12 ms·

Hacker Monthly #1 is here

641 points by bearwithclaws 16y ago

howcool 16y ago
way too pricey
hubb 16y ago
is anyone else unable to download the pdf? keeps telling me that it's damaged. dang
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
subbu 16y ago
Here is the pdf link: http://hackermonthly.com/hackermonthly-issue1.pdf http://hackermonthly.com/hackermonthly-issue1.pdf
- giu 16y ago
  Google Viewer: http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://hackermonthly.com/hackermonthly-issue1.pdf http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://hackermonthly.com/h...
  - tedge 16y ago
    Reader for small Mac laptops: http://twilightedge.com/mac/readright http://twilightedge.com/mac/readright
- rodh257 16y ago
  why did they need the javascript void link in the first place anyway?
  - bearwithclaws 16y ago
    I'm using Mixpanel to track the crucial events such as downloads and purchase: http://mixpanel.com/api/docs/guides/integration#js http://mixpanel.com/api/docs/guides/integration#js Not sure if there's a better way to do it.
    - paraschopra 16y ago
      Just attach it externally. Do something like this: <a href="URL_TO_PDF" onclick="registerConversion()">Download</a> You can put a minor 500 ms pause so that event gets registered.
      - subbu 16y ago
        Even better, use unobtrusive js to do that: $('your element').click(function(){//put calls to mixpanel here; return true; });
        bearwithclaws 16y ago
        Thanks for all the suggestions. I've implemented it: $("a.magcloud").click(function() { mpmetrics.track('purchase', {'issue': '#1'}); self.delay(500); return true; });
waterlesscloud 16y ago
This looks quite tasty.
jf 16y ago
Beautiful. I'm buying a hard copy now.
sl911 16y ago
Awesome!
ThomPete 16y ago
One of the most brilliant things about HN is the comments in relation to the article not just the article. I had hoped it would include the discussion threads from that too.
- bearwithclaws 16y ago
  I agreed. Still working on that. Trying to obtain the permissions from the commenters is harder than I initially thought. That will come in #2, hopefully.
  - ThomPete 16y ago
    sweet
  - ErrantX 16y ago
    Suggest a way for us to indicate (maybe something in our profiles) agreement for you to use our comments and I suspect quite a few will support it. In case I didnt say before: you're welcome to use any of mine with attribution (if you want to edit long ones a quick email would be appreciated).
    - bearwithclaws 16y ago
      Thanks. If anyone wants to provide permissions to use their comments in HN, just email me at cheng.soon@hackermonthly.com.
  - almost 16y ago
    Maybe PG would agree to put some text to the effect that "by posting this comment you give permission for it also to appear in Hacker Monthly unless you opt-out" on the comments page. I can't imagine many people having a problem with that but tracking down people after the fact is always going to be difficult. I do think it's going to need comments to be worth while. I have just bought a copy of the first issue anyway though :)
- jf 16y ago
  From the Hacker Monthly FAQ: Q. Will you include the comments of Hacker News? A. Of course. Similar to the articles, I will email the original commenters for permission. Oh, if you are a regular commenter in Hacker News, pretty please, put your contact information in your profile (a lot of the members just leave it empty), that would save me a lot of fuss trying to look for your email around the web. [ed: that means you ThomPete]
warp 16y ago
Sadly, magcloud still doesn't ship to (most of) europe.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
danielrhodes 16y ago
Great idea.
Thunderke 16y ago
I'm from Belgium and want to by a hard copy is there anyway to do this? magcloud seems to be only sending to usa/uk/canada
- bearwithclaws 16y ago
  I live in Malaysia and have a hard time trying to get MagCloud to ship to me too. Hence, I'm using SHIPITO (http://shipito.com http://shipito.com). They seemed to be the cheapest and quite reliable (has a support forum).
  - steilpass 16y ago
    What do you pay in total? Around 20$?
  - mknx 16y ago
    well done, cheng soon. pass me the hard copy when we meet again :)
ido 16y ago
Nice! I think you've messed up the title's formatting a bit in the jwz iPhone article tho.
- alexkay 16y ago
  It's a journal, those two pages will be side by side.
mahmud 16y ago
So beautiful.
erikstarck 16y ago
This is just brilliant. Media companies are putting up paywalls while their print volume is decreasing. Hacker News goes the other way around. I like it!
- spicyj 16y ago
  Hacker News is taking down its paywalls? No one told me!
decadentcactus 16y ago
Impressive. Won't be purchasing the print copy but the pdf is well done. Hope it works out for you!
- bigiain 16y ago
  +1 - I'd happily throw you a few bucks for the PDF though, if you've got a donate button somewhere...
  - bearwithclaws 16y ago
    Put up a donation button :)
pavs 16y ago
I will have to admit, I was skeptical about the idea when it was discussed here first and now I can see real value in it. Its true that discussion on these topics adds value to the contents and that is what makes a community unique. The discussions. But sometimes I just want to read the content, not get distracted by anything else. Two suggestions for future releases. 1) Can you reprint at least the top 3-5 comments on those topics on hackers News? (not sure how you are going to do that without making a lot of people mad). Also on the PDF version, can you have a clickable link to the discussion on the hacker news? 2) One of the biggest reasons I am turned off from reading magazines is the annoying ads all over the place including in-between the content. Since you are going to rely on ad, may I suggest that you try to avoid ads on the same page, where there is content? I stopped reading Wired Magazine, just because of this reason. Good luck. Looks good.
- ibagrak 16y ago
  I have to second the parent on the comment comment. :) I've seen this done superbly in Snob magazine (www.snob.ru), which is a relatively recent Russian-language project also featuring both an online community (subscribers only) and traditional printed issues. I think it's a very interesting model for the new media, and Snob executes it very well. In any case, what they do is they have a few pages in the printed edition where they just reprint interesting comments from the online discussion. The comments are shown as thought bubbles next to user icons from the online community, and they are selected such that they make sense standalone without the original article text. These pages are surprisingly fun to browse, and they also work as an ad for the online portion of the magazine and the discussions taking place there.
- ars 16y ago
  I think the ads were fine. I think the reason he did not include comments is the lack of a way of contacting people on HN. Very few people include an email address in their profile. HN could help him a lot by adding a "email me" link on the profile page - not an email address, but a forwarder, HN will send the email. I don't think spam would be much of a problem since you would need to be a registered user to send an email, and you could require 3 karma or something.
shalmanese 16y ago
It's gorgeous!
RBerenguel 16y ago
Absolutely gorgeous. Really nice work!
ugh 16y ago
It would be super-awesome if you would use correct quotes and apostrophes (the curly kind) everywhere.
codifier 16y ago
Very cool! Looks great.
perokreco 16y ago
Is there a way to subscribe to it on MagCloud so I don't have to buy it every month?
- bearwithclaws 16y ago
  Nope. I need to write my own app to do that.
shalmanese 16y ago
It's weird but I remember reading some of these articles on the web but, reading them again in magazine form, they somehow seem much more authoritative and objective. Ah, the perils of framing!
- olliesaunders 16y ago
  I think that has something to do with the quality of the design and typography. This is a gorgeous publication!
- olliesaunders 16y ago
  Although I think it might be hindered a little bit by the titles of some of the articles. Something about "5 Actions that Made Me Happier", "The Scariest Pricing Idea Ever", "Best Writing Advice for Engineers" etc. in a print magazine seems unbecoming. Perhaps it speaks of the desperation to grab attention that is necessary on the web but not in print. I'm not really sure but, for me, those titles seem to cheapen what is otherwise beautiful.
  - jimbokun 16y ago
    To me, those titles sound like articles I'd like to read.
    - marcamillion 16y ago
