mcorrand (u/mcorrand)

mcorrand commented on Vim Tutorial as an Adventure Game vim-adventures.com/... · Posted by u/KirinDave

wolfgke · 9 years ago

> I do feel like I got my $25 worth at the time though.

If you buy a game for 25$, you can play it as often as you want.

mcorrand · 9 years ago

I agree with you, somewhat: there is not much of a server component to this game and we should get to play it forever and ever, and it is frustrating that we didn't know for sure ahead of time this was a 6 months license only.

However, as a solo entrepreneur, I agree even more with the creator of the game. He gets to price his creation however he likes, and he probably needs to make money like the rest of us. His game teaches a super valuable skill that has saved me well over the price in typing efficiency. Again, I'm fine with the price tag. Just wish he had the option to renew for a month after the initial purchase to brush up. Probably leaving money on the table!

mcorrand commented on Vim Tutorial as an Adventure Game vim-adventures.com/... · Posted by u/KirinDave

wolfgke · 9 years ago

For me it was mentioned, but I read on HN that the main reason for the "6 month" restriction is that the author wants to avoid complaints and reclaims in the case that he stops providing the website after 6 months. In other words: there are legal reasons why this restriction exists, but it will not be restricted to 6 months. So I trusted the HN crowd and paid the price that I considered as "a little high".

Lesson learned: Don't trust the HN crowd.

mcorrand · 9 years ago

I'd renew for a month to refresh the less usual commands in a heartbeat if it was $2-3 bucks! $25 is hard to swallow. I do feel like I got my $25 worth at the time though. It was a great way to learn and I use a lot of it daily.

mcorrand commented on Vim Tutorial as an Adventure Game vim-adventures.com/... · Posted by u/KirinDave

wolfgke · 9 years ago

I bought a license about a year ago. When I logged in today, a message came:

> License Expired

> [my email address]

> There is no time left in your license.

> License activated on [date]

and an offer to buy another half a year for 25$. Here I openly say: No, thank you.

mcorrand · 9 years ago

Same here. I bought when it had just launched, wasn't complete yet and there was no mention of the license not being perpetual. Disappointing, but I did get a lot of value from it though!

mcorrand commented on Sorting 2 Tons of Lego, Many Questions, Results jacquesmattheij.com/sorti... · Posted by u/darwhy

jacquesm · 9 years ago

This is already possible, but I'm not using it because in some trial sales I've found that sets are rather hard to sell profitably:

- the sets have to be absolutely perfect to be worth something

- you need to check to make sure all parts are present, this is hard enough for Lego which starts from known quantities and brand new parts, with second hand parts and people being ultra picky about such details as year-of-manufacture of the bricks it becomes an intractable problem.

- Rare parts are really rare. In fact, the only parts you would have to document like this are the rare ones, and 'rare' is actually one of the categories that I can sort for. This gives the option to sell only the rare parts for a certain set and to leave the bulk parts to some other method. Much easier to do that profitable.

mcorrand · 9 years ago

Gotcha. The gap between hobby-grade solutions and business-grade solutions blows my mind every time.

mcorrand commented on Sorting 2 Tons of Lego, Many Questions, Results jacquesmattheij.com/sorti... · Posted by u/darwhy

jacquesm · 9 years ago

That would require a robotic warehouse as well to pick the orders in a profitable way.

mcorrand · 9 years ago

Possibly not, right? If you don't sort but instead use the machine to do the inventory of your bins, then you could have your software tell you which bins you are going to need to fulfill your orders for the day. The big "if" in that scenario is that your machine is not categorizing anymore but identifying. I don't have the experience to assess how much harder it is.

Then you'd go and pick the bins, run them through, and the machine assembles the sets from those bins. That's similar to the way Amazon does it. Now they have the shelves on robotic trolleys that bring them directly to the packers, but that's just a required efficiency at their scale.

I guess the problem with this scheme is that you move the problem from classifying to identifying... twice. So the precision requirement goes up. I don't know how big your dataset would need to be to require minimum human intervention.

mcorrand commented on Sorting 2 Tons of Lego, Many Questions, Results jacquesmattheij.com/sorti... · Posted by u/darwhy

pveierland · 9 years ago

One idea for selling the parts would be to keep a precise inventory of everything entered into the system. A precise inventory + a database of the parts needed for any LEGO set would allow customers to order an arbitrary set for a nice price. A total system which would take random parts as input, and output packaged complete LEGO sets would be neat.

mcorrand · 9 years ago

Ditto. I think that's definitely what would sell at the best value.

Coincidentally, it kind of simplifies the sorting problem too. Just do like Amazon and don't sort!

Instead, use the machine to figure out exactly what was in that bin you just bought. Give the bin an ID, and store it as is. Then, when putting together a set, have your software find the minimum number of bins you need to pull from to assemble the set. Run them through, and have the machine pull the parts.

mcorrand commented on Britain passed the “most extreme surveillance law ever passed in a democracy” zdnet.com/article/snooper... · Posted by u/eeZah7Ux

module0000 · 9 years ago

Protect your privacy with a VPN, either run your own or use one of the available providers. It's a shame you need to do this, but that's just the state of things.

Run your own with OpenVPN: https://openvpn.net

VPN providers(not affiliated, just ones myself or colleagues use): https://www.expressvpn.com https://www.goldenfrog.com/vyprvpn https://nordvpn.com

mcorrand · 9 years ago

Second that! Vultr offers OpenVPN as a one click app, it's super easy to get it running on a $5 vps.

mcorrand commented on How a team of young people helped rebuild healthcare.gov (2015) theatlantic.com/technolog... · Posted by u/rmason

mcorrand · 10 years ago

This is a hard problem to solve perfectly. I'm still stuck at the ID verification step, after sending in my documents. Never heard back. I'm the perfect corner case though, having gotten a green card recently, left a job, moved to another state, so on so forth...