skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: worth monetizing?
I've been developing a small mobile web app for personal use. My nephew is a "special needs" student and after talking with his teacher we found it valuable to monitor his daily behavior via a shared spreadsheet. Using all my dev skills at once (a fun task) I put together a web app.

Built on AWS EC2 (provisioned with sprinkle) using ruby sinatra (erb, sass) and front end uses topcoat.io, highcharts, roadcrew js (instead off jquery mobile) with redis for data (redis-cloud).

Currently works on "modern browsers" only, but looking to wrap with PhoneGap to push out to native mobile (for laughs). Someday-feature would be an api that exposes the data so that a raspberry pi can read daily reports and trigger rewards in terms of "game time." - about 80% done.

Question - is this worth monetizing? Any ideas on how to proceed? Ads? I thought about limiting tracking to 5 students and then monthly subscription for unlimited along with SMS notification. Thoughts? Or is this just too small and specialized? Is kickstarter an option instead?

It was a fun project for sure, but running out of money and probably going back to contracting until I can build up some more funds. Got a standard corporate gig but better pay than what I can freelance at moment. I can try again in 6 months.

Any ideas and feedback greatly appreciated!

Very rough but gets the job done. See

www.todaywent.com

try demo data with

username: demo
password: demo

Thanks!!
Of course they could provide the service. They still provide Backpack for existing customers. They just don't want to because they don't care.
Actually, the Date content header is quite well defined in HTTP/1.1 [0], and should not be manipulated nilly-willy by intermediates. If you're having problems with proxies caching your requests, even if you're asking non-cached content [1], then you're never going to be able to get an accurate time from anywhere since any request might be cached, and no solution would work anyway.

It's not quite a "hacky" solution, I would guesstimate it would work 95% of the time rather than 80%, but even 80% is a great solution for the amount of work involved, the tradeoffs, and the fact that we're talking about a clock displayed on a website.

Or, you know, you could spend £15.000 taxpayers' money over 3 months for something I'm not even sure would be more flexible/maintainable/performant.

[0]: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-14.18

[1]: E.g. URL's with random number in the query
Why would they create an scripting language just to develop YaST? The language feels very familiar though, check http://doc.opensuse.org/projects/YaST/SLES10/tdg/id_ycp_func...

Here is the full reference. http://doc.opensuse.org/projects/YaST/SLES10/tdg/Book-YCPLan...
> Nuclear plants don't have much in the way of a throttle - they're just "on" or "complete shut-down and it will take substantial measures to start it up again".

Well, this is exactly what we need. Power demand is fluctuating, but mostly averages out to something constant. It's easier to throw in a little buffering to compensate demand fluctuations than to wake up with half the power in the grid because it suddenly got cloudy. You'd have to store very large amounts of power, which is this "substantial investment in energy storage systems" GP was writing about.

> Uranium just isn't that plentiful, for example.

Here you are wrong.

http://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_162.shtml
Seth's Blog: The 5000th post*
Makes ya wonder why they didn't just "Rework" it to attract more customers?
But you also get a feeling of accomplishment when you unlock a hero.
Pixel City homescreens
http://theindustry.cc and http://foundation.bz
Lots of designers seem to be using Pinterest to collect inspiration. How is this different?
> * If you’ve ever played Starcraft, Age of Empires or pretty much any other real-time strategy game, you’ll know the drill, and the buildings and units come off as almost painfully derivative.*

That's a strange claim. In fact, I would claim that, if you've ever played Starcraft, Age of Empires, or pretty much any other real-time strategy game, you would be aware that they have very little in common with Clash of Clans.
A photographer examines American life without leaving his home
I m sure,these 12 months were preceded by lot of hard work and sacrifices. Success doesn't happen overnight. It often arrives, when market timing meets intense preparations.
I suspect we're missing some key piece of this story...

