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Issue #88 - November 8, 2020
If you are looking for work, check out this month's Who is hiring? and Who wants to be hired? threads.
Here are the top threads of the week, happy reading!
1. Ask HN: As a person, what can I do to improve a city?
Top comment by burlesona
The single best thing you can do is pick a neighborhood - not the whole city - and invest deeply.
Get to know everyone in the neighborhood and understand what they want and need, then try to find ways to bring that.
When you have a strong network of neighbors and a little bit of cash, you can ramp up investment by cleaning up dirty corners and getting the basic services that a neighborhood is missing.
Here’s an example of how folks in Memphis, TN did this Over time: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/5/21/this-is-what-w...
If you’re interested in connecting with people who already have this mindset, there are a lot of them in Strong Towns, and there may even be a group in your area.
Top comment by the-rc
This is so sad. Dan always found time to talk to you, whether it was at the local NYC meetup or one of the monster Kubecons. No matter how small your company, he tried to get everyone to be active in the community.
I have a quick Dan story. I saw him after a Kubecon keynote and I joked that he should have sent me the slides for review, because the numbers for diversity grants he showed on stage were great, but the total was wrong. Later that day, I saw him again at the evening party. I think it was in Austin, the crazy one where it snowed. He told me, still embarrassed, that he had checked and the numbers were wrong. Then, he handed me a couple of extra tickets for drinks. I think I'll pour one for him now.
3. Ask HN: How do custom software dev firms make money?
Top comment by chairmanwow1
>> “Hey HN, I'm working on a project for school and need to learn a bit more about the revenue model of custom software dev firms.”
I used this trick A LOT in college to get secrets from companies. My friends and I would call some people and tell them we were trying to understand something for a report. It was amazing how much secret information people were willing to share.
One of the most powerful assets you have as a student is that .edu email address.
4. Ask HN: What can replace my iPod for podcast listening?
Top comment by greenyouse
You could bump up to an iPod mini v2 and optionally swap out the internals for some extra storage space. The stock battery with the latest apple firmware lasts about 18 hours with 450mAh. There are better 1300mAh+ batteries that offer a lot longer time though. Like others have mentioned Rockbox firmware is also available and will increase the battery life too.
The iFixit site has nice repair articles for how to change the internals. An upgraded SDXC memory card with 128GB of space runs about $30. You could also buy a modded mini with this kind of storage off ebay for around $125 but it probably won't have the nicer battery life.
If you really like the nano you could also swap out the nano battery to bring it back to life. It doesn't look like the storage is replaceable though.
5. Ask HN: How to effectively get feedback from users?
Top comment by staysaasy
Some ideas that have worked well for me in b2b/SaaS:
* If you're pre-product/market fit, just reach out to users via email, in-product messaging etc. You can incentivize them with Amazon gift cards as well. At this stage nobody actually needs your product so you'll have to do it by hook or by crook.
* If you're post-product/market fit then people actually _need_ your business. Once you make it clear that you're going to action on their feedback they're highly incentivized to help you out – so use the same strategies as above but make it clear what you'll use the feedback for.
* Set up automated surveys, especially ones that are unobtrusive in order to not create a shitty user experience – this allows you to baseline your product's effectiveness which is the first step towards continuous iteration. Eg last quarter we were at 3.3/5 satisfaction, let's get to 4.0/5 this quarter. These surveys are also a great way to find customers to interview.
* FullStory and Hotjar both allow you to view user sessions, highly recommend them as well.
The most important point: if you're an enterprise business, I highly recommend identifying the "best" customers that you have, building relationships with them, and favoring their guidance over others'. Once you hit scale all of your customers will want to give you feedback, but only some of them will have the wisdom/intelligence/creativity/whatever to have a great sense for what _you_ should build for _your_ business to succeed. When you find these customers, get them onto a customer advisory board / meet with them a lot as they will help you in the art of pulling a great product out of your market.
6. Ask HN: Hey Drew, why is Dropbox becoming so bad?
Top comment by evgen
As others have noted, I share your pain and am in complete agreement that Dropbox has gone from a must-have utility that was a core part of several key workflows to a steaming crapfest of monetization and upsell. I dropped my subscription to Dropbox, migrated everything that was easy and convenient away, and have not looked back.
I feel bad, sort of, to need to part ways with a tool that was once so useful and clever. OTOH, good riddance!
7. Githubassets.com Cert Has Expired
Top comment by mg
This is a script I call "certdays.sh" which you can call from your regular tests like this:
certdays.sh somedomain.com 14
If the certificate for somedomain.com is valid less then 14 days, it will fail:
https://github.com/no-gravity/certdays
Top comment by ogwh
I left technology behind almost completely a year or two ago. What I've realised is that most technology doesn't improve our lives, it complicates it and makes it measurably worse. I still check HN, which is probably the last remaining symptom of my link to the tech world.
The world needs less software and less technology, not more. The further down this rabbit hole we go the worse everything gets. Physical health, mental health, social health and the broader links that bind society together all suffer.
It's all noise and its supposed benefits are, for the most part, an illusion.
There's definitely a role for tech to play in our lives, but a limited, balanced role. We're living in a world saturated with it, overdosing daily.
Give it all up, move on, and in time you will recover. Even if it takes years.
Good luck.
(It's unlikely that I will return to read any replies to this comment.)
9. Ask HN: Consultants and freelancers, how do you handle invoicing?
Top comment by rikkipitt
I use https://www.xero.com. My accountant can manage my accounts via their Xero login too which is handy.
Many of these platform have APIs you can use. I've created a few products off the back of them through tools I'm built for myself internally.
- https://www.inviewapp.com | Creates iCal feeds for your invoices and bills so you can see who owes what on your calendar (or in Slack). Works with most major invoicing platforms.
- https://www.quikk.co.uk | Backups and audits all your Xero data.
I'm sure you'd find neat ways to automate your workflow with whichever platform you end up opting for.
10. Ask HN: Anyone seriously working on starting a new country?
Top comment by Memosyne
> If you could take all the good parts of most countries and try to combine them to create a new country, you could have a winner.
Or you could have an amalgamation of different policies that are dependent on conflicting cultural values.
> Is anyone seriously working on starting a new country?
Hm, I don't know if you consider them serious but there's the ongoing Syrian civil war, Boko Haram insurgency, Mali war, etc...