DanielN

This is really nice! I was similarly bothered by biases in new sources so I built https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bias-tracker/mhijk...

The servo is mounted to the piece of rubber which is then mounted to the doorknob. The only thing keeping the servo on the lock is friction.

I've been building a lockitron clone using a raspberry pi. The key functionality selling point for me was being able to lock/unlock the door base on proximity like lockitron's "sense" feature.

Turns out this is much more difficult than it sounds because bluetooth le rssi is pretty unreliable. I've figured how to get it working for my particular case but I would be curious how lockitron configures it to work consistently for a wider range of locations and devices.

On a separate note, the servo can be attached to the door without duct tape or modifying the door if you have a door like [1]. I simply bought a piece of rubber tubing that fits over the knob and then configured a smaller piece of rubber to fit the servo arm to the lock piece on the knob. This design is also nice in that if the device malfunctions a key can override it.

1 - http://www.happynews.com/living/livingimages/remove-door-kno...

This. I often tutor beginners wanting to learn to code and environment setup is by far the biggest hurdle. Frankly, think about the last time you started learning a new language, it's usually the biggest hurdle for experienced programmers as well.

The next biggest hurdle for beginners is usually grasping basic design patterns or the request response pattern of client server interaction. This is usually difficult because a lot of the nomenclature isn't there yet. But that is nothing in comparison to the struggle it is to walk someone through basic environment setup for RoR even node.

Put your email in you profile under about or drop me a line.

If you ever think of doing this STOP, watch this video http://vimeo.com/22053820 and then reconsider.

Better yet, watch that video now, hire a lawyer like every other freelancer on the planet and avoid such a mess entirely!

When I've tutored for web development and CS I've surprisingly been able to change the same as my freelance rates. This might suggest that I don't charge enough for freelancing, but I charge above my hourly rate at work and live comfortably in the bay area.

yeah, choosing to do this in python might not have been the best idea.

Guys there is an easy way around your problem. if your results are as good as you say they are then its just a matter of tweaking your ux. offload the result delivery to email and pubsub the actual search. If you have thought of this I would be interested in hearing why it doesn't work. If not then please at least include it as an option.

There is plenty of third party javascript that is not at all predatory. Pretty much all analytics services, Olark and other similar customer outreach services, A/B testing suites. There is far more of a push to create new more secure avenues for third party js (namely cors and websockets) to exist than there are efforts to eliminate it.

I'm curious how this change will effect services like optimizely that rely on third party cookies to prevent tests being run on the same users multiple times.

My personal favorite:

  $array = array('z'=>12, 'o'=>43, 't'=>32, 'th'=>85, 'f'=>91, 'fi'=>42);

Take a minute look at that and tell me what the keys stand for. When you figure it out you'll realize why this is the worst piece of code you've ever seen.

Slightly off topic but I enjoyed this and it is a great example of self promotion, something a lot of people here are interested in:

The most recent video on Jia's site is of him asking to race someone. He walks up to a high schooler and his personal trainer explains himself and asks to race one of them. As soon as Jia mentions he is a blogger the trainer without making a direct reference to it casually unzips his jacket to reveal a sweatshirt with the name and logo of his company on it.

It tickled me and made me strangely proud that now because of this man's quick opportune thinking and the happenstance that someone decided to write an article about Jia, likely thousands more people than have ever before will click through and visit http://rwa-texas.com/ .

Your email isn't in your profile so if you would like to drop me a line and let me know what you're looking for I would be happy to help or suggest some people that might be able to help.

http://www.siliconprairienews.com/ is a good starting point. KC, Chicago, Minneapolis, Columbus, Madison, Detroit and Omaha all have great tight knit entrepreneurial communities, as do most of the college towns in the midwest.

I guarantee you there is at least one thriving developer meetup in your area.

Also, it has already happened this year but checkout http://cincinnati.startupweekend.org/ and other startup weekend events in cities near you. They are a great way to meet fellow entrepreneurs and hackers.

related hn discussion here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3019163

This seems really cool, but I'm having some trouble coming up with a use case for this. Why would I want to translate my django model to a dictionary?

The testing rules I code by:

- will someone else be touching the code? If yes then I TDD

- Am I likely to be touching the code six months from now? If yes then I at least document with tests.

- Is it a crucial piece of code who's specs I want documented? If yes then I document with tests.

Very well put. I'm not a huge fan of php, but find this possibility of resurgence (particularly because I use the language for my day job) very interesting.

Quite possibly never, but it was arguably the best web language in the early 2000s.

OP here, I would be interested to hear how others automate django project creation.

You might find https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hapackcnjagkljgfjl... helpful.

/shameless plug

I haven't and that is great to know. I guess that was part of my question: How does Codecademy attack the balance that hiring companies want to see when it comes to technical knowledge and experience building real things.

So from what I understand Codecademy's long term monetization plans seem to be focused on being a middle man between new programmers and companies looking to hire [1].

But I'm curious how this is actually achieved. The key in such a system would be keeping users engaged in the site from the time they first start learning to the point that they are ready and qualified to get their first job. This is likely six months to a year of training (at the low end) and it can't just be 1)learn the basics of javascript 2)learn the basics of html css 3)learn the basics of python.

New programmers with an eye for getting to their first programming job asap are better off building a portfolio that shows that they can work in the full stack and get stuff done. Or alternatively with in the confines of Codecademy if you're not going to have a deep portfolio, showing a mastery of the full stack with deep knowledge or maybe one platform (say deep understanding of javascript and the fundamentals of CS).

I'm curious how Codecademy plans to bridge this divid or if they have other plans in mind (which they probably aren't as willing to share with the masses)

[1] http://www.quora.com/How-will-Codecademy-monetize

To be honest I haven't used South in about a year so I don't really know how it has changed. But with South I always seemed to be running into issues of it allowing you to modify existing elements of your schema but not add new elements or modify types in your schema.

I would highly recommend using http://code.google.com/p/django-evolution/ over South

If writing tests for your code is difficult and takes too much time, that is a pretty strong code smell that you're writing unmaintainable code or you are working within an unmaintainable system.

As to the OP's question, the only reasonable scenarios for not writing tests are weekend project style web apps and projects coming out of ad agency style shops where the lifetime of a given project is so short and rushed it doesn't matter whether the code base is maintainable.

The vast majority of places I've talked to in the valley, from three man startups to 100 developer shops, have reported some respectable level of code coverage. It is my opinion that you can read something significant into what is expected of your work and the priorities of the company based on their testing policies.

interesting implementation. I really liked the idea of just building a restful interface that people could plug into however they wanted to.

So I had a similar idea about six months ago. Briefly start working on the app when I was informed by a lawyer friend of mine that most states had laws against advertising drink specials.

Interested if you have looked in to this at all, especially because googling "laws against advertising drink specials" brings up this http://www.wtop.com/41/2821800/Vas-happy-hour-law-makes-some... as the first result.

On a broader scale I guess this brings up two points: 1) have the owners of this site considered this issue yet? 2) Is it sometimes better to just build it and worry about the legal ramifications later (to a point)?

Shameless self plug: http://danielnill.com/blog/nodejs-tutorial-with-socketio/

Not a full tutorial, but hopefully a decent intro for those looking to learn the ropes.(I would love to hear feedback good or bad)

At some point you end up outside of the scope of testing, but you can build bootstraps to make sure that your mocks match whatever they are mocking.

Obviously, this does you no good when something like an API service goes down, but that's issue is irrelevant to the question that was posed. Having some static file to test against whether it is accurate or not will instantly tell you whether it is your code or the third party that is breaking.