AskHN Digest

1. Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue

Top comment by holoduke

Very nice. Congrats. Keep on going. I remember that I started with my side project back in 2011. A small app. It made like 1 dollar a month. I spend like 8 hours on it every day and night next to my normal day job. People were thinking I was insane. After 1 year, it made like 1 dollar per day. Then few months later I got 20 dollars in one single day. Another few months later it made for the first time 100 dollars a day. Still worked on it for many many hours. App is still running today and generating 2k per day. It gave me freedom to quit my day job and the opportunity to start a business as around it a few years ago. And just recently I started an entire new (more serious) fintech business. Although I know it's not easy to start something like I did. But on the other hand. Most people are not even trying it. I always tell people to really start making something you feel passionate about. (I am talking from a developers perspective) Don't look at others and don't do something other want you to do. If money is the motive, then you will fail for sure.

2. Ask HN: What's the best paper you've read in 2020?

Top comment by tgb

Here's a wonderful one I read a little over a year ago:

"Estimating the number of unseen species: A bird in the hand is worth log(n) in the bush" https://arxiv.org/abs/1511.07428 https://www.pnas.org/content/113/47/13283

It deals with the classic, and wonderful, question of "If I go and catch 100 birds, and they're from 20 different species, how many species are left uncaught?" There's more one can say about that than it might first appear and it has plenty of applications. But mostly I just love the name. Apparently PNAS had them change it for the final publication, sadly.

3. Travis CI is no longer providing CI minutes for open source projects

Top comment by jrochkind1

Only a few weeks ago they wrote a letter (https://blog.travis-ci.com/oss-announcement) that said "Open source accounts, as always, will be completely free under travis-ci.com."

Their home page at travis-ci.com still says:

> Testing your open source projects is always 100% free!

> Seriously. Always. We like to think of it as our way of giving back to a community that gives us so much as well.

That is simply not what's going on. As far as anyone can tell, they are offering some OSS which meet specific criteria (including no company funds any part of it, including paying people to work on it(?!)) free minutes in fixed monthly allotments, which you have to keep asking for every month. And there are only so many total minutes they are willing to give out, which apparently have now been frozen.

How can they have written a letter only two weeks ago saying "Open source accounts, as always, will be completely free under travis-ci.com"? How can their home page still say "Testing your open source projects is always 100% free!"??

At this point, it is hard to explain it as anything other than intentional manipulative dishonesty.

I don't understand why they don't just say "Yes, we can no longer provide free open source accounts." They aren't actually fooling anyone, I mean people notice that they don't have free accounts anymore, right? It is a weird attempt at some kind of reality distortion.

I guess you could try replying: "Credit allocation"? I don't understand, Paul Gordon wrote on Nov 24 "Open source accounts, as always, will be completely free under travis-ci.com." Is this not true?

I'm kinda curious what they'd say, but I guess it's just torturing poor support staff whose jobs probably aren't going to last either.

4. Why does Linux have so much trouble sleeping and waking?

Top comment by steviedotboston

Drivers. The way laptops sleep and wake is pretty unique to each type of computer, and many manufacturers don't care about Linux support so kernel developers are left to figure it out on their own.

I haven't used Linux on a desktop/laptop in a decade so it's sad to hear that things are still the same.

5. Ask HN: Losing all interest in programming, what now?

Top comment by balabaster

This sounds like the beginnings of burnout or depression... do you find joy in anything else? Does anything motivate you?

I went through this for about 3 years after my divorce. I couldn't find motivation or joy in anything. I turned to helping other people solve their problems because at least I was helping others to get through what I couldn't figure out how to get through myself. There was a lot of time spent in reflection and introspection and about a million cups of tea drank while looking out of the window trying to will myself to do something, anything. It was a tough run, I was just dragging myself out of it when COVID hit and kicked me while I was already down. I think I'm just beginning to be back on the rise again now. I can't promise I've got any advice that can help, but it certainly sounds like you are where I've been.

6. Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

Top comment by the__alchemist

I've been selling pH, ORP, and temperature sensors for MCUs (in practice, most users use it with Raspberry Pi) for a few months. Not enough for a significant income, but fun, and I hope to expand it with the addition of a standalone, multi-sensor device soon. Great experience learning, and communicating with customers, even though the profit isn't there. https://www.anyleaf.org/

7. Ask HN: Recommend books that give you insight into other professions

Top comment by swyx

Ex finance guy here - Liar's Poker for 1980s Wall Street, When Genius Failed for 1990s, More Money Than God for 2000s, Flash Boys for 2010s

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liar%27s_Poker

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Genius_Failed

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_Money_Than_God

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_Boys

obviously these do not represent all of finance but its a nice decade-by-decade recap of talking points, i figured i'd try to do it and was surprised how nicely it broke out

8. Ask HN: What's are your personal automations?

Top comment by jacknews

I realise this might not be what the question has in mind, but we have a bread machine.

Just buying bread might be more 'automatic', but we've been evolving the process and recipe for the last 6+ months, and honestly the bread is now better than any but the best artisan loaves available locally, and hugely cheaper.

To save time, and overcome laziness, we pre-mix 'wet' and 'dry' 'kits' in batches of 6 or 10 loaves at a time, and divide into loaf-sized portions. Wet is water, sugar, honey, oil, salt, etc. Dry is various flours, oats, multigrains, etc.

When it comes time to make bread (usually the night before we want it), it's a simple matter of pouring a wet kit into the machine, sprinkling over a dry kit, some yeast, setting the timer and pressing 'start'.

The kids do that, and do most of the batch prep, which we/they've optimised for teamwork, and for example we've 3d printed scoops in the right measures for the recipe, to speed measurements.

So from my point of view, I almost have 'automatic bread' :)

9. Ask HN: I'm quitting my job, will create a game – any advice?

Top comment by nicpottier

I built games full time for about five years, straddling the transition into smartphones.

Building a mobile game that is profitable is a bit like the lottery. You need to build something great to have a chance of winning, but building something great is not a guarantee that you will win. I realize that goes for most business ventures, but I think it is more true for mobile games than most.

What captures the imagination of an audience is in large part a guessing game and a matter of luck. You can look at past successes as a demonstration of that. Flappy Bird was a hit for a bit but it wasn't exactly clear what was so different about it than so many before. Angry Birds started an insane franchise, but I'm not sure if the same game were launched today whether it would capture the same share of the market. It is just really really ephemeral.

But making games is fun, like really fun! I had more fun in those years than I have at any other point in my career. We were banging out a game a month and having a blast doing it. This was very early so we knew there was audience enough for each of those to pay the bills, but I wouldn't count on that these days.

So all of that to say, do it! But don't expect to pay the bills doing it. Maybe you will, maybe you won't, but it is very much either rags or riches with very little predictability on where you arrive.

10. Ask HN: Why does an article critical of Paul Graham get removed?

Top comment by tptacek

One reason we tend to flag down meta drama like this is that, for the most part, people on HN don't have a good mental model of how moderation works here. This is a good example; it can bother you that people flag stories, but everyone over the (low) karma threshold can flag anything --- if you do it abusively, you can quietly lose your flag powers, is my understanding, but that's it. It's not a conspiracy.

I flagged this post, just to be clear: it's drama about drama. There was an excellent post yesterday that was critical of Paul Graham: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25325716