I find this (extremely common) attitude rather distressing. People are all too eager to believe that the authorities are always right, and when presented with a case showing the contrary, they assume "we're missing some key piece of [the] story."
It seems to me that how a person takes this statement would depend largely on which stage of mathematical education they are primarily in: http://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/there%E2%80%99s-...
Creative marketing.
I'd just like to note for the record that none of my friends are operating death camps or starting a world war.

Yesterday, at least one American did at least one bad thing, somewhere. Are you culpable for that? Are you inferior?

So far in this conversation, the post I responded to identified muslims, jews, blacks and gays as morally inferior. I objected, and you're tripling down on the assertion. Am I misunderstanding you?
Minneapolis

Yes, Minneapolis is a correct counterexample. What matters most for house prices in the Twin Cities is nearness to lakes. North Minneapolis has few lakes, the highest crime rate in the city (with a murder rate far higher than, for example, New York City), and blighted public schools. Southwest Minneapolis (same municipal government and same public school district) is a desirable neighborhood near lakes with a lot of high-income residents and a high school that is a feeder school to the Ivy League.
SAP to Acquire hybris
It's refreshing to see these guys fail for once. There, I said it.
"Mozilla did say why it is waiting so long before making these changes: Firefox 24 is an Extended Support Release (ESR), so major changes have been pushed after it to minimize any potential impact."

Ah, this makes sense. Previously I had suspected that Mozilla was saving Australis as the impetus for a big "Whole New Firefox" marketing initiative, what with all the new goodies like IonMonkey (tantalizingly close to V8 now, http://arewefastyet.com/) and the native developer tools.

Considering that Australis was proposed sometime mid-2011, I'll be happy to finally see it land (if indeed it does land in 25, I haven't actually seen any official announcement yet).
this. makes. my. day.

guess the "gurus" didn't do enough "growth hacking".

hahaha

last laugh goes to.

me.
cool - small typo in your post
s/Chief/Chef/

(http://leonsbox.com/blog/2013/06/04/improving-testing-by-usi...)
The other responses have pointed out how it's not a cop-out. There's also the fact that this is a business, not a charity.
Show HN: IsThereAFuckingRockiesGame.com - an open source webapp
Just a fun thing I thought I'd share with the community. It's a webapp based on Yeoman's webapp template, HTML5 Boilerplate, Handlebars, Bootstrap. and all the best practices I could muster. I's easily customizable for your team too!
"Come back with something better", "I am waiting on you to produce the stats", "<crickets/>"

...um, why would I want to engage in a discussion with someone who communicates like this?

Also before you insult people's arguments by attempting to devalue them as assertions lacking proof, make sure you are also not guilty of the same. You use a lot of absolute language for someone concerned with evidence.

Lots of things in life cant be proved, does that mean we cant talk about them like mature and curious adults?
Cool, thanks for sharing your experience! OK if I repost this comment on my blog? (Or maybe you want to repost it yourself?)

Thanks! Looking forwards to writing more about this.

Tito
But I didn't get my nexus phone and tablets for free I bought them :(
I don't want to play the no true scottsman game here, but at some point you have to.
am i the only one who gets annoyed by every "body-length : speed" and "body-weight : carrying-capacity" comparison? these things don't scale, people! it's not amazing.

is it amazing that a spider can freefall from 10,000 ft (millions of body lengths) and survive? no, it isn't.
1) With a warrant the government doesn't have to break the safe--the court can compel you to hand over a key.

2) In the U.S., there is no "absolute right to remain silent." The 5th amendment says: "No person shall be... compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." This is a somewhat narrower protection. For example, someone can be compelled to give authorization to a third party to search property of the defendant in the possession of the third party.

How the 5th applies to encrypted volumes is still up in the air. On one hand, reciting a key could be seen as testimonial speech. On the other hand, it could be seen as analogous to handing over the key to a safe, which is not considered testimonial speech subject to the 5th amendment.
How long should they run the service at a loss for before they are allowed to bin it?

