MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by daedrdev | 2025-04-01 22:50:04+00:00
35% of books published are profitable

96% of books sold less than 1,000 copies in 2020

50% sold less than a dozen copies in 2020

This is the state of the industry, publishers publish many books gambling for the hits the make up the vast majority of their revenue.

It is a very cold industry with many authors failing to get readers interested. They best measure of schuss is to have a preexisting readership or be popular elsewhere, and even then that's by no means a guarantee of a books success. And this data is from before AI. The 35% probably undersells it because books like hers probably received no marketing.

[1] https://www.elysian.press/p/no-one-buys-books
by daedrdev | 2025-04-01 22:51:49+00:00
There are more books published today than ever before. 96% sold less than 1000 copies when published by the big publishing houses. I feel like that is the strongest sign the market can give that there are too many authors or many of them aren't good enough.

https://www.elysian.press/p/no-one-buys-books
by GenericCanadian | 2025-04-01 22:52:11+00:00
I found using partials between projects to be a headache. I wanted a way to standardize my UI for accessibility across all projects and not have to re-implement the same standards over and over. It's nice to be able to package the UI up into a gem and keep it maintained everywhere.

It's got a nice path for incremental adoption, so there is no need to go all-in unless you want to. Personally my Rails projects are all 95%+ ruby now.

Another nice knock off effect is that the LSP and integration with my IDE (neovim) is much nicer with Phlex components than it is with ERB.

I also think personally I don't like "magic" spaces like ERB where its hard for me to follow the code path. How does ERB manage multiline blocks with html in them? Hard to understand, harder to explain. To me it feels like there is less to worry about in Phlex where I'm thinking more in Ruby, less in the specifics of the view context.
by tmpz22 | 2025-04-01 22:52:54+00:00
As much as I like lifetime purchases I think for software products it creates too many liabilities for all parties. Probably in the fine print you need a carve out saying it won't actually be provided in perpetuity (what software is?). As a purchaser I don't think it's realistic to really expect the software forever. I think of it more as a supporter/founder tier with various privileges that will one day end - and it should probably be advertised as such.
by golergka | 2025-04-01 22:53:25+00:00
Looking from the outside, it seems that people in the US are always using credit cards as opposed to debit cards, and I don't really see a good reason for that. I have owned credit card in the past, and I could get one easily now, but I don't see any reason to: I have money in the bank, I want to spend it, and I don't need to lend anything.

Why and how does _credit_ becomes the first and default way of payment?
by spacebanana7 | 2025-04-01 22:53:35+00:00
I don’t think that logic works well with digital goods. Because there is zero marginal cost, you always want more purchases even if the price is incredibly low.

And digital goods can be infinitely large. Conceivably the combined works of JK Rowling or Tolkien could be sold as a single unit. Therefore able to cut beneath a minimum price.
by Terr_ | 2025-04-01 22:53:51+00:00
That depends on whether:

1. You're looking for a very specific person.

2. You want to unconstitutionally punish somebody for free speech, and you don't care who, you just want to cheaply find a convenient victim.

In that respect, tracking-dots are an invitation to #2, since they don't really need much in the way of human labor-hours or focus.
by toomuchtodo | 2025-04-01 22:54:00+00:00
Because wages are insufficient. Credit fills the gap to survive. Half of bankruptcies in the US are from medical debt, for example. In 2023, approximately 36.8 million Americans, or 11.1%, lived below the poverty line. ~50% of Americans carry a balance, and the average U.S. household with credit card debt has a balance of around $6,065.

Credit cards are expensive short term financing.

https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/the-burden-of-medi...

https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2024/may/which-us-...
by 20after4 | 2025-04-01 22:54:39+00:00
That cash back is basically a scam. It's paid for by the credit card processing fees - fees which are charged to merchants and ultimately get passed on to the customer in the form of higher prices. Some merchants even tack on explicit ~$3 transaction fee for credit card purchases, to cover transaction costs.

So the cash back is just a partial refund on your credit card processing fees.
by 486sx33 | 2025-04-01 22:54:44+00:00
Let’s just say you’re a wealthy consumer with a million dollars in the bank. You’d still buy things with a credit card, why? 1. Purchase protection (insurance) 2. Chargeback protection 3. Rewards either points or “cash back” 4. Merchants hardly ever give cash discounts anymore, credit card fees are baked into the price of everything so you’re going to pay for the advantages above and receive nothing in return, plus have the burden and liability of carrying cash.

Merchant side. 1. CC fees are high so we add 3.5% to the retail price of everything. Someone pays cash? Good, a small bonus. 2. Merchants are being charged the same for “debit” cards which allow electronic payments from bank accounts, coming with the same chargeback risks and fees as a CC.

So what the heck assume the worst for every transaction.

How to fix this. Does it need fixing? If the gov is going to push everything to electronic payments, you might as well get the rewards.

The trap, if you’re not paying off your balance every month, the rewards are nothing and the interest rate is crippling.
Show HN: Pillr – Real estate market trends and comps by zipcode
by tndibona | 2025-04-01 22:55:08+00:00
We built Pillr to help homebuyers make data-driven decisions through interactive visualisations of recent sales trends organised by zipcode. After launching our paid tier in February, we've attracted our first subscribers, validating our core offering. Now we're looking to improve our conversions and we’d love to connect with someone who can guide us on the necessary tweaks. We'd appreciate HN's feedback on our product, UI/UX, and monetisation strategy.

Check us out at https://pillr.io/accessCode/hn4free and reach out directly: info@pillr.io
by yathern | 2025-04-01 22:55:27+00:00
I'll definitely do a technical write-up in the coming days! I'm storing any valid word they type, though I'll probably quite quickly put in a TTL for words <= 3 letters long. But every thing they write is from a deterministic seeded RNG, with a tick that is randomly generated every 15 seconds, combined with the monkey salt (that I may rotate on a schedule). So you can technically go back in time and regenerate all of the content.

Supabase/postgres backend. First time for me, I actually was using firestore a week ago and migrated in a delirious frenzy at the last moment - which I think was a good call. Firebase charges per document write, and I had words as documents... which would get out of hand quickly. There's ways to be more clever than that (I also would store 16 monkeys to a single doc) but it just wasn't a good fit for what I was trying to do
by nostrademons | 2025-04-01 22:56:21+00:00
They're pretty handy just as a form of payment. I've never once carried a balance and never paid a cent of interest to a credit card company, but I use credit cards for basically all of my spending. I get back ~$1000/year in rewards, plus all the convenience of having plastic whenever I want to spend, recurring billing, dispute resolution, fraud prevention, etc.

I'd argue that this suggests another hypothesis that the article only partially considered: high interest rates are a cross-subsidy to attract the 40% of credit card users who never carry a balance, and the 40% of credit card users who never carry a balance are a marketing expense to normalize credit card use and make the 60% who do think it's completely acceptable to spend without a thought. I get literally thousands of benefits from the credit card company, and I don't pay a cent. That money has to be coming from somewhere, and I'd bet that it's coming from the 60% of consumers who pay usurious interest rates.
by skadamou | 2025-04-01 22:56:50+00:00
If you are able to pay off your credit card balance each month, you can earn rewards points on every purchase which is money back in your pocket. Even if it seems like a tiny amount, in the long run, you are leaving money on the table using a debit card as opposed to a credit card for most of your purchases.

The big caveat being you MUST pay the balance off each month to avoid paying interest otherwise you are losing money by using a credit card.
by 6stringmerc | 2025-04-01 22:57:04+00:00
Okay so I’m also a writer - self publishing on Medium (and earn $x.xx occasionally some months) and also a 100% independent musician and producer and songwriter. I release through DistroKid which I found here ages ago. I actually lose money by having it available to stream.

You are absolutely spot on about the tone. It’s incredibly whiny and woe-is-me and complaining about a system that, as she admits, is known to be poverty level revenue for the vast majority. The big tell is “support authors!” as if it’s some kind of requirement people do more than simply sustain an industry already on the brink. She has the gall to even get an advance, publish, and make it the audience’s guilt trip she’s gotta tell people she didn’t make squat? That’s a high horse.

I dislike the article and its perspective. It’s PETULANT. Thousands of writers simply appreciate audiences for sharing their TIME for reading a piece. This article? It’s a dressed up complaint and I’ll have none of what she’s having.

