Why hacks don't make great products - A critique of Twitter 4 for IOS - <AUTHOR> http://www.byte.org/2011/12/10/things-i-dont-like-about-twitter-4-for-ios/

<comment><USER3> I guess I must be a Twitter power user (I'm not really), but I find Twitter 4 to be excellently simplifying for my every-day usage of Twitter.

It gives me a timeline. I can quickly post a tweet.

It quickly shows me my @ conversations. It shows me who retweeted my stuff.

It shows a (much better) trending topics page. For the big important or interesting stuff I don't need to figure out what #santacon means, it has an explanation and a photo.

I don't use multiple Twitter accounts, so I can't comment on that.

And frankly, the entire premise of @ and # being hacks is absurd. The article seems to argue that these were ill-conceived work-arounds for features that Twitter was missing originally. Well, that may be so; however, Twitter is now _defined_ by those features. Twitter without @ and # would be no Twitter at all. It turns out that using simple recognizable symbols to convey different meaning works extremely well in a 140 character medium.

<comment><AUTHOR> @ and # may define Twitter, but there are simpler and more accessible means of addressing users and creating groups/topics categories.

<comment><USER4> Such as?

<comment><AUTHOR> this thread seems to have nailed both grouping and addressing with nary an @ or a #. I'd say that was simple - I just hit reply.

<comment><USER5> and what about when you want to mention someone? will you reply to their profile? pick an arbitrary tweet? Twitter has a unique distributed, free-form environment where topics and interactions aren't aggregated in a page - <USER2> lets the users make these connections with @ and #

<comment><AUTHOR> No, there are means to handle that as well. For instance, I could just invoke their username and let the software handle the linking and notification. Perhaps it needs a trigger like @ or not to separate regular conversation from usernames, but all the primitives are there. Facebook has some pretty decent tools in this area, so does Disqus. I'd also mention that there's a difference between using a special character as a trigger and building a UI around it. Its the latter that I'd argue Twitter needs to deal with as the current presentation is overly complex and not nearly relevant enough for the vast majority of users.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Amazon Got What It Deserved–And So Did New York - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/amazon-cancels-new-yorks-hq2and-thats-a-good-thing/582844/ <comment><USER2> Tax government subsidies at 100% percent? That is absurd and I doubt that is constitutional. Or is it? Can US politicians do this? Its stupid, might as well not give any subsidies at all.</comment>


Code of Conduct Complaints Against Linus Torvalds - 0-_-0 https://linuxreviews.org/%22Linusgate%22_Leaked:_Over_250_Messages_About_Code_of_Conduct_Complaints_Against_Linus_Torvalds <comment><USER2> The emails getting cited here are from 2014 - what is the news in this article actually?

And for what it's worth, I didn't see anything particularly noteworthy - <AUTHOR> used the platform offered to him by Debian at DebConf to attack another organization that Debian presumably shares some goals and sympathies with - the FSF. Apparently many Debian project members felt that this was wrong, that they did not want it to repeat, and that Linus may not be welcome at their events because of this.

To be clear, Linus wasn't speaking out against the FSF, he was berating them and accusing them. It seems it was mostly a rant.

Note that this has nothing to do with 'policing language' or 'social justice warriors' or anything that CoC's normally bring to many people's minds. It is mostly about one organization offering a platform to attack an organization that they are friendly with.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this really just about Linus calling the FSF "dishonest", "immoral", "lying", and "crazy bigoted people"?

I don't believe his remarks constitute harassment, to be perfectly frank. In fact, I don't really see how that's a CoC matter.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. I can't see the bigotry or harassment here. He's allowed to not like people and express that forcefully.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There must be some middle ground. Like git works in a decentralized network of trust, you also need a network of trust. That network would reveal who is most trusted in what context. Torvalds is trusted with kernel code and git, but not basic empathy and polite discussion. Such moronic statements about others that spouts from that one's mouth, only deserve scorn and ridicule. But the ideas behind kernel and git is well-founded, plus some genius and Bob Martin-esqe open-mindedness about how to code, which we all could inspire from.

People who don't contribute, don't belong in certain forums. However, the world can't afford to close their ears anymore either.

The world is complex.

</comment><comment><USER6> I hope the Linux mailing list doesn't become a place where a bunch of political correct lynch mob hangs around to harass others.

<comment><USER7> i hope it has fewer troglodytes hiding behind a misguided concept of freedom of speech

<comment><USER8> Ha yes because saying describing the FSF as `bigots', is an infraction to the « Code of conduct ». If that's the case your CoC is pure bullshit designed to stifle speech.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The messages described in the article/headline are from 2014.

</comment><comment><USER10> What is the nature of respect, exactly? It sounds like "respect" boils down to being polite and considerate, not actually being forced to examine and see the world through another person's perspective.

</comment><comment><USER11> He allowed a CoC to be added to the Linux kernel. I'll be glad to see him get a taste of his own medicine. At least it would serve as a warning to others.

</comment><comment><USER8> ESR was right.

</comment><comment><USER7> maga bullshit</comment>


Ask HN: Review my startup, MailSortr - <AUTHOR> As an Outlook user to manage my emails, I got frustrated with the way Outlook functioned. So I created an Add-In for Outlook (desktop version only for windows) which makes my life much easier organizing my emails in Outlook.
I would greatly appreciate your feedback on the features, pricing and any other suggestions. I'm planning to officially launch this week. I'm new here so I hope I'm not doing anything wrong by posting this.
Thank you very much for your feedback.
url: www.mailsortr.com <comment><USER2> I found some point to share with you about the website.

\- add home link to the navbar

\- Bring the get started button to top now its below fold.

\- change the text of the button 'get started' to download.

\- i think its better to collect user email id through the app rather than asking him. if you avoid this step, the number of download will be more.

\- There is a slight possibility of user, he/she may drop of if you ask email id. Because there is no mention of why you collecting the email id. Especially professionals are very concerned about sharing the email id.

\- Outlook 2007/2010/2013/2016 & Office 365 (Not compatible with Mac)(Exchange and POP accounts only) should need more font size. because the app is more windows focused

\- you can give more focus to your features. try arranging the content in a good flow eg:- navbar, header, description, download button, video, features - (2 per row, increase font size to 16px line height 1.4), testimonial, download button,footer.

