Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What tiny purchases have disproportionately improved your life?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 428 posts

Re: Ask HN: What tiny purchases have disproportionately improved your life?

#111

Post by 5555624 »

bragr wrote: post #83
ortusdux wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PO box?

The problem with PO boxes, besides being in short supply, is all the places that can't accept or ship to PO boxes (DMV, voter registration, private parcel services, insurance companies, ...)

While it cannot be used as an option for "your physical residence.... in legal documents" -- voter registration or the DMV -- the USPS does offer "Street Addressing Service." It provides a street address you can use with UPS, FedEx, and others. P.O. Box 59 would be 500 Main Street #59 (for a Post Office located at 500 Main Street). The service is free. (I just filled out the form two days ago.)

Re: Ask HN: What tiny purchases have disproportionately improved your life?

#112

Post by dTal »

tenfourwookie wrote: post #100

I buy high mileage Honda minivans for no more than $3000 because they're dependable and cheap at high mileage. I generally get 100,000 miles out of them, so 4 mostly dependable vans and 400,000 miles for about $12,000. You'll lose $12K in depreciation alone just driving a new car off a lot. I've lived in them safely and comfortably for a total of about 3 years, living all over the western US from New Mexico to Montan…

This must be some rich person definition of "tiny purchase"...

Re: Ask HN: What tiny purchases have disproportionately improved your life?

#113

Post by jareklupinski »

banana_giraffe wrote: post #69
gadnuk wrote: post #12

Varying length of phone charging cables. Bought a couple of bundles of iPhone charging cables from Amazon that were 3ft/6ft/10ft in length with charging attachment from my old iPhones. It's such a great feeling to use the phone from any part of my place without having to worry about length of the cable. I keep a couple of the longer cables in my car too just in case someone wants to charge on a long trip.

> Varying length of phone charging cables For me it's Varying lengths of USB-C charging cables, and a bunch of USB-C -> Micro and USB-C -> Lightning adapters so no more looking for the right cable.

I remember buying two of these https://www.sparkfun.com/products/12016 thinking I would never need to buy another cable/adapter ever again

ha

Re: Ask HN: What tiny purchases have disproportionately improved your life?

#114

Post by psyc »

dTal wrote: post #112
tenfourwookie wrote: post #100

I buy high mileage Honda minivans for no more than $3000 because they're dependable and cheap at high mileage. I generally get 100,000 miles out of them, so 4 mostly dependable vans and 400,000 miles for about $12,000. You'll lose $12K in depreciation alone just driving a new car off a lot. I've lived in them safely and comfortably for a total of about 3 years, living all over the western US from New Mexico to Montan…

This must be some rich person definition of "tiny purchase"...

When it’s your house that you own outright, I’ll allow it.

Re: Ask HN: What tiny purchases have disproportionately improved your life?

#115

Post by raspyberr »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #110
ozzythecat wrote: post #52

An electric toothbrush and floss. Brushing with a regular toothbrush doesn’t give me the clean/fresh feeling my electric toothbrush does. The model I have was maybe $25 or $30. Using the electric toothbrush and flossing before bed every night, I feel like in my morning my mouth actually still feels fine. Of course I would never start my day without brushing, but my mouth doesn’t feel icky when I wake up in the mornin…

Brushing after breakfast, rather than before, is recommended for maximum cleanness. If you only brush once a day, brush last thing before bed.

I remember hearing a long time ago that brushing before eating is better. Sugar reacts with plaque to form acids and brushing temporarily removes plaque. So eating straight after brushing doesn't really do anything.

Re: Ask HN: What tiny purchases have disproportionately improved your life?

#116

Post by tenfourwookie »

dTal wrote: post #112
tenfourwookie wrote: post #100

I buy high mileage Honda minivans for no more than $3000 because they're dependable and cheap at high mileage. I generally get 100,000 miles out of them, so 4 mostly dependable vans and 400,000 miles for about $12,000. You'll lose $12K in depreciation alone just driving a new car off a lot. I've lived in them safely and comfortably for a total of about 3 years, living all over the western US from New Mexico to Montan…

This must be some rich person definition of "tiny purchase"...

