3,217 karma · joined April 22, 2011
I'm very very interested in multiple possible $300-$1000 budget things for both. Edit: Looking at the other comments (I haven't priced anything out using the site yet, scared to do so b/c i don't like drip campaigns), some of my projects might be below this budget using you! Wow!
Is the goal that I use this service to make beautiful enclosures for my projects, or to do all the hardware needs for my project from design to complete?
I've mostly used Oshpark/Shapeways. I was looking into getting a desktop milling machine like an Othermill or Shapeoko, but from my testing they're still way too loud to have in my home office.
Do you cater to one-off things from people like me, or is the hope to be doing mostly B2B?
My Xbox controllers are on some weird Microsoft waveband that only works with Windows drivers, so I have to use a big extension cable connecting the adapter to my PC not the Steam Link.
I would normally be totally okay with a controller "feeling cheap", and think of it as a positive (especially since it means the price isn't inflated for no good reason), it's just with the mixture of constant-growing-pains that makes me snap out of disbelief and say "why am I using this controller?" to myself a lot.
I in no way think Valve made a mistake making this controller, as I stated I use it a lot, I just think I personally would be more inclined to stick through the growing pains if I had paid more money and was more invested and knew that when I put in the time to configure it perfectly for a game it'd be a "premium" experience all around.
When it comes to a controller, or anything, that I myself just use inside my own apartment and no one else sees ever, I'm not talking about it feeling cheap as a way of not letting me demonstrate my wealth and purchasing power to the world.
I kept hitting the buttons on the back by accident, but I never tried using it on my computer or anything outside of the Xbox itself.
It felt really good in my hands though. I'm going to go try right now, thanks for the reminder!
I use the Steam Link + Steam Controller to play games from my PC in my home office on my TV in my living room, a lot. I would say in the last year I've spent at least 80-100 hours using my Steam Controller in different situations and games.
It's hit or miss in many games, the best experience I've had with it is in Civilization. In some games it's _so_ close to perfect but the game disables mouse-input if you are using a controller, which means you can't use the Steam Controller to its full capability.
All in all, I mostly use my Xbox controllers (connected to my PC via the Microsoft adapter) to play on my Steam Link, mainly because the Steam Controller just feels cheap.
When they first talked about open sourcing all the designs for it I was hoping someone would take the specs and make a all-metal version of the controller, with some more heft.
I love the Steam controller, but it just feels so cheap so that when any growing-pains pains get in my way, it's one more negative against it compared to just using my other controllers.
I may be part of a small niche market but I would gladly pay $150-$250 for a good feeling controller that does exactly what the Steam Controller does. I think if I paid a bit more for it and it felt more premium, I'd be more invested in taking the time to configure it just right.
How does it handle differentiating different types of bread, which have differing carbs?
How does it handle a thick layer of butter or another fat put on the sandwich in the Avocado Toast example, which would presumably be below the visible avocado?
A long time ago my friends and I offered a manual version of this as a service via sending pics / emails to us and us then manually going through and guessing. It worked well enough, so I have high hopes for a ML version!
My biggest pain point doing it manually came from pics of things like pasta where I couldn't really guess how much oil was in the sauce.
You can definitely get far with just estimating the macronutrients from a photo, and the absolute accuracy matters less than consistency in measurements over time.
It really depends on which aspect of SendGrid we're talking about.
Transactional e-mail? Mailgun is a easy to use API on top of Amazon's SES.
You can even set up incoming e-mail hooks e.g. "When a new e-mail arrives, POST the contents to this address and attach any attachments on the e-mail as file uploads."
Newsletters? Drip campaigns? I have less experience on this side of the realm, but HubSpot has been the best experience I've seen. Their web management UI is also powered by their own open API, if I remember correctly.
I work at Stack Overflow, where our company chat is split between Slack and an internal chat product we made ourselves years ago.
I think the "comments as threads" concept helps solve some specific use cases (like room clutter) but not the use cases I personally care about the most.
The "in-line method" mentioned in this other article about the change is my preferred method: https://www.fastcompany.com/3067246/innovation-agents/the-un...
My gripe doesn't stem from rooms being too cluttered, it stems from if there are 4 people talking at once and I'm in two different conversations chains with them, I'd like to explicitly reply to a specific message and carry on the convo. not hide it in a comment thread.
On our homebuilt chat product this is the difference between starting a message with `@Name` or hitting "reply" on a specific message and having `@:{Message Id}` as the beginning of your message.
It shows the same to the users, they seen `@Name`, but if it's a specific message reply when they hover over the message the one it's in response to gets highlighted (and there's a button to scroll to it if it's off-screen).
I think this Slack feature, like most features, is targeted at helping people using chat sitting in the same room or office together.
I work at a very remote company where with some people I share less than 2 hours of a work day. I want better chat tools centered around making our async communication flow better. Not out-of-room comment threads.
If I use Svelte to make my site, is the expectation that the data is being loaded in the cacheable HTTP call or is it a SPA?
I have a couple questions just off the homepage that I didn't quite really get answered:
- Can I use webpack? Can I add this into my current webpack flow?
- Can I use TypeScript?
