edent

Of the purchase price that the end-user pays, the retailer has to pay tax. That knocks off a variable percentage. It would be 20% in the UK.

There's also the cost of selling through Steam / Google Play / Whatever - typically 30%.

I assume the developer has some professional expenses - an accountant at a minimum, probably a lawyer, certainly insurance. Maybe they also have a PR team, advertising, and the like. I don't know whether they pay for testers, translators, and things like that.

Then we get on to things like buying a new development machine, going to tech conferences, taking an educational course, backups, and all the other things that a business needs to spend on in order to be effective.

Maybe a profit margin of 10% is unrealistically low - but developing software has legitimate costs. The margin is never going to be 100%.

What did your local politician say when you wrote to them and suggested it?

(I've worked with several politicians. You'd be surprised what a well timed letter or meeting can achieve.)

That's why Vehicle to the Grid / Home is so exciting. Your multi-kWh car battery can power your home for several days.

https://carnewschina.com/2024/12/05/byd-struck-deal-with-jap...

Plenty of paywalled articles are posted and upvoted.

There's nothing in the guidelines to prohibit it https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Thank you!

Open an issue on GitHub and we can discuss it.

Please build it! There are lots of lovely tree memorials which should also be preserved.

Built it and they will come.

OK, it was a mixture of things. I told my friends about it and they were sufficiently nerdy to try it out.

I responded to early feedback - specifically about creating a leaderboard. Originally it was all anonymous but people wanted to see how well they'd done.

My wife and I gave an interview to a local BBC radio station which gave it a little bump. Similarly, when it is mentioned on reddit and other sites we pop up and talk about it.

It was also picked up by a couple of academic papers, which gave it a bit of credibility. As did our recent integration with OpenStreetMap.

There's a far amount of schema.org metadata which probably helps with SEO.

But, other than that, who knows? I've had plenty of projects which didn't do as well. Sometimes the Web rewards nice things.

You are welcome to fork our code for OpenBenches

https://github.com/openbenches/openbenches.org/

It is fairly standard PHP + MySQL.

We use Auth0 for authentication - people editing have to use a social network to log in. That significantly reduces (but doesn't eliminate) the need for moderation.

As for maintenance - once in a while dependabot will say a PHP library is out of date and I'll run the update.

Please do launch your project; it sounds like fun

> I wish there was a law that assigned a dollar value to different types of PII leaks

There is. It is called GDPR.

Plenty of companies have been fined for leaks like this.

Some countries also have whistleblower bounties but, as you might expect, there are some perverse incentives there.

BitWarden offers users a choice of US or EU hosting.

Do you want to know a secret?

Sometimes my friends post on social media platform A "Hey, I've just posted on platform B. Upvotes appreciated."

Or a newsletter will say "please share this post on…"

Or people on Discord / Slack / Matrix will say "people are being mean to me on platform C, where are my defenders at?"

HN feels organic - and is pretty well moderated - but it isn't immune to family & friends giving something an initial boost.

But if no one wants to discuss it, the post will falter.

As for the other levers, it is hard to say. Sometimes the posts I've worked hardest on with the most detail just die a death. But the half-finished thought casually tossed off will Do Numbers. Outrage sometimes works, but it is a fickle friend to tame. Catchy titles aren't clickbait (despite what some people say) but they work best when they are descriptive.

And, finally, people can and do resubmit stuff. What doesn't work at 0900 Monday will be popular at 1700 Tuesday. Why? That's just the way it is.

In the end, it is all luck. But, as the saying goes, the harder you work the luckier you get.

Where's the evidence that users want this?

By users, I mean the people who browse marketing websites. Do they think having their company name / information in your copy is going to be helpful or creepy?

Oh, and did the IP owners give you permission to take Obi-Wan's name in vain?

I tried several different domains and the copy was so generic it gave no indication of being personalised.

As I wrote:

> Like most WordPress blogs, my site has an API.

WordPress, for all its faults, powers a fair number of websites. The schema is identical across all of them.

In fairness, they were relatively popular back when I got the domain in 2007 :-)

It isn't a custom schema. It is the WordPress standard one - as used by [m|b]illions of sites.

I've been using an eInk screen for over 12 years - it is refreshed multiple times per day.

It is as crisp and clear as the day I got it.

Admittedly, I'm not trying to run video on it constantly and it doesn't get hot. But eInk seems remarkably durable.

It also looks beautiful when printed out - I made it into a spiral which hangs on my wall.

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2022/07/the-mostly-complete-unicode...