According to the site , they are giving you your data back anyway.
It's just rich people doing stupid things. It is however unnecessary to associate the entire valley with one idiot.
I see your point, but I made this list so that people can see lots of alternatives. Feel free to make your own list with just the ones you think are good. That's really the idea of Gini - it's meant to be like a Github for useful lists of data. Collaboration and forking coming soon!

I've added FeedWrangler now, thanks.
A documentary about thorium (Kickstarter)
hey,thanks for your comment. You are right, however, from our interviews many of them don't like to use Pinterest when they need to save and share something with clients. Lots of noise made by cupcakes and wedding dresses. Also in Pinterest you only have three private boards, while our product is totally private which, again, is better when you have clients' work. Make sense?
Personally, if I see a pop-up then I close the page.

"Download our mobile app."

"Give us feedback."

"What's new."

No. If I want to know what's knew, I'll click a "What's new?" link. Put it at the top of the page and make it obvious, but not so obvious that it feels like it wants to move in with me.
I don't really understand my brain's response to small things.

Small dog/cat -> cute

Tarantula -> horrible

Small robot that goes as fast as a tarantula -> cute?

Anyway, that's pretty cool. They should put some sticky/rubbery material on the tips of the legs to improve traction on smooth surfaces.
> Sad to see reddit's pedo-apologia leaking onto news.yc.

You are 0-2 with your hyperbole. First accusing people of being anti-Islam and now that yc is turning into Reddit.
Yep, we are seeing exactly the same things and have more or less the same response. I've long been a huge Github fan so to think of moving away makes me quite sad, but the frequent chunkiness (even exhibited in things as simple as switching between page 1 and 2 of open issues) causes me a lot of frustration every day. I'm not ready to give up just yet however.
I couldn't agree more, nothing is more frustrating than getting hooked on a game only to realize that progress is essentially crippled without massive amounts of free time or a few in app purchases. I would much rather pay an up front fee (or perhaps instead of crippling the game, a one time fee to unlock the rest of the game).
Beautiful pictures! Thanks for sharing.
There is no need to force anybody to install and turn on anything - they could just passively monitor the signal of your wireless router, our that of your neighbor or of your cellphone. Or they could actively send such a signal and analyze it if they don't care about being detected. In the end it is some kind of (passive) radar and you will probably have to actively jam or block it in order to prevent someone from monitoring you.
I think the ubiquity of HTTP and other centralized methodologies have encouraged this discrimination ("residential internet" vs "commercial internet"). There's no time like the present to roll back the presumption of consuming non-producers (who only need 56kbps upstream) as second class netizens.
Says who? The historical practice, at least in the U.S., allows for some level of compulsion to help the prosecution. For example, there are cases (in connection with fraud and tax avoidance) holding that defendants can be forced to give written authorization to overseas banks to release financial records to prosecuting authorities.
Is there an article you have seen in the western media that elaborates on what you've said here. I'm not finding my usual sources to be at all helpful explaining what is happening
Pivotal Analytics Workbench Offer the Power of a 1000-Node Hadoop Cluster
This makes me feel sick inside. These kind of apps are the wood rot of the modern gaming industry. As soon as I see a "beat your opponent by buying more of our shit" I delete the app.

Good fucking riddance.
From what I understand, what mongodb needs is not more speed, but better acid guarantees by default.
Why do you say this? If you google pedophilia recidivism rate you will immediately see things like:

> [PDF]
recidivism rates for pedophiles - Université d'Ottawa

> No differences were found between pedophiles and nonpedophiles with respect to recidivism rates

Are you perhaps spreading a very nasty myth?
Challenges to Becoming a Better Designer
Child porn laws and the variable obscenity standard are meant to protect the majority of children. While there are notable exceptions such as your grandmother when she was young, the courts have recognized that most 14-year-olds may not be capable of understanding and / or advocating for their sexual health, plus making life-changing relationship decisions.

As for your last point about porn, prosecutors do try to track down the producers of child porn. However, finding the producers is often extremely difficult. That's why they also target those who traffic and distribute the material as a means of stopping children from being exploited. United States vs. Stevens (2010) is a good example.

Edit: grammar fix
Really odd - Nuclear Thorium was mentioned on NPR this morning and before this I had never heard of it. It sounds intriguing - thanks for posting !
Well, since you're answering questions... Would you say in general that the government is becoming less 'secular'? Have there been other large changes pushed by the government besides the big issues I have heard about (including the alcohol issue)? Also, have there been laws put in place against atheism or LGBT rights issues?

One of the big issues right now is that these protests are not really getting coverage in the media here in the US. It's hard to get the full story.
But they would if they were allowed to.
They want to criminalize abortion? That's women lives on the line. "Pro life" is actually "pro death of poor under-age mothers from bleeding from illegal abortion", always call them that.

They want to make porn illegal? They just made everyone a felon, and they can pull anyone over and land him in a camp. Even fascist didn't have such a good tool. CheKa grade.

They want to tinker with age of consent? They'll make a 16 year old girl and her 17 year old boyfriend both felons. Is that nice?

They agree to predatory, murderous, bloody ideas all the time and they are still "good people". As a group they do that.
That's so nice of them.

I try to find one thing religious people are getting right over agnostics/atheists and I seriously can't think of one.

UPD: I'm not saying people are inferior, just that their beliefs are and they would be better off without those.
North Korea Accuses South of "Kidnapping" 9 Youths
Uhh try going to a VC to raise money with the Jeff Bezos story today:

"We're going to lose money for five years and then operate at absurdly low margins for eternity".

Look, Amazon may win in the long run, but asking why more companies aren't like amazon is like asking why every company isn't Apple. We can't all be outliers.
Tatsuo Horiuchi, the 73-year old Excel spreadsheet artist
Hey coherentpony! This is a direction we want to pursue. We will be adding this very soon (and let you pick between a few styles). We have some big ideas and this is just our MVP. Thanks!
Facebook Removes Downloads of Your Posts
Oh another story about how the biggest problem with fighting child abuse and exploitation is all the innocent bystanders that are getting caught.
Blackstone said "It is better that ten guilty men go free than that one innocent man be convicted."

I'd say that applies..
My pleasure. Did my best to help out the cause, and tried to remain objective in the photos I took and the text as well. I'd appreciate it if you wanted to share the link - I tried posting on the front page of HN but don't think I have enough karma (it just .. disappeared..)
I'm using http://feedbin.me right now, which doesn't appear to be on the list.
It is insulting, that's the point. Erdogan is no stranger to provoking people, and then demonizing them in the ensuing outrage.

Like when he called the protestors 3-5 bandits, or when he called the founders of the constitution two drunkards (and they did drink, but so what?), or when he said "if you have 100 thousand people on the streets, I'll bring out a million" (all easily googleable, don't have time to link now).

His bully-like attitude is partly why he's losing sympathy even among his own supporters and party, which contain a spectrum from conservative-moderates to ultra-conservatives.
I would think that community service with no way of paying your way out of it would be a better deterrent than fines.
Or just button:focus{ outline:none; }. That should remove focus styling on all browsers, last I checked.
> Depending on the country they do have the right to ask you to show them first aid kit, fire extinguisher and spare tire.

What? Who carries all that around? Is this a good reason to drive around on your spare tire, so they can see it?
So what computer repair shop actually called the police on him? Spyware typically injects all sorts of nonsense into somebody's computer and most of these shops are pretty jaded to the things they see and I doubt that the crazy images are almost ever actually owned by the person who is bringing their computer in for repair.
Thought this was going to be pixel art using colored cells..
Stop Playing Favorites at Work
Largely this is due to the simple fact that SUSE has many proficient Ruby developers.

This strikes me as very pragmatic and doesn't surprise me. I had one of their developers as speakers (and martial arts instructor) at my conference (eurucamp[1]) and he was really good. He built some of their internal toolchain. Definitely someone I would trust to not pick an implementation base for its hype value.

[1]: http://2013.eurucamp.org/
There's a game theory element to this as well. If customers know that the product is likely to get discontinued shortly unless the product reaches an arbitrary and invisible (to the user) goal, then only early adopters are going to use it because it's too risky to rely on something that might die in 4 months. Early adopters are a very small section of a large bell curve of potential users. This could lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy where their new products all die due to customer fear, not lack of customer interest.
An entire page of how they were trying to implement in various ways, including FORTRAN.

Then, suddenly:

"S.R. Russell noticed that eval could serve as an interpreter for LISP, promptly hand coded it, and we now had a programming language with an interpreter."
So now you're falling back on "interests" of the states when the actions of the Federal government are the ones we have on hard record.

I could just as easily counter Rayiner's contention that the Feds were responsible for ending Segregation by saying that the interests of the states, localities, and citizenry were the actual force behind the end of Segregation.
NoFlo: two years of flow-based programming with JavaScript
Much easier to get away with when it's a small thing for developers. I'm guessing slid.es shows a little more deference to IE. Just a guess, though.
Clarification: We are hiring fulltime people and ALSO interns, not just interns.
Insert bitcoins and launch EC2
From Leif earlier, "TokuMX offers multi-document transactional semantics without application changes (snapshot reads), as well as protocol support for multi-statement (read-modify-write style) transactions, within a single shard. We are still designing how we want to present transactions in a sharded cluster."
Man, it's times like this which I had down-vote ability already. First a post up-thread asking for someone to give their real identity and now this. You must be a real jewel of a human.
Stop fund-raising your open source projects
That same argument cuts both ways, imagine you live in a place where racist and anti-gay sentiment is the norm.

In such a place you might be concerned about making a comment that could be construed as support for gay marriage or racial equality as you might be ridiculed or shunned in some way by your community.

In such a situation would it be fair to say that the person in question should necessarily adjust their views to conform?
You know it's not all Romeo and Juliet right? Are you OK with a 40 year old man pushing his penis into the anus of his 7 year old daughter?

Sure, there can be problems with laws that have zero flexibilites (like a 17½yr old having sex with their 18 year old partner), but that doesn't mean everything should be thrown out.
The Tech Behind the GlueCon Hackathon’s Node.js Winning App
I agree with your policy recommendations.

Your problem isn't with muslims, it's with social conservatives and specifically social conservatives who want to legislate their morality on the rest of us (a population that, in the US at least, is 99% non-muslim and in fact most of them hate muslims). I'd suggest that focusing on muslims distracts from the issue, unless your actual problem is really with muslims specifically and you're being disingenuous with your policy concerns.

And no, my friends would not be operating death camps if they were allowed to. They're nice people, good work ethic, live and let live types.
What about Google groups as a replacement? Only potential problem is it may go the way of Google Reader?
I use http://www.FeedRebel.com (Disclaimer: I built it), can you add it to the list as well.
> Pedophilia frightens people because of the recidivism rate

Does the recidivism rate matter as much as the number of pedophiles? Even if every real pedophile committed the crime 3 times, that's the same as having 3x as many first time offenders. The rate and the number of pedophiles is far more important.

Unless we buy into the idea that pedophiles are lurking around every corner, the recidivsm rate should't scare us.
Obama proposes legislation to curb patent trolls
thx, added to answers.
Um.... any one remember the riots in the UK a couple of years ago? The police shot dead a black suspect, kept the family out of the loop and riots kicked off all over the place. (Yes, there was a lot more to it than that)

Well.... public opinion at the time wanted the UK police to act like these Turkish police. In fact, a lot of people wanted the police to be shooting these youths with plastic bullets, not to mention calling out the army to clear it up.

I wonder if the people who held those opinions are now condemning the Turks? I wonder if this is the sort of thing they had in mind?
Makes sense. My designer and I used a shared board on Pinterest in the beginning and that worked fine. The part that got hairy was going back and forth with the actual PSDs of the design. It might be nice to add simple drawing tools for giving feedback. Good luck!