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Comment by eterm | Hacker News Reader

Some things I noticed:

The list is fairly short (70 activities total). Once filtered it would be easier to simply display all matching activities.

Many of the "Low" cost activities have significant upfront costs. I wouldn't describe Archery as "low cost", nor describe Astronomy or a board game night as Free activities!

It was easier just to read the raw JSON than browse the site. ( The activities are https://www.whataaabout.com/activities.json and seem to be static, not based on parameters. )

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Thanks for the feedback! It is short yes, mostly because I didn't want to spend more time on it before showing it to somebody. If the feedback is positive I'll add more. About displaying all activities, it's a good point, I though it was more fun to get one at a time, but I might add the display all as another option. And about the categories, I hear you, but take it with a grain of salt, those depends on many factors. For example I consider board game night free because where I am there are many pubs with games you can play. Same with archery, I've been in places where with 20euros or less you can try it for one hour..so yes, it depends.

I really like the idea and the site looks nice. It's good the list is short as of now, as quality of suggestions is crucial. I'll be absolutely looking at it, sometimes I get really too narrow in focus.

I appreciate it!

I'd remove "Try CBD" and "Space Cake" once you've got more options. The latter is still illegal in many places and for the former is just gauche.

Plus the CBD one appeared when I had the "Kid Friendly" filter selected :-|

Seriously or are you trolling? If so, it's some strange bug, Kids friendly is not a category assigned to that activity

The issue may be that your filters act as ORs whereas someone might interpret them as ANDs. If I filter for Social+Kids and Culinary, the CBD/space cake ones come up.

Oh right, makes sense, that must be it!

Well it is FDA approved to treat epilepsy in children :-)

It’s also commonly used for treating parenthood in parents.

No, we use THC for that, CBD is for physical back pains.

Didn't HN just get in an uproar over T Mobile disallowing marketing texts where the topic was illegal in one state but legal in another?

So do we want legal-in-some states items or not?

Who is "we"? There's more than one person commenting on HN and they don't always agree.

The people who I describe, which were a bunch.

Surprisingly, CBD is illegal in Hong Kong.

CBD = Central Business District too. Worth a try!

> a board game night as Free activities!

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamecategory/1120/print-play

https://boardgamegeek.com/forum/974620/bgg/design-contests

BGGs site is always a bit confusing to me to navigate, but searching for "pnp" or "print and play" and a contest year will probably surface a lot of good "free" (or at least, free to print....) You can at least certainly get a bunch printed for cheaper than 1 boxed game and if you dont like half of them, no drama.

Shutup and sit down has done a few round ups of solo-print-and-plays https://inv.tux.pizza/search?q=shut+up++and+sit+down+print+a.... I'm sure there are people on here that can recommend some +1-player pnp games.

Besides, board games are dirt cheap entertainment. Assuming a cost of 50 of your local currency, split between four people for entertainment for perhaps six to ten hours is hard to beat. And you can typically sell the games to recover 50% of what you paid.

In fact, if you buy used, and resell when you're bored of the game, if can be pretty much free.

I kinda like that it shows only one activity at a time. If one doesn't like it, they can always spin for a new one. Makes it better than the typical, google seo farmed lists. Also, let's you focus on one and make a decision.

In regards to the costs, again, what's low cost for one might be different for another. My archery club allows you to show up and try it for a session (or two) before enrolling. Astronomy nights don't cost us anything or much fuel, if at all. Been to plenty of board game nights where there were no entrance cost.

To share some contrasting opinions.

I agree, I like being forced to make a decision on an activity sequentially. Prevents optimization, which is a common way to spin around doing nothing.

I feel the same way, it's good you are presented with one option and can process it in depth. Let's. Slow. Down.

> I wouldn't describe Archery as "low cost"

Obviously the range is very broad, but around my parts you can get away with archery for about ~15 EUR per person (and up). That's not very expensive. What is "low cost" also obviously depends on the person.

Yup. About $20 USD where I grew up, with several archery ranges at public parks. I’d probably spring $20 for a few more niceties.

Having bought basic archery gear for 3 people in the last year, unless you're talking about a toy longbow, $20 is not going to get you anywhere. Even buying the absolute necessities for a basic barebow recurve setup, let's list things off:

Riser, plunger, arrow rest, limbs, string, arrows, finger tab. That's the absolute bare minimum. You'll also probably want an arm guard unless you don't value your forearms. You can't do this for less than US$150-$200, unless you find someone basically giving away second hand equipment.

They're talking about rental archery, aka. "I give you $20 and in turn can use your bow and arrow for an hour."

Not sure about archery and astronomy, but free board game meetups are pretty common. There’s normally plenty of people bringing games that you don’t need to bring any yourself.

Or just play Go online.

And Board Game Arena has many more online board games (non-premium) for free.

>>It was easier just to read the raw JSON than browse the site*

this is hilarious. Like when us it guys have to call a call center triage desk "yes, i already rebooted...."

For me astronomy night would be much longer than an hour, and yeah not free because of fuel costs.

More like 3-4 hours, and low (but not zero) cost.

At a basic level astronomy requires you to wait until twilight or dusk, and then tilt your head up :-), which costs nothing. You can also enhance it with an night sky app which are usually free too. If you have binoculars hanging around grab them.

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