AskHN Digest

1. Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell

Top comment by czue

I have two!

An app for making wedding place cards that does about $1000/mo https://www.placecard.me/

A boilerplate for making SaaS apps with Python/Django that does $5k/month (highly variable) https://www.saaspegasus.com/

I also have a third that does around $150/mo. It's an app that adds analytics to GroupMe which is a WhatsApp alternative. https://chatstats.co/

I keep complete revenue and effort data here if you're curious: https://www.coryzue.com/open/

2. Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?

Top comment by michaelbarton

“How to change your mind” by Michael Pollen.

I read a lot of books, and this is one that caused a change in my life. The succinct summary is that psychedelics are misunderstood and there is more and more research showing their potential, especially in the treatment of trauma.

I had a difficult childhood. It’s something I still struggle with personal interactions because of this, even after years of therapy. After reading Michael Pollen’s book I thought this might be something that could move the needle on my day-to-day quality of life.

I found a shaman and did an 8 hour blindfolded mushroom trip. Similar to what’s outlined in the book. Previously I’ve never done anything more than weed occasionally.

It had a profound impact on me. The way I describe it is like jumping off a diving board into a deep dark pool, and the pool is you. Then spending hours there.

I don’t know if I’d do it again but I learnt a lot about myself. I won’t proselytize here either, because the research is still early. There’s also risk because you put a lot of trust in someone who’s there with you while you’re high. But I do recommend at least reading the book.

3. Ask HN: Strategies to land fully remote $250k+ job

Top comment by mark_l_watson

Well, it is a workers market right now.

Professionally there is nothing special about me except that I really enjoy working, but for the last two remote jobs, the offer letter I received was more than what I verbally agreed on with HR. Since I am also 70 years old, I take this as good evidence of how pro-worker the job market is right now.

I offer free mentoring (see my web site) and always talk about the importance to having a beginner’s/learner’s mind. I think that what companies want is: prioritizing the company’s interests, being flexible, and being observant looking for opportunities to improve the business. Fairly straightforward strategy.

Good luck reaching your financial goals/salary number but also please remember money isn’t everything, and is much less important than our relationships with other people.

4. Ask HN: Startup acquired by a large company and it sucks. What to do?

Top comment by twblalock

> So I reach out to the manager and ask what is going on. This is a simple task, I said. Why does it take an entire quarter for your team to deliver? He doesn't have an answer.

Your simple task, which you think would only take a few days to implement, is probably one request in a long queue of requests that team is dealing with. That means they won't be able to start on it for a long time.

That team probably set up the onerous Google Docs process to gate requests because they get so many!

When they do start working on your request, maybe it will only take a few days -- or maybe you underestimate the level of effort required because you are new to the company and you don't understand the complexity of the systems you are dealing with.

Take this as a learning experience: don't assume that you are at a startup where people will drop everything to handle a request from you right away. Instead, assume that people are dealing with a lot of other requests, from a lot of other people. Learn how the system works, and learn how to be effective within that system.

I know for sure that it's possible to be highly productive at a large company with a lot of bureaucracy -- but I also know for sure that new employees who try to bypass process and question the priorities of other teams, before they learn the ropes and build credibility and trust with other people, do not succeed.

5. Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

Top comment by toddm

For me, the special part is truly viewing any job as just that: a job.

I no longer assess my worth as a person as a function of job title, salary, or anything else.

I take contracting work primarily and expect absolutely nothing more than a paycheck. Work is a transaction and I deliver what I can and am not a jerk.

Almost every disposable penny goes toward physical fitness. My spouse happens to be cut from the same cloth, which is a big plus.

We don't live extravagantly unless you count the money for fitness, but we consider that to be an investment and not a frivolous expense.

Satisfaction in life for me comes from every angle EXCEPT my job, and that's my secret.

6. Ask HN: Show your failed projects and share a lesson you learned

Top comment by et1337

I worked solo for three years on a 3D cyberpunk shooter all in a custom C++ engine. It was a hybrid single/multiplayer idea, where you would progress through the campaign and encounter other players at the same time. The twist was, in keeping with the cyberpunk theme, once you got to the end it would be revealed that all the players were actually bots the whole time.

At first I was going to commit 100% to the deception. There wasn’t going to be real multiplayer in the game at all, it would all be fake. But then I realized the riot I would have on my hands if I actually tried to sell it as a multiplayer game and there wasn’t real multiplayer. So I wrote real multiplayer. By the end, the project was big enough for a team of 100. I was making cinematics, running a Discord server, trying to figure out how to train an AI to play my increasingly complicated game, it was insane. I ran out of money.

Trailer: https://youtu.be/QnMz27nPbB4

Code: https://github.com/etodd/lasercrabs

Dev blog: https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=49277

7. Ask HN: Have you accepted the TOS that give FB access to your WhatsApp data?

Top comment by verytrivial

Never accepted it. Moved to Signal. Didn't install WhatsApp when I upgraded my phone a few months ago. "unfriended" absolutely everyone on Facebook and manually destroyed all my Facebook activities going back to the creation of my account there. Absolutely all of it. The more difficult the process became, the more I realized how coercive they were in welding you into their network. I maintain an empty shell of an account filled with "creative" metadata due to some public groups and clubs that do not have the resources to manage their own presence online.

Suffice to say I did not respond well to the TOS change.

8. Ask HN: Best alternatives to Google Analytics in 2021?

Top comment by shafyy

If you're looking for web analytics, I love and can recommend Plausible (https://plausible.io/). It's both simple and privacy-friendly.

Inspired by Plausible, I recently launched Fugu (https://fugu.lol). Fugu is a simple and privacy-friendly product analytics tool. It offers only event-based tracking, so it's better suited for web or mobile apps and not web sites (go for Plausible for websites). Fugu doesn't track unique users or any personally identifiable information. It's pretty basic for now, but I'm working on adding conversion funnels next (I work on it in my free time).

Fugu is open-source[0] and self-hostable. I make money by providing a managed version for $9/month.

0: https://github.com/shafy/fugu

9. Ask HN: Can web scraping be the basis of a viable business model?

Top comment by apienx

Google, a trillion dollar company, is essentially the world's largest web scraper. So...yes! You'll almost certainly find a way to monetize that.

Monopolies, lobbying and protectionism got in the way of keeping the web truly machine readable. There's tremendous value in restoring some of it.

10. Ask HN: Which tech stack is the most fun?

Top comment by IceDragon200

For work? Elixir! I particularly enjoy writing tests in elixir compared to any other language so far. Most code is transparent so you can always peek under the hood to see what it's doing, maybe copy a few ideas for your own use. Package management is rather straight forward. The console access in production has been a godsend to execute one off scripts or running export tasks, diagnostics or other bits.

For personal projects? Ruby and Elixir, though ruby's documentation has fallen off of shape as of late, that or Elixir's has spoiled me by setting higher bar

I see you mentioned RoR, you can try Phoenix in its place for Elixir.