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic._ This maxim has proven robust over decades. But now are we now so used to interacting with layers of technology and automation that sufficiently trained _humans_ could seem in any way magical?

I don't agree, but a scary indictment if it were true.

Clever business name though.

<comment><USER3> I love this quote. Thanks for reminding me of it! :) For me, the "magic" refers to the magic moment that I experienced when we prototyped this internally. Despite the power of today's on-demand services, I've always felt them to still be rather frustrating. Sometimes the drivers cancel, they get lost, you still have to manage them. We tested this by delivering the product to each other internally, handling all the annoyance of dealing with these services behind the scenes. The result feels like magic. Just text in what you want...and it appears.

<comment><USER52> This is what used to be called "concierge service". You can still get it with, for example, high-end American Express cards, or from firms which specialize in providing it.

Judging by the examples on your site, you've succeeded in bringing concierge service to (sorry) the masses, by pricing it much lower than competing offerings.

Congratulations! You have a highly viable MVP. Good luck scaling it out!

<comment><USER53> My Credit/Debit card offers concierge service but I've never used it. I'd have to find the number (or put it in my phone..), then speak to an operator, and then trust that they could deliver on what I expect.

This service is based on SMS though, and I'd presume they hold all the pertinent info (address, credit card etc) so that I wouldn't have to keep repeating it. I'd still have to trust that I get what I want, but the crucial _speaking to an operator_ component is reduced to a fire and forget SMS. I'd use this if I was in the States.

<comment><USER54> I don't follow you

> My Credit/Debit card offers concierge service but I've never used it. I'd > have to find the number (or put it in my phone..), then <text> an operator, > and then trust that they could deliver on what I expect.

> This service is based on <calls> though, and I'd presume they hold all the > pertinent info (address, credit card etc) so that I wouldn't have to keep > repeating it. I'd still have to trust that I get what I want, but the > crucial <texting> an operator component is reduced to a fire and forget > <call>. I'd use this if I was in the States.

<comment><USER53> My Credit Card company doesn't do text based concierge service. I would have to call them. The _making a phone call_ is the bit I don't like. I haven't used the service so I have no idea what to expect with regards to storing details etc.

The landing page for Magic shows me exactly what I could expect, and it's based on SMS.

What's not to follow?

<comment><USER54> You mentioned

\- having to find the number (or put in in your phone), and

\- trust that they could deliver on what I expect

\- I'd presume they hold all the pertinent info

Yet those three things are identical whether you use magic or your CC concierge service!

So you might as well have just written

> My Credit/Debit card offers concierge service but I've never used it. I > don't like talking on the phone, but I don't mind SMS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Is this really new in the states? In sweden we've had these numbers called 118 100, or 118 118 where it costs relatively much to call in but they can take care of a lot of things for you.

For example since my company pays for my phone I tend to use them for things like getting a taxi wherever I am. "I want a taxi in X city". And they can do this via SMS or phone call, they can send the reply via phone or via sms if you want, included in the service charge.

Essentially they can do what magic claims, with operators standing by 24/7, for a service fee that comes from your phone operator.

We've had this in Sweden for many, many years now. I don't even remember how long but I know that some time 6-7 years ago they started advertising that you could call them (or text them) about any stupid question you might have and they would try to answer it.

If this magic really is new to the states then I predict it will explode just like our swedish alternatives have here.

<comment><USER56> Do they handle payment? When I lived in Belgium there were a few services like what you describe (2000-2001 ish), but they were all basically glorified Yellow Pages - they'd find and call a service provider for you, but from there on out you were on your own. Also don't bother sending them a list like '6 eggs, a gallon of milk and a pair of black socks', which it seems this service does cater for.

<comment><USER55> No you can't make purchases through them, and you can't store information with them.

The only type of payment involved is the service fee when you call the number. Other than that they look up information for you, or answer questions for you. Like a google phone operator.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Sounds like _General Services_ from the story _We Also Walk Dogs_. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E2%80%94We_Also_Walk_Dogs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E2%80%94We_Also_Walk_Dogs) for the story.

I'll bet they don't invent antigravity devices though! :-)

</comment><comment><USER58> I created a service very similar to this about 2 years ago and no one cared. Given my experience, I'm stunned (but happy) to see so much praise for this. Anyway, congratulations....looks like you have that right time/right product/right place thing going on. How do you intend to monetize? If I buy a pizza, do you charge me directly (a premium) and then pay Domino's et al? How many people do you have to handle the deluge of texts? Do you intend to seek affiliate relationships with local merchants where you can't charge a known fee up front (for example, where someone says "Dude, I need a plumber ASAP!")?

</comment><comment><USER59> This is the most amazing startup I've ever seen on HN. There's no app, there's nothing to install.

I need Magic in my life. I hate ordering, filling out forms, etc. Pease scale this thing hard and fast. This is Uber-level fantastic. Better than that, even.

</comment><comment><USER60> Have you thought about chargeback risks? I.e. when you hit mass-market there will be a non-trivial number of attempts in which customer cancels the payment to you after receiving the ordered product on the basis that it was not what he ordered. It seems that it can be quite a mess to figure those situations out due to suppliers being so varied.

<comment><USER61> it's probably way too early to worry about that, they just need to grow and deal with actual issues that are coming up today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> My first thought to this is: How is it going to scale? This requires human labor to be behind every service requests!

And then I was reminded of Uber. Isn't Uber in the same sort of service model that requires a human driver for every request, but is doing super successful? (let's not talk about regulation.)

The more I think about it, the more it appears a good business model. It definitely helps users save time and worry, and as demand is growing, it can simply hire more trained service men, and creates huge job opportunities.

This is a platform that enables/accelerates service to people by people. I'm optimistic of its future.

<comment><USER63> Eventually Uber will fire all drivers and replace them with self-driving cars. In many ways Uber is currently doing things that don't scale with regard to relying on humans to drive customers. Eventually the cost-intensive humans won't be needed and Uber will grow massively.

I could see this happening in many business models. Obviously Magic may fail entirely (it appears to be pretty much just an idea currently) but I could see AI replacing the human components.

I'm not sure how I feel about all of this.

<comment><USER62> Or maybe Magic could pivot to serve a few niches that AI serves well, e.g. food ordering, tickets/flight/hotels booking, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Looks like an even more minimal version of WunWun ([https://www.wunwun.com/](https://www.wunwun.com/)), which is a "write some unstructured text and we'll dispatch it" app, in NYC and SF. They hire and manage their own couriers tho.

<comment><USER3> We also handle things that WunWun doesn't, like booking plane tickets, making reservations, paying bills, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> This is a shadow, a hint of what AI and machine learning will bring us.

