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jwngr

882 karma · joined January 4, 2015

Cofounder @ Shortwave

Shortwave: https://shortwave.com Personal: https://jwn.gr

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jwngr··on From Gatsby gridlock to Astro bliss: my personal site redesign
Oh, thanks for letting me know! Looks like I'm not properly clearing the interval. I'll get that fixed.
jwngr··on From Gatsby gridlock to Astro bliss: my personal site redesign
Thanks for sharing! I use Fireabse Hosting, which I guess gets grouped in with the other services you mentioned. It's free, has a lightweight devX, and integrates with CI via GitHub actions for preview and production builds [1].

[1] https://github.com/jwngr/jwn.gr/tree/master/.github/workflow...

jwngr··on From Gatsby gridlock to Astro bliss: my personal site redesign
Oh cool, I see. Didn't get that impression when I first looked. I will check it out!
jwngr··on From Gatsby gridlock to Astro bliss: my personal site redesign
Not a full replacement in all scenarios. But for my personal website with a basic blog, Astro is by far the simpler and more maintainable option. I bet that is true for most people here who maintain their own personal website.
jwngr··on From Gatsby gridlock to Astro bliss: my personal site redesign
Thanks for the link. I prefer the simplicity of .mdx files for now. My use case is very basic and Astro already handles it well.
jwngr··on From Gatsby gridlock to Astro bliss: my personal site redesign
I felt the same way! But I came around. Take a look at the source code for a component [1]. The .astro format is pretty much just TS, CSS, and HTML. I don't even need React anymore. Way less glue code and dependencies than with Gatsby. There is a configuration file and some abstractions for things like collections, but almost everything is opt-in.

[1] https://github.com/jwngr/jwn.gr/blob/master/src/components/b...

jwngr··on From Gatsby gridlock to Astro bliss: my personal site redesign
Me too! The closer my framework is to raw HTML, JavaScript (really TypeScript nowadays), and CSS, the less lock-in I feel. Those 3 languages are continue to get better year over year. And we are get better framework abstractions every few years too. Astro feels like it hit the sweet spot, but maybe there is more to come.
jwngr··on From Gatsby gridlock to Astro bliss: my personal site redesign
Astro is what I wanted and thought Gatsby would be. GraphQL was the wrong sized abstraction for a basic blog site like mine. And once Gatsby turned towards the cloud (which made sense as a business), everything just got so complicated. I was swept up by it too.

Cool insight on frontend ceilings -- deployment is king.

jwngr··on From Gatsby gridlock to Astro bliss: my personal site redesign
Yeah they really nailed the developer experience. There is very little magic to it.
jwngr··on Six Degrees of Wikipedia
Thanks for your comment! You may enjoy this blog post: https://www.sixdegreesofwikipedia.com/blog/search-results-an...
jwngr··on Six Degrees of Wikipedia
My script has been broken since February 2021 :( Documentation on the data source (with links to old data dumps) is on GitHub: https://github.com/jwngr/sdow/blob/master/docs/data-source.m...
jwngr··on Six Degrees of Wikipedia
Creator here. Glad that HN rediscovered my old side project. All the code is freely available on GitHub [1]. It's running on a tiny f1-micro GCE instance which is currently down due to the traffic. I don't have time to fix it right now, but it should resolve itself once traffic dies down. The data source is also several years out of date at this point, so the links it returns may not match current reality. Other than that, it should still work!

I'm currently building an AI email app called Shortwave [2]. I promise that has much better uptime and more consistent updates!

[1] https://github.com/jwngr/sdow

[2] https://shortwave.com

jwngr··on Shortwave: A GPT-3-powered front end for Gmail
You're right. We're a small team of 10 people [1] and we have to ruthlessly prioritize. Gmail on web and iOS are our primary platforms right now. Our Android app is in beta and will be for longer. In the meantime, are improving the PWA experience. We just shipped a brand new inbox last week that has much better support for the Android PWA - finally fixes the back button issue we heard a lot about! I know it's not a native app, but that's not practical for our team right now. It will be eventually though.