- How does this compare to preact? Note that their homepage has a lot more info than this one: https://preactjs.com/
Honestly with the rest of this thread and the feedback though, I wish I hadn't posted it at all. I used to really enjoy participating in this community.
I just felt the need to comment because a lot of the comments remind me of my first impression of the product before I really gave it a chance.
I was so angry they were working on it, they started working on it after a quiet period following the Fog Creek / Trello split and my first impression was they were merely looking for something to waste their time doing, it just didn't make sense. But, I tried it, and damn I love it.
You can go look through my 5 years worth of HN comments if you'd like, when I like something I am always this excited about it.
You can import any code from a Github repository you have, or export the project you're working on to a Github repository, or download a .tgz of the entire thing. Anil's opinions on "the web we lost"[0] fit into the ethos of Fog Creek and co well, I think.
I loved it when it was called Hyperdev too. At first I didn't really get it (I work at Stack Overflow so we're part of the same extended family meaning my first impression of Hyperdev was before it was as polished), honestly at first I was angry they were even spending the time doing something I considered so stupid. Until I had a use for it.
I had gotten a Raspberry Pi foundation touch-screen LCD, spent my Saturday morning setting it up, had a grandiose idea of what I wanted to make using it (basically just a "smart" note / TODO / grocery list manager I could attach to my fridge's door) and... realized I had to write yet-another-webapp. I've been making web apps for around a dozen years. The last thing I want to do in my life is spend the time writing the basics of a web-app.
My idea was going to be a thing where I'd use Trello (wow this is becoming an ad for all my sister companies remind me to plug FogBugz, Kiln, and CityDesk at some point too) as the "data store". I have Trello boards for everything. Work to-dos, Personal to-dos, even a trello list for the records I own and the records I want to own.
After writing the basics of what I wanted down, I started sketching the UI. And you know what? After I had all that set, I was able to make a prototype of the entire thing in less than 15 minutes using Gomix (at the time Hyperdev). You can view my prototype here: https://coal-sting.gomix.me/
I didn't end up building the full flow, but I've been coming back to the Gomix project every month or two and adding one-more-MVP-checklist-feature to my prototype. And once I'm done with it? I can take all the JS I wrote, put it into a project bundled with webpack like the rest of my projects, and place it directly onto my RPi and touchscreen.
I know Gomix looks deceptively simple, but that's exactly why I love it. I really value minimizing the time it takes to go from "ooh that's a cool idea" to "holy shit I'm actually working on the idea and not the cruft and skeleton code I need to work on before I get to work on the idea itself!"
Half the time the reason why I stop working on a side project is because I'm getting bored before I get to even work on the real side project. I am always just looking for an excuse to give up and go back to playing video games.
Gomix is perfect for me. I can't wait until they support more languages so I can throw away all the time I've spent and code I've written making templates[0] and bootstrappers[1] for myself.
[0] https://github.com/jc4p/flask-react-skeleton [1] https://github.com/jc4p/quickstart
I tried posting this earlier in the week and it didn't get any traction, but user sleavey posted a great summary of the talk in that thread in case you don't have an hour, which is worth reading: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13273314
I'm pretty sure the attack vector they discuss about finding boarding passes and changing the frequent flyer number attached to the itinerary is what the people who sell flights for 20-30% the cost[0] do. I've been wondering who that scam hurts for a while, the common thought is that they're using stolen credit cards but from what I understand the "services" are way too reliable to be based off stolen cards.
[0] http://krebsonsecurity.com/2012/01/flying-the-fraudster-skie...
The last "innovation" I've witnessed in the space was the Hired model, and everyone is trying different versions of that now. It's a hurtful model that abuses the inefficiencies and lack-of-transparency in the two sided market. (For anyone wondering what I mean: When you sign up on Hired they ask you what your preferred salary range is, then, as of last time I checked, they show _that exact value_ to the companies looking through prospective candidates. So guess what the first offer you get is? Not what a "fair" market rate is, but exactly what you typed into the sign-up form.)
I do a lot of talking to recruiters as part of helping them use our Stack Overflow Talent product, and honestly it feels like taking crazy pills half the time. Having to answer "why?" to "You need to at very least explain what your company actually does, or maybe the tech stack you use" makes me feel insane.
I loved Starfighter, but thinking back what I liked most about it was the content you and Erin and Patrick wrote about it. Your point about "life is too short" is very very poignant.
I guess the whole point of this comment is for me to say I completely respect that decision, you all did the right thing. Trying to convince people who would rather just throw more money at a wall than try something unique to use your unique product is an awful feeling.
I'm very glad to hear your new project is easier to make money off :)
With badly coded websites like GeekedIn the attack vector is all of their data being public like so: https://www.troyhunt.com/8-million-github-profiles-were-leak...
But with the websites that aren't as badly coded, the annoyance is recruiters messaging you on your Github account pitching you random jobs. Do you get those?
This is something we deal with at Stack Overflow (where I work) a lot. People love trying to scrape our content and creating Chrome plug-ins that when someone loads up a Github or SO profile shows all the random bits of info they've been able to scrape about that person. It leads into a lot of issues for us e.g.:
Recruiter claims to have gotten my email address from Stack Overflow http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/318621/472021
to the point where we've (semi) recently changed our ToS to directly be able to fight cases like this:
A Terms of Service update restricting companies that scrape your profile information without your permission http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/277369/a-terms-of-se...
