new_here

If a government formally announces a name change for one of its cities and provides an English spelling for the new name then that should probably be respected, like it has been done in the example on Google Maps.

It is definitely political. In this case they're resetting the original name that was anglicised when they were colonised. Would it not be courteous to respect that?

This looks like 133 startup memes rolled into a PDF.

That is also true, however in this case the Indian government did officially rename Bangalore to Bengaluru in 2014 in order to drop the anglicised version of Bangalore. Yet many people still refer to it as Bangalore.

For example, Google Maps redirects Bangalore to Bengaluru, whereas it does not for Moscow.

Bengaluru: https://www.google.com/maps/place/bangalore

Moscow: https://www.google.com/maps/place/moscow

Two weeks ago I was on a flight into London. While we were coming down through some clouds I was looking out of the window for a clearing when I saw an almost blinding purple flash which was followed by a loud crack. I looked forward with pure panic in my eyes at the airhost who was smiling, he calmly informed me that we had just been struck by lighting. Apparently, it's not uncommon and planes are designed to withstand it. I learnt something new that day.

Is it just me or does this page not scroll in Firefox?

So many founders have warped expectations of overnight success, myself included. This probably comes from all the Techcrunch style articles we read about viral product launches and massive raises. 10 weeks is not a lot of time, especially if you are bootstrapping a social network. I've been doing it for about two years and only now am I starting to see some traction and figure out how it all works. I don't mind though because it's a labour of love that I fund thorugh my day job.

One thing I've realised though is that the barrier to entry for creating a social network has gone up significantly, because when users come to your network they expect the same experience that they get from other networks like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Quora, Github, LinkedIn, Medium and so on. Things like:

- A highly relevant, non-repetitive newsfeed of fresh stimulating content.

- Customizable and respectful notifications

- Super tight privacy

- Rich UIs for creating content and comments

- Openness (RSS, ActivityPub etc.)

If you aren't able to deliver the same experience as venture funded social networks as a bootstrapped 2 person team, users typically bail. This in turn stops the network from growing and becoming more useful. Many companies like Quora, LinkedIn and Medium also pay people full-time salaries to produce content that brings people in.

Awesome! Well done and thanks for sharing.

This has now been added to user profiles and posts.

Permissions have been fixed.

That’s an awesome idea! Would need to request write permissions though and most users are wary of this. Thoughts?

OMG, I feel an ulcer developing just from reading that story. Thanks for posting!

Reminds me of that 2 million LOC monstrosity someone once commented on an ASK HN about the worst codebase they’ve ever seen.

Btw, there are some duplicate paragraphs in the article that are probably worth trimming out. Search for “Contract arrives, I sit down with COO and CFO and explain that we have been duped.“

Give us 24 hours. Will reply once it’s sorted.

Hey there, all that info is here in our manifesto: https://able.bio/about

Hope that helps.

Apologies, we’ll tighten that up. We only want social auth to streamline onboarding.

Check out ProseMirror.

It’s not. We don’t have to grow at all costs for investors. You can read our manifesto here: https://able.bio/about

This is actually a really cool idea.

Thank you! There isn't, but if you just use the site and spread the word about what we're trying to do that is more than enough :)

Yes, we want to support this too and will be looking into it.

Great tip, will definitely add that!

Agree that everyone should have their own site but we just want to create another corner on the web where you can read and write interesting, well presented content and find jobs etc.

You're also welcome to cross-post to Able to help build an audience to your blog too. One thing we don't want to do is bait and switch users like other venture funded companies have done recently. We just want to build a good community and charge businesses to advertise jobs to good people.

I understand your skepticism though, hopefully over time we can prove that not everyone has to play that game.

You can read more about our intentions and business model here: https://able.bio/about

Thanks so much for your support. We hope it becomes a useful place for the community. Always keen to hear feedback.

We'll charge businesses to advertise their vacancies, so we don't have to get in the way of developers/users.

It should ask you what notifications you'd like to receive during the onboarding process and you can just check the 'Digest' box. Did that not show up for you?

Thanks for the feedback, we're still quite a small site so our authority still needs to grow. Google has said that TLD's shouldn't affect ranking.

I didn't know there about the issues in Asia, thanks for mentioning this.

We've looked into the use of bio and there was a case where they considered it to be appriopriate for biographical purposes.

Ultimately though, we do want to get a better tld. I just can't afford it on my current salary :) - suggestions are welcome.

Thanks, will fix that.

> Also, why .bio? Sounds like biotech web site.

Because we couldn't afford the .com and .io wouldn't sell. So we had to get creative. The idea is that your able bio can be found at able.bio/username

Just for individual users at the moment. You can find them on user profiles or at the bottom of articles.

When we launch support for publications you'll be able to follow the publication feed too.

Would you want a feed for all articles?

Yes.

Thanks for the feedback! We're busy working on RSS imports right now and should have something up in a day or two. We're open to ActivityPub too but this might take a bit longer just because we're building Able in our spare time.

Ultimately, we want to create a great place for developers and then charge businesses to advertise their job vacancies to that community. Because we're self-funded we don't have pressure to grow at all costs but we'll need the support from the developer community if we want to turn this into a sustainable business.

We're self-funded, so we don't need or want to push for a billion dollar exit. We just want to be a sustainable business and resource for developers online. You can read more about our intentions and business model here: https://able.bio/about

Publish on your Own Site Syndicate Elsewhere.