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kcon

277 karma · joined June 14, 2011

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kcon··on Nissan's Response (?) To My Leaf Home Screen Widget
Changes in the latest version of Nissan's official mobile app for their LEAF electric car broke the widget I created last year for quickly checking my car's battery charge status on my phone's home screen, and then things got interesting.
kcon··on Board: New game console recognizes physical pieces, with an open SDK
I was looking for more info about developing for Board on https://board.fun/pages/developers and became confused because the page mentions an SDK that can be accessed but does not explain how or link to any other information. Poking around the website some more, I found https://board.fun/pages/support?hcUrl=%2Fen-US%23article-289... which clarifies:

> Can I add or create my own games?

> Soon. We’re building tools that will let anyone design their own Board games, starting with developers and expanding to players. The future of play is one you can help create. Learn more at board.fun/developers.

So I think I understand the SDK is not available yet. Can you clarify that developer tools are not yet available but are coming soon on https://board.fun/pages/developers to avoid confusion?

kcon··on Show HN: Nissan's Leaf app doesn't have a home screen widget so I made my own
Thanks for sharing! Unfortunately I do have a model year newer than 2018.
kcon··on Show HN: Nissan's Leaf app doesn't have a home screen widget so I made my own
Thanks! The IFTTT widget can supposedly update within a few seconds of receiving the triggering email since this is a “real-time applet” (https://help.ifttt.com/hc/en-us/articles/4412435510171-What-...), but in practice it seems to update more on the order of several minutes after the scraping workflow runs.

I have been running the scraping workflow once per hour during waking hours the past week, but I reduced that recently because I was starting to feel nervous (but without any real evidence) that pinging the car too often could drain the 12V battery.

The scraping workflow takes between 2-3 minutes to run. You can view the history and duration of runs here if you’re curious: https://github.com/kevincon/nissan-leaf-widget-updater/actio...

kcon··on You don't really need a virtualenv
I think that is referring to the Python launcher utility for Windows: https://docs.python.org/3/using/windows.html#python-launcher...
kcon··on Ask and Show HN: Ever coded for love? Willing to share?
I developed a VR experience as part of my proposal to my now-wife: https://kevintechnology.com/2018/05/03/vr-proposal.html
kcon··on Ask HN: Has anyone curated a list of hidden interview questions?
Bandcamp has a fun puzzle on their jobs page: https://bandcamp.com/jobs

“To apply, gather the crumbs (starting with your cookies).”

kcon··on A Stroke Turned a 63-Year-Old into a Rap Legend
> Like a true underground star, he shunned mainstream success. He did appear in a documentary about Leimert Park, not as a novelty act, but as a regular member of the crew.

I believe this is the documentary the article refers to: http://www.leimertparkmovie.com

There's a preview clip on that website that I believe shows him rapping as Dr. Flow: http://www.leimertparkmovie.com/media/06RonCarringtononThurs...

kcon··on The Rise of Microsoft Visual Studio Code
It seems strange to me to compare VSCode against PyCharm, IntelliJ, and Android Studio separately. While PyCharm, IntelliJ, and Android Studio are distinct applications, I believe they share much of their code, UI, 3rd party plugins, and workflows for all being JetBrains language-flavored IDEs.

On the other hand, VSCode supports different languages through its extensions instead of having separate language-flavored applications like "VSCode Python", "VSCode Java", or "VSCode Android".

So I feel that reaching for IntelliJ vs. PyCharm vs. Android Studio is roughly equivalent to installing a particular set of extensions in VSCode. If you look at it that way, the data from the article seems to tell a different story - while VSCode has grown significantly in popularity, JetBrains IDEs seem to dominate in terms of overall usage (11.3% + 6.9% + 4.1% = 22.3% vs. VSCode's 16.8%).

kcon··on Monolist: working hard to preserve the spirit of Inbox's organizational features
I think "Google Inbox Replacement" is misleading if your workflow assumes users will use Gmail in addition to Monolist:

> We’re working on a Gmail integration as you read this! To start, the emails you star in Gmail and any threads that you haven’t responded to will become action items in Monolist, but we have plans for much more.

Personally I don't think I would use Monolist because I want to replace Google Inbox with a single service, not Gmail plus another service.

kcon··on Equifax Faces Multibillion-Dollar Lawsuit Over Hack
I believe it depends on your state. I'm in California and I had to pay $10 for freezing on Experian and TransUnion, although it was free for Equifax.
kcon··on Smart Photos
I understand this article is a little dated, but for a follow-up blog post, I'm interested in hearing more about Tinder's internal hackathons. What motivated hosting an internal hackathon? What format was chosen, i.e. duration, criteria for projects, criteria for participants, etc.? How often are they held? Do employees retain any rights for the projects they work on? How is participation encouraged?
kcon··on Show HN: Visualize your Dropbox Space Usage
Unfortunately, there's currently no read-only access for Dropbox API users to access all of the user's files and folders (e.g. to make a treemap visualization). It's read/write or nothing.
kcon··on Show HN: Visualize your Dropbox Space Usage
I made the exact same thing at PennApps Fall 2013! Great minds think alike. ;)

https://github.com/kevincon/utilityknife

kcon··on Preventing Cheating at Hackathons
This is very much a grey area. Most hackathons I've attended restrict previously written code to open-source projects, with the idea that it's fair game if all participants have access to it. I think it's hard to police because projects aren't usually audited, and if someone utilizes private, frequently-used code snippets like you mention, that's even harder to catch.
kcon··on Preventing Cheating at Hackathons
I like that the focus of your hackathon is hacking, and the resulting hacks seem really cool. I'd like to participate in your hackathon if I ever find myself in San Antonio (I'm in Palo Alto for now, though). Do you have a website I could bookmark?
kcon··on Preventing Cheating at Hackathons
I think this is a good idea in theory, but AngelHack Boston Spring 2012 tried this and it didn't work very well logistically since many participants were not familiar with the chosen version control software (git).

Also I'm not sure it would cover all the bases for more complex hacks that involve hardware or more unique setups/dependencies.

Ultimately, I wish a solution could be found that doesn't work to limit the types of hacks, since that freedom is one of my favorite parts of hackathons.

kcon··on Preventing Cheating at Hackathons
I really liked your talk. Thanks so much for your work in helping to nurture hackathons.
kcon··on One reason Gmail for iOS still sucks
Am I correct in saying that this is using the technology Google acquired from Sparrow? The swipe-left bar in particular looks very much like the swipe-left bar in Sparrow.
kcon··on Baking Pi - Operating Systems Development
I love that he uses assembly to twiddle the bits in memory, but the title is quite misleading. I was expecting tutorials on using something like Buildroot, OpenEmbedded, or a similar embedded linux development environment.