Hacker News Reader

chaosmachineon Make Your MacBook Pro, Again

From the pictures it looks like an extra battery, 3 USB ports, Ethernet, and an SD card slot. It's possible there's space for a hard drive, too.

chaosmachineon Amazon Restaurants

Skip was so much better than Just Eat, too. Skip has Uber-style live GPS tracking, Just Eat seemed to be stuck in the dark ages.

chaosmachineon [dead]

not sure what happened, hn ate the link. trying again here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13019591

chaosmachineon Olduse.net: a 30-year delayed Usenet feed (2013)

In case you enjoy that terminal font[1] as much as I do, you can download it here:

http://sensi.org/%7Esvo/glasstty/Glass_TTY_VT220.ttf

[1] http://blog.fosketts.net/2015/10/06/the-best-mac-os-x-termin...

chaosmachineon Space Mono

I just created a variant that removes the ligatures, it's called "Space Mono NL":

http://tweetcompressor.com/temp/spacemono-nl.zip

chaosmachineon 216 postive words not in the English language

Some background on Janteloven:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante

chaosmachineon NHL goal celebration hack: real-time machine learning and hue light show

It seems like analyzing the video would be much easier, as you could basically just OCR the on-screen scoreboard.

chaosmachineon Show HN: Unregistered word.tld domain names for your project

Hey, nice site. I actually built a very similar tool a few months ago:

http://shortdomainsearch.net/

chaosmachineon [dead]

It's a bit difficult, as the whole workflow is based on emails and phone calls, but I'd like to at least get a video up soon so people can see/hear how it works first.

chaosmachineon [dead]

This is something I've been building for the last couple months. It originally started as a Startup Weekend Ottawa project, now I'm trying to bring it into the "real world". Any feedback would be appreciated :)

chaosmachineon [dead]

This was posted on twitter by @dragosr:

https://twitter.com/dragosr/status/404725802803007488

chaosmachineon Show HN: My new domain search tool

Yeah, unfortunately Godaddy commissions beat NameCheap by about 10x, but there's an option on the top right of the site to switch the outgoing links to NameCheap, if you'd rather use them.

chaosmachineon Show HN: My new domain search tool

I just added a few thousand six-letter domains, enjoy :)

chaosmachineon Show HN: My new domain search tool

You can use the "links" buttons on the top right of the site to change where the links go (there's an option for namecheap and name.com). It'll even remember your choice for next time :)

chaosmachineon Show HN: My new domain search tool

Thanks, I spent a lot of time speeding up the search feature.

I still find it a bit difficult to visually scan the results list, particularly at full length, but I'm hoping the various filtering options help with that.

chaosmachineon Show HN: My new domain search tool

I've been working on this for the last couple weeks, let me know what you think. It's written in Node.JS, served using nginx, and I'm using Redis to store the data.

chaosmachineon Super Mario Melodies (2011)

Here's a cached copy: http://www.losdoggies.com.nyud.net:8080/archives/1302

chaosmachineon 9 Gigapixel Image of the Milky Way

Zoomable: http://www.gigapan.com/gigapans/117375

chaosmachineon Buzz Aldrin’s Official Statement on the Passing of Neil Armstrong

Site's overloaded at the moment, here's the text:

I am deeply saddened by the passing of my good friend, and space exploration companion, Neil Armstrong today. As Neil, Mike Collins and I trained together for our historic Apollo 11 Mission, we understood the many technical challenges we faced, as well as the importance and profound implications of this historic journey. We will now always be connected as the crew of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, yet for the many millions who witnessed that remarkable achievement for humankind, we were not alone.

Whenever I look at the moon I am reminded of that precious moment, over four decades ago, when Neil and I stood on the desolate, barren, yet beautiful, Sea of Tranquility, looking back at our brilliant blue planet Earth suspended in the darkness of space, I realized that even though we were farther away from earth than two humans had ever been, we were not alone. Virtually the entire world took that memorable journey with us. I know I am joined by many millions of others from around the world in mourning the passing of a true American hero and the best pilot I ever knew. My friend Neil took the small step but giant leap that changed the world and will forever be remembered as a historic moment in human history.

I had truly hoped that on July 20th, 2019, Neil, Mike and I would be standing together to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of our moon landing, as we also anticipated the continued expansion of humanity into space, that our small mission helped make possible. Regrettably, this is not to be. Neil will most certainly be there with us in spirit.

On behalf of the Aldrin family, we extend our deepest condolences to Carol and the entire Armstrong family. I will miss my friend Neil as I know our fellow citizens and people around world will miss this foremost aviation and space pioneer.

May he Rest in Peace, and may his vision for our human destiny in space be his legacy.

BUZZ ALDRIN

chaosmachineon Best Buy feels Amazon squeeze, to close 50 big-box stores

An interesting comment from Reddit:

"Roughly 5-7 years ago Best Buy was competing with another company called.. Circuit City. One of the ways they were making sure they kept market share was whenever Circuit City was putting in a bid to open a store somewhere, Best Buy would bid higher and put a store in that exact same location. This caused Best Buy to open a lot of stores that were close to other Best Buy's (roughly 3-6 miles in some cases), but they just wanted to make sure Circuit City didn't get market share.

