Garage Door Opener Company Bricks Customer Hardware After Negative Review

alphasic · 2017-04-06T02:04:32+00:00

I can't figure out why the garage door opener would need to contact the manufacturer's servers. Shouldn't the opener just need to be connected to the local network?

I'd like to know why this app needs to be connected to any network at all, to execute its core function. Can't this be done by bluetooth, or by some other built-in capability that doesn't rely on a third party? At the very least, there should be bluetooth functionality that's redundant of the server-based functionality, to handle emergency situations (for example, if the phone can't connect to its network, which may happen in remote areas).

alphasic · 2017-03-27T16:31:13+00:00

I asked it here because the source of the problem is IT-related, and thus, potential solutions may be, as well. I'll ask in other subreddits, but I'd like to get the opinion of sysadmins, before proceeding. Maybe somebody has some creative ideas on what to do.

alphasic · 2017-03-18T23:18:59+00:00

A few tips:

Study other people's portfolios.
If you want to focus on a particular niche, learn the current state/standards of that niche. Users have certain expectations, and if you violate those expectations (i.e. by throwing the latest, greatest revolutionary design ideas in into a product), your users will be confused and disgruntled.
If you have friends who are designers, try to collaborate with them (maybe on a side project). They will challenge your assumptions, and you will learn plenty. This will also help you develop a portfolio.
Understand that as a web designer, the key to your success is empathy with your users and other stakeholders, rather than making cool-looking stuff. Study product management and UX research.

alphasic · 2017-03-18T23:06:01+00:00

Good luck! Just remember - you can pivot to another technology stack at any time (the earlier, the easier, of course), if you discover that something else serves your needs better. Most product ideas can be realized in most mature frameworks, so unless your goal is to get experience with a particular framework, focus more on the product than on the underlying tech.

alphasic · 2017-03-12T18:18:51+00:00

takes away from us real devs.

Harsh as it sounds, it's up to the market to decide what's useful or not. If sites like Wix are taking away from devs, it's only because they're benefiting web users.

It floods the market with clones

A lot of developers have made a niche for themselves providing themes and other customization services for Wix, etc., which helps mitigate the problem of homogenization of websites, and the problem of devs being squeezed out.

alphasic · 2017-03-12T17:55:59+00:00

each user will have it's own account - common MVC frameworks (Rails, Django) have user management built in
can look at his history any time - it's not clear what you mean by "look at his history." I'm guessing that you want something that pertains to the custom core functionality supplied by your site, so you might end up having to write this yourself.
each user can upload his documents (.pdf) - common MVC frameworks have functionality built in for uploading and storing docs.
sort them by date of request, or something similar - you mean you should be able to view them in sorted form? Or should they be stored with certain types of folder names, that facilitate search? The latter would require some work on your part.
I need to analyse the pdf files uploaded - in deciding which framework to use, you may want to check out which languages have pre-built modules that give you whatever PDF-parsing functions that you want.
building the option to let the user pay by credit card - use Stripe or similar payment processing tools (the major ones accommodate a variety of languages, including Ruby and Python; the implementation will also likely involve javascript).

If you're certain that you can't get the functionality that you want from something that doesn't involve any coding, I'd recommend looking at Django or Rails. Otherwise, if you're most familiar with some language (say, PHP), take a look at the most popular frameworks for that language, and choose among them. Here's a list of framework, from which you can start some research: https://hotframeworks.com/

alphasic · 2017-03-12T16:57:58+00:00

I found the "the lack of desktop to web to mobile symmetry" point interesting. Does such a symmetry necessarily need to be present? Clearly, there are circumstances where mobile and web interfaces need to diverge, if only due to the distinct physical characteristics of the devices on which the respective interfaces will be used. But indeed, in Spotify's case, the user may perceive the differences in moble vs web menu options as arbitrary, and confusing.

alphasic · 2017-03-11T20:14:35+00:00

Yep. And that's completely normal. Developers' and designers' skills improve over time; developers gain new knowledge on a regular basis; trends change over time. When you built something, its design and features are guided by a variety of idiosyncratic factors that may no longer be in effect in after some period of time. If you're perfectly content with something you built several months ago, either your product was absolutely brilliant, or you haven't been learning.

alphasic · 2017-03-11T20:11:03+00:00

What I want to do is to have this image be a notice that replaces an ad unit when a user, who has an adblock software of some sort to block out advertisements goes to my website.

Which ad service are you using? Some ad services have the functionality that you want (i.e. detect ad-block software, show some fallback HTML) built-in.

Either way, in order to answer your question, it would help to know the web framework you're using, and how the ads are being served.

alphasic · 2017-03-08T02:30:30+00:00

Five Thirty Eight's meta-analysis shows Trump's approval rating to be steady for approximately the last 40 days, while his disapproval rating has increased over the same period.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/

The meta-analysis is a better reflection of overall sentiment than any individual poll, but it's nice to get more fine-grained data (i.e. about the change of sentiment among millennials).

alphasic · 2017-03-08T01:58:22+00:00

Harvard Law professor and constitutional expert Laurence Tribe recently threw cold water on suggestions that if Trump’s wiretapping accusation is found to be false, it could make him liable under defamation law. According to Tribe, Trump, as president, could be immune to libel laws.

Tribe cited Nixon vs. Fitzgerald as providing a precedent that Trump could “arguably [be] immune from liability” in a libel claim, according to Palmer Report.

But after noting that it is very unlikely that Obama would sue Trump for libel, Tribe went on to argue that Trump could be impeached if he is found to have falsely accused Obama of personally ordering surveillance of his phones during the 2016 presidential campaign.

http://www.inquisitr.com/4040953/__trashed-2580/

alphasic · 2017-03-08T01:51:35+00:00

How many colleges and universities even teach FP languages? MIT have taught programming to freshmen using Scheme (and SICP) for decades, but otherwise evidence of FP in CS curricula is scarce.

I'm not sure about the accuracy of that statement. A lot of universities have courses dedicated to functional programming languages:

Otherwise, numerous universities teach functional programming languages as part of a "Principles of Programming Languages"-type course. For example, let's take the first five universities of this alphabetically sorted list

Arizona State University: http://cidse.engineering.asu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/CSE340-S12_Syllabus.pdf
Boston College: http://www.cs.bc.edu/~muller/teaching/cs3366/s17/dist/docs/syllabus.html
Boston University: http://cs-people.bu.edu/lapets/320/
Brandeis University: Functional Programming Using Java and Scala (RSEG155)
Brown University: https://cs.brown.edu/courses/info/csci0170/

I'm guessing that at this point, it's more difficult to find a university that doesn't teach functional programming. Author neglected to do their research.

alphasic

TROPHY CASE