Hacker News Reader

jurgenwerkon What Are Spomeniks?

I fell in love with one particular spomenik so hard I decided to make a small replica from concrete: https://www.etsy.com/listing/728310082/concrete-brutalist-ww...

jurgenwerkon Ask HN: What physical product do you make?

I'm also running a website where I ask people exactly that! :) https://myhandmadestory.com/ (success stories from independent makers who sell handmade stuff online)

jurgenwerkon Ask HN: What physical product do you make?

I outsource that. I find 3D design sculptors on Upwork and CGTrader and tell them what I need. When I'm satisfied with the result, I send it to my 3D print guy who makes a print for me.

jurgenwerkon Ask HN: What physical product do you make?

I have a side hustle where I produce niche desk ornament sculptures and busts made from concrete. Etsy link: https://www.etsy.com/shop/jurgenstudio

This brings me around 500 euros per month. Recently the sales of Marcus Aurelius took off nicely, so I'm seriously thinking about expanding this business by making busts of more famous philosophers and leaders. I'm in the process of adding mini concrete busts of Alan Turing, Steve Jobs, Slavoj Žižek, Nikola Tesla, Plato, Aristotle, Jordan Peterson and more.

If anyone is interested in how I these are made (3d printing, molding, concrete pouring), please check here: https://twitter.com/matixmatix/status/1243116129289146368

jurgenwerkon Ask HN: Books giving practical advice on starting a solo SaaS business?

Start Small, Stay small is 10 years old. A lot has changed since then. The author made an unfortunate decision to write extensively about things that are not perennial. So after reading for a while about software tools and practices that are now dead or outdated, describing the limitations of an iPhone 3G, etc, I decided to stop and return the book.

jurgenwerkon Ask HN: Who wants to be hired right now?

Location: Ljubljana, Slovenia

Remote: Yes (remote only)

Technologies: Ember.js, Ruby on Rails, Elixir

Blog: https://codeandtechno.com

Résumé/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jurglic/

Email: matic@jurglic.si

Experienced full stack web developer looking for new opportunities. Excellent communicator. Fun to work with. Able to lead teams.

jurgenwerkon Rules to run a software startup with minimum hassle

The author argues it's better to have monthly subscription plans only and ditch the yearly plans, but I don't really get it. This goes against one of the most common cashflow optimizations known in the SaaS world - which is to push as many users to yearly plans as possible. I think long term subscription plans should be preferred as they produce lower churn, make the revenue more predictable and bring more money upfront.

jurgenwerkon Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (February 2020)

Location: Ljubljana, Slovenia

Remote: Yes (working remote only)

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Ember.js, Ruby on Rails, Elixir

Blog: https://codeandtechno.com

Résumé/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jurglic/

Email: matic@jurglic.si

Experienced full stack web developer looking for new opportunities. Excellent communicator. Able to lead teams.

jurgenwerkon Ask HN: What are the best places to buy and sell an independent SaaS product?

https://transferslot.com/

https://www.sideprojectors.com/

https://1kprojects.com/

https://feinternational.com/

https://empireflippers.com/

https://transferhub.io/

There is also Flippa, but I'd stay away from it. Too many scams.

jurgenwerkon Ask HN: What book changed your life in 2019?

Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Man, reading this book really put a fire under my ass. I realized how much more I could be getting out of life by pursuing optionality and using the barbell strategy.

A quote that stuck with me the most is: "If you have more than one reason to do something, don't do it." That means that you are trying to convince yourself to do it. Obvious decisions require no more than one good reason.

jurgenwerkon Ask HN: What did you build in 2019?

Synonyms Deluxe (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/synonyms-deluxe/kf...) - a browser extension for looking up synonyms

Gitfuck (https://www.instagram.com/gitfuck/) - automated Instagram account featuring commit messages of frustrated developers on GitHub

Windows 95 Accessories (https://unexpectedcomputers.com/) - Windows 95 swag and jewelry

My Handmade Story (https://myhandmadestory.com/) - Success stories from makers who make and sell handmade products

jurgenwerkon Ask HN: How do you convince people to work for you as a non-exciting startup?

Companies should never advertise unlimited time off. This is a myth. There's always a limit, and what this does is just impose extra stress when trying to guess what it is.

jurgenwerkon Ask HN: What are the most viable ways to make money online?

Some ideas here: http://justinmares.com/the-4-kinds-of-side-businesses-you-ca...

jurgenwerkon Ask HN: What SaaS expenses do you wish you could reduce?

Check this: https://intercom.rocks/ (save money on your monthly Intercom bill with automated contact archiving)

jurgenwerkon Ask HN: What are you using as an issue tracker in 2019?

