TheGRS (u/TheGRS) - Readit News

TheGRS commented on Show HN: I spent 4 years building a UI design tool with only the features I use vecti.com... · Posted by u/vecti

somenameforme · 3 days ago

This is a far bigger small world than some might expect. The number of devs and games he's referring to numbers well into the thousands. A quick search [1] shows more than 4 games are released per day on Steam which will go on to earn more than $50k in revenue, so about 1500 per year.

It's wild - I'm a big gamer but I strongly doubt I could even list 1500 games across all systems and time. And that many games make $50k+ each year.

[1] - https://gameworldobserver.com/2023/10/06/steam-stats-41k-gam...

TheGRS · 3 days ago

It's crazy! I don't think anyone in my sphere is some hardcore fan of a niche game. But then I stumble on them in the marketplace or watching some GDC talk and it's like, wow this solo dev has been making this obscure series of games for 20 years and they live comfortably (but not extravagantly) with their family. Good on them!

I'm really just describing the long tail at this point. Gives me hope that maybe I can find that product before getting to retirement age.

TheGRS commented on Show HN: I spent 4 years building a UI design tool with only the features I use vecti.com... · Posted by u/vecti

crazygringo · 4 days ago

> I kept finding myself using a small amount of the features while the rest just mostly got in the way. So a few years ago I set out to build a design tool just like I wanted. So I built Vecti with what I actually need...

Joel Spolsky said (I'm paraphrasing) that everybody only uses 20% of a given program's features, but the problem is that everyone is using a different 20%, so you can't ship an "unbloated" version and expect it to still work for most people.

So it looks like you've built something really cool, but I have to ask what makes you think that the features that are personally important to you are the same features that other potential users need? Since this clearly seems to be something you're trying to create a business out of rather than just a personal hobby project. I'm curious how you went about customer research and market validation for the specific subset of features that you chose to develop?

TheGRS · 3 days ago

Every now and then I stumble on video game developers who have been chugging along for many years, even decades with a handful of dedicated fans. They make obscure niche games that play so well into that niche that they can sustain themselves. Honestly this is something I'd aspire to get to eventually, building a niche product that I love and that just enough people love that I could live sustainably on it, not trying to please anyone but a little collective of people who all agree on what the product should be.

TheGRS commented on OpenCiv3: Open-source, cross-platform reimagining of Civilization III openciv3.org/... · Posted by u/klaussilveira

bigstrat2003 · 4 days ago

I love that the community is doing this, though I'm curious why Civ 3 in particular. My understanding was that "classic" (for lack of a better term) Civ fans tend to prefer either 2 or 4, and that 3 was considered to be not as good. But perhaps I was mistaken as to the community's opinions on the games.

TheGRS · 3 days ago

Can I tangent on your question here and ask what others think of Civ 7 now? When I learned about it I thought it was a day 1 game purchase for me for sure, but I held off when I saw a stream of bad reviews. I figured I'd come back when they ironed the problems out (as they've done in every major Civ release to my memory). Haven't taken the plunge yet.

TheGRS commented on AI is killing B2B SaaS nmn.gl/blog/ai-killing-b2... · Posted by u/namanyayg

TheGRS · 6 days ago

I've worked in SaaS for most of my career, only recently working at a big corp who is largely the buyer and user of SaaS tools to meet their objectives. From the perspective of the corp business buyer, they want something that works for their needs and they want to buy something instead of build it because the support costs are gnarly. They already have engineers dedicated to the tools they've purchased. Much better to put the risk on someone else they can yell at. And the permissions and access to these tools, reports, data, is usually its own special problem to manage. Building a lot of one-off tools is going to just give IT a huge headache and they will push the org to buy before vibe coding a solution.

TheGRS commented on AI is killing B2B SaaS nmn.gl/blog/ai-killing-b2... · Posted by u/namanyayg

bdcravens · 6 days ago

And in many cases, it's 12 features, with 2 of the features not even existing in the big SaaS.

I'm pretty sure every developer who has dealt with janky workflows in products like Jira has planned out their own version that fits like a glove, "if only I had more time".

TheGRS · 6 days ago

JIRA especially, and I'm always shaking my fist at Atlassian that simple APIs or workflows or reports aren't already included in the tool. I have to pay some other company $10/user/month to get this dumb report your tool should already be able to do?? Insane.

TheGRS commented on Yawning has an unexpected influence on the fluid inside your brain newscientist.com/article/... · Posted by u/MDWolinski

EA-3167 · 6 days ago

They can be detrimental too, especially if they're linked to beneficial traits. The test is ultimately whether or not the harm done is sufficiently disadvantageous that it interferes with reproductive fitness. Baldness is arguably detrimental, but it's linked to a bunch of recessive genes that function in other ways, and it doesn't impact us until we're likely to have already reproduced.

That's a simplification, but you get the idea.

TheGRS · 6 days ago

Peacocks with their giant tail feathers are my favorite example. They make flying really difficult, but they make attracting female mates much easier. The reproduction need wins.

TheGRS commented on Ask HN: Is there anyone here who still uses slide rules? · Posted by u/blenderob

gcr · 7 days ago

I designed and 3D-printed my own slide rule to help me play Balatro!

Balatro is a roguelike survival game where you need to multiply "chips" and "mult" together to meet a requirement each round. You get three chances to draft enough resources to survive. I designed my own slide rule to help with the mental multiplication - most of the fun of the game comes from the mechanics being slightly obscured from the player.

Since I designed this slide rule myself, I was able to make a couple unconventional design choices that fit my needs. For instance, mine has three octaves so it can represent numbers within the ones, thousands, or millions' range, for example; no need to track arbitrary powers of ten. Since it's a rotary rule, it wraps around. Eg. 353×24 shows on the device as 8.47, so you can think of it as 8.47 thousand, for example.

Holding a physical object in my hands while playing helps more than I thought it would. Should I take a card that increases chips by 600 or increases mult by 1.3×? Do I need to take a card to clear the blind in the short term, or do I have enough resources to draft a slower card that will scale better over time? Even just looking at how densely packed the marks are on the "Chips" side vs the "Mult" side of the device gives a visceral physical sense of what my build needs to focus on.

Pictures and .STL: https://www.printables.com/model/1026662-jimbos-rotary-slide...

Github repository: https://github.com/gcr/balatro-slide-rule

The actual plotting code used Marimo notebooks, which host a python in your browser via WASM. Take a look here: https://marimo.app/l/4i15d7

I entered it in Printables’ educational tools competition but the other entries were cooler. Maybe HN might like it. :-)

TheGRS · 7 days ago

Its really cool, appreciate the typeface choice.

TheGRS commented on xAI joins SpaceX spacex.com/updates#xai-jo... · Posted by u/g-mork

eldenring · 8 days ago

the radiators would be lighter compared to the solar panels, and slightly smaller surface area so you can line them back to back

TheGRS · 8 days ago

If someone has a design out there where this works and you can launch it economically on a rocket today, I wanna see that. And then I wanna compare it to the cost of setting up some data centers on earth (which BTW, you can service in real time, it sounds like these will be one-and-done launches).

TheGRS commented on xAI joins SpaceX spacex.com/updates#xai-jo... · Posted by u/g-mork

sillysaurusx · 8 days ago

That’s wild. So it’s true that Twitter is merging with SpaceX?

TheGRS · 8 days ago

That's what the headline is, yep. Wild times indeed.

TheGRS commented on xAI joins SpaceX spacex.com/updates#xai-jo... · Posted by u/g-mork

TheGRS · 8 days ago

Elon investors should try buying a lottery ticket, it also lets you dream of the future while not providing returns.