      Exactly. I am tired of all these people raining on link-baiting. So what if he wants to phrase his titles like that? It makes much sense, because that's how attention is grabbed. Without those titles, I know I would have missed many wonderful articles.
giu 16y ago
My jaw dropped a little bit when I opened the PDF; it looks very professional, and it's gorgeous, too! I skimmed through it and I'm definitely looking forward to read it. I totally would buy a hard copy, but unfortunately MagCloud doesn't ship to Europe (Pity!!). Are there any plans to ship HM to Europe? I could imagine that it would cost too much, but there's always hope:) Either way, keep up the good work!
- mixmax 16y ago
  I second that - I'd gladly buy a subscription if it could be sent to Europe.
- mbrubeck 16y ago
  Shipping costs shouldn't be an issue - it costs basically nothing to ship the bits. You just need to find a printer in Europe who can distribute it there.
  - giu 16y ago
    Yes, true; I expressed myself wrongly in the above comment. I hope somebody finds a publisher in Europe. I did a fast search, and it looks like there aren't a lot (or any) services like MagCloud here in Europe. At least I got some hopeful bits from the MagCloud FAQ: The MagCloud team is working hard on expanding to other European and Asia Pacific countries Let's hope that working hard means they'll start to ship to other European countries in the next few weeks ;)
- fsniper 16y ago
  I second this. I'd really like to have Hacker monthly shipped to Turkey :(
- kmfrk 16y ago
  Don't Lulu basically have the same prices? I haven't managed to figured out MagCloud's pricing, but I can advise on Lulu's pricing if need be. I'd love to see the magazine perfect bound rather than saddle stitch, too. MagCloud state that they plan to expand, but we don't know how long it will take.
donaq 16y ago
Maybe instead of putting the threads on the magazine, you could have a link to the discussion thread at the end of every article. That would probably save a bunch of trees in the print copy.
perokreco 16y ago
MagCloud has some sort of address checking that does not work with my address, so you are out of at least one buyer.
steilpass 16y ago
It looks great. If I could only buy it here in Germany. :-(
ekpyrotic 16y ago
Lim, at times your grammar is off and your constructions are jarring. If you'd like a proofreader for future issues you can contact me on: jg457 [@] st-andrews [.] ac [.] uk. Otherwise, well done on Issue 1. Looks great.
- bearwithclaws 16y ago
  Just emailed you. :)
- rdela 16y ago
  Agreed, curator's note needs editing, and jwz's last name is also misspelled on the TOC (p3 - "JAWINSKI" instead of 'Z[...]'), though he's credited correctly on the inside jacket (p2). You could update the pdf, I suppose. I'm happy to share the proofreading/editing burden with ekpyrotic or do a pass before or after ekpyrotic does, if that would be helpful (http://rdela.com http://rdela.com has an email link at the bottom).
  - bearwithclaws 16y ago
    Thanks for the help. Just replied your email ;)
warwick 16y ago
Absolutely beautiful. A slight typo: I noticed Jamie Zawinski's name is spelled wrong in the table of contents.
evandavid 16y ago
@MAGCLOUD PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD tell your users that you don't ship to their country before they add items to cart, sign up (in order to confirm purchase), and then proceed to the payment page. PLEEEEASE!
- ErrantX 16y ago
  it does have US/Canada/UK in the drop down at the bottom on the first page...
  - evandavid 16y ago
    I'm not seeing it, and the fact that I have to search for it isn't exactly encouraging. I start on this page: http://magcloud.com/browse/Issue/88360 http://magcloud.com/browse/Issue/88360 I click Buy Issue. I click Sign Up Now. Still haven't seen it. Even on the magcloud.com homepage I don't see it. Maybe I'm crazy/blind. The site has my IP address this whole time and could use it. Visitors from outside the US will feel my pain on this one - it is a common and maddening frustration.
    - ErrantX 16y ago
      Just hit checkout - you don't need an account, that takes you to the shipping page where it tells you (thinking about it I can see how it is a bit confusing how they ask for an account, not sure how you got to the payment page though, it is on the shipping page) People elsewhere have suggested as a solution btw: http://www.shipito.com/ http://www.shipito.com/
      - evandavid 16y ago
        I admit - I overreacted... Sorry Magcloud. You can cancel my support request (seriously, which is kind of embarrassing). Anyway I've had dinner and can now speak calmly. The feature that I described (a preemptive suggestion of the inability to ship to the visitor's country) is not common on the web. In fact most online retailers really suck at it. I still haven't found a decent solution for quickly checking whether Amazon items can be shipped to me without adding to cart and proceeding to checkout. However, it would be a welcome feature for most online retailers, and would definitely stop visitor's like myself from getting a nasty first impression. I guess it's not implemented well because, by definition, if I'm outside your shipping area than I'm outside your target market. However you can see how this is short sighted, and keeping me happy might be a good idea for the future. So those are my $0.02 on the issue. I guess this is what happens when a company makes me angry ten minutes before dinner :D
aymeric 16y ago
Awesome execution. Starting the first issue with 1500 subscribers, a great design and a quality magazine is quite a feat! Not for me though, I remembered 90% of the articles included in the issue and rereading them didn't really add much value.
kqr2 16y ago
Just ordered a print copy. Hopefully, you will share some sales figures and/or blog about the experience of putting it together. Also, interesting that magcloud still remains very connected to HP. It's paypal address is actually magcloud@hp.com
ErrantX 16y ago
I bought a print copy out of interest, so clearly this is just my observation from reading the online one... Looks great, first off, really nice design. I'm guessing you are a designer? The only downside for me was the lack of editing... it's key to producing a magazine and there were places where it was obvious. As an example; some of the pieces were just too long and needed additional proof reading. Other thoughts? Obviously comments would be neat (but I know your working on that). Editorial would be quite interesting to have. Maybe ask one or two HN members each month to write custom editorials on big topics or just in general. EDIT: if you need a hand editing drop me a mail.
- kylec 16y ago
  I don't think that any content should be modified, even if it means that it's long for a magazine article.
  - ErrantX 16y ago
    Why not? It's entirely standard practice to edit for length, style and spacing in magazines. It makes things a lot more readable and if you have a good editor it can mean the difference between good content and great content :) (take the first article; it could have benefited from some slicing/reorganizing, but most of all from good sectioning (particularly headed sections)
    - kylec 16y ago
      Because the content has already been published elsewhere. I don't want to have to reread an article online to find out what I missed in the print article.
      - ErrantX 16y ago
        That's not what I mean by editing. It really is important in print to make sure it fits the medium. You would be surprised how much can be cut without losing content or the style of the piece.
diehell 16y ago
Dude, congrats. DOwnload them and it looks good. Proud of fellow country doing this, especially fellow penangites. ;) Keep Up the good work! If you need help just pm!!
tomerico 16y ago
Just a suggestion - Use a "Pay as you want" model for the downloadable pdf, which will enable people to give you donations.
- JustAGeek 16y ago
  Yes, I'd do that as I don't care about a printed version and kinda feel like cheating when downloading the free pdf. It's a great idea, very well pulled off!
  - Aegean 16y ago
    I think there should definitely be a free version at least until it gets established. I simply wanted to check what it is about without any commitments including the hassle to go through a payment processor.
    - kiiski 16y ago
      I think that "pay as you want" means that you can pay if you want, or you can just take it for free.
      - JustAGeek 16y ago
        Exactly! Just keep it free but offer the possibility to donate for everybody not ordering the print version.
