8 ms·

Hacker Monthly #3 [pdf]

185 points by wwortiz 16y ago

colkassad 16y ago
Thanks to the people who put this together. It's one of the few things I look forward to having arrive in my inbox.
bjg 16y ago
Reading through the issue it looks like another good one. Does the graphic on page 31 render oddly for anyone else? I have random characters all over the image, it doesn't seem correct. ( Using Preview.app on Mac OS X 10.5.8 )
- epochwolf 16y ago
  Can't duplicate: OSX 10.6.4
- bearwithclaws 16y ago
  That's weird. Can you do a screenshot?
  - bjg 16y ago
    Sure, check it out: http://imgur.com/h6LcL.png http://imgur.com/h6LcL.png
- fatguy 16y ago
  Yea, it does for me. I think the issue might be with Preview. I opened it with Adobe Reader, and it worked fine. screenshot: http://cl.ly/701481461d7fdf060e01 http://cl.ly/701481461d7fdf060e01
- spicyj 16y ago
  fatguy said the following and it was dead-ed; I'm not sure why. > Yea, it does for me. I think the issue might be with Preview. I opened it with Adobe Reader, and it worked fine. > screenshot: http://cl.ly/701481461d7fdf060e01 http://cl.ly/701481461d7fdf060e01
  - bearwithclaws 16y ago
    Just fixed it (reimport the artwork as image instead of PDF). Hopefully it's good now (I can't replicate the issue here).
  - fatguy 16y ago
    I am not sure why either. Maybe coz of the link. On Cloud.App, it was still set to private at the time of posting Anyways here is the screenshot again: http://cl.ly/1pjn http://cl.ly/1pjn
jakevoytko 16y ago
I didn't appreciate Hacker Monthly until this issue. I missed "Lessons Learned From 13 Failed Software Products" when it passed through HN. Too many late nights at work! Lesson learned: summarize the strong signals in dynamic data. Not everyone looks for changes 10 times a day. On a related note, is there a RSS feed of the top daily HN links? It would be great to review past articles and comment threads when I get back from vacations and business trips
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- adrianwaj 16y ago
  It's not an rss feed, but in the history dropdown, you can see the best page cached everyday for the last 7 days, then, each week for the last 4 weeks, then once per month for the last 12, then every year. It also remembers the snapshots you've previously viewed and shades them down. http://hackerbra.in/best http://hackerbra.in/best (same done for front page and ask) - inline top comments available edit: for the rss feed, see http://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/ http://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/
  - jakevoytko 16y ago
    Ah yes, that's exactly what I wanted. Thanks!
- marcusbooster 16y ago
  This was posted recently, using point thresholds: http://jmillerinc.com/2010/07/23/a-cure-for-hacker-news-overload/ http://jmillerinc.com/2010/07/23/a-cure-for-hacker-news-over...
- wvl 16y ago
  There's also my new http://hckrnews.com/ http://hckrnews.com/ that lets you filter past days by top 10, top 20, or top 50%.
  - fraXis 16y ago
crizCraig 16y ago
I'd love to have an audio version of these.
- pavs 16y ago
  How do you plan to have the audio version of the code snippets? Some things are just not meant to be in audio.
  - crizCraig 16y ago
    True. Listening to 4-Hour Work Week now and the msnbc article paths are killing me..."h t t p colon forward slash forward slash m s n b c..." + guids galor, haha. So they'd definitely need to weed out unreadable portions, but I think I would still find a lot of value in it. :)
  - jamesbritt 16y ago
    In college I had a side gig for a blind EE student who could not get a particular electronics book in Braille. So I would read chapters onto cassette tapes (yeah, '80s!) for him to listen to. There were many equations and such. I also had a stack of semi-soft plastic sheets and a rubber-padded clipboard; drawing on the sheets with the rubber underneath allowed for finger-parsable drawings. Whether to attempt to an audible version of an equation versus making a drawing was the big decision. It was faster if I could read an equation, but I wasn't always sure I was getting it quite right. OTOH, having a large stack of "etchings" was not so good either, and the details had to be marked well enough to feel. I asked the guy once how he could "see" computer screens; he said there was a device that had a matrix of a bazillion pins that was used to create an image of the screen for him to run his fingers over.
jackowayed 16y ago
I'm thinking of getting one of the new Kindles, and being able to read Hacker Monthly on it would be a big selling point. Has anyone put Hacker Monthly on their Kindle? How does that gorgeous PDF translate to the Kindle?
- acangiano 16y ago
  My wife ordered a Kindle DX for my birthday and it should be here in a few days. The first thing that I plan to do is put magazines like this one and a few PDFs I bought to the test. I plan to write a detailed review with pictures in my blog. If you can wait a week or two, I'll write a very thorough review.
  - jackowayed 16y ago
    Sweet. I would buy one of the brand new ones that don't ship for a month, so I can definitely wait. I look forward to your review.
    - rodh257 16y ago
