Hacker News Reader

ravivoodaon Controversial creators are benefiting from monetization programs run by Meta

Every other day, my feed seems to be filled with pro-Republican posts, followed by pro-Democratic posts the next. It’s fascinating how the model decided this was the kind of content worth generating.

ravivoodaon Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2025)

Building AI workbench and tools for Home Service Business verticals. I found there is a lot of waste in targeting and workflows for business, focussing on improving them with advanced YOLO and LLM models.

https://localxai.com/demo

ravivoodaon CEO pay and stock buybacks have soared at the largest low-wage corporations

Beginning of game:

CEO = 0$ value Employee = 0$ value

---

Round 1 Year

CEO = $20M Employee = $0.5M (generous)

Round 5 Years

CEO = $100M (if pay remained the same, and they did not create new companies, which I'm sure they will).

Employee = $3M (let's give them promo) etc. Cost of living is increasing with employee's wage, nothing for a CEO.

----

Tell me who is more secure, who has the flexibility to take risks, and create new value.

It's not about the 900$ every human being gets. It's how much differentiation 5 years makes, which is 1/4 of value generation timespan of adults.

ravivoodaon Ask HN: What are you working on? (May 2025)

https://preview--tool-millions-accessed.lovable.app/launchpa...

For the tinkerers of the world: drop your tool, we handle auth, payments, usage. You get paid per run.

For the consumers: don’t like selling your data just to convert a file? You’ve found your home. No tracking. No ads. No dopamine hacks (only regular dosage).

ravivoodaon Google Maps tests new pop-up ads that give you an unnecessary detour

I've been using it for the past 3 years. Things I love about Apple Maps.

1. Limited distractions. 2. Traffic Lights, Stop signs are so easy to follow! 3. Lanes are rendered very clearly.

Of course, once in every other blue moon I have to open Google Maps when I find myself in an alley with no outlet, while Apple Maps is telling me to drive through the building.

ravivoodaon Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread brain connectivity

I agree with the sentiment here, but I couldn't find a way to scale when working with others over async document communication channels. However, I did a self experiment and realized using markdown in electronic communication, google docs (even if its not supported) is much better at create a mind map of knowledge than regular text. I don't know why. My current ranking model is:

    1. Is this knowledge for me? Write in a notepad. Upload a screenshot to my personal rambling google doc.
    2. Is this knowledge for a group that includes me? Use markdown text files (READMEs, Google Doc etc.)
    3. Resort to Wiki or a Rich Text Editor.

ravivoodaon MBAs who can't find jobs

How does that work? How do you line up a job 2 years ahead of time? Curious.

ravivoodaon Show HN: A job application tracker with company reviews, recruiter autoresponder

I love that you gave test credentials :)

ravivoodaon Study Finds Hybrid Work Improves Mental Health Compared to Remote or In-Office

Hmm, do you work at Meta Bellevue office? Sounds very similar.

ravivoodaon Fixing for loops in Go 1.22

ravivoodaon Ask HN: How to minimize career risk from an attempted startup

I think it depends on whom you ask.

1. If you plan to continue your entrepreneurial journey, VCs tend to look for what you've learnt from the failure of the business, what would you have done differently etc. 2. If you want to board the FAANG train again, technical details about product, scale, issues etc. would be of interest.

Does that make sense to you?

ravivoodaon Launch HN: Inri (YC W23) – Wealthfront for Investing in India

Awesome guys! I know Hemant personally. Great fruition. Looking forward to testing it out

ravivoodaon Ask HN: Small scripts, hacks and automations you're proud of?

MyQ Garage Automation had issues with my account and wouldn’t send me notifications when the door is left open for a long time.

So I automated the notification system using IFTTT.

https://github.com/ravivooda/thoughts/blob/main/docs/garage_...

ravivoodaon Standard Notes

100% agree. There are a lot of unnecessary features, that I rarely use. As a customer, you need a simple reliable service.

ravivoodaon Salesforce Lays Off 8k While Paying Matthew McConaughey $10M/Yr to Sit Around

Okay, I understand that came across pointing, but I hope you know I'm not pointing at you. I'm pointing at "Market Rate" salary fixing, etc.

ravivoodaon Salesforce Lays Off 8k While Paying Matthew McConaughey $10M/Yr to Sit Around

> though I think all of us have known that the ever-increasing TC wars amongst big companies was unsustainable

Just wow! What about ever increasing stocks? ever increasing returns on VC funds? You've gotta be kidding.

ravivoodaon Standard Notes

I'm happy with Apple Notes. BUT, give me markdown!!!

ravivoodaon Ask HN: What are your biggest pains integrating and building APIs?

F****. That curl converter is what I needed all this time!

ravivoodaon Ask HN: Photo Storage for Travelers

I have been thinking about similar problem. I have a few TBs of hard drives lying around my house. And I have 180GB of photos in my iCloud. Instead of paying iCloud, can I compress my photos and save them in my hard drive.

ravivoodaon Ask HN: I Need to Talk to Someone

I’m in somewhat similar boat with H1b.

Feel free to reach me at claims-doubts0s@icloud.com.

ravivoodaon Automated data analysis for the prevention of criminal acts is unconstitutional

TIL: Blackstone's ratio

ravivoodaon How the Wealthy Save Billions in Taxes by Skirting a Century-Old Law

Slightly different tangent but people do this with ETFs all the time. I built a tool that shows potential swaps to harvest losses for taxes but keep similar exposure. Checkout taxlossharvestingtool.com

ravivoodaon Ask HN: Do ads push you beyond monthly data caps?

Huh! Never thought about that! But that probably is true. It would be great if we could attribute traffic by domains. But don't think such thing exists yet for Mobile phones.

ravivoodaon Ask HN: How do you deal with information and internet addiction?

My mantra

  - Don't use anything that has recommendation engine. Especially the opaque ones. I don't need to watch "what Crypto crash means" when I recently searched and watched Cricket videos!
  - The only exception is Hacker News. 
  - If I want to watch something on YouTube, be goal oriented. What exactly am I here to watch.
  - I've also cut down on streaming content. Started buying the content I wanna watch. I feel paralyzed and drowning with the array of content from each provider. And somehow they never have the content that I exactly want.

Started enjoying boredom a lot more with my kid.

ravivoodaon Big data is dead

Well said! I wonder if Web3 could solve such a problem (or a zero trust solution). Where you provide your service that can run in a special container

ravivoodaon An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

I resonate with this sentiment very well. I was deeply disturbed when a Venture Fund publicly stated that engineers are making too much money in a statement (https://www.tcifund.com/files/corporateengageement/alphabet/...)

ravivoodaon Big data is dead

It never sat well with me that none of the production services could leverage my local computation and storage power. I don't need to store my contacts on a remote server that could index my contacts when mixed with every other contact in a single table. That’s a blatantly oversimplified example but you get the gist.

ravivoodaon Ask HN: Those making $0/month or less on side projects – Show and tell

Is it possible to onboard service onto Apple Music?

ravivoodaon Appliance makers sad that 50% of customers won’t connect smart appliances

I was going to ask about the same; Matter or HomeKit would/should solve the problem of Privacy, right?

ravivoodaon Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2023 – Show and tell

Monetization is predominantly through affiliate referrals to CPAs and Tax Advisors; I ran Facebook ads and I had a good number of people reach out to me via messaging. am also exploring possible monetization opportunities through integrating APIs with big brands and roboadvisors.