News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

leandot

Re:Ask HN: What're You Reading? on Tuesday September 29, 2026 @11:31AM (#49895061)
The Immortal Great Souls by Phil Tucker. Very enjoyable fantasy with great world and characters.
Re:Ask HN: What're You Reading? on Tuesday September 29, 2026 @11:29AM (#49895007)
The Immortal Great Souls from Phil Tucker. Very enjoyable fantasy with unique world and characters.
Curious about more details about this setup?
Re:Watching an elderly relative trying to use the modern web on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @07:39AM (#47046846)
Not sure what you mean by "the modern web", but if it's the ads and popups, I can only recommend NextDNS. It blocks spam, offensive content etc. on dns level. Obviously you have to trust them, but it makes the web usable again to me and my family.
Re:Ask HN: Should I shutdown my 20 year old SaaS sideline? on Tuesday January 13, 2026 @07:59AM (#46600380)
I’d love to hear about it, for a reasonable amount and in a good niche it might be interesting, feel free to pm me
This. It also caps your fares in a day to the cost of a daily ticket, so you don't get overcharged.
Re:Ask HN: Why Is My Happiness Tied to My Productivity? on Thursday August 14, 2025 @04:36PM (#44905405)
there is a saying "busy hands, calm mind"
Re:Ask HN: What's your most unpopular dev opinion? on Saturday May 31, 2025 @11:31AM (#44144903)
That’s an interesting point—what makes you think that’s the case?
Re: on Sunday April 27, 2025 @04:33AM (#43810387)
Condolences for your loss. It sounds like a difficult period - give yourself time to mourn. Try to fill the time with meaningful experiences - if you like dogs, go to a dog shelter, if you like hiking, go hiking. A lot of sun, sport and good company helps too. Avoid thinking about the future, work or money right now.
Re:Ask HN: I am at a loss. What shall I do? on Friday April 25, 2025 @08:10AM (#43792750)
People already mentioned this, but take a base salary at least.

Consider posting your product, maybe someone would have an idea of what to do with it or a company might need exactly certain features, even if your product does not have traction at the moment.

Re:Iced.rs vs. Dioxus for cross-platform GUI in Rust on Sunday April 13, 2025 @02:20AM (#43670517)
Interesting, can a dioxus app built with freyaui also run on the web?
Re:Exercise has 2M users but no money in the bank on Saturday September 07, 2024 @02:53AM (#41472041)
I submitted the article to HN after reading it and I have joined the Exercism Insiders - recurring $10/month, a very fair deal. Hope that has helped a bit!

As someone already mentioned please consider adding ways for monetizing, ads + remove ads, paywall, paid exercises, etc. to stay afloat.

Also please get in touch, email in bio, I don‘t have anything concrete in mind but would like to be in touch. In another life I would gladly be teaching coding, who knows maybe it works out.

Re:How to Deal with Loneliness as a Founder? on Tuesday August 06, 2024 @03:45AM (#41168673)
Founder life is difficult and grinding, make sure you have an outlet - sport, hobbies, family etc.

Also, hire and empower people to take off some of your work and responsibilities. For many years I didn’t have a proper vacation as I was trying to be always available and this is not the healthy way.

If you can, consider hiring a CEO/COO or get a cofounder.

Re:Ask HN: Why Is Nobody Hiring Juniors? on Wednesday June 05, 2024 @02:33AM (#40581975)
There is much advice on the web that you should change jobs regularly to get salary raises fast. It is potentially a good advice if you are very good at what you do and your employer is not investing enough to reward you properly. But I’ve seen many cases where a mediocre developer finds a slightly better paying job and your 1+ year investment in training and teaching goes down the drain. Also with LLMs you usually achieve the same as 3-4 juniors.

I am very much pro-training and teaching juniors but there is (was at least) a sense of entitlement and lack of commitment that is detrimental to those efforts.

