ddubski

As a counter point, the hat is a great way to protect against AC water drips.

My biggest fear about walking around any city (but NYC in particular) is an actual AC machine dropping onto my head. Maybe you could offer the choice to drop down a hard hat on streets with high AC unit density (and then pick it up when I leave the area).

My little sister was so afraid of her Furby that at one point she threw it off our roof to try to kill it. That didn’t work so she ended up putting it in the freezer.

This will not make her feel better.

Whenever I hear the words “American carnage”, I can only think of this scene.

I actually felt that sharing this provided a more credible starting point for the discussion than my own viewpoint. I did not think to confirm whether the paper had been published so I’ve learned my lesson on that.

To be honest I’m a bit surprised by the strong reactions as today’s news is filled with different perspectives on the economic consequences of higher gas prices (as unimportant as that is relative to the war in Ukraine) but I appreciate the feedback. There’s no intent to be dishonest or self-serving here but I’m sorry if that’s how it was construed.

Hi, I’m the OP. I shared this because from a practical perspective it seems that filling a car’s fuel tank is one of the most volatile and essential line items in a typical household budget, and when expensive housing (owned or rented) stretches household budgets, prolonged increases in gas prices could feasibly be a “straw that breaks the camel’s back”, as another commenter mentioned. I appreciate the far more educated perspectives available on HN, so given some of the current parallels (expensive housing, rising prices) and some of the much more unfortunate new variables (war, inflation, supply chain), I wanted to raise the topic for discussion.

I personally think that trends like increased EV/hybrid ownership and WFH could mitigate this issue in particular, but I don’t think these are trends that apply to all Americans equally (especially those with more precarious finances).

One of my mom’s friends has a great method for keeping in touch with people. He keeps one of those daily tear-off calendars (filled with cat/dad jokes) on his desk. Each day he looks at the joke and decides who it reminds him, then just tears that page off and mails it to the person, along with his business card. No further explanation or note involved. I guess he just needs a lot of stamps.

This seems awesome. Just this morning I discussed 2-3 projects at work where we’d want to do something like this to save engineering time, without even knowing this existed. :)

Hi HN, I shared an earlier version of this back in August. Conceptually it was based on the idea of creating a "GitHub for buildings", where you can create and analyze a version history of your home and all the changes you make to it over time. Based on the extremely helpful feedback I received, I've reimagined this as a collaborative home management "platform" instead, where project detail/history is just one part of the value proposition (on top of helping people take care of little problems around the house, taking care of their stuff, coordinating documents and people, etc.). From the feedback, I think there's still some value to knowledge transfer between owners, but it's been completely de-prioritized in terms of roadmap work. I'm excited to help homeowners create "instruction manuals" for their homes instead. Really appreciate any additional feedback - thanks

Hi HN, I shared an earlier version of this back in August. Conceptually it was based on the idea of creating a "GitHub for buildings", where you can create and analyze a version history of your home and all the changes you make to it over time. Based on the extremely helpful feedback I received, I've reimagined this as a collaborative home management "platform" instead, where project detail/history is just one part of the value proposition (on top of helping people take care of little problems around the house, taking care of their stuff, coordinating documents and people, etc.).

From the feedback, I think there's still some value to knowledge transfer between owners, but it's been completely de-prioritized in terms of roadmap work. I'm excited to help homeowners create "instruction manuals" for their homes instead.

Really appreciate any additional feedback - thanks!

Each property is completely private by default unless you want to make it public (and currently that feature isn't ready anyway).

Thank you also for your clarification on version tracking vs. control - I will change that now! And I do plan to describe it as something other than "GitHub for Buildings" eventually, but assumed that description might register more effectively here while I hunt for feedback.

No offense at all - this is the part that makes me the most nervous too, and I'd be very glad to help you self-host it (if you wouldn't mind emailing me at dstein@shinybuildings.com to discuss further).

I completely agree - at the moment I'm focused on getting feedback from "tech savvy" early adopters, so I thought this description might help express what I'm going for most effectively here on HN. But once I nail down the features that make sense for buildings and real estate, I'm hoping I can come up with a more approachable way to describe the functionality (even though I would like to incorporate and build on the more sophisticated concepts that GitHub has made pretty standard for code.)

Thank you for the feedback! Obviously if I could get this to a place where enough people find it valuable, I would like to make it work for as long as possible... But in the meantime, I'm definitely planning to prioritize full data export functionality (and other ways of making sure you're not locked-in or empty handed after investing in it.)

Thanks, it would be awesome to hear if you use it! I'm actually a renter myself and use it for cleaning and managing some of my stuff. My email is dstein@shinybuildings.com if you have any feedback or suggestions.

I really appreciate that, and this is one of the main pieces of feedback I was looking for. I would like to make it a business, so I've been studying the issue and it seems there is a gap in the market for homeowners who want to plan and document their work outside of Excel, paper, etc. I've also heard that there are some sellers who would like to transfer detailed "knowledge" about a house to future owners, and certainly many buyers who would value that information. But I certainly don't plan to force anyone to share anything about the house (issues, work done, etc.) that they don't want to share. Your perspective is extremely helpful.

If it doesn't make sense for homeowners, I'm also wondering if there's an interest in using a tool like this for the upkeep of buildings and structures in the public interest (schools, infrastructure, etc.), in which case transparency and ability to transfer knowledge might make more sense. But I know that's a completely different animal altogether.

Hi HN, thank you for the chance to share. Shiny Buildings is meant to be a tool to tell the story of your house: how it got to where it is today, and where you'd like it to take it. It's inspired by both GitHub - which I (like many) think is an extremely fun and functional tool - and Stewart Brand's "How Buildings Learn", which I discovered on this site a couple of years ago [0]. Growing up, I was always completely enamored with actual "shiny buildings" - fancy looking glass boxes that I found downtown and on college campuses, which I've always thought were super exciting, new, technological marvels compared to all these clapboard relics up here in New England... With time though (and especially after reading this book), I came to realize that almost any standing building is somewhat of a miracle, and well-maintained, well-loved buildings that get patches and extensions and upgrades and just seem to grow organically are nothing short of awesome to look at and enjoy. I'd like to think there's some value in documenting all of these changes and sharing it with other people who help take care of your home, etc., but I'm mostly hoping this tool can just provide another source of pride and satisfaction for anyone who enjoys where they live and wants to keep making it better.

Anyway, this version definitely falls far, far short of the quality, functionality, and concepts of GitHub, and the ideas in the book, so any feedback and criticism is extremely appreciated. Here's a video if you'd rather not try it directly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGbqgmrv8m0

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21087901