Hacker News Reader

_auguston Man wins French Scrabble championship without speaking a word of French (2015)

One of my proudest foreign-language speaking moments was playing, and winning, a game of Codenames in France, against native french speakers.

It was an amazing way to learn new vocabulary. If you haven't played, it's a 4x4 grid of words with 2 teams guessing which words belong to which team, giving additional words as clues.

After the board setup, the French players would explain the single, double, sometimes triple meanings of the words and I'd write them down into a notebook. Then, using a English-French dictionary I'd come up with clues that could fit. It worked surprisingly well, I think perhaps given the similarities between many English and French words. I wonder how it would work with a much more different language.

_auguston Apple’s New Map, Expansion #5: Northeast U.S.

Wow, this guy makes super in-depth posts. This one about Google's methods for creating "Areas of Interest" is fascinating: https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat

_auguston Hundreds of thousands of people read novels on Instagram

Did you have to login to an online website to buy that book/reader? How did you procure your ebook? What about the book, did you have to create a library card (login)?

_auguston Hundreds of thousands of people read novels on Instagram

I’ve been waiting for this comment just so I can point out it is in fact, literally, the same :P

_auguston Hundreds of thousands of people read novels on Instagram

Try it yourself, it’s pretty cool like an instant ebook.

Metamorphosis: https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3ODUyMTE0ODA2MzA3...

The Raven: https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3OTYyMTk5MTcwMTYz...

Alice In Wonderland: https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3OTQ0MTEwMzE5MTg4...

—

I find the top comment quite cynical, it’s literally the same as reading text on an ebook or even paperback. IMO once you get engrossed in a story the medium falls away. It’s cool that people are experimenting with a platform in a way maybe not originally intended, but that’s the beauty of it. No one can really foresee all the things you can do with a new platform/technology.

_auguston The boring technology behind a one-person Internet company (2018)

;)

_auguston The boring technology behind a one-person Internet company (2018)

Also running a solo company - https://fitloop.co

I'm primarily a front-end dev so I keep things pretty simple on the back end side.

Stack:

  Meteor, managed hosting on Galaxy
  MongoDB, hosted on Compose
  React
  GraphQL / Apollo API

_auguston Show HN: Stack – Use all your apps at the same time on 1 screen

Just installed it -- Got a scary popup about needing access to "System Events". What's that about?

Also, can't open localhost:3000?

_auguston Show HN: DuckDuckSometimes – Redirect some of your Google searches to DuckDuckGo

Now I wish there was a DuckDuckDiff to show me both results merged together.

_auguston Show HN: I made a mind map tool meant for large, detailed node hierarchies

What are the differences compared to WorkFlowy?

_auguston Stellarium: A free open-source planetarium for your computer

How do people find the time to create free software of this caliber?

_auguston India to Attempt Moon Landing at the Lunar South Pole Today

NYTimes: "India Loses Contact With Chandrayaan-2 Mission During Moon Landing Attempt"

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/06/science/india-moon-landin...

Edit:

NYTimes subtitle says "The country will likely have to wait for a future mission to join the elite club of nations that have landed on the moon."

Wikipedia for Chandrayaan-1 says "On 14 November 2008, the [Chandrayaan-1 probe] struck the south pole in a controlled manner, making India the fourth country to place its flag insignia on the Moon"

.. huh?

Edit 2: Ah, impact landing vs soft landing.

_auguston Generating natural-sounding synthetic speech using brain activity

Video (buried in the article): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pv0vT82Cys

_auguston Show HN: Lunch Money, a personal budgeting tool with multi-currency support

I would love a simple electron wrapper around this, perhaps with offline capabilities slowly added over time.

_auguston Show HN: Stackkup – Don't let tabs slow the browser down

I just installed http://tabagotchi.com/ and it seems to be keeping me in check from keeping too many unnecessary tabs open.

