I thought Paper referred to the Facebook app that shut down a couple years back
Paper is the real 'killer app'
191–200 of 346 posts
Re: Paper is the real 'killer app'
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who grew up on paper books, but at one time bought an e-reader, my 2 cents: Ereaders will likely never be as good as the best paper books. However , they can be better than many printed books. I've owned printed books with poor bindings, poor typesettings, poor quality paper. The ereader was definitely better than those. On the whole spectrum of quality of published (paper) books, I would rank my ereader t…
> On the whole spectrum of quality of published (paper) books Well, not until someone proposes a 10-11" e-reader that doesn't cost half my salary. The biggest disappointment with my e-reader is that reading PDFs is awful on that ridiculous display. We might have nice, readable fonts and pictures, with zoom too, and instead...
>The biggest disappointment with my e-reader is that reading PDFs is awful on that ridiculous display.
Ereaders suck for PDFs. To some extent, that's because the PDF format sucks. PDF forces a number of words per line, lines per page, etc. Essentially, PDFs force a certain page size on you. If you compare with physical books, that's not the case. When Stephen King writes a novel, it can be printed as a small paperback or a large print book.
Epubs is the way to go with ereaders.
As for the size of ereaders, it's a tradeoff. 6 inches has its shortcomings (frequent page turns), but they have their pluses (very easy to carry).
Sony used to make 9" readers, and I occasionally find used ones for very cheap at Goodwill (under $10).
The Kobo Auro One is almost 8" (about $250).
But yeah, if you want to read PDFs, ebook readers are not the way to go. Use a tablet instead (with all its screen fatigue, etc).
Re: Paper is the real 'killer app'
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you are a linux user gtk-redshift does the same thing, I've also found it be very reliable with ATI's binary drivers (though these days I use the open source drivers anyway).
Flux supports Linux.
It does but ime it breaks (or did) on the various ATI/binary combinations and isn't open source.
I've had zero issues with gtk-redshift across multiple machines/configs with 1 to 4 screens :).
Re: Paper is the real 'killer app'
#194Trying to remove technology from our lives seems to be a current trend. Don't hate technology just because it's technology. Instead, we should think about what new undesirable behaviors it introduces and how to address those deeper issues. I quite like my phone, but I also value setting it aside as much as possible when in the pleasure of someone's company. I don't recommend we backpedal on important advances in sanitation, sustainable power, etc. just because the transistor counts are getting too high.
Re: Paper is the real 'killer app'
#195The advantage of paper is that you can be more creative and use slow thinking[1]. Just take a look at Newton's[2] or DaVinci's[3] notebooks, how would they think so freely on a computer? Sure for a work task list, a computer is fine, but I find a computer too limiting on my creativity for myself. Added bonus: no ads, bugs, or distractions. People that create apps create them to make money, not because they make you m…
Money is a decoupling mechanism. An interface.
True, but it's also an incentive. If there were a way to compensate app developers for actual productivity gains then the incentives would be more aligned. This may actually be possible for bigger ticket, B2B apps. Maybe some sort of share-the-risk arrangement tied to a consulting engagement.
Re: Paper is the real 'killer app'
#196One of my "when I have some time" projects is to make a 'better' (in that it fits my usage case) scanner for all my notebooks, I want something intelligent that I just put a pad under and it takes an image, converts it to pdf and stores it and that detects when I turn the page and takes the next image rather than having to press a button (though that's an option with a floor button).
I have the design in my head I just need to build one.
Re: Paper is the real 'killer app'
#197I hate paper. No searching and highly losable. I'm also way faster on a keyboard than with a pen/pencil. In fact, I had to fax a hand written letter (yeah, don't ask) the other day and realized I'm now almost illiterate with this thing. I could draw very well as a kid, but my handwriting was always pitiful. But after years of neglect, the thing was illegible. I pity the poor person that would have to decifer the hier…
Partly it depends on the kind of writing/brainstorming I'm doing. I make lots of drawings in my notes, which is hard to do with a keyboard only app. Graphics tablets, even my Cintiq, which I use for actual drawing, don't have the responsiveness and clarity for note taking, diagram doodling, storyboarding, etc.
Plus, and this the real killer, the start up cost in time of using a tablet and graphic stylus are enormous compared to having paper and pencils handy on my desk. A cheap memo pad in my brief case is also handy. I've tried using my phone, but keyboard input on a phone, while I'm sitting somewhere away from office requires a minimum dedicated effort.
A lot of stuff gets lost when you have to overcome those startup costs. Even unlocking my phone with the thumb sensor contributes to me _not_ reaching for my phone when I've had a thought.
Re: Paper is the real 'killer app'
#198There definitely is an appeal to the analog and the idea of slowing down to be more creative and productive. Photography is a hobby of mine. I own a Nikon D500, which is one of Nikon's flagship professional DSLR cameras. It can shoot at 10 frames per second with a buffer of 200 shots. The storage cards hold thousands of images. All of this is great when you're shooting high-speed action where every shot in a short ti…
You can buy a 1Gb SD card for every photo session, and throw it to garbage after it's full.
Don't lie to yourself, you just like film and paper itself, and all that stuff and smells around the process. :-) (me too)
Re: Paper is the real 'killer app'
#199This is ridiculous. Are people this short-sighted? I keep hearing about people going back to paper agenda or simple text files for todos. I would understand if they said they couldn't find a better solution, but many of them claim that this is an improvement over any digital solution. Again, nobody seems to be tackling this. Not even YC mentions this problem.
You seem to have implicitly made a jumbled mass of claims without supporting any of them. I can't quite tell what claims. It seems you contend that you need more complicated solutions for a better task tracking solution than paper or text files can offer. At some point, you reach the point of not getting any more marginal utility by making your planning system more complicated. The mental energy you put into the deal…
> Bill Gates, shockingly, built Microsoft without a GTD planner. Trump became president of the united states without one. I don't find this premise at all convincing.
I can walk all the way to Argentina. Does that make planes any less useful?
> Paper, as mentioned by the article, can stimulate different parts of the brain. No app can match that.
Bullshit.
> You seem to react with shock to the notion without addressing the actual shortcomings in any constructive way.
I can't believe nobody has managed to tackle perhaps the most important problem (GTD) using computers. I truly can't accept that this is true. I must be missing something.
You are correct. My comment was not constructive at all. There's nothing I want more than a discussion about making the world better through proper GTD tools.
Re: Paper is the real 'killer app'
#200I've found journaling on paper to be one of the best morning rituals for calming anxiety. It really is amazing how just writing a few sentences creates a sense of awareness of what's going on in your head. I also tried bullet journaling as my 'system', but quickly abandoned it. It is great if you're not a compulsive to-do list maker, but if you follow a GTD-like system where you frequently capture, it becomes onerous…
Interesting. I wonder how useful journaling would be to help combat insomnia. I will give it a go next time I am lying in bed at 2am with my head buzzing..
So I moved to paper note taking a month and a half ago, and it's helped with work-anxiety. It's not a cure-all either, the hardest part is changing your habits so that you still open the book to look at what you wrote down.