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Hacker Monthly, a printed magazine version of Hacker News.
- chegra84 17y agoIt's not really appealling to me. More likely it's because I dont know the format, so what would be helpful is maybe an example magazine?(yes we like free stuff) I really dont want to read alot, so summaries are important as well as categories. I personally, dont like news about Apple(iPad), IBM, microsoft etc. But I like to hear what is new for founders, or an interesting blog post. So, it might be good to separate it along some lines.
- bearwithclaws 17y agoThe PDF version of the magazine can be downloaded for free.
- chegra84 17y agoWell I mean like before i gave a email or anything like that. Maybe a link with a free example that can be browsed without any commitment.
- araneae 17y agoWell maybe he will when the first issue comes out. But it's not out yet, so what should he do, not ask for an e-mail? :)
- chegra84 17y agoWell, I'm just telling him what would make an easier buy-in for me. And I'm pretty certain they are others out there like me. Personally, I like to hear what would change someone's no to a yes, and this is the information I was trying to convey.
- reedlaw 17y agoWhen I clicked "submit" there was no noticeable feedback so I ended up clicking 4 times and got 4 confirmation requests in my inbox.
- deconigo 17y agothat would be like... 13 days lag?
- DrJokepu 17y agoThe obvious question: what about non-US delivery? Can I get it mailed to the UK?
- bearwithclaws 17y agoYes. I'm using MagCloud.com. They delivered to UK, US and Canada.
- oliverkofoed 17y agoDarnit, no Denmark :( I think it's a good idea, and i'd subscribe if my country was supported.
- Keyframe 17y agoThey charge 20 cents per page??
- paulbaumgart 17y agoI really like this idea. It sounds hard to do well, and it probably won't end up being a net gain in terms of free time for the curators, but I for one would definitely be interested in subscribing. I like reading on paper much better than in the browser, enough that I would be able to hold off spending too much time reading the internet to avoid spoiling the fun of reading in in the print edition. I already do that with a few other magazines. I'm a little torn about my HN reading habits- HN has been incredibly educational for the ~1.5 years I've spent here, but it can very easily become a huge time sink. Your proposal just might be the ideal compromise.
- swombat 17y agoMonthly is way too slow for something as fast moving as geek news. (and this site is called "Hacker News", even though some articles certainly are timeless) I'd make that a weekly, published on Friday morning. I suspect that the print aspect might be nice locally but disseminating a weekly publication worldwide will offset the niceness of print. The iPad/Kindle wave is coming - ride it, don't avoid it. Time to pivot. There's an obvious question about comments... perhaps you can take the best comments from each post and ask the author for the right to republish - or even just republish and hopefully/probably nobody will sue you, or even ask pg to change the terms&conditions to grant an irrevocable license to HN to use the comments as you see fit, followed by an authorisation by HN for you to use the comments as you see fit. Apart from that, there's also the question of how you'll select the articles. Presumably votes aren't enough by themselves, if you want to publish content that's "timeless" you'll have to do some selection. What kind of stuff will end up there? Erlang articles? Start-up wisdom? Scalability tricks? It seems to me that HN pumps out enough content on a weekly basis to produce at least a handful of such themed collections... not sure what the solution is there, but worth thinking about.
- llimllib 17y agocounterpoint: monthly is exactly the right pace for geek news. Much of what we read and comment on here is ephemeral crap, and due to the pace of HN there are many repeats of well-known information. There are only a few good, innovative, really interesting articles on HN per month.
- adrianwaj 17y agoI have domain hackerbrain if want to buy it.
- adrianwaj 17y agoBecause of all the downvotes, I suspect people aren't getting what I'm saying: if the author of Hackermonthly wants to run something more frequent as the parent item suggests, he'll need a new name.
- gxs 17y ago
- morbidkk 17y agosomething on the lines of http://pragprog.com/magazines http://pragprog.com/magazines should be fine instead of dead-tree magazine
- paraschopra 17y agoNo offense, but your site color (orange background) hurt my eyes. You may want to ask for additional feedback on background color from others too, but for me, I couldn't stand it even for 10 seconds.