marcamillion 16y ago
Wow...I was skeptical at first...but this is pretty epic. God I LOVE HN!!!
sumeeta 16y ago
I ordered one because I can’t wait to find it lying around a couple of years from now. Seems like this could be awesome bookshelf material.
pk 16y ago
Lim Cheng Soon, the creator of the Hacker Monthly, deserves a good deal of credit for securing the rights to reprint all of the content in this magazine. I'm sure that was the most time-consuming part of putting this together. In the Curator's Note on the second page he says, "I've also exchanged near hundreds of emails asking for reprint permissions." Projects like these make a good case for open-content licenses like Creative Commons' and the GNU Free Documentation License. If all the articles included in the magazine used the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license (which allows content to be reused as long as any modified versions are available under the same terms), Lim could have saved countless hours by not having to explicitly ask permission for each piece he included. Lim, if you're listening, perhaps you would consider encouraging the people you talk to to license their works under a Creative Commons license. This could make things a lot easier the next time around if you pull material from the same blogs, etc.
- j_baker 16y ago
  Erm... If I were to license my content under a creative commons license, it would be a non-commercial one. If anyone wants to republish my work, fine. If they want to republish my work commercially, that's a whole different ballgame. I don't like the idea of others (like this magazine) making money off of my content without giving me a cut.
  - mbrubeck 16y ago
    That's a common and understandable sentiment, but plenty of us are happy with less-restrictive licenses. In fact, I see that you have published code under BSD and MIT licenses, so you must not object strongly to people making money off that.
    - j_baker 16y ago
      Although your point is reasonable, it's a bit like comparing apples and oranges. If someone uses my code, they won't be making money off of it directly (if they did, I'd be highly surprised). If someone publishes and sells an article that I wrote, that is making money off of my work directly. If you genuinely prefer a less-restrictive license, more power to you. But the argument that people should license their work under a CC license to make things easier for publishers is a bit like my boss saying "Why don't you just work for free so I don't have to go through the hassle of having to pay you?"
heresy 16y ago
Great work! For someone who claims no prior knowledge of print you've created something that looks pretty good, chunky selection of articles as well. I noticed something interesting, I recognized some of the articles, but in this format I read them more thoroughly. It's as if content on the web is more "disposable", whereas in printed form it feels more permanent, and you feel obligated to give it more time - as another poster said, less distracted by the comments. Might I suggest using a different monospace font though? I found the code font you used in JWZ's article to be much less readable than my typical code window (e.g. Consolas).
shrikant 16y ago
Yum. Hacker Monthly is the old Wired.
fakelvis 16y ago
Great work, Lim. Everyone else: Live in the Netherlands or the surrounding area? Want a hard-copy of Hacker Monthly but can't get it because they don't ship to mainland Europe? Willing to have an impromptu meet-up in Amsterdam to get hold of your copy of Hacker Monthly? I do, and I still have a UK address that I visit semi-regularly. I'm sending my copy there. Email me if you're interested (see my profile). Depending on the interest (up to a point, obviously) I'm willing to bring them over and sort this out.
- aik 16y ago
  Ship it to Australia too please. I'd buy.
johnconroy 16y ago
It's sitting proudly in the coffee shop in the IT dept. of the national Uni. of Ireland, Galway as we speak :D Looks great... i printed it out in b&w I'm afraid :(
jessor 16y ago
Very nice. I'll subscribe when MagCloud ships to Germany.
adnam 16y ago
Would be nice to have a smartphone-friendly version too. HTML content flows to the with of the screen on my Android, but PDF text does not. (Perhaps I'm doing it wrong?)
- bearwithclaws 16y ago
  I could easily export it to EPUB format. If you want it I can send you a copy to see how it looks on your Android.
  - dpapathanasiou 16y ago
    If you can generate an epub file, please consider distributing it via fifobooks.com (my startup). We can make it available for non-epub devices like the Kindle and Blackberry, as well as the iPad, Nook, sony Reader, Android, etc. You can continue to give it away free, or a charge a fee for it, and we're accessible from any country.
  - lecha 16y ago
    I tried exporting to epub to read it on an iPad. Both Calibre (calibre-ebook.com) and www.epub2go.com stripped almost all layout information, making the result unattractive and very hard to read. I ended up buying GoodReader for iPad (0.99c) so I could read the magazine in the form it was intended to look on paper. Recommended.
Terry_B 16y ago
Wow, it actually makes me somewhat wish HN didn't exist and instead I got this in the mail. If only there was someway to source great articles I hadn't already read...
steve19 16y ago
Can you please describe your workflow and the tools used to create the magazine.
- bearwithclaws 16y ago
  Sure. A blog post is coming up about this.
  - blhack 16y ago
    Scribus?
    - bearwithclaws 16y ago
      Adobe Indesign CS4.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
parbo 16y ago
Please make it available in Europe so I can quit buying Wired!
benofsky 16y ago
It's really beautiful and brilliantly laid out, congratulations!
microcentury 16y ago
Quick typo feedback on your site: 'We accept donation now' should be 'donations' :-)
- bearwithclaws 16y ago
  Typo fixed :)
jteo 16y ago
Fantastic work. =) I humbly offer my free time as as a proof reader for future issues(noticed some minor grammar mistakes).
RyanMcGreal 16y ago
I'd forgotten just how good the dismal guide to concurrency is. Thanks for producing this!
jalada 16y ago
Read a few articles so far and really enjoying it. Great companion to my new iPad! Definitely going to donate; it feels like stealing otherwise.
kloc 16y ago
loved it!! Thanks for putting in all the effort.
mechanical_fish 16y ago
This looks absolutely great, and I'm so happy to see someone try out a business model that I've been thinking about for years. There's just no reason why we shouldn't have editors and publishers whose job it is to find good writing on the web and mark it up decently for reading. It is certainly a service I'd pay for. Already I spot several articles that I didn't see when they appeared on HN in the first place.
araneae 16y ago
Wow, that was really beautifully copy-edited. Damn, guys.
sigzero 16y ago
The SR-71 story was worth it alone!
rcavezza 16y ago
Quick note: got a 404 not found error when I tried to access the ratecard page: http://hackermonthly.com/ratecard http://hackermonthly.com/ratecard
- bearwithclaws 16y ago
  Fixed that. Thanks.
swah 16y ago
Is this official? The site is looking better than news.yc :)
swah 16y ago
Aren't comments included in the maganize? One would think that comments would become something like "Readers opinion"...
fog 16y ago
Really nice, thanks for this! Feedback: I noticed some small typos in the "SR-71" with missing dots at sentence endings. Another thing was that the contents page shows "2 Steps to Becoming a Great Developer" and "This is why I sell beer" in reversed order. The positive is that it looks professional and was a pleasure reading! Big thumbs up! :)
flupkear 16y ago
You should add shipping to more countries. I'm in Argentina and would love to get the print version.
rokhayakebe 16y ago
WOW. FANTASTIC.
hegemonicon 16y ago
Hrm, this submission is over 300 karma points as of this comment, which means that hacker monthly #2 will have to include an entire copy of hacker monthly #1...
- eru 16y ago
  We will have to find a way to force hacker monthly #n to include hacker monthly #n itself. This way they will have to come up with some kind of quine.
  - fsniper 16y ago
    RecursiveMonthly!
qeorge 16y ago
Looks amazing. Ordered mine, can't wait to see it in person.
Wolf_Larsen 16y ago
Thanks. Buying the print issue. MagCloud is an awesome service, btw.
ihodes 16y ago
