I've drastically cut my HN time in the past few months by following this one weird trick:
Add "news.ycombinator.com##td.subtext" following to your Adblock/uBlock custom filters.
You still get to read the articles and keep up with tech news, but you don't end up in comment threads (unless it's an Ask HN/etc, hence why I'm commenting now). Occasionally I load up HN in a different browser if I want to take a break and read some comments but my idle browsing has been drastically reduced.
There's lots of great content in the comments, but it's also a fantastic way to waste time.
I agree with this. I find it not only interesting, but also informative to hear other people's take on articles, both for their opinion and added knowledge of something that may not be in the article. Sometimes the discussions veer a little bit which adds more background/relevant/related information. At least for me, the more I know about a subject, the more angles I'm aware of, and the more context I have, allows me to not only absorb it better, but it also allows me to develop or realize the theory behind the matter. From there, I can better apply what I'm reading/learning to other situations.
I make sure to only browse HN, youtube, social media etc. on my phone. I don't have my various accounts logged in on the desktop. This way I can take a 5 minute HN/whatever break and actually go back to work again after 5 mins. Even my subconcious knows being on my phone is not working.
I do similar, but mainly by looking at comment count. Typically higher posts have large comments, and I just don't have the energy to read all those comments.
Completely agree. Often I'd look on the designer's website and find the exact price listed - even though Gilt said it was heavily discounted.
After my last shopping experience with them, I won't be buying again. Whilst it took several weeks for my items to arrive as they picked a cheap shipping option (which I don't really mind), they expected me to pay for fast delivery back to the US when I had to return the items. In the end, I received a little more than £100 back from an order that cost almost £200.
I've been using it for a week or two now. It blocks links to all comments (besides Ask HN, Show HN, etc - which is why I'm here). I've drastically cut down my HN time but still keep up to date on tech news. I also read the articles in full a lot more than I used to.
Contrarywise, I usually just hit the comments without reading the article. It's super fast for bootstrapping yourself into an issue. Does rely on the people on HN not being full of crap, though.
Your customers may not read TechCrunch but they may read The Guardian or the Wall Street Journal and if you want to get an article there, your best bet is to have an article already on TechCrunch and similar sites.
It's the same reason why Hacker News, Reddit and other community-based sites matter more than you might think: it lets journalists at larger companies know that there is interest and that you might be worth writing about.
I think you underestimate the excellent journalists from The Guardian and The Wall Street Journal if you believe that they:
a) cannot find good stories without social proof from TechCrunch
b) use TechCrunch as a source for what is up and coming
c) value a story already reported in TechCrunch over one that has not received attention.
Your best bet is to build something that matters. Good journalists are smarter than we give them credit for.
You are getting downvoted for what you said (as of now anyway) however I have gotten press in the WSJ by sending them clippings that appeared in the local paper. This was after they had no interest in the story initially. In other words seeing that even a lowly local paper (ok was a big city paper actually) did a full page article was enough to get them to run a blurb about what we were doing. (On the front page no less).
So in other words to your point about Techcrunch it can be thought of as it as a filter of legitimacy that you can use to your advantage.
This is what Homekit[1] (and Brillo[2] from Google) is trying to fix. We're early on in IoT - things are very immature right now but that doesn't mean the entire concept is flawed.
No, it's not, it's actually great that there are literally hundreds of them. They are just the 'hubs'. Whatever 'hub' implements most 'protocol bindings' and provides the best added value on top of it, 'wins'. And if one gets behind, you can 'easily' (depending on circumstances...) switch to another without having to replace the devices.
Also, it's third-party over the internet, but IFTTT would connect all of the items mentioned in the post. LIFX, Alexa, Hue, and WeMo. It's not ideal to be dependent on a third party web application that's still in its early stages, but it is a partial solution.
IFTTT is a third-party cloud service where you give a random startup access to all of the devices in your house. Far from a good idea, and more likely an eventual security nightmare.
Even though it's hard to imagine Apple making a car, there is an awful lot of smoke around this. There has to be a fire somewhere. Lots of people are wondering how Apple can differentiate in the car market - I think (surprisingly) it comes down to price. Few people may remember this, but when Apple announced the iPad, people were shocked at how cheap it was. People knew the iPad was coming and were predicting it would start at $1000, easily. It cost $500.
Leaving out driverless car tech, which I'm not sure whether Apple will have ready for launch, I think the Apple Car will look and function like a $100,000 car - but will cost significantly less. Say, half the price. Ive, in a recent interview, spoke about how he hated so many cars on the road. Not because they were cheap, but because they were poorly designed and put together with such little care. I think, unless he's gone off the deep end into the luxury market (which he very well may have!) he would want to produce a car that is really great - but still affordable enough that lots of people will be able to afford it[1].