<comment><USER66> I imagine if this thing sticks around, they'll eventually be able to automate simple things like the pizza ordering and whatnot. I imagine it could call back to a human in case of issues, such as:

Requester: "I want two pepperoni pizzas, one with extra cheese."

AI Response: "I can have 3 pizzas, two pepperoni, and one cheese (with extra cheese), delivered from Dominos for $24.15"

Requester: "No, I wanted two pepperoni pizzas, with extra cheese on one of them"

Human steps in after the "no" is detected: "Sorry, I misunderstood your request, I can get two pepperoni pizzas with extra cheese on one of them for $16.50 from Dominos"

Requester: "Yes, thanks."

</comment></comment><comment>

It'll just be a matter of time as the automation spreads to less and less mundane topics.

<comment><USER67> The first step is just to have backend software make a first pass at the texts and make suggestions to the rep. As it get better, it increases the throughput for the human rep. Like most automation, it becomes about making a human more productive, and that's a lot easier to accomplish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> They say that they guarantee credit card security by using an HTTPS link. How is that even security? We don't even know for sure if this is a legitimate service. What does it matter if they are getting the CC number via SSL or not?

<comment><USER69> The credit card paragraphs... did not inspire confidence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Great idea.

Can we find out how much it costs, or do we just have to trust that the quoted price for the task isn't too much above actual cost? Or does it not have any service fees? The site is really vague about pricing.

<comment><USER3> This is a great question. We are still trying to figure this out right now. Our vision is to be a service that handles everything - and that means everything from ordering food, to ordering clothes, to booking a one week's vacation in St. Thomas. The fees obvioulsy vary. Any ideas you have about doing this in a more straightforward way would be welcome. For now what we are doing is thinking about what would be reasonable on the fly. Sometimes it's more than people think, i.e. if someone wants milk delivered to their house in Wisconsin, we have to call a local courier, etc. However we've found people are willing to pay more than you would think, too.

<comment><USER47> My bold suggestion would be to _not_ do what other posters are suggesting about making pricing clear and itemized. As I've said in another comment, I think this service mainly fulfills an emotional need, not a rational one (and that's not bad for a business at all), so make your customers feel luxurious. Bean counting isn't luxurious. Do exactly what you do now, just handle the request and state the price. Getting people to think about pricing by having pricing listed and itemized will just ruin the experience. Besides, people prone to bean counting will quickly figure out this isn't worth it. Don't be Amazon, don't race to the bottom. Just find a way to scale your fee estimation process to stay reasonable enough without bothering your customers with it.

<comment><USER70> Completely Agree with this. Your service is extremely easy to use and your customers will choose if the price is too much or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Can you somehow handle requests that are primarily research questions, that don't necessarily culminate in an immediate (or an intermediated) financial translation?

I'm just thinking about requests that ask for a recommendation for a product or a service that won't be purchased right away (like finding a certain kind of restaurant with certain parameters, but not getting food delivered from it, or finding a certain kind of professional service without immediately contracting for it).

Or for that matter factual questions like "Who won the 2014 Oscar for Best Documentary Feature?".

Would this somehow look like "I found 3, and I'll tell you about them for $5, OK?"? Will people be more resistant to paying the fee if the fee is the only item they're paying, rather than bundled with the price of some other transaction?

<comment><USER72> I asked several questions and got decent answers for all of then, sometimes after they prompted me for some more information. I eventually asked about the pay structure and they said they would probably start charging me for asking questions if the volume were high.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> This is an example of "execution is everything." People might try this as novelty. If it gets any traction, there will be millions of imitators. This won't succeed or fail because of the idea, but because of execution.

This needs to be really awesome to be good, really awesome. So awesome people get dependant.

</comment><comment><USER74> I've seen something similar before, very cool idea! My question is from an operational standpoint, who are the "operators"? Given the side-project nature of the site, are you up all night answering/ordering these things?

<comment><USER3> It's safe to say that this is no longer a side project.

<comment><USER75> =)congrats. care to share what volume looks like?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> This seems a lot like fancy hands, via text messaging. The big difference I see is that there is no monthly commitment. Since my personal assistant quit, I've been using Fancy Hands I have been quite delighted by the service. I'd love to know the model that this business uses. I dug into fancy hands a little bit and it seems like the operations are not quite so straightforward(crowdsourcing what the headache of managing employees). When I first looked through this I assumed this was coded onto fancy hands API. But given the scaling issues and the pricing structure of this app it probably isn't.

</comment><comment><USER77> I can already order pizza and flowers and plane tickets myself. However, if you could handle requests like:

       Call Comcast for me and have them configure my Cisco
       DPC3939B for bridge mode

       Go stand in line at the post office and retrieve
       my package with tracking #xxxxxxxx

       My iPhone's screen is cracked.  Take it to the mall
       and get somebody to fix or replace it, whichever's
       cheaper.

       Bring me some Mongolian BBQ with the following
       specifications.

... I can see this whole "magic" concept going places. :)

<comment><USER11> Yeah, if you can wrap shleps like this in a painless interface, it would be _incredible._

I would pay _a lot of money_ for that.

Especially for stuff like "Dispatch someone credible-sounding to stand in line and negotiate as my agent with large shitty ossified organization X," where X might be a post office, utility company, embassy, real estate, etc, where their user experience disrepects my time.

The dev who sits next to me has been trying to buy a house for a month, and he spends ~50% of his time on the phone with home inspectors, contractors, the title office and similar, basically telling them trivial facts or participating in silly naggy negotiations where they're basically gambling that he won't push back on the twentieth little crappy line item this week.

This is a super-real pain point.

<comment><USER78> So you're saying that your coworker needs a real estate agent.

Is there a reason, besides money, that he isn't using one? I say "besides money", because you said you would pay "a lot of money" for it, so you can clearly afford an agent.

<comment><USER11> No clue why he's doing it the way he is, and I know nothing about how to buy a house, but it sure sounds like a pain.

<comment><USER78> His reason is almost certainly money. An agent's commission isn't insignificant. It's the opportunity cost of, well... what he's doing.

If he's talking with contractors, he's probably also trying to figure out how to fix it up or modify it. I didn't need to talk with any contractors at all, so I don't know whether or not an agent would have helped.

<comment><USER79> When we bought our house, the seller paid for our agent as well as theirs.

<comment><USER11> If the seller is paying for "your" agent, is she really _yours_ in the incentivized sense?

eg. Zuckerberg's college buddy who fronted the money for early FB servers was sure that "his" attorneys had his back, right up until they stabbed him, because they were paid by Zuckerberg.