I had to buy it, after reading through the PDF. I'll be keeping up with these, for sure. I wish that, somehow, an article of new content could perhaps be in each issue. If there were a magazine like this with original content, or at least half original... I don't even know how to express how overjoyed I'd be. Like someone in this thread put, "the old Wired". But really, much better. Keep up the amazing work, please! And let us know if you're interested in help.
evo_9 16y ago
Ah this is slick... I hadn't heard this was in the works. So are there plans to sell this mag through bookstores like B&N or Borders? I'd like to pick up a copy of the real mag (I just bought issue #1 online - would be nice to be able to snag locally though). Also, does anyone have info on how often they plan to publish? Monthly? Bi-monthly? Is there a yearly subscription price and anywhere to sign-up? I only see the option to buy one issue right now.
- tsally 16y ago
  2600 has been sold in B&N for a long time, so I'm hopefully that eventually this could find its way into B&N as well.
  - evo_9 16y ago
    Good point, I always forget that.
famfam 16y ago
Can you add QR codes for linking to the original source?
eshi 16y ago
I think this is a very well executed idea. I like how the layout is very polished and beautiful and I feel like this could be something being read standing at a news-stand or in a bookstore. I haven't read the entire thing yet, but reading Eric Davis's article was more than worth it. I felt like I got a free therapy session. Keep up the good work.
shaunxcode 16y ago
A few thoughts - I have already ordered a physical copy because I definitely agree that the medium of print is one which yields better long term absorption of content. But I couldn't resist downloading the pdf first to get at taste of what the content would be - I was sort of disappointed that there were not more articles w/ code in them. I am still stoked on the articles that ARE there I guess I just want more haha, but being a magazine that is a good thing as I will want the next issue. I am not sure how mag cloud works (print on demand or do they actually create the "plates" for offset printing and thus unique issues are not doable?) - but if it is print on demand could you not have a button which says "Add comments to this issue" which would collate and generate the pdf then and there by the users own interaction thus side-stepping the legal issues?
aristus 16y ago
This is truly beautiful stuff. (Buying five copies for my mother.) A surprising thing: I use a lot of links and footnotes, which don't translate well to print. If writing for both print and web, I think my style would change quite a bit, eg taking the time to paraphrase a source rather than just linking to it.
melling 16y ago
How about a version built with the Adobe tools for the iPad the way Wired released their magazine. I'd also prefer to pay for 12 issues at once.
fireandfury 16y ago
It looks amazing. I'm trying to figure out the best way to read this. The printed option looks good. This is definitely something I want to sit down with and soak in.
Caligula 16y ago
For some strange reason I cannot access the site. It is as if my ISP has it blacklisted(rogers). I get the same firefox response as if my internet was disconnected. I also tried wget using the url provided in the comments but that does not work as well. I am stuck relying on google cache and cannot see the pdf. Any tips? wget http://hackermonthly.com/hackermonthly-issue1.pdf http://hackermonthly.com/hackermonthly-issue1.pdf --14:52:00-- http://hackermonthly.com/hackermonthly-issue1.pdf http://hackermonthly.com/hackermonthly-issue1.pdf => `hackermonthly-issue1.pdf' Resolving hackermonthly.com... failed: Name or service not known. ping hackermonthly.com ping: unknown host hackermonthly.com
- cstross 16y ago
  It's at 72.18.130.89, but that won't get you far -- they seem to be running Apache multiheaded and haven't bothered with a default site for requests coming in by IP only. I'm not seeing DNS for hackermonthly.com on my home ADSL2 connection (via Be Broadband), but my colo box (hosted by Bytemark) is resolving it fine. As I'm in the UK, this is definitely not Rogers in Canada -- it's some kind of DNS screw-up. NB: It resolved okay via Be about 10 hours ago (10am BST) when I grabbed a copy this morning. I suspect something's come adrift since then.
  - yagibear 16y ago
    Same DNS problem from Optus in Australia, though server requiring hostname is readily solved by entering details in hosts.txt
    - bearwithclaws 16y ago
      Hopefully it's working now. The site is hosted on WPWebHost (a company I founded and sold) and they seemed to have a slight hitch few hours ago.
- coolboy89 16y ago
  wget http://72.18.130.89/hackermonthly-issue1.pdf http://72.18.130.89/hackermonthly-issue1.pdf '--header=HOST: hackermonthly.com'
sgt 16y ago
Awesome.. I am surprised how professional it looks!! It's VERY professional.
yoonminn 16y ago
malaysia boleh !
ewams 16y ago
Thanks, ordered a print copy.
mkramlich 16y ago
love it, great job! keep it up!
smilliken 16y ago
Thanks Lim Cheng Soon, the magazine looks great! I've already ordered my copy. I've been hoping someone would do this for a while now, and I'm glad to see that it looks very well done. I'm a developer for MagCloud, so I'm really interested in any feedback you might have so far. Feedback from everyone else is welcome too! I'm looking forward to future issues! If you care to share, it would be nice to hear some stats to see how much attention the magazine is getting. I'm speaking on my own behalf, of course, not MagCloud's, but I will pass this link on to everyone else on the team.
- jonah 16y ago
  MagCloud looks great! Awesome to see a growing range of options for self-publishers. I just purchased a copy of Hacker Monthly and have a few usability comments the checkout process! From the cart page I clicked "Sign up Now" (which could be a tad more visible) and then chose to select an address from my address book. It was of course empty so I chose the add address link. So far so good but here's where I ran into problems. 1) MagCloud only ships to three countries, but the country dropdown contains the whole ISO list... not necessary. 2) After adding my address it returned me to the address book. There it wasn't immediately clear how to select my new entry as the shipping address. (See Amazon for a clearer approach.) 3) Once my address was selected and populated into the checkout form I ran into the address validation engine: I'm in the USA so I don't know how you're doing it with the others but the address correction was overly aggressive and the error messages were unhelpful. Take a look at some other sites that attempt to normalize addresses. On my first try it (correctly) had a problem with my submission but the error wasn't that helpful: "Multiple addresses were found for the information you entered, and no default exists. This order would be shipped by the USPS, and it does not recognize the address you entered. Please try to correct the address." Could it offer those choices or be more specific about the ambiguous fields? 4) The address in my address book wasn't updated with the corrections made to the address during the checkout process. 5) There is no way to delete or edit an existing address. 6) This is more of a aesthetic issue but when it corrects the address it UPPERCASES everything (the way the USPS likes it) however it didn't cap address line 2 nor the name. Those could be UPPERCASED too for consistency. 7) The font color of unfocused fields seems a bit light - almost looks disabled. 8) Clicking Checkout/Sign In/Sign Up should also apply coupon on cart page. 9) The error messages could be closer to the form fields. All-in-all I like the design and layout of the site though!
zandorg 16y ago
Ah great, something else to read on my new Kindle DX!
coned88 16y ago
I much prefer reading from paper books. Even when I read my kindle, I just don't absorb as much info as I do from a physical book. Reading on the web is a whole other story, that I don't remember anything.
paulbaumgart 16y ago
You can get $2 off using the coupon code: DADGRAD
resdirector 16y ago
Stupid question: what font is used for the headers and quotes? (I want to use that font for my web app home page).
fsniper 16y ago
Looking at the index of Hacker Monthly I've just realized how much time I spend reading HackerNews submissions but still miss much.. Maybe Some one should start a Reddit Monthly too.
kunley 16y ago
Yeah I love good ol' printed content. Wait... they don't ship to Poland. Ouch
epistemenical 16y ago
The very first real-content sentence in the magazine is missing a period. :( Beautiful, though.
sgallant 16y ago
This is great! I too like keep my online-time to a minimum.

