Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Pony – a messenger for mindful correspondence

ponymessenger.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 245 posts

Re: Show HN: Pony – a messenger for mindful correspondence

#201

Post by dmitryminkovsky »

keppy wrote: post #104

In the past you would boast if your IM software was instant/fast. We all wanted real time everything if only to push the SOTA. But the results aren't ideal; we have slack overload, zoom fatigue, gmail addiction etc. I think there is a trend, now that fast is the baseline, where we will see more software that intentionally gives people space & time to think and reflect.

Isn't that interesting! It's like we all just take it for granted what "tech" means and something is not "tech" if it doesn't fit those parameters. For me it was some time around when Viber came out that I was like "wow, do we really need so many of the same messenger?" It makes sense because instantaneity was really revolutionary from a human historical perspective, but as you say, now that we have this baseline, I hope people become more receptive to exploring technology that's designed for usability and not technological novelty that isn't even novel anymore...

Re: Show HN: Pony – a messenger for mindful correspondence

#202

Post by dmitryminkovsky »

motoxpro wrote: post #139
dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you! And thanks for asking! I could go on about this forever :). I started working on this many years ago at this point trying to build the backend with Java/event sourcing[0] and the frontend as an SPA React app. I took the unfortunate/fortunate approach of building a webpage first[1]. I learned a lot from this experience and the result was something that worked okay but was terribly inflexible and difficult t…

Hasura is incredible! So happy to see you using it :)

It's a game-changer... I love it.

Re: Show HN: Pony – a messenger for mindful correspondence

#205

Post by r-w »

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #174
wanderingstan wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My instinct is to go the other way: for communication with old friends, I’d enjoy a once-a-week or even once-a-month pace. I approximate that rhythm with many friends now, but there’s always a worry that I’ll drop the ball when life gets busy.

Mine too! That's what my user experience with this thus far has let me to believe, too. I am thinking of creating a way to specify the delivery settings per-thread, such that messages on some threads take 3 days to deliver, or 7 days, or 14. You could have multiple threads with the same people, with different delivery durations. A core goal is to keep correspondence alive and one of the best ways to do that is to mak…

I was just thinking of that! It definitely presents some difficult UI challenges though… May I ask your thoughts on resolving those?

Re: Show HN: Pony – a messenger for mindful correspondence

#206

Post by ajkjk »

neilalexander wrote: post #127
ajkjk wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they could just not do it because it's not that important to most people... HN comment sections are not representative of the general populace.

Do you know this with reasonable certainty or are you assuming this to be the case? Either way, it’s arguably better to design defensively and build in better security than you think you will need up front rather than have worse security and be in the headlines for the wrong reasons later.

I'm assuming it, and I'm certain my assumption is right. 99% of people have no idea what encryption is, so there's no way they could care about it. So while I'm not "utterly certain", all anyone would have to do to be as certain as me is go ask, like, five people who aren't engineers about it.

Re: Show HN: Pony – a messenger for mindful correspondence

#207

Post by ajkjk »

spacebear wrote: post #135
ajkjk wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they could just not do it because it's not that important to most people... HN comment sections are not representative of the general populace.

I don't think this is true anymore. The average user may not know what end-to-end encryption is, but they know they don't trust Facebook. And Apple built a whole marketing campaign around user privacy. I think most people do care about privacy, but they're usually powerless to defend it.

The average Facebook user.. does... trust Facebook, enough to use it. That's why Facebook is a multi-billion-dollar company.

Seriously, sometimes I wonder if people on this site have ever interacted with people outside of tech.

Re: Show HN: Pony – a messenger for mindful correspondence

#209

Post by Cyphase »

Waterluvian wrote: post #194

I’m not sure I could rewire myself to do this but I love the idea. I wake up in the morning and read my postcards from friends. Write a few during the day. They get “mailed” out that night. I just need to find some friends who don’t just want to chat all day. Is there potential for a bridge between worlds? I’m on WhatsApp with a bunch of friends. One of which will read our entire group thread once per day and provide…

As an aside, do you know if your friend is replying like that on WhatsApp mobile, or WhatsApp Web on a larger screen?

Re: Show HN: Pony – a messenger for mindful correspondence

#210

Post by da39a3ee »

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #190
rekoros wrote: post #175

Very nice! Many years ago I lived in a house without a phone - the only meaningful way to communicate with faraway friends was sending and receiving paper letters via post. In many ways, that cadence was a great way to maintain relationships over many years, with minimal mental overhead. Maybe Pony should send/receive messages once a week/month, instead of daily :-)

Thank you rekoros! More delivery modes is something I am really excited to explore, especially slower ones. I think pickup/delivery should always remain once a day, but you could specify that on a given thread, messages take 3 days or 7 days, etc, to deliver. I've noticed that in my own usage of Pony, this would be pretty nice because sometimes it is the passage of time that makes a correspondence exciting and helps…

Right I was about to suggest exactly the same thing. You could even agree with a friend (invite a friend) to have a thread checked, say, once every two months. So there'd be a bit of guilt if you didn't leave anything, but that potential for guilt is the cost the two of you would pay for keeping in touch.
Post reply on HN