<comment><USER79> Being little people, the laws apply to us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> Am I supposed to tip the delivery guy?

Normally I tip for pizza delivery, Instacart, etc. Do you make sure that's included for me?

<comment><USER12> Normally we will charge you one overall charge and handle everything including tipping, but if you prefer to do the tipping yourself then just let us know!

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> Great service for a consumer. But as a business - how do you earn revenue?

<comment><USER82> They're likely using one of the world's oldest business models: "Buy things for $1, sell them for $2."

<comment><USER83> The simplicity of your reply blew mine out of the water. :0

<comment><USER82> I think I stole the quote from the Wire.

<comment><USER84> Yup, love that show.

"Shit is just business, String. Buy for a dollar, sell for two. That's all it need be."

Proposition Joe

<comment><USER85> I know a guy who buys cheap cars, fixes them, and resells them. All through craigslist. But whenever he buys a car, even one he plans to keep for himself, he immediately lists it with a huge markup. Just today he got an offer for $3200 on a motorcycle he bought last week for $2000.

<comment><USER86> I often think that would be a great gig.

I like fixing things.

But I don't know how to work on cars. So there's that...

<comment><USER83> You'd be surprised how much you can learn from a classic Haynes manual. Start small (changing oil, tires) and you might surprise yourself!

<comment><USER86> Yeah, it's partially that I've (so far) had exceptional luck with my vehicles! In my 15 years of driving I've only had maybe 10 parts changed. I did the easiest myself--an alternator, a couple of serpentine belts, etc. I sometimes change my own oil.

Sometimes I don't know enough to diagnose a problem, though, and I take it to my buddy. He usually does the fix and I watch and help a little, but I don't know enough about the whole engine and how it all works together, at this point.

I want to buy a car to take apart and reassemble, but I don't currently have a space I can do that in. Though it just occurred to me I could get a storage unit, probably.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> I love the absurdly simple way this works. That said, maybe there should be some form of (appropriately simple) authentication on each request, because what if my phone gets stolen/lost?

<comment><USER88> You could do this: if you enable passcode confirmation, type your pass anywhere in the text message along with your text confirmation. If you forget, you get a request to do so.

<comment><USER89> Except that text history is usually saved on the phone. If someone has access to sending texts, they will have access to that as well. It is probably better to go with phone locking, instead.

That said, I like the passcode idea. I know that caller ID is easily spoofed, and so I would imagine that the source ID for text messages can be spoofed as well. Requiring the passcode would prevent this sort of attack.

<comment><USER90> The source of text messages is indeed easily spoofed. Most paid services enabling you to send SMS over the web allow you to set arbitrary sender IDs, so the cost of entry for spoofing is about $5.

It's not hard to imagine this leading to trouble as soon as you get into the crosshairs of some internet troll who managed to get your mobile number.

<comment><USER88> Prediction, they will switch to a simple app soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER91> This is neat. I like the simple execution, and I'm working on something metaphorically similar in that I'm using Stripe and other separate Bitcoin APIs in a similar "amalgamated" way to create a well-rounded application that does a simple service really well. This gives me the confidence that a "mashup"-like concept isn't necessarily the downfall of a service, so long as it provides real value to the end-user.

I wish the Magic team the best!

</comment><comment><USER92> Maybe one approach is to start by doing everything by hand but then gradually try to automate things. This would not work for answering questions, but when it comes to ordering things I would assume majority of orders would fall into not-so-many categories.

It could be valuable to just record all the transactions and how the agents filled them. What the customer asked, what kind of questions the agent asked, did agent Google for the service, what steps did they take on web sites to perform the order etc. If you have this kind of data for thousands of transactions that might have some value for Google, Apple or other companies working to build digital assistants.

For more complex/expensive purchases one added value thing for customer could be that the agent knows how to find a good deal. There's for example a service (or maybe just a forum) where people can post their travel plans and airline ticketing experts compete to provide the best ticket options.

One obvious income source that comes to my mind is affiliate fees and companies paying for you to introduce them for new customers. This is of course also difficult one since customers would like you to recommended the best provider and not the one that pays best affiliate fees.

</comment><comment><USER93> This looks identical to Jarvis: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8094351](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8094351)

<comment><USER94> Jarvis charges a large upfront fee. This charges per use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER95>
        > We will send you a 128-bit encrypted HTTPS link via SMS that you can click to enter your credit card number. We do not store your credit card number. All payment processing is handled by Stripe.

What if one of your operators sends me a link to pay them instead and I never get what I asked for?

Also, for something people are wary is a scam, saying "be careful what you wish for" in your first reply is a little bit ominous!

</comment><comment><USER96> I see almost no barrier to entry for this idea and as some commentors pointed out- this has been done before- although today does feel like the right time to succeed because these other services are maturing.

Why not turn this into an excess capacity market where you enable anyone to easily offer this service themselves...especially if they have local insights.

This seems like a good way for anyone to Make a few bucks in their free time.

</comment><comment><USER97> If you've never read it, this is the time to read the Heinlein classic, "We Also Walk Dogs."[1] This is exactly the business he describes.

[1] [http://www.lightforcenetwork.com/sites/default/files/%5BHein...](http://www.lightforcenetwork.com/sites/default/files/%5BHeinlein_Robert_Anson%5D_We_Also_Walk_Dogs%28BookFi.org%29.pdf)

<comment><USER98> From the short story:

"Miss Cormet reflected to herself that the prosperity of General Services and her own very substantial income was based largely on the stupidity, lack of resourcefulness, and laziness of persons like this silly parasite"

</comment></comment><comment><USER99> uhhm... in italy we have this kind of service for years (I remember back in the '80s when there was still one national telephonic company there was this number "12" you could call to have infos).

There is now a profusion of heritage (like [http://www.1240.it](http://www.1240.it), [http://www.892424.it](http://www.892424.it), etc).

<comment><USER100> But they got complacent and didn't scale, I guess they missed the boat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER101> I love it! Sounds like Heinlein's "General Services" \-- no job too big, no job too small.

"Want somebody murdered? Then DON'T call General Services. But for anything else, call.... It Pays!"

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E2%80%94We_Also_Walk_Dogs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E2%80%94We_Also_Walk_Dogs)

</comment><comment><USER102> Best app? No app.

</comment><comment><USER103> This is crazy, I was just brainstorming about this last week. You're basically layering concierges on top of remote hands. Awesome!

I'm curious to see what you'll do to handle exceptional cases. I live in the boonies and am asking for a philly cheesesteak right now.

<comment><USER104> So did they deliver?