For reference, I’ve got 10k Spotify plays, worldwide, over the course of 10 years and it’s under $20 worth of revenue. When I write about this fact, I don’t complain about the income. What is my big takeaway? I’m grateful people I’ve never met and will likely never meet have found my music worth listening to and chosen to give it a little slice of their life. That’s a good perspective, a healthy one, and I’m with you on your impression.
by int_19h | 2025-04-01 22:57:42+00:00
It's not uncommon when using brokers to see outliers like this. What happens basically is that some models are very popular and have many different providers, and are priced "close to the metal" since the routing will normally pick the cheapest option with the specified requirements (like context size). But then other models - typically more specialized ones - are only hosted by a single provider, and said provider can then price it much higher than raw compute cost.

E.g. if you look at https://openrouter.ai/models?order=pricing-high-to-low, you'll see that there are some 7B and 8B models that are more expensive than Claude Sonnet 3.7.
by lxgr | 2025-04-01 22:58:41+00:00
> 1. Purchase protection (insurance) 2. Chargeback protection

These are available on debit cards as well. (Both by law, i.e. Regulation E, and both Visa and Mastercard requiring issuers to provide zero liability policies to consumers.)

> 3. Rewards either points or “cash back”

Which consumers more than pay for themselves – all consumers, including those paying cash.
by hx8 | 2025-04-01 22:58:59+00:00
I wonder if there is a market for secured credit cards with low interest. Maybe backed by a HELOC or stock portfolio. By lowering the default risk significantly lenders should be able to offer loan values closer to car loan numbers than loan shark numbers.

I think people with enough assets to secure such a card might be those less likely to carry a balance, but maybe a lower interest rate would entice them.
by crazygringo | 2025-04-01 22:59:34+00:00
This article is actually really interesting and has non-obvious findings.

The tl;dr is that it's not mostly due to defaults or for rewards programs.

But rather due to very high operating expenses (4-5% of dollar balances!) driven by marketing.

And also because the lending banks can't diversify. The risk of default is essentially magnified because you can't do anything if the economy turns bad and everybody starts defaulting together at the same time.
by toomuchtodo | 2025-04-01 22:59:38+00:00
You're assuming these consumers of credit card products can pay off their cards (transactors) when the data shows, broadly, that the consumer is stressed financially. Consumers are relying on credit cards because they cannot afford not to (revolvers).

US Consumer Debt Delinquency Hits Highest in Almost Five Years - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-13/us-consum... | https://archive.today/ivRqd - February 13, 2025

Record Share of Americans Pay Only Minimum on Credit Card Bills - https://news.bloomberglaw.com/banking-law/record-share-of-am... - Jan. 22, 2025

Philadelphia Fed: Card Balances and Delinquencies Continue Upward Trajectory; Mortgage Originations Stagnate - https://www.philadelphiafed.org/surveys-and-data/2024-q3-lar... - January 22, 2025

St Louis Fed FRED: Consumer Loans: Credit Cards and Other Revolving Plans, All Commercial Banks (CCLACBW027SBOG) - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CCLACBW027SBOG

(credit card balances total ~$1T outstanding as of this comment)
by atVelocet | 2025-04-01 22:59:54+00:00
Since i‘ve been doing this sort of thing for many years here are some basic rules: - Get LTSC (W10) or IoT/Enterprise (W11) images to begin with - Get https://www.ntlite.com/ .. you won‘t find any other tool which does a better job at removing packages, adding drivers, etc. Worth every penny with great support. - Use GroupPolicies to configure your system. Take the time and download them for Office, Edge, Chrome, Firefox and update those that come with Windows. - Integrate drivers not only for the base image but also in the recovery and setup image. - Install a firewall (binisoft is fine) - Use NextDNS - If you don’t mind the security implications: Disable Defender, SmartScreen, BootGuard and VBS (use bcdedit) - Disable Microcode loading (delete the DLL) - Disable Spectre/Meltdown mitigations - If you need Office: Use the LTSC version

Most third party tools are outdated or do stupid stuff which isn’t needed. You can silence Windows with the right GroupPolicies quite easy.
by toast0 | 2025-04-01 23:00:35+00:00
I mean, I certainly don't need credit cards, but given the marketplace, they're often the least expensive and the most convenient way for me as a purchaser to pay for a lot of things.

