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jottoon Show HN: Page Replica – Tool for Web Scraping, Prerendering, and SEO Boost

A "static site" implies HTML rather than a JavaScript app.

With respect to JavaScript apps (React, Angular, etc.):

It's not clear these days because the major search engines don't explicitly clarify whether they parse JavaScript apps (or if they only parse high-ranking JS apps/sites. But 10 years ago it was a must-have to be indexed.

One theory on pre-rendering is it reduces cost for the crawlers since they don't need to spend 1-3s of CPU time pre-rendering your site. And by reducing costs, it may increase chances of being indexed or higher rank.

My hunch is that long-term, pre-rendering is not necessary for getting indexed. But it is typically still necessary for URL unfurls (link previews) for various social media and chat apps.

disclosure: I operate https://headless-render-api.com

jottoon Medium is not the home for your ideas

I made https://roast.io if you want a web host that auto-populates og:image with a screenshot

jottoon Modern Android is pretty secure

I feel that most OS (Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android) have continued to improve security but at the same time reduced privacy.

If that's true, is there a TailsOS equivalent for phones?

jottoon U.S. states lean toward breaking up Google's ad tech business

>you don't even pay for Google

You don't pay for Google with cash. You pay for Google by submitting your free will.

jottoon San Francisco, Silicon Valley rents plunge amid downturn

Curious, from what neighborhood to what neighborhood?

jottoon Next.js 9.4 – Fast Refresh, Incremental Static Regeneration

I'm going to shill my own product https://www.prerender.cloud because it's (mostly) solved this since Chrome headless was finally released in fall 2016.

If you can be patient enough to cache any state you might have in a special global var that gets serialized during the "server side render", then it works for any JavaScript framework that can rehydrate/reattach to SSR'd HTML.

jottoon Fed to buy junk bonds, lend to states in fresh virus support

"order of magnitude"?

* March 4th assets: 4.2T

* Today: 5.8T

* Proposed: 2.3T more

so that's 3.9T since March 4th. Doubling. Not "order of magnitude"

jottoon Ask HN: What projects are you working on now?

I'm definitely interested if you OSS, I wrote a little about it here: https://jonathanotto.com/linear-search-benchmark

jottoon Caffeine boosts problem-solving ability but not creativity, study indicates

I styled/modeled roast.io pricing page after Balzac and a few other famous coffee drinkers: https://www.roast.io/pricing

jottoon We Just Witnessed the Fastest Stock Market Correction on Record

Such a politely written counterargument.

jottoon Ask HN: What's your latest failed side project and why?

https://www.roast.io/

I launched it shortly after https://www.prerender.cloud, which server-side renders JavaScript SPAs, to make integration easier.

Prerender.cloud kind of sells itself, but roast.io does not. I've wondered if it appears too complex.

jottoon Building a more private web: A path towards making third party cookies obsolete

This will break a lot of auth0 jwt/login default integrations since it depends on 3rd party cookies.

jottoon Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

Do you have any recommended links/reading on this? (better understanding on the tradeoffs)

jottoon U.S. Goods Trade Deficit Declines to Smallest in Three Years

Why do you think there's not more discussion around forfeiting the privileged position? Or am I wrong, and is there a lot of discussion on it already?

jottoon U.S. Goods Trade Deficit Declines to Smallest in Three Years

Can you expand on why it would be pretty bad for the US?

jottoon Fed Adds $72.8B to Markets, Balance Sheet Moves to $4.07T

With this much printing (without requisite gains in GDP), it means there's already a problem, but we don't understand it yet.

jottoon Creating an open-source solution to the headaches of headless browsers

For a similar headless Chrome project launched around the same time, but with a price-per-api-request model, see https://www.prerender.cloud/ (PDFs, screenshots, pre-rendering). MRR is about the same.

jottoon Bill Gates Objects to Elizabeth Warren’s Wealth Tax, and She Offers to Explain

Clear your local storage, sessions, cookies, etc. for that particular domain. Chrome "developer tools" -> "application tab" -> "Clear storage"

jottoon Don't Use VPN Services

How often do you rotate the IP on the box you're proxying through?

jottoon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2019)

Messari | Senior Front End Engineer | New York, NY (NYC) | ONSITE | $130,000 - $175,000

We're building the front-page of crypto and looking for 1-2 experienced and opinionated front-end engineers who enjoy working with ReactJS, care about lightweight JavaScript payloads, fast renders, and minimal CPU usage (great client experience).

