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An old, sprawling, and personal website filled with animations and interactive elements
Bootstrapping to $150K MRR by doing less, better.
we introduced something new—a concept no one had tried before:
We abandoned volume-based pricing, offering unlimited forms and responses for free
We created a modern form-building experience—no drag-and-drop, just a beautifully simple interface that works like a text document
Ask HN: Can I really create a company around my open-source software? | Hacker News
I get that you've worked on this for months, that you're burned out generally, and now unemployed. So this comment is not meant as "mean" but rather offered in the spirit of encouragement.
Firstly, building a business (especially in a crowded space) is stressful. It's not a place to recover from burnout. It's not a place that reduces anxiety. So my first recommendation is to relax a bit, put this on the back burner, and when you're ready go look for your next job.
Secondly, treat this project as an education. You had an idea and spent months implementing it. That's the easy part. The hard part is finding a market willing to pay money for something.
So for your next project do the hard part first. First find a market, find out what they will spend, ideally collect a small deposit (to prove they're serious) and then go from there.
In my business we have 3 main product lines. The first 2 happened because the market paid us to build a solution. We iterated on those for 30 years, and we now are big players (in very niche spaces.)
The 3rd happened as a take-over of a project by another retiring developer. He had a few customers, and a good product, but in a crowded space where there's lots of reasons not to change. It's taken many years to build it out, despite being clearly better than the competition, and it's still barely profitable (if you ignore a bunch of expenses paid by the whole business. )
The lesson being to follow the money, not the idea. (Aside, early on we followed some ideas, all those projects died, most without generating any revenue.)
So congratulations to seeing something through to release. But turning a product into a business is really hard. Turning a commodity like this into a business is almost impossible.
I wish you well in your future endeavors.
For a major commercial product I visited similar markets to ours, knocked on the doors of distributors, tried to find people who wanted to integrate our product into their market. I failed a lot but succeeded twice, and those 2 have been paying us lots of money every year for 20 years as they make sales.
Your approach may vary. Start locally. Talk to shop keepers, restaurants, businesses, charities, schools and so on. Look for markets that are not serviced (which is different to where the person is just too cheap, or adverse to tech for other reasons.)
Of course it's a LOT harder now to find unserviced markets. There's a lot more software out there now than there was when I started out. Ultimately though it's about connecting with people - real people not just sending out spam emails. And so meeting the right person at the right time is "lucky". But if you're not out there luck can't work with you. You need to give luck a chance.
Gen Z and the End of Predictable Progress
Gen Z faces a double disruption: AI-driven technological change and institutional instability
Three distinct Gen Z cohorts have emerged, each with different relationships to digital reality
A version of the barbell strategy is splitting career paths between "safety seekers" and "digital gamblers"
Our fiscal reality is quite stark right now, and that is shaping how young people see opportunities
When I talk to young people from New York or Louisiana or Tennessee or California or DC or Indiana or Massachusetts about their futures, they're not just worried about finding jobs, they're worried about whether or not the whole concept of a "career" as we know it will exist in five years.
When a main path to financial security comes through the algorithmic gods rather than institutional advancement (like when a single viral TikTok can generate more income than a year of professional work) it fundamentally changes how people view everything from education to social structures to political systems that they’re apart of.
Gen Z 1.0: The Bridge Generation: This group watched the digital transformation happen in real-time, experiencing both the analog and internet worlds during formative years. They might view technology as a tool rather than an environment. They're young enough to navigate digital spaces fluently but old enough to remember alternatives. They (myself included) entered the workforce during Covid and might have severe workplace interaction gaps because they missed out on formative time during their early years.
Gen Z 1.5: The Covid Cohort: This group hit major life milestones during a global pandemic. They entered college under Trump but graduated under Biden. This group has a particularly complex relationship with institutions. They watched traditional systems bend and break in real-time during Covid, while simultaneously seeing how digital infrastructure kept society functioning.
