
Ask HN: Not a startup, what do you think of the craft & techniques? - ptramo
https://rdv.to/
======
dang
You'd be better off (1) posting this as a Show HN with a title that says what
the project is, and (2) adding a first comment to the thread giving the
backstory of how you came to work on this, and explaining what's different
about it. That tends to seed discussion in a much better direction.

If you do this, email hn@ycombinator.com and we might be able to help out a
bit.

~~~
ptramo
Thanks for your guidance. This is a super early effort and I'm very grateful
for the feedback I already received, but I will certainly better follow
guidelines next round and appreciate the implicit second shot to get more
hackers involved in the conversation.

------
sokoloff
What I think is your headline gave so little information that, though I did
click, I almost immediately clicked away because, well, you didn’t guide me in
any meaningful way to what “craft and techniques” might be interesting to
news.yc readers.

I experienced it as pretty close to click-bait overall.

~~~
benjaminsuch
Have to agree, you need to read and scroll a lot to somehow get an idea what's
the site about. I left too pretty quickly.

~~~
ptramo
Yes, to be honest at this stage I'm not looking for feedback from people who
won't invest a bit more time in it than you have as I'm sharing a lot of ideas
in little space and they probably take a bit to digest depending on your
expertises, but thanks for trying. I guess anything being exposed in that
document is fair game, including the soundness of the ideas exposed (however
limited their current exposure), their applicability, how to improve visual &
textual communication are areas where I would more than welcome feedback.

------
stevage
I spent a little while reading, but I still have absolutely no idea what this
is.

> At the end of the day, cryptography applied to rebuilding JWT+JWS for the
> people, distributed messaging over WebSocket and WebRTC, sharing abstracted
> Git refs, a few URL tricks & QR codes for link sharing. >Make it easy to
> integrate your platform and to your platform. Think and share components
> over entire apps, build around local state and synchronization. Use the
> standard web & GraphQL. >To think silo = identity -> code + state & build
> distributed systems as pools of state machines behind queues,

I'm at least passingly familiar with all those things (except JWS), but I
still can't connect the dots. What do Git refs have to do with websockets?

What does "Think and share components over entire apps" even mean?

This reads a little bit like someone got high, had some major epiphanies, and
is trying to communicate them with the world with a lot of hand-waving.

Hopefully there's some good ideas under there, they need much more refining
and distilling before announcing them in this fashion though.

~~~
ptramo
> I'm at least passingly familiar with all those things (except JWS), but I
> still can't connect the dots. What do Git refs have to do with websockets?

It is my intimate belief that they compose well to build powerful platforms.
If they had a lot to do with each other I'd probably use one or the other.

> What does "Think and share components over entire apps" even mean?

I'd suggest finding legos and a friend and learning of ways to compose scenes
together. Not trying to infantilize you and sorry if I sound condescending,
but I think it's the experience closest to what I'm trying to achieve that
many can relate to.

> This reads a little bit like someone got high, had some major epiphanies,
> and is trying to communicate them with the world with a lot of hand-waving.

Thanks? Hopefully my hands can slowly calm down.

> Hopefully there's some good ideas under there, they need much more refining
> and distilling before announcing them in this fashion though.

I don't think "sharing a link on HN" requires much anything, but thanks for
sharing your opinion. It helps me to see the elements take place in some
context to iterate on them, this is early work.

------
gwbas1c
Three thoughts:

\- I'm not really sure what you're proposing? You really need pictures /
mockups. Maybe even 15-second animations that show the flows that are in your
imagination?

\- IMO, the big problem with social networks is how they spread
misinformation. I personally believe that the "credibility" problem is more
important than trying to build a decentralized Facebook.

\- Don't let your imagination run away!

BTW, as someone else mentioned, this really should be a "Show HN."

~~~
ptramo
> BTW, as someone else mentioned, this really should be a "Show HN."

Sorry for missing the etiquette, I'll know better next time.

> \- IMO, the big problem with social networks is how they spread
> misinformation. I personally believe that the "credibility" problem is more
> important than trying to build a decentralized Facebook.

Certainly food for thoughts I've already had but haven't centered on. I do
think they're something around cryptographic identities and chains of trust
that X509 was trying to achieve for telcos and E-mail that we can beat for the
modern web.

Many thanks for the encouraging feedback.

~~~
gwbas1c
> Certainly food for thoughts I've already had but haven't centered on. I do
> think they're something around cryptographic identities and chains of trust
> that X509 was trying to achieve for telcos and E-mail that we can beat for
> the modern web.

Cryptography doesn't solve the problem of misinformation.

Or, technology doesn't solve political problems.

------
exdsq
I didn't quickly understand what this was showing me so clicked off. I have a
short attention span! The title should be more informative, have a shorter
landing page, and make it obvious why I should read it :)

~~~
ptramo
100% somehow labelling is always the last thing I tweak. Thanks, I've been
thinking platform and slowly turning to initial "product(s)", so it's good to
be reminded of the essentials. That being said if you're waiting for a landing
page it's gonna take a while. The point of RDV is that every "rendezvous" is
one so I don't really need mine.

------
cpach
This should probably be a ”Show HN” :)

~~~
ptramo
Thanks, not HN-cultured enough when I posted, won't repeat this now-permanent
mistake.

------
zwaps
The scrolling light effect makes my head hurt.

~~~
ptramo
Thank you for getting back to me and sorry for the bad experience, this sounds
terrible! Would you think wrong amount(s), wrong timing, wrong effect(s)? Does
you browser prefer dark or light backgrounds (did the background go very dark
or very light when you scrolled)? If you care to emulate the other through eg
Chrome DevTools, does this affect your opinion?

~~~
zwaps
It‘s like a strong light shines from behind the background.

------
deltaveedaddy
That alpha-blend or whatever happens as you scroll is incredibly obnoxious. I
nearly clicked away and ignored this because it's so awful.

The grammar of the page suggests an asocial author with limited social skills,
and perhaps a misunderstanding of what the objective of a landing page is for.

""" We only earn real customer money, at any cost. Free or $10/year, later
adjusted with you to follow our expenses. """

It boggles my mind that you'd consider writing this, in this manner, to try
and attract interest. It sounds clunky, complicated, awkward, mechanical;
there's really not enough adjectives to capture this page's problems.

Then you have a picture of code (you've automatically disqualified yourself
far before now, but an image of code instead of <code> blocks will always lose
my interest, personally)

To summarize, this is horrendous, and you can do better.

The first three seconds of this webpage are losing 99% of your prospects. Not
that your page even explains what your product is anyways, but for clarity's
sake:

Famous image in the background, that's distracting, is this an art project?

"TAKING THEM SOON" What does that mean? It sounds vaguely threatening, or
maybe the author is just illiterate.

Scrolling down beyond that results in a flashbang exploding before my face, so
I'd leave.

0/10

~~~
dang
Please don't be a jerk in HN comments, especially when commenting on someone
else's work. The damage you do exceeds the help you give.

Don't forget that, in an "objects in mirror are closer than they appear" sort
of way, it's easy to seem like a much larger asshole in internet comments than
one seems to oneself. If you don't want to come across this way, you need
apply a corrective transformation to avoid it. (And if you do want to come
across this way, you shouldn't be doing it on HN.)

If you wouldn't mind reviewing
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.