<comment><USER103> They offered! They found a "good cheesesteak place" about 30 miles from here (I believe it) and offered to have someone drive it out to me, but cautioned it would be very expensive & asked if I wanted them to get a quote. I declined, not THAT hungry for a cheesesteak tonight, but I'm super happy with the knowledge & result.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER105> About a week ago, my team and I also launched a similar service in India - Genie (www.getagenie.in). I am happy to answer any questions or concerns from Indian market standpoint. We have built a concierge technology platform that our crowdsourced Genies (of course we handpick only the best) uses to serve the customers. We take a bit different route in pricing/offering where we provide an actual assistant (ofcourse shared and available via text, call or email) who takes the customer to know personally and provide both reactive (customer asking for a plumber for example) and proactive (Genie coming up with ideas on customer anniversary for example) services.

</comment><comment><USER106> The front-end looks awesome.

But will it scale?

To me, the obvious value of your business is in being able to train Operators up to the Magic corporate standard. If you can do this while growing the service, you've got a real winner - especially if you put up a web front end to make it possible to become a Magic operator anywhere in the world. I'd be quite happy to do this kind of service work from home - as long as I had the tools to support me, and I think ultimately thats where your real value is going to be - certainly growing the customer base is valuable, too. But being able to train/service Operators who can do the job properly is going to be the key to it all ..

</comment><comment><USER107> Example screenshots show iMessage, but the number provided supports SMS-text only.

<comment><USER108> I can't tell you the number of times I _knew_ the recipient had an iPhone and it still showed up green on Messages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm curious to know how they can cover the entire US.

Obviously, I realize they can't, I just wonder how often their answer to the query is "Sorry, we can't do this".

Overall, I think it's a great idea but the fact that it's bottlenecked by humans will make it very, very hard to scale (and you can already see this as the web site has a big banner saying the service is currently restricted due to high demand).

Still, it's clear from the testimonials so far that these guys have their heart in the right place and they really want to achieve maximum user satisfaction. Kudos!

<comment><USER109> > _I 'm curious to know how they can cover the entire US._

Because they're just using other services to get you what you want.. i.e. flowers, groceries, pizza, etc. - they just call a florist/supermarket/pizza joint/etc. local to the requester.

What examples of requests can you think of that can't be served anywhere in the US?

<comment><USER34> I understand that but you still need a one to one mapping between customers and request, even if that request is not ultimately implemented by the person who picked up the phone.

<comment><USER67> They'll find a price point that matches the demand with their ability to supply. The premium involved in using this service is already substantial, so it's not going to be an everyday thing for everyone.

<comment><USER34> You're missing my point: their service is limited by humans. Every new customer needs exactly one human to address their needs.

<comment><USER67> Every new customer needs a few minutes of one human's time. They can hire as many people as they need as long as customers are willing to pay the cost of that time. As long as the cost of the humans is something some number of customers are willing to pay, everything is great.

This is an ancient business model for customer service, so I guess I'm confused where you're going with this...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER110> Many people here are making the argument that this is more efficient than opening up an app or going to a UI. However after looking at one poster's times of actually using the service, it seems like the opposite. ([http://brianbeck.com/images/magic- times.png](http://brianbeck.com/images/magic-times.png))

For someone who gets really overwhelmed by too many texts, this seems like a lot of back and forth compared to just googling to find the number of the restaurant and ordering.

</comment><comment><USER111> Nice idea and like others here I really appreciate the simple plain web page. Best of luck with it all.

Just a thought for when this begins to scale: vetting of the people ordering the stuff. They will have names, email, delivery address and an idea of the income level/lifestyle of the person ordering. I'm assuming credit card details are on a payment system and not available to the people handing the requests.

PS: any customers complained about what they got yet?

</comment><comment><USER112> Just to sign up (before I asked for anything), the credit card form is for a $20 initial payment... with no explanation if this goes towards your first purchase, or not? [http://i.imgur.com/J5TKJO5.png](http://i.imgur.com/J5TKJO5.png)

Also, they're using a Stripe account managed by this company: [https://bettir.com](https://bettir.com)

<comment><USER113> Bettir seems to be a product of the same company (Plus Labs).

</comment></comment><comment><USER114> Like Jim Barksdale used to say - there are two ways of making money, you can bundle or unbundle. Magic is clearly a very clever bundling play.

</comment><comment><USER115> This looks great! It would be really cool if, in the far future, this service could make deals to cut out some of the natural 'fee stacking' that occurs. If you order from magic and magic uses Postmates, you're going to pay a delivery fee to each service. This will add up to probably 20-30% of the price, but that's the price of convenience I guess.

</comment><comment><USER16> Great site, and exciting service.

One little nitpick: the blue chat bubbles on the site gave me the impression you'd be using iMessage for supported phones instead of SMS. (This matters to me just a bit because I have a limited number of SMSes per month.) I totally get why you would just stick to SMS.

Still happy to use your service, but it did create just the tiniest bit of initial dissapointment.

</comment><comment><USER116> I kind of like the idea of a broker service for deliverables. Does this look for best price or just best effort at fastest fulfillment?

<comment><USER3> Both. Whichever you like. Just specify.

</comment></comment><comment><USER117> Congrats to Mike and team for making something people [really] want! I am so excited for you guys. Can't wait to start using.

</comment><comment><USER118> Who do I talk to about adding Lugg to the list of services? [http://lu.gg](http://lu.gg)

</comment><comment><USER119> Good idea, you're blowing up so get off this damn forum and go fulfill some orders. The best to you gents/ladies.

<comment><USER120> They're doing alright it seems, I got a response within like 30 seconds! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER121> I'm curious how they are scaling on the financials side. I'm assuming they are paying for the things ordered off of their personal CC's and with the sudden spike in requests and the long delay of getting money back into their account, I wonder how far they will go.

A blog post after all of it cools down would be a fun read. :)

<comment><USER67> The users put a card on file with Stripe. Is there a way to use that info through Stripe to make a payment to the vendor? (and a separate charge to Magic for the service fee, maybe?)

I assume bitcoin is going through Stripe as well, though if not, that money could come to Magic more quickly. The problem then is that the vendors likely don't accept bitcoin...

</comment></comment><comment><USER122> Maybe it's me but i don't feel confident giving my credit card after reading the home page. After reading the whole page i understand the business but my first impression was really somewhere between "is this a joke ? / they are stealing credit card numbers"

Maybe the very cheap design discredit the whole project.

</comment><comment><USER9> Holy shit, they flinched! Magic, get your act together. Seriously, do not cut off potential exponential growth like this. You need to get talented operators in place and fake it until the AI is ready. Understand your role, you are a _sales channel_. Make it happen and make it big.

</comment><comment><USER123> I do not understand the internet. This type of service has existed for ages.

