MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Lrodd | 2025-08-01 12:48:56+00:00
We're living in this unfortunate split where tools like Google Analytics tell you where people came from, and Stripe tells you who paid, but there's no simple way to connect the two.

As a solo founder building SaaS products, I kept asking myself:

“Which traffic sources actually drive revenue?" “Which traffic sources bring in the highest-value customers?”

UTMs and custom attribution params get lost after signup. Stripe doesn’t track attribution. And wiring together GA, BigQuery, and Stripe is way too much for a small team.

So I built Boone — a lightweight attribution tool that fills the gap:

- One-line JS snippet captures UTM/referrer data - Stripe Connect pulls in revenue events - Boone links the two via customer email - You see exactly which sources drive paying customers

And here's the fun part: once the data's in, you can actually chat with it. Boone includes an AI business coach (powered by GPT-4) that answers questions like:

- “Which channels are bringing in the highest LTV?” - “Did Twitter traffic drop off this week?” - “Where is most of my churn coming from?”

So now instead of staring at dashboards, you just ask your questions and get real, instant insights.

What was harder than expected:

1. Making the AI chat actually useful: The first version just repeated the stats: “$500 from Google, $200 from Twitter.” I had to iterate a lot on prompt engineering to get it to give real advice like “Double down on Google - LTV is 3x higher.” It now feels more like a growth-minded cofounder than a data parrot.

2. Resisting the urge to overbuild: There were so many tempting features: predictive modeling, graphs, anomaly detection, more insights. But I had to keep asking: “Does this help validate the core problem?” Saying no to scope creep over and over again was difficult.

3. Making the data actually connect end-to-end: Capturing traffic data → linking it to a signup → tying that to Stripe revenue seems simple. But real-world edge cases (like multiple signups, missing attribution, or webhook failures) ate up a surprising amount of time. The AI stuff gets all the attention, but the plumbing took just as much work.

4. Solving the cold start problem: Boone’s value lives in attribution — but when someone first signs up, we have none. Waiting for post-snippet traffic wasn’t acceptable, so we focused on delivering instant value from Stripe data alone. That meant surfacing insights like which products had the highest LTV or churn, and letting users chat with that data out of the box. It gave new users a reason to engage immediately, even before attribution kicked in.

Boone’s live. I’m looking for early users to try it out and start tracking revenue across Twitter, LinkedIn, paid ads, or wherever you’re sending traffic. https://www.getboone.com/?utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=s...

Happy to answer any technical questions or go deeper on how it works.

- Lock
by bakuninsbart | 2025-08-01 12:49:12+00:00
The issue is that by introducing hyperbole, the meaning changes completely. Take the two statements:

1. I want peace.

2. a) Therefore I need to be strong enough to deter any attack.

2. b) Therefore I need to be so strong that all my enemies fear me.

2. a) is sound. Nobody attacks if they believe the cost is higher than benefit. ("Believe" is doing heavy lifting here, most wars start when countries belief about cost/value is misaligned)

2. b) is incompatible with 1. Either you believe that a stronger party does not necessarily attack weaker parties, thus peace could also be maintained without supremacy, or you believe supremacy leads to wars, but then your own goal of supremacy cannot be in the name of peace.

Unless, of course, you're a race supremacist, who believes you're so much wiser and more moral than anyone else that only you can be trusted with unchecked power. An idiotic and immoral position to take.
by 1718627440 | 2025-08-01 12:49:43+00:00
What do you thing about what I claimed is a fallacy? Like, I think if you don't agree that your perception tells you about the truth, than you can also claim that you are a test tube brain and you won't be wrong. When there is no causality between what you are thinking and reality, your thoughts are just random ideas and don't mean anything. Heck, you don't even know causality exists, because you just don't know anything.

I think this ideas are quite well expressed in: C.S.Lewis "On living in an Atomic Age". For example: https://www.andybannister.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/csl...

(I find it a bit easier to understand in my translation, but that may only be the fact, that english isn't my mother tongue.)
by clarionbell | 2025-08-01 12:49:56+00:00
I do hope that some members of the mob will reflect and repent. That they will be more hesitant next time. But unfortunately, I have a feeling that they are mostly going to double down.

