Somewhat ironically, I find that page a little hard to read because the background is so bright. I find reading text on HN much easier with a darker grey background.
I'd be curious to get the opinion of others on whether or not this was a mistake given the information they had at the time.
It's pretty useless to say "our biggest mistake was x because it turned out to be a huge failure". I'm not interested in hearing someone say "my biggest mistake was eating vegetables every day because I ended up choking on a piece of broccoli".
When I first saw the site, I was hoping there would be a way to upload a picture, perhaps do some kind of feature-tagging (similar to the way you point out your pupils on photos on those try-on-glasses apps[1]) and have the site spit back a suggested face based on the features they had that most closely resembled yours.
Of course, this is complete spitballing, I have no idea if it's feasible.
With Android you have countless options to fix the orientation. Use the settings menu, use a one-click widget on your desktops, use a button in the notification pulldown menu, etc. You could even easily make it stop rotating if you use certain apps by using Llama or a similar tool. Same for making that by time of day or else.
I submitted a few "interesting" questions from StackOverflow last year (by interesting I mean they had interesting subjects, but weren't link-baity; my poor memory has forgotten what they were though!). IIRC, both of them got about 200-250 votes (on HN) and about 20-30 thousand visits. How do I know? I submitted using the share link StackOverflow gives you (it's something like stackoverflow.com/question/1000/2000, which means that user 2000 (me) has linked to question 1000), and about the time they reached 100-120 votes, SO awarded me a badge along the lines of "you shared a link that 10,000 unique IPs have visited".
So, based on my very limited experience: unique visits are about 100 times the number of votes on HN.
I've always thought that a laptop-tablet hybrid of the sort Lenovo makes is the best form factor[1] for mobile computing. A physical keyboard and trackpad you can fold away when you're not using but that you always have with you. I used an old x61 tablet that I got dirt cheap for years, and for things like watching video or reading comics or long-form text documents, being able to fold away the base is great.
Are there any machines in this form factor aimed at a general audience? A modern multi-touch tablet screen with a pivoting keyboard and mouse base?
Huh. I thought it was an update to reduce specifically "low-quality" EMDs rather than EMDs with "a lots of keywords in the domain name". Or are these two ways of saying the same thing?
The new algorithm is designed to target low-quality EMDs. HN readers are less likely to know the term "EMD," so I went primarily for an explanation and chose the example to help convey the connotation of low-quality.
Which part of the TOS do you think this would violate?
AFAIK you're not under any obligations to show Adsense ads to all users, or all of the time. I know quite a few people who only show Adsense ads to search engine visitors, for example, or block ads for people arriving with certain referrers.
I suspect I've missed the boat on this one, but in any case:
About a year ago, I began an (overly) ambitious project to build a database of the scientific evidence behind the use of herbal supplements to treat a variety of conditions. I sank my nights and weekends into it for a couple of months but only got as far as one test section. It's sat more or less derelict ever since.
Aside from a mostly ignored Reddit submission, no-one has ever really seen it. If you have a minute, take a look and please let me know any thoughts you have about it at all.
(Forgive me, the section on ED happens to be one I wrote up as a test section because I was researching it anyway as a writing gig. Click on the name of each supplement in the first table to go to the full page for it.)
You may be interested in http://examine.com/ which is a project similar to yours but focused mostly on fitness supplements specifically (although it has articles on major other supplements like fish oil). Their editors have actually provided a lot of write-ups even though they are just volunteers originally from reddit's Fitness subreddit.
Yeah, I've been following them for a while. Aside from the obvious difference in focus, my biggest gripe with that site is that the basic taxonomy is per supplement. The typical use case is the user hears about supplement A, hears it's good for purpose X, then searches for "A" or "A fox X", finds the examine.com page, and sees if A is really good for X.
With my project, the basic taxonomy was always per-complaint (or per-illness if you prefer). It doesn't presuppose the user has ever heard of any particular supplement. The idea is the user can browse to the page that documents their condition and quickly see a summary of all the evidence for all the different tested herbal treatments.
Now, I'm not at all sure that this difference in structure justifies starting all the research etc. from scratch. It may be the case that examine.com could trivially switch over to the structure I used. But I do think that my structure is superior.
Thanks, I appreciate your comment. Unfortunately, barring a change in my circumstances or a sudden upsurge in interest from the public, I just don't think it will be possible. It may not look like it but the research involved even in that one modest test section was (by my standards at least, possibly I'm just workshy) a massive undertaking.
>This turns your email inbox into a giant password manager
I already use my primary email for this purpose. Most passwords I memorize, but some, for services with requirements so arcane that memorization isn't possible, I just email to myself with a unique key I remember. To get the password, I just search my email for the key.
Yes, this makes me vulnerable if my email is ever compromised. But my primary email is already a single point of failure and pretending otherwise doesn't do me any favors.
I could use a password manager, which would have the advantage of encryption. But it's also limited to those places I have access to it. I can store the database in my dropbox, but that limits the platforms I can access it from (at least, without some serious headaches) and makes the whole process that much more painful.
Somewhat ironically, I find that page a little hard to read because the background is so bright. I find reading text on HN much easier with a darker grey background.