Why does this one attract so much attention?

</comment><comment><USER124> And yet another cool startup I'm going to have to wait to expand to the UK.

Good work guys, and I agree with everything that everyone else said about the simplicity of your landing page, and the controversial design decision to actually communicate information.

<comment><USER125> Don't bother waiting, we made a UK version you can find at askjarvis.co.uk or by texting "start" to 0115 824 4141

</comment></comment><comment><USER126> This seems a lot like fancyhands.com; or on its way to trying to become something like it...

<comment><USER127> That's the first thing I thought when I saw the user scenarios. Fancyhands charges a monthly fee for a certain number of transactions which can get pricey.

</comment></comment><comment> tom-lord This seems like another one of this startup ideas that will blow up, sell for $X,000,000 in a few weeks/months, then die as the fad wears off.

Congrats on being so successful so far, but my advice would be to sell out before the investors loose interest!

<comment><USER39> This is literally day 3 for them... a bit early for the investor talk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER128> Just FYI, My company used to offer Les Concierge for something very similar, until recently. They stopped it because people were not really using the service. So, inspite of the coolness of the startup, I am skeptical if it makes money.

</comment><comment><USER129> I love how the Hacker News crowd is consistent over the course of 200 days: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8094351](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8094351)

</comment><comment><USER130> How would you deal with the following cases?

\- people using the service just to figure out the price of something (and then declining)?

\- people not being happy with what they got delivered (perhaps rightfully so), and wanting their money back?

</comment><comment><USER131> Took a few more minutes than I expected, but it checks out.

[http://f.cl.ly/items/3l3h3j3c0N3Q1h1A2A3O/IMG_3684.PNG](http://f.cl.ly/items/3l3h3j3c0N3Q1h1A2A3O/IMG_3684.PNG)

</comment><comment><USER132> A joke I always had was that startups always have the "we do it so you don't have to" headline. Applies so perfectly here!

Still, looks like a very nice idea, might try it if I ever need something :)

</comment><comment><USER133> So I ordered a pizza last night(not through your service) and I had to call them after an hour because it didn't arrive and they misplaced the order. How would you handle such a situation?

<comment><USER3> We do exactly what you would do if you're being completely proactive...just behind the scenes so you don't have to worry about it. We call the pizza place, call the driver, deal with the annoyance. You just relax and wait for your pizza.

<comment><USER134> The customer knows if it arrived - do they need to notify you when it does? Or do all the services notify you? Otherwise, I don't see how you can tell if it's late and likely got misordered, and you need to contact the pizza place again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER135> OK, I haven't read all the comments yet, and, sadly, when I texted the Magic number, I was wait listed, but I think this is a great idea and will definitely use it if prices are fair.

</comment><comment><USER136> Those prices. Holy moly. Is everyone in the Bay Area rich these days?

<comment><USER137> yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER138> Since this is just a middleman to other services, even like instacart, it's more expensive. I wonder why humans are so lazy nowadays just to get trivial things done.

</comment><comment> shawn-butler What guarantee of customer satisfaction is offered? If your fees are "bundled" how do you intend to refund in the event of poor service by the final provider?

</comment><comment><USER139> Hey just a heads-up - your logo looks very similar to the one Magic FM use - [http://www.magic.co.uk/](http://www.magic.co.uk/)

</comment><comment><USER140> PRODUCERS. This is huge for producers. Please keep this in mind. A producer on set who needs something special delivered ASAP will pay a PREMIUM for this kinda service.

</comment><comment><USER141> Like a high speed freight train smashing through a wooden fence with horns blazing, and speeding on. This is a great idea and really simple execution. I love it.

</comment><comment><USER142> Great service, guys, but beware of the first waves of fraud.

</comment><comment><USER143> Simplicity at its best. Quite stark and simple landing page. Simple service. Seems like no gimmicks. I would say I am looking forward to give it a try!

</comment><comment><USER130> If Magic is going to be the one selecting the services, this may cost Google and others a great deal in ad revenue.

How would they respond to this? Their own meta-service?

<comment><USER144> Google buys these guys out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER145> How do you handle support issues - returns, exchanges, credits? Same mechanism?

Where do you draw the line on "anything"?

Also, this whole thing is April Fool's joke, right?

</comment><comment><USER146> Its a neat idea, I'd love to try it. Unfortunately I'm Canadian, so I guess I'll have to wait for it to grow a bit first.

</comment><comment><USER147> What a great way to boil business down to the essentials. Help people in a way they value, give them an easy way to pay for it, profit.

</comment><comment><USER148> It's a dream project for me this kind of adventure.

If you are lokking for some jack of all trade to help you , or looking for some one in france.

I'am in ...

Btw good luck.

Bussiere AT gmail.com

</comment><comment><USER149> Just want to point out that such a service wouldn't work in India. The Reserve Bank of India has stipulated that all "card-not-present" transactions (such as online purchases) require a secondary authentication (Verified by VISA password or a grid printed on the back of card). This improves the security but also pushes the liability to the consumer, given that he is not supposed to share this secondary password with anyone else.

<comment><USER150> My impression is that they're buying stuff for you, then charging the user as a separate transaction that includes the original purchase price plus their fee.

</comment></comment><comment><USER151> Honestly, "get magic" on the internet sounds like a trap. What is this? I don't trust the URL :)

</comment><comment><USER144> I know it is too early to say, but if I had to guess what the next Google would look like, it would be this.

</comment><comment><USER152> This could be handy as a Slack chat bot

</comment><comment><USER153> I mean this as a genuine compliment: this is an obvious idea...that was hiding in plain sight.

Good job on seeing it.

</comment><comment><USER154> Perfect. Now please come to Canada.

</comment><comment><USER155> Yet another technology lifted straight out of an anime: Eden of the East [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eden_of_the_East](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eden_of_the_East)] where contestants compete to win a reality game with access to a concierge by phone backed by a staggering sum of money.

</comment><comment><USER156> Cool service, but you should really make it more obvious that it's only for the USA.

<comment><USER125> Where are you based?

</comment></comment><comment><USER157> Has anyone used it? What was that like? How much did they charge to use the service?

</comment><comment><USER158> The idea, the execution and the simplicity of the web site are all astonishing !

</comment><comment><USER159> Very cool idea. I wonder if they are crowdsourcing the operator side of it?

</comment><comment><USER160> I think this particularly clever and refreshingly simple. I wish you luck!

</comment><comment><USER161> looks like you guys blew up and had to limit orders. bummer. would love to give this a shot as I get my invite! great idea, hopefully the execution is good.

</comment><comment><USER162> How did you get office space at Moffett Federal Airfield?

