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dirtae

1,706 karma · joined August 19, 2007

Missoula, MT

Co-Founder of AnyList

http://jeffhunter.me/

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dirtae··on Home food delivery’s questionable value, for consumers and investors
AnyList does combine ingredients from multiple recipes, but the ingredient names and units have to match. For example, if one recipe calls for "2 onions" and another recipe calls for "3 onions", you'll see a single item in your shopping list for "5 onions". But if one recipe calls for "2 large onions" and another recipe calls for "1/2 cup yellow onion, chopped", then they won't be combined.

I'm not sure exactly what the grandparent comment means by "new ordering", but AnyList supports ordering for pickup or delivery from Walmart, Instacart, Kroger, Safeway, Albertsons, and other stores: https://help.anylist.com/articles/feature-overview-online-sh...

(Disclosure: I am the co-founder of AnyList.)

dirtae··on Face ID and Touch ID for the Web
Apple's claim is false, and can be shown to be false via documents in the court filing: https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/131134525357683097...
dirtae··on Face ID and Touch ID for the Web
Apple's claim is false: https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/131134525357683097...
dirtae··on Face ID and Touch ID for the Web
False. https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/131134525357683097...
dirtae··on Face ID and Touch ID for the Web
Except that is false. https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/131134525357683097...
dirtae··on Office 365 is now on Mac App Store
I agree. I wrote a proposal for how this could work:

https://blog.anylist.com/2015/02/open-letter-to-tim-cook-reg...

dirtae··on Launch HN: JetLenses (YC S18) – Lowest Prices on Contact Lenses
ContactLensKing.com is substantially cheaper than JetLenses for the contacts I wear, the Bausch & Lomb Ultras. $43 for a 6 pack on JetLenses, $30 on ContactLensKing:

https://www.jetlenses.com/Ultra-6PK_p_76.html

https://www.contactlensking.com/prodDetail.aspx?ItemGroupCod...

Why is there such a discrepancy in the pricing on these?

dirtae··on Illnesses from Mosquito, Tick, and Flea Bites Increasing in the US
You probably should have gently removed it with a pair of tweezers from your first aid kit, not killed it and gouged its head out of you:

https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/removal/index.html

dirtae··on Tesla crash victim had complained about auto-pilot in same location
I believe the accident happened on US 101, which is a multi-lane highway with 5 or 6 lanes at the spot where the accident occurred. How many of the trips Tesla is citing occurred with the vehicle in the same lane as this guy? Comparing apples to apples would probably greatly reduce these 85,000 / 200 per day figures.
dirtae··on Cover (YC W16) Raises $8M Series A
OK. I still don't understand the reference to "ad dollars". What are "ad dollars" in this context, and how do insurance premiums look like ad dollars?
dirtae··on Cover (YC W16) Raises $8M Series A
"Take our services + insurance view to the extreme, and insurance premiums start looking like the next ad dollars – spinning out free products and services that bring joy to insurance customers, the basis for a consumer-centric insurance company."

Huh?

dirtae··on Thursday night Mountain View power outage the result of a drone crash
It's already been done in the Bay Area: https://twitter.com/i/moments/689241776549269504?lang=en
dirtae··on Apple cuts App Store affiliate commission from 7% to 2.5%
It would be amazing if this were a precursor to the "Apple tax" being lowered. If Apple is going to lower their 30% take on app sales, then perhaps that requires lowering these affiliate commissions. I know this is probably wishful thinking, but as the author of this[1], I will hold out hope...

[1] http://blog.anylistapp.com/2015/02/open-letter-to-tim-cook-r...

dirtae··on Mary Anderson, a Founder of the Outdoor Cooperative REI, Dies at 107
Where do you recommend shopping for outdoors gear that offers a significantly better value than REI? The gear at REI is not cheap, for sure, but it's also high quality. You can get cheaper gear at big box stores and discounters, but it will also fall apart more quickly, often negating the lower price.

When shopping for gear, I look around and check Backcountry.com, Moosejaw, and other retailers, and on average, REI's prices are not out of line with those other shops. And, of course, if you pay full price for something at REI, you get 10% back as a dividend at the end of the year, and REI's return policy is very generous.

dirtae··on Beepi Winding Down After Burning Through $150M
That's a good point. Beepi seemed like they were just way too generous, in general. (See my comment elsewhere in this thread about them allowing you to charge your entire car purchase to a credit card.)
dirtae··on Beepi Winding Down After Burning Through $150M
I bought a car on Beepi, and it was a great experience, much better than buying a used car from a traditional dealership or a private party (e.g., Craigslist). One thing that struck me as particularly crazy, though, is that they allowed you to charge your entire purchase to a credit card! That was great for me, since I got a ton of credit card points out of it, but it didn't seem very sustainable, and I guess it wasn't.

