You guys need to build more stupid shit

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45795704

by gnarbarian • 9 months ago

25 17 9 months ago

news.ycombinator.com

You guys are way to serious around here. Building stupid pointless shit is fun and it will teach you a lot.

fennec-posix• 9 months ago

I wish I had the time to build dumb shit

gnarbarian4• 9 months ago

you should try working for the federal government and getting shutdown for a month.

WarOnPrivacy3• 9 months ago

I once built an obit scraper to build a db of local recent decedents. It was just to ease some work I was doing for a probate attorney.

I eventually set it to compare against a church roster. It emailed the leadership on matches and they'd follow up to see if it was the same person.

Sometimes they got notified earlier than they would have otherwise. But there were a few matches every year that would have flown under the radar (snowbirds or less active). It allowed leaders to make assistance and support available to the family.

aeonfox3• 9 months ago

Not stupid or pointless, just difficult (and kinda evil) to monetise. But perhaps that counts as stupid and pointless here?

WarOnPrivacy3• 9 months ago

It wasn't too hard. Probate firms scan obits to look for their own clients. This made that task less tedious.

pleasedontman• 9 months ago

Not that difficult to monetise, dead people are not known for calling the cops for burglary and funeral homes, estate lawyers etc would pay for leads.

Given the audience on hacker news it's not even the worst thing people here do for cash because it's only one or so victim at a time instead of hyperscale. Old school artisan crime.

gnarbarian4• 9 months ago

that's good.

pavelai• 9 months ago

Why is it like so? What would it teach you to?

bix6• 9 months ago

F you pay me

gnarbarian4• 9 months ago

best I can do is a like.

BOOSTERHIDROGEN• 9 months ago

Because people are becoming more sensitive, everyone is scared of lawsuits.

gnarbarian4• 9 months ago

it never stopped moot!

M95D• 9 months ago

As if there isn't enough stupid shit; need to add more...

How about some not-stupid-shit for a change?

gus_massa• 9 months ago

Have you seen https://news.ycombinator.com/shownew

It has a mix of big and tiny projects, you may like some of them.

You guys need to build more stupid shit

Related Stories