\- the more link of the first feature is broken

\- in the feature explanation page the video seems like a bit aside of the main content. put the video under right content better keep a flow to keep the page scanning easy. give more font weight to important terms/features like remove, mute, etc.

\- all the buy now button are point to same item in the checkout cart. if click >20 users it showing $29.95, 5-20 showing same $29.95 and single user again same.

\- give more importance to this line on pricing page - Subscription includes access to the latest versions of MailSortr which will ensure compatibility with newer versions of Outlook in addition to new features added to MailSortr.

All the Best.</comment>


TROJAN WARNING Do not click: Branding to Founders What Law Firms Got Right - <AUTHOR>

The site has a trojan on it. <comment><AUTHOR> WARNING: Trojan.JS.Redirector.cq caught by my software comming from this site.</comment>


Using the 'shadow-effect' to generate electricity - <AUTHOR> https://news.nus.edu.sg/research/using-shadow-effect-generate-electricity <comment><USER2> The quality of this article is atrocious.

Where is the explanation of the physical effect in use? How about theoretical or achieved efficiency numbers? Where did the "sufficient to power a watch (1.2v)" come from? Voltage isn't a measure of power...

I understand that this article has been simplified for a non-technical audience, but still...

<comment><USER3> So does this generate more energy per unit cost or area than conventional solar? I mean, you could just put tape over half of it and put it in the sun?

Im guessing the output for are is insanely low compared to regular solar, because there is so little actual information in the article that guessing is all I've got lmfao.

I get the feeling that this tech has an insanely narrow use case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cue Roger Zelazny, "Jack of Shadows".</comment>


Saraf Ali , a cybersecurity intern who uses AI to turn his home lights on - <AUTHOR> The definition of the Internet of things has evolved due to the convergence of multiple technologies, real-time analytics, machine learning, commoditysensors, and embedded systems .Traditional fields of embedded systems, wireless sensor networks  systems, automation (including home and building automation), and others all contribute to enabling the Internet of things. In the consumer market, IoT technology is most synonymous with products pertaining to the concept of the "smart home", covering devices and appliances (such as lighting fixtures, thermostats, home security systems and cameras, and other home appliances) that support one or more common ecosystems, and can be controlled via devices associated with that ecosystem, such as smartphones and smart speakers.<p>"Long-term benefits could include energy savings by automatically ensuring lights and electronics are turned off", says Mumin Farooq, an expert programmer, a data analyst and a AI developer.<p>A smart home or automated home could be based on a platform or hubs that control smart devices and appliances. For instance, using Apple's HomeKit, manufacturers can have their home products and accessories controlled by an application in iOS devices such as the iPhone and the Apple Watch. This could be a dedicated app or iOS native applications such as Siri. This can be demonstrated in the case of Lenovo's Smart Home Essentials, which is a line of smart home devices that are controlled through Apple's Home app or Siri without the need for a Wi-Fi bridge.There are also dedicated smart home hubs that are offered as standalone platforms to connect different smart home products and these include the Amazon Echo, Google Home, Apple's HomePod, and Samsung's SmartThings Hub. In addition to the commercial systems, there are many non-proprietary, open source ecosystems; including Home Assistant, OpenHAB and Domoticz. <comment><USER2>
      who?</comment>


Second sound in graphite above 100 K - <AUTHOR> http://news.mit.edu/2019/second-sound-observed-graphite-0314 <comment><AUTHOR> The arxiv version: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.09160](https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.09160)</comment>


Toyota's idea of a good UX - <AUTHOR> http://twicsy.tumblr.com/post/47799231484/toyotas-idea-of-a-good-ux Their iphone app for making car payments makes me want to wretch. <comment><USER2> What's important is that you're not bitter. ;-)</comment>


Why doesn't any one talk about nim - <AUTHOR> I recently came across nim-lang (www.nim-lang.org) and was wondering why nobody is talking about it. Granted it's new(relatively) and maybe it's just another shiny new language ,but it's so awesome. so I'm asking all of HN and ppl who are definitely more code oriented than me to support it and help it become the next language(Python) to look out for. <comment><USER2> [https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=...](https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story&query=%22nim%22)

<comment> r-w Better link: [https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&date...](https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=pastYear&type=all&query=%22nim%22)

To be fair, I had to go back a year for other posts to overtake this one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> We've had lots and lots of discussions on Hacker News about Nim, including many discussions on Nimrod.

If you want to talk about cool aspects of Nim, just do so. If you're looking for empty hype postings, count me out.

</comment><comment><USER4> Re: Why I Write Games in C -- How about Nim?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10870902](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10870902)

</comment><comment><USER5> Nim has been discussed on HN on multiple times.</comment>


ASK HN: How to find my comment on a Facebook post which has lots of comments? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/unanswered/How-do-I-find-my-comment-on-a-Facebook-post-which-has-thousands-of-comments?share=1 <comment><USER2> Go to your Facebook settings, there is a page which lists all your activities in Facebook (it should scare you and stop you from using Facebook...). That's an easy way to find any comment you have written anywhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks</comment></comment>


What price branding? - <AUTHOR> http://www.australiancreative.com.au/news/what-price-branding <comment><AUTHOR> I would love to see a listing of logos ranked by price in today's value. Some measure of how the company's value has changed as a result of the new logo (in the case of a redesign) or how successful the company has been would be interesting too.

Anyone know of such a thing already existing?</comment>


Bosses Can Snoop on E-Mails to Your Girlfriend, Court Says - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-12/companies-can-snoop-on-you-during-working-hours-court-decides <comment><USER2> The broader point is that the user was using an external service (Yahoo chat) via the company network, not (for example) just via his company email, so the title is bogus.</comment>


FreeBSD Status Report, Jul-Sep 2015 - <AUTHOR> https://www.freebsd.org/news/status/report-2015-07-2015-09.html <comment><USER2> The focus of the general public remains around Linux, so it's exciting to see so much progress on the BSD front. No need for a religious war, I'm happy to see both projects maturing as they are.

</comment><comment><USER3> It was a nice surprise to see that a RISC-V port is in a semi-working state. I didn't expect anybody to bother with that until next year at the earliest since the supervisor mode spec is still a draft, but I guess commits are cheap.

<comment><USER4> It's being worked on in part to help find issues with the spec.