Shift (one of their competitors) also seemed quite nice, but they didn't allow you to charge your car to a credit card, so that was one factor in my decision to choose Beepi instead.

dirtae··on What happens when you dump the App Store?
Piezo, Rogue Amoeba's app, was removed from the Mac App Store with "minimal publicity", according to their blog post:

https://weblog.rogueamoeba.com/2017/02/10/piezos-life-outsid...

dirtae··on iOS and MacOS Developers Can Now Respond to Reviews
What's your plan when you release the next major version of OmniGraffle? You will create a whole new App Store listing for it? Or you'll somehow have a single listing for OmniGraffle on the App Store, and people who have purchased v7 but not v8 will be able to unlock v7 but not v8 within the app?

The latter sounds like an unholy mess, the former is very annoying as a developer, since you lose all of your reviews and history, and customers generally don't really understand how to download apps they've purchased which are no longer listed on the App Store, and presumably you'd pull OmniGraffle v7 from the App Store.

Also, right now in the U.S. Mac App Store, you have 3 reviews on the current version of OmniGraffle, and 2 out of 3 are 1 star reviews complaining about the way your free trial is presented.

The Mac App Store is a broken mess.

dirtae··on Caching at Reddit
What if the next page that you go to isn't on Reddit?
dirtae··on Now Open – AWS US East (Ohio) Region
The US is not a region. US East (Northern Virginia) is one region, and US East (Ohio) is another region. There are also other US regions, like US West (Oregon) and US West (Northern California).
dirtae··on New Cities
I hope that as part of this, some investigation will be done into pluralistic representation and better voting systems (e.g., Condorcet method[1]). If there is a minority viewpoint that can get, say 20% of the vote, but cannot get a majority in any given district, it would be nice if that minority viewpoint could still get some representation on city council, etc., as opposed to "winner take all" type of elections.

(I'd like to see this at the state and national levels too, but that's a big task, so starting at the city level seems best.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method

dirtae··on Subscription Pricing Is for Stagnating Products
Charging for software on a one-time basis without paid upgrades is inherently unsustainable. The only way to make it work is to, as the author points out, continually find new people who are willing to purchase your software. If you can find an infinite stream of new people to purchase your software, then you may be able to make it work, but in practice, there aren't infinite streams of people.

This post seems to have been written two years ago. I would like to see an update from the author on how his "free updates to people who only paid once" strategy is working out in 30 years.

(Of course, if you don't care about building a sustainable business, and just want to make some money now and possibly abandon everything in a few years, then this doesn't matter. I personally am interested in building sustainable businesses, though.)

dirtae··on California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers
Visalia is the county seat of Tulare county. I cannot find any articles mentioning that people in Visalia get nothing when they turn on their faucets. Can you link me to a source?
dirtae··on California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers
Which entire counties get nothing when they turn on their faucets?
dirtae··on Apple’s Tim Cook Delivers Blistering Speech on Encryption, Privacy
Yeah, that screenshot is from a very old version of iOS. It's now under Privacy > Advertising, which is right where I'd expect it.
dirtae··on SendGrid employee’s account was compromised and used to access internal systems
I am a SendGrid customer and received no notification from them about this. I only found out about it via Hacker News. Very poor form.
dirtae··on Show HN: Timely for Apple Watch – Scheduling and time tracking on your wrist
We chose not to build an Apple Watch app prior to its launch precisely because it difficult to do good design and engineering for a device that you don't have and have never used:

http://blog.anylistapp.com/2015/04/why-anylist-is-not-availa...

See also:

http://www.macrumors.com/2015/04/29/qantas-customers-discove...

'Qantas's predicament serves as a sort of warning for developing an app for the Watch before actually having the device in hands to test. Qantas's lead app designer, Gabriel Santos, echoed a similar sentiment of difficulty in developing the app, describing the entire ordeal of building and creating the app without the Watch "a scary process."

"We initially locked in a concept but when trying it on the actual device, it didn't work as well as I thought it would," he said.'

dirtae··on How to pay $400 instead of $70,000 in Delaware franchise tax
Delaware corporations that do not conduct business in Delaware do not pay any corporate income tax. So the franchise tax is a way for Delaware to generate revenue from all of the Delaware corporations that do not conduct business in Delaware.
dirtae··on Bubble talk
Has anyone ever actually paid $1 / year for WhatsApp? I know in several places they claim that is their business model, but I've never come across anyone that has paid for WhatsApp.

Part of that may be due to the fact that WhatsApp grows so fast that most users haven't been around for a year, but I'm under the impression that after a year, if you don't pay, the app continues to work and you never lose access.

dirtae··on In Defense of the Midwest
Yik Yak is a consumer Internet startup that just raised $61 million, and is based in Atlanta, GA:

http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/02/yik-yaks-new-funding-round-...

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