AskHN Digest

1. Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?

Top comment by jiripospisil

Smart Folders (Finder -> File -> New Smart Folder). It's not exactly hidden but I never paid too much attention to it. It's essentially a way to create a folder whose content is dynamically updated based on your search conditions.

For example, you can create a smart folder that contains all PDF files matching a certain name pattern within a given directory (or the whole disk) [0]. You can get really advanced, there's a ton of different parameters you can use [1], and you can even create more complicated conditions by holding Option and clicking the plus sign (now changed to just three dots). And of course you can drag these folders into the sidebar's Favourites section.

[0] https://i.imgur.com/lD2zaSd.png

[1] https://i.imgur.com/SKsQRnQ.png

2. Ask HN: Films that made you see the world differently?

Top comment by trykondev

My answer might sound like a joke, but I'm being sincere -- the Adam Sandler movie "Click" had a profound impact on me. I saw that movie in theatres on a total whim when I was a teenager. After watching the movie, I felt extremely emotionally affected -- I literally spent the drive home sobbing.

I felt so moved by how the movie showed time passing by, especially as the main character started to lose control of how quickly time went by. I visualized myself being in the same situation as the main character at the end of the movie -- his entire life having passed by, and this sensation of guilt and regret he must be feeling for not having spent his time in a meaningful way and for having missed things like the last conversation with his father. I imagined the despair the character must have felt at having wasted his life, and then the incredible relief he must have felt when he got a chance to do it over and do it right.

Ever since seeing that movie, I've made an extra effort to remain present in my life, prioritize my family and close friends, and always question whether the way I'm spending my time is meaningful, or if I'm doing things that I'll one day look back on and feel regret. This movie made me confront what it would feel like to look back on my life and evaluate my choices, and consequently it helped me see what's important to me in life.

3. Ask HN: What are the least competitive consumer and enterprise markets?

Top comment by quickthrower2

My experiment that I am thinking of recently is almost the opposite.

1. Start with markets with high competition. E.g. paid alternatives to Google forms.

2. Get a list of 50+ products competing in the space. If < 50 go back to step 1.

3. Google to find what people, who are on the paid tiers of those products, complain about. This is easy as I am now Googling brand names so should get laser targeted results (v.s. googling "problem I had creating a form" -> Stack Overflow user who'll never pay for a form!)

4. Interview them to dig in further. If you can't get any of these people to even spare 5 minutes to talk, then it might be an indicator that you wont get them to buy.

5. Based on this, derive a hypothesis for a MVP that would solve the problem, along with the market it serves and where to find these people.

6. Presell to people in #4. If they say no - dig in further as to why. If they say yes, aim for maybe $1000 monthly revenue presold, then build.

The reason for this approach is it filters for the "are people motivated enough to spend money" which I think is the biggest risk for the ideas I come up with. Since they are (they already use the "competitor" product"), can I carve out a niche where I do something better for a specific group of people? Can I reach them easily without spending crazy money on ads? And am I solving their problem?

Caveat is this is designed as an idea generator for an Indie Hacker style project, not a startup!

4. Ask and Show HN: Ever coded for love? Willing to share?

Top comment by ashton314

During my junior year of high school, there was a girl in my calculus class that I wanted to ask out to our homecoming. Time was running short and I had no idea how I would ask her.

Then, while sitting in class, inspiration struck.

I started coding frantically on my TI-84. When the school day ended, I spent several hours in my room refining my program.

The next day, at the end of calculus, I asked this girl if I could see her calculator. (I was well known for creating games and other useful programs on TI's, so this wasn't that far out.) She handed me her calculator. I transferred the program I had written, set it up, and handed it to her. "Press ENTER", I said, and then scurried out the door.

The program apologized for the strange manner of my asking her out to a dance, then presented a menu saying "will you come to homecoming with me?" If she pressed "No", it would go to a new menu that begged, "please?" If she pressed "yes," it would confirm one more time with a cheerful "really?" Finally, if all was successful it would thank her for agreeing to come with me.

The next day, at the beginning of class, she walked up to where I was sitting, put her calculator down on my desk, and said "Press ENTER".

She had rewritten the program so that it would a.) tell me that she would come with me, and b.) didn't walk through the same series of menus. She wasn't a programmer by any means, but had managed to figure it out.

Nothing came from that other than just a good friendship. She married one of my friends, and I married a girl I met that summer. The four of us have hung out once or twice to play games, all just as good friends.

5. Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (August 2020)

Top comment by scomu

SEEKING WORK | US/Chicago [UTC -5] | REMOTE

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Senior full-stack developer with 15 years of experience, including agency, startup, and Fortune 50 experience.

Lead developer for many projects, so I can work with a team of designers/writers/PMs/UX professionals, or on my own / with a lean dev team.

Strong communication and time-management skills.

Preferred tech stack (always growing and can pick up a new technology as needed):

    - Backend: NodeJS, PHP
    - DB: MySQL, PostgreSQL, NoSQL
    - Frontend: Responsive HTML5, Javascript, React
    - Mobile: React Native, Swift, SwiftUI
    - Platform: AWS, Heroku, Netlify, Linux VPS
    - CMS: Wordpress, Jekyll, Static Site Generators

6. Ask HN: What’s your daily/weekly routine?

Top comment by bonniemuffin

We have a toddler, 2 full-time jobs, and a nanny who comes to our house from 10-4 during the week. I'm an early riser and also breastfeeding, so I take the early mornings, and I feed the baby about 6 times a day, wherever it fits into my schedule that day.

6am - me+baby wake up, breakfast and coffee. 7:30ish - husband wakes up and takes over baby while I go for a run or do housework/work. 9am - baby takes morning nap, I work. 12-12:30 - lunch 12:30-4 - work 4-6 - me+husband rotate between child care, work, and making dinner 6-7:30 - dinner and baby bedtime routine 7:30-9 - relax/watch tv/putter around 9pm - bedtime 4am - baby's favorite time to scream for no apparent reason

7. Ask HN: How can I “work-out” critical thinking skills as I age?

Top comment by wenc

From the description, it sounds like what you're asking about is more along the lines of mental acuity rather than critical thinking per se (the latter is more about analysis in order to form judgments -- recognizing fallacies, rhetoric, and using deductive/inductive logic to form arguments).

If you're asking about mental acuity so you can think faster and solve brain teasers at interviews, many of the other comments in this thread offer great suggestions. Achieving familiarity with the problem space and pure practice are keys.

If you're asking about actual "critical thinking" (though I suspect that is not the case from your description, but it's an interesting topic that you might want to pursue anyway), the classic methods are the Socratic method, disputation and critical discussion of ideas with other people. If you don't have that luxury, you can train yourself by arguing with authors in the margins when you read books. Writing is key -- it helps crystallize thoughts and reveal weaknesses in thinking. Courses in philosophy also help provide a foundation on different approaches to reasoning.

8. Ask HN: Geopolitical forums similar to HN?

Top comment by rhyswallace

The /r/Geopolitics subreddit is surprisingly solid!

Political bias is (supposed to be...) moderated to a maximum to foster only useful discussion. It has better days than others, but know I've definitely learned a lot from the discussions over there.

9. Ask HN: Do you have a daily cash stream?

Top comment by rsynnott

> His reasoning behind running a bar is that the bar serves as a daily cash stream

Of course the downside is that if things go wrong it acts as a daily cash sink, instead. Most businesses, especially retail/catering businesses, fail. Don't get into that unless you know what you're doing.

I have a daily cash stream; it's called a job.

10. Ask HN: What are the most interesting things in tech lately?

Top comment by chrisco255

Decentralized Finance on Ethereum. Blockchain always gets snarky comments on HN, but it is a rapidly evolving space. Whereas the 2017 bubble was built on token ICOs and hype, what I'm seeing now is advanced financial products including decentralized money markets for car loans (https://defimoneymarket.com/) and fractional investments in tokenized real estate (https://realt.co/). Stablecoins (tokens that trend towards the value of $1 USD) have also taken off in a big way, with Dai being one of the biggest decentralized examples (https://makerdao.com/en/). Lending platforms such as Aave (https://aave.com/) have created markets for various tokens, including stable coins, paying out variable interest on deposits.

User-friendly apps have cropped up that enable people to easily save and invest their stable coins and earn interest, such as Argent (https://www.argent.xyz/). People are creating Social investment strategies around tokens and pooling their funds together on TokenSets (https://www.tokensets.com/), these are basically social ETFs.

There are no-loss lotteries that simply invest the pool of funds to earn interest and then one lucky staker wins the interest (https://www.pooltogether.com/). Decentralized funding of open-source Web3 projects (https://gitcoin.co/).

I can really go on and on, I'm not even covering some of the developments with Non-Fungible Tokens, gaming, governance, etc.

Here are a couple newsletters I recommend for following the space: https://thedefiant.substack.com/ https://bankless.substack.com/