+1 for ClickUp. We went through Trello, Jira, Pivotal, then Jira again, Airtable, and now we're finally happy with ClickUp.

jurgenwerkon How to Be a Stoic (2016)

What if Marcus Aurelius were a software developer? https://codeandtechno.com/posts/stoicism-for-developers/

jurgenwerkon Ask HN: Which ergonomic changes did you make?

Electric adjustable standing desk. Love it. I switch heights around 5 times per working day and it has been a huge relief for my back.

jurgenwerkon Ask HN: Which site is best to check the domain authority of sites?

Both maintain their own backlink index and calculate their scores with different formulas. That means their authority metrics will rarely match, unless the website is very established. That said it makes little sense to compare the metrics across both providers.

Stick to the provider you trust more and perform domain/page authority comparisons in the scope of a single SEO metrics provider.

Personally, I think Ahrefs is more accurate. Their crawling bot is supposedly the second most active bot after Google.

jurgenwerkon Ask HN: Can you actually get a dev job without doing a stupid quiz?

Here is a repository of companies that don't force you into solving fizz buzz problems: https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without-whiteboards

jurgenwerkon Ask HN: Have you noticed that Google search links are less clickable lately?

I'm experiencing this recently too.

jurgenwerkon How should digital nomads keep things safe? sharing lessons from getting robbed

1. backup 2. encrypt disk 3. 2fa everywhere 2. anticipate to lose your computer at any time.

jurgenwerkon Ask HN: Are we witnessing the rise of the dark mode?

https://darkmodelist.com/

jurgenwerkon Ask HN: How to compete against bigger competitor?

The business I'm working in (SEO tracking, Google rank tracking) is incredibly saturated and there are a couple of big players (Moz, Ahrefs, Majestic,...) around which are the industry standard. They get the large piece, obviously. But that doesn't mean us small fish can't get a share as well. You just have to develop one or more unique selling propositions, or try doing something better.

For example, we made our product stand out by using a completely different design and branding. Big players use the usual corporate white theme, while we went for a black themed app with aggressive logos. Others are server side rendered apps, while we serve a single page app that's feels much snappier. We polished the UX. Even though the competition (the big players) have many more features and much richer datasets, we started observing some people jump ship - from their to ours. Simply because our interface makes people really enjoy using the app and it ticks with them (if you want to check us out: https://nightwatch.io/).

jurgenwerkon Ask HN: Advice for self-publishing books

I recommend putting your e-book on an established selling platform, like Leanpub. This is crucial especially when you don't have an established following.

Make a dedicated e-book selling website as well.

Regarding monetization, there are many tricks. Make different price brackets, include extras in pricier packages. For example, if your book is a programming tutorial, offer team licences. In your book content, try to up-sell your other products if you have them. Create many micro launches every time you update your book. Collect e-mails by providing a free book sample. You can read more on this matter in a blogpost I have written: http://codeandtechno.com/posts/tips-for-writing-an-indie-ebo...

jurgenwerkon How do you implement subscription payment in SaaS?

I second this. Just do it yourself with a cron job. It can be really simple in the beginning, and very flexible later when you need it. As your business grows, your charging can quickly get complicated. Think custom subscriptions with conditional coupons, multi-currency, custom pro-rating, special discounts with specific conditions. With your own charging solution, you can do all these with ease. But if you off-load billing and charging schedule to an external service (and use webhooks or reverse APIs), you will quickly discover you're pretty limited.

jurgenwerkon Ask HN: What is the one quote that you carry around in your head all the time?

"The more you know who you are, the less you let things upset you" from Lost in Translation movie, said by Bill Murray.

jurgenwerkon Ask HN: What is some advice that has made your life better?

Don't work on weekends.

jurgenwerkon Ask HN: Which book have you read, but do not recommend?

I got stuck with Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance as well. I bought the book because I heard people praising it, but to me it was just a struggle to read. Didn't manage to finish it.

jurgenwerkon Timescale raises $16M from Benchmark, NEA, Two Sigma Ventures

We recently integrated TimescaleDB extension into our PostgreSQL database at https://nightwatch.io. For performance reasons, we decided to implement time based table partitioning. We were evaluating native PG 10 partitioning vs. TimescaleDB, and concluded the latter will spare us a lot of work, maintenance and headaches. We were right - we got table partitioning basically "for free", query performance improved, and there is no partitioning maintenance involved, everything is automatic behind the curtains with their concept of hypertables. Support is really good too, they are very helpful on Timescale Slack channel.

jurgenwerkon Ask HN: What’s your list of sideprojects?

http://deadcoins.com - A list of dead crypto.