silverlight

Thank you.

Thanks!

I did a Show HN for Roll20 right after launching: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4532754

We now have almost 2 million users and a small team working on it full-time. I definitely originally thought it would only be a side project...

If I could get this screen (along with it working with the pen and the other accessories) but hook it up to my existing desktop I would be all over it. Even if it was still $2,200. But a 980M is just not going to cut it as my primary graphics card...

I live in KC and they are still rolling out here. Next phase ends Nov 3. I assume they are I'll keep rolling out in the metros they are already in as the leg work is done for the most part.

Doesn't seem to work for me on my HTC Vive but I've never used any A-Frame site before so I might just be doing it wrong. I tried on both Chrome and Firefox.

At first glance, it's interesting. We currently use Freshdesk. We have around 3 people that use it daily. We get around 100 emails per day.

Re: the price point, it's certainly cheaper than a full-fledged offering like Freshdesk, but honestly if there's one thing most businesses are probably comfortable paying for, it's tools to keep their customers happy. So I'm not sure competing on being much lower-priced is a win here.

About 80% of our email that comes in is answered with a canned response. I would make that your number one feature to add (unless it's already in, in which case I would highlight it on the homepage).

The other thing I would consider a must-have is the ability to move a card from the "Completed" list back to the "Active" list if the customer re-responds. I think a very typical workflow for this type of system is to answer the email and then consider the case "closed" unless you hear back again from the customer, in which case you want it to be moved back onto your active list.

Finally, it's not super-important to us, but I know that reporting is big in this space as well -- knowing who is responding to what and how quickly the average email is getting answered, for example. That might be the type of thing you could sell as an add-on, where you keep track of that on your end and then allow them to access a report on your site.

Overall though it's a very neat idea. I might swing back by in a few months and see where it's at and consider it for my next project.

Does adding a Gin index to the JSONB help this?

Even if you get a tax break in Amsterdam wouldn't you just end up paying that tax to the US? My understanding is basically your US tax still applies unless you are posting more in foreign tax than you would in US tax.

I think the best thing to do with PayPal if you're doing an ongoing subscription with different plan levels or addons, is to use Pre-Approved Payments. This basically allows you to get a PayPal token which you can use like a Stripe token -- that is, you can tell PayPal "here's this token, I need to charge it $4.99" and they will do so anytime you ask.

As you might expect, they watch companies using this type of API very closely so obviously don't use abuse it. But we've been using it from around a year now with Roll20 an d have had great success with it. It allows our customers to link their PayPal account to their Roll20 account one time, and then buy subscriptions or digital one-off content without needing to log into PayPal again or anything like that, just as if they had a stored credit card on file with our Stripe integration.

The benefit from the consumer side is that you can log into your PayPal account at any time, and see exactly when and how much you've been charged over the life of the relationship, plus end the relationship on the PayPal side with one click. So it's really a win-win I think.

Note that we also do offer using a regular PayPal checkout flow for one-off content if you're not a subscriber, but as soon as someone wants to get on a subscription plan we have them do the pre-approved payments agreement with us.

Cool, that looks perfect. Thanks!

Random but related: does anyone know of a good library (in C#, Javascript, or really anything higher-level than C preferably) that implements this? By "this" I mean a UDP-based system capable of sending both "it's stale when it's sent" data that can be dropped if it's lost and "this must be delivered" messages that will be re-sent if not delivered?

I would need it for a Unity project, so if it's Unity-ready already that would be great, but honestly at this point I'm willing to just take what's out there as a starting point and work with it.

I did find this: https://community.unity.com/t5/Asset-Store/Open-Source-UdpKi... but it's apparently unsupported now and the author has moved on to other things.

There are some other packages on the Unity Asset Store but most of them are focused around Unity-to-Unity communication, and I'm looking for something more generic (since my architecture is actually Unity-to-NodeJS currently).

I previously started Roll20, and it is now a profitable SaaS business. It started off as just myself, then very quickly I added 2 Co-Founders, and now we have 8 people total working on it full-time. For that business, we used Kickstarter to get it off the ground, and then just slowly built through word of mouth and a strong built-in networking effect.

I am in the process of starting my next project right now; it's a VR small-scale MMO called "OrbusVR". I've been working on it for about a month now, and I've got a blog up (http://blog.orbusvr.com) where I've been posting development updates at least weekly; I've also been posting frequently to Reddit in places where potential players are likely to hang out (e.g. /r/vive). I have around 50 people already signed up on a newsletter, and every time I post about it I gain another 10-15 subscribers. I plan to launch a Kickstarter for this project as well probably in the next month or two; both to "fail fast" if there isn't going to be a large enough playerbase to support it, and to get a boost to the funding (which is 100% out of my own pocket right now).

So I guess in my experience, the trend has been:

1) Make something people really want already, but don't have.

2) Work on it in the open as much as possible to build up an early evangelist community.

3) Do a Kickstarter campaign or other event to gauge actual "I will spend money on this" interest.

