<story><title>Beam has raised $9.5M to reinvent the browser</title><url>https://sifted.eu/articles/beam/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>munificent</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; And yet instead of feeling accomplished, several years ago Leca realised he felt an internal void.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; Has anything he’s built really improved people’s lives?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; To hear Leca describe it, the development of Beam is as much an effort to improve the web browsing experience as it is a spiritual quest for meaning.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; “The only reason I’m doing this is to be working for the greater good,” Leca said. “Is this something I can explain to my kid and be proud of the fact that it’s not just a stupid business to make money?”&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This reads like a parody of SV hubris. It&amp;#x27;s a startup to slap note-taking onto a browser shell. It&amp;#x27;s not curing cancer. I do believe that creating software can be a deeply meaningful experience, and that software can change people&amp;#x27;s lives for the better in real ways. But... this is a VC-funded startup for a browser shell.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; “What do I have for all these hours I spent on the internet?” he said. “Nothing. I’ve got three bookmarks and a few notes here and everything else is basically lost.”&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s crazy to me that the author thought that and their solution was &amp;quot;I should make it easier to take notes&amp;quot; and not &amp;quot;I should spend less time fucking around on the Internet mindlessly consuming media.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The knowledge base should be primarily in your head. If your mind doesn&amp;#x27;t feel like a knowledge base to you, it&amp;#x27;s because we&amp;#x27;re all so busy jamming new data into it that we never slow down and take the time to reflect and process what we&amp;#x27;ve already consumed.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>derf_</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; It&amp;#x27;s not curing cancer. I do believe that creating software can be a deeply meaningful experience, and that software can change people&amp;#x27;s lives for the better in real ways. But... this is a VC-funded startup for a browser shell.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have worked on software for treating cancer, and I have worked for Mozilla. And boy, let me tell you, the latter sure felt like it had a much bigger impact on the world.</text></comment>
<story><title>Beam has raised $9.5M to reinvent the browser</title><url>https://sifted.eu/articles/beam/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>munificent</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; And yet instead of feeling accomplished, several years ago Leca realised he felt an internal void.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; Has anything he’s built really improved people’s lives?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; To hear Leca describe it, the development of Beam is as much an effort to improve the web browsing experience as it is a spiritual quest for meaning.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; “The only reason I’m doing this is to be working for the greater good,” Leca said. “Is this something I can explain to my kid and be proud of the fact that it’s not just a stupid business to make money?”&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This reads like a parody of SV hubris. It&amp;#x27;s a startup to slap note-taking onto a browser shell. It&amp;#x27;s not curing cancer. I do believe that creating software can be a deeply meaningful experience, and that software can change people&amp;#x27;s lives for the better in real ways. But... this is a VC-funded startup for a browser shell.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; “What do I have for all these hours I spent on the internet?” he said. “Nothing. I’ve got three bookmarks and a few notes here and everything else is basically lost.”&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s crazy to me that the author thought that and their solution was &amp;quot;I should make it easier to take notes&amp;quot; and not &amp;quot;I should spend less time fucking around on the Internet mindlessly consuming media.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The knowledge base should be primarily in your head. If your mind doesn&amp;#x27;t feel like a knowledge base to you, it&amp;#x27;s because we&amp;#x27;re all so busy jamming new data into it that we never slow down and take the time to reflect and process what we&amp;#x27;ve already consumed.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jeromenerf</author><text>&amp;gt; The knowledge base should be primarily in your head.&lt;p&gt;I agree generally, then there is also a case to be made about writing down notes as a way to memorize the information. Particularly useful when starting on a new subject and could be great for teaching.&lt;p&gt;There is also information that isn’t worth memorizing but worth annotating. Shopping for instance.&lt;p&gt;I would appreciate a 2-way annotation system, where existing notes would appear when visiting a page and where pages would appear when visiting organized notes.</text></comment>