Gen Z 2.0: The Digital Natives: This is the first group that will be graduate into the new digital economy. This group has never known a world without smartphones. To them, social media could be another layer of reality. Their understanding of economic opportunity is completely different from their older peers.
Gen Z 2.0 doesn't just use digital tools differently, they understand reality through a digital-first lens. Their identity formation happens through and with technology.
Technology enables new forms of value exchange, which creates new economic possibilities so people build identities around these possibilities and these identities drive development of new technologies and the cycle continues.
different generations don’t just use different tools, they operate in different economic realities and form identity through fundamentally different processes. Technology is accelerating differentiation. Economic paths are becoming more extreme. Identity formation is becoming more fluid.
I wrote a very long piece about why Trump won that focused on uncertainty, structural affordability, and fear - and that’s what the younger Gen Z’s are facing. Add AI into this mix, and the rocky path gets rockier. Traditional professional paths that once promised stability and maybe the ability to buy a house one day might not even exist in two years. Couple this with increased zero sum thinking, a lack of trust in institutions and subsequent institutional dismantling, and the whole attention economy thing, and you’ve got a group of young people who are going to be trying to find their footing in a whole new world. Of course you vote for the person promising to dismantle it and save you.
Is YouTube Infrastructure? – Pixel Envy
video is special. It is cumbersome; it requires complex arrangements to serve it efficiently and reliably. But some of those barriers are becoming less foreboding, giving us more places to post and watch videos. It was not so long ago that YouTube was the only name in general-purpose video hosting. Yet you can now publish to most any social network. Instagram and TikTok host a different type of video but, for lots of people, they are just as relevant as YouTube. Alternatives like Rumble and X are appearing for the perpetually aggrieved set who are convinced their broadcasts would be censored elsewhere. Yet there is nothing else quite like YouTube.
Stop Analyzing Trump's Unhinged Ideas Like They're Normal Policy Proposals
Let's be clear about what's happening: The President of the United States is openly fantasizing about forcibly annexing a sovereign nation of 40 million people. He's been repeatedly referring to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as "Governor Trudeau" and threatening our closest ally with absorption into the United States. This isn't a policy proposal to be analyzed; it's the ravings of a dangerous authoritarian.
But instead of treating this story as what it is — evidence of Trump's increasingly unhinged worldview and contempt for democratic norms — Baker decides to play electoral college calculator. He walks us through detailed scenarios about House seats and Senate majorities, complete with expert quotes about the Democratic Party's theoretical gains. It's like writing about the thermal properties of the emperor's new clothes while ignoring his nakedness.
The real story here isn't about electoral math. It's about a sitting president who talks about invading allied nations while referring to their democratically elected leaders as though they were already his subordinates. It's about the continued deterioration of democratic norms. It's about how the institutions meant to protect democracy — including the press — seem increasingly unable or unwilling to call out authoritarian behavior for what it is.
The press needs to stop treating politics like a game of electoral mathematics and start treating it like what it is: a serious business with real consequences for democracy and human lives. When the president starts talking like a mad emperor, that's the story, not how many House seats his delusions might hypothetically affect.
Doechii: Tiny Desk Concert
gen z doesn't exist
idle gaze 071: rotting upstream
Stretch My Time Off - Optimise Your Vacation Days
Trumpian policy as cultural policy - Marginal REVOLUTION
Trumpian Policy as Cultural Policy Analysis: Trump's administrative actions and policy decisions are primarily driven by a strategy to reshape American culture rather than achieve specific policy outcomes, using controversial decisions to dominate public discourse and shift cultural narratives.
- The article analyzes Trump's policy approach as primarily a cultural strategy rather than traditional policy-making
Key aspects of this cultural policy approach:
- Focuses on highly visible, controversial decisions that generate widespread discussion
- Prioritizes cultural messaging over policy effectiveness or implementation
- Aims to control ideological agenda through rapid, multiple policy announcements
- Doesn't require policies to be legal, practical, or even implemented to achieve cultural impact
Specific examples:
- Executive orders against DEI and affirmative action as first actions
- Proposed renaming of Dulles Airport
- Bill to add Trump to Mount Rushmore
- Tariff threats against Canada and Mexico
- Changes to federal employment structure
- Elimination of Black History Month at Department of Defense
- Targeting of US AID
- Nomination of RFK Jr.