See the product at https://messari.io

We believe crypto will replace conventional infrastructure. If you want to help us accelerate that process (and live in NYC), email me and Qiao: jonathan@messari.io, qiao@messari.io

jottoon New York City Neighbors Build Cheaper Way to Connect to Web

some context on the primary ISP in NYC: 1 year ago (2018-07-27) Spectrum got "kicked out of NYC": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17628906

then in April 2019, managed to avoid getting kicked out by agreeing to expansion and paying a fine: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/04/charter-avoids-g...

jottoon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (August 2019)

Messari | New York, NY (NYC) | Onsite or Remote

We surface actionable info about blockchains via an API (time series, current, and real time via WebSockets) and a React web app. This currently includes market data, on-chain data, and qualitative information (Twitter, Github)... but we want to expand into a lot more (layer 2 networks, non-crypto, and metrics that are a function of other metrics)

example: how long does it take for a new version of a bitcoin client to propagate through the network? (implication: knowing how frequently members of a network update their client software reveals how quickly the network can adapt to new features or security fixes)

Stack: Kubernetes, Postgres, InfluxDB, Golang, Node.js, React/Typescript

Looking for people who are skeptical about crypto, have good OPSEC, and like to learn new things.

For backend people, we care about clean and performant APIs. You can choose to focus on on-chain data, ingestion infrastructure, or jump around across the backend.

For frontend/React people, we care about lightweight JavaScript payloads, fast renders, and minimal CPU usage (great client experience).

https://messari.io/careers

or email me and Qiao: jonathan@messari.io, qiao@messari.io

jottoon Google unlocks 33% of publisher paywalls on July 30

or the problem is aggregators (reddit, HN, twitter, fb)

jottoon A Black Hole Engulfing the World's Bond Markets

Can someone explain the basics? Why buy a bond if it loses money? Why not hold cash?

jottoon Understand the JavaScript SEO basics

I can confirm that they do not parse low ranking JavaScript sites, but they will parse higher ranking JavaScript sites.

Bots aside (Twitter and Slack still don't parse JS), it is still in your best interest to server-side render or pre-render a JavaScript site. The time-to-first-paint difference always starts small, but as you add features the JS apps become so bloated you'd be better off starting over with a server-side rendered HTML app.

(I am the creator of https://www.prerender.cloud/)

jottoon VAIO announces tiny laptop with tons of ports

Are the thermals that bad? My understanding is that they had a bad incident with a 6-core MBP in 2018, but they managed to fix it.

jottoon Ask HN: What happened to server-side rendering?

It's still relevant, just difficult. I think the herd jumped into SPAs before they understood the implications.

I was one who jumped in, then tried to automate my way out of client-side slow renders with https://www.roast.io/ (uses a headless browser to server-side render a JS app)

jottoon Show HN: Cloud browser – headless Chrome and image maps

I made a similar attempt at this a couple years ago, to allow browsing the (JavaScript) web with JavaScript disabled. It works by proxying all traffic through a headless Chrome instance... but a screenshot + an image map is even better.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/prerendercloud-dis...

https://www.prerender.cloud/

jottoon Y Combinator’s latest batch of startups is too big for one Demo Day stage

What's going on with Techcrunch's format here?

  * Headline
  * Hero image
  * Sales pitch for TechCrunch premium
  * 98 words (598 characters) for this article
  * seemingly non-sequitur into next article

jottoon The Book of Secret Knowledge – A collection of lists, blogs, hacks

There's also https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome

What's causing the rise of these curated lists? Some things I've been pondering:

  * quality decline of Google search results
  * less people using bookmark aggregators (del.icio.us)
  * the trend towards feeds or transient info (fb/twitter/reddit)