Ask HN: What interesting stuff are you browsing?

I'm with you about not drawing firm conclusions from potentially biased anecdata from that one post. Also we don't know if that number is gross or net.

That said, I have been reading this sub daily for the past 2 months now and yes there's variability but in general, most agree the work is paying (check out the sub's history in the last 2 months).

It sounds like customers are tipping better, traffic is reduced so trips are shorter, gas is cheaper, parking is more abundant, and order volumes are up. These conditions are temporary and are not sustainable in the long term of course, but it's worth seeing the situation for what it is right now. It sounds like it is possible to do well in these times.

The sub is a window into what folks (admittedly a biased sample) are actually experiencing, as opposed to theoretical conjecture based on our (sometimes disconnected to reality or outdated) priors, etc.

In my line of work, I often overhear stuff from field service people, and it's always fascinating to me how different reality is from what say, software engineers are thinking. The discrepancy between "systems as found" and "systems as imagined" is interesting to me is all.

That's just one subreddit. There are other watering holes.

In the rare occasions I take an Uber I always ask about the economics of it. From my anecdata it seems like most have never done any modeling of depreciation or maintenance cost forecasting, even extremely basic like miles until major service required and how much it would cost. At most they factor in the monthly oil change, if they even do that.

Maybe some enterprising person on here could make a slick web app to help people estimate depreciation and maintenance costs, with a user interface that people with a high school diploma could understand.

I'm not going to drop in here and say, "I did that kind of delivery gigging for two and a half years, AMA", but I did, in fact do that kind of delivery gigging for two and a half years and can vouch for those numbers. I made thousands of deliveries. I quit my desk job (making >$15/hr, but still not great) with the plan being specifically for the delivery gigging to be my main (and as it turned out, only) source of income. I'm no longer doing it, but I don't regret the decision in the least, and would relive it all gladly.

- Tips had very little to do with it, and I reported all my tips as taxable income, even cash tips. It was not unheard of to go a week or so without receiving any tips. When asked (e.g. by a friend who used the service) whether people should be tipping the drivers, I always said, "Don't." Having said that, tips were welcome and rarely refused—only on a few occasions when some wanted me to "hang on a sec" so they could get me something, where the running calculus suggested that it would be better for me to leave instead so I could move on ASAP.

- The gigging companies have always insisted that drivers are contractors and not employees, and I made out by embracing that. Every delivery was treated as a job offer to be decided based on estimated cost and return. I made judicious use of my ability to not accept orders, keep blacklists of businesses when they or their customers were known to be high cost/low reward, and even walking out of many businesses empty handed after having accepted an order and arriving only to find that they didn't have their act together, usually in regard to having the food ready in a reasonable about of time; eating the sunk costs was usually the favorable option compared to holding out for an answer to see if this program halts.

- My rating was usually around 97% at any given time, but sometimes it would go as low as 94% (92%?). Bending myself out of shape just to make sure the last few percent don't slip away and trying to satisfy everyone wasn't worth it (and likely futile). I told businesses and customers on more than one occasion to go fuck themselves while letting them know that the deal is off. I should have done it more.

- I got a fair bit of free food, but not as much an ordinary pizza delivery driver would. Someone once butt-dialed a $150 to $200 order from a (so-so) Mediterranean restaurant while stoned, and when I showed up with their order they said they'd already contacted the service/restaurant and requested that it be sent back and the order be canceled. I ate leftover Mediterranean takeout for the next week. When people don't show up or answer the door to receive their order, it's yours to dispose of after 5 to 10 minutes (depending on whatever the service's A/B testing says they should set the timer to, I guess). Generally, I didn't feel that it was worth it and would have preferred to make the delivery as quickly as possible.

As with everything, details matter. I can't claim that any given person would be able to repeat my success. Sturgeon's Law applies. 90% of the labor efforts of working adults seems to be not very good. That ratio at least jibes with what I've observed of rideshare drivers when I've been in the backseat. When I've talked to my rideshare drivers, I thought it was strange that almost no one was also doing deliveries or interested in it in the least. People, generally, aren't very good or thoughtful and wouldn't do well, and nobody really wants to work hard.

I worked hard. Everything that I did while I was online was focused on maximizing my returns. I know my city well and how to get around it. I know which areas to hang out in so I can get the offers from the good businesses. I know when to call it a night instead of holding out "until I make X hundred dollars" or "put in X hours", as I've heard some of my rideshare drivers explain. I know what the mind of a developer working in an environment rooted on a the SV startup mindset and how analytics might be used against me.

