5 ms·

But why do you need an app where webpage is more than enough?

by SergeAx 7y ago

_jal 7y ago
Because it cost like $10 and 5 minutes, could be set up by non-web-plumbers, and was pretty out of the box.
- iamben 7y ago
  Aside: this is one of the biggest lessons of my adult life. Just because I could make something doesn't mean I should make something. Learning to value your time is a very underdeveloped skill.
  - ampdepolymerase 7y ago
    But...but.. something.. something Stallman...vendor lock-in...closed-platforms bad...something.
    - SergeAx 7y ago
      If it is a sarcasm, then please mind that original comment author got really humped by this app's vendor when it stopped working. Maybe Stallman got something right after all?
      - reaperducer 7y ago
        It didn't stop working. It just doesn't get updated anymore.
        bigiain 7y ago
        In Stallman thinking though, he doesn't have the freedom to fix or update it himself. (I don't think Stallman's ideas are necessarily right for everybody, but I'm glad he's doing his thing right out in his end of the bell curve to counteract the opposite end of the software philosophy craziness...)
        quickthrower2 7y ago
        Under Stallmans model the developer works for free, and I guess they need a second job to pay the rent. Ah but GPL doesn’t mean free as in beer? Oh yes for practical purposes it does mean exactly that. Outlier business models excepted of course!
        SergeAx 7y ago
        Actually no. Under Stallman's model it is perfectly okay to demand and earn payment for your work, but results still would be free, quote, as in "free speech", not "free beer", unquote. Did you see bounty offers in open source repos' issues?
- SergeAx 7y ago
  I really don't understand, is sounds too ignorant and almost arrogant. Web browser doesn't need to be set up, it is already included with iPad (or any Android device, or any laptop or desktop, or your smart TV, smart fridge or smart watch). You need to configure your app during first launch pointing it to your data source, and maybe entering login and password. It is exactly the same amount of hussle compared to opening web site and make it default homepage of your browser. I don't even want to talk about money, it's totally irrelevant, $10 or $0.
  - reaperducer 7y ago
    The hard/technical part isn't launching the browser. It's about building a continuously updating status page for that browser to display.
stiray 7y ago
One more thing, if I want a webpage, I will just write plugin for this: https://github.com/netdata/netdata https://github.com/netdata/netdata It is meant as system monitor but it can chew up preatty much anything. And it is fast and lean. Really fast.
- djsumdog 7y ago
  Have you found any tools for writing custom dashboard in netdata? The docs are really light and custom dashboards seems to involve hacking the default HTML and pulling out all the components (javascript/divs) you need. I thought about writing my own, but have too many projects already.
  - stiray 7y ago
    Set up netdata, check which plugin serves the type of chart you want, find shortest of that type, make a copy and hack it untill it works. I was doing it a while back so I cant remember the details but it wasnt something special to do... Ignore the docs, existing plugins are all the documentation you need.
- sneak 7y ago
  Note well that it will silently send lots of information about your machine and browsing/usage to Google: https://github.com/netdata/netdata/issues/7366 https://github.com/netdata/netdata/issues/7366 They added a tiny mention in the installer when I complained, but they still don’t mention how to opt out. The opt out doesn’t disable the spyware in the webpage, either. I have a patched version (sneak/netdata) on dockerhub, if you like. The issue is that it’s just not that great of a system monitor. Looking at, say, a “last 24h” chart is difficult. It’s a good and pretty replacement for top/htop/iptraf/iotop, but that’s pretty much it. You still need a graphite or prometheus or mrtg/rrdtool ultimately for serious understanding beyond “what happened in the last few minutes”.
  - 314 7y ago
    There are 17 lines of text output to verify the installation choices, of them 5 are devoted to opting out of the anonymous telemetry. The wording seems clear. NOTE: Anonymous usage stats will be collected and sent to Google Analytics. To opt-out, pass --disable-telemetry option to the installer or export the enviornment variable DO_NOT_TRACK to a non-zero or non-empty value (e.g: export DO_NOT_TRACK=1).