Fast forward to now, the leases on those stores ending and Best Buy is not renewing them. The store isn't very profitable as it could be because there is another one not too far down the road.

What that article also fails to mention is Best Buy is also going to open an additional 100 stores, two different types (Mobile stores in malls and community stores in smaller markets). Both of these types of stores are much smaller, cost less to run but typically are very profitable due to cell phone sales.

Am I a Best Buy employee? Obviously yes. Do I speak for the company? Nope. Do I plan on working here the rest of my life? Of course not. Just trying to be a bit more accurate than the chicken little the sky is falling that is mentioned in this article is all."

http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/rj92n/the_slow_d...

chaosmachineon Avoid Distractions and Remain Focused

"Working out doesn’t matter. Dating doesn’t matter. Eating nice meals doesn’t matter. Sleeping doesn’t matter."

Here's my advice, as someone who's been self-employed for 5 years and recently sold a startup:

Eat well, sleep right, exercise daily, go on dates. You'll be happier and more productive.

chaosmachineon Show HN: Flutter - Control Spotify or iTunes Using Gestures thru Webcam

Supposedly it's hardwired, you can't power the camera without powering the LED. I wrote a security app that grabs from the iSight every few seconds, and got tired of the light flashing on and off all the time, so I just covered it with a little black sticker.

chaosmachineon Google blocking all FastSpring stores

I use FastSpring for several of my businesses. All my Firefox and Chrome customers are currently bouncing off a scary malware warning when they go to check out:

http://i.imgur.com/aaV50.png

FastSpring support says:

"Our marketing page on fastspring.com was hacked with some malware. Because of this, google lists any FastSpring.com URL as hosting malware and blocks Chrome and Firefox visitors from going to FastSpring.com URLs. While Springboard and Order pages weren't hacked, the net effect is that users of Firefox and Chrome are temporarily blocked from getting to order pages. We are working to clean this up and get google to unblock and hope to have it fixed soon. Buyers using IE, Safari or Opera aren't effected."

For the moment, I've paused all my AdWords campaigns. I'm really hoping this will get resolved quickly.

chaosmachineon Show HN: I built a faster way to burn your money on Etsy.com

I made something sort of similar for Amazon a few years ago:

http://bigbooksearch.com/

It's horizontal (like a bookshelf), instead of vertical, though.

chaosmachineon Google+ Hacker News Circle makes Search plus Your World Amazing

It looks like there may be a problem:

"You've reached the daily limit for adding to your circles. You can add more tomorrow."

This happened when I tried to add any of the circles with 1000+ people. The one with 990 or so worked.

chaosmachineon Zaarly: How To Get 100,000 Subscribers In 3.5 Months – with Bo Fishback

I've been a paying subscriber for a few months. It's hit and miss. The value you get really depends on how well the information lines up with your particular business model.

A lot of the courses feel more like product demos ("here's the hard way to do it, or you could just sign up for my service, look how easy it is"). Not that they're worthless, but it's hard to give impartial advice and pitch your product at the same time.

(And you can't really expect people to just give away their best secrets. The best tricks are the ones that would stop working if everyone was doing it...)

That said, a few of the courses have inspired me to explore ideas I would have otherwise dismissed, and some of those ideas have worked out pretty well. Ultimately, $25/month is not a lot, if I bring in one extra sale, I've made a profit.

Just don't expect pre-packaged miracles.

chaosmachineon A Year On Hacker News

I come to HN for the comments. Every now and then I'll read something that really inspires me. I'm not necessarily talking about great advice, either. Sometimes just reading over other people's frustrations will lead me to new business ideas.

chaosmachineon Image Ad Blending Works Really, Really Well

I watched that Mixergy video too, and was inspired to try something similar :)

BSA is great, but if you need more inventory, you can get this strategy working on Google AdWords, too. You just need to create a new ad group, and use "managed placements" to specify the sites you want to target.

Since you probably don't want 100 ad groups, you have to get a bit more generic with your ads, but there are plenty of ways to do that and still get the "this is useful information, not some off-topic ad" effect.

Here's another tip: Once you have an ad that exceeds about 0.2% CTR, you'll often get much lower cost-per-click by switching the campaign to CPM bidding.

For example, if you're bidding $1 CPM, and getting a 2% CTR, your effective CPC is only $0.05! In CPC mode, you'd often have to bid $0.30 CPC just to show up.

chaosmachineon Do It Now

It's beyond strange, it's credibility damaging. How can you trust anything written by a guy who claims dead people take up residence in water bottles?

Then Ron [his dead friend] says to me, “Put the water bottle back on the table. It makes it easier for me to see.”

And wouldn’t you know it? As soon as I return the bottle to the table, I start winning again — fast.

All I'm saying is this guy isn't a credible source. He makes fantastic claims with no evidence, and people should be aware of that.

chaosmachineon Do It Now

Before taking anything in this article literally, you should be aware this is the same guy who claims ghosts give him gambling advice:

Several people have asked if I’m still able to connect with my recently departed friend Ron who died in a car accident on August 14th. The answer is yes. He’s been hanging around often. The connection is so strong that I don’t have to meditate or anything. I just think of him and can instantly converse with him. I’ve never experienced such a strong connection before.

Seriously, read the whole thing[1], he claims his ghost friend helps him win at blackjack.

[1] http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2008/08/can-spirits-help-yo...