Real monsters are walking free of consequence, while innocents are ruined. Society is so obsessed with moral puritanism, and completely blind to the absurd corruption at the top.

If all that energy expended on cancelling people was instead used on genuine political action, we wouldn't be in the trouble we are now at. If more people were reasonable at the time and didn't jump to conclusions, they would still have the high ground. Instead they became the boy who cried wolf.
by rsynnott | 2025-08-01 12:50:19+00:00
> A standard-ish city bus is $1M and seats 50 (though they're rarely full).

This sounds wrong, or at least your local transport company is being ripped off. Dublin Bus bought 600 plug-in hybrid double-deckers a few years back at a unit cost of 450,000 eur; they take about 90 people. More recently it bought a couple hundred electric buses of the same size for 500k apiece (though of course these are cheaper to run).

Also, define 'rarely full'. At rush hour, most buses will be full for at least part of their route.

Taken as an example, Dublin Bus has 1,100 buses, almost all ~90 person double deckers (homeopathic numbers of smaller single-deckers and giant three-axle double-deckers can be ignored). Let's say 90% are operating at peak time. That's a capacity of 89,000 people on the road; implementing your plan with 6 person vans would require about 15,000 vans. This is obviously completely absurd.

(The original claim that they were good _train_ substitutes is even more absurd; replacing a 1,000 person rapid transit train would require 166 vans. Which is multiple kilometres of vans. On a decent metro line such as train might arrive every 3 minutes. There is just no way you can do that with vans.
by coldtea | 2025-08-01 12:50:22+00:00
Because "caring for the future" is not a problem that's solved with money. Especially when short-term profit trumps it, and the people that should be caring wont be alive in that future and don't give a fuck.

Thinking "we'll just pay someone to do it" is exactly the mindset that fucked up everything.

(And, for starters, you need to care for X to pay someone to do X, to begin with).
by sjw987 | 2025-08-01 12:50:24+00:00
It does seem to me, British people are very quick to call for "bans" on anything that they don't like. I always believed it comes from the average British person's mediocrity (and acceptance of) and crab-in-bucket mentality.

This country has so many (excuse my rudeness) lamearses, and they seem to revel in pulling everybody down to their level. Whenever they feel challenged by somebody else having genuine hobbies and interests (beyond consumption of food, drink, substances, and media), being fit and healthy, or being educated, they get threatened and start trying to pull that person down. I've seen it all my life.

However when you do find interesting and talented people here, they shine through. It's just needles and haystacks.
by twixfel | 2025-08-01 12:50:48+00:00
Right, "settler colonialism" is probably the more precise term. Colonialism is too vague.

> it's just two native populations fighting over a piece of land - not exactly a new historical concept

That doesn't mean it's not colonialism. And the Israelis have less right to the West Bank than I, as an Anglo-Saxon, have to Lower Saxony, which is still not very much.
by _mlbt | 2025-08-01 12:50:52+00:00
The organization behind this, Collective Shout, is Australian, not American.

https://www.collectiveshout.org/

Also, funny you bring up guns. The payment processors caused issues for legal gun, ammunition, and accessories purchases before the current NSFW content issue. It's such a problem that firearm friendly credit card processing companies are a thing now.

https://www.tacticalpay.com/
by meta_ai_x | 2025-08-01 12:51:22+00:00
If Remote Work is incredible and extremely productive, you can literally arbitrage away and create remote-first companies and crush your competition who insist on WFO. According to the logic of WFH backers, it should be incredibly easy to attract the highest talent and that talent should be working at peak productivity and should have no trouble in beating competition.

The fact that none of the companies can do it, means WFH is a massive productivity failure. The reasons are aplenty

- Self-Reporting Employees or Researchers simply can't measure productivity that matters.

- WFH research is typically done and funded by WFH-friendly entities skewing it's benefits. There are no neutral social science research.