It's okay to be skeptical if you find it hard to believe, but this is all really just another case of "selling onions on the internet".

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19728132

Caveats are that I always worked nights, usually 7 nights a week, and the total hours were less than a full work week you'd get from scheduled shifts at the office. A typical week involved 7 days of me waking up sometime between 6:00 to 9:00 AM, putting in 30 to 50 hours sitting behind my desk at home working on personal projects or reading HN or papers or something else that I found intellectually gratifying, stopping mid-day for lunch with no definite bounds, jumping in the shower around 6:00 to 6:30 PM (right after or during my period of highest productivity for the day that popped up around 5:00 PM for some reason), and then shooting to be out the door around 6:45 or 7:15 PM. There was no commute. Work was the commute. I'd stop for groceries most days while out before wrapping up deliveries and come home 9:30 PM to 1:00 AM and have half a bottle of wine and dinner and cookies and watch a movie or two, and then knock off and go to bed. Having no family and a car that I owned and that I did all the maintenance on and was a reliable workhorse are a big part of what made it possible.

I agree, though on the other hand reddit posters are notorious for being angry haters of anybody that has more than them, especially corporations, and greatly over-represent perceived negative aspects of them.

You have to understand that gig economy has huge outliers on both sides of the curve. Some people work 12h shifts on this, and rack up all kinds of bonuses.

I was delivering food via DoorDash before COVID-19 (using $5k 300cc motorcycle, so my gas expenses and depreciation were low), and it wasn't hard to hit $40/h during lunch or dinner delivering food in San Mateo, CA. Sometimes, when restaurants were slow I made about $20/h (I stopped taking orders from Mendocino Farms and Sweet Basil for that reason).

I also tried to deliver food in Palo Alto, but most of the orders were coming from Stanford Shopping Center were it was hard to find parking, and then it was hard to find the restaurant, and on top of that the restaurants were pretty slow to prepare the orders.

The factors that may contribute to higher income through delivery apps during COVID-19:

- without regular visitors, restaurants are probably faster to prepare food for delivery

- with more customers there are more chances for delivery app to batch orders

- with less traffic and cheaper gas, the expenses per delivery are lower

My problem with Uber is not the absolute amount that drivers get paid, but the percentage of my money that ends up in their pocket. While I think Uber provides a valuable service, it does not provide a service that is 25% or more of the ride. Uber also locks a lot of potential income in the form of bonuses (do X rides in 1 week), to force a lot of drivers to work ungodly hours in order to meet those targets.

Not sure about SaaS ideas, but maybe hang out at water holes on topics you're interested in? There's usually a subreddit for even very esoteric interests. There's one called r/onebag where people discuss how to pack efficiently for travel -- I was interested in this pre-shutdown when I did a lot of business travel. Now, not so much.

I've taken these feelings as cues to get off the internet and focus my energy toward the "real world", as cheesy as it may sound.

I feel more joy and direct benefit through improving interacting with the physical environment like cleaning the house, learning the science of baking and cooking and giving the results to friends and family.

It feels more like I'm living real life than having my life disappear into the ether of the web.

The famous realization of reaching the 400th post on reddit for the day...

I was taught to make the sound as (1) make a long “e” (as in leek) shape with your mouth, (2) pronounce the “e”, (3) leaving the tongue and rear part of the mouth in place, change the position of the lips to make the shape of “o” as in “oh”.

This configuration doesn’t exist in normal English, but it’s not too far away! Once you know what it’s supposed to sound like, the next trick is combining it with consonants.

The first wovel in "deuce" is the closest English comes to that sound.

Brilliant idea. I will use it to improve my polish!

Had (a Turkish language, my then target language) random wikipedia page as my home page for a while, a year maybe.

OMG. There's a dedicated calendar wiki, https://calendars.wikia.org/wiki/Main_Page

I don't know why I'm surprised, but this brightened by day!

I think so. As of 2019, 4 of the 7 SI base units were redefined by setting exact numerical values for several of the units (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_redefinition_of_the_SI_ba...), so scientists must be confident we can reasonably recreate the base units from measuring various fundamental phenomena.

I haven't looked into it much, but it looks at least better than base 10.

Yeah... that's something that's been on my mind so I'd be interested in that.

Thank you!

Great, thank you for the feedback!

It's also highly opposed to the concept of artificial intelligence or anything resembling computational theories of mind.

I don't think they've ever posted anything that puts computers and modern tech in a good light.