
The Macro - BIackSwan
http://macro.ycombinator.com
======
rileywatkins
Hacker News Highlights[0] is something I didn't even know I needed. There's
some great content to be found here (including some insightful comments), but
the sheer volume of content means I'm probably missing out on most of it.

[0] [http://macro.ycombinator.com/articles/2015/11/hacker-news-
hi...](http://macro.ycombinator.com/articles/2015/11/hacker-news-highlights/)

~~~
jt2190

      > the sheer volume of content means I'm probably missing 
      > out on most of it.
    

I guess I'm one of those old-timers who misses the days when the submissions
were more focused on startups and less about government policy, macro
economics, and whatever else. (I'm quite biased toward consuming information
that is _useful_ and _actionable_ rather than merely _interesting_ , so I
realize that puts me at odds with the site's stated policy.)

(edit: phrasing)

~~~
tptacek
1000000000% agree. I think the site is pretty bad at hosting political
discussions, and, worse, that the resulting discussions are tedious. There are
very few long-time readers of HN who can honestly say they'd have a hard time
predicting what HN will say about any given political issue.

~~~
krapp
For example - any thread even tangentially related to the Paris attacks
recently. There are probably still subthreads simmering over whether Islam is
really a death cult or no more evil than Christianity or whether the West
really had it coming, or whether maybe we should just nuke all of Asia and be
done with it. Except really it was all a false flag operation by the New World
Order because Snowden. For a while, the comments page was practically toxic -
and every bit of it entirely predictable.

I'm starting to see now why some people say engineers can be prone to rigid
and extremist political views. When your day job requires you to prove things
to a certain degree of correctness, maybe it makes sense to believe the world
and people should work the same way. There seems to be far too much cynicism,
vitriol and condescension here around some subjects, and too many people who
seem to think those are the qualities of a keen intellect. Maybe politics is
one of those fields everyone just thinks they're an expert at.

~~~
mindcrime
_I 'm starting to see now why some people say engineers can be prone to rigid
and extremist political views._

I really don't see engineers being in any way unique in that regard.

------
loyalelectron
I'm Colleen, the editor of The Macro. Happy to answer any questions and hear
feedback!

~~~
wmeredith
No questions. Although as UI Designer/Developer with 10 years experience under
my belt, I have to say I'm in love with site's design. If the content matches
in caliber, we're in for a treat.

Best of luck!

~~~
loyalelectron
Thank you! Kevin Hale
([https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=kevin](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=kevin))
is the designer/developer. I love it too.

~~~
Falcon9
Went to check out Kevin's own website (roundedbygravity) and the css seems to
be 404ing.

------
zallarak
Really impressed by the fast page loads and readability. This matters more
than anything and they nailed it. I wish other publications thought like this.

~~~
sotojuan
It's amazing when websites that display text documents just use text and a bit
of CSS :-)

------
orbitur
I'm getting a Chrome ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED on all of the
"macro.ycombinator.com" links here. "ycombinator.com" works, however.

~~~
Jarred
Same

~~~
free2rhyme214
It was working a few minutes ago. I'm sure it'll be up soon.

------
rrtwo
[http://yc-macro-redirect.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/index.ht...](http://yc-
macro-redirect.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/index.html)

This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with
it. The document tree is shown below. <Error> <Code>AccessDenied</Code>
<Message>Access Denied</Message> <RequestId>...</RequestId> <HostId> ...
</HostId> </Error>

~~~
kevindeasis
Looks like someone forgot to add view permission for everyone.

~~~
rrtwo
getting this error on other articles too (e.g., [http://yc-macro-
redirect.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/articles...](http://yc-macro-
redirect.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/articles/2015/11/science-startups/))

------
justplay
use "cache:" in front of url in chrome. it will get the cache copy.

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sourceid=chrome...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sourceid=chrome-
psyapi2&ion=1&ie=UTF-8&q=cache%3Amacro.ycombinator.com&oq=cache%3Amacro.ycombinator.com&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.6536j0j4&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.&biw=1276&bih=682&dpr=2&ech=1&psi=_XFPVo6-DpSJuAS7mKaAAw.1448047102290.3&ei=_XFPVo6-DpSJuAS7mKaAAw&emsg=NCSR&noj=1)

~~~
sdegutis
Great pro tip. Thanks!

------
minimaxir
Why isn't there a comments section in the articles? :P

I'm surprised here isn't a link to the analogous HN thread, at the least.
(Akin to the implementation in Reddit's Upvoted)

Relatedly, there should be an official bot (like whoishiring) to auto-submit
themacro.com links to HN anyways to avoid race conditions for Karma.

