AskHN Digest

1. Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2022 – Show and tell

Top comment by dutchbrit

Correction, previously asked 26 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29667095

Obviously still nice to see what people have built who missed the last post!

2. Ask HN: What is your system for backing up family photos and video?

Top comment by aarondf

I use Google Photos and once a year I do a Google takeout to a hard drive and put that drive somewhere safe.

I tweeted about this a while back and several people had good replies: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis/status/1445408384472211464

For context, this was after facebook was down for a day. I think the odds of Google deleting all my photos is pretty low, but the odds of me losing access to my Google account for legitimate or non-legitimate reasons is much higher.

3. Ask HN: Anyone making a living building desktop applications?

Top comment by grujicd

I'm making Windows/.Net based app for managing queues - QueueExplorer. Started with MSMQ support back in 2005, now it supports Azure Service Bus, RabbitMQ and ActiveMQ. It's old fashioned perpetual licensing, so revenue is a rollercoaster. Because of that, it's emotional rollercoaster as well. Good thing is you get paid for full license at the time of purchase instead of collecting it in 10-20 months. Bad thing is every month starts at zero.

Although .Net went multiplatform years ago, my app relies on WinForms a lot so it's Win only, except through Wine. I would love to support Mac as well but the only realistic option looks to be Electron based, and it would be a significant step back for my Windows users. Maintaining two different GUIs looks like a problem for micro company.

The best thing about desktop software is it can't break for all the users at once like server-based app can. That gives some piece of mind when you're micropreneur. Sure, there are bugs, but they affect only users who downloaded buggy version. You can't crash all installed instances just like that.

The worst thing is, it's hard to ask for a subscription. Yes, I hate it as a user, but would love it as a business owner :)

https://www.cogin.com

4. Ask HN: What's Up with Google?

Top comment by SnowflakeOnIce

I've noticed in the past 2-3 months that results from StackOverflow, Wikipedia, and official programming language documentation sites seem to have been abruptly downranked. They used to typically be in the top 3 results for me for appropriate queries, but now they frequently aren't even on the first page.

5. Ask HN: Burned Out. What Now?

Top comment by orasis

The bad news is it’s going to take a long time to heal. The good news is you can come back happier than you can imagine.

In an ideal scenario you would quit working entirely to focus on your health, but I’m guessing this is not an option.

You need to focus on the body first. The most important is sleep, but that is also difficult to address directly, so it’s best to focus on diet and exercise. You’ll likely have to design your entire day and week around these two things.

Try the Whole 30 program first. It’s a way of eating that eliminates inflammation causing foods. DONT TRY TO LOSE WEIGHT! Weight loss is important for overall health but you’ll usually sleep worse during a weight loss phase. That said you’ll probably lose weight naturally anyway.

Give up the alcohol for 30 days and consider weening off caffeine at some point since both of these will mess up your sleep.

For exercise, you just have to find something enjoyable enough to do at least 3x per week. It really doesn’t matter what it is as long as it makes you a bit sore. Consistency is key - don’t overdo it by jumping into something like CrossFit.

Lastly, WHY are you burning yourself out? Are you afraid of failing? Afraid of being broke? Afraid of being perceived as a loser? The WHY is a spiritual problem and may be addressed through meditation (slow), psychotherapy (slower), or psychedelics (fast but more risk). Until you resolve the WHY of your burnout you’ll likely remain stuck in this cycle.

6. Ask HN: Is it just me or do 99% of SWE jobs offers seem completely pointless?

Top comment by elephanlemon

Don’t agree with most of these comments. Not wanting to work at a company that makes some uninteresting business product just a little more profitable does not mean that you are depressed. Working at a place like that can certainly make you depressed though!

To the OP, I think you have a few options. On one hand you can keep taking short jobs / consulting or try to build some sort of simple SaaS business that you can just maintain. Alternatively you can try to find work that is meaningful to you - perhaps at a nonprofit or government job, or by building your own company or organization.

On a related note, I recommend reading Tribe by Sebastian Junger, which goes into great detail on how western society is arguably terribly unfulfilling.

7. Ask HN: Why is spam email still a thing?

Top comment by jlengrand

Because it works. Still relevant, from Microsoft Research:

"Why do Nigerian Scammers Say They are from Nigeria?"

This approach suggests an answer to the question in the title. Far-fetched tales of West African riches strike most as comical. Our analysis suggests that is an advantage to the attacker, not a disadvantage. Since his attack has a low density of victims the Nigerian scammer has an over-riding need to reduce false positives. By sending an email that repels all but the most gullible the scammer gets the most promising marks to self-select, and tilts the true to false positive ratio in his favor.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/...

8. Ask HN: Is Bay Area in a tipping point for tech talent?

Top comment by xyzzy_plugh

It's funny that no one wants to admit that Covid-19 was the forcing function for shifting to remote wholesale. I have many peers who have been fighting for internal accessibility of working remotely, most of whom gave up and jumped ship. I even know a few people who left Stripe in 2019 due to their inflexible remote work policies.

So to now come out and say "look at all the remote hiring we're doing" sure leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Yeah, because you have no choice!

The talent has realized they have all the cards and bargaining power in terms of remote work right now. Anyone who is fighting to return to the office is missing the point. We should all be striving to unlock permanent mobility within our professions.

9. Ask HN: New YouTube hover feature? Does anyone else find this annoying?

Top comment by todorov84

I've blocked these popups and the suggestions overlay at the end of videos by using these rules:

  www.youtube.com##.ytd-thumbnail-overlay-loading-preview-renderer
  www.youtube.com##.ytd-video-preview
  www.youtube.com##.ytp-ce-covering-overlay
  www.youtube.com##.ytp-ce-element
  www.youtube.com##.ytp-cards
  www.youtube.com##.ytp-cards-teaser
  www.youtube.com##.ytp-cards-button-icon

10. Ask HN: Why are we accepting ageism in tech as something immutable?

Top comment by dboreham

Limited input data, but my sense is that this could have nothing much to do with age. You've been talking to people who say plain out illegal things in interviews (at least in the USA), and it sounds like you've been looking for jobs through "commodity" channels -- asking for "interview projects" to be done in two weeks, hiring for experience with very specific tech, and so on.

Recommendation: don't do that. Instead aim to get a job with people who value inherent capabilities and flexibility, and who aren't abusers. To do that you may need to do some work first. For example, develop a web application of your own, open source, using some modern tech stack (doesn't matter which specific one). Then, when you interview you can talk about your experiences, thoughts, etc with that tech. This shows the interviewer that you have the capability to pick up new tech, to understand its strengths and weaknesses, to produce output. A good interviewer will see that and know that you will therefore be able to pick up whatever tech they want you to use. It's not about specific knowledge and buzzwords : it's about the ability to learn and apply. You can now go into interviews with the approach : I don't know anything about some of the tech you're using, but that's ok because I have proven I can learn, and I know a huge amount about _something_, and perhaps the interviewer will be interested to learn from me about that.

One of the advantages of age is that you have had more time to meet more people, with with more people, build a network. Use those contacts to look for jobs rather than recruiters.