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Issue #96 - January 3, 2021
Here are the top threads of the week, happy reading!
1. Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?
Top comment by baron816
In-person social organizations.
Social isolation is probably the biggest cause of unhappiness in advanced countries. Having a strong social network has lots of advantages including providing better romantic and career opportunities, as well as improving physical and psychological health.
Humans have a long history of dishing out lots of money to be parts of strong communities too--country clubs and fraternities have high fees. Church goers regularly give up 10% of their (gross) income to be part of that group. Cult members might even hand over ALL of their possessions to join.
The camaraderie and experiences that go along with being part of a strong, long lived community tends to be the thing people value most in life. Yet finding those communities has become increasingly difficult in the modern era. People move away to different cities, or just don't run into the same set of people everyday. With the rise of remote work, social disconnection is only going to rise. I think there's a lot of room to create new social organizations with pretty minimal technology, and make a pretty profit from doing so. Humans are still human--they want those connections--they mostly just need an introduction.
Top comment by TeMPOraL
Szczęśliwego nowego roku!
A round of applause for 'dang for keeping this place in order. And another for all of you here, contributing things that gratify intellectual curiosity and maintaining a level of discourse that's atypically high for Internet communities.
For me, HN was an important part of keeping sane in this disaster of a year. Let's hope the next one will be boring.
3. Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?
Top comment by ZguideZ
In 2004 my brother and I developed a buttplug shaped like George W. Bush - we called it the Bushplug. Manufacturing was more expensive than we had expected but we sold about 100 of them - presumably as novelty gifts. Our price point was too high for a novelty gift and the nose was a little too pointy to be an enjoyable sex toy. We made our money back and had some fun with being featured on BoingBoing and Fleshbot. Someone tried to sue us. We sent the last of the Bushplugs to the Smithsonian's presidential museum. We made our investment back but didn't become buttplug millionaires.
4. Ask HN: Predictions for 2021?
Top comment by Dirak
* 50% of all US currency is printed between now and the end of 2021
* 1 Bitcoin will cost over $100k on Dec 31, 2021
* An animation tool rivaling Adobe Flash for the web will emerge
* FB releases a thin virtual reality headset https://research.fb.com/blog/2020/06/holographic-optics-for-...
* Austin Tx or Seattle Wa succeeds Silicon Valley as the next major tech hub. San Francisco and its century old Victorians become the Detroit of the tech world
* Section 230 doesn't get repealed
* WFH and quarantine continues until the summer
* A React competitor that compiles to WASM with promises of perf and space gains will emerge
* A Reddit competitor emerges and wins majority marketshare
* 2021 will be the year of punk and rock n' roll
5. Ask HN: Favorite Podcast Episode of 2020?
Top comment by lawn
Hardcore History: Supernova in the East, part 5.
It's about Japan during the second world war and there's something about the absolutely insane Japanese mentality that lead civilians to commit mass suicide that captivated me.
The whole series, and really the whole of Hardcore History is absolutely amazing and even if you think you don't like history you absolutely should give it a try. Blueprint of Armageddon is still the best piece of entertainment I've ever had, regardless of media.
https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-66-supern...
6. Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses in 2021?
Top comment by makeee
Divjoy [0] is now profitable and my full-time thing. It did $50k in year one and my goal is to break $100k this year. It all started with a Show HN [1], so thank you HN :)
It was rough going at first, but I won the $15k YC Startup School grant [2], which let me jump into it full-time and give it my full focus. I managed to hit ramen profitable before having to go back to freelance.
The conventional wisdom is that devs won't pay for software (especially code!), but I've found it to be the opposite. There are a lot of employed software engineers who have disposable income and who are happy to pay for a dev tool if it means they can actually build and launch an idea in a weekend.
[0] https://divjoy.com
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20688044
[2] https://blog.ycombinator.com/announcing-the-startup-school-2...
7. Ask HN: What low-code “dashboarding“ SaaS would you recommend in 2021?
Top comment by reilly3000
Grafana is pretty great. There are a lot of built in connectors, but its ability to query arbitrary REST, JSON, oData etc endpoints along with databases makes it super flexible for what you mentioned.
https://grafana.com/grafana/plugins/simpod-json-datasource
It has a great GUI for building queries, plus solid RBAC, great charting, and a very flexible alert system. Configure in their GUI, then get your dashboard's code in as JSON for deployment. You can also define dashboard in actual code, ie grafanalib in Python and others- which is great for DevOps. https://github.com/weaveworks/grafanalib
They have nice stylesheets ready for TV displays, but it gets really fun when users get their hands on it and can zoom in and drill down on time-series data, filter with dynamic parameters and such.
8. Thank HN: All of you, this place, gives me hope
Top comment by hliyan
I've been reading HN almost every weekday for the past six years. It's been consistently great. I have been looking around for other communities (e.g. on subjects such as psychology, physics, economics, basically anything) that have managed to replicate this success. Yet to find a single one that maintains this level of discourse. I'm sure it's in no small part thanks to the moderators.
9. Ask HN: How can I use my phone to create things rather than consume them?
Top comment by Normille
A lot of the comments are looking to find ways to get around the fact that entering text on a phone is a pain. Others have suggested creating 'art' but, personally I find a phone screen far too small for drawing on.
If you want to 'create' with your phone, why not use the feature it has which is actually as good as [and in some aspects better than] the equivalent 'proper' equipment. ie. the camera.
I'm a keen amateur photographer and have actually sold my SLR and compact cameras and now use my phone for 100% of my photography. It may lack some of the capabilities of my proper cameras, but [like most modern phone cameras] it's very good indeed and light years ahead of the equipment many of history's greatest photographers had access to, in their time. And, as the famous quote says; "The best camera is the one you have with you"
[and who of us leaves the house without our phones, these days?]
Next time you're thumb-twiddling somewhere, why not set yourself a photography project to kill the time:
* Find and photograph 'faces' in everyday objects
* Pick a random word [for example off a billboard] and take photos on that 'theme'
* Pretend you're a news photographer and record 'stories' on your journey to wherever you're going
* Photograph some everyday objects from weird angles and see if your mates can recognise them
* Try and find some 'beauty' in decay; dilapidated buildings, rubbish, grafitti, etc.
....and so on.
10. Ask HN: What was your favorite comment in 2020?
Top comment by ra7
From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22045384:
> I sometimes find myself thinking, "why would you do that!?" and that's when I realize that what that really means is I'm the one who's not understanding something. I should be asking myself, "why would they do that?"
This is my favorite because it’s simple, but so powerful. I’ve tried to stick to this advice since I saw that comment. And I think it has made me kinder and much more willing to empathize with others and give chances.
Every time I find myself judging or criticizing others, I keep reminding myself of this comment and almost always end up with a different perspective.