[1] https://www.shortwave.com/about/

jwngr··on Shortwave: A GPT-3-powered front end for Gmail
Email is the perfect tool for these new LLMs - most of us have years, even decades, of our writing and important information in our email archives. Now that we have AI which can understand that in a deep way, a ton of value is waiting to be unlocked and email is going to change. All of our tools will. I talked a bit more about this in our blog post today [1].

Also yes, attention is nice for a small young startup fighting against a bunch of giant companies who've been doing email for decades. Marketing is indeed a thing :) But we stand by Smart Summaries as a feature that actually makes your email experience better and faster. And we plan to build more soon.

[1] https://www.shortwave.com/blog/ai-email-summaries/

jwngr··on Shortwave: A GPT-3-powered front end for Gmail
I go into this a bit more in our blog post from today [1], but we believe LLMs are going to transform how we interact with email. Yes, you still need a solid inbox with labels and contacts and push notifications and everything else that email clients like Shortwave offer. And we will continue to iterate on and nail that experience. But these new tools allow us to push the boundaries of what can be done with email, and we intend to do just that.

[1] https://www.shortwave.com/blog/ai-email-summaries/

jwngr··on Shortwave: A GPT-3-powered front end for Gmail
Outside of search and import history, our free version is 100% feature compatible with the paid version. None of the core functionality (including the new AI stuff) requires a paid plan. On a paid plan, you can import and search your full history. On the free plan, you can import and search your last 90 days. See our pricing page for more details (https://www.shortwave.com/pricing/).
jwngr··on Shortwave: A GPT-3-powered front end for Gmail
Despite adding some AI features, we are definitely still focused on the core triage and workflow of getting through your inbox. We've launched a bunch of other stuff already this year (https://www.shortwave.com/changelog/) and have more non-AI features coming.

As for marking stuff as read: this is a known issue that we are planning to address. For now, it behaves like archive in Gmail, which does not mark as read. How would you like it to work?

jwngr··on Shortwave: A GPT-3-powered front end for Gmail
We use OpenAI's GPT-3 API to generate summaries. We have explicitly opted out of OpenAI's default behavior of using their APIs to train their models: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/5722486-how-your-data-is...
jwngr··on Shortwave: A GPT-3-powered front end for Gmail
We use OpenAI's GPT-3 API to generate summaries. We have explicitly opted out of OpenAI's default behavior of using their APIs to train their models [1].

Our summarization feature is entirely opt-in. So if you're concerned about sharing your emails with OpenAI, you can choose not to use the feature. You can also read our Privacy Policy [2] and Terms of Service [3] to see how your data is used.

[1] https://help.openai.com/en/articles/5722486-how-your-data-is... [2] https://www.shortwave.com/policies/privacy-policy/ [3] https://www.shortwave.com/policies/terms-of-service/

jwngr··on Shortwave: A GPT-3-powered front end for Gmail
Hi HN - Shortwave co-founder here. We’ve built a full-featured email client over the last couple of years, just in time for the rise of LLMs. We’ve added quite a few features (and are working on many more) that use LLMs to save you time.

I’m most excited about Smart Summaries — they’ll read and then summarize (even from a different language) long newsletters & those huge threads you just don’t want to wade through.

We’ve got a long way to go, so please do leave us feedback if you have it. Shortwave is much of the early Firebase team, and HN really helped us building that product :) Thanks in advance!

jwngr··on Show HN: AI Email Summaries
Hey HN Co-founder and head of product at Shortwave here. Excited to share our latest feature – Smart Summaries. Summaries act like your personal AI email assistant, working to save you precious time by using AI to intelligently summarize key points from an email in seconds.

We’re launching today in open beta! We’d love to hear your feedback. We’re looking to double-down on AI features going forward. Would love to have feedback!

jwngr··on Show HN: Shortwave: Enjoy Your Inbox
Check out our security doc [1], Privacy Policy [2], and Terms of Service [3] for this information.

[1] https://www.shortwave.com/docs/references/security/

[2] https://www.shortwave.com/policies/privacy-policy/

[3] https://www.shortwave.com/policies/terms-of-service/

jwngr··on Show HN: Shortwave: Enjoy Your Inbox
Thanks! Our keyboard shortcuts are pretty extensive too [1]. Let us know if there's a shortcut missing that you'd like to see!