There are plenty of "synthetic" flavours - Takis, Twinkies, and bubblegum drinks spring to mind.

There are also a wide variety of textures that are heavily industrialised. If you go to some fine dining restaurants, you'll find smells and colours which you simply cannot replicate at home - let alone make from scratch.

Most synthetic meat and fish is really just a flavour carrier for whatever sauce people like. I've had imitation chicken, shrimp, beef, crab, etc. They all taste great - but that's mostly because the sauces are the same as their meaty counterparts.

When I occasionally venture I to standards-land, I always ask "what user research have you done on this?"

So many weird design choices in computing are because one person said "this seems right to me" without considering other viewpoints or consulting with the wider community.

Sure, you probably dont want death by committee, but a tiny cabal engaging in groupthink often produces unhelpful results.

We appear to be in violent agreement with each other :-)

I'm not sure if my writing was unclear, but I said "Anyone who preaches the ideology of hate has no business here."

That's who my screed was against. Those who use their influence to promote hate.

I was very specific in not saying "everyone needs to agree with me" or "if you're not with me you're against me". If you took that away from my writing, I can only apologise.

I didn't mention people like you.

I said, "That's why it baffles me that some prominent technologists embrace hateful ideologies."

If you fall into that category, then, yes, I do hope you feel unwelcome.

If you don't, then I am not sure which paragraph you think applies to you.

Again, you'll notice that I didn't actually ask anyone to join a campaign. I rather conspicuously didn't ask anyone to become a member of a political party, sign a petition, or donate money to a cause. I am literally not organising anything.

I am not able to ban people from the web. I don't have that power, nor would I want it.

As for percentages, I suggest you speak to people. Ask them if they think it is ok to be gay. You can probably look up the statistics for your country - but in most places, people are tolerant.

Ask your friends and family if gay people should be banned from studying at universities. Ask them if your city should only allow white residents. Ask if they think it is useful to build wheelchair accessible buildings.

In my experience, it probably is only the 0.5% that you experience. We agree!

But then ask them whether people who bully minorities should be welcomed in polite society.

I'd be fascinated to hear what they (and you) answer to that question.

The author (me) we not trying to rouse hate against specific people. Indeed, I didn't mention or name anyone.

If you truly believe that 50% of people are full of hate, then I can only suggest you get off the computer and go out into your local community.

Most people are willing to give a helping hand to someone who needs it. Most people don't go shouting slurs. Most people don't want their neighbours to live in fear.

If truly 50% of the people you meet are filled with hate and rage against the world, I think that probably says more about the company you keep than it does about the world.

You'll notice that the author (me) didn't actually credit the invention of the computer to Turing's sexuality.

But it is an undeniable fact that he was gay.

If the British government had banned him from working at Bletchly Park because of that, would the computer still have been developed? Certainly he wasn't the only one working on it, but historians and computer scientists seem to agree that he was a key figure.

The health of a technical community depends on its ability to attract contributors from a wide variety of backgrounds.

We agree that the result of the work is what is important. I'm arguing that Stephen Hawking can't participate unless you install wheelchair ramps.

Is it?

Capitalism is about choice. If my local greengrocer is rude to me, I can choose to take my business elsewhere.

If the author of a text editor doesn't share my sentiments on whether to ban tobacco adverts, I can choose not to use their software.

People can make the choices which make them happy. I'm happy to use a slightly worse text editor if it means I am not supporting someone I don't like.

"there are only:

Two races: white and "political" Two genders: Male and "political" Two hair styles for women: long and "political" Two sexualities: straight and "political" Two body types: normative and "political"

https://twitter.com/emmahvossen/status/1138841342921060354?l...

The idea that the US has experienced anything even close to moderate left-wing policies is - from the perspective of an outsider - laughable.

I'd love to know what extreme positions you think US politicians have enforced and what the moderate position is.

Thank you very much for your constructive criticism on my writing. I appreciate the candid feedback.

I must take one small issue though. Every engineering project I've worked on has very definitely specified a tolerance. Something may be X cm ± Y mm.

Tolerance is essential to engineering.

The author (me) wasn't writing for you.

If you haven't been paying attention to the various bigots trying to rouse hate from their position of technology prominence, then I don't think my post will convince you of anything

The author (me) is one of literally dozens of people who doesn't live in the USA. We don't all obsess over a foreign politician.

As for Sophie Wilson, I suggest you speak to your trans friends about whether they were trans before they publicly transitioned.

If you don't have any trans friends, perhaps reflect on why that is.