I started a paper website business • Hacker News Board

Re: I started a paper website business

#81

Post by dhosek » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 5:05 PM UTC

MMS21 wrote: post #65

pkdpic wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes me remember that my primary way of finding new things on the web back in middle school was just typing educated guess urls in until I found something. Makes me wonder how interesting the web might be if I just started doing that again, and how boring it might have been if I'd just had a working search engine back then. Then again I also seem to remember getting bored enough with the web to only spend an ho…

If you did that now you'll run into sites with no content but a banner at the top with contact details so you can buy the domain.

Or a page full of ads.

Re: I started a paper website business

#82

Post by underdeserver » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 5:07 PM UTC

Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #61

It feels less like a paper website business and more just like a traditional website builder except with some OCR to turn notebook pages into web pages. Like, you've still got to edit the page to add links, images, colours, etc. In fact, that seems like the most complicated part. It's a fun gimmick and a nice selling point. But someone will be able to use this idea for Wordpress/Wix/Squarespace plugin. Would be surpr…

A blog is more about the content of a single post than about the links inside.

When I'm reading a post, I rarely click any links at all.

Re: I started a paper website business

#83

Post by _virtu » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 5:07 PM UTC

Slightly off topic, but I'm a bit of a paper snob at this point. While Moleskine is not the bottom of the barrel I still find for use with fountain pen inks they're not the best. You haven't lived until you try out some Tomoe river paper.

Check out TarokoShop's notebooks: https://www.etsy.com/shop/TarokoShop?ref=simple-shop-header-....

Re: I started a paper website business

#84

Post by Philip-J-Fry » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 5:10 PM UTC

noodle wrote: post #70

Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #61

It feels less like a paper website business and more just like a traditional website builder except with some OCR to turn notebook pages into web pages. Like, you've still got to edit the page to add links, images, colours, etc. In fact, that seems like the most complicated part. It's a fun gimmick and a nice selling point. But someone will be able to use this idea for Wordpress/Wix/Squarespace plugin. Would be surpr…

Wouldn't be HN without the "you can build this trivially" [ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 ] response.

I'm not saying it's trivial to build this. I'm just saying that the "paper website" part is greatly exaggerated. The real meat of the pie is in website builder which _is_ more complicated than tweaking some parameters on some off the shelf OCR/GPT3 solutions.

It's cool, I've never shipped a project like this, and probably never will. But I've worked on my fair share of software so I know what it takes behind the scenes.

Re: I started a paper website business

#85

Post by duxup » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 5:13 PM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #78

duxup wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We remember the fun stuff, but you had to look for it even back in the day.

"Back in my day," we had to look for fun compared to the expectation that fun will be delivered to you at your beck and call. How times have changed. When you grow up with something, it's just accepted as normal. You have to have known a time without it to truly get the difference.

“Facebook didn’t provide me what I wanted…THE WEB IS DEAD!”

Re: I started a paper website business

#86

Post by MCneill27 » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 5:17 PM UTC

noodle wrote: post #70

Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #61

It feels less like a paper website business and more just like a traditional website builder except with some OCR to turn notebook pages into web pages. Like, you've still got to edit the page to add links, images, colours, etc. In fact, that seems like the most complicated part. It's a fun gimmick and a nice selling point. But someone will be able to use this idea for Wordpress/Wix/Squarespace plugin. Would be surpr…

Wouldn't be HN without the "you can build this trivially" [ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 ] response.

It's pathetic. So many egos that need to be assuaged every time a clever execution they didn't do is brought to their attention.

Re: I started a paper website business

#87

Post by rkangel » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 5:19 PM UTC

aniforprez wrote: post #71

jaypeg25 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish Stumble Upon still existed just so I could find the weird corners of the web again. This site and Reddit sort of fill that but also don't quite fit it at all.

Not to be a downer again but reddit is pretty much dead for this. It's turning into FB more and more every day with a lot of young kids and teenagers filling it with memes and begging for engagement and such. It's not much of an aggregator anymore and is turning into more of an actual social network now except they still have "anonymous" profiles I guess it's what the people running it want but I find myself going th…

I've found Reddit improved by careful curation of my subscribed subreddits. If I spent most of my time in there rather than /r/all then it's great. I still feel like scrolling through memes on /r/all from time to time and that has the beneficial side effect of helping me add to those subscriptions.

Re: I started a paper website business

#88

Post by rkangel » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 5:21 PM UTC

didip wrote: post #42

When Pg told people to build a business that doesn’t scale, he meant this.

PG did NOT tell people to build businesses that don't scale. He told people to OPERATE businesses in ways that don't scale. That is of course true for this business - the overall model scales extremely well, but obviously what they're doing at the moment isn't scaleable. It is however an excellent proof of concept of the business model.

Re: I started a paper website business

#89

Post by amelius » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 5:24 PM UTC

dash2 wrote: post #9

Three above this story on the front page is an article called "The Web Is Fucked", complaining about how there's no character on the web any more, and lamenting the 90s, Geocities etc. etc. I'd say this story refutes that one.

Uh, this story uses GPT-3 to "improve" content based on a huge training set. Do you think that this will increase diversity and bring more character to the web?

Re: I started a paper website business

#90

Post by spiffytech » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 5:25 PM UTC

ushakov wrote: post #25

soared wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t really need to register an llc or do any of that for your projects that are not big.

how do you legally accept money then? clarification: i'm in EU

In the US, anyone can sell good or services and do business without formally registering as a business. You're automatically classified as a sole proprietorship, with your legal name as the business name. But there's no liability protection, since you and the business are the same legal entity. That's where LLC or incorporating comes in, along with lots of other reasons to want to formalize the business as a legal entity.