Do you think Github should try to do something similar? I just want to have a place to put my code and be able to easily talk to others working on code, not something that results in recruiters messaging me and random websites taking my data hostage.
Edit: In case you want to see what the "attack vector" looks like, find any of your recent Github commits, e.g. for me:
https://github.com/jc4p/quick-hue-toggle/commit/28f4cf724968...
and add a `.patch` at the end to get the patch file:
https://github.com/jc4p/quick-hue-toggle/commit/28f4cf724968...
and bam, my e-mail (per my git user config) is right there. Should we all be using fake e-mails when we commit to git?
> As most owners probably have experienced, the microphones can often be triggered inadvertently. And those errant recordings, like ambient sound or partial conversations, are sent to Amazon’s servers just like any other.
When I use my Echo in my apartment alone I don't have a lot of false positives on the wake-word detector. This past week I've been in my family's home and very frequently when more than one person is talking Alexa has butted in (and tried its hardest to understand what we're saying, listening for the maximum time it can).
I think the hope is that if some ruckus was happening in the home, the Echo might've accidentally woken up at some point and recorded a small bit they can use to help piece together the crime.
Out of curiosity, do you know if the the flow I describe works now? The link (and your comment) discuss putting content on the TV. The link says you can do:
> even control your media with commands like “Pause this episode”, without lifting a finger.
but that didn't work for me 3 weeks ago, does it work now?
Btw, I don't think the Google Home can actually control Chromecast. They advertise it but each time I've tried stuff like "Okay Google, mute my TV" or "Okay Google, turn off Chromecast" it's said something along the lines of "Sorry, I can't do that yet, but I'm getting better every day". I switched off the Google Home after 2 weeks back for the Echo, so maybe it's gotten better.
IoT:
All my lights are Phillips Hue. Outside of the Echo I have HomeKit set up to take care of automatically turning the lights off when I leave my apartment's geofencing zone. When I arrive home from work, I really enjoy opening my door and saying "Alexa, all lights on" followed with ripping my headphones out of my phone and saying "Alexa, Play Spotify" to have her transfer the Spotify session over (more on this in the next section).
It sounds really silly when I look at it now, but honestly when I'm traveling and I stay at a hotel or something, I definitely miss not having to think about turning all the lights off. It's an extra task that's very lightweight, but it feels good to not have to think about. Before I had the HomeKit compatible Phillips Hue bridge I said "Alexa, all lights off" when leaving my apartment every day. That too is a lot easier to do than recognizing that one of my lights is on and needing to go to the room to turn the switch manually.
Music:
I have a real sound system in my apartment but it's so much easier to just have the Echo play music, and it sounds pretty good.
If you use Spotify, you can use the Spotify app to directly stream to your Echo. You can also just be listening to an album or playlist on your phone or Spotify on your computer, say "Alexa play Spotify", and it'll pick up on the same part of the same song with the same queued up next songs. The Amazon Echo competitors I've tried don't do this, they start a new Spotify session and play whatever they feel like (e.g. Google Home defaults to the first playlist in your playlists list.)
Cooking:
I rely on the Echo while cooking a lot. Everything from "Alexa set a timer for 20 minutes" while roasting some potatoes to having it do the calculations for reducing the recipe's ingredients by 1/3 since I'm cooking for one and it's a recipe for three. I like cooking with the Echo a lot more than with the competitors because on the Echo you have a giant blue ring that shows you if it heard you or not. I burnt my sweet potatoes the first time I tried cooking with the Google Home because it has a "face" that faces a specific direction and my oven is outside of that field of view, so I didn't know that it didn't hear my "Okay Google" and set no timer.
API wise:
The "Skills" themselves are really easy to make, but I wish the communication for using your custom skills wasn't so clunky. The only thing that I've actually made with their real API is a simple interface for Halo achievements.
My xbox is in my living room near my Alexa and my friends and I routinely would see an achievement pop up like "Top Gun" and want to know what it meant, but since we're in the middle of the game we can't check now and we'd forget after the game.
In less than 30 minutes I was able to write some JavaScript in the Chrome console to scrape the list of achievement name and descriptions for the Halo 5 website, then make a Skill out of those. Since the list of medals is pretty static, this is a set-once and forget operation.
Now when I'm playing on my Xbox, if an interesting achievement pops up I can say "Hey Alexa, Ask Halo what's Killtacular?" and it responds with the description. The "Alexa, Ask Halo" is the clunkiness I mean. I wish I could just say "In Halo, whats Killtacular?"
For what it's worth, the Skills editor has a really decent flow. Here's what the Skill I'm describing looks like in the interface: http://i.imgur.com/8VPbt0v.png
In fact, the article explicitly mentions people who do have the luxury of being able to take public transport using cars on the weekends for grocery shopping, just like you mention. And it mentions that in many many parts of America solving the last mile problem isn't anything since people are driving a lot more than a mile.
Please don't judge an article by its headline.