Strategic elements:
- Uses polarization to guarantee at least one-third public support
- Deliberately chooses well-known targets (like Canada/Mexico) for maximum cultural impact
- Creates debates that delegitimize existing institutions
- "Floods the zone" with multiple controversies to maintain constant cultural dialogue
Author's analysis:
- Strategy doesn't require coordinated planning
- Works through spontaneous order of competing interests
- Relies on three factors:
- Conflicting interest groups
- Competition for Trump's attention
- Trump's belief in cultural issues' importance
Effectiveness factors:
- Leverages internet-intensive, attention-based media environment
- Creates disorganization among opponents
- Uses negative contagion to reinforce cultural shifts
- Prioritizes cultural impact over policy success
A quote by Rainer Maria Rilke
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
On Nonviolent Communication
if you say “my boss makes me crazy”, you will indeed think your boss is “making” you crazy. If you instead say “I am frustrated because I am wanting stability and consistency in this relationship” you may then think you can control your level of frustration and clearly address what it is you want. If someone else is making you crazy, there’s nothing you can do. If you control your feelings, you can take actions to change how you respond to causes.
Words can be windows or they can be walls — they can open doors for compassion or they can do the opposite. NVC uses words as windows. Our language today uses them as walls. More on this later.
If I ask you to meet me at 6:00 and you pick me up at 6:30, how do I feel? It depends. I could be frustrated that you are late because I want to spend my time productively, or scared that you may not know where to find me, or hurt because I need reassurance that you care about me — or, conversely, happy that I get more time to myself.
It’s not enough to blame the feeling on the person whose actions triggered the feeling. That very same action might have inspired completely different feelings in someone else — or even in me, under different circumstances!
Incidents like the friend coming late may stimulate or set the stage for feelings, but they do not *cause* the feelings.
There is a gap between stimulus and cause — and our power lies in how we use that gap.
If we truly understood this — the separation between stimulus and cause — and the idea that we are responsible for our own emotions, we would speak very differently.
We wouldn’t say things like “It bugs me when …” or “It makes me angry when”. These phrases imply or actually state that responsibility for your feelings lie outside of yourself. A better statement would be “When I saw you come late, I started to feel scared”. Here, one may at least be taking some responsibility for the feeling of anger, and not simply blaming the latecomer for causing such feelings.
the more we use our language to cede responsibility to others, the less agency we have over our circumstances, and the more we victimize ourselves.
NVC believes that, as human beings, there are only two things that we are basically saying: Please and Thank You. Judgments are distorted attempts to say “Please.”
NVC requires learning how to say what your needs are, what needs are alive in you at a given moment, which ones are getting fulfilled, and which ones are not.
You sacrifice your needs to provide for and take care of your family. Needs are not important. What’s important is obedience to authority. That’s what’s important.
With that background and history we’ve been taught a language that doesn’t teach us how to say how we are. It teaches us to worry about what we are in the eyes of authority.
When our minds have been pre-occupied that way we have trouble answering what seems to be a simple question, which is asked in all cultures throughout the world, “How are you?” It is a way of asking what’s alive in you. It’s a critical question. Even though it’s asked in many cultures, people don’t know how to answer it because they haven’t been educated in a culture that cares about how you are.
The shift necessary requires being able to say, how do you feel at this moment, and what are the needs behind your feelings? And when we ask those question to highly educated people, they cannot answer it. Ask them how they feel, and they say “I feel that that’s wrong”. Wrong isn’t a feeling. Wrong is a thought.
When your mind has been shaped to worry about what people think about you, you lose connection with what’s alive in you.