<comment><USER163> There seem to be quite a few companies at Moffett Field. Maybe a sublease?

[https://www.crunchbase.com/location/moffett- field/d32799a0b6...](https://www.crunchbase.com/location/moffett- field/d32799a0b61c08c58682cccfa008a770)

[http://m.jobs.monster.com/l-moffett- field,-ca.aspx](http://m.jobs.monster.com/l-moffett-field,-ca.aspx)

[http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/topic/moffett- field/](http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/topic/moffett-field/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER164> How does this service compare to Jarvis or Fancy Hands?

</comment><comment><USER165> Fewer peeople are using SMS today. In US, WhatsApp is preferred text message app; In Japan and Taiwan, everyone uses Line while rest of Asia uses WeChat. Any plan to support those Apps?

</comment><comment><USER112> Is there someone available 24/7 to reply?

<comment><USER12> We are always available, though we might be a bit slower during the wee hours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER166> Very cool idea. I hope you guys make it big.

</comment><comment><USER167> What differentiates this from Fetch?

</comment><comment><USER168> cmikec, how many operators do you have by now? and how many customers?

</comment><comment><USER169> Awesome. Simply brilliant.

</comment><comment><USER170> They just ignored me.

<comment><USER12> I'm so sorry! We're getting ridiculously hammered. Please try us again, or you can wait while we catch up on everything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER171> Is this US only?

<comment><USER172> Yeah, the page says

"Q: Where is Magic available?

Anywhere in the US."

</comment></comment><comment><USER173> This will get abused by fraud really quickly.

</comment><comment><USER138> I

</comment><comment><USER174> Color me flabbergasted. Props to these guys for launching an MVP and all that, but seriously - what a value proposition: "Why order online when you can get someone else to do that for you adding an undisclosed middleman fee?". First world problems.

</comment><comment><USER175> When is this coming to Canada eh?

</comment><comment><USER176> Has our society really come to simply throwing money on paying two separate third parties to order FOOD? I use Magic, to use Postmates, to get Chipotle?! No offense but I feel like this is the most first world solution I've ever encountered. Congrats on the success and traffic though and best of luck on executing.

</comment><comment><USER177> this adds a voice interface to all apps/services that do the fulfillment on the back end.

now you can safely order food to be delivered when driving home. or laundry pickup, or whatever.

"siri, text magic, i want a large pepperoni pizza delivered to my home in 1 hour."

<comment><USER178> Now we only need Siri to read out how much it will cost.

<comment><USER16> Siri will read notifications, including text messages if you say something like "read that text".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER179> From some of the comments here it sounds like you're using a long code (phone number) rather than a short code for your sms messages.

The FCC has been cracking down on the use of long codes in marketing. Not sure about an app like your's though... But you probably should move to a short code anyway.

There are also very strong requirements for how opting in, opting out, etc works.

[http://www.experian.com/blogs/marketing- forward/2013/01/02/s...](http://www.experian.com/blogs/marketing- forward/2013/01/02/sms-compliance-what-you-dont-know-can-hurt-you/)

</comment><comment><USER180> really? not magic. Who's moderating hackers news on the weekend. ?

</comment><comment><USER181> 408-217-1721 in [https://archive.today/2ZmPj](https://archive.today/2ZmPj)

<comment><USER61> This is nice to know but I really think it's a questionable thing to do considering they specifically want to omit the number from their current website :/

</comment></comment><comment><USER182> I love this idea, but I'm absolutely terrified of the possible implications from a liability standpoint.

When you guys get slammed with fraud, give me a shout.

</comment><comment><USER183> This is an example of a completely useless title.

</comment><comment><USER184> Perhaps the site's creators will be kind enough to consider the privacy issues regarding Google Fonts: [http://fontfeed.com/archives/google-webfonts-the-spy- inside/](http://fontfeed.com/archives/google-webfonts-the-spy-inside/)

<comment><USER185> Google addresses this here: [https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq#Privacy](https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq#Privacy)

<comment><USER184> From your link: "We do log records of the CSS and the font file requests". _I_ don't trust Google and that's final.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER186> Haha.

Boom! there goes every single bit of something resembling "privacy" you had. Magic.

</comment><comment><USER187> > The first time you use Magic, we'll ask for your credit card info, your > address, etc.

Etc? Really?

</comment><comment><USER188> My baby daughter is five days overdue. My three-year-old son keeps asking when he'll be a big brother. And my wife and I are trying to figure out how we'll do the grocery shopping—or even focus on a computer screen long enough to shop online—once we're juggling two kids. When I told my wife about Magic, she visibly relaxed. This service has huge, huge potential.</comment>


$TSLA Almost +20% on After Hours Trade - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ATSLA&ei=IMSKUdDlDe7higLFUQ

<comment><USER2> I think someone missed a decimal point. Currently Google says its +0.43%.

<comment><USER3> It is sitting at 18% right now. The after hours trading stat is in small print under the current stock price.

<comment><USER4> I didn't even know after hours trading was a thing.</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft is ignoring .net developers - <AUTHOR>

I'm a .net developer trying to code with Facebooks Connect API. Microsoft invested $240 million in facebook but hardly a dime in .net developers. Now even FLASH has a better supported library than .net developers.
Recently I posted my frustration with MS with other .net developers
http://facebooktoolkit.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=52107
I doubt it'll have any result, it looks like the project has been abandoned...
Am I crazy to think MS should officially support Facebook (esp since they invested in the company) and also come out with a real alternative to wordpress for .net developers? If I were a developer just starting out I'd have little reason to use .net instead of php. <comment><USER2> > Am I crazy to think MS should officially support Facebook

You don't need a corporate behemoth to give you an API for a web service. You can bitch about MS withholding binary API for its system calls, but the web is wide open baby! XML protocols are the easiest to implement, no wonder there are clients for all the major languages, and the not-so-major ones:

[http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Client_Librari...](http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Client_Libraries)

MS is a platform vendor, it can't afford to hitch its wagon to a wild horse like a web application; these things come and go, but the platform stays (even if it changes face.)

If you want tight integration of "facebook" with Visual Studio, you will probably have to write your own plugin. Or use an open development environment, even if you target a proprietary OS.

Cheers!

<comment><AUTHOR> These libraries may be open source but they're still written/managed by major companies. PHP library is managed by Facebook. The Flash library is managed by Adobe. The .net library? Abandoned at codeplex...

Part of being a platform vendor is releasing libraries. Adobe isn't waiting for a public team to write their product, they just did it themselves because it adds value to the platform.

