from Hacker News

Show HN: Buzzngo.io – Real-time public polls using RethinkDB

by lionpixel on 8/16/18, 4:04 PM with 37 comments

  • by lionpixel on 8/16/18, 4:04 PM

    Hi HN,

    my name is Basti, and I would like to showcase our project Buzzngo with you. Our system is running with RethinkDB under the hood and although the company behind it faded away we still think it's a nice tool to power real-time statistical analysis.

    Our tests in Frankfurt, Berlin and Hamburg (Germany) were great collecting thousands of votes during a sunny day. Feel free to sign up if you want to start public polls in Germany/Europe in the near future.

    Happy to hear your opinion!

    Greetings Basti

  • by degenerate on 8/16/18, 4:59 PM

    You should create a sample poll and link to it, so we can try it out. I'm not going to register for something to demo it.

  • by honkycat on 8/16/18, 10:50 PM

    Try to back up and restore a large ( a table with a million rows ) rethinkdb database and tell me about how much you love it.

    Used rethinkdb for my start up. It is a curse.

  • by nbclark on 8/16/18, 6:19 PM

    Lots to like here.

    > RethinkDB is a wonderful db. Did you guys use Horizon on top for streaming? Or something custom? > Wonderful design asethetic

    Seeing as you're based in Frankfurt, I'd recommend reaching out to events hosted locally as live polling is a pretty common ask.

  • by gitgud on 8/16/18, 10:48 PM

    Love the idea! but was a confusing explanation. So a station is an hardware input to the poll? Can you vote online too?

    A cool idea would be to have hardware as an output too. I can imagine a political campaign wanting an LED screen with a live poll count.

  • by dillondoyle on 8/16/18, 11:33 PM

    Two of the example polls in the site screenshot are political (us 2020, cannabis).

    I'm wondering how you get background demo info on poll participants?

    I think it could be interesting to think about using visual cues from video (gender, age) but what about info like is registered to vote or other demographic info.

    I don't see example of the hardware but I'm guessing this is like those smiley face poll stations in that it just collects a simple response and doesn't collect say first, last, address, birthday etc?

  • by zengid on 8/16/18, 4:47 PM

    Glad to see RethinkDB is still getting some use!

  • by dyeje on 8/16/18, 5:51 PM

    Surprised to see no mention of security. How do you prevent people from messing with the polls? Physically or digitally.

  • by djstein on 8/16/18, 5:55 PM

    really love your guys styling. is it all custom?

    Maybe its so much text in one space, or maybe the cool animation in the background, or maybe just my tired eyes, but I'm having a bit of trouble focusing on what to read in the top section. I am not immediately faced with the value prop because there is so much content!

  • by koboll on 8/16/18, 5:21 PM

    Isn't there quite a bit of selection bias involved in who is willing to walk up and vote at a kiosk?

  • by pdappollonio on 8/16/18, 6:22 PM

    No demo?

  • by sergiotapia on 8/16/18, 5:27 PM

    Tangent but this is quite funny hahaha

    >Now, create a poll for that campaign. For example, "Donald Trump or Kanye West?"

    >In our example, we could place the station near a university to get insights from academic people.