</comment></comment><comment> vezzy-fnord Quite interesting to see JdeBP's nosh integration for FreeBSD notable enough to be mentioned. Does this signify there is interest for getting it into base? It would certainly be miles ahead over choosing launchd.

<comment><USER5> "Core fielded an enquiry about NextBSD and whether this should be the future direction for the whole FreeBSD project. Core's position is that NextBSD is an interesting project, and we regard it, like the other BSD projects, as a potential source of good ideas. However, we currently have no plans to adopt NextBSD as the official FreeBSD distribution."

I don't see launchd coming to FreeBSD anytime soon.

<comment><USER6> It's in the content, FreeBSD is developing nosh[0] for replacing init system.

[0] [https://www.freebsd.org/news/status/report-2015-07-2015-09.h...](https://www.freebsd.org/news/status/report-2015-07-2015-09.html#The- nosh-Project)

<comment><USER5> FreeBSD is not developing nosh as a replacement for init.

Someone in the FreeBSD community is developing nosh, and it might, someday, be a replacement for init. Might.

(I'm responsible for the IPSec bits in that report, and one of my employees did the Allwinner A10/A20 stuff listed there.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I still prefer the Dragonfly fork, with its hybrid kernel architecture.

HAMMER2 is looking good.

<comment><USER8> Agreed. I would frankly like it to be adopted into OS X as a replacement for HFS+

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Everytime I read about ZFS all I can think about is how awesome and improbable it would be for Oracle to change the license on both ZFS and Dtrace so it can just get shipped in mainline linux.

<comment><USER10> Debian[1] and Ubuntu[2] are both working on making ZFS first-class: easily available and easily manageable.

[1] [http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ZFS- Debia...](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ZFS-Debian- Libdvdcss-Packages) [2] [http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ubuntu- ZF...](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ubuntu-ZFS-Standard- Plans)

<comment><USER9> Yes but without a change to the license itll never go into the kernel. While that might make not change things operationally for some people, not having it ship with the source means itll always be a second-class citizen.

<comment><USER11> That doesn't matter to anyone other than GPL fans in practical terms if Debian and Ubuntu do their thing right.

<comment><USER12> The GPL aside. Being accepted in the kernel would mean the immense rate how development which happens there.

<comment><USER11> Again, that's from rosy GPL glasses. At worst, ZoL would be forever one or two kernel releases behind (and is basically reality now), which means very little to production users running LTS distros.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> LUN clustering via CTL and multipath TCP both sound like killer applications to me.</comment>


Github is down - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cocoflunchy

<comment><USER2> I wish people would stop posting this stuff. The people who need Github already know, the people browsing HN probably don't need to know.

<comment><USER3> Yes. I've known about the outage almost since its start. Lets get back to posting news.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm amazed it's still down, it was down yesterday. Best wishes to the github guys fixing it.

It seems like I need to expand my github-backup program with the ability to cache and later send issue reports to github. It's nice that I have a backup of all the issues of all the projects I'm likely to want to look at, but would be good to also be able to file bug reports.

It's a pity that distributed bug tracking has never fully taken off, despite some excellent tools like SD. Github is in such a good place to do something about that, as they have one of the most commonly used issue trackers, and are all about leveraging and making easy distributed version control.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is why we keep two git repos - one hosted on our own server that we deploy from, and one on Github that we use for collaboration.

Of course, we can't update some gems if github is down, but we can still deploy patches, and it's pretty trivial to host your own git repository.

</comment><comment><USER6> The problem is not so much that the source repositories are there, but projects have started using github as a major goto point for their wiki, discussions, and documentation.

This is probably a good example of a product which gets re-defined over time by its users.

</comment><comment><USER7> ... and we can't deploy our software.

Waiting for the green light ... <https://status.github.com/>

</comment><comment><USER8> <http://xkcd.com/303/> git pull takes longer than expected</comment>


Unauthorized Access to My Computer - <AUTHOR> My computer has been completely compromised. It looks like my vigilantism has pissed someone off, and they have gained full access to my computer.
Not too long ago, I was digging into fund activity, and just by chance clicked on a 13-G filing for SEAC, a company I had never heard of or searched before. This is where things get very unusual. I logged into my stocktwits account and noticed I had received a message from somebody inquiring about the same stock, SEAC.
I found this very unusual because it is thinly traded, and I had never mentioned it to anybody before. I compared the time of the stocktwits message to the time in my search history, and things became even more creepy. My history (which I hadn't cleared in several weeks) showed my first search for SEAC was at 8:22pm, September 05, 2019, and the message I received on stocktwits was at 8:34pm, only 10 minutes later.
In the message, the person requested I follow them so we could have a private conversation, and I immediately confronted the person about this strange time correlation. They just brushed it off. We talked for a bit longer than I said I had to go, and the next day I decided to screen record everything just in case.
When I confronted the person today, they again brushed it off, but this time I decided to be more forceful and said -- basically in laymen terms --  off and leave me alone, and this is where it gets very creepy. When I looked at my search history a few hours later, it had completely changed. It showed that I had been viewing SEAC once per day since the beginning of August.
No this is not all in my head, and I have video evidence. I also know that I do not follow that stock, and have never heard of it until last night. I am at a loss. I am at a complete loss as to what I am to do about this.   Many possibilities come to mind. The fact that I am even posting this on this website (where i don't know anybody) is a testament to how irked I am by all this. <comment><USER2> My guess is your machine was compromised before clicking on a 13-G filing, or possibly during depending on the website you were on.

Consider your machine compromised, at the least. Try to pull down a virus scanner, malware scanner and see if it will find anything. You may also have recent browser extensions that could have been compromised.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply. I tried to post this on cybersecurity subreddit and it was immediately removed. I'm responding late because I didn't know how to find my post lol. New to this site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Check your browser for unexpected add-ons.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the heads up</comment></comment>


A Powerful Twitter Client in less than 50 lines using Ruby Metaprogramming - <AUTHOR> http://gregosuri.com/powerful-twitter-api-wrapper-in-less-than-50

<comment><USER2> the ruby's cool, i guess, but holy shit is the gridbag.com design awful.</comment>


Sales of Bingo Card Creator Per Month - <AUTHOR> http://www.bingocardcreator.com/stats/sales-by-month <comment><USER2> Oh man, am I glad that page is cached now. (Generating it from a clean memcached takes 30 seconds.)