- zackattack 17y agoThis is incredibly appealing to me because I would like to distribute it to people who DON'T read hacker news, so they can get a feel for the hottest new techniques & technologies, as well as a feel for the "pulse" of the elite developer community
- Keyframe 17y agoI'd rather see a diskmag than a paper mag (like Hugi or something) - since, after all, it's called "Hacker News". Problem would be that most of the content I see on HN is web related, which I have little to no interest.
- jqueryin 17y agoI cannot say I'm indulged by this news. I want my tech news down to the minute, not a monthly overview. I'm doubtful that many HN users would care to learn more about month old news. IMO this would not be a good representation of the HN community. I believe your target audience is outside the scope of HN (but still technical).
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- systemtrigger 17y agoI think your subtitle, The Best of Hacker News, infringes on a trademark: http://ycombinator.com/legal.html http://ycombinator.com/legal.html.
- chaosmachine 17y agoNot sure that's a valid trademark, others have used it similarly for a long time. http://www.whois.net/whois/hackernews.com http://www.whois.net/whois/hackernews.com Registered 1998.
- mildweed 17y agoPicking up where 2600 left off.
- nw 17y agoI am a wannabe luddite, but... if we all read HN offline, who will contribute? It's a living breathing thing, y'all!
- rokhayakebe 17y agoOne the idea- Who said print was dead? There are several niches and this is one of them. There is nothing like a mug of coffee and a nice magazine/news paper on a Sunday morning. Plus I would really love to see someone build a profitable business out of HN. On copyright issues- I do not know why anyone on HN would worry about someone reprinting their comments. The minute you put them online is the minute you said "redistribute". Someone would really need to be a hater to complain about it. On your experience- Nothing trumps the passion that drives a need to solve a problem. On the business model- It would be interesting to see the numbers.
- araneae 17y agoI'm interested in this (the .pdf, anyway) simply to make sure I didn't miss anything really good ^-^.
- sutro 17y agoGood idea. Ignore the naysayers.
- najirama 17y agoSomeone please explain to me why bearwithclaws even has to ASK permission to reprint the comments. This is a forum of discussion - if I am sitting in a city council meeting and someone whimsically writes on the provided chalkboard "I want to speak next!" can they then sue me if I publish a book with the title, "I want to speak next!"? Sure, creative work recorded to some medium is protected by copyright - however, transcribed discussion is not by the standard measure, "creative," (i.e. derived for some rational and/or aesthetic purpose, such that it has the ability to be appreciated and admired on its own merits, for its own sake.) I say publish the comments consequences be damned. If any commenter has issue with their words being published hardcopy, they will have a hell of a time trying to justify why they wrote them in a public forum in the first place. In any case, given the indignation that is ever-present here when a software I.P. story gets posted, at least you will have outed the hypocrites among us... ;)
- jasonlotito 17y agoWriting something on a forum accessible to the public doesn't give away your copyright. First, "I want to speak next!" isn't copyrightable. Copyright is there to protect things of value. "I want to speak next!" isn't anything of value. You realize this yourself, so I wonder why you asked the question in the first place. However, you make the mistake of assuming "where" you publish your work is any indication of value. Indeed, the really good comments are usually well written, and do add value. You'd also be hard pressed to demonstrate that comments are merely transcribed discussion. Comments are just the label we've assigned to the posts we make here. So each comment must be weighed on it's own merits. A comment can be valued, can be "creative". Indeed, one could argue that the desire to include quality comments in a publication could be indicative of it's quality. Now, I see your point. Essentially, commenting is the 21st century version of a discussion. Reporters are allowed to report what people said. What people said can be reported. A discussion or commenting forum should be considered in the same way. I don't think copyright works like that. Is there anything out there where this has been tested? Good post, btw. Got me thinking. =)
- _pius 17y agoSomeone please explain to me why bearwithclaws even has to ASK permission to reprint the comments. If the copyright issues discussed throughout this thread don't make it clear enough, think through it logically. Does it seem ok for someone to republish your original writing for money without asking your permission first?