Fair enough, but I mean tiny relative to the purchase of a new car. That is, a new car is disproportionately more expensive than 4 used vans at 3k each. And the vans will collectively provide more mileage than one new car. Why are you making me explain this? I must dispatch George the Rottweiler on a contempt charge. Old Honda vans need love too. There.

Re: Ask HN: What tiny purchases have disproportionately improved your life?

#117

Post by bxparks »

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #86
bxparks wrote: post #71

A Fujitsu S1500 ScanSnap, dual-sided, document scanner (now discontinued, replacement might be the iX1600). Completely changed how I manage my personal documents (e.g. financial, invoices, receipts, product manuals, medical info, business docs, recreation and hobby stuff, etc). Anything remotely important, I scan to PDF, which triggers automatic OCR that is reasonably accurate, then I upload the PDF to Google Drive,…

How does it compare to smarthone camera + one of hundreds of scan+ocr apps like Adobe Scan? For me the smartphone solution is supereasy, basically it takes n seconds to scan a n-page booklet for example.

I find the quality of the photos from my phone to be terrible: wrong brightness, wrong color balance, wrong focus, wrong contrast, wrong orientation, motion blur, etc. The quality of the documents from the Fujitsu scanner is top notch. And the feeder is amazingly fast, specs say 20 ppm, which I think means 20 sheets, or 40 pages/minute. I also hate typing long file names on a phone keyboard. But if it works for you, then it works for you.

Re: Ask HN: What tiny purchases have disproportionately improved your life?

#118

Post by tmaly »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #10

Mail processor. I spend $20/month, they receive all of my mail, open it, and digitize it. They discard the junk mail if I want. I never have to visit a mailbox again. I can even register it as my address on my driver's license and for my vehicles. EDIT: The service I use is https://www.sbimailservice.com/ .

what happens when your bank sends you a new atm card when the old one expires?

Re: Ask HN: What tiny purchases have disproportionately improved your life?

#119

Post by tmaly »

gordon_freeman wrote: post #35

Libby - I used to buy so many Kindle books and had an expensive Audible subscription a year ago but all that stopped when I discovered Libby. I can read ebooks and audiobooks right in the app using my local public library card for free and the entire UX of the app is just beyond awesome. I can now read/listen to 5-7 books a month using Libby.

I do this with the Overdrive app and my local library. I think they have Libby also. I prefer the audit books during my commute to work.

Re: Ask HN: What tiny purchases have disproportionately improved your life?

#120

Post by falcolas »

_peeley wrote: post #107
falcolas wrote: post #77

For voice recordings - Izotope RX8 elements. Found it for $9 right now. Aggravating mouth noises be gone. Magnetic charging cables. Some can't take advantage of the higher speed charging (only connecting V+ and ground), but it's unreasonably nice to have cables throughout the house that can support all of your devices. A comfortable mouse with enough buttons. A comfortable keyboard that just works, even if you don't…

Any good mice you could recommend? I used to use a Razer Naga during my MMO days and I've really missed the side button array, but I found myself replacing them way too often (they'd wear out and start double clicking in just 6 months on average).

I tend to prefer gaming mice, simply for their long-term comfort, lots of buttons, and precision. I'm still holding on to a Logitech G9, it's one of the best mice I've ever had. Discontinued, sadly.

The Logitech MX series is pretty decent, though I've had to start fighting with uneven mousewheel acceleration. Corsair makes decent mice, and Razer as well.

The double click issue I've had happen with a couple of products. A Razer opto-mechanical keyboard had this crop up, a previous Logitech MMO mouse did this (double left click as well), and even a "Topre" switch keyboard had this happen. I haven't had it happen with cherry switch keyboards (yet), but I'm sure it will.

It almost seems like an industry-wide problem that combines less-expensive switch components and debouncing tolerances that are set too tightly - it's like none of the newer products are set up to handle aging switches. Just a guess though.

Post reply on HN