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Inter is the secret weapon for a lot of product/UI designers.

kylefoxon Ask HN: What have you built with Rails lately?

I’m building Rewardful, a way to setup affiliate programs with Stripe.

https://www.getrewardful.com/

I debated what stack to use. I thought maybe I should use this as an opportunity to go deep into Node + React or Vue, or maybe Laravel.

Ultimately I decided to stick to what I know best — my end goal is to build a business, not experiment.

In the end this turned out to be a good decision because WOW are there a lot of moving parts to doing affiliate software correctly & robustly. It would’ve probably doubled development time if I had simultaneously been mastering a new stack.

The app is built in boring old Rails & Bootstrap. But not a single customer has mentioned the tech - they only care that Rewardful solves their problem. This experience has been a good reminder about what matters!

kylefoxon Show HN: SlashPixels, a Google for Designers

The owners of this site spammed hundreds and hundreds of designers and added them to a JIRA project without consent. A stunning degree of email abuse. Please do not support this website or campaign.

kylefoxon Arq 5: Massively faster backup and restore for Mac and Windows

I've been using Arq for years and absolutely love it. Worth every penny. It is extremely well-built software — it's FAST, doesn't hog resources, and feels very polished & reliable.

I like that I can backup to multiple destinations (AWS S3/Glacier, Dropbox, Google Drive, even my own server via SFTP). IMO you can never have too many backups.

I use it along with Backblaze (and will be setting up Time Machine & Super Duper or Carbon Copy Cloner this week, after putting it off forever).

Congrats to the Haystack team!

kylefoxon Uber Isn’t Worth $17 Billion

Fair point — but doesn't this assume price per mile remains constant over time?

kylefoxon Uber Isn’t Worth $17 Billion

>> “For my base case valuation, I’m going to assume that the primary market Uber is targeting is the global taxi and car-service market.”

Uber is not (only) competing with taxis and car services. They are competing with vehicle ownership.

This single assumption dramatically affects the size of market Uber is serving.

kylefoxon Ask HN: Should I quit my job if I am not learning?

The frustrating thing about learning is you often don't really know what knowledge is useful until years after you acquire it.

kylefoxon Canada Post to phase out urban home mail delivery

Canada Post is an entity that sustains itself solely by delivering direct marketing junk mail. As a Canadian citizen I would prefer to see it disappear entirely. If people need things physically sent to them they should rely on the private sector (FedEx, Purolator, etc).

Such a system would reduce waste and encourage digital of documents, invoices, etc. +1.

kylefoxon Granify Raises $1.5 Million To Help Drive E-Commerce Transactions With Big Data

It's a great place for this kind of startup. Startup Edmonton (http://startupedmonton.com/) has done a great job of promoting Edmonton as a startup city and getting people involved. Lots of people leaving their cushy government jobs to come hack on interesting startups :)

There are also a TON of financial incentives for doing business in Alberta. Low taxes, SRED, Alberta Innovates, and many other government grants for ambitious tech startups.

It's specifically good for Granify because the University of Alberta has a strong machine learning program.

Plus, the summers in Edmonton are INCREDIBLE — even if winter is a bit harsh ;)

kylefoxon Granify Raises $1.5 Million To Help Drive E-Commerce Transactions With Big Data

> The pricing seems a bit weird though.

Thanks for the feedback — what about the pricing seems weird to you?

kylefoxon Granify Raises $1.5 Million To Help Drive E-Commerce Transactions With Big Data

Edmonton is a pretty great city for this type of startup. The University of Alberta has a highly-regarded machine learning program.

kylefoxon Sir Trevor Editor

This is awesome. I've been sketching and thinking about such an approach to editing for months now — it would be perfect for one of my products. Not only have you validated that this "block" concept makes sense to other people, you've also given me a head start on the code. Many thanks, and I look forward to using (and contributing to) the project!

kylefoxon Linode NextGen: RAM Upgrade

> $20/month is prohibitively expensive

If you're capable of using a bare-bones Linux VPS but are unable to pay $20/mo for your side projects, it's time for you to find a better paying job.

kylefoxon Cult app Cheddar up for sale, solo hacker explains why

I guess my main point is that Sam seems to be setting the price based on what Cheddar is worth to him personally, rather than some kind of growth/potential calculation (or so I assume -- he doesn't go into how he arrived at the $125k price tag, aside from alluding to the number of hours he put into the project). That makes a harder sell, IMO. Buyers are going to look at how much potential Cheddar has as a business, not how many hours Sam put into it.

BTW I'm not suggesting this is the wrong way to sell it -- if it takes $125k for Sam to feel OK parting with Cheddar, that's totally valid.

kylefoxon Cult app Cheddar up for sale, solo hacker explains why

My feelings, too. I can understand why Sam feels it's worth $125k, based on the amount of hours he put into it, but a potential buyer will (most likely) evaluate this as buying a business -- and from that perspective the price looks really steep. You'd need to grow the business 10x just to break even.

That being said, there might be someone out there who's been contemplating building a task app business, and this would give them a really nice head start, product-wise. Or, perhaps it would make sense for a larger company (OmniGroup? Panic?) who can devote substantial marketing resources to it.

Nonetheless, I wish him the best of luck. He's a likeable guy and has obviously put a ton of love into this product -- it would be nice to see him enjoy some monetary return on his efforts.

kylefoxon The Future of Ruby

I think Python's process is pretty ad-hoc too, in that anyone can champion an idea and everyone can discuss on the mailing list. There aren't many formalities, other than (1) a few core people get to make the final decision, and (2) at the end of the discussion the yes/no stamp (and importantly, the reasoning behind the decision) is documented.

kylefoxon Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (October 2012)

SEEKING WORK: Edmonton, AB + remote

Developer (frontend + backend) & Interface Designer

I consider myself both a coder and designer, but I don't half-ass know things -- I'm pretty experienced in both realms. I've done everything from designing the UX/UI for brand new products to building distributed systems on Amazon EC2/SQS/SMS.

A few projects (happy to discuss details via email):

- Self project: http://myfotojournal.com/ (Django + front-end + design)

- Self project: http://photobattle.me/ (Rails + front-end + design)

- Self project: http://craftingtype.com/ (Designed site, copywriting/newsletter, co-organized event)

- I've worked on Carbonmade (http://carbonmade.com/), TestFlight (https://testflightapp.com/), Yardstick (http://getyardstick.com/), and many projects with Lift (http://www.liftinteractive.com/)

Experience with:

- Python, Django

- Ruby, Rails, Sinatra

- JavaScript (including large apps, jQuery, some Backbone, etc)

- HTML / CSS (including responsive design)

- Interface Design

- Some iOS development (the Carbonmade app I worked on just launched! http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/carbonmade/id551454081?mt=8)

- Totally comfy with git, command line, and sysadmin stuff

I've dabbled in a bunch of other languages and am pretty quick to pickup & be productive in new tech.