- helwr 17y agoi don't get it, are you going to print the original articles? many are coming from wsj, nyt and other magazines, i don't think you can do it
- lovskogen 17y agoGo for it, don't listen to the negative people. Try it out and see what happens.
- j053003 17y ago^^^ Great advice for anything entrepreneurial.
- NathanKP 17y agoWhat is this 1K Hacker_Monthly.vcf file attached to the subscription confirmation email? It looks suspicious.
- psawaya 17y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard
- mcantor 17y agoMy eyes... the goggles, they do nothing!
- roc 17y agoWhy even deal with the copyright issues when you can do an end-run instead? Link. Summarize. Add insight. Present the article link, summarize. Present the discussion link, summarize the major points/concerns/counterpoints raised in the thread. Present any relevant external posts about the subject. Having the benefit of a month and the full breadth of the discussion and potentially other posts around the web on the topic, you have an opportunity to add truly valuable insight and analysis to the topic -- the sorts of things that even fervent readers of HN might find value in. When everything you publish is either a link or your own words, copyright doesn't enter into it. That said: I think dead-tree format, in and of itself, is your biggest roadblock to success. It dramatically boosts your costs and headaches. It will select out quite a bit of your possible readership. There are non-trivial economic reasons why the dead-tree industry is struggling and it has little to do with the content itself.
- shalmanese 17y agoI think this is a great idea. Curation is an important service which I think is often undervalued. The target audience for this is not people who read hacker news but those who would like to read hacker news but don't have the time. The opinions expressed in this thread are going to be biased towards the negative because you're missing out on that important audience segment. I would say probably your best marketing angle with this is to send out tons of free copies to tech conferences to stuff into goodie bags. That's your exact target audience of people. Also, if this gets off the ground, a yearly, self-published Best of Hacker News 20XX would also be something I think has a lot of appeal. But, I think, the crucial thing that will make this a success is the taste of the editor. Don't go by upvotes or mass popularity, otherwise, what's the point of having a human in the process. Really unearth those undiscovered gems and occasional moments of brilliance and never let the quality flag or you'll be done.
- juvenn 17y agoSubscribed. But try your best to maintain a high ratio of signal:noise, we'll appreciate your creative work then.
- louislouis 17y agoGreat idea. Now I can catchup on HN without being on here everyday. My productivity is sure to rise.
- roofone 17y agoI've signed up. I think this is a great, counter-intuitive idea with some interesting digital/print mash-up possibilities -- like a Hacker Monthly forum where people can comment on and discuss the Hacker News comments and discussions it publishes. The slick and weighty Bookmarks (http://www.bookmarksmagazine.com/ http://www.bookmarksmagazine.com/) magazine may be worth looking at as it does something similar with book reviews: gathering, compiling, summarizing, adding commentary, etc.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- yters 17y agoI'd be interested, save me getting sucked in when I visit.
- seshagiric 17y agoWill it have pictures?
- medianama 17y agowhat about copyright?
- grellas 17y agoFor something to be copyrightable, it must be an "original" work of authorship that is fixed in a tangible medium of expression. 17 U.S.C. § 102(a). A leading copyright treatise states that a work is "original" if it is "independently created by the author" and possesses "at least some minimal degree of creativity." Nimmer on Copyright, §§ 2.01[A], [B]. Therefore, a submission or comment posted online would be protected by copyright provided that it possesses at least some minimal degree of creativity. The copyright would belong to the author and not to the site on which the comment or submission is posted. This is why many terms of use for sites that invite third-party submissions, comments, etc. provide that, in making a submission, a third party assigns all copyright to the owner of the site, who is then free to use the material as he likes without further say from the submitter. Without such terms of use, the submitter (i.e., the author) would retain the right to object to any other use being made of the submission besides the post itself as submitted by that person. Two major doctrines modify the above. First, by making the submission, the author of the comment gives at least an implied license for display on the site and for incidental copying that goes along with it. Second, fair use might allow otherwise copyrighted material to be quoted in limited ways. Given the above, I believe permissions would be needed to re-publish in magazine format any comments or other materials that reflect any degree of creativity. The magazine sounds like a great idea, though, and the problem is likely more logistic than anything, as I assume few if any contributors would not give permission if asked.
