Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#571

Post by Fuzzwah » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 9:35 PM UTC

vax wrote: post #51

Yahoo Pipes was an excellent tool for mashing up RSS feeds.

I had one of the most complex Pipes rigged up to automate the collection of all the content I created or favorited from all over the web. It merged them all into a single rss feed which my very simple bit of python code scraped and output as static html on my "blog".

When yahoo killed off pipes I found https://github.com/nerevu/riko and realised that the visual aspect of pipes was holding me back.

Having said that, the visual aspect of pipes was what made it easy for me to get into the whole idea of "stream processing". So I have a lot to thank the pipes team for.

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#572

Post by seba_dos1 » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 9:36 PM UTC

arendtio wrote: post #349

com2kid wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xmpp is a disaster, I have otp enabled and all too often messages are delivered to the wrong machine, but encrypted with a different key, so it is pure garbage and lost forever. That is on the off chance that the message is actually delivered. Trying to get omemo up and running, but some clients (pidgin) have next to no support for it, while others only support it, and it seems it is only supported on ejabberd as of…

While I agree with your pain points, I would not say XMPP that the protocol isn't any good. - Pidgin: Just take a look at their bug tracker. You will not have any problems finding tickets requesting essential features which are 6 years and older (e.g. Message Archive Management). So unless the Pidgin devs get some done I would not use their client (Gajim is a much better alternative, especially since the 1.0 release…

From the user perspective, Pidgin is pretty much unmaintained at this point, so it's like complaining that old software isn't modern. Also, ejabberd doesn't disable OMEMO by default for quite a long time already.

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#573

Post by seba_dos1 » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 9:44 PM UTC

znpy wrote: post #418

mkhpalm wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Xmpp is a disaster, I have otp enabled and all too often messages are delivered to the wrong machine, but encrypted with a different key, so it is pure garbage and lost forever. What part of XMPP is doing that? I think you're talking about a bug in an implementation of XMPP not the protocol itself. Its like saying you go to an address and get the wrong website. Hard to blame an issue like that on HTTP rather than a…

> I think you're talking about a bug in an implementation of XMPP not the protocol itself. Is a protocol worth anything without an implementation? Is a protocol good even if it only has poor implementations?

I've got no such issues, so those questions seem rhetorical to me.

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#574

Post by gtf21 » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 10:03 PM UTC

miguelrochefort wrote: post #314

gtf21 wrote: post #58

Pebble smart-watches. I had them from the original kickstarter, and eventually had a Pebble Time Round which I loved. Whilst I now would never buy a smartwatch, I think that theirs were by far the best. Slimline, with a great UI, and nice functionality, and also not locked into either mobile ecosystem. I'm not entirely sure what caused their death, but my personal view is that they tried to become too big, and I don'…

> Whilst I now would never buy a smartwatch Why?

When my PTR died, I thought I'd really struggle without it. I used to evangelise the idea of it, claiming the convenience of on-wrist notifications, fitness tracking, my diary to hand (I have a very busy diary), etc..

I realised a couple of things once I lost it:

1. very few notifications need my urgent attention. In fact, I frequently have my notifications turned to "calls only" on my phone, and frequently leave it in another room on purpose so I don't have the temptation to look at it. A smartwatch would be thus a negative aspect of my life in this regard.

2. I don't need to track every aspect of my life, in fact that just generated more anxiety for me. I'm pretty fit, sleep soundly not enough (but tracking that never helped), eat very healthily, etc.. Tracking didn't help, it just added to the mental noise / anxiety (disclaimer: I don't suffer strongly from anxiety).

3. While I loved the PTR form-factor, I can't stand bulky watches (and really dislike cuboid watches). There just isn't a smartwatch with an aesthetic I'd consider wearing.

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#575

Post by emilsedgh » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 10:05 PM UTC

sergiotapia wrote: post #559

gcb0 wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you only think you liked unity because now you despise gnome3. the sooner you accept the gnome legacy is dead and move on to kde the better. I know it will be difficult, but it's inevitable.

kde was a meme and the red haired step child of linux even back in 2011 dude.

was.

nowadays it's pretty polished, fast and stable.

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#576

Post by ksaj » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 10:11 PM UTC

mrbill wrote: post #95

ksaj wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not particularly accurate. Windows NT was based on VMS. OS/2 is quite different. The interfaces are related, but the same is true for all Windows variants on the grand timeline. The good news is that if you are feeling particularly nostalgic and have a 16 or 32 bit processor (or emulator), you can relive the OS/2 glory days with ArcaOS from https://www.arcanoae.com/arcaos/ It'll cost you about $130 for a perso…

Dave Cutler (one of the designers of VMS at DEC) led the development of WNT at MS. While some ideas may have trickled down, WNT isn't "based" on VMS. If it was, it would be a lot better :D (Still waiting for the x86-64 VMS port to be completed... https://www.vmssoftware.com/products_roadmap.html )

Correct in the official sense, and it fits the EEE mantra to a T.

As we all know, transposing each initial by 1 from VMS gets you WNT. Rather like the HAL/IBM Space Odyssey factoid.

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#577

Post by ksaj » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 10:25 PM UTC

patrickg_zill wrote: post #527

ksaj wrote: post #4

The Sun Ray was ahead of its time. After Oracle bought and killed it, "the cloud" kicked up and is exactly what the Sun Rays were built for in the first place. Oops!

The ability to pull out your smartcard, have the desktop go away, then plug your smartcard in somewhere else and have your desktop come back was pretty impressive.

Indeed. When we got them for the lab I was working in, this was a feature that blew my mind.

The segregation and amplification of the server/client roles is what makes me connect it to modern cloud computing. Your local device capabilities (speed and space) isn't nearly as important as long as it has a capable Presentation Layer and a network route.

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#578

Post by colejohnson66 » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 10:26 PM UTC

franee wrote: post #420

Lowkeyloki wrote: post #335

Ubuntu's Unity desktop. People really hated it because (IMHO) it had a really rocky launch. Ubuntu replaced a very usable GNOME 2.x desktop with an alpha-quality replacement. And Canonical was riding high from having "won" the Linux for desktop game and was pushing their weight around, giving the impression that they were ignoring the feedback from their users. Unity wasn't without its missteps. But it matured quite…

Yup unity was what spelled the end for the Ubuntu wave. I think this has been the single biggest mistake they made. I think it will take at least a decade again to bring the linux desktop to the masses. Gnome 2 was perfect for people coming from windows moving over. Gnome 3 is like windows vista. Me personally, I was really disappointed (of course you can install gnome 2 etc). But at the end of the day you just want…

> Gnome 3 is like windows vista.

What’s wrong with GNOME 3 or Vista? I’ve never had problems with either.

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#579

Post by colejohnson66 » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 10:30 PM UTC

fabricexpert wrote: post #472

avinium wrote: post #443

Grooveshark - one of the first/greatest music streaming services around. Comprehensive music catalogue, servers never went down, and UI was simplicity incarnate. Totally illegal business model, so it's not surprising that it didn't survive. But it was awesome while it lasted.

> Totally illegal business model It was no different to YouTube’s...

Are you referring to VEVO? Because VEVO is entirely legal

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#580

Post by colejohnson66 » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 10:34 PM UTC

nichos wrote: post #446

indentit wrote: post #290

Android touchscreen phones with physical slide-out qwerty (though I would have preferred Colemak ;)) keyboards like the Sony Xperia Mini Pro. So much quicker and more comfortable to touch-type on (ironic, no? :)), I barely ever made any typos.

Blackberry still makes Android phones with keyboards.

BlackBerry is still around?