~~~
loyalelectron
It was difficult to decide how to handle comments and whether to have them at
all, so we opted to just leave them out for now. I like both of those ideas --
adding in a link to an article's analogous HN thread, and the official submit
bot.

~~~
mbrock
Comment threads are infinite, sprawling, and often infuriating. It's nice to
have a peaceful place aside from that. Us commenters will find a way to
comment anyway.

~~~
noir_lord
Very much this, I use Ublock Origin to hide comments on all the news stuff I
consume since they are generally just noise that detracts from good content
(outside of specific sub-reddits and this place anyway).

~~~
delish
that's a great use! I'm gonna do that. I've been blocking headers and footers
of webpages because I have a 16:9 screen and need all the vertical space can
get. as "web 1.0" as it sounds, I love that I get to decide how webpages
appear on my computer.

------
mh-

        ;; QUESTION SECTION:
        ;macro.ycombinator.com.		IN	A
    
        ;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
        ycombinator.com.	831	IN	SOA	ns-225.awsdns-28.com. awsdns-hostmaster.amazon.com. 1 7200 900 1209600 86400
    
        ;; Query time: 60 msec
    

no A record here.

------
jakozaur
Y Combinator expands its media conglomerate:

1\. Starts from books "Founders at works".

2\. Startup School.

3\. Hacker News.

4\. Paul Graham essays.

5\. Startup class.

6\. Macro.

7\. ???, but already excited

~~~
TeMPOraL
N+1. An image sharing serivce that is to HN what imgur is to Reddit. For
posting screenshots of your startup's growth metrics.

~~~
msellout
For a moment I thought you were suggesting they produce something like N+1
Magazine ([https://nplusonemag.com/](https://nplusonemag.com/)), which is a
pretty awesome publication.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Never heard of it before, thanks!

------
jimbobimbo
Thank your for including RSS feed!

------
refrigerator
Cool idea. Little niggle though - the body font for articles etc. is a bit
illegible. I think removing "webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased" and letting
it default to "subpixel-antialiased" on the paragraph text makes it a lot
better: [http://imgur.com/sVPPPwK](http://imgur.com/sVPPPwK) (before/after
comparison).

------
ooshma
Ooshma here. Loving the new website. Was a crazy experience to open up with
Colleen on the inaugural Q&A. Thanks Colleen for an incredible interview, and
congrats Colleen, Kevin, and YC on a successful launch!

------
Walkman
I'm getting ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED error. Is it just me?

------
urs2102
Great name! I'm wondering if this will be like Reddit's Upvoted trying to
surface interesting content from Hacker News, or if this will be focused on
allowing submissions and collecting ideas to distribute as a publication?
Looking forward to seeing what comes out of it.

~~~
loyalelectron
I'm Colleen, the editor of The Macro. Thank you!

It's more focused on the latter, but there is a "Hacker News Highlights"
section that we'll probably update semi-regularly.

------
cheetos
This is wonderful. Looking forward to reading this in the future.

One suggestion to improve readability: use text-align: left instead of text-
align: justify on the body text.

------
TeMPOraL
Bug report: URLs are broken in the articles - they append to the article's
address. See e.g. [0].

EDIT: I've been seeing a steady increase of this particular bug on the
Internet, usually in blog and news articles. I wonder if this isn't a direct
consequence of browser vendors removing protocol from the address bar? I.e.
people just copy-paste a part of an address and don't notice that the browser
didn't append the protocol part.

[0] - [http://macro.ycombinator.com/articles/2015/11/science-
startu...](http://macro.ycombinator.com/articles/2015/11/science-startups/)

~~~
kevin
Oops. Fixing now. thanks for letting us know!

~~~
mancites
Hello Kevin,

In your article, I think there are 4 errors, which I surround with brackets:

1 This is a visual essay, which is [every] different.

2 [Everyone one] of those items is a piece of information.

3 Normally, it’s not ideal to show a slide with every potential [comeptitor]
out on the market.

4 However, these logos represent how annoying it would be for users to get
what they want [themsevles] using each of these companies.