Not sure why you guys are suddenly interested today, because its been up for quite some time now, but if you've got questions hit me.

P.S. I hate summer.

<comment><USER3> I don't really understand what one does with a Bingo Card created by this software. Is this an American teaching method that's common?

<comment><USER2> Let's say you're doing, I don't know, a lesson on cellular biology. After wrapping it up, on Friday afternoon, you want to play a fun game which still has some educational content. So you print out one Parts of A Cell bingo card for each student in your class and explain how bingo works (or not, because they've almost certainly played before).

Then start calling things like "This center of the cell is where the chromosomes are stored". Kids mark "nucleus" on their bingo card. Repeat a few times -- somebody wins, the rest of the class comes close to winning (this is the diabolically brilliant thing about bingo), everybody is happy and most don't realize they've just reviewed some vocabulary.

Yes, this is a quite common activity in America. You'll find it in almost any book of teacher activities from elementary school through high school.

Bingo has a few features which make it particularly good from the teacher's perspective, incidentally. It scales to any number of kids with one teacher (not true of all games), it performs excellent crowd control since all students are forced to proceed at the same pace ( _very_ not true of all games), it doesn't pit students directly against one another (many American teachers do not believe that is wise), it is very difficult to be bad at bingo (in a way it is not difficult to be bad at e.g. spelling bees), there is an element of luck involved so the winner will almost certainly not be the strongest student in the class (some teachers believe this is wise), etc etc.

<comment><USER4> I've know about your Bingo Card Creator for about a year now, and for the first time I know what it is. Clearly an explanation is not necessary for your market (which I assume is the US); to expand internationally, evangelizing for the teaching method itself would reap great rewards, I believe. As a vague demonstration, Avatar has earnt 27.5% domestic, 72.5% international: <http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=avatar.htm>

[I'm in Australia, a close relative was a secondary school teacher, and I've never heard of it. But sounds like a great idea, and you have a great pitch for selling it]

very minor nit: nice to distinguish in some way the final month (May) in the chart as incomplete (or not show it).

<comment><USER2> Evangelizing is tough, which is why most technology evangelists work for companies with enough money to buy small European nations and have vague job descriptions that they can't possibly fail at. I, on the other hand, have a limited budget and a well-defined brief.

The audience of biology teachers is much, much wider than the audience of "people looking for biology bingo", and it being more diffuse makes it harder to address via scalable marketing methods like SEO and AdWords. They're also much harder to convert, because I have to sell them on a) biology bingo, b) Bingo Card Creator, and b) paying $30 for it, whereas if I just try for folks who typed [biology bingo cards] into Google I get (a) for free.

I want to be someone's first bingo game about as much as Apple wants to make someone's first cell phone.

P.S. The game many Australians think of when they think of bingo is not the game on my website. Yay, internationalization.

<comment><USER4> Well thought out; but by "evangelize" I just meant to consider those people visiting your site who don't know what your Bingo Cards are, and to sell the concept of Bingo Cards, not just your product ( _sell_ in the sense of explaining the benefits, as you did above). Like adding a link from "for instructional and entertainment purposes" to an explanation page. It would be a long-term strategy, to grow the pie, not just your slice, so it might take a long time to show up in A/B testing (and probably would be minuscule compared to the existing low hanging pie... er, fruit).

So many sites assume the reader already knows what they're selling. Still, I can see that your customer acquisition costs must be much lower for those who already know, and your site speaks precisely to those people; and there seems to be enormous growth left in that segment.

I mainly mentioned it because it would be a beneficial thing to do for the world - a connotation of "evangelize".

<comment><USER4> BTW: Here's more on lean evangelizing (for want of a better term): [http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch13_Promote_Through_Educat...](http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch13_Promote_Through_Education.php)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You seem to be reducing the amount of money going for advertising. Any special reason for this?

Thanks for the awesomeness of sharing all this stuff!

<comment><USER2> That is the opposite of the truth, actually.

I just haven't done bookkeeping for 2010 yet, because a plugin I used on my bookkeeping page broke back in February, and I've been putting off fixing it.

My actual advertising budget is largely a factor of two things: Google AdWords algorithms and Google AdWords customer support. One of these two things I have a lot of love for, because it automatically matches my ads up with sites they perform well on, and I'd happily spend $100k if they'd let me. The other I have had some issues with, most recently that it frequently takes weeks or months for them to approve changes or additions to my ads, which does not help minimize the time through the learning loop at all.

I get really, really tired of having to argue /dev/null that I am not a gambling operation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why is it so unusual for businesses to be open about the income and expenses?

<comment><USER7> Because if you are successful it's asking for competition?

<comment><USER8> Make's it easier for your competition to position themselves to. In this case it's such a niche market that most people wouldn't mind releasing financials. Other things though, I think there is a big advantage to keeping the competition guessing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Repost of repost of repost :)

Every now or then another URL of the Bingo Crad Creator sales.

But always interesting and nice to see some people sharing such detailed information on their business.

Thanks to the creator.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's so weird that a guy who makes an online bingo card generator is openly publishing sales stats and releasing an a/b testing gem, but I like it.

<comment><USER2> Believe me: I would have been thrilled if one of the larger commercial entities using Rails had solved A/B testing before I did, but since nobody seemed to be working on it, it was either write my own or use Google Website Optimizer.

A/B testing is totally worthwhile for an Internet business even at small scales. I can't say enough good things about it.

<comment><USER10> Some of these larger commercial entities could probably take a few lessons from you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been asking about admin tools and buisness analytics inside of rails (<http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2849695/ruby-on-rails-adm...>) this is a great example of something that I am making from scratch on my own.

Do you have any tips or rails libraries that can help?

</comment><comment><USER12> I wouldn't expose too much of the company finances. Someone might find it profitable and start a copy-cat. What do you think?

<comment><USER2> I think it happened. Twice out of folks who know me from online forums, possibly more outside of that.

Oh well.

<comment><USER13> I'll bet that most competitor attempts are a net positive.

Even the failed attempts help convince folks that they need bingo cards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What are the freelancing expenses for? (Customer support and creating new card categories?)

Side note: you might want to change the color of the "payments processing" slice of the expenses pie chart, since it's pretty impossible to see with the current background. But anyways, this information is really cool.

