Bounced a few emails around. I was turned down. A few months later I went and put it together myself anyway. The beta test has been well recieved and I am looking for clients.
90 karma · joined April 3, 2013
Very true. I announced a new javascript storefront the other month with Show HN. It got four upvotes and 1400 unique visitors in the first few hours, almost all from automatic Show HN aggregators.
I agree so much with this. I run a small service that looks like it would be a perfect use-case for a database. Even though all the data is beautifully normalized and instantly searchable, using a database directly would be impossible. Instead it starts as a series of flat text files. From these flat text files, the database is automatically generated. Three big gains here:
Version control on the text files works perfectly as expected.
Creating ad-hoc and one-off columns (while figuring out how to best normalize unfamiliar data) is trivial and painless.
Comments! It is so easy to write in-line notes. This alone is the killer feature of text files. Normalizing and curating data requires making a lot of choices and comments let me keep track of these.
Of course there are downsides. You must edit the text file to add data. (With some exceptions, such as updating live prices/inventory.) If you have equal numbers of writes and reads, this system is not for you. But if you have infrequent (daily) writes then it is no problem.
Sorry, what? The linked four pack of CFLs costs $6.97. You must have been doing some very interesting taxes this week if you think 6.97 / 4 = 0.74. (Apologies if you are not American.)
> Check the efficiency of [800 lumen] LEDs that cost no more than $5
They don't exist. Even cheap direct-from-China LED bulbs* are more expensive than that. $10-$15 per bulb is the typical cost and you'll be hard pressed to find 800 lumen (60 watt equivalents) for any less. I'll gladly check their efficiency if you can show me where to get that many lumens for that price.
* Actual lumens. Many Chinese reseller sites will outright lie and you need to check the manufacture's website. Eg, http://dx.com/p/193927 says 1008 lumens while http://www.sencart.net/e27-24smd-5060-led-pure-white-lights-... says 700 lumens.
Not at all!
CFLs cost $1.74 per bulb with an efficacy of 64 lumens/watt [1]. LEDs cost $12.47 per bulb with an efficacy of 84 lumens/watt [2].
As far as LED bulbs go, $10-$15 per bulb is a pretty typical price. A more correct phase is "The average LED is 30% more efficient than a CFL, but costs 7x more." Anyway, both halves of your statement are wrong.
The big savings comes in flexability. LED bulbs are easily dimmable. Dimmable CFL bulbs are expensive and don't work well. LEDs can be turned off and on quickly without wearing them out. I go through a lot of CFLs in my basement, because the lights are turned on for three minutes at a time, several times a day. They actually burn out faster than the incandscents! Though in most cases it does not make sense to replace CFLs with LEDs yet.
Eventually it will, see Haizt's Law [3]. CFL tech has been improving too but not as fast. In 1980 florescent tech was at 34 lum/watt. Doubling every 30 years is a dead end.
[1] http://www.homedepot.com/p/t/100687000
It languished for some time. Then Hmexx came along with his HN Proposition. I threw the basic idea at him and it was turned down. While the pitch was not enough to convince him, it was enough to convince me. Thanks, Hmexx. Parametrek would not have shipped without your encouragement.