641 points by bearwithclaws 16y ago

howcool 16y ago

way too pricey

hubb 16y ago

is anyone else unable to download the pdf? keeps telling me that it's damaged. dang

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

subbu 16y ago

Here is the pdf link: http://hackermonthly.com/hackermonthly-issue1.pdf http://hackermonthly.com/hackermonthly-issue1.pdf

giu 16y ago
Google Viewer: http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://hackermonthly.com/hackermonthly-issue1.pdf http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://hackermonthly.com/h...
- tedge 16y ago
  Reader for small Mac laptops: http://twilightedge.com/mac/readright http://twilightedge.com/mac/readright
rodh257 16y ago
why did they need the javascript void link in the first place anyway?
- bearwithclaws 16y ago
  I'm using Mixpanel to track the crucial events such as downloads and purchase: http://mixpanel.com/api/docs/guides/integration#js http://mixpanel.com/api/docs/guides/integration#js Not sure if there's a better way to do it.
  - paraschopra 16y ago
    Just attach it externally. Do something like this: <a href="URL_TO_PDF" onclick="registerConversion()">Download</a> You can put a minor 500 ms pause so that event gets registered.
    - subbu 16y ago
      Even better, use unobtrusive js to do that: $('your element').click(function(){//put calls to mixpanel here; return true; });
      - bearwithclaws 16y ago
        Thanks for all the suggestions. I've implemented it: $("a.magcloud").click(function() { mpmetrics.track('purchase', {'issue': '#1'}); self.delay(500); return true; });

waterlesscloud 16y ago

This looks quite tasty.

jf 16y ago

Beautiful. I'm buying a hard copy now.

sl911 16y ago

Awesome!

ThomPete 16y ago

One of the most brilliant things about HN is the comments in relation to the article not just the article. I had hoped it would include the discussion threads from that too.

bearwithclaws 16y ago
I agreed. Still working on that. Trying to obtain the permissions from the commenters is harder than I initially thought. That will come in #2, hopefully.
- ThomPete 16y ago
  sweet
- ErrantX 16y ago
  Suggest a way for us to indicate (maybe something in our profiles) agreement for you to use our comments and I suspect quite a few will support it. In case I didnt say before: you're welcome to use any of mine with attribution (if you want to edit long ones a quick email would be appreciated).
  - bearwithclaws 16y ago
    Thanks. If anyone wants to provide permissions to use their comments in HN, just email me at cheng.soon@hackermonthly.com.
- almost 16y ago
  Maybe PG would agree to put some text to the effect that "by posting this comment you give permission for it also to appear in Hacker Monthly unless you opt-out" on the comments page. I can't imagine many people having a problem with that but tracking down people after the fact is always going to be difficult. I do think it's going to need comments to be worth while. I have just bought a copy of the first issue anyway though :)
jf 16y ago
From the Hacker Monthly FAQ: Q. Will you include the comments of Hacker News? A. Of course. Similar to the articles, I will email the original commenters for permission. Oh, if you are a regular commenter in Hacker News, pretty please, put your contact information in your profile (a lot of the members just leave it empty), that would save me a lot of fuss trying to look for your email around the web. [ed: that means you ThomPete]

warp 16y ago

Sadly, magcloud still doesn't ship to (most of) europe.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

danielrhodes 16y ago

Great idea.

Thunderke 16y ago

I'm from Belgium and want to by a hard copy is there anyway to do this? magcloud seems to be only sending to usa/uk/canada

bearwithclaws 16y ago
I live in Malaysia and have a hard time trying to get MagCloud to ship to me too. Hence, I'm using SHIPITO (http://shipito.com http://shipito.com). They seemed to be the cheapest and quite reliable (has a support forum).
- steilpass 16y ago
  What do you pay in total? Around 20$?
- mknx 16y ago
  well done, cheng soon. pass me the hard copy when we meet again :)

ido 16y ago

Nice! I think you've messed up the title's formatting a bit in the jwz iPhone article tho.

alexkay 16y ago
It's a journal, those two pages will be side by side.

mahmud 16y ago

So beautiful.

erikstarck 16y ago

This is just brilliant. Media companies are putting up paywalls while their print volume is decreasing. Hacker News goes the other way around. I like it!

spicyj 16y ago
Hacker News is taking down its paywalls? No one told me!

decadentcactus 16y ago

Impressive. Won't be purchasing the print copy but the pdf is well done. Hope it works out for you!

bigiain 16y ago
+1 - I'd happily throw you a few bucks for the PDF though, if you've got a donate button somewhere...
- bearwithclaws 16y ago
  Put up a donation button :)

pavs 16y ago

I will have to admit, I was skeptical about the idea when it was discussed here first and now I can see real value in it. Its true that discussion on these topics adds value to the contents and that is what makes a community unique. The discussions. But sometimes I just want to read the content, not get distracted by anything else. Two suggestions for future releases. 1) Can you reprint at least the top 3-5 comments on those topics on hackers News? (not sure how you are going to do that without making a lot of people mad). Also on the PDF version, can you have a clickable link to the discussion on the hacker news? 2) One of the biggest reasons I am turned off from reading magazines is the annoying ads all over the place including in-between the content. Since you are going to rely on ad, may I suggest that you try to avoid ads on the same page, where there is content? I stopped reading Wired Magazine, just because of this reason. Good luck. Looks good.

ibagrak 16y ago
I have to second the parent on the comment comment. :) I've seen this done superbly in Snob magazine (www.snob.ru), which is a relatively recent Russian-language project also featuring both an online community (subscribers only) and traditional printed issues. I think it's a very interesting model for the new media, and Snob executes it very well. In any case, what they do is they have a few pages in the printed edition where they just reprint interesting comments from the online discussion. The comments are shown as thought bubbles next to user icons from the online community, and they are selected such that they make sense standalone without the original article text. These pages are surprisingly fun to browse, and they also work as an ad for the online portion of the magazine and the discussions taking place there.
ars 16y ago
I think the ads were fine. I think the reason he did not include comments is the lack of a way of contacting people on HN. Very few people include an email address in their profile. HN could help him a lot by adding a "email me" link on the profile page - not an email address, but a forwarder, HN will send the email. I don't think spam would be much of a problem since you would need to be a registered user to send an email, and you could require 3 karma or something.

shalmanese 16y ago

It's gorgeous!