<comment><USER2> I do all customer support myself. Freelancing is overwhelmingly creating new cards for the website, doing content for mini-sites, and doing web design (something I'm not good at).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It looks like the graph shows that this is popular with school teachers.</comment>


iPhone: The Microformat Killer App? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nickpeters.net/2007/01/09/iphone-the-microformat-killer-app/ <comment><USER2> I doubt that microformats will be implemented in any meaningful way out of the box, and Apple has been somewhat hostile towards would-be third party iPhone developers, so I wouldn't hole out much hope.

Also, as cool as a mobile version of Safari is (and it is cool), but it's not quite as revolutionary as soom people seem to think. Opera Mobile/Mini and the S60 browser both do a solid job of rendering regular XHTML web pages for many months, yet there hasn't exactly been an explosion in Mobile Web 2.0 content (or microcontent).</comment>


Gorilla Youngsters Seen Dismantling Poachers' Traps (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/07/120719-young-gorillas-juvenile-traps-snares-rwanda-science-fossey/ <comment><USER3> In Aotearoa-New Zealand we set traps for introduced species like stoats, rats, possums, etc. that kill our endangered wildlife that evolved without natural predators.

The Kea which are very smart mountain parrots will go and disarm the traps in order to eat the bait. They're smart enough to have figured out how to do this, and are one of just a handful of animals that habitually use tools, but are unfortunately too smart for their own good because their handiwork means there's more predators for them.

But, some people don't give animals enough credit. Mammals and especially primates are very, very close to Humans genetically. Animals are often very smart.

<comment><USER4> _> unfortunately too smart for their own good because their handiwork means [certain doom]_

Reminds me of a certain mammalian species.

<comment><USER5> Almost like this trait might be inherent in all mammals. Or does it go even higher? All animals? All life? Evolve intelligence, begin building your doom?

<comment><USER6> Plants are possibly in that club too: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event)

<comment><USER7> I thought this would be something more like how plants chemically communicate with each other about insect infestations so other plants can proactively protect themselves or "scream" (give off a pulse) when attacked.

<comment><USER6> GP was talking about life causing its own doom, so I thought that plants causing a climate change and mass extinction due to uncontrolled growth would be appropriate.

This does miss the "crafty solution to an immediate problem" part that you and the original article mention, though.

<comment><USER7> I totally misunderstood what you were going for.

In that vein, one of my environmental studies textbooks had a comic of microbes creating oxygen way back when and some of the microbes holding protests against them poisoning their environment with all that icky oxygen waste gas, ew.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > "If we could get more of them doing it, it would be great," he joked. > Karisoke's Vecellio, though, said actively instructing the apes would be > against the center's ethos. "No we can't teach them," she said. "We try as > much as we can to not interfere with the gorillas. We don't want to affect > their natural behavior."

I would think that the main danger is in habituating the gorillas to humans, teaching them that we're safe when we're not. It may be better if any human interaction with them is aversive but not damaging, like pepper spray.

<comment><USER9> Pepper spray is actually quite damaging.

<comment><USER10> It was an example, captain pedantic.

<comment><USER11> He is actually not a captain.

<comment><USER12> This comment is way underappreciated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Few technologies will ever stand up to the will of adolescents trying to do things they're told they're not allowed to do -- Scott Berkun [1]

[1] [https://scottberkun.com/essays/37-how-to-build-a-better- web-...](https://scottberkun.com/essays/37-how-to-build-a-better-web-browser/)

</comment><comment><USER14> >Veterinarian Mike Cranfield, executive director of the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project, also said he wasn't shocked by the news.

>"Chimpanzees are always quoted as being the tool users, but I think, when the situation provides itself, gorillas are quite ingenious," he said.

>Cranfield speculated that the gorillas may have learned how to destroy traps by watching the Karisoke center's trackers.

Looks like they may have learned it from watching humans.

</comment><comment><USER15> Or how about the video of the orangutan fighting the bulldozer destroying its home? I used to think people just didn't realize that animals have internal emotional, social, intellectual lives. But I'm now convinced we know and choose to look away. Tragically.

[https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/8896313/david- attenbor...](https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/8896313/david-attenborough- climate-change-the-facts-orangutan-bulldozer-video/)

<comment><USER16> At the beginning of _Dune_ , someone differentiates humans from animals like this:

> _You 've heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap? There's an > animal kind of trick. A human would remain in the trap, endure the pain, > feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove a threat to his > kind._

The idea is recognizable, at least. It's antelope individually scattering from a cheetah, rather than forming a tight group that wouldn't be attacked a second time. But it's sad, and kind of funny, just how wrong it is to draw that line at 'humans'. Gorillas disarm traps instead of avoiding them. Elephants defend their friends, even across species, and bury their dead. Dolphins proactively kill sharks, and hold injured dolphins - or humans - <USER2> the surface to breath. Even octopuses, not usually understood as a social species, display clear theory of mind.

It's not just the endless redefinition of "tool use" that feels like hubris anymore. Just about everything we consider deeply meaningful, emotion and intellect and teaching and even ritual, is not a uniquely human experience.

<comment><USER17> My pet theory is that most animals know they're conscious and know they are part of one consciousness.

Humans evolved an illusion that we are alone in an individual consciousness because it was an adaptation: the mistaken belief makes it easier for us to kill, and kill in large numbers. Which happened to work well for us. It let us kill off any humans who thought there was anything wrong with carving out a new world without regard for the cost to other creatures.

Without that adaptation we never would have created civilization.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > "No we can't teach them," she said. "We try as much as we can to not > interfere with the gorillas. We don't want to affect their natural > behavior."

Tsk. Like the Prime Directive but in the real world.

Well, isn't it the natural behaviour of gorillas to learn? If they can learn by observing humans, without the humans specifically intending it, then what's so different, or unethical, if it's done with intent? I think this is just splitting of moral hairs that is missing an opportunity to help the gorillas protect themselves against poachers.

Anyway, if we left the gorillas on their own, without interfering, they'd eventually be wiped out by poachers and others.

P.S. It strikes me that the center's workers could have actually shown the gorillas how to dismantle the snares and are only pretending to be surprised at their "unprecedented" behaviour. But I'm proably just paranoid and jaded.

<comment><USER19> I feel that if any human was found to be teaching gorillas how to do human things, they would ultimately suffer punishment like Prometheus who taught humans how to use the fire of the gods.

