Hacker News Reader

RepressedEmuon Myths About Choosing a College Major

I didn't think the grandparent comment is "moralizing". They aren't saying your choice of major is "good" or "bad". They are saying that when you make a sub-optimal(in relation to expected future income) degree choice then you should expect a sub-optimal result and take responsibility for your own decisions rather than complain about "the economy" or "the system" or "capitalism in general".

RepressedEmuon Ask HN: Is short term crypto currency trading profitable?

I have been working on an app to do trend forecasting for various cryptocurrencies. The end goal is to get realtime alerts when a currency dips or spikes above a given forecast. You'd get a message with the current forecast and a picture of the price graph with various statistical markers overlaid. Kind of like a real-time trend analysis snapshot.

Is this something you'd be interested in?

RepressedEmuon Ask HN: What is your weirdest secret YouTube addiction?

Just fell down the lofi/simpsonwave rabbit hole myself! Those videos and playlists definitely have some of the tamest comment sections on Youtube.

RepressedEmuon The fake Facebook profile industry

I presume that holds unless the only "signal" you get is your local priest and feudal lord? Especially since for most of human civilization the vast majority(95%+) couldn't read or write...

RepressedEmuon Single Founders Shouldn’t Put Marriage Off

I think the advice is closer to: "If you aren't going to put your startup in front of everything else in your life. It will fail."

Which, at the scale of business they are referring to, might just be the reality. Although I also find it to be a very distasteful warping of human priorities, personally.

RepressedEmuon Selling shovels in a gold rush: building a SaaS for cryptocurrency enthusiasts

This is a really good write up of taking a product from an idea all the way through getting paying customers! I just wish the author delved more into details.

How many of their users converted to a paid plan? What price point did the author settle on for their service?

He says that the server costs are paid off for a year but we get no details beyond that.

RepressedEmuon Explore Wealth and Income Inequality in the World Wealth and Income Database

Most people don't jump up to "defend capitalism" because it is already the status quo in America. It is already being aptly defended by the oligarchy of big business that profit off of the inequality being discussed here.

You argue in another comment that "you just want it to be said" that modern American poor are better off than the poor people in Laos in the 1800's. Congratulations, you've won that strawman argument.

Now you should move on to how to solve the actual current problems of the modern poor and the hollowing out of the American middle class rather than wasting your breath defending the current status quo and arguing against improving people's lives. It might be a better use of brainpower.

RepressedEmuon Ethical issues in research using datasets of illicit origin

Your second example is very fascinating. Is finding unique datasets like this part of your job? How lucrative is something like that?

RepressedEmuon China's Race to Find Aliens First

This sounds like an amazing project! I'd love to help in any way I can. Do you have a website where I can learn more about your startup?

RepressedEmuon Mail-Order CRISPR Kits Allow Anyone to Hack DNA

Not with THAT attitude!

RepressedEmuon Human Beings Almost Vanished from Earth in 70,000 B.C

Yes but in the last 100 years we've also added around 6 BILLION new people. 100 million dead is a drop in the bucket compared to the amount thats been added due to advancing technology and culture.

RepressedEmuon Ask HN: I would pay X for Y

Don't most mainstream podcasts come with a text transcription?

RepressedEmuon Ask HN: I would pay X for Y

Mturk can get you 100 data feeds scraped for around that price pint probably.

RepressedEmuon Letting users skip our paywall if they wrote an apology

Adding a sharing feature to get past the payment is an interesting thought. Instead of subjecting your users to ads you make them advertise to others on your behalf. Its definitely a good move for them if they are a young company.

RepressedEmuon A curated directory of resources and tools to help you build your startup

http://launchaco.com/build/

This is for landing pages but offers drag and drop simple website builder for you and I think it uses bootstrap. I use it all the time to quickly get 80 percent of what I want before refining it from there.

RepressedEmuon Show HN: I recently launched instaaa.com and have made $12K in sales

True, my first thought that popped into my mind was how fast I could replicate their entire website and business model. Don't know if thats good or bad.

RepressedEmuon “Startup” asks internship applicant to build their app before phone screen

Oh boy, don't give them any ideas.

RepressedEmuon After the end of the startup era

This is why I love HN! Talk soon.

RepressedEmuon After the end of the startup era

It seems like you have a lot of entrepreneurial energy and inspiration in your personal network. SV pundits don't care about those people creating lifestyle businesses, they just want "megascale" and big fancy exits.

RepressedEmuon After the end of the startup era

My short term goal right now is to sell/grow enough side projects to go full time with prototyping "micro businesses". I feel like a startup studio of 4-8 people could get some serious work done. It would also just be a great time exploring new ideas and green-field code all day every day. But hey, a young guy trapped in a megacorp-cube can dream, right?

RepressedEmuon Ask HN: What is your preferred tech stack for web apps?

Rails, Postgres, pure JS frontend. You can go from zero to MVP for 90 percent of projects in 6 weeks or less.

RepressedEmuon Which service do you use to host static website?

Same! Struggled with github pages at one point but Netlify really just made it a two command process to get a site up with SSL. I love it!

RepressedEmuon Ask HN: Do you have a side project you want to sell?

Email sent.

RepressedEmuon Ask HN: Who has turned a side project to full time gig? And at what revenue?

Sent you an email.

RepressedEmuon Ask HN: Who has turned a side project to full time gig? And at what revenue?

I'm currently in the process of deciding whether to sell my most recent side-project($400 recurring profit in 1.5 months), transfer it to a friend from business school and keep a large percent of profits, or to hire some part time digital assistants to run the support. Its a tough decision but I realized that the weekly support emails and upkeep was keeping me form developing my other ideas.

RepressedEmuon Ask HN: Is it poor form to clone a startup with little to no competitors?

Instead of a direct clone you should try to find your own "twist" on the idea. That way you can still get buzz and be seen as a competitor and not just a knock-off. Finding a good twist is the hard part though. Also, remember that "good artists copy and great artists steal"

RepressedEmuon Ask HN: Do you have a side project you want to sell?

I have a site with 2k recurring revenue(16 percent profit margins) but it requires support and marketing time(5-10 hours per week). What kind of multiple is normal for something like this?

RepressedEmuon Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

I'd also like to know this. I'm fascinated by their business model and I see them popping up all over.

RepressedEmuon Britain Moves to Criminalize Reading Extremist Material on the Internet

I think there is a disconnect between your values and many on HN when it comes to the right of free speech. You see "harm from bad speech" as a major problem in society so you naturally seek to correct it with the strongest tools you can muster. You're already using social pressure to create norms for "good speech" and now you want to move to actual legislative pressure to enforce your growing list of speech norms. I think your heart is in the right place but legislating speech is a very dangerous business. If you normalize the ability to control speech then you open the door for anyone else in power to make those decisions for you. So either you think the current "harm" is so great that its worth risking the entire future of free society or you think the risk of creating that "1984 dystopian world" is zero.

I personally think the risk is non-zero(Trump, Brexit, Black Swan events ect.) so you can understand why most people would disagree with that trade off, right?

RepressedEmuon Average IQ scores seem to have been falling and population ageing may be why

Bullies are normally very insecure themselves which is why they shine the spotlight on others. Speaking as a former bully.