qeorge

Honest question: as a United States internet user, is there any practical reason I need to have a root certificate from the Chinese national Internet authority installed?

Corollary, is there a short list of CAs that folks around here trust more than average? Is there any value in such a whitelist, or are all CAs so rotten it doesn't much matter?

CloudFlare is probably not a good choice. They recently blocked access to a similar service, Lantern, per the linked WSJ article.

"CloudFlare, which offers content-delivery network services, said last week it cut off Lantern’s use of the service, saying it was unauthorized. “We don’t do anything to thwart the content restrictions in China or other countries,” said Matthew Prince, chief executive of CloudFlare. “We’re a tech company and we comply with the law.”"

http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-cloud-providers-face-backlas...

I'm not very impressed. Maybe someone from CloudFlare is around to defend that position further.

I'm a little slow. Blast you and your Socratic method!

Yes, in the US at least, "a private club for members and their guests" is a common phrase, and would likely apply to a country club.

This would fit Digital Ocean's interpretation of private - not accessible to the general public, but accessible to other members.

How about: free users can track budgets for 1 person (themselves), and the data is stored locally. If they want to share it with several people for free, they can install it on the family tablet.

In the free version you could show ads, and then do an IAP to remove them forever (one time cost). You could skip ads if you wanted, but I would probably go ahead and put them in the free version.

You could then offer a companion service which syncs to "the cloud", allows sharing the budget between several people, and which requires a monthly subscription (sold through your website).

This segments nicely: young people with no cash get it free, and families who have more money are your paid users. Even better, you have a time-honored and very popular plan to eventually convert your free users to paid. :)

Yes, this is what I meant. We want companies to take a chance on people who might not have perfect resumes, or for new ventures that might not work out. This gives people without traditional bona fides a chance to prove themselves, and to get experience.

I was only in the job market very briefly before giving up on the whole mess and starting a business. I didn't finish college, so it was brutal. The jobs I did get were non-traditional companies who took a chance on me. Sales jobs in particular will give anyone a chance to prove themselves. I came to deeply appreciate that.

Congrats on launching this! The site looks nice.

Some feedback:

1) $5 for the Premium Account is too cheap. There is nothing that is $5 a month that I want to use for my business. Its a signal that this is probably a hobby. Make it free or charge a real price (at least $29/month, but $49 is better). If its not worth real money, you should reexamine the value proposition.

Amy Hoy says you need 500 people to pay you $30 a month, which seems about right to me. At $5/month, you're going to need 3000 people paying you every month! That's really tough! Don't do that to yourself!

2) You have to explain what this does, succinctly, right at the top of the page.I read your site, and your Medium post, and I'm still somewhat confused.

How about this headline instead:

Improve Your Accountability With OpenLoopz: Public, threaded, shareable to-do lists.

Anyway, congrats again on launching! And keep in mind that 90% of the readers of your HN post do not have anything in the wild for which people could actually pay them money, so you're way ahead of the curve. Keep going!

Off topic: OP mentions the AdWords Expert, Aaron Weiner of Software Promotions[1], who was finally able to get it all resolved.

If you have an AdWords campaign and its underperforming, HIRE THIS MAN. I had the opportunity to work with Aaron about 5 years ago, through a client, and I could not have possibly been more impressed. He took an absolute dog of a marketing campaign [2], and made it work. Unreal.

Anyway - I don't do this often, but he's that good. Hire him / Software Promotions if you need help with AdWords - you will not regret it.

[1] http://www.softwarepromotions.com/

[2] previously managed, quite unsuccessfully, by yours truly

I'm having trouble getting my head around the pricing. 1x for one task, 2x for unlimited. Can you expound a bit?

Specifically, what do you mean by unlimited? Could I schedule you every day for a 30 minute consultation?

Also, I'm one shop but we have several properties. Correct to assume I need an account for each one? (roughly 4 accounts)

Very interested!

Edit: I see now that you have one business day turnaround, and allow one order in the queue. Each task is about ~30 minutes, so effectively up to 10 hours of marketing consultation a month for $175. That's very compelling! Cool!

Definitely, I feel bad for them too. Getting fired/laid off sucks.

But remember that the opposite scenario, where companies only hire folks when they are sure they have a permanent role for them, is far worse.

MMM has an excellent guest post on how to get started with aquaponics here: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2014/10/20/aquaponics/

The author is selling his "Zero To Hero" design plans for a shockingly reasonable $10 here: http://www.frostyfish.com/shop/aquaponics-plans-2/zero-hero-...

And if you want to buy a 4x8 kit, he also has that for about $400: http://www.coldweatheraquaponics.com/shop/aeration-2/zero-he...

I've been wanting to try it, but have not as of yet.