The underlying philosophy of punishment and reward is that if people are basically evil or selfish, then the correctional process if they are behaving in a way you don’t like is to make them hate themselves for what they have done.
If a parent, for example, doesn’t like what the child is doing, the parent says something like ”Say you’re sorry!! The child says, “I’m sorry.” The parent says “No! You’re not really sorry!” Then the child starts to cry “I’m sorry. . .” The parent says “Okay, I forgive you.”
Note, I think NVC is productive is for friendships and relationships, or anything where connection is the main goal, not for any work or organizations that primarily serve another mission.
NVC involves the following:
1) how we express ourselves to other people,
2) how we interpret what people say to us, and most importantly,
3) how we communicate with ourselves.
Some have suggested alternatives such as Compassionate Communication, Authentic Communication, Connected Communication.
35 bits of advice - Erik Torenberg
This doesn’t mean that everything that has happened to you is a result of your actions. It means that you develop an ability to respond to whatever happens to you, even if you don’t control the consequences of your actions.
It means exerting maximal agency towards the things you can directly change (your behavior), and maximum acceptance towards things you can influence but not control (external circumstances, other people’s behavior).
Our responses typically come from patterns and scripts handed down from our parents and our pasts. We are not hostage to those patterns, we can update them. A pattern that's run through your family for generations can stop with you. Vision is bigger than baggage.
A pattern like anxiety may have been helpful in a previous unsafe environment but is maladaptive for our current safe environment.
Cognitive behavior therapy or Byron Katie’s work helps us get new training data by asking questions like: “are you absolutely sure that’s true? How do you react when you believe that thought? Who would you be without that thought?“ This is great for updating limiting beliefs, of which we have many that are often mostly incorrect and holding us back.
loving people and wanting other people to flourish on their own terms, independent of what’s in it for you—even when it’s at your expense.
Write down a list of what you want in your relationships and the types of people you want personal and professional relationships with and then make sure you are bringing those attributes to the table too. e.g. If you want loyal friends, *be* a loyal friend. Focus on “being” rather than “having”, because you can only control the former, and by doing so you can influence the latter.
We want to get that job because we want respect, autonomy, recognition, connection. But there are thousands of ways to meet that need. Acknowledging this makes you more flexible to what life throws at you, and makes it more likely you’ll get what you actually want deep down. A lot of stress in my life came from being set on certain strategies when if I appreciated what need I was trying to meet, I could have been more flexible in switching strategies.
“I’ll be happy once I hit X goal” may be motivating, but it won’t be true—you’ll just move the goalposts. If this is how you’re motivated now, it’s unlikely to last because at some point you’ll figure out that your pattern is unfulfilling and you’ll stop following it. Then you’ll need to find a new way to motivate yourself. A more durable motivation comes from genuinely enjoying the process and the contributions and the relationships that stem from it.
You can’t be in your body and be stuck in your brain at the same time. The way out of the brain loop is through the body. If you feel feel the feelings it might take a few minutes or hours to pass them, whereas if you repress it it might take months or years.
Keep in touch with old friends more broadly. Call them randomly, even if it’s been years. Keep track of what they care about.
Be able to acknowledge when you are not in a secure place, and be able to reset by working out, taking a walk, listening to music, talking with a friend, etc. Wait until the anger or trigger passes before acting. And never fight over text. And if you ever find yourself in a fight, realize you’re in one and calm down and ask yourself why you’re fighting.
Deposits into your own bank account look like being proud of yourself — contributing to others, gaining competence at something that matters, doing the right thing, keeping promises to yourself and others, and taking good care of yourself.
Track what people and activities and habits make you feel better and which drain you. Track when you get triggered or or when you trigger others and see if you can identify patterns.
Do a weekly audit where you can look backwards and reflect on what brings you closer to yourself or and vice versa and readjust how you spend time accordingly.
Although rewiring is worth doing, it's easier to change your environment than to change your insides. Change your environment & then let the new cues do the work.