      the brand new ones are the basic Kindle aren't they? He has bought the DX which is the more expensive one with a larger screen (said to be more suited to PDF files)
      - jackowayed 16y ago
        Yes. I was most worried about the Kindle's rendering, but I guess size could be an issue too.
  - jteo 16y ago
    Do share your experience. Thanks!
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- ews 16y ago
kunjaan 16y ago
This issue is amazing. Even though I check Hacker News almost everyday, I missed out on a lot of gem. Thank you.
js4all 16y ago
Nice patchwork magazine. Thanks.
pavs 16y ago
On a side note the Chrome integrated PDF viewer (on dev channel) is just beautiful and fast: http://i.imgur.com/f7vMY.png http://i.imgur.com/f7vMY.png
thehodge 16y ago
if your on the iPad you can get HNMonthly via the new Magcloud magazine app and for the moment, all magazines are free
ajj 16y ago
The lesson I learn from Hacker Monthly: you can make something truly beautiful with content and ideas (articles / comments) out there. You need to see the opportunity and execute it well. Great job, once again.
Zakuzaa 16y ago
I'd love to see how you're doing with monetisation and of course other stats that matter like downloads and social media mentions etc. Could you please start adding en extra page dedicated to how HN Monthly is doing.. throw in some graphs etc? Your call :) Among other things it would add a curiosity element among the readers.
billmcneale 16y ago
Out of 64 pages, I counted 8 dedicated to programming (and I'm being generous). Why is this called Hacker Monthly again?
- wwortiz 16y ago
  Because it is high rated articles from hacker news and as you probably have noticed, a major part of this crowd likes to vote up startup and other articles which are relevant to their interests. Besides hacking isn't limited to programming anymore than artistry is limited to painting. Other than that, I personally would be interested in a monthly magazine that focused on interesting programming related things.
- aristus 16y ago
  The original name of HN was "Startup News". Paul generalized the theme about a year into it to include anything interesting to hackers. I also noticed the bias towards business and motivational material as opposed to programming, but that's probably just the luck of the draw. Hacker Monthly is a static slice of a dynamic process.
sev 16y ago
Site looks down by the way
milofelipe 16y ago
Great issue! Side note: I just discovered the "Reflow" view in Adobe Reader. It converts the PDF to a single column for easy viewing at a large magnification. The layout gets messed up sometimes but it's alright for me. My problem before was I had to scroll up and down a couple of times on a page to read all the contents (3 columns) in fix width view.
almost 16y ago
This is a link to to the free PDF version. Much better to buy it on paper here: http://www.magcloud.com/browse/Issue/102377 http://www.magcloud.com/browse/Issue/102377 The printing quality (from the last two issues) is great and it's amazing to have it as an actual physical magazine. I've submitted the link to HN if anyone fancies voting it up, it seems a bit silly to have the direct PDF link be the only link on the front page when the whole point of the thing is that it is an actual magazine: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1565184 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1565184
- chris_l 16y ago
  Unfortunately, outside of the U.S. the shipping is a bit expensive. Could we lobby MagCloud to ship from Europe too? And btw. does anyone know of a European MagCloud clone? Seems like a good idea...
  - jrockway 16y ago
    If someone in the EU wants to distribute the magazine, perhaps a bulk shipment to the distributer could be arranged (to save on shipping)? I know a flat-rate envelope costs something like $5 to mail internationally, and it can hold a lot of magazines.
    - rdela 16y ago
      someone posted a link to these guys when this was brought up before, they consolidate packages: http://www.shipito.com/consolidation http://www.shipito.com/consolidation
  - petercooper 16y ago
    It cost $10.69 to have issue 2 sent to me here in the UK. Unfortunately the receipt isn't itemized but I don't think the shipping was much.. it arrived very quickly too. I assumed that MagCloud does have a EU based printer, but perhaps I'm wrong.
    - chris_l 16y ago
RossM 16y ago
hackermonthly.com seems to be down, I don't suppose anyone can mirror the PDF? Edit: No problem, I downloaded it from Scribd (although I didn't want to have to auth with Facebook).
nicpottier 16y ago
This is really, really nice, I would buy a print copy subscription for sure if I didn't live in the middle of Africa. Some others have brought it up, but any chance for Kindle (normal size) optimized version? I'd pay for that too if it was reasonable, but this is just screaming for me to sideload and read in my downtime. I'll make do with the pdf, but having a Kindle optimized version really seems like a win.
stevefink 16y ago
Just when you think you have read all of the most relevant links on HN for the month, Hacker Monthly gets released. It's amazing how much quality content slips my radar. Kudos - this PDF also looks fantastic on the iPad.

