Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

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Yup. Also, I've been reading the feature list at https://biorender.com/features, and seeing this:

  SECURE, TEAM BASED COLLABORATION
  Store illustrations in our secure web-based application, forever
  Share illustrations with your lab, team or organization
  Add or remove team members as needed
  Secure, web-based portal that auto-saves your work as you go

my first thought was literally: I don't want this; that's what files are for. I don't want yet another collaboration platform, on which I have to manage users. I don't want yet another piece of data locked in to a random vendor of uncertain expected lifetime. These features are better handled by Dropbox/Box/other file syncing services.

This is not to deny that they did a nice and important job with these icons. They did. But they're also part of an annoying trend of "take what should be desktop software, move it on-line, slap on some 'collaboration' feature, enjoy recurring pricing and taking users' data hostage".

I tend to whine a lot about SaaSS and user control, but even ignoring that, I wish we could remove the platform part from SaaS(S). There's no user benefit from each vendor doing their own half-assed reimplementation of a shared file system. There's only increased account management headache, and loss of data ownership.

When academic teams collaborate on a paper or a poster, what do you think would be more useful- real-time WYSIWYG editor or "here's the file, make the changes you want and then let me know"? Github/Invision/Figma or file servers?

Having worked as a researcher, I can tell you it's the latter.

Why?

Because these teams have never used (eg) google slides to put together a presentation from 3 different continents

I have, and I’ll never go back to PowerPoint. Not coincidentally, my lab uses biorender all the time and it saves us an absurd amount of time. We often paste directly from biorender images into google slides. Yeah it’s pedestrian, but it works really, really well.

Ask the penny pinchers who look down their nose at this who funds them, how many R01s/R37s/equivalents they hold, etc. $400 for a decently run lab is jack shit. Unless you’re buying Rain-X by the gallon at Sam’s Club and silanizing your own float glass for gels, I suspect there are other expenditures that offer less marginal value. YMMV, but it probably won’t.

These guys are doing well because they solved a long standing problem that is worth a lot to a large group of people to make it go away. Every single signup I’ve seen went like this:

“How’d you put that together in 5 minutes?”

“We used biorender.”

“What’s biorender?”

“A web application that helps put biomedical illustrations together. If something is missing, you ask and they add it.”

(Couple days pass)

“Hey we just signed up for it too. Thanks!”

YMMV, again. But probably not.

Part of the concern though is that should biorender shut down, for whatever reason (or some other human factor comes into play), you may lose access to anything stored there. You are also entirely dependent on access to that service. This is in contrast to a desktop application - YOU control the data and access to the service. It would be completely doable to have collaborative features built into that too without needing a third party to be involved, just not as profitable.

It's bad enough that we have to deal with Elseveir - we really should not be encouraging stuff like this when it is not necessary as a general principle.

I download the illustrations (duh?). That’s the value. I don’t actually care about the service per se. Once the illustrations are in the paper/talk, the value has been realized, for my lab.

Nothing in this world lasts forever. I’m ok with that. Software undergoes bit rot, and services shut down. For us, the value is simply that we can communicate complicated experimental designs and results, clearly and effectively, without a lot of application training or other bullshit. That’s worth a LOT to my lab.

We release almost everything open source, and are militant open data proponents. We also like to remind people “if it breaks, you get to keep the pieces”. The value of this service isn’t in the pieces.

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