Hacker News: robla

New comment by robla in "Show HN: Margin – A lightweight, flexible markup language for structured thought"

robla — Mon, 11 May 2020 22:53:53 +0000

> Org-mode is awesome. But only in the context of Emacs.

Really? I agree with [Karl Voit 2017 essay](https://karl-voit.at/2017/09/23/orgmode-as-markup-only/) regarding that. To quote:

> You can type Org mode in vim, notepad.exe, Atom, Notepad++, and all other text editors out there. And in my opinion it does have advantages compared to the other, common lightweight markup standards such as Markdown, AsciiDoc, Wikitext or reStructuredText.

Voit then provides a very compelling case for why Org-mode syntax is a well-designed [lightweight markup language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_markup_language), and works well outside of Emacs.

New comment by robla in "Interesting Tech Markets for 2019"

robla — Wed, 09 Jan 2019 15:14:24 +0000

It seems to me that tools for creating large scale projects is a big opportunity. Not everyone who creates a "little Rube Goldberg machine" is a hopeless idiot who is pleased with their creation. Some of them will aspire to create bigger, better machines, and will prefer to spend their time trying to build them instead of setting up a meeting with an incumbent salesperson.

New comment by robla in "Why There Will Never Be Another Red Hat: The Economics of Open Source (2014)"

robla — Mon, 29 Oct 2018 16:09:00 +0000

Agreed. My theory: the market will only sustain a finite amount of revenue by open source software creators. That amount grows 20-30% per year as competing business models collapse and as customers learn the value proposition, but there is a ceiling. Red Hat has been brilliant about identifying the market segments that were ripe for an open source player, and entering those markets (often via acquisition).

There might be room for another Red Hat now that Red Hat will no longer be independent. IBM may have just legitimized Red Hat as a top-tier player.

That is, of course, if IBM still has the clout and capitalization to be considered a top-tier player. 20 years ago, it would have been considered funny to say "IBM is great and all, but they're no Apple". My oh my have times changed.

New comment by robla in "Monica – Personal CRM, Remember everything about friends and family"

robla — Sun, 28 Oct 2018 13:47:42 +0000

I'm looking for systems that have Orgmode compatibility, since some really cool personal PIM apps that don't require emacs are starting to gain traction. Orgzly, for example, is a really good hierarchical notetaker mobile app. The orgmode-compatible tools still have some rough edges, but the usability issues look solvable. Does Monica have any sort of Orgmode support?

New comment by robla in "Tell HN: Winners of Apply HN for YC Fellowship 3"

robla — Sat, 07 May 2016 22:18:42 +0000

You also get Republican nominees named "Donald Trump". https://medium.com/@ginsudo/president-trump-is-your-fault-e5...