185 points by wwortiz 16y ago

Thanks to the people who put this together. It's one of the few things I look forward to having arrive in my inbox.

bjg 16y ago

Reading through the issue it looks like another good one. Does the graphic on page 31 render oddly for anyone else? I have random characters all over the image, it doesn't seem correct. ( Using Preview.app on Mac OS X 10.5.8 )

epochwolf 16y ago
Can't duplicate: OSX 10.6.4
bearwithclaws 16y ago
That's weird. Can you do a screenshot?
- bjg 16y ago
  Sure, check it out: http://imgur.com/h6LcL.png http://imgur.com/h6LcL.png
fatguy 16y ago
Yea, it does for me. I think the issue might be with Preview. I opened it with Adobe Reader, and it worked fine. screenshot: http://cl.ly/701481461d7fdf060e01 http://cl.ly/701481461d7fdf060e01
spicyj 16y ago
fatguy said the following and it was dead-ed; I'm not sure why. > Yea, it does for me. I think the issue might be with Preview. I opened it with Adobe Reader, and it worked fine. > screenshot: http://cl.ly/701481461d7fdf060e01 http://cl.ly/701481461d7fdf060e01
- bearwithclaws 16y ago
  Just fixed it (reimport the artwork as image instead of PDF). Hopefully it's good now (I can't replicate the issue here).
- fatguy 16y ago
  I am not sure why either. Maybe coz of the link. On Cloud.App, it was still set to private at the time of posting Anyways here is the screenshot again: http://cl.ly/1pjn http://cl.ly/1pjn

jakevoytko 16y ago

I didn't appreciate Hacker Monthly until this issue. I missed "Lessons Learned From 13 Failed Software Products" when it passed through HN. Too many late nights at work! Lesson learned: summarize the strong signals in dynamic data. Not everyone looks for changes 10 times a day. On a related note, is there a RSS feed of the top daily HN links? It would be great to review past articles and comment threads when I get back from vacations and business trips

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
adrianwaj 16y ago
It's not an rss feed, but in the history dropdown, you can see the best page cached everyday for the last 7 days, then, each week for the last 4 weeks, then once per month for the last 12, then every year. It also remembers the snapshots you've previously viewed and shades them down. http://hackerbra.in/best http://hackerbra.in/best (same done for front page and ask) - inline top comments available edit: for the rss feed, see http://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/ http://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/
- jakevoytko 16y ago
  Ah yes, that's exactly what I wanted. Thanks!
marcusbooster 16y ago
This was posted recently, using point thresholds: http://jmillerinc.com/2010/07/23/a-cure-for-hacker-news-overload/ http://jmillerinc.com/2010/07/23/a-cure-for-hacker-news-over...
wvl 16y ago
There's also my new http://hckrnews.com/ http://hckrnews.com/ that lets you filter past days by top 10, top 20, or top 50%.
- fraXis 16y ago

crizCraig 16y ago

I'd love to have an audio version of these.

pavs 16y ago
How do you plan to have the audio version of the code snippets? Some things are just not meant to be in audio.
- crizCraig 16y ago
  True. Listening to 4-Hour Work Week now and the msnbc article paths are killing me..."h t t p colon forward slash forward slash m s n b c..." + guids galor, haha. So they'd definitely need to weed out unreadable portions, but I think I would still find a lot of value in it. :)
- jamesbritt 16y ago
  In college I had a side gig for a blind EE student who could not get a particular electronics book in Braille. So I would read chapters onto cassette tapes (yeah, '80s!) for him to listen to. There were many equations and such. I also had a stack of semi-soft plastic sheets and a rubber-padded clipboard; drawing on the sheets with the rubber underneath allowed for finger-parsable drawings. Whether to attempt to an audible version of an equation versus making a drawing was the big decision. It was faster if I could read an equation, but I wasn't always sure I was getting it quite right. OTOH, having a large stack of "etchings" was not so good either, and the details had to be marked well enough to feel. I asked the guy once how he could "see" computer screens; he said there was a device that had a matrix of a bazillion pins that was used to create an image of the screen for him to run his fingers over.

jackowayed 16y ago

I'm thinking of getting one of the new Kindles, and being able to read Hacker Monthly on it would be a big selling point. Has anyone put Hacker Monthly on their Kindle? How does that gorgeous PDF translate to the Kindle?