- Startups, which are a better unbiased WFO/WFH study (because all startups have the same starting conditions allowing us to control more variables), clearly show that teams (both technical and sales) sitting in room can crush/outrun Startups that are remote-only.

- Productivity measures done by these studies are almost always individual, but team productivity and firm productivity are emergent properties and hard to measure
by Cthulhu_ | 2025-08-01 12:52:55+00:00
> Who's going to regulate?

I will; when I am elected God-Emperor, I will set up a global defense network that will shoot down any unauthorised launches. I will also build a space palace, because I can.

Only half-joking; space will be regulated when one force becomes dominant and individual countries' rights are taken away, OR when the majority of countries, but specifically the biggest and most powerful ones, get to an agreement - but given the significant differences between e.g. the US, China, India and Russia, that's unlikely to happen anytime soon. So at the moment, a globally dominant world power setting the rules will be the likely candidate.

But first, there needs to be a tipping point of sorts, a line that is crossed. That'll either be space-based weapons or missile defense systems, or simply being out-competed. It'll be at least another decade plus billions of investments before any other nation or company can start to compete with SpaceX's launch capacity, and they haven't stopped yet; if Spaceship becomes viable they and the US will have a huge lead, and the launch capability to set up a global missile detection / defense / space offense network.
by schnable | 2025-08-01 12:53:07+00:00
Unfortunately, it is not common sense. Innocent until proven guilty is a very modern concept and still not practiced in much of the world. Human nature is tribal, we trust (or don't want to contradict) members of our groups, and we get a kind of a rush from "othering" people and ostracizing them, especially in a mob.

It takes work to protect the integrity of our justice system. This applies to the members within it and for those outside of it--neither should sacrifice or attack its credibility for short term political or personal gain. It also requires proper education that focuses on the good, not just the failings.
by Peritract | 2025-08-01 12:53:49+00:00
MLK famously said 'a riot is the language of the unheard'; if you want people to avoid social pressure (note: not a lynch mob -- no physical harm), you have to give them a better, fairer alternative.

A functioning justice system for sex crime accusations would be amazing; for valid reasons, a lot of people do not trust that this exists.
by gethly | 2025-08-01 12:53:50+00:00
Coding has nothing to do with degrees. It's actually a huge waste of time. Unless you are studying to be a doctor or a lawyer, school is waste of time and money and has huge opportunity costs. So definitely do not even think about masters.

I have started fiddling with HTML around 2000, PHP in 2004, then Go in 2018-ish. I always worked with websites, though thanks to Go, nowadays it is mostly backend related and lower level stuff.

Anyway, I say this as I have seen the market develop for quarter of a century. And what you are experiencing is simply saturated market. Everyone thinks they can write code nowadays and so there is too much supply. Then add the the "AI" crap and you find yourself very quickly being obsolete. The real economy is tanking, despite fake numbers propping up the stock market, one just needs to glance at massive tech layoffs since 2022 to realise the time is up. So not a good time to be a newbie in this field.

But is that really so? No, absolutely not. My whole "career", I worked in niches and that always paid my bills. And I always recommend the same. Don't be a generalist, specialise on something unique where there is little competition and sufficient demand and stability. It can be absolutely anything imaginable, just make sure you become an expert in this niche.

This will then allow you to easily filter out job advertisements so you can focus on jobs where you will have high chance of being a fit for and also experience little competition, comparatively to the rest of the job market.

Last tip, focus on the east, not on the dying west. The future is in China when it comes to tech. There is competition, but again, keyword is "niche". And the job market is there and will be there. As you are in Iraq, that poses quite a problem, even for remote work. So you might be forced to look for middle eastern countries with tech jobs. I guess UAE would be my pick as from what I hear the salaries are great and supply is low, mostly because nobody wants to move there. Also you would have no time zone issues for remote work. Either way, you have to think in the context of your situation in general and make decisions based on your capabilities and options.
by churchill | 2025-08-01 12:53:56+00:00
Exactly this. Glad someone else can see it. Having studied other settler colonial states (I believe), Israel realizes that Western weapons and doctrine guarantees they'll win every single confrontation with the Palestinians, just like the Rhodesians & Apartheid South Africa. Easily too, with insane KD ratios.