They're certainly not the least expensive way for the merchant, but unless they pass the merchant "discount" as a line item, it doesn't make sense as a purchaser to use anything else. And even then, I think my current card involves the issuer paying me to use it, beyond the discount (4% cash back, but I think merchant fees top out closer to 3%). There's also the delay between time of charge and when the statement is due, although I think the merchant's receipts are also delayed.
by xrd | 2025-04-01 23:02:06+00:00
I wrote a book for O'Reilly. I got the same advance, $2500. I got paid the same royalty rate, 10%.

It wasn't worth it at all financially. I bet I made $6000-$7000 in total. Of course, that's not why I did it.

But, in a new consulting role there is a kid who is early twenties. It came up that I wrote a book and I told him the book and the publisher and he said "other than the car parts company I don't know O'Reilly." I was pretty shocked by that. He's a computer science graduate. That generation doesn't read tech books at all apparently.

It used to be that this was another item on my resume to stand out. It feels like that is totally devalued. And basically everything else on my resume now that Claude has infinitely more knowledge about everything. It's so depressing.
by mvdtnz | 2025-04-01 23:02:16+00:00
I think people who perform these kinds of pranks vastly overestimate the positive reactions they get.

FTA,

> Having sent this out, I fielded a few anxious calls, who laughed uproariously when they realized, and I reset their printers manually afterwards. The people who knew me, knew I was a practical joker, took note of the date, and sent approving replies.

I doubt a single person "laughed uproariously". Most often they probably rolled their eyes and gave a sympathy chuckle. The people who knew he was a "practical joker" understood how much of this guy's ego was tied to his inaner sense of humor and laughed along to get out of the conversation with him.
by bluGill | 2025-04-01 23:02:46+00:00
Cash is not the bonus you think it is. Few have calculated the risk of robbery, (both employee and otherwise) counterfeit money, miscounting, and all the time spent counting and recounting cash. Having been mananger of a fast food in a previous life just my time to count cash was 1% of gross income and the other clerks similar - divided over each customer.
by rayiner | 2025-04-01 23:03:25+00:00
The groups that have focused on “class, gender, [and] ethnic interests” have made much less forward progress compared to groups that have eschewed political approaches. It’s a boat anchor around the neck of individuals in those groups who could otherwise succeed. It yokes individuals to the worst and most hopeless members of whatever group they belong to, dragging them down and holding them back.
by briHass | 2025-04-01 23:03:56+00:00
Depending on your breaker panel, the cheapest way to do this is with an interlock kit ($20) designed for your panel type. A low-tech solution that mechanically locks out a designated breaker (usually upper right) unless the main breaker is off.

The breaker that is exclusively locked out when main is on is connected to an outdoor receptacle for the generator cable. When the power goes out, you switch off the main breaker and the interlock now allows you to switch on the generator's breaker. This serves as the backfeed of power into the rest of the circuits from the generator.

The nice thing about this setup is the ability to use all the other breakers to control what loads you want on the generator. Downside is it isn't automatic.
by onetakeaudio | 2025-04-01 23:04:12+00:00
One Take Audio | Senior or Student | REMOTE | https://www.onetakeaudio.com

We're building generative AI software that helps music creators build their visions. Our team is at capacity and we need your help to accelerate development.

Experience we want - Generative AI (ONNX, Triton), C++ Windows desktop application, Windows ARM, gRPC, audio processing, GPU & NPU optimizations.

People we need,

Senior SW Developer - Join the team and work for equity. Moonlighting is ok to start, with a willingness to convert to full-time once we can provide a competitive wage.

Student - Internship. Equity is possible for exceptional candidates. We want someone who will complete school within a year and be open to full-time employment afterwards.

hello@onetakeaudio.com
by nine_k | 2025-04-01 23:04:13+00:00
Pick used EV or industrial batteries. This must be much more efficient due to a larger cell size than in laptops.