_auguston Mark Zuckerberg Wants to Build WeChat for the West

Because of a lack of end-to-end encryption? I'm still trying to wrap my head around it, but it uses TLS, so I'm not sure of the differences.

_auguston Mark Zuckerberg Wants to Build WeChat for the West

This is why I'm glad Google is supporting RCS [1] to improve our outdated SMS system. Many of the reasons I use these chat apps (and I think my friends as well) are having a responsive and modern chat system.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services

_auguston Ask HN: One-person SaaS apps that are profitable?

Yep! I made https://fitloop.co as a solo maker and it’s making about $450 MRR.

_auguston Show HN: Cardbox – The address book reimagined as a social network

I don't really get it. I use contacts on my phone + iMessage, this seems to be just a slightly more featured contacts manager? But, comes with a huge drawback that everyone else needs to be using it as well?

I would like an app where I can manage my friends / family lists, and then be able to text multiple people at once, invite them to events, etc. Those are the useful features I see from social networks, but are not well replicated right now outside of Facebook.

I typically manage all my contacts thru Google, and that has some features for merging duplicates, portability across devices/gmail, and also some list features.

_auguston Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

Foursquare! I've been using it pretty regularly and it always seems to give me cool neighborhood gems compared to over-advertised entires that Yelp gives you. You can kinda even feel that the app was built with some heart.

Also, I love the filters on there compared to Google (Google maps always seems to hide a lot of places)

_auguston How I accidentally made a startup

Oh no :( Backup: https://medium.com/@shridhargupta/i-accidentally-made-a-star...

_auguston Show HN: I made this to get me working out

You can see the full routine here: https://fitloop.co/routines/rr2018

_auguston Ask HN: Virtual phone provider?

In the US you can use google voice. Do you mean in Brazil?

_auguston Ask HN: Cities underserved by tech jobs? (Europe Edition)

Can you post a link to the US thread?

_auguston Verizon throttled fire department’s “unlimited” data during wildfire

https://fi.google.com/about/plan/

Looks like it's 6 gigs for $80 total, then up to 15 gigs unlimited at fast speeds after that, then unlimited at 256kbps after that.

Similiar definition of "Unlimited" as Verizon, but they are more upfront about it.

However the Fire department was using 25+ gigs, they would run into the same capping issues.

_auguston Verizon throttled fire department’s “unlimited” data during wildfire

At $10 a gig, I don't see how that would be any better.

_auguston Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2018 – Show and tell

https://fitloop.co/

A site I built to teach myself bodyweight fitness (from a routine I found on reddit) -- grew a userbase and built up more detailed tracking, configuration, and usability.

The MRR is a bit hard to calculate right now (since I charge annually), but somewhere in the $500 - $1000 range.

Edit: This app grew from feelings of being stuck / burned out / almost depressed that can come from being in front of the computer too much. I was trying to build another startup out of college from my parents' house, and was having little progress or social interaction. There's been a number of threads about depression on HN recently, I felt the same. I realized I needed to be able to work out, but had no good gym accessible at the time, thus this little project was born (and went on to be more successful than the app I was initially trying to work on).

_auguston Show HN: Fitloop.co – A full-body fitness workout made easy for everyone

Hey everyone!

Fitloop.co is a site I've been working on for a few years to help me learn the routine from Reddit's bodyweightfitness subreddit. The routine is freely available here: https://www.reddit.com/r/bodyweightfitness/wiki/kb/recommend...

I got into bodyweight fitness since I liked the idea of exercising wherever you are, no gym membership required. Bodyweight fitness is quite amazing, especially if you're a traveler or want to save time (and money) going to the gym.

As a beginner I wanted more than the wiki offered, a tool which would break down the routine in easy steps, show the youtube videos right there, and help me log and track exercises. So I made it.

- Shridhar

_auguston Show HN: Find a public park gym near you

Please add it using the Add Gym button on the top right! The whole thing is powered by crowd-sourced gym points. I used to live in Pleasanton and seem to recall some ones there that I'll add.