RBerenguel 16y ago

Absolutely gorgeous. Really nice work!

ugh 16y ago

It would be super-awesome if you would use correct quotes and apostrophes (the curly kind) everywhere.

codifier 16y ago

Very cool! Looks great.

perokreco 16y ago

Is there a way to subscribe to it on MagCloud so I don't have to buy it every month?

bearwithclaws 16y ago
Nope. I need to write my own app to do that.

shalmanese 16y ago

It's weird but I remember reading some of these articles on the web but, reading them again in magazine form, they somehow seem much more authoritative and objective. Ah, the perils of framing!

olliesaunders 16y ago
I think that has something to do with the quality of the design and typography. This is a gorgeous publication!
olliesaunders 16y ago
Although I think it might be hindered a little bit by the titles of some of the articles. Something about "5 Actions that Made Me Happier", "The Scariest Pricing Idea Ever", "Best Writing Advice for Engineers" etc. in a print magazine seems unbecoming. Perhaps it speaks of the desperation to grab attention that is necessary on the web but not in print. I'm not really sure but, for me, those titles seem to cheapen what is otherwise beautiful.
- jimbokun 16y ago
  To me, those titles sound like articles I'd like to read.
  - marcamillion 16y ago
    Exactly. I am tired of all these people raining on link-baiting. So what if he wants to phrase his titles like that? It makes much sense, because that's how attention is grabbed. Without those titles, I know I would have missed many wonderful articles.

giu 16y ago

My jaw dropped a little bit when I opened the PDF; it looks very professional, and it's gorgeous, too! I skimmed through it and I'm definitely looking forward to read it. I totally would buy a hard copy, but unfortunately MagCloud doesn't ship to Europe (Pity!!). Are there any plans to ship HM to Europe? I could imagine that it would cost too much, but there's always hope:) Either way, keep up the good work!

mixmax 16y ago
I second that - I'd gladly buy a subscription if it could be sent to Europe.
mbrubeck 16y ago
Shipping costs shouldn't be an issue - it costs basically nothing to ship the bits. You just need to find a printer in Europe who can distribute it there.
- giu 16y ago
  Yes, true; I expressed myself wrongly in the above comment. I hope somebody finds a publisher in Europe. I did a fast search, and it looks like there aren't a lot (or any) services like MagCloud here in Europe. At least I got some hopeful bits from the MagCloud FAQ: The MagCloud team is working hard on expanding to other European and Asia Pacific countries Let's hope that working hard means they'll start to ship to other European countries in the next few weeks ;)
fsniper 16y ago
I second this. I'd really like to have Hacker monthly shipped to Turkey :(
kmfrk 16y ago
Don't Lulu basically have the same prices? I haven't managed to figured out MagCloud's pricing, but I can advise on Lulu's pricing if need be. I'd love to see the magazine perfect bound rather than saddle stitch, too. MagCloud state that they plan to expand, but we don't know how long it will take.

donaq 16y ago

Maybe instead of putting the threads on the magazine, you could have a link to the discussion thread at the end of every article. That would probably save a bunch of trees in the print copy.

perokreco 16y ago

MagCloud has some sort of address checking that does not work with my address, so you are out of at least one buyer.

steilpass 16y ago

It looks great. If I could only buy it here in Germany. :-(

ekpyrotic 16y ago

Lim, at times your grammar is off and your constructions are jarring. If you'd like a proofreader for future issues you can contact me on: jg457 [@] st-andrews [.] ac [.] uk. Otherwise, well done on Issue 1. Looks great.

bearwithclaws 16y ago
Just emailed you. :)
rdela 16y ago
Agreed, curator's note needs editing, and jwz's last name is also misspelled on the TOC (p3 - "JAWINSKI" instead of 'Z[...]'), though he's credited correctly on the inside jacket (p2). You could update the pdf, I suppose. I'm happy to share the proofreading/editing burden with ekpyrotic or do a pass before or after ekpyrotic does, if that would be helpful (http://rdela.com http://rdela.com has an email link at the bottom).
- bearwithclaws 16y ago
  Thanks for the help. Just replied your email ;)

warwick 16y ago

Absolutely beautiful. A slight typo: I noticed Jamie Zawinski's name is spelled wrong in the table of contents.

evandavid 16y ago

@MAGCLOUD PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD tell your users that you don't ship to their country before they add items to cart, sign up (in order to confirm purchase), and then proceed to the payment page. PLEEEEASE!

ErrantX 16y ago
it does have US/Canada/UK in the drop down at the bottom on the first page...
- evandavid 16y ago
  I'm not seeing it, and the fact that I have to search for it isn't exactly encouraging. I start on this page: http://magcloud.com/browse/Issue/88360 http://magcloud.com/browse/Issue/88360 I click Buy Issue. I click Sign Up Now. Still haven't seen it. Even on the magcloud.com homepage I don't see it. Maybe I'm crazy/blind. The site has my IP address this whole time and could use it. Visitors from outside the US will feel my pain on this one - it is a common and maddening frustration.
  - ErrantX 16y ago
    Just hit checkout - you don't need an account, that takes you to the shipping page where it tells you (thinking about it I can see how it is a bit confusing how they ask for an account, not sure how you got to the payment page though, it is on the shipping page) People elsewhere have suggested as a solution btw: http://www.shipito.com/ http://www.shipito.com/
    - evandavid 16y ago
      I admit - I overreacted... Sorry Magcloud. You can cancel my support request (seriously, which is kind of embarrassing). Anyway I've had dinner and can now speak calmly. The feature that I described (a preemptive suggestion of the inability to ship to the visitor's country) is not common on the web. In fact most online retailers really suck at it. I still haven't found a decent solution for quickly checking whether Amazon items can be shipped to me without adding to cart and proceeding to checkout. However, it would be a welcome feature for most online retailers, and would definitely stop visitor's like myself from getting a nasty first impression. I guess it's not implemented well because, by definition, if I'm outside your shipping area than I'm outside your target market. However you can see how this is short sighted, and keeping me happy might be a good idea for the future. So those are my $0.02 on the issue. I guess this is what happens when a company makes me angry ten minutes before dinner :D

aymeric 16y ago

Awesome execution. Starting the first issue with 1500 subscribers, a great design and a quality magazine is quite a feat! Not for me though, I remembered 90% of the articles included in the issue and rereading them didn't really add much value.

kqr2 16y ago

Just ordered a print copy. Hopefully, you will share some sales figures and/or blog about the experience of putting it together. Also, interesting that magcloud still remains very connected to HP. It's paypal address is actually magcloud@hp.com

ErrantX 16y ago

I bought a print copy out of interest, so clearly this is just my observation from reading the online one... Looks great, first off, really nice design. I'm guessing you are a designer? The only downside for me was the lack of editing... it's key to producing a magazine and there were places where it was obvious. As an example; some of the pieces were just too long and needed additional proof reading. Other thoughts? Obviously comments would be neat (but I know your working on that). Editorial would be quite interesting to have. Maybe ask one or two HN members each month to write custom editorials on big topics or just in general. EDIT: if you need a hand editing drop me a mail.

kylec 16y ago
I don't think that any content should be modified, even if it means that it's long for a magazine article.
- ErrantX 16y ago
  Why not? It's entirely standard practice to edit for length, style and spacing in magazines. It makes things a lot more readable and if you have a good editor it can mean the difference between good content and great content :) (take the first article; it could have benefited from some slicing/reorganizing, but most of all from good sectioning (particularly headed sections)
  - kylec 16y ago
    Because the content has already been published elsewhere. I don't want to have to reread an article online to find out what I missed in the print article.
    - ErrantX 16y ago
      That's not what I mean by editing. It really is important in print to make sure it fits the medium. You would be surprised how much can be cut without losing content or the style of the piece.

diehell 16y ago

Dude, congrats. DOwnload them and it looks good. Proud of fellow country doing this, especially fellow penangites. ;) Keep Up the good work! If you need help just pm!!

tomerico 16y ago

Just a suggestion - Use a "Pay as you want" model for the downloadable pdf, which will enable people to give you donations.