OTOH used laptop batteries can likely be obtained for effectively zero monetary cost, while used EV or solar backup batteries still cost quite noticeable money per kWh. With laptop batteries, you pay with your time; if you for some reason have an excess supply thereof, or you just enjoy this kind of work as a pastime.
by edferda | 2025-04-01 23:04:25+00:00
Credit cards offer rewards which are really beneficial to people that properly use them.

In my country, credit cards are safer because they offer better fraud protection mechanisms than debit cards.

Credit cards make it easier to spend money in foreign currencies. I’ve faced issues when trying to pay with a local currency debit card abroad, but I never have faced that issue with a cc. Then, I can just pay my credit card with local currency.

Most of these issues are solvable for sure. But as of today, credit cards are way more reliable than debit cards. At least for me.

I think credit cards do have very valid use cases today.
by crazygringo | 2025-04-01 23:04:49+00:00
On top of protections, rewards, etc., you're gaining the time value of money.

You shouldn't be keeping your savings in the bank, you should be keeping them in investments. When I charge something to my card, it's an average of 45 days until it gets debited from my bank account. That's 45 days that money can be in investments and profitable.

It doesn't matter much over just one or two months (and will be swamped by the direction of the market anyways), but over a lifetime it adds up.

Don't ever pay now when you can pay later, if you can invest your money during that gap.
by enlyth | 2025-04-01 23:05:02+00:00
I'm in Europe and still use my Amex for everything I can.

It has no membership fee, I get 0.5% cashback which is free money, and one time a merchant failed to deliver an order and they gave me back my money within like 10 minutes of me raising a dispute

If I had used my debit card with my normal bank it would probably take a week to resolve, and I'd be the one out of pocket in the meantime
by dj20062004 | 2025-04-01 23:05:33+00:00
Location: Kerala, India Remote: Yes (Preferred EU / USA Timezones)

Willing to Relocate: Yes

Technologies: Python, Django, FastAPI, Cython, NumPy, Pandas, Polars, GeoPandas, PostgreSQL

Résumé: https://dheerajck.github.io/dheerajck/

Email: dheerajck18@gmail.com

Python Backend Role

Hi there, I’m looking to join a small high trust team / startup rn where I can focus on backend development, but work on AI side aswell.

I work within EU / USA timezones.

Open to remote work and relocation.
by dexwiz | 2025-04-01 23:05:39+00:00
Couple of reasons

- Point schemes. Every card has some sort of points system that encourages use. The best programs are often tied to specific products like airlines. Sometimes there are multipliers on specific categories of use like gas or travel. More expensive cards have better points programs.

- Protection. You pay with the bank's money, not yours. This means you have an extra buffer to protect against fraud, and the bank is more incentivized to resolve issues. On the flip side, banks can put pressure on merchants by raising/lowering their transaction rates if they are consistently bad actors.

- Card holder benefits. Often cards have extra things like car insurance for car rentals built into the card. They also give you access to a cash line of credit in emergencies.

- Builds credit. If you don't have other major debts like a mortgage or car loan, your credit score can be low, because the banks rate unknown borrowers as risky. Consistent credit card usage alone can give you a medium-high rating, so when you do need to borrow for a home, you can get a better rate. This is a bit of a racket overall, but its better than a random banker judging you based on their personal bias.

If you pay off your card in full every month, the only cost is the yearly fee, which varies by card, my current one is a mid range card for $50/year. Usually you need to spend a few hundred to thousand a year for the benefits to outweigh the cost. That said, this whole system preys upon those who don't pay every month/don't their card enough to benefit from it.

I was taught credit cards were dangerous, and stayed away from them for years. I'm glad I never racked up debt when I was younger. But as a responsible adult, they are a boon.
by dimal | 2025-04-01 23:06:07+00:00
I prefer types over tests everywhere. If I’m passing props to a component and I get a TypeScript error, that’s a test I didn’t need to write or run. I love finding errors like this at compile time instead of at runtime. Just because HTML and CSS are untyped by default doesn’t say anything about whether types are useful for them. Does Nue have any way to protect against those kinds of errors or does some other architectural decision obviate the need for this kind of protection?

I’m not hating on Nue. At first glance, there’s a lot to like here, but I have to disagree on this point.