Not only could you publish them in a loop, until 2011 they were not random at all. Rather, the first 3 digits behaved much like an area code - if you know where someone was born, you can pretty easily guess the first 3 digits of their SSN.

Apparently in 2011 they changed this, and now none of the numbers are significant.

I don't disagree that a lot of people would stop pirating if there was a legal alternative. However, in my experience, most adults will simply chose an alternative rather than resort to piracy (which is probably watching a different show, but it could also be simply not watching TV).

I'm in that camp, now. I'll just pick another show which is available on Hulu/Netflix/Amazon, or I'll play my Xbox, or I'll take a walk. Not a big deal.

I think for some segment of the population it will continue forever. But I think most people grow out of piracy eventually.

In my experience, adults generally don't steal things, even if no one is going to catch them and even if they really want it. And consequently most people grow out of piracy. Not everyone of course, but enough for me to believe there's still a future in selling IP.

Perhaps a reputation system for recruiters, i.e., an Angie's List for recruiters, could help here? That could be a useful service.

Its a tough market to serve because the most people don't change jobs more than a couple times in their career.

What if the recruiter tells you that Google/FB/etc reviewed your resume and you didn't make the cut? (When in actuality they just don't want to pay the commission)

You wouldn't dislike them, but you might then not apply for a job there (thinking you had already been turned down once), and then Google/FB/etc misses out on any chance to hire you.

As I understand it, the problem is this:

Joe Random Recruiter can decide one day that he is a recruiter for Google/Twitter/FB/anyone else. He doesn't need or obtain their permission - he just starts firing out emails to everyone he can find on i.e., LinkedIn.

The email says something like: "My client, {Google, Facebook, etc}, is looking for someone with {one of your skills}. Are you interested?"

If you reply yes, he then sends an email to {Google, Facebook, etc} and says:

"I'm representing an engineer with {your skills} at {outrageous price including fat commission}. Are you interested?"

Assuming they are in fact interested in you (which they likely are), Google/Facebook/etc is now in a tough position.

- Google/FB/etc can say YES, pay the fat commission to the recruiter, and give you the job. You think the recruiter is a gift from heaven.

- Google/FB/etc can say NO, and the recruiter will just tell you they flaked, the opportunity disappeared, or just never contact you again.

The twist is that if Google/FB/etc says NO, the you will end up with a bad impression of THEM, not Joe Random Recruiter. They don't even know your name, with which they could reach out and explain.

Google/FB/etc know this, and as an engineer you are (currently) so valuable that they are (currently) forced to play ball.

And unfortunately, since this method actually works, we see more "recruiters" popping up every day. Even worse, the bad ones are the most aggresive, and they drown out the honest players.

My advice to the Googles/FBs/Twitters of the world: make a page listing the firms you DO work with, just as you list the IP ranges of your crawlers. Not a great idea, but its all I've come up with.

My advice to the job seekers of this world: cut them some slack - you probably didn't ever actually talk to Google/Facebook/etc, or at least they were misinformed about you.

This is great! Thanks for building this!

I use my Roku's universal search to do this now, but I can only use it on the device. Having this function in a website is so useful!

Suggestion: automatically highlight Hulu when I choose "Hulu Plus"

Thanks for your comment. This makes sense - I would use Watson to determine which photos have humans at all, and then run those through, e.g., my facial recognition software. But Watson would keep me from having to waste resources looking for faces in photos of trees, for example.

I'm not in this field, so I'm having trouble understanding what use cases / consumer facing features this API unlocks. Your comment is very helpful in that regard.

I just tried a photo of the Kremlin, and got Cargo Ship (and ironically, Taj Mahal).

http://easycaptures.com/fs/uploaded/736/8308577082.jpg

The top 3 may be correct, but they aren't very useful. What could I do with this information? What feature could I build?

Also, the other results are very wrong. (i.e., Watson is more confident that this is a dog than a person. And I have no idea where it got "Long Jump" from). This makes it hard for me to trust Watson.

Is the recommendation that I incorporate a "confidence in Watson" metric, and ignore most of the results?

What confidence from Watson would you say indicates an answer that is probably accurate? And how confident are you that Watson's self-reported confidence is accurate?

I've been uploading the easiest photos I can find to the visual recognition demo[1], and its yet to get one right.

For example, I searched Google for "photo of girl", and found this image which seems very easy:

http://www.wagggsworld.org/shared/uploads/img/rachel-s-p-pho...

Watson says:

    Color		71%
    Human		67%
    Photo		65%
    Dog			59%
    Person		57%
    Placental_Mammal	56%
    Animal		50%
    Long_Jump		50%

Huh?