JustAGeek 16y ago
Yes, I'd do that as I don't care about a printed version and kinda feel like cheating when downloading the free pdf. It's a great idea, very well pulled off!
- Aegean 16y ago
  I think there should definitely be a free version at least until it gets established. I simply wanted to check what it is about without any commitments including the hassle to go through a payment processor.
  - kiiski 16y ago
    I think that "pay as you want" means that you can pay if you want, or you can just take it for free.
    - JustAGeek 16y ago
      Exactly! Just keep it free but offer the possibility to donate for everybody not ordering the print version.

marcamillion 16y ago

Wow...I was skeptical at first...but this is pretty epic. God I LOVE HN!!!

sumeeta 16y ago

I ordered one because I can’t wait to find it lying around a couple of years from now. Seems like this could be awesome bookshelf material.

pk 16y ago

Lim Cheng Soon, the creator of the Hacker Monthly, deserves a good deal of credit for securing the rights to reprint all of the content in this magazine. I'm sure that was the most time-consuming part of putting this together. In the Curator's Note on the second page he says, "I've also exchanged near hundreds of emails asking for reprint permissions." Projects like these make a good case for open-content licenses like Creative Commons' and the GNU Free Documentation License. If all the articles included in the magazine used the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license (which allows content to be reused as long as any modified versions are available under the same terms), Lim could have saved countless hours by not having to explicitly ask permission for each piece he included. Lim, if you're listening, perhaps you would consider encouraging the people you talk to to license their works under a Creative Commons license. This could make things a lot easier the next time around if you pull material from the same blogs, etc.

j_baker 16y ago
Erm... If I were to license my content under a creative commons license, it would be a non-commercial one. If anyone wants to republish my work, fine. If they want to republish my work commercially, that's a whole different ballgame. I don't like the idea of others (like this magazine) making money off of my content without giving me a cut.
- mbrubeck 16y ago
  That's a common and understandable sentiment, but plenty of us are happy with less-restrictive licenses. In fact, I see that you have published code under BSD and MIT licenses, so you must not object strongly to people making money off that.
  - j_baker 16y ago
    Although your point is reasonable, it's a bit like comparing apples and oranges. If someone uses my code, they won't be making money off of it directly (if they did, I'd be highly surprised). If someone publishes and sells an article that I wrote, that is making money off of my work directly. If you genuinely prefer a less-restrictive license, more power to you. But the argument that people should license their work under a CC license to make things easier for publishers is a bit like my boss saying "Why don't you just work for free so I don't have to go through the hassle of having to pay you?"

heresy 16y ago

Great work! For someone who claims no prior knowledge of print you've created something that looks pretty good, chunky selection of articles as well. I noticed something interesting, I recognized some of the articles, but in this format I read them more thoroughly. It's as if content on the web is more "disposable", whereas in printed form it feels more permanent, and you feel obligated to give it more time - as another poster said, less distracted by the comments. Might I suggest using a different monospace font though? I found the code font you used in JWZ's article to be much less readable than my typical code window (e.g. Consolas).

shrikant 16y ago

Yum. Hacker Monthly is the old Wired.

fakelvis 16y ago

Great work, Lim. Everyone else: Live in the Netherlands or the surrounding area? Want a hard-copy of Hacker Monthly but can't get it because they don't ship to mainland Europe? Willing to have an impromptu meet-up in Amsterdam to get hold of your copy of Hacker Monthly? I do, and I still have a UK address that I visit semi-regularly. I'm sending my copy there. Email me if you're interested (see my profile). Depending on the interest (up to a point, obviously) I'm willing to bring them over and sort this out.

aik 16y ago
Ship it to Australia too please. I'd buy.

johnconroy 16y ago

It's sitting proudly in the coffee shop in the IT dept. of the national Uni. of Ireland, Galway as we speak :D Looks great... i printed it out in b&w I'm afraid :(

jessor 16y ago

Very nice. I'll subscribe when MagCloud ships to Germany.

adnam 16y ago

Would be nice to have a smartphone-friendly version too. HTML content flows to the with of the screen on my Android, but PDF text does not. (Perhaps I'm doing it wrong?)

bearwithclaws 16y ago
I could easily export it to EPUB format. If you want it I can send you a copy to see how it looks on your Android.
- dpapathanasiou 16y ago
  If you can generate an epub file, please consider distributing it via fifobooks.com (my startup). We can make it available for non-epub devices like the Kindle and Blackberry, as well as the iPad, Nook, sony Reader, Android, etc. You can continue to give it away free, or a charge a fee for it, and we're accessible from any country.
- lecha 16y ago
  I tried exporting to epub to read it on an iPad. Both Calibre (calibre-ebook.com) and www.epub2go.com stripped almost all layout information, making the result unattractive and very hard to read. I ended up buying GoodReader for iPad (0.99c) so I could read the magazine in the form it was intended to look on paper. Recommended.

Terry_B 16y ago

Wow, it actually makes me somewhat wish HN didn't exist and instead I got this in the mail. If only there was someway to source great articles I hadn't already read...

steve19 16y ago

Can you please describe your workflow and the tools used to create the magazine.

bearwithclaws 16y ago
Sure. A blog post is coming up about this.
- blhack 16y ago
  Scribus?
  - bearwithclaws 16y ago
    Adobe Indesign CS4.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

parbo 16y ago

Please make it available in Europe so I can quit buying Wired!

benofsky 16y ago

It's really beautiful and brilliantly laid out, congratulations!

microcentury 16y ago

Quick typo feedback on your site: 'We accept donation now' should be 'donations' :-)

bearwithclaws 16y ago
Typo fixed :)

jteo 16y ago

Fantastic work. =) I humbly offer my free time as as a proof reader for future issues(noticed some minor grammar mistakes).

RyanMcGreal 16y ago

I'd forgotten just how good the dismal guide to concurrency is. Thanks for producing this!

jalada 16y ago

Read a few articles so far and really enjoying it. Great companion to my new iPad! Definitely going to donate; it feels like stealing otherwise.

kloc 16y ago

loved it!! Thanks for putting in all the effort.

mechanical_fish 16y ago

This looks absolutely great, and I'm so happy to see someone try out a business model that I've been thinking about for years. There's just no reason why we shouldn't have editors and publishers whose job it is to find good writing on the web and mark it up decently for reading. It is certainly a service I'd pay for. Already I spot several articles that I didn't see when they appeared on HN in the first place.

araneae 16y ago

Wow, that was really beautifully copy-edited. Damn, guys.

sigzero 16y ago

The SR-71 story was worth it alone!

rcavezza 16y ago

Quick note: got a 404 not found error when I tried to access the ratecard page: http://hackermonthly.com/ratecard http://hackermonthly.com/ratecard

bearwithclaws 16y ago
Fixed that. Thanks.

swah 16y ago

Is this official? The site is looking better than news.yc :)

swah 16y ago

Aren't comments included in the maganize? One would think that comments would become something like "Readers opinion"...

fog 16y ago

Really nice, thanks for this! Feedback: I noticed some small typos in the "SR-71" with missing dots at sentence endings. Another thing was that the contents page shows "2 Steps to Becoming a Great Developer" and "This is why I sell beer" in reversed order. The positive is that it looks professional and was a pleasure reading! Big thumbs up! :)

flupkear 16y ago

You should add shipping to more countries. I'm in Argentina and would love to get the print version.

rokhayakebe 16y ago

WOW. FANTASTIC.

hegemonicon 16y ago

Hrm, this submission is over 300 karma points as of this comment, which means that hacker monthly #2 will have to include an entire copy of hacker monthly #1...

eru 16y ago
We will have to find a way to force hacker monthly #n to include hacker monthly #n itself. This way they will have to come up with some kind of quine.
- fsniper 16y ago
  RecursiveMonthly!

qeorge 16y ago

Looks amazing. Ordered mine, can't wait to see it in person.