If you’re going to offend someone, do it on something you care about. Not on an off hand remark or action that didn’t mean anting to you. If you’re unsure, wait a couple days to see if you still mean it. Usually you don’t.
Grudges are ankle weights on your soul.
If you have extended anger with someone, even if they’re in the wrong, you’re both losing.
Empathize with what needs they were trying to meet through their actions and then either reconcile with them or move on with the levity of being grudge-free.
Try other tactics to get curious about other people instead of righteous. If you look at their childhood photos it’s hard to be mad at them. If you have your hands on your heart it’s hard to be angry at them. If you’re hugging your partner it’s harder to fight with them.
One self-connection exercise when triggered is:
How do you feel? (vent)
How does that feel on the inside? (connect with deeper feeling)
What do you want? (suggest strategy, get action oriented)
What would that give you? (connect with deeper need)
Use language that emphasizes the fact that people can change: Use verbs over adjectives and observations instead of judgments. For example, instead of saying, “X is always late”, say “X has been late the last three times.”
Don’t bring work mode to relationships and vice versa. For work, you want to be efficient, outcome oriented, and prioritize winning above all. With people, you want to be effective, process oriented, and prioritize connection above all. For work you want to be right (accurate), for relationships you want to be happy (connected).
Don’t keep score, your patience will run out. And equality doesn’t matter. On your death bed you won’t wish things were more fair, but you’ll regret that your insistence on fairness prevented you from connecting with an open heart.
everyone has a micro impact on their families, friends, and local communities and we don’t pay enough attention to making it great.
Use things like politics, sports, social media etc as ways to meet or get closer to other people, but don’t use it as something to make you angry or further from others.
Cultivate what makes you unique. The more distinct your path is, the less competition you’ll have, and the less you’ll compare yourself to others because you’re running your own race.
Envision the highest version of your own success and strive to get as close to it as possible while also being happy with wherever you land.
Your past was what you needed to get here (no regrets), and fretting about what will happen in the future bond what you need to prep for it won’t help either
Most ambitious people on their death beds wish they were less hard on themselves. The happiest people are best at focusing on what they can control and not letting past drama or future worries get in their way.
Asymmetric upside opportunities could lead to new relationships or forms of growth. Asymmetric downside opportunities could lead to sacrificing your health or your relationship or your reputation.
Anthropic's Economic Index Findings
you owe it to all versions of yourself
- Multiple selves exist simultaneously across three dimensions:
- Temporal (past/present/future)
- Contextual (work/family/friends)
- Developmental (child/teen/adult)
- Each self deserves moral consideration and ethical treatment
The Season 1 finale of Severance may be one of the best episodes of television of all time.
Fortnite Is the Future, but Probably Not for the Reasons You Think — MatthewBall.co
AI Based Tagging And Collecting | Voters | Raindrop.io
Ladies & Gentlemen... 50 Years of SNL Music | Official Preview
in defense of pretension.
Cozy video games can quell stress and anxiety.
The Real Lie About Online Video Runs Deeper Than Facebook’s False Metrics
I Think People Are Perverts
I hate the embarrassment that people in this country have around art. I hate the word “pretentious”, especially. I am not against skepticism, but that’s not what I’m talking about here. It’s one thing to criticise pretension when it serves to hide a lack of substance, but we have long since lost the plot about what the word “pretentious” even means. It has become a cudgel, a pernicious rejection of the idea that art should “mean” anything at all beyond entertainment. This kneejerk anti-intellectualism that manifests most often among the “let people enjoy things” crowd, who take gleeful pride in their ignorance and condescension towards any art that aims to broaden horizons or break rules. People who treat art like customer service, like an artist is a DJ you’ve hired for a wedding to only take requests.
lookcaitlin
interesting. / esoteric retro images photos and illustrations
PersonalityMap | Explore 1 million human correlations spanning personality, demographics, behaviors, psychology, and beliefs | Generally speaking, do you think that the churches (or religious authorities) in your country are giving adequate answers to people's spiritual needs?
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