Writing and maintaining a library for facebook doesn't require that many resources. Now I know you're response is going to be "Then why don't you do it." I wont do it because I can't write every little bit of code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't think MS was investing in Facebook as a development platform- they were just trying to buy into some page views. MS definitely thinks Sharepoint is the alternative to wordpress- really!

The more striking thing about your comment to me is that .net developers may tend to wait for Microsoft to build a library for them while members of other communities self organize to build their own. It's very nice for the developers when MS does something, because it's generally good enough, but it seems like it's harder to get open source projects started because of the chance MS is working on it secretly.

<comment><AUTHOR> But in this case Microsoft actually paid a third party to develop this POS and they both decided to make it open source. People, like me, want to contribute but the project has been abandoned so our changes/upgrades wont get integrated.

<comment><USER4> Grow a pair and fork it. You could even / _GASP_ / write your own!

You're not Jeff Atwood, you haven't built up a persona of being a proud idiot that can't code his way out of a paper bag without getting a blessed library from on high. You _can_ do it yourself. You are a big boy with real tools. Do it.

It is just not difficult to poke a webserver over HTTP, especially when you have a documented and widely used interface provided to you on a silver platter.

<comment><USER5> No need to refer to someone more successful than you as an "idiot".

<comment><USER6> What does that even mean?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hacking Digital Calipers - <AUTHOR> https://www.notion.so/Hacking-Digital-Calipers-3ee7726f11ca431694dc70a1977516e4 <comment><USER2> So looking at SAMDcaliper.py I see that you just print these numbers as on US keyboard layout. That has two major problems:

1\. If user's computer has a different keyboard layout that will enter garbage instead of numbers. For example, in Russian keyboard layouts there is usually a letter "ю" on the key which is used for dot on US keyboards, so instead of 7.31 you will get 7ю31.

2\. Excel accepts numbers only if they are entered with a proper decimal separator which depends on Windows number format settings which are part of regional settings. So for example in Russia (and apparently most of the world: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DecimalSeparator.svg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DecimalSeparator.svg)) decimal separator is comma instead of dot, so even if user would switch to US keyboard layout Excel will not accept the numbers with decimal dots, it will think that they are just strings.

Both problems can be solved by using numpad keys instead: they are the same in all keyboard layouts and KEYPAD_PERIOD key will enter a proper decimal separator for Excel to accept.

</comment><comment><USER3> I looked into the sensing mechanism used by these cheap digital verniers [1] - which involves overlapping capacitive plates.

What I couldn't figure out was how precisely the sensing worked, because it looked like it would have to measure capacitance at the femtofarad levels, and nothing I had access to could measure a capacitance that small - or monitor the sensing process without adding enough capacitance to mess it all up. It also looked like it'd be really sensitive to the distance between the plates, but it didn't seem to control that particularly precisely.

If anyone here knows how they measure such small capacitances and how control for the distance between the plates, I'd be fascinated to hear more about it!

[1] [https://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/digital-vernier- teardown/](https://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/digital-vernier-teardown/)

<comment><USER4> You measure discharge times repeatedly ensuring the capacitor is never fully charged. Presuming you know the impedance, temperature and charge voltage you can get very precise. It's a frequency counter after all.

Distance control is sort of weak which is why these are no good against vibration.

Another way is to use contact resistance with very accurate bridge temperature corrected voltmeter. More expensive. Essentially a potentiometer. Dimensionality is less important, but contact still is. To do that you need a high-ish impedance wiper you can slide over.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Really interesting! I recommend checking out Yuriy toys [1]. He's famous for making an Arduino based DRO with these type of calipers. He goes in depth in his reverse engineering process too which was a fun read.

[1] [https://www.yuriystoys.com/p/arduino-basic-dro- controller.ht...](https://www.yuriystoys.com/p/arduino-basic-dro- controller.html?m=1)

</comment><comment><USER6> Using an extra CPU just so you can write your logic in python seems … excessive.

<comment><USER7> You could honestly due the whole thing with an attiny45, including the USB HID. But it's a hacker one off, you do what you know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hardware noob question: How do you figure out when a packet of 24 bits _starts_?

From the diagram in the post, the clock signal seems to just be identical blocks of 4 bits.

Edit: Found the answer in one of the linked articles:

> Between each series of 24 bits there is a longer period during which CLK > remains HIGH

<comment><USER9> For others who are to lazy to link follow the linked article from the original article, there is a section of code in the function "loop" (modified for readability):

        void loop () {

          // if clock is LOW wait until it turns to HIGH
          //
          while (digitalRead(clockpin)==HIGH) {}

          tempmicros=micros();

          // wait for the end of the HIGH pulse
          //
          while (digitalRead(clockpin)==LOW) {}

          // if the HIGH pulse was longer than 500 micros
          // we are at the start of a new bit sequence
          //
          if ((micros()-tempmicros)>500) {
            decode(); //decode the bit sequence
          }
        }

so it looks like the 24 bit sequence is indicated by a 500 us pause between a falling edge and a rising edge of the data stream.

[1] [https://sites.google.com/site/marthalprojects/home/arduino/a...](https://sites.google.com/site/marthalprojects/home/arduino/arduino- reads-digital-caliper)

<comment><USER10> I love that the input is using inverted logic due to the voltage translation needed, but the code and comments don't mention this.

To me it looks like an obvious bug and first glance, since the CAPITALIZED sigal states don't match between code and comments.

Glad I read the article first. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nice to see what model caliper Harbor Freight cloned, too. :D My cheapie HF special has the exact same case & access port. Time to find out if it is electrically the same as well!

<comment><USER12> Isn't it more likely white-labelled, ie the same product sold under a different brand, than it is cloned (reverse engineered from a product that's on sale)?

<comment><USER13> White labelled: these same calipers are also avaliable at most auto parts stores. Unfortunately they are all absolute garbage in my experience, simply due to poor battery life. Removing the battery when storing is almost required, as I have found they tend to drain the button cell in ~2 weeks even in standby. On the plus side, they are actually relatively accurate; all 3 pairs I have tested meet their specs when measuring guage blocks.

<comment> semi-extrinsic These cheapo ones seem to be around $20, while a proper Mitutoyo is $120. Those last forever, as do the batteries in them. Why not get the good one?

<comment><USER11> It's nice to have loaners, or ones you can share with people and not worry too much about it. And I'd rather have three in convenient locations that just one good one, as the accuracy is the same. That being said, the cheapies I have don't have the battery issue mentioned above, either. That would get annoying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Or you could do it with a camera watching and extract the numbers from the image. I've considered this route many times for many types of devices.

</comment><comment><USER15> How is the board powered? By the same cell as is already in the calipers? What is that thin connector called that runs from the SAM32 to the calipers?

