th0rgall

I've learned to live with having WireGuard/Tailscale on all the time on my own devices. But for giving (extended) family & friends access to shared albums with Immich, it's too impractical to configure and explain widely. I've been using a Cloudflare Tunnel for this situation with their "Zero Trust" email-based authentication. It probably won't work with the Immich mobile app though, since I doubt that client can handle Cloudflare's interstitial login screen.

Related statement from the Executive Director of Open Collective Europe (OCE): https://opencollective.com/europe/updates/regarding-the-anno...

I'm personally the admin of a (very small) OCF collective. It's sad to see them stopping. When starting the collective ~2 years ago, OCF was an attractive option because of their fees, which were significantly lower than many other big fiscal hosts (5% instead of 10%). Their array of services was also impressive, but I never made use of any service outside the core Open Collective feature set. I wonder if raising their fees, or cutting down services, would have made the operation more sustainable.

Thanks for posting this! I'm the admin of an OCF-hosted Collective, but I didn't receive that email yet.

I couldn't agree more! I'm working at https://readup.com/, we're making a general-purpose reading app where reads-to-completion are the basis for monetization as opposed to clicks or views. Together with reader ratings it really helps to reduce (even eliminate) clickbait.

I think our missions are quite aligned! We're mostly trying to incentivize & monetize the deep reading of medium- & long-form stories on the web. If that's something Forth is also going into (next to streams of shorter updates?), we may be able to collaborate!

Interesting concept, might try it! I've used Quitter (https://marco.org/apps) for months to auto-quit my email app & Slack after a time interval. This is a more proactive approach.

You'd still have the issue of being able to open multiple browser tabs, and they can be more distracting than apps. But there are already plenty of browser extensions for that; personal fav: the Defaulter in https://github.com/louisbarclay/nudge (unfortunately temporarily unmaintained)

Nice, thanks! Apt timing. Easier than the grep & find commands I've been struggling with yesterday for the ua-parser-js debacle (though it's probably a virtue to know those!).

Replying on your other comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28869067) > Freemium model: advertisement based, with a subscription fee for some extra content personalization.

Have you also considered integrating with pre-existing web monetization models? I'm thinking mostly of Coil, but also Brave Rewards/Flattr/...

Cool! Reminds me of speed-reading tools, but those ususally only keep a few words in focus, not whole paragraphs. This is almost the opposite, way more relaxed!

What really helps me with reading long articles online is a little "% read" counter in readup.com. This app tries to track exactly what you're reading. The feeling of getting credit for actually reading something adds motivation to read it, and helps me get through small moments of distraction (disclaimer: I'm working for Readup. Here's how that tracking works! https://blog.readup.com/2020/11/02/how-readup-knows-whether-...)

Interesting! Do you then move on to reading "normally" after applying this method to the first few pages? Seems tough to stick with for a whole reading session.

Reading physical books also may to be correlated to higher, active comprehension: "human beings need a knowledge of where they are in time and space that allows them to return to things and learn from re-examination" (article with related discussion https://readup.com/comments/the-guardian/skim-reading-is-the...)

Stretch goals: I'll throw in a desktop version as well (mac first).

Makes sense! Because it does force me to context-switch if I have to open a browser to consult my notes. Browsers are notoriously distracting as well.

The browser extension looks good and functions well, but for me it would be more useful as a front-end to an existing note taking app (in my case, Notion).

Another thing I noticed: keyboard events while typing in a note seem to still be sent to the underlying page, which may react weirdly to that.

In addition to what Jeff said, from the reader's point of view, Readup's mission is to make a home for deep reading on the internet first. It's not only ad-blocking and monetizing for creators. We already have article discovery/ranking based on our read tracking algorithm, and future developments will improve the reading experience even more. For example, by being able to construct your own feeds with your favorite RSS & newsletter sources, topped up with our metadata, or expanding on the ability to organize & curate your reading socially. A comparison with "the next Pocket" might be appropriate from that perspective, or to a "Spotify for reading" (a nice read on this trend: https://readup.com/read/protocol/spotify-for-readers-how-tec...).

Our universal monetization model indeed draws comparisons to Coil, Brave Rewards, Flattr, Twitter Blue... we have in common that we try to make the web more ethical & sustainable. For a writer or publisher, we're one more monetization source for which they don't have to do extra work. And we come with a community of readers that you can interact deeply with (example: https://readup.com/comments/organizer-sandbox/ginny-our-litt...).

Coil had [an article discovery Reddit-clone](https://coil.com/blogs), but they have moved that to [Write.as](https://write.as/) now. I invite you to look at Readup's ranking and compare what you see!

Hey all, Thor from Readup here! I started reading on Readup in Dec. 2019, when it was still just a browser extension and tiny web app. Readup gradually opened a new world for me: the variety and quality of articles I found made me read much more, and more deeply.

Readup hit all the right chords. The read-before-you-comment and ranking algorithm was a great response to my frustration with incumbent social media, and Readup could feed my curiosity like no other venue. Over the course of 2020 I got to know Bill & Jeff better, and in June this year I took a serious leap quitting my job to join the team. I blogged about all that in more detail here https://blog.readup.com/2021/09/08/why-I-joined-readup.html. Glad to answer any questions!

That sounds more like the ultimate goal of Facebook and Twitter.

In contrast, Apple's ultimate goal is to sell more devices and get more people onto their subscription services.

The ideas mentioned in the article don't collide with this goal. They are intended to provide more (not less) value to the lives of Apple's customers. To help you when you yourself recognize you're engaging too much, or in a bad way. They seem to be configurable to the customer's preferences too. If you wouldn't want these features, fine, but others might want them, and prefer Apple's products over e.g. Android phones because of having the option.

The only party who could be displeased with these system interventions are the big ad-based app or platform developers that do rely on user engagement.

Update: Apple has some shared incentives with engagement-based business models, like their revenue stream of App Store (in-)app purchase commissions, but it's still much less than Google/Facebook/Twitter's reliance on that stuff.

I really like the ideation here (and in the HN comments!). They're not the first to come up with most of these ideas though, the Nudge extension (https://nudgeware.io/) already has nudges against infinite scroll & other interventions for Twitter/Facebook/, and there are plenty of "app blocker" apps out there (for App Conditions). Still, I liked to see concrete designs on how Apple could make improvements that only they have the power to implement: the persuasive design settings, the Time Well Spent/Regret Tax.

But the problem is broader and more systemic than Apple can address I'm afraid. "persuasive design" is a direct result of ad-based attention-seeking business models. We need purposeful social apps like https://readup.com or Strava, whose business model incentives are directly aligned with our wellbeing. I'm spending 4-10 hours reading on Readup weekly, and I invariably consider that Time Well Spent (https://readup.com/@thorgalle).