Beyond price, there are a handful of examples [2], but I'll focus on two big things that set Shortwave apart:

(1) An opinionated triage flow. Bundles group together related senders to make your inbox more scannable, while our triage actions (Pin / Snooze / Done) and drag 'n drop allow you to treat your inbox like the to-do list that it is. [3] We lean into the fact that inbox zero is not a realistic goal for many email users.

(2) Team features. We bring Slack-like channels into your email inbox and give you the notification controls to make that possible. [4] Shortwave eliminates the boundary between your team and the rest of the world. And things like emoji reactions, mentions, and a chat-like interface make it feel unlike any email client you've used before.

[1] https://www.shortwave.com/docs/references/shortcuts/

[2] https://www.shortwave.com/features/

[3] https://www.shortwave.com/docs/guides/101/

[4] https://www.shortwave.com/docs/guides/team/

jwngr··on Show HN: Shortwave: Enjoy Your Inbox
Agreed! This is definitely on our list and we've got big plans here. Added your +1 to our internal task tracking this feature :)
jwngr··on Show HN: Shortwave: Enjoy Your Inbox
"Inbox Zero" is 100% not the goal with Shortwave and you won't see it in our marketing. Not to be too cheeky, but "Inbox Organized" is the goal. We want to help you treat your inbox like the to-do list that it is, not necessarily smash every email that enters your inbox. Read more about our workflow in our docs. [1]

[1] https://www.shortwave.com/docs/guides/101/

jwngr··on Show HN: Shortwave: Enjoy Your Inbox
Shortwave cofounder here. We totally get that. Gmail is just the start for us. We plan to support more providers in the future and even become our own provider long-term. Read more about our company mission on our blog [1].

[1] https://www.shortwave.com/blog/future-of-messaging/

jwngr··on Six Degrees of Wikipedia
Creator here. It's exciting to see this back on the front page of HN! My poor little f1-micro instance is not holding up well against the traffic though I won't be able to migrate it to a bigger server today, but if you bookmark it and check back in a day or two, it'll be back up.

If you think this is cool, I'm working on a huge new thing with some former Firebasers and others. Follow me @_jwngr on Twitter (https://twitter.com/_jwngr) for a big reveal coming very soon!

Here is the original HN post for those who are interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16468196

jwngr··on Insights on Hitler and More from the First 500,000 Searches
Hey everybody, my "Show HN: Six Degrees of Wikipedia" [1] from two weeks ago was really popular with this crowd and I enjoyed all the comments and discussion that resulted. Now that the site has handled half a million search results, there is a lot of interesting data which I know you will also enjoy seeing. So I put together this blog post and I plan to make a series of them on different aspects of this side project. All the code for my project is open source [2] and I'm happy to answer any questions or hear any suggestions you've got. If you want to get notified of future blog posts in this series, I have a low-volume personal newsletter [3] you can sign up for.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16468196

[2] https://github.com/jwngr/sdow

[3] https://jwn.us15.list-manage.com/subscribe/post?u=d19fa80c86...

jwngr··on Insights on Hitler and More from the First 500,000 Searches
Hey everybody, my "Show HN: Six Degrees of Wikipedia" [1] from two weeks ago was really popular with this crowd and I enjoyed all the comments and discussion that resulted. Now that the site has handled half a million search results, there is a lot of interesting data which I know you will also enjoy seeing. So I put together this blog post and I plan to make a series of them on different aspects of this side project.

All the code for my project is open source [2] and I'm happy to answer any questions or hear any suggestions you've got. If you want to get notified of future blog posts in this series, I have a low-volume personal newsletter [3] you can sign up for.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16468196

[2] https://github.com/jwngr/sdow

[3] https://jwn.us15.list-manage.com/subscribe/post?u=d19fa80c86...

jwngr··on Show HN: Six Degrees of Wikipedia
Possibly... follow this GitHub issue[1] if you want to be notified about it.

[1] https://github.com/jwngr/sdow/issues/11

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