This isn't me cherry picking bad results; aside from their demos I'm not finding any photos that are accurately classified. I even tried a headshot of a person isolated on a white background, and Watson told me I uploaded a photo of "shoes".

Seriously - how is this data useful? What could I build with this level of accuracy?

Watson team - do you agree? Is this product about to get a lot better, soon, or is this considered "pretty good"?

[1] http://visual-recognition-demo.mybluemix.net/

I'm an Exchange user with a Nexus 4, and the most recent Android update has really made my life tough.

First, they removed the normal email app, forcing me to use Gmail. I really dislike the Gmail app.

Next, they removed the normal calendar app, and replaced it with Google Calendar. I preferred the old one, and I don't use Google Calendar, I use Exchange.

And of course, I lost about 80% of my contacts (also stored on my Exchange account).

I've since switched to Nine[1] and turned off Sync on my exchange account (via Android settings), and that's fixed a lot of my problems. I can't recommend Nine enough.

Its frustrating. I liked the old "vanilla" Android. I just want an OS that stays the way I configured it, instead of changing its interface and removing applications at random.

Anyone else have this experience? What's the option? Cyanogen? I just want a phone that works; I don't want to spend my whole life on this.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ninefolder...

That's my point - no tweaks are even needed. Why can't I show this same ad, exactly like it is, before e.g., the UNC vs NCSU game?

I could! Unless I did something ill-advised, like saying "Super Bowl", which in fact does only refer to one game.

You're saying there is no other event that Dorito's could possibly use an ad about "The Big Game" for? That's incorrect, and that's my point.

Why make an ad you can only use once, when you could easily tweak it and be able to reuse it? Like you said, its not like anyone won't know you mean the Super Bowl, when you're talking about the big game on Super Bowl weekend.

My Uber driver on Wednesday flat out told me he won't pick up certain racial groups, because they tend to leave lower-than-five-star ratings. It was offensive, but I understand that his > 4.5 star rating is essential to his well-being.

(This is the modern day equivalent of not being able to hail a cab if you are a person of color.)

Uber & friends will need to fix that, or their drivers are going to keep cherry-picking riders to maintain their ratings and giving a lot of customers bad experiences.

Perhaps they could simply throw out the grumps' ratings (e.g., this rider rated the driver a 2, but that's normal for this rider, so just ignore it).

Or its because the advertisers want to get more than one use out of the ad?

The Super Bowl is not the only "big game". In fact its not usually even a particularly great game, and its never a rivalry. So saying "Big Game" instead of "Super Bowl" means they can use the ad again, and maybe even for another sport!

Or its a conspiracy theory. That works too.

From later in the post: "The key is nobody has to cool these devices, so it’s almost like free computing at the endpoint."

Also, you don't have to buy it! (the user bought their phone/computer and pays for the power)

I agree its a bit handwavy. I suppose the remaining cost is the cost of transmitting more data?

But regardless, it is a good point - we are absolutely crazy to not be taking advantage of all the free computing and power that our users have purchased for us to use (and are paying the costs up upgrades and maintenance). I've felt this way for a while (especially when OnLive came out), but it seems that servers have so far been cheap enough that its been cheaper to buy more servers than spend valuable engineering time making your app distributed.

I think pricing is the very first thing you should think about, before features. Once you know what's actually valuable to your customers, it'll be easy to figure out what features to build to deliver it.

This book probably isn't an excellent fit for freemium pricing models. Its more about pricing B2B products, instead of consumer products. But you should still read the book anyway, because it teaches you to understand your customers' problems (and the value of solving those problems) at such a deep level that you would never be willing to part with that much value again for free.

Furthermore, and this is the big takeaway from the book, you're[1] looking at the problem backwards. The question is not, "can I find someone to whom my product is worth at least X" - that's flawed from the start.

The correct process is this:

1) Find a customer with a problem

2) Figure out how much its worth to the customer to have that problem solved ($X)

3) See if you can design and a product for less than $X

For example:

1) The local cab company wants to grow its business

2) It is currently making $300,000 per year. A 50% increase would be worth $150,000 (naively)

3) Could you create a white label Uber that would increase ridership by 50% for less than $150,000?

Thinking about it that way, there's no room for freemium. If you're thinking about freemium, you should find a new customer base or a new problem to solve.

(BTW, I love talking about pricing. Please shoot me an email any time if you'd like to talk more. I have a new SaaS that I would love feedback on, and I would be happy to offer my feedback on yours as well.)

[1] the proverbial you're (including me!)

Thank you so much Brian! I'll start reading it right away.

The class sounds great as well, and I hope you enjoy it. If you find yourself compelled to share anything in particular, I'd be very interested to hear it. Maybe you could do a blog post?