Hacker News: maguay

When France gave away terminals, and a dozen email services bloomed

maguay — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 09:02:22 +0000

Article URL: https://buttondown.com/blog/minitel-email

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50150072

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Email isn't decentralized, and that's fine

maguay — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 10:05:08 +0000

Article URL: https://buttondown.com/blog/deliverability-and-decentralization

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50003916

Points: 2

# Comments: 2

Apple and a hacker's future

maguay — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 10:05:02 +0000

Article URL: https://stratechery.com/2026/apple-and-a-hackers-future/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49962857

Points: 300

# Comments: 249

New comment by maguay in "Everybody’s home. No one’s coming over"

maguay — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 02:46:24 +0000

One of my favorite "you can just do things" experiences was one day thinking it'd be nice if our friend group had a group Christmas party ... and then just starting one. Kept it going five or so years, faded out after a while after people started taking turns and logistics piled up, but I'm proud of having pulled it off.

But man do they take a lot of time, money, and dedication to pull off well.

New comment by maguay in "Ray Ozzie and the Optimism of Being Early"

maguay — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 03:11:39 +0000

Author here, yikes, sorry about that. Going to go get that fixed.

Ray Ozzie and the Optimism of Being Early

maguay — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 09:57:26 +0000

Article URL: https://reproof.app/blog/lotus-notes-history

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49738518

Points: 40

# Comments: 31

New comment by maguay in "Lotus Notes and the dangers of starting from scratch"

maguay — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 13:44:17 +0000

Absolutely, but it came several years before MIME for example for formatted emails with attachments, and other things.

New comment by maguay in "Lotus Notes and the dangers of starting from scratch"

maguay — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 12:01:42 +0000

Author here, the idea with the title was that Lotus Notes was built at a time when the standards for email especially but also interfaces and keyboard shortcuts were still in flux, and it was built for so many platforms at the same time, all of which contributed to many of the complaints about its interface seeming like a mess. It was starting from scratch with opinionated takes about how the software should work, and that’s a tough spot to build in (and which partly accounts for both the fond and bad memories that both typically surface whenever Lotus Notes is mentioned).

Lotus Notes and the dangers of starting from scratch

maguay — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 10:01:15 +0000

Article URL: https://buttondown.com/blog/lotus-notes-email

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49623937

Points: 186

# Comments: 128

Write Things Down

maguay — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 11:19:48 +0000

Article URL: https://stratechery.com/2026/write-things-down/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49608748

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Have We Forgotten How to Design?

maguay — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 03:29:59 +0000

Article URL: https://lmnt.me/blog/have-we-forgotten-how-to-design.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49428773

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

Show HN: Reproof – A non-linear writing app for perfectionists

maguay — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 09:30:07 +0000

Hey HN! I've written more words on the internet than I could count, for everyone from Zapier to Wirecutter. And for years it's bugged me that nearly every writing app still treats the writing surface as a linear sheet of paper, with paragraphs one after another and no space for experimentation.

And so I and a friend build Reproof.app as what I've taken to calling a writing app for perfectionists.

It's built around paragraph versions. You can add new versions to any paragraphs and swap between them to see how the different takes read in context. You can cut a paragraph as a clipping to save it for later. It’s a writing app that lets you experiment without losing any of your ideas along the way.

It took four complete rewrites before we finally found an approach that worked well (don’t reinvent the text editor, they say, yet we tried, and even with Tiptap it still was harder than it should have been). But it’s here. You can write and rewrite to your heart’s content in Reproof today, with writer-focused features like equal support for rich text and markdown (and HTML; you can copy in either format anytime), a command palette to keep your hands on the keyboard, side-by-side documents to have notes on one side and your document on the other, and a proofreading tool to catch things you might not other (with suggestions, but no AI rewriting, as I believe humans should still be doing their own writing, with AI as a sidekick to catch typos and other mistakes). And there’s a lot more coming.

Would love your feedback, if you have a chance to try it!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49343323

Points: 5

# Comments: 1

New comment by maguay in "Picking berries is my meditation"

maguay — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 12:48:47 +0000

Washing dishes, strangely, hits that for me. One of the reasons I've never found dishwashers to be worth it.

Private Email Is Fine

maguay — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 07:52:18 +0000

Article URL: https://buttondown.com/blog/hide-your-email

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49282917

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by maguay in "Don't use your phone while you poop"

maguay — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 15:09:06 +0000

There are dozens of us!

New comment by maguay in "A Sick People"

maguay — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 14:19:42 +0000

I'm living in Thailand, the self-declared Land of Smiles, and ... it's not very smiley.

I visit Japan, which social media seems to say is a terrible place to work and make friends, and it strikes me as much more friendly and outgoing. Same when I'm in the States, where I find it far easier to strike up a random conversation and enjoy the nods on the sidewalk.

Somehow I think the core differences is wherever you spend the most time, the gilding wears off and there's a core discontent underneath everything everywhere if you stay long enough.

The Economist Problem and AI

maguay — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 09:45:39 +0000

Article URL: https://pithandpip.com/blog/the-economist-problem-and-ai

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49180573

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Bending Spoons is acquiring Airtable for $1.285B

maguay — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 09:54:53 +0000

Article URL: https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/bending-spoons-makes-first-post-ipo-acquisition-with-13-billion-airtable-deal-2026-08-04/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49166340

Points: 11

# Comments: 1

New comment by maguay in "Ask HN: What apps are you building?"

maguay — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 03:55:36 +0000

I'm building a writing app for perfectionists: Reproof (https://reproof.app/)

I've been a writer for over a decade and a half. I'll often rewrite intros and other sections a half-dozen times, or cut quotes and bits that don't quite fit, only later to wonder if an earlier take was better.

I built Reproof to solve this. Every paragraph is versioned, so you can rewrite paragraphs and switch between the takes to see which sounds better. There's a clipping pane on the bottom, to cut things and save them just in case you find a spot to include them later. And there are a bunch of writer-focused features: Write and copy text in either rich text or Markdown, open two documents side-by-side and find/replace between both, selective find/replace to edit only some of the results, command palette to search across everything, daily versioned backups, and more. And lots more to come.

Nearly every other writing app is a digital piece of paper with linear paragraphs. Reproof instead lets you explore the best way to write what you're trying to say.

New comment by maguay in "It's getting harder to focus every day"

maguay — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 09:43:34 +0000

Ahhh this too. Love flights without WiFi.