acangiano 16y ago
My wife ordered a Kindle DX for my birthday and it should be here in a few days. The first thing that I plan to do is put magazines like this one and a few PDFs I bought to the test. I plan to write a detailed review with pictures in my blog. If you can wait a week or two, I'll write a very thorough review.
- jackowayed 16y ago
  Sweet. I would buy one of the brand new ones that don't ship for a month, so I can definitely wait. I look forward to your review.
  - rodh257 16y ago
    the brand new ones are the basic Kindle aren't they? He has bought the DX which is the more expensive one with a larger screen (said to be more suited to PDF files)
    - jackowayed 16y ago
      Yes. I was most worried about the Kindle's rendering, but I guess size could be an issue too.
- jteo 16y ago
  Do share your experience. Thanks!
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
ews 16y ago

kunjaan 16y ago

This issue is amazing. Even though I check Hacker News almost everyday, I missed out on a lot of gem. Thank you.

js4all 16y ago

Nice patchwork magazine. Thanks.

pavs 16y ago

On a side note the Chrome integrated PDF viewer (on dev channel) is just beautiful and fast: http://i.imgur.com/f7vMY.png http://i.imgur.com/f7vMY.png

thehodge 16y ago

if your on the iPad you can get HNMonthly via the new Magcloud magazine app and for the moment, all magazines are free

ajj 16y ago

The lesson I learn from Hacker Monthly: you can make something truly beautiful with content and ideas (articles / comments) out there. You need to see the opportunity and execute it well. Great job, once again.

Zakuzaa 16y ago

I'd love to see how you're doing with monetisation and of course other stats that matter like downloads and social media mentions etc. Could you please start adding en extra page dedicated to how HN Monthly is doing.. throw in some graphs etc? Your call :) Among other things it would add a curiosity element among the readers.

billmcneale 16y ago

Out of 64 pages, I counted 8 dedicated to programming (and I'm being generous). Why is this called Hacker Monthly again?

wwortiz 16y ago
Because it is high rated articles from hacker news and as you probably have noticed, a major part of this crowd likes to vote up startup and other articles which are relevant to their interests. Besides hacking isn't limited to programming anymore than artistry is limited to painting. Other than that, I personally would be interested in a monthly magazine that focused on interesting programming related things.
aristus 16y ago
The original name of HN was "Startup News". Paul generalized the theme about a year into it to include anything interesting to hackers. I also noticed the bias towards business and motivational material as opposed to programming, but that's probably just the luck of the draw. Hacker Monthly is a static slice of a dynamic process.

sev 16y ago

Site looks down by the way

milofelipe 16y ago

Great issue! Side note: I just discovered the "Reflow" view in Adobe Reader. It converts the PDF to a single column for easy viewing at a large magnification. The layout gets messed up sometimes but it's alright for me. My problem before was I had to scroll up and down a couple of times on a page to read all the contents (3 columns) in fix width view.

almost 16y ago

This is a link to to the free PDF version. Much better to buy it on paper here: http://www.magcloud.com/browse/Issue/102377 http://www.magcloud.com/browse/Issue/102377 The printing quality (from the last two issues) is great and it's amazing to have it as an actual physical magazine. I've submitted the link to HN if anyone fancies voting it up, it seems a bit silly to have the direct PDF link be the only link on the front page when the whole point of the thing is that it is an actual magazine: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1565184 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1565184

chris_l 16y ago
Unfortunately, outside of the U.S. the shipping is a bit expensive. Could we lobby MagCloud to ship from Europe too? And btw. does anyone know of a European MagCloud clone? Seems like a good idea...
- jrockway 16y ago
  If someone in the EU wants to distribute the magazine, perhaps a bulk shipment to the distributer could be arranged (to save on shipping)? I know a flat-rate envelope costs something like $5 to mail internationally, and it can hold a lot of magazines.
  - rdela 16y ago
    someone posted a link to these guys when this was brought up before, they consolidate packages: http://www.shipito.com/consolidation http://www.shipito.com/consolidation
- petercooper 16y ago
  It cost $10.69 to have issue 2 sent to me here in the UK. Unfortunately the receipt isn't itemized but I don't think the shipping was much.. it arrived very quickly too. I assumed that MagCloud does have a EU based printer, but perhaps I'm wrong.
  - chris_l 16y ago

RossM 16y ago

hackermonthly.com seems to be down, I don't suppose anyone can mirror the PDF? Edit: No problem, I downloaded it from Scribd (although I didn't want to have to auth with Facebook).

nicpottier 16y ago

This is really, really nice, I would buy a print copy subscription for sure if I didn't live in the middle of Africa. Some others have brought it up, but any chance for Kindle (normal size) optimized version? I'd pay for that too if it was reasonable, but this is just screaming for me to sideload and read in my downtime. I'll make do with the pdf, but having a Kindle optimized version really seems like a win.

stevefink 16y ago

Just when you think you have read all of the most relevant links on HN for the month, Hacker Monthly gets released. It's amazing how much quality content slips my radar. Kudos - this PDF also looks fantastic on the iPad.