I really wanted one of these when they first came out, however, the arrogance of having locked down hardware really irked me...
iirc you had to pay something like $5/month after spending $250 for the sensor just to have access to the data! After spending $250 for it, I would have like to be able to write my own script to read the data off the device and not rely on their web service.... not having open access really turned me off...
We have no monthly fees for typical home use and anyone buying through the kickstarter. And you can download everything in 15-second intervals to CSV or via our real-time API at any time.
You're welcome to try that other device. You'll find, among other things, that:
1) the +/-100 watts of resolution, updated every 30 seconds, at best, will yield a cumbersome user experience. Turn on five 20 watt bulbs and then the data will jump 30 seconds after you turn on the fifth bulb. Wattvision: +/- 2 watts, and 3x faster updates.
2) You need to buy another piece of hardware, and figure out what software you want to use, and then tie this all together, if you want to look at the data online or your computer. It's a cumbersome user experience, not counting the need to change batteries rather often on the sensor (Wattvision is a set-and-forget system).
We're building the best user experience for this scenario. Thanks for your feedback, perspectives, and kind words.
Giving kickstarter donators special treatment doesn't really change anything. Why don't you just charge for access to the web UI/feeds/etc, but still leave the hardware open and usable independently for those inclined and able to set up their own software? You certainly wouldn't lose many subscriptions to it.
It is one thing to say "Wattvision costs too much for me; I think they should lower or restructure the price".
It is another thing to say "the way this startup has structured their pricing is insulting to me".
The fact that you were easily able to come up with a market substitute for this offering just underscores how silly the idea of being "insulted" by pricing is.
Things cost what they cost, not what we think they should cost. As a general rule, we HN'ers suck at thinking about what things should cost.
Charging for a service is fine, but I agree that it is legitimately insulting to charge for use of a consumer-owned device.
That said, what wattvision lists in its FAQ is extremely fair. Using data from the last three months is free, so if you want to do your own processing you can easily download from there even if the device is difficult to directly access.
As others have said, the resolution on the B&D is not that great. But if you are really up for some tinkering, you could build something reasonably cheaply with better resolution with A/C current sensors and an Arduino, like this guy:
this is sad.... and also a result of a war on drugs. Decriminalization of drug use would actually allow people to get help without losing their job/life/everything. There is no reason for this senseless madness.
I'm surprised more people in Washington don't see this as a parallel to the rising influence of the mob when alcohol prohibition happened. There are probably no wiser words than "those who don't learn from history, are doomed to repeat it".
There's a problem though. If you legalize marijuana and get rid of the cartels, then what? Are you just going to make that giant industry aroudn drug enforcement go away?
The point is, there is organizational inertia regarding lobbying etc which more or less guarantees that Congress cannot act on this.
The best thing is to force a Constitutional crisis by states refusing to cooperate with federal drug enforcement. Given the recent health care reform case, the federal government has far fewer options than they did before the ruling on the Medicaid expansion issue there. They certainly cannot cut off all funding, and certainly cannot even cut off a large amount of funding.
No, you just take the people who used to enforce prohibition and make them collectors of taxes on the newly-legal substance.
This would not be a new concept. For most of the period alcohol prohibition in the US, for instance, Federal enforcement of the prohibition laws was the responsibility of the IRS and the Treasury Department (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_of_Prohibition), because of those agencies' long experience as collectors of alcohol taxes. (When you hear hillbillies in old movies complain about "revenuers," they're complaining about Treasury agents who shut down their untaxed backwoods stills.) And the Prohibition Bureau's successor agency, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, was part of the Treasury from the repeal of Prohibition until the big reorganization after September 11.
Wow, I've always thought that if drugs were decriminalized, you'd have to continue to let employeers have testing and drug-free workplace policies as part of the new laws. To do otherwise is really asking for this never to happen.
"We learned quite a bit about Power of Attorney and Medical Directives, as well."
this is important. I see too many people say 'do whatever you can' but they do not realize what they ask. The loss of the mind is terrible, but so also is the complete loss of the body. Combine the two and there is real (and expensive!) trouble with doctors 'doing everything they can'.