<comment><USER20> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koko_(gorilla)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koko_\(gorilla\)):

 _"Hanabiko "Koko" (July 4, 1971 – June 19, 2018) was a female western lowland gorilla known for having learned a large number of hand signs from a modified version of American Sign Language (ASL)"_

Wikipedia thinks Koko's teacher still is alive (aged 72), so punishment certainly wasn't swift.

<comment><USER21> Reports of actual language use by Koko were famously exaggerated, and only seemed to happen with her teacher working with her. Hardly stealing fire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Could the gorillas be the poachers? The story seems consistent with the gorrilas warning the tracker by grunt to stay put, then dismantle their nearby traps to protect the humans. This is also consistent with the fact that the tracker hadn't noticed the second trap. I don't really believe my suggestion though, but the coincidence probability does seem rather low for 2 such trap- dismantling events during a single encounter between tracker and gorillas. If they spontaneously dismantled strictly for themselves, I'd expect the traps to already be dismantled, if the gorillas preferred the traps dismantled. Perhaps human poachers set the traps, and the gorillas for some reason benefit or are entertained by the trapped animmals?

>On Tuesday tracker John Ndayambaje spotted a trap very close to the Kuryama gorilla clan. He moved in to deactivate the snare, but a silverback named Vubu grunted, cautioning Ndayambaje to stay away, Vecellio said.

>Suddenly two juveniles—Rwema, a male; and Dukore, a female; both about four years old—ran toward the trap.

>As Ndayambaje and a few tourists watched, Rwema jumped on the bent tree branch and broke it, while Dukore freed the noose.

>The pair then spied another snare nearby—one the tracker himself had missed—and raced for it. Joined by a third gorilla, a teenager named Tetero, Rwema and Dukore destroyed that trap as well.

</comment><comment><USER23> From the article:

>"If we could get more of them doing it, it would be great," he joked.

>Karisoke's Vecellio, though, said actively instructing the apes would be against the center's ethos.

>"No we can't teach them," she said. "We try as much as we can to not interfere with the gorillas. We don't want to affect their natural behavior."

I wonder if this "prime-directive" style rule might be something they consider changed - if there was a way to teach the gorillas to disabled various kinds of traps it seems that would be great.

On the other hand, I wonder what the side effects would be.. anyone?

</comment><comment><USER24> Kind of makes you wonder if human evolution was driven by predation.

</comment><comment><USER25> I just realized that it is a 7 years old article!

</comment><comment><USER26> This makes me wonder how will the rest of the lifeforms will evolve in future. Will gorillas become more intelligent to survive in a current human dominated environment? Will they evolve to the point, where they become early versions of the homo sapiens?

</comment><comment><USER27> So,is present time the another Neanderthal moment in our history?

</comment><comment><USER28> I wonder if we should show them how to write software?

<comment><USER29> Not software probably, but could be a plan B for Uber's "driverless" cars.

<comment> frosted-flakes That's probably not as stupid as it sounds. Well, actually it is, but if horses can drive their carriages autonomously, could we teach gorillas to do the same for cars?

<comment><USER30> You know there's a very famous sci-fi musical about why this would be a bad idea!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlmzUEQxOvA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlmzUEQxOvA)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I imagined the adult gorillas sitting around going "Kids these days, they're so tech-savvy."

<comment><USER32> Millennial gorillas are killing the poaching industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I at first read this as "Guerilla Youngsters Seen Dismantling Poachers' Traps."

Either way I'm all for it.

</comment><comment><USER34> When will governments start selling licenses to hunt poachers?

<comment><USER35> Hunt poachers, then sell their organs legally at market price, and then take a cut of the profits. This way the government does not even have to pay for anything.

Of course, highly controversial idea, but if you really want to curb down poaching, it might be a good way to fight back with better incentives.

<comment><USER36> I recall an article on poachers in africa. In that particular case it was down to poverty - I poach or my children go hungry. I've no doubt we'd all do the same.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I for one welcome our new overlords, I hope to serve them well.

</comment><comment><USER38> "Kids these days are so rude"

</comment><comment><USER39> Maybe we should experiment with giving these gorillas knives, see what happens.

<comment><USER40> Dismantling the poachers?

<comment><USER41> A gorilla doesn't need a tool to kill a person - have you ever seen a gorilla?

<comment><USER42> The problem here is that poachers could have guns, so even though gorillas are extremely strong, and a gorilla with a knife is a scary prospect close-up, a poacher with a gun wouldn't have much problem killing the gorilla.

The solution is simple: give guns to gorillas and teach them to shoot them. Now we'll have gorilla warfare...

<comment><USER43> "Well, first we had the right to arm bears, and then everyone said that wasn't fair. Now we're arming gorillas, too!"

<comment><USER44> What we fear most: Kids with Guns.

\- Gorillaz

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Poacher: We're setting traps to give you Gorillas new homes.

Gorilla dismantling trap: No. Caesar IS home.

<comment><USER46> They are setting traps for bush meat

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> >Bush-meat hunters set thousands of rope-and-branch snares in Rwanda's Volcanoes National Park, where the mountain gorillas live. The traps are intended for antelope and other species but sometimes capture the apes.

>The hunters, Vecellio said, seem to have no interest in the gorillas. Even small apes, which would be relatively easy to carry away for sale, are left to die.

Pretty misleading for the title to blame poachers then, isn't it?

<comment><USER48> Considering it's a national park, hunting antelope is probably also considered poaching.

<comment><USER49> Yes. That's why setting trap in some countries is a strictly regulated activity and lethal or harmful traps are almost always forbidden. You can't always catch what you intended to, so you have to give a way out to the guy you caught by mistake. Snares without a stop are harmful by design.</comment></comment></comment>


Design for Non-Designers: Part 1 - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/design-for-non-designers-part-1-6559ed93ff91#.p7cpx0sae <comment><USER2> The author suggests reducing clutter and then goes on to use four different type styles for a modal dialog. The header is italicised, in a different colour and different point size to the body text. The text in the button is uppercased and tracked out. Why? 90% of the time you only need one level of differentiation to create a sense of typographical heirarchy, otherwise you end up with exactly the opposite of what was intended in the article.