- bearwithclaws 17y agoI will email the original author of each articles to obtain the permission to print.
- mahmud 17y agoPlease don't contact me. You have my permission to reprint and sell whatever words I posted here on HN .. without attribution :-)
- gokhan 17y ago2.8em is way too big for any subscription form, in my opinion. Subscribed out of curiosity, not because of a need since I love reading HN daily.
- senthilnayagam 17y agoPDF makes sense, maybe as a weekly to catchup after a vacation will I ever buy it as print version, I doubt
- apphacker 17y agoSo you want to me more productive at work and only use the internet for work (according to the 'why' on that site) and you're going to achieve that goal by taking the time to read all the news articles on Hacker News, write out summaries or reprint the articles and then mail them? Uh.
- bearwithclaws 17y agoFirstly, let me clarify. Aside from solving my own dilemma, this is also a business venture, where I look to make money from advertising revenues and such. Second, once the revenue comes in, I will start delegating jobs to other people, until the point where I don't do most of the work. And you are right. I will probably have to do all the hard work for the first few issues. But hopefully, ONLY for the first few issues.
- IgorPartola 17y agoJust out of curiosity, have you published printed magazines before?
- bearwithclaws 17y agoNo.
- wdewind 17y agoI'm not trying to be negative, but take a look at the publishing industry right now. I think you've got to have a really good reason to swim against the stream here, and I don't see it. -1 more for being 100% unnecessarily wasteful, and I'm really not liking the idea.
- wdewind 17y agowhy the downvote :/
- hmmmidontknow 17y ago
- rms 17y agoBe careful about implying any connection to YC when you are not affiliated with YC. That's a secret rule that can get your post killed. I'm not saying you do here, just that you are coming close by using the phrase "Hacker News". I myself see no problem with what you are doing; you just may want to ask PG if you haven't already.
- bearwithclaws 17y agoI have already exchanged a few email with PG.
- pbiggar 17y agoPosts get killed by YC alumni, and PG doesn't resurrect them.
- systems 17y agosome comments on the site design (1) make it smaller its ridiculously big, i understand that this style is hip nowadays, buts its also ugly and patronizing (2) add more white an grey, kinda like the original hacker news site, orange is just one line on the top
- rdl 17y agoIf you can take the productivity hit to do this, I would be interested. My preferred format is kindle/iPad ebook of some kind, although PDF is fine too. I would pay up to $20/mo, but $5 would be more fair. (I figure I'd save 5-10 hours a month, with only some loss of quality). It's like methadone for a heroin addict. I'd also appreciate a hackernews-to-rss which actually embedded the body of the article AND the comments, which you could maybe do as a related service. If it were properly paginated to work well on various mobile devices, especially synced to work with no online connectivity during reading, it would be great. iPhone, Android, iPad, Kindle would be great targets. I think ignoring copyright is the way to go.
- swah 17y agoWhat about environment?
- edkennedy 17y agoIf they use MagCloud you should be able to order it as a PDF.
- deno 17y agoWhat about? More wasted paper ≈ more planted trees. Wood (and thus paper) is renewable resource or did I miss something? I guess you can worry about transport costs but than perhaps it'd be better to optimise where it matters — like bottled water.
- antipaganda 17y agoRecycling paper takes a lot of energy and water use, not to mention harsh chemical bleaching. Sorry to burst your "use paper, it's recyclable" mentality. I was disappointed when someone burst mine, too.
- lutorm 17y agoThere is a reason for the order in "reduce, reuse, recycle"...
- deno 17y agoI didn't say anything about recycling actually. I'm not really looking to discuss this much further, just please do not put words into my mouth.
- antipaganda 16y agoApologies, I read you wrong. Renewable resource because it's trees, not because you can recycle it. Eeek. Someone slap me.
- mapleoin 17y agoSure, unless they buy the wood from a third world country where corruption is a major issue and influential people can cut forests down and then sell the wood and use a percentage of that to bribe the authorities. Then the real estate people come and houses get built instead of those forests. That's what happens where I live, anyway...
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]