But why do you need an app where webpage is more than enough?

_jal 7y ago

Because it cost like $10 and 5 minutes, could be set up by non-web-plumbers, and was pretty out of the box.

iamben 7y ago
Aside: this is one of the biggest lessons of my adult life. Just because I could make something doesn't mean I should make something. Learning to value your time is a very underdeveloped skill.
- ampdepolymerase 7y ago
  But...but.. something.. something Stallman...vendor lock-in...closed-platforms bad...something.
  - SergeAx 7y ago
    If it is a sarcasm, then please mind that original comment author got really humped by this app's vendor when it stopped working. Maybe Stallman got something right after all?
    - reaperducer 7y ago
      It didn't stop working. It just doesn't get updated anymore.
      - bigiain 7y ago
        In Stallman thinking though, he doesn't have the freedom to fix or update it himself. (I don't think Stallman's ideas are necessarily right for everybody, but I'm glad he's doing his thing right out in his end of the bell curve to counteract the opposite end of the software philosophy craziness...)
        quickthrower2 7y ago
        Under Stallmans model the developer works for free, and I guess they need a second job to pay the rent. Ah but GPL doesn’t mean free as in beer? Oh yes for practical purposes it does mean exactly that. Outlier business models excepted of course!
        SergeAx 7y ago
        Actually no. Under Stallman's model it is perfectly okay to demand and earn payment for your work, but results still would be free, quote, as in "free speech", not "free beer", unquote. Did you see bounty offers in open source repos' issues?
SergeAx 7y ago
I really don't understand, is sounds too ignorant and almost arrogant. Web browser doesn't need to be set up, it is already included with iPad (or any Android device, or any laptop or desktop, or your smart TV, smart fridge or smart watch). You need to configure your app during first launch pointing it to your data source, and maybe entering login and password. It is exactly the same amount of hussle compared to opening web site and make it default homepage of your browser. I don't even want to talk about money, it's totally irrelevant, $10 or $0.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  The hard/technical part isn't launching the browser. It's about building a continuously updating status page for that browser to display.

stiray 7y ago

One more thing, if I want a webpage, I will just write plugin for this: https://github.com/netdata/netdata https://github.com/netdata/netdata It is meant as system monitor but it can chew up preatty much anything. And it is fast and lean. Really fast.

djsumdog 7y ago
Have you found any tools for writing custom dashboard in netdata? The docs are really light and custom dashboards seems to involve hacking the default HTML and pulling out all the components (javascript/divs) you need. I thought about writing my own, but have too many projects already.
- stiray 7y ago
  Set up netdata, check which plugin serves the type of chart you want, find shortest of that type, make a copy and hack it untill it works. I was doing it a while back so I cant remember the details but it wasnt something special to do... Ignore the docs, existing plugins are all the documentation you need.
sneak 7y ago
Note well that it will silently send lots of information about your machine and browsing/usage to Google: https://github.com/netdata/netdata/issues/7366 https://github.com/netdata/netdata/issues/7366 They added a tiny mention in the installer when I complained, but they still don’t mention how to opt out. The opt out doesn’t disable the spyware in the webpage, either. I have a patched version (sneak/netdata) on dockerhub, if you like. The issue is that it’s just not that great of a system monitor. Looking at, say, a “last 24h” chart is difficult. It’s a good and pretty replacement for top/htop/iptraf/iotop, but that’s pretty much it. You still need a graphite or prometheus or mrtg/rrdtool ultimately for serious understanding beyond “what happened in the last few minutes”.
- 314 7y ago
  There are 17 lines of text output to verify the installation choices, of them 5 are devoted to opting out of the anonymous telemetry. The wording seems clear. NOTE: Anonymous usage stats will be collected and sent to Google Analytics. To opt-out, pass --disable-telemetry option to the installer or export the enviornment variable DO_NOT_TRACK to a non-zero or non-empty value (e.g: export DO_NOT_TRACK=1).