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nsx147on Snap Misses User-Growth Estimate as Facebook Copying Takes Toll

Most people on HN bearish on SNAP...and I am too in the short term. The problem with SNAP at the moment it is HARD to spend money on ads. There is no open API that individual businesses / ad agencies can use to easily spend...meaning longer iteration cycles for companies trying to figure out creative etc and turn it into a profitable channel.

As long as they can deliver SOME value to advertisers in the form of app installs/ traffic to site/whatever businesses will find it and do SNAP's job for them - turn it into a profit machine once they have programmatic access. From what I can see they are copying FB's ad platform which is great...once that API is out there I think it will be a different game.

Or they could just end up like TWTR

nsx147on Ask HN: HNers who got their “Show HNs” on homepage, how is your site doing now?

Yes - I thought so too, but still haven't gotten around to it :)

For my use case this does not fall short. Although I'm sure you could come up with features I didn't know I needed.

nsx147on Ask HN: HNers who got their “Show HNs” on homepage, how is your site doing now?

the ability to CRUD the CSV via API endpoint after it's in there would be great.

nsx147on Things I wish someone had told me before I started angel investing

timing?

nsx147on Ask HN: What are your opinons of the Yii framework?

I've built a few apps with Yii2, the largest project handling about 500k monthly visitors with database heavy operations. It's great, fast, and relatively light-weight.

ActiveRecord is extremely useful in parameterizing queries, reusing them, and configuring multiple databases. Setting up caching is pretty easy and customizable. URL routing, easy. Debug toolbar is helpful. Testing with codecept is a bit complex but it exists. REST API URL rules for controllers to easily handle POST/GET/PUT, etc. Decent amount of helper methods - URL generation, form validation / generation, etc. Console support for command line / cron tasks works well.

The only thing I wish it had native support for was worker methods and easy plugin to one of the popular messaging queues. And to that point there are some solid community built plugins that fill in the gaps of most of the framework's shortcomings.

To be fair - the only other framework I've used is CodeIgniter a while back, but I've rarely found myself thinking "wow this framework is no good anymore I need to find a better one"...like I did with CI

Ultimately - I like it because it is a GREAT MVP building tool from backend to frontend. And with CRUD code generation you can build forms and tables so fast. If I ever hit the point where Yii2 doesn't work at scale - it has served its purpose.

nsx147on Playment (YC W17) gives companies on-demand workers to analyze data using mobile

Sounds like mechanical turk

nsx147on Charisma / Power

The builder type focuses on building product. The charismatic type focuses on building social value, to build the product

Naturally they both excel at each, ultimately 2 different means to the same end

nsx147on Google reverses its ‘digital death sentence’ for Pixel phone resellers

Facebook happened

nsx147on Taking PHP Seriously

I like to call myself a "biztech" entrepreneur and these are the reasons I stick with PHP. Specifically using Yii2 I've been able to whip up MVP's and simply just focus on getting traction. In my experience that is all that matters for a startup.

nsx147on The People’s Code

Check out this guy's commit history: https://github.com/alex-perfilov-reisys?tab=overview

nsx147on I hacked Uber's website yesterday

Some Uber intern probably made that form and didn't know what sanitizing inputs was about. Good find - but easy fix. You usually can't get away with XSS attacks anymore

nsx147on Machine learning for fraud detection

these are the things that will set stripe apart from the incumbents

nsx147on The Scale of AWS and What It Means for the Future of the Cloud

"...they built to their own networking designs. Special routers were built."

What an audacious call by Amazon

nsx147on Washington Post adds Amazon buy-it-now links inside articles

it's better than native advertising

nsx147on Amazon/Hachette Business Interruption

In fact, the 30% share of total revenue is what Hachette forced us to take in 2010 when they illegally colluded with their competitors to raise e-book prices.

Shots fired

nsx147on Professionalism for Software Engineers (2000)

I tend to communicate in a way my peers can effectively relate and understand. This applies to comments in source code. I feel it would otherwise be a disservice to everyone involved.