Re:Ask HN: SaaS prcing. Why not charge the little guy? on Monday May 13, 2024 @07:43AM (#40342124)
Because it's not worth the support and complaints. A business account paying $$$ is more likely to see the benefit and the money goes out from preallocated budget.
Re:Any way to read WSJ articles? on Thursday May 09, 2024 @01:53PM (#40310867)
How about by paying for the work of the WSJ team?
Try to share some information about your project and get feedback in a relevant and friendly community (like HN but there are others too). This could boost your motivation and maybe put you on the right track.
First of all congrats for creating something and achieving some traction. However, on the valuation side I think the things are a bit different. The size is just too small to justify a higher multiple, because you have to maintain the product, invest in marketing, etc. Until at least 5-6k mrr the buyer would be at a net negative (either hire someone to maintain or do it themselves and in a lot of countries the mrr is enough for neither).

A strategic buyer might buy it for the potential, but also at that size they can likely copy it quickly and with a bit of marketing scale it up.

Out of curiosity, what is your expectation for such a project? 3x arr is a standard measure, especially for such small numbers.
Are you looking for a web service that does the whole thing? Otherwise asking ChatGPT gives you

convert this free text

  I goto to example.com
  I click the search bar
  I type in “fruit”
  Expect to see a list of fruit
to playwright script

const { chromium } = require('playwright');

(async () => { const browser = await chromium.launch(); const context = await browser.newContext(); const page = await context.newPage();

  // Navigate to example.com
  await page.goto('https://example.com');

  // Click the search bar
  await page.click('input[type="search"]');

  // Type in "fruit"
  await page.type('input[type="search"]', 'fruit');

  // Press Enter to submit the search
  await page.press('input[type="search"]', 'Enter');

  // Wait for the page to load
  await page.waitForLoadState('networkidle');

  // Expect to see a list of fruit
  const fruitList = await page.$$('ul li');
  if (fruitList.length > 0) {
    console.log('List of fruit found!');
  } else {
    console.error('Failed to find the list of fruit.');
  }

  // Close the browser
  await browser.close();
})();
Re:Ask HN: I am the software guy and marketing is hell for me on Thursday February 08, 2024 @12:17PM (#39304629)
I'd suggest to spend 50% of your time on base marketing - provide meaningful content to your target audience on the web and other channels if they make sense, e.g. LinkedIn for B2B and you will slowly start to get recognized. After that it should get easier. Avoid scammy tactics and spam.

If you really think you need a good non-tech co-founder it should be someone you have worked with under pressure and they have proven that they can deliver. Avoid people that produce strategies.

You should list some things you have built so that someone with marketing/sales experience could find it interesting and get in touch later. It's part of what I called "base" marketing and it's a long game, no shortcuts.

I have been on both sides and if someone doesn’t want to turn on the video and doesn’t want to even try discussing an algorithm in an interview then it is a 100% no go. In the eyes of the interviewer you are uncooperative, likely trying to cheat and they should expect similar conflicts in the future.

If you are good and don’t want to be interviewed then be a freelancer, it might be a better fit if you can somehow prove you are good without interviewing.

I occasionally use Perplexity on iOS to avoid googling. You get a reference list where the data came from, which is nice.
I agree that there is typically a "superstar", but it's rarely the ones that believe they are a superstar. Often times the so-called "superstar adds so much abstraction and complexity to a product that it feels only they can deal with it, because the rest of the team can't and does not want to deal with it. Work piles up and moves very slowly and it feels the "superstar" is the only one who does the job. Then superstar burns out, quits and leaves the "mediocre" team to deal with the mess.

For me a "superstar" is a friendly capable coder, who simplifies, teaches and learns in a feedback loop. They are indeed very rare.

Re:Ask HN: Techinical and non-technical goals for 2024? on Monday January 01, 2024 @05:23AM (#38830896)
I can’t recommend Andrej Karpathy’s videos enough, it’s mind blowing how he guides you from zero to neural networks and even chatgpt.

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