Those two regimes won every battle easily, but what eventually did them in was sanctions. And, when the West sanctions you, you eventually collapse or stay economically irrelevant. Case in point: USSR, Maoist China, Rhodesia, South Africa, etc.

But, the Boomer, Christian Zionist generation is dying out, along with older Germans (and Europeans) who still struggle with some Teutonic guilt.

Irreligious, humanist youngsters across the Americas and Europe now see it's a clear good vs. bad struggle and the Zionists are not the good guys, so Israel likely believes they need to expel the Palestinians from Gaza & the West Bank within one generation or they'll be facing devastating sanctions within 10-20 years.

Given that Israel's economy depends heavily on technology service exports, diamonds, and agriculture, if they don't change posture and end up getting sanctioned, it'll cripple them without a doubt. Just cutting off their technology workers' foreign exchange salaries is enough to shrink the economy by half once that FX channel dries up.
by watwut | 2025-08-01 12:54:05+00:00
Europe was un-strategic there, simple as that. Trump will take advantage of that. But, USA is getting weaker and weaker ... and will continue to fall further. That being said, practically EU promised things it likely wont deliver, because structurally cant. And the tariffs on cars are at its benefit. So like, there is nice chance Trump will look strong (which is bad), but wont get much in the practical terms (and that is fully deserved).

Trump is fearful when challenged, he backs down. That is a fact. It does not even matter as much who is objectively strong or not. Trump nor current American leadership deals with facts. They are all about feelings.
by kcplate | 2025-08-01 12:54:09+00:00
I think there are a couple flaws in your logic. One, $50k is $50k and spends the same whether you make $174k or $1M. It’s money you didn’t have and now you do and if it’s completely legal to receive it, why wouldn’t you take it? I would at either level of salary if it was legal and was an interest I wasn’t morally opposed to. Generally donations to garnish support will be for things that are not going to go directly against the politician’s morals—assuming they have morals.. If they are willing to take the donations and entertain special interest money, they are willing to take it despite their income high or low.

Another is assuming that the price to buy support is fixed and the coffers are limited. The price might be $50k because perhaps that is the sweet spot on your target, but support and donations will go higher if needed and the special interest is motivated to garner support.
by netcan | 2025-08-01 12:54:27+00:00
>as observers, what we're left with is two people accusing someone of something and the accused saying they're innocent.

This is the point though, isnt it. He's writing a retrospective about the impact of public condemnation and ostracization as a result of such proof-less, process-less accusations.

Neither the accusation nor the denial come with proof. This is not exactly about what should we do in this circumstance. Its about what peiple did fo in these circumstances.

You can doubt his innocence. But... and this is the crucial point... this post is not attempting to punish the accusers. So to me... normal rules apply. Assumption of good faith and honesty, to some extent, apply.

If I read the other side's story, then I'd probably read it from the same perspective.

That's ok... because we aren't hanging someone at the end of this conversation. If we are, different standards apply.
by roenxi | 2025-08-01 12:55:10+00:00
Additional Background: US government provides funding, US government tries to use that leverage to decide how the show will be run.

Over the years I've come to accept the blind spot most people have where, despite all evidence, they assume that the government goals match their own. But it still isn't the case. The prudent approach is to set up institutions that are largely independent of government. Government funding is not an answer to long term problems. Governments are too fickle and the political bandwidth isn't high enough to handle complex arguments like whether researching structure in sequences of 0s and 1s is a good idea.

I know the fashion is to present Trump as some weird aberration but he's been a factor for about 10 years now and won his 3rd election pretty convincing margins. Nobody can say they are surprised that the US government is behaving erratically if it is an environment where Trump is a top contender for high office.
by figassis | 2025-08-01 12:55:11+00:00
Not excusing anyone who jumps at judgement, but this illustrates the importance of protecting the integrity of due process. People have over time seem many cases of due process being corrupted by money, power or just incompetence. Many times it has happened to them. Due process is often opaque, complex and lengthy so they decided to bring that in-house and make their own judgements.