<comment><USER16> The board is probably powered by USB, because if the whole point is to emulate a keyboard and type in the numbers, then you're going to have USB anyways.

<comment><USER17> Not necessarily, ESP32 has WiFi and Bluetooth so you could emulate a Bluetooth keyboard or so something entirely different using WiFi.

But yes, I suspect USB like you suggest.

<comment><USER10> Uh, the actual article says it's USB, and talks about HID implementation and so on.

No need to second-guess anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> While the article is interesting, it's a site that's annoying.

I use the keyboard to navigate articles frequently. This site intercepts keyboard commands - page up/down does nothing, arrow keys select specific elements rather than letting me scroll down. Worse, the article does not load at all if you turn javascript off. I spent a few minutes trying to figure out where the actual content loads from (since the page itself doesn't contain it and just references JS) - but gave up.

I can't see why they've made these choices, it doesn't seem to give any better UX than just having HTML and some CSS would.

<comment><USER19> I would guess that it would be because Notion is mostly designed to be used as a personal note-taking/todo/trello app (which it's great at!)

Though it's possible to "publish" or share your notes it doesn't look like a well designed use of the platform.

<comment><USER20> More irritatingly, Google's cache appears to have it available, but says "404" if you actually try to access the cached version (my usual workaround for these JS-only-app-sites.)

 _Though it 's possible to "publish" or share your notes it doesn't look like a well designed use of the platform._

If you are actually editing the content then I agree that using JS makes sense and could be obligatory; but then, sharing/publishing content in what should obviously be a read-only form should really turn it into a static page. It'd save them some bandwidth too, given that readers really do not need all the functionality the JS has. (The app-*.js on that page is over 4MB!) Unfortunately common sense is not so common.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: I'm writing an illustrated introduction to algorithms [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.manning.com/bhargava/GrokkingAlgorithms_MEAP_CH01.pdf

<comment><USER2> Read thru all of the pages in this PDF - Here are a few quick observations & requests.

(1)Could you reword this ? "You could start at the start" \- to something like "You start at the beginning of the Phone book" Or "you could start searching from the beginning of the book". This sounds really conversational , in fact a lot of the text sounds conversational , I suppose you wanted it to be that way !

(2)What is figure 1.2 for ? Is it to accompany the text that says "Now suppose you log on to facebook" ? The picture here doesn't seem to serve any purpose. I guess it could go to the side of the page when eventually typeset. When I see a picture in between paragraphs , I automatically think of it as an explanatory picture and not something that has been added for 'fun factor'

(3) And figure 1.3 is not doing a good job at explaining itself too :( Is that hour-glass shape 'the algorithm' in itself ?

(4) The number guessing game and all of the associated illustrations are nice.

(5) "1.2.1 Algorithm speed is not measured in seconds" is really cool. I had a lot of troubles understanding why asymptotic analysis was necessary when I was first introduced to it. This sort of explains clearly that "seconds" is not the metric for analyzing the speed of algorithms. upvoting this part of the book :)

Good luck !

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback!

1\. I will change this.

2\. The formatting is misleading here. The final book will have very different formatting. There are a lot of "fun" images in the book, but it is confusing that they still have a label like "figure 1.2". They serve no purpose except to provide a mental break.

3\. This figure got removed in a rewrite.

4 & 5\. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN! I'm posting this today because the book is half off today. The target market is bootcamp students and undergrads looking for an easier introduction to algorithms. I've seen a positive reaction to it so far!

The half off code is dotd081814au at www.manning.com/bhargava.</comment>


History That Explains the ICO Bubble - <AUTHOR> https://haseebq.com/3-models-for-understanding-the-ico-bubble/ <comment><AUTHOR> A podcast version of it is here: [https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2019/03/17/crypto- bubbl...](https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2019/03/17/crypto-bubble-with- haseeb-qureshi/)</comment>


Sunflow Rendering System - <AUTHOR> http://sunflow.sourceforge.net/index.php

<comment><USER2> Sunflow seems dead.

Take a look at LuxRender. Source: <http://www.luxrender.net/en_GB/source_code>

[edit] also take a look at the forum: <http://www.luxrender.net/forum/> There are a lot of nice projects related to LuxRender. From exporters to GPU rendering.

<comment><AUTHOR> Another good one, yeah. Basically I was just once again abusing HN as my personal bookmarking tool -- so that, when the time comes to learn from their open sources, I won't have a hard time remembering the name of the project.

Wow, LuxRender really does look so promising. Probably I can really skip Sunflow and dive right into Lux. 4-5 years in graphics algorithms is an eternity, after all (which is both wonderful and annoying)...

<comment><USER3> Also worth noting is PBRT: <https://github.com/mmp/pbrt-v2> which is described in a book by Matt Pharr: <http://www.pbrt.org/> It's basically a modern textbook on the subject. Or, if you prefer GPU, check out Arauna: <http://igad.nhtv.nl/~bikker/>

<comment><USER4> LuxRender is a pbrt fork.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> cm-t <http://sunflow.sourceforge.net/index.php> => "April 11, 2007" ?

<http://sourceforge.net/projects/sunflow/files/> =>2007-02-09

<http://sunflow.sourceforge.net/phpbb2/> => Could not connect to the database

<comment><USER5> Last commit: 4 years ago.

[http://sunflow.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/sunflow?view=revis...](http://sunflow.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/sunflow?view=revision&revision=396) <https://github.com/fpsunflower/sunflow>

This seems to be pretty much dead. Anyone knows what happened? The last commit message doesn't sound like they are closing shop.

FWIW, there seem to be some forks and projects relying on it on github:

[https://github.com/search?langOverride=&q=sunflow&re...](https://github.com/search?langOverride=&q=sunflow&repo=&start_value=1&type=Repositories)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've recently found this one too... it works but it's been dead for a while now. I used it with Structure Synth, which is an awesome generative modeler (<http://structuresynth.sourceforge.net/>), kind of dead too... Does anyone know of a replacement?

</comment><comment><USER7> A random rendering system that's been dead for four years makes it to the front page of HN? What's going on here?

</comment><comment><USER8> Why would anyone write a 3d renderer in Java? Anything slower than C++ is unacceptable in this field.

<comment><USER9> Java is not necessarily slower than C++. In some cases it could even be faster due to dynamic optimizations performed by JIT based on runtime profiling information. For example, JIT can directly link or even inline polymorphic calls automatically at runtime.

Here is an overview of performance techniques used by the Java HotSpot VM: [https://wikis.oracle.com/display/HotSpotInternals/Performanc...](https://wikis.oracle.com/display/HotSpotInternals/PerformanceTechniques)</comment></comment>