There is a huge disconnect between design thinking in the cultural and arts sector and design thinking in the technology sector. As a developer and designer working in the former, I find it both perplexing and frustrating to see the lack of consideration given to design as something that adds value rather than as something serving a purely functional purpose in the latter. I think the lack of modern design education in other, particularly more traditional formats for those focusing on digital design is partly to blame.

I would think it would be valuable for anyone with an interest in design to look at the work of many of the better graphic design studios practicing today who don't necessarily work in digital formats. There is a lot to be learnt about the subtleties of graphic design from a well typeset book for example. These blanket statements about things like white space are more often than not rehashed guidelines for producing at best mediocre design.

</comment><comment><USER3> A long long time ago, I wrote up a really basic rules of thumb for novice designers[0] to help me be more aware of basic principles but I've always wanted someone to write a more comprehensive yet practical design guide. This is it!

I'm super excited about Tracy's work on this topic, everyone should follow it and get in on the Kickstarter[1] if you haven't already. :)

[0] [https://shazow.net/everything/rules-of-thumb-for-novice- desi...](https://shazow.net/everything/rules-of-thumb-for-novice-designers/)

[1] [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1868398473/hello-web- de...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1868398473/hello-web-design- design-basics-for-non-designers/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice to see this here! I'm the author, happy to answer any questions anyone has.</comment>


$68B CA bullet train project likely to overshoot budget and deadline - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-bullet-train-cost-final-20151025-story.html <comment><USER2> America seems to be unfixable.

"The 11-mile East Side Access tunnel in New York City, for example, is 14 years behind schedule, and the tab has grown from $4.3 billion to $10.8 billion. Boston's 3.5-mile Big Dig was finished in 2007 — nine years behind schedule and at nearly triple the estimated cost."</comment>


Pixel C is 25% off for developers - <AUTHOR> http://www.greenbot.com/article/3042597/android/google-will-sell-you-its-high-end-pixel-c-tablet-for-25-off-if-you-say-youre-a-developer.html <comment><USER2> [http://www.greenbot.com/article/3012675/android/google- pixel...](http://www.greenbot.com/article/3012675/android/google-pixel-c- review.html)

I feel like this article does a good job of explaining why it isn't selling well. MS Surface is a messy device in the sense that it cobbles together a bunch of old and new technologies, but in the old PC tradition, its a device where you can get the job done. Sure, Pixel C is for developers because Google _wishes_ developers would build full featured productivity apps for Android. Its not surprising, and Pixel C is still too expensive for what it does.

<comment><USER3> Every company that missed an opportunity goes through the _" let's give devices to developers for free/cheaply"_ phase.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I continue to believe this was originally a chromeOS device, and that internal politics shoved Android on it.

A touch-oriented chrome device that could take a keyboard would be a lot more appealing to me than a premium android tablet. I'm not sure how common this perspective is, though. I definitely use my iPad Pro as a limited Macbook air..

<comment><USER5> Android runs Chrome. The only drawback is the windowing system isn't right for the form factor. Split screen in Android N will probably make the Pixel C loved by many.

"Internal politics" makes it sound like a mistake, but when Android replaces Windows as the default desktop OS in a few years, the Pixel C will look like a pretty smart idea.

<comment><USER6> ChromeOS != Chrome

<comment><USER7> It is just a Linux distribution with a window manager that only knows about Chrome.

<comment><USER6> Given the fact that crouton exists, I am inclined to disagree. It also has implemented proper secure boot, something that is still difficult for most distros.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Could the title please be edited, as it's misleading?

It's off 25% _for developers in the US, for a limited amount of purchases_.

<comment><AUTHOR> Certainly it's limited to one person, but where do you see developers in the US restriction?

<comment><USER9> The article doesn't tell you but going to the actual page[1] tells you it's restricted to US only.

> The Google Store Promotional Codes Terms apply. Offer2 only available in the > United States while supplies last.

[1] [https://pixel.google.com/developer- discount/](https://pixel.google.com/developer-discount/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Just saw it too. Sorry I missed this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> $450 is still pretty expensive for something that doesn't really rate against an iPad :/

<comment><USER11> Reality (and sales figures) disagree with you: [http://www.statista.com/statistics/276635/market-share- held-...](http://www.statista.com/statistics/276635/market-share-held-by- tablet-vendors/)

(I personally dislike tablets as a form factor and have both an iPad and Android tablet gathering dust, but people do seem to keep buying Android tablets.)

<comment><USER2> Your link doesn't imply that. It suggests that "other" is the category replacing iOS in the market, which are no-name brands. Its not a trend where consumers are paying $450 for a Google product, but one where they're paying $200 for something generic. Amazon and the other players are just holding their ground.

On the Apple side, I know people who bought the larger iPhone no longer felt a need for an iPad. I'm sure the same trend is true for Android, so its unclear who exactly is still buying tablets. Could it be people in markets/demographics where they can't get/afford full-featured phones?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is nice, I'd really like to try one out.

To save the other international readers a two clicks: Discount is sadly US only.

> Offer2 only available in the United States while supplies last.

</comment><comment><USER13> Based on comments I think the purpose of the discount is being missed. We are a Mobile app Company with significant presence on Android. The fact that this rebate made available at the time N Preview was released gave us enough push to order 1 so that we can test our apps on Android N in desktop like environment for Multi-Window support.

</comment><comment><USER14> > Offer2 only available in the United States while supplies last.

You may try to buy it with some logistic companies/ warehouse if the discount is larger than the service charge. E.g. I am currently in Hong Kong. The service charge is USD33. If I buy the USD499 one, the discount is 124.75, still cheaper than buying in Hong Kong.

</comment><comment><USER15> Still NO, Google

</comment><comment><USER16> I already have a lenovo, android phone and android tablet all of which were cheaper granted the lenovo is a refurb. So nah! But i am a developer.</comment>


Project management practices for startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.collade.com/think/essential-project-management-practices

<comment><USER2> At our startup (18 employees), we're about to give Collabtive (open source project management app [http://collabtive.o-dyn.de/](http://collabtive.o-dyn.de/)). Anyone tried it? If so, what did you think?

If you've used a good free or paid project management app, feel free to drop me a reply with a recommendation.</comment>


Show HN: StarTrack – GitHub star history and stats - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/seladb/StarTrack-js <comment><USER2> Really nice!

If I can suggest:

1) update the browser url so I can share directly, no need for the copy button (I shared it with my team, then the link was wrong, then I went back and found the copy button).

2) maybe cache the result for like 2h? it should be barely 0 cost, but if I refresh or share with someone who clicks immediately it's almost instant.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very cool stuff!!</comment>


Open-source network and infrastructure monitoring and management system - <AUTHOR> https://netxms.org/ <comment><USER2> Looks like a great project. Unfortunately, the UI looks like something from a time gone by.

From an engineering perspective, this shouldn't matter.

From a management acceptance factor, I can't get this through the door. If I'm bringing something new in, it'll be compared against the alternatives. At that point, superficial looks typically matter, and this doesn't stack up, so it typically won't reach the POC phase.

A sad reality that too many of us live in.</comment>


If Barbara Corcoran Can Turn Off Her Phone At 6:30, So Can You--Here's How - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1830132/barbara-corcoran-shark-tank <comment><USER2> 'Corcoran also shares her number one power tool "which no one should have to live without"--and it's not an app.'

Umm... what is her power-tool? I'm not watching a video when it could have been mentioned in the text. This is why I read--videos cost time.</comment>


Tim Draper Doubles Down on Europe - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/03/tim-draper-europe/

<comment><USER2> Yes, Bitcoin will solve all of Greece's problems. Give me a break.</comment>


Lessons Learned After Year One As a Startup Founder - <AUTHOR> http://www.derekflanzraich.com/2012/04/lessons-learned-year-one-startup-founder/

<comment><USER2> I met Derek when I was on vacation in NYC last summer. He took the time to meet with me (a nobody who he just "knew" from twitter) and explained me the big vision behind Greatist. He's crazy passionate and not afraid to make mistakes (which this article shows perfectly.). It's been awesome to see him talk to the "big guys" in the fitness industry all of a sudden. This shows, once again: Hard work pays off, people. Go Derek & go Greatist! :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Fey-- means a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Absolutely great story and thanks for sharing. This sort of sharing is invaluable for those trying to start something.

Nice site and I can see why it has gained so much traffic. The biggest question is - how did you get this traffic?

Have you paid for any advertising? How much is driven from advertising or organic growth?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks-- and glad you found it valuable!

Our growth has been nearly entirely social, with the 60% driven by sites like Pinterest, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Tumblr, & Twitter. The rest mostly comes from our syndication partnerships. Outside of some free trials from Google Adwords, we've never paid for any visitors... and we've never been covered by any major outlet either. We've grown 35% on average each of the last 5 months & it's all organic.

<comment><USER3> Pretty impressive. Is your social driven traffic via your own profiles on these sites or users/readers?

<comment><AUTHOR> Mix of both, we've got some pretty epic profiles-- but the majority comes from others sharing our stuff w/ their friends. Strong believer in this as a trend (Buzzfeed talks about this, too: [http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/content-shared-close- fr...](http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/content-shared-close-friends- influencers/233147/))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4>
      4. Surround yourself with friends who will remind you
      you're awesome when you need it & shit on you when it's
      time.

I hate it when my friends go out of their way to say nice things about my work. They do that because they know much effort I put into my work, and they don't want to make me feel bad.

But this is counter-productive. You're not helping me if you don't point out what can be improved!

<comment><USER5> Exactly. Recently I asked a friend to check out a site I just uploaded, he sent me some nice compliments. Later I realized that on IE (which he uses) the layout was all off.

I need to find some meaner friends.

<comment><USER6> You need honest friends. I looked at a little iOS game a friend of mine was doing. I told him what I like about it. I also told him everything I thought was wrong about it. He was asking me for honest feedback so I gave it.

I didn't have to be mean about it, just clear and straight forward. "I don't like the way this works because ..." "I don't like the way this looks because ..."

Real feedback is much more helpful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Thanks for sharing your lessons. The biggest takeaway for me is this:

> Literally schedule in specific time to think & be creative– you need it.

</comment><comment><USER8> Are you planning to partner with a larger conglomerate like Everyday Health to make money through advertising, or you plan to build your own sales team?

Also, do you have any plans to increase engagement in your site? I envision the number of page views per visitor is 2-3 or so?

Lastly, how would you remain sustainable if Google one day decided to penalize you for whatever reason?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for reading-- we're actually currently partners w/ Everyday Health for advertising & have no plans to build out a major sales team in the near future. We're hoping to build a business that isn't driven by ad sales, but instead driven by guiding people to products, tools, and services that are as high-quality as our content & will help them achieve their goals.

In terms of engagement-- we have a lot on the way. Right now our focus has been purely to build the highest-quality brand equity and an audience. We've got a 26% return rate, so think we're doing something right so far-- though obviously there's a long way to go and a lot more to do.

Our traffic is currently less than 6% driven by Google search-- but we're already ranking for some pretty awesome terms ahead of some classic incumbents. We believe we're writing among the highest-quality content in the space already (every fact cited by a PubMed study, every article approved by multiple experts) & that if we keep consistently doing that and people keep returning & noticing that we likely won't penalized by Google in the future. My take at least!

<comment><USER9> _Guiding people to products, tools, and services that are as high-quality as our content & will help them achieve their goals_

So, advertising?

edit: also, what are your sources of traffic if only 6% google? I mean, is it diversified or all coming from a big single non-google?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha-- nope, apps, subscription services, etc...

Re: traffic, more on it in the comment below, but more than 60% is driven by social.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> wow, up to 800k visitors per month after only 1 year? Impressive! How are you getting most of your traffic, if you don't mind me asking.

<comment><AUTHOR> Check some of the answers above-- thanks for reading!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Any plans on adding additional traffic drivers beside content, such as interactive fitness tools?

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh yeah. Stay tuned! :)

<comment><USER11> Nice. If you ever want to explore drop-in route planning using maps (OSM and/or google), as well as activity tracking using GPS data, we have an extensive javascript API to interact with our service. Basically, we handle everything complicated, and it's just a matter of JS developers and designers making it nice on your front end.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Paint a flag over your profile picture - <AUTHOR> http://www.flaggify.com <comment><USER2> Flaggify rocks ! Thank you flaggify !!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sorry it's a quick hack and does not work very well on all mobile browsers.

All feedback/bug reports are welcome, though!

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice ! How did create overlays on the client side?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a simple canvas overlay with 50% transparency.

Then the resulting image data is put in a URL and ready to download.

There is not much into it, really ;)</comment></comment>