4) Continue to grow slowly via world of mouth until you reach a tipping point where a network effect kicks in and then just grow from there.

I would think the main barrier to doing this is the tie-in between the hardware and software. Mac hardware doesn't even really have a "large server" piece. And certainly if they did it wouldn't be very cheap compared to a Linux box. Since basically any software you would run on OSX to run a server you would presumably be able to run on Linux as well (e.g. nginx, etc.), I don't know what the advantage would be.

That has got to be one of the most pointless, low-effort pieces of "writing" I have ever read in my life. VR is bad for kids because Ben Affleck won't let his 4 year old see Batman and your daughter didn't like the IMAX at the aquarium? What?

I do think there is a lot of merit in being cautious with any new technology when it comes to children (I have an HTC Vive at home now and my 5 year old and 3 year old are not using it), but c'mon, in what way did this article contribute to that discussion in any way? And honestly, in general, why is an article from the NY Post's "write whatever you want" section even HN-worthy?

I think there's a difference. Going to a National Park requires additional resources above just having a National Park. People to assist you, additional infrastructure like bathrooms and campsites, etc. So I think it makes sense you pay extra to actually use the park and tax payers are paying just enough to keep the park established.

However, what's the extra cost in distributing the journal article? Hosting fees? A simple website where the paper author uploads a PDF? It seems like those costs are pretty small

It's way better. My Echo understands my 5 year old even with complicated phrases like "Alexa play Secret Agent Man on Spotify". His pronunciation isn't perfect but it still, amazingly, works.

That was nuts. Interested to read the post-mortem on this one. Our site went down as well. What could cause a sudden all-region meltdown like that? Aren't regions supposed to be more isolated to prevent this type of thing?

Seems to have only been down for about 10 minutes, so I'm thinking some sort of mis-configuration that got deployed everywhere...they were working to fix a VPN issue in a specific region right before it went down...

Congratulations to everyone involved in this tremendous achievement, both the engineers who created AlphaGo and the Go community for being such gracious hosts.

So they licensed the core Alexa tech? Or it just uses the API?

I've had the Echo a bit longer (6 months? We were in the first batch that went out to Prime customers) and we love it as well. I also want to get one for the whole house instead of just currently the basement. In addition to music and trivia and timers, we also use our to control our lighting (via the Hue stuff from Phillips) and we love that as well. Overall it's amazing.

I thought Google SQL was based on MySQL?

Certainly what we're in the process of doing.

Indeed, well, keep fighting the good fight. We are cheering for you.

Interesting how many people forget there are more parts of the world than just the US, or even the Bay Area...

Glad to hear something official on this...5 or 6 days is way too long to go without something more than "We're working on it" and some light details. I understand that it's likely an all-hands-on-deck hair-on-fire situation over there, but those of us who rely on Linode for our own businesses have been largely left in the dark.

When our customers are emailing and tweeting us and they just want to know when we are going to be up, and all we can say is "We have no idea, we don't know why this is happening or what's really going on", that's pretty much the definition of a worst case scenario from a customer service standpoint.

As someone whose business relies on Linode currently to function, I am sympathetic to Linode's plight...this is the equivalent of someone coming and setting off a bomb in your factory; not exactly something that you can always plan for even if you have prevention measures in place. But they would have kept a lot more of my sympathy long-term if they would have communicated better with their customers in the first place...

EDIT: And it looks like the attackers decided to start things back up again, as Linode.com is unavailable...

Been happening daily for about 5 days now. Pretty frustrating but I'm sure it's frustrating for them too.

Thinking about moving to Google Compute Engine instead.

Fair enough. I mean in that case I would probably have spent some time in the video showing how easy it was to set up all the devices to work with Josh. Since what you're saying is that while the end result is about the same (currently), the setup is easier. As you said not really for me then since I like having the hackability of using IFTT to do all sorts of things, but I can see how someone in a 10k sqft home might not want to deal with it.

Of course that's a pretty small audience, so there you go. "Sell to the classes, eat with the masses", as they say...

I'm not usually one to hop on something and criticize when it's a Show HN.

But I have literally everything that this is doing already set up in my home right now using an Amazon Echo, which is $200, instead of $10,000.

I can say "Trigger lights for projector", and lights dim how I want it. Or "Trigger lights for guests" and bing, lights. I can say "Play my Lumineers station on Pandora", and my Echo will play it. And of course I can ask Echo all kinds of things like "What is the distance to the moon?" or "What is the population of India?"

Plus a lot more.

So what is the value add here? How is this different/better than Echo + IFTT + a Wink hub? I'm really genuinely curious, because this is something I am doing right now and am totally willing to spend money on to do better, but based on this short video I have no idea how this is better...

So I guess take that as constructive feedback from (presumably?) your target audience -- show me something really cool this does to get me to consider spending $10k on it.

No, I think you only pay $12.99 if you subscribe via iOS. If you subscribe on Desktop then access it via your iOS device on the same account, you already have a subscription.