All of that being said, and no matter how much Apple cares about the mass market, Apple will want to keep their high margins. They'll need to bring down manufacturing costs considerably. However, if anyone can do it, it's Tim Cook. He's well known for being a wizard at managing supply chains. Perhaps it'll be their first product assembled entirely by robots, who knows.
We'll see what happens but if Apple are able to produce a very high quality car at a reasonable price, I suspect that it will be extremely disruptive. In the UK at least, pretty much every car under £30,000 is utter garbage. I'd love it if Apple could change that.
[1] I suspect, as with Apple Watch, there will also be a high-end version of an Apple Car. It will probably have the same functionality (i.e. it won't just be a super-car) but will have extras, like a Hermès leather interior. I, for one, look forward to customising a car like a new Macbook - current car customisation screens are a pain (besides Tesla, actually, theirs isn't too bad).
> In the UK at least, pretty much every car under £30,000 is utter garbage.
What?
Modern cars are of incredibly high-quality, even at the lower end of the market.
Take a look at what taxi drivers in the UK use. Today, the taxi fleets are dominated by Skoda[0], Kia and ( in London ) Toyota. Those all cost under £30,000. Well under. Yet they hold up well in the daily urban taxi grind.
Mercedes, BMW and other 'premium' brands are notable by their absence from such fleets. That's because they don't offer any quality differential correlating to their price. They mainly occur in the higher-tier occasional-hire market, aimed at people who want image.
[0] That fact that Skoda is preferred over the same parts wrapped in an Audi or VW body is interesting.
Sorry, perhaps I should have been more clear - I'm not saying these cars are unreliable or will fall apart, I'm saying they're ugly and made of horrible materials. Unpleasant fabric, plastic that is textured to "look" like leather, fake leather and just awful, awful designs (e.g. The Toyota Yaris or the Nissan Juke - just dreadful). I'm sure these cars are very reliable, but from a design perspective they're ghastly.
Maybe for you (and me too) but for the general public, the default apps are used a hell of a lot. 50% of users use the default notes app[1], for example. Apple Maps (which based on the press, many might assume isn't used at all) has 3.5x the usage of Google Maps[1].
I don't know whether there are any other stats out there, but I suspect that for most people, there's no need to install a custom podcast app, for example, when the default one works just fine for them.
I think you're forgetting the fact that this application still works. Sure, when iOS 10 is released it may break - but the same could be said for any now-abandoned app.
It's a shame but he gave people notice (instead of just stopping development) and recommended people request refunds. This is nowhere close to being a scam.
While that's true, keep in mind that not everyone who bought Peace know who Marco Arment is. I don't even think he released the app using his name.
Customers who bought the app only because it was the top app in the App Store at the time have no way of knowing the developer stopped supporting the app. They're screwed in the long term because they'll think they're using an ad blocker when they don't.
I think the smart way to go about this would have been to make the app free and let users know via the interface that the app will no longer be updated and users should ask for refunds. I realize this could make the app even more popular since you make it free, but I think this is still a better way to let users know about the future development of the app.
This isn't an ordinary application. Ad blocking applications live and die by their blocklist. Many people purchased this application with the implied assumption that the blocklist would continue to be updated for the foreseeable future.
Without an updated blocklist, this app will quickly become useless.
I'm not sure how the UI for this would work, and perhaps it's best left as an idea for a browser extension, but I like the idea of showing a selection of the five or so most recently submitted stories on the homepage, separate from the main articles. It wouldn't be enabled by default, only when an option is selected in the user profile.
I never visit the new section of HN. I really wish I did but I always forget about it. However, if there was a little section for new articles on the homepage (perhaps at the bottom or the side of the page in a box) I'd definitely check some out and upvote the interesting articles.
You wouldn't even need a browser extension in Chrome, as it supports "greasemonkey" style user scripts natively: any `.user.js` file you drag onto the "chrome://extensions" page is converted to an anonymous Chrome extension automagicly. YMMV with other browsers, if course.
It would be interesting to have a map of this and explore a new city by going to the spots with the most photos. It'd mainly be the tourist spots but it'd be more exciting than regular sight-seeing as you'd never know what you were on your way to see.
Add "news.ycombinator.com##td.subtext" following to your Adblock/uBlock custom filters.
You still get to read the articles and keep up with tech news, but you don't end up in comment threads (unless it's an Ask HN/etc, hence why I'm commenting now). Occasionally I load up HN in a different browser if I want to take a break and read some comments but my idle browsing has been drastically reduced.
There's lots of great content in the comments, but it's also a fantastic way to waste time.