It does seem like the "passion score" is a rule-of-thumb estimate at best. A lengthy post could just be someone rambling, and a short post could be from a timid dev sharing their project on HN for the first time.
I imagine you could get the post author's reputation score from the API and factor that in to the passion score, but reputation is really just another proxy.
I wondered the same until the section near the end of the article that mentions that the app creator's email address and password were left unsecured leaving his admin panel exposed.
Seems to me if this was deliberate that the creator would have gone to greater lengths to protect themselves.
I will probably release the software as source-closed, but if you need help making a custom script, feel free to email me (you can find the address in the footer of my website).
What phone model do you have? I suspect the screen is on the narrow side.
Yes, I am even going to make a real little game to show that you can get absorbed by a very simple game if it uses the gameplay loop and multiple feedback mechanisms correctly.
If DuoLingo is currently a thriving company, I am convinced it is exclusively because of branding momentum. I think Match.com's trajectory foreshadows the fate of DuoLingo. In the 00's, Match.com used to be the premier "try to meet a not-weird-fuck to date online" system. Then in the early 2010s, Tinder-style dating apps consumed the market. Shortly after, match.com started doing some really fucked up business practices because their niche market got swallowed up in a larger general market by a superior "free" product.
Duolingo's users are sticky so long as the brand ideology holds: "if you want to learn a second language, play duolingo".
Also, Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn also founded ReCAPTCHA. Every idea this man has capitalized on has been made obsolete by the advance of AI.
