
The way we run Exist - troydavis
https://exist.io/blog/the-way-we-run-exist/
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codenutz
I've used Exist for a few years and love both the service and the way its run.
The design of the app is great, its reliable and continues to evolve, but the
biggest thing for me has been how open and transparent the dev team are.

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cube2222
The app looks nice, but really, do you think I'll readily hand so much data
over to a company which I barely know?

I do think this could be an amazing local-storage service though, not free,
still paid as a subscription model.

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bitwize
Yeah, everything will be hunky-dory until Belle and Josh are struggling to
make their mortgage payments, and Facebook comes calling.

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anonytrary
Why does this need to be centralized? This is like asking for the user's soul.
For the good of everyone, services need to start thinking offline-first, smh.
I would not use this service for the _exact_ same reason I never used
Facebook.

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santialbo
Asking for credit card details on a free trial is going to be a stopper for
new users.

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chatmasta
Clearly it wasn’t a show stopper for all their existing users, who are now
paying two engineers their salaries.

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santialbo
Well, it was for me. I read the blog post and decided I wanted to try it until
I had to add my cc details on the sign up form. If you are providing a one
month free trial why on earth do you need them?

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chatmasta
To protect against users creating a new account each month.

To be fair, though, I’m largely in agreement with you in this case. For
products like cloud infrastructure, where the company is fronting real costs,
the requirement makes sense to prevent abuse. But this product has low
marginal cost per user, and also loses all of its value if a user recreates
his account.

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santialbo
Why would I do so? the nice thing about this is to have the historical of
data. If I created a new account I would have to start over.

Unless, of course, you could import historial data somehow. But then maybe
just make that feature not available on trial.

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chatmasta
Exactly; that’s why I’m agreeing with you for this particular service. This
was what I was referring to when I said the product “loses all of its value if
a user recreates his account.”

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sAbakumoff
Does anyone here actually use this odd app? Why? Did it bring any improvements
in your life?

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codenutz
I use it. Its great for bringing together data from various self-tracking
sources and try to get some learning from them.

Why - several reasons. It means I go to one place to look at this data, and
its presented in a consistent way. It also helps try to drive meaning from all
this data by looking for correlations and commonalities.

Did it bring improvements. For me its helped me get in shape, its helped me
find things that have a knock-on effect to my mood and/or productivity.

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sAbakumoff
Interesting..if you mean physical shape, then I always thought that the most
effective way to "get in shape" is a simple discipline combined with the
primitive reward-system..Literally - just don't eat junk food, work out for 30
minutes per day and if you are happy about results, go ahead and reward
yourself by a piece of apple cake or whatever(reduce your normal intake to
keep everything balanced - for advanced users). This is so simple and so
effective that you don't need anything else - no trackers, no complex data
analysis or shrink visits. Amazingly a lot of people ignore this simple path
and try various tools like this "exist" thingie.

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codenutz
Obviously having discipline, exercising and not eating junk food is a big part
of it, and for many people that would be enough. What Exist helped me with on
this was keeping me motivated over a period of time and helping me identify
other things that were / are impacting my progress (e.g. sleep, work etc).
Clearly its not for everyone - but it is certainly something that I value, and
something that has helped me.

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sAbakumoff
Oh, I forgot about sleeping. Indeed it's the paramount and it's the most
difficult part. Sleep at least 7hrs per day, use the ear plugs and the
sleeping mask, don't take sleeping pills and stay away from taking melatonin
in capsules. Stop drinking liquids at least 2 hrs before going to bed. Use the
anatomic mattress and pillow.

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yinghang
> Stop drinking liquids at least 2 hrs before going to bed

Even water? What if you're thirsty? Any sources?

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sAbakumoff
To me it's just stop eating AND drinking at least 2 hrs before going to bed.
My most reliable source is "burn the fat feed the muscle" book that helped me
to endorse the healthy way of living this life...Here is the quote:

"I strongly recommend moving the last intake for the day as far away from
bedtime as you can. 3-4 hours is ideal, but at least 2-3. This increases the
length of the "fast" which in reality nighttime is - broken by breakfast.
Using this method consistently is one of the most effective ways to lower body
fat - and it doesn’t take a lot of effort"