Thanks for the article and design. (:

~~~
kevin
Great eyes. Thanks!

------
ericd
Mmmm so fast. The most important feature of a good site, outside of good
content, IMO. Nice work.

------
jacquesm
Strange use of a 'colofon', normally it lists information about the publisher
rather than just the fonts used to make the publication.

~~~
applecore
Historically, the term _colophon_ was also used to indicate the brief
statement at the end of a book with details about how it was printed.

~~~
jacquesm
Ah, I see. Ok, normally the 'colofon' pages I'm familiar with - especially
with publications like periodicals - will include that info but only as an
afterthought or a footnote, the 'meat' is the details behind the publisher,
addresses, people involved (editor) and so on.

------
fascinated
Had to read like 3x to realize it wasn't Marco's new project

~~~
rhubarbquid
I read it as "The Marco" at first too

------
edent
Could you please get https support?

macro.ycombinator.com uses an invalid security certificate. The certificate is
only valid for *.cloudfront.net

Thanks :-)

~~~
kevin
Yeah, we can do that.

------
blfr
I had no idea there's a Startup School Podcast.

[http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:150759713...](http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:150759713/sounds.rss)

------
david_mitchell
Would it be possible to have the macro available using the HN ui and
accessible from a link in the orange nav bar? (Don't read this as a criticism
of your design; I just think it would be more convenient).

------
DanBC
That's lovely. The Hacker News highlights is really nice. I was a bit confused
at first because I have images turned off.

But mostly I really love this. Thank you.

~~~
kevin
Ah. I'll add alt tags to those images and that should help you and other
fellow text browsers.

------
timdorr
Looks like the actual domain is going to be
[http://themacro.com/](http://themacro.com/)

------
jdoliner
Did pg have any influence on the name? I know that guy likes his macros.

Edit: Nvm, it says in a footnote that that is indeed an influence. I'm glad it
is.

~~~
loyalelectron
Yep! It was a really fun moment when I first told PG the name.

------
coetry
I'm so excited by this. The name, the simplicity, the overall vibes. Looking
forward to some quality content as the weeks go by.

------
spuiszis
Love the idea. I'm glad to hear they are using Middleman for the site, it has
been a joy to develop with. I highly recommend checking it out if you're
looking to build a static site [0].

[0]
[https://middlemanapp.com/basics/install/](https://middlemanapp.com/basics/install/)

------
aresant
Very cool!

Quick note on Kevin's article, I'm getting a 404 on the link titled "bottom of
the slide." w/link to:

[http://macro.ycombinator.com/images/ddaytips/ddaytips.034.jp...](http://macro.ycombinator.com/images/ddaytips/ddaytips.034.jpg)

~~~
kevin
Dang. Should be png.

[http://themacro.com/images/ddaytips/ddaytips.034-e3a53b28.pn...](http://themacro.com/images/ddaytips/ddaytips.034-e3a53b28.png)

Also, there is a bug I see.

------
SapphireSun
Haven't had a chance to read the articles yet, but I'm a fan of how well
designed the site feels while still feeling like I'm on hacker news. That
slight motion on the tab hover states feels very nice and the large orange
block of text is great. I can't help but read the headline.

------
carsongross
Excellent aesthetic.

HN looks charmingly terrible. TM pays homage to it, but is significantly
better looking.

Well done, designer.

------
fauigerzigerk
Excellent web design. Love it!

------
Geekette
Question for the Macro peeps: Does one still need to subscribe for the
publication if already on YC mailing list? My inbox is currently chaos land
and I want to avoid duplicate missives.

~~~
kevin
We'll be treating them as separate.

------
seancoleman
I noticed a typo in one of the articles. Any thought to open-sourcing the
Middleman repo so individuals can submit pull requests for fixes such as this?

------
raspasov
Does the logo have anything to do with Lisp macros? : )

~~~
livingparadox
Yep

[http://themacro.com/about/#r1](http://themacro.com/about/#r1)

See Note1 at the bottom

------
dandare
Showethough: Since supporting Nonprofits and Research @ycombinator is becoming
the real life Plus Ultra society (#Tomorrowland).

------
kepano
New Caledonia? Obviously Kevin is involved :)

------
avip
Looks sup. Note to FE chef: reader view seems broken on FF (article 'header'
missing).

------
kevindeasis
The link is down on my browser (DNS lookup failed).

------
avip
and... it's down.