I have learned to fight the instinct to judge because many times I judged very very sure of my conclusions, only to find put some time later how completely wrong I was. It's scary, how a rational person can feel so righteous and yet be so wrong. As a rule I try never to make a decision on the same day I receive information. You'd be surprised how much your opinion can change once you digest your info.
by kolektiv | 2025-08-01 12:55:27+00:00
Given their positions on things like Russia, the Epstein files, free trade, etc. (where the position has changed from things that were either broadly "American" values or positions that Trump directly supported) I would guess it would take a day or two. The core "Trump is infallible" demographic will follow him no matter what. If he said the sun set in the morning, they'd blame the sun when it rose.
by MadnessASAP | 2025-08-01 12:56:24+00:00
> 3. The Nix language (and library?) is not sane. Nobody actually understands it, only copy-pastes pieces of existing package scripts and hopes the changes work.

Perhaps Nix is "Wonko the Sane" and it is in fact the rest of us who are in the asylum?

Nix, the language, is a little strange at first but really does make sense. Nixpkgs, the "standard library", is a little stranger and sometimes makes an odd default choice. The nice thing though is that using Nix you can coerce Nixpkgs into just about any shape that suits you.
What I have learned about startups from building my own
by Taikhoom10 | 2025-08-01 12:56:37+00:00
Hey everyone, i just wanted to share some of the lessons i have learned from working at startups and building my own, soya. Feel free to add or critique anything.

Build and launch fast, charge your customers and assess the demand

Interview potential users before building, understand the problem you are solving deeply

Do not buy into conventional wisdom

Think from first principles, the best solution is rarely the obvious one.

VC isn’t always the path, again don’t buy into conventional wisdom

Talk to your users and iterate accordingly

You don’t need to hire a ton, often small is better and more productive

Buy into Paul graham, Steve blank and others

Always learn from your failures.

Iterate, pivot if necessary

Find market gaps, fill them in. Aka identify opportunities

Be delusional yet realistic at the same time

Constantly test new things, break things move fast.

Learn from your users, understand how they are using your product.

Don’t get obsessed with adding features, start with doing one thing really well and then adding features on top of that.

When marketing never do ads, terrible conversions. Ideally if you build a really great product your users will do the marketing for you.
Ask HN: Which software companies hire people in Africa for remote work?
by DanieleProcida | 2025-08-01 12:56:43+00:00
I want to compile a list of companies that will employ people from Africa to work remotely.

I'm referring to full-time permanent roles offering stability and career progression, rather than piece work, short-term contracts or gig work.

It would be particularly useful to know which companies actually have hired remote African team-members, and don't just offer "globally remote" jobs on paper.

I will add any relevant information to https://www.fanaka.pro.
by spacedcowboy | 2025-08-01 12:56:45+00:00
This is a whole lot of words to say “I don’t want us to be living in a simulation” - the problem being that there is no proof either way. This lack of determinism makes it excellent source material for a wordy and pompous article, conflating whether with desire; dragging religion (which is orthogonal to whether) into the mix, and dabbling with authoritarianism, philosophy, and sexism along the way.

If you make a statement like “we are not living in a simulation” I want to see some actual rationale for that, not frantic hand-waving and attempts to obscure the statement. I have no clue whether we are (or not) living in some high-order simulation, but this article does nothing to clarify that.
by JdeBP | 2025-08-01 12:56:58+00:00
No.

Because checking some of the Debian patches accrued against ttyrec, and the source to rewindtty, it seems that rewindtty does not have some of the common programming mistakes that the author of ttyrec made a quarter of a century ago.

* https://sources.debian.org/src/ttyrec/1.1.7.1-1/debian/patch...

* https://github.com/debba/rewindtty/blob/develop/src/recorder...

* https://github.com/mjording/ttyrec/blob/master/ttyrec.c#L328

rewindtty will error out if the SHELL environment variable's value does not have a directory prefix, but at least it won't outright crash. (-: