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ejainon The least useful passport in the world

The least useful passport is the expired passport :-)

ejainon We made something. We use it. We love it. Apple rejected it

Best thing that could have happened to you, given all the attention you're getting now? :-)

ejainon Hey LinkedIn – Nobody Wants This

No, it's called being viral. Monetizing is when you get spam from people you're not connected to (a.k.a. InMail)...

CircleCI is really neat, going to ditch the slow CloudBees build server as soon as CircleCI gets the last remaining issues sorted out. Hope the money lets them hire someone who can write proper docs and changelogs :-)

ejainon Show HN: Free, open-source site for finding beautiful hikes

This site looks great for inspiration, but for me the most important thing when planning a hike is being able to see updates on current conditions (e.g. is the trailhead accessible? Is there snow on the trail?).

One of the best-implemented hiking sites in my opinion is hikr.org, though the information I need tends to be on local sites like wta.org or nwhikers.net.

In addition to submitting trip reports to wta.org, I keep a record of my hikes at https://zenobase.com/#/buckets/u07qih0a27/. It's a more general-purpose service, but I can filter by any combination of region, hiking distance, duration, season etc.

ejainon Show HN: Free, open-source site for finding beautiful hikes

Typo? wta.org

ejainon A peek inside Exist, our quantifed self app close to launch

Withings has a wireless blood pressure cuff, and makes the data available through a Web API for services like exist.io.

BodyMedia's FIT detects when you lie down and get up (so no need to push any buttons), and you don't need to transfer the device into an awkward wrist strap (since you're wearing it on your upper arm).

ejainon A peek inside Exist, our quantifed self app close to launch

The problem isn't the data, it's the services, which for the most part are geared towards motivating and entertaining you, not helping you interpret your data.

One reason for this is that the human body is too complex (and the data too incomplete) for simplistic advice like "walk x steps per day to reach weight y".

You're also unlikely to discover a novel correlation that can be used to lose weight (and write a book and get rich)... But what you can do is use your data to determine which known solutions are working for you, and which are not (e.g. do I really sleep better when going to bed before midnight, all else being equal?).

I'm eager to see how exist.io handles all of this! (I run another service in this space, zenobase.com)

ejainon A basic guide to when and how to deploy HTTPS

Sounds good, but StartCom's certificates don't appear to be recognized by Oracle's Java out of the box; this should be a show-stopper for anyone who is providing a Web API.

ejainon Think like a reporter: Startup stories they want to write

The product may speak for itself, but what if there is no one to listen? :-)

ejainon The Easiest Data Analysis Mistake to Make

An equally common mistake is to visualize without analyzing :-)

ejainon Ask HN: Is it just me or has YouTube gone fanatical on ads?

I don't think you can place ads in any movie--only movies that have the "monetization" feature enabled.

It's the same issue as with Google AdSense, though there you have options to exclude certain ads.

ejainon Startup Idea: Solve Personal Analytics

Personal analytics can help you decide e.g. if those expensive supplements you started taking last month do in fact improve your sleep, or if you burn more calories at the gym than when you go for a free walk. Sometimes the effects are obvious enough, but often life is too messy (and your thinking to wishful) to reach a correct conclusion without some help.

ejainon Startup Idea: Solve Personal Analytics

I'm the founder of https://zenobase.com/, another startup in this space.

Completely agree that "graphs without the ability to manipulate data are worse than nothing"--it's hard to gain much insight without being able to drill down and filter the data. Simple questions such as "how strong is the correlation between room temperature and sleep" end up having to be refined e.g. with "ignore weekends" and "correct for different amounts of physical activity".

Being able to "get as much data as possible" sounds good, but garbage in, garbage out applies...

Finally, I don't think it's possible to create a single mobile app that suits everyone, which is why Zenobase has a flexible, generic data model and an API.

ejainon What’s new in Play 2.2

Play is an interesting option if 1. you need async request handling (most people don't), 2. are comfortable with Scala, and 3. don't mind maintaining your own branch of the framework (or can pay for commercial support).

Otherwise there are better options, given the hard to configure and slow build process, bloated artifacts, infrequent releases, missing features (in the Java version) and incomplete/outdated documentation.

ejainon StatusPage (YC S13) Lets Anyone Communicate With Customers About Outages

This company will be bought by New Relic in 3... 2... 1...

ejainon First-ever human head transplant is now possible, says neuroscientist

It's not a head transplant, it's a body transplant.

ejainon Working with the Stripe Payouts API

BrainTree is another option to consider: Their API seems to be as simple as Stripe's, and their pricing looks better (quicker payouts, volume pricing).

ejainon How not to be alone

Google Maps is quite useless for navigating in the backcountry, especially now that they appear to be dropping the "terrain" maps. But that doesn't mean all digital maps are useless.

ejainon How Plus Will Become The Next Google Reader

The inability to filter out items that I have already seen is precisely what makes Facebook, Twitter, Google+ et al so inefficient for me.

ejainon How to share your data effectively

I much prefer the RDF graph data model over the document-centric tree model of JSON or XML for representing data. It's too bad the need for RDF to be a solid formal knowledge representation format trumped more practical concerns (like being able to represent an ordered list in a simple manner).

ejainon The OAuth Bible

Neat! But I've yet to find a place that explains why OAuth requires certain things (vs stating what is required).

ejainon A farewell to bioinformatics (2012)

I agree that a lot of effort that is put into bioinformatics is wasted. But it's silly to say that bioinformatics hasn't contributed much to science, and naive to think that dysfunctional software development is less widespread outside of bioinformatics.

ejainon Fitbit, why can’t I have my data?

FWIW, I asked for (and got) access to Fitbit's "intraday" API without much trouble (or extra cost).

ejainon Fitbit, why can’t I have my data?

The total number of steps in neat, but I'm more interested in seeing how often and how long I move (or don't move). I consider 20,000 steps followed by 6 hours of non-stop slouching in front of the computer less ideal than just 10,000 steps but never sitting for more than an hour at a time. Fitbit doesn't provide this analysis, but I can do it myself with access to minute-by-minute data.

ejainon Does it really rain all the time in Seattle?

Yes, please stay in California.

ejainon Exceptional acquires Ranger Monitoring

Any such services that work well with (i.e. have official support for) Java applications? Other than New Relic, which requires a rather pricey "Pro" subscription for exception reporting...

ejainon Ask HN: What are your goals for November?

Integrate several self-tracking services (incl FitBit and Withings) with my generic data collection service, zenobase.com.

ejainon Why Self-Track? The Possibility of Hard-to-Explain Change

https://zenobase.com/ is another, new self-tracking service. It's quite generic, so not as user-friendly or convenient as more specialized tracking services can be, but it's more flexible, and is an improvement over a plain spreadsheet (or pen and paper).