Bullshit process? URL Pharma exploited a loop hole to do 'research' and a clinical trial on a drug that has been known for centuries to work (yes centuries, the plant it is based from has been used since roman times).... Doctors are angry because suddenly the poor patients without insurance could no longer afford medication they need. That research was worthless, proved what was already proven, and exploited a loophole in the FDA grandfathering process to make a company a risk free profit.
The price went from $0.09/pill to $4.85/pill overnight.
URL Pharma didn't exploit a thing. The FDA setup the program, and asked drug companies to do the trials. It was the FDA's "Bullshit Process" that caused the problem, not the drug company that did what they were asked.
From the article:
"That year, the FDA started their "Unapproved Drugs Initiative", through which they sought more rigorous testing of efficacy and safety of colchicine and other unapproved drugs on the market.[26] In exchange for paying for the costly testing, the FDA gave URL Pharma three years of market exclusivity for its Colcrys brand,[27] under the Hatch-Waxman Act"
no that doesn't at all. Why not have any two humans mate to have offspring? there are 23 pairs of chromosomes and only 1 pair is sex determining. doesn't really make sense to have male/female especially since the 'male' physical characteristics are small enough to be present in a female also.
ugh. This is exactly what drives up the cost of medicine. People hear crap like this, and then come in demanding that 'everything be done' for their 95 yo grandmother in a coma in the ICU. Sadly technology can keep this type of person 'alive' for a very long time. Expensive, wasteful, selfish.
Medicine needs to send truthful messages about what can and can't be done.
You misunderstand, it isn't selfish to want it for yourself, but it is selfish to keep someone else alive in a vegetative state. It is so easy to choose 'life' as the correct and right thing when in fact 'death' is the natural and moral thing. Society needs to think about their end of life plans. If your plan is to be fed through IVs, have a foley, breath through a machine, have a butt tube, and foley catheter in for the last 10 years of your life be my guest. Just please don't use any of my tax dollars for that! The sad thing is most people don't chose this for themselves, instead they have a stroke or suffer another handicap and while they are unable to make decisions (probably unable forever) the family chants 'do everything you can'! Medicine can do a lot, but mostly at the end of life it just prolongs misery.
I routinely ask patients their 'code status' and articles like this give them false hope and false belief. Instead of: "do you want us to do cpr if your heart stops and/or intubate" ... I should be saying, "do you want your last dying moment to have someone beating on your chest breaking all your ribs while another person shoves a tube down your throat as you get pumped full of drugs."
You will never forget the first time you push on ribs and feel the crunch, watching the half-dead eyes look up at you as they live their last moments, and wondering if they are feeling their veins burn with drugs being pumped in.
Never mind that the article makes it sound like resuscitation efforts are grand. They aren't at all. The statistics are dismal.
Oh ACLS drugs? Yea, they don't really work to well... even as far back as 1998.. there are newer studies showing that ACLS training is helpful, but the actual drugs make little to no difference.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0196064498...
Am I the only one who thinks the story is a little too perfect and ridiculous? It is much more likely that the author simply fabricated the story.
He did manage to start a very popular thread, and get a ton of people with really high rep to respond AND get a link on HN. He just threw out some bait, and the community swarmed like starving fish.
He just threw out some bait, and the community swarmed like starving fish.
This is true of all "light" SO/SF posts. Nobody gets excited about answering someone's obscure apt-get question. Everyone gets excited when they can spend their boring workday telling some dude that his security consultant is fucking him. It's the same reason people read "People Magazine" instead of "Purely Functional Data Structures".
iirc you had to pay something like $5/month after spending $250 for the sensor just to have access to the data! After spending $250 for it, I would have like to be able to write my own script to read the data off the device and not rely on their web service.... not having open access really turned me off...
This one is much cheaper : http://www.amazon.com/Black-Decker-EM100B-Energy-Monitor/dp/... and it occasionally can be had for a simple $25... sure it'd take some hacking to get the data to the computer, but avoids the insulting monthly fee!