Wolf_Larsen 16y ago

Thanks. Buying the print issue. MagCloud is an awesome service, btw.

ihodes 16y ago

I had to buy it, after reading through the PDF. I'll be keeping up with these, for sure. I wish that, somehow, an article of new content could perhaps be in each issue. If there were a magazine like this with original content, or at least half original... I don't even know how to express how overjoyed I'd be. Like someone in this thread put, "the old Wired". But really, much better. Keep up the amazing work, please! And let us know if you're interested in help.

evo_9 16y ago

Ah this is slick... I hadn't heard this was in the works. So are there plans to sell this mag through bookstores like B&N or Borders? I'd like to pick up a copy of the real mag (I just bought issue #1 online - would be nice to be able to snag locally though). Also, does anyone have info on how often they plan to publish? Monthly? Bi-monthly? Is there a yearly subscription price and anywhere to sign-up? I only see the option to buy one issue right now.

tsally 16y ago
2600 has been sold in B&N for a long time, so I'm hopefully that eventually this could find its way into B&N as well.
- evo_9 16y ago
  Good point, I always forget that.

famfam 16y ago

Can you add QR codes for linking to the original source?

eshi 16y ago

I think this is a very well executed idea. I like how the layout is very polished and beautiful and I feel like this could be something being read standing at a news-stand or in a bookstore. I haven't read the entire thing yet, but reading Eric Davis's article was more than worth it. I felt like I got a free therapy session. Keep up the good work.

shaunxcode 16y ago

A few thoughts - I have already ordered a physical copy because I definitely agree that the medium of print is one which yields better long term absorption of content. But I couldn't resist downloading the pdf first to get at taste of what the content would be - I was sort of disappointed that there were not more articles w/ code in them. I am still stoked on the articles that ARE there I guess I just want more haha, but being a magazine that is a good thing as I will want the next issue. I am not sure how mag cloud works (print on demand or do they actually create the "plates" for offset printing and thus unique issues are not doable?) - but if it is print on demand could you not have a button which says "Add comments to this issue" which would collate and generate the pdf then and there by the users own interaction thus side-stepping the legal issues?

aristus 16y ago

This is truly beautiful stuff. (Buying five copies for my mother.) A surprising thing: I use a lot of links and footnotes, which don't translate well to print. If writing for both print and web, I think my style would change quite a bit, eg taking the time to paraphrase a source rather than just linking to it.

melling 16y ago

How about a version built with the Adobe tools for the iPad the way Wired released their magazine. I'd also prefer to pay for 12 issues at once.

fireandfury 16y ago

It looks amazing. I'm trying to figure out the best way to read this. The printed option looks good. This is definitely something I want to sit down with and soak in.

Caligula 16y ago

For some strange reason I cannot access the site. It is as if my ISP has it blacklisted(rogers). I get the same firefox response as if my internet was disconnected. I also tried wget using the url provided in the comments but that does not work as well. I am stuck relying on google cache and cannot see the pdf. Any tips? wget http://hackermonthly.com/hackermonthly-issue1.pdf http://hackermonthly.com/hackermonthly-issue1.pdf --14:52:00-- http://hackermonthly.com/hackermonthly-issue1.pdf http://hackermonthly.com/hackermonthly-issue1.pdf => `hackermonthly-issue1.pdf' Resolving hackermonthly.com... failed: Name or service not known. ping hackermonthly.com ping: unknown host hackermonthly.com

cstross 16y ago
It's at 72.18.130.89, but that won't get you far -- they seem to be running Apache multiheaded and haven't bothered with a default site for requests coming in by IP only. I'm not seeing DNS for hackermonthly.com on my home ADSL2 connection (via Be Broadband), but my colo box (hosted by Bytemark) is resolving it fine. As I'm in the UK, this is definitely not Rogers in Canada -- it's some kind of DNS screw-up. NB: It resolved okay via Be about 10 hours ago (10am BST) when I grabbed a copy this morning. I suspect something's come adrift since then.
- yagibear 16y ago
  Same DNS problem from Optus in Australia, though server requiring hostname is readily solved by entering details in hosts.txt
  - bearwithclaws 16y ago
    Hopefully it's working now. The site is hosted on WPWebHost (a company I founded and sold) and they seemed to have a slight hitch few hours ago.
coolboy89 16y ago
wget http://72.18.130.89/hackermonthly-issue1.pdf http://72.18.130.89/hackermonthly-issue1.pdf '--header=HOST: hackermonthly.com'

sgt 16y ago

Awesome.. I am surprised how professional it looks!! It's VERY professional.

yoonminn 16y ago

malaysia boleh !

ewams 16y ago

Thanks, ordered a print copy.

mkramlich 16y ago

love it, great job! keep it up!

smilliken 16y ago

Thanks Lim Cheng Soon, the magazine looks great! I've already ordered my copy. I've been hoping someone would do this for a while now, and I'm glad to see that it looks very well done. I'm a developer for MagCloud, so I'm really interested in any feedback you might have so far. Feedback from everyone else is welcome too! I'm looking forward to future issues! If you care to share, it would be nice to hear some stats to see how much attention the magazine is getting. I'm speaking on my own behalf, of course, not MagCloud's, but I will pass this link on to everyone else on the team.

jonah 16y ago
MagCloud looks great! Awesome to see a growing range of options for self-publishers. I just purchased a copy of Hacker Monthly and have a few usability comments the checkout process! From the cart page I clicked "Sign up Now" (which could be a tad more visible) and then chose to select an address from my address book. It was of course empty so I chose the add address link. So far so good but here's where I ran into problems. 1) MagCloud only ships to three countries, but the country dropdown contains the whole ISO list... not necessary. 2) After adding my address it returned me to the address book. There it wasn't immediately clear how to select my new entry as the shipping address. (See Amazon for a clearer approach.) 3) Once my address was selected and populated into the checkout form I ran into the address validation engine: I'm in the USA so I don't know how you're doing it with the others but the address correction was overly aggressive and the error messages were unhelpful. Take a look at some other sites that attempt to normalize addresses. On my first try it (correctly) had a problem with my submission but the error wasn't that helpful: "Multiple addresses were found for the information you entered, and no default exists. This order would be shipped by the USPS, and it does not recognize the address you entered. Please try to correct the address." Could it offer those choices or be more specific about the ambiguous fields? 4) The address in my address book wasn't updated with the corrections made to the address during the checkout process. 5) There is no way to delete or edit an existing address. 6) This is more of a aesthetic issue but when it corrects the address it UPPERCASES everything (the way the USPS likes it) however it didn't cap address line 2 nor the name. Those could be UPPERCASED too for consistency. 7) The font color of unfocused fields seems a bit light - almost looks disabled. 8) Clicking Checkout/Sign In/Sign Up should also apply coupon on cart page. 9) The error messages could be closer to the form fields. All-in-all I like the design and layout of the site though!

zandorg 16y ago

Ah great, something else to read on my new Kindle DX!

coned88 16y ago

I much prefer reading from paper books. Even when I read my kindle, I just don't absorb as much info as I do from a physical book. Reading on the web is a whole other story, that I don't remember anything.

paulbaumgart 16y ago

You can get $2 off using the coupon code: DADGRAD

resdirector 16y ago

Stupid question: what font is used for the headers and quotes? (I want to use that font for my web app home page).

fsniper 16y ago

Looking at the index of Hacker Monthly I've just realized how much time I spend reading HackerNews submissions but still miss much.. Maybe Some one should start a Reddit Monthly too.

kunley 16y ago

Yeah I love good ol' printed content. Wait... they don't ship to Poland. Ouch

epistemenical 16y ago

The very first real-content sentence in the magazine is missing a period. :( Beautiful, though.

sgallant 16y ago

This is great! I too like keep my online-time to a minimum.