Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

news.ycombinator.com

481–490 of 769 posts

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#481

My hobby is organizing in-person meetups for random people to get together, chat and make friends. Barely structured, if at all. I've found this rewarding and ended up making friends this way. You have to accept that 5-15% of the people who would show up to something like this are genuine weirdos you probably don't want to be around. And another 10% at any given meetup are autistic or neuro-divergent but well-meaning…

> You have to accept that 5-15% of the people who would show up to something like this are genuine weirdos

Thanks for unlocking a new anxiety for me.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#482
I play vintage baseball. It's baseball using rules and equipment from the 19th century. There's nothing else in my life that connects me to my eight-year old self, but the feeling I get running out onto the field or going up to bat is exactly what it was back in Little League. It's also a really fun community of passionate baseball nerds, and a good motivation to stay fit.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#483

I'm very much into niche hobbies: they usually have nice tight & friendly communities. Below are some of my favorite I'd love to share: - FPV drone flying: once you've spent 5-10 hours to get initial reflexes for the controls in the simulator, the first flight on a real machine outside feels magical. - Electric unicycles: the "mind-controlled" PEV, and arguably the best way to get around in San Francisco. - Foiling:…

>FPV drone flying What sort of set-up would be a good one for a beginner?

That's the fun part: most of the stuff currently on the market is quite good. The quads, the gear — if a few people recommend it on Reddit, it's likely totally fine for a beginner and it will fly well.

A few pointers:

The guy we all watch on YouTube is called Joshua Bardwell.

Regarding radio, the protocol you're looking for is ELRS. Everything has converged on ELRS, it's open source and crazy good. ELRS at 250mW will survive more than your video feed, and many ELRS transmitters go to 1W.

Transmitter (the controller): There are options, but you can't go wrong with anything from RadioMaster. FPV quads don't need many inputs, so honestly a RadioMaster Pocket is completely fine. I have both the Pocket and the TX16S (their flagship transmitter, I also fly fixed wings), and it makes zero difference for quads. This is completely up to your budget, just get something with ELRS.

The video situation is a bit more interesting, but generally: analog is alive and kicking with brutal power and range, but shitty video. In digital, DJI is king, although a bit expensive. They sell entire drones, even some (very meh) FPV, but they also sell cameras, video transmitters and goggles for "proper" FPV builds, and these kick ass. If you don't like DJI, there are alternatives (WalkSnail, HDZero), but nothing as open and as compatible as analog.

First you spend some time on a sim. They're all good nowadays, I personally fly Uncrashed the most, but I also have Liftoff and Tryp FPV, it's all good fun. The flight models feel slightly different, but so do real-life quads, so unless you're trying to match your real-life quad down to the last atom, you won't notice any issues.

You either build a quad from scratch (not hard at all, but it takes time and there's some soldering) or you buy a finished one (we call these BNF — bind and fly), or you get something in between and add your own parts (e.g. a camera + VTX (video transmitter) to match your goggles).

You choose the size and type of the quad according to where and how you want to fly. A "tiny whoop" for your apartment, a "cinewhoop" for high-quality video indoors and outdoors, a 3inch freestyle quad for a big garden or a park, a 5inch (the golden standard) for racing and seriously whipping it around, a 7inch for huge environments and longer cruising, and anything bigger for serious long-range missions.

I wouldn't go larger than 5 inches for a first quad, you'll likely crash it a few [dozens of] times and larger quads are both more fragile and more expensive to fix if you do break something.

Crashing a quad is a completely normal thing and they're built to withstand it. Usually you'll just ding or bend a prop, you bend it back and replace it (<1€/$) when it's really bad.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#484

I’m obsessed with powerlifting. Not only because big numbers get bigger but also the physical changes that occur with a healthy dose of lifting each week. It’s also easy to track lifting stats and there are tons of analysis tools out there if data analysis is something you enjoy. Also, I’m trying to learn guitar - right now following the Justinguitar.com lessons

How much ya bench?

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#485
post #73

My hobby is organizing in-person meetups for random people to get together, chat and make friends. Barely structured, if at all. I've found this rewarding and ended up making friends this way. You have to accept that 5-15% of the people who would show up to something like this are genuine weirdos you probably don't want to be around. And another 10% at any given meetup are autistic or neuro-divergent but well-meaning…

Between the genuine weirdos, the autistic and/or the neuro-divergent, is there anyone left, really? Do the "normies" genuinely exist? Happy-go-lucky, knows a bit about everything but doesn't nerd out on anything, picks up every conversation subject and listens and holds their own in a manner that is just right? I am genuinely curious about the existence of these "superhumans".

The "normie" doesn't really exist. Everyone is kind of weird in some aspect, which might not be obvious on a surface level.

But having gone to a bunch of programming meetups, the majority of people are perfectly pleasant and good to socialise with. The weirdos are usually non tech people who have an app or crypto idea they want help with. Or just total crazy people who just showed up to the first event they could find regardless of topic.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#486

I make my own hot sauce: https://successfulsoftware.net/2024/08/04/making-your-own-ho... It's quite easy and you don't have to make it super hot. I am currently growing chillis for the next batch.

I've got a local guy that provides me all my hot sauce. I used to buy from supermarkets but I've become convinced that sourcing everything I eat locally is the way to go.

Anyway I only need to order from him like once per year because he sends me about 1l of this carolina reaper sauce that is so potent it only takes a few drops.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#487

1. Lacto fermented food, you can spend plenty of time making unique food not available anywhere. Good niche to start is lacto fermented hot sauce. You can go very mild or crazy hot depending on your preference. 2. Sourdough is pretty understood, but there is hardly anything about gluten free sourdough. Basic principles are the same, you make a starter from flour and water, but you need to make it across different glu…

You lost me at gluten-free sourdough.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#488
post #89

How niche is retrocomputing? I absolutely love my ancient machines, and I use them to explore period applications, much more than games. I also love to restore and preserve them. There’s something magical about a Sun workstation Solaris 2 a Frog Design Trinitron monitor. or a Microvax running VMS and DECWindows. Or a multi-user Altair Z80. I think it’s sad a lot of software was lost and some platforms were denied the…

I have a working Apple II with some of the original games, manuals, etc. Let me know if there's a way to contact you. Happy to send it your way if you cover shipping or something along those lines.

I’m easy to find. There are very few Bánffys named Ricardo.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#489

Not sure if you're into 40s music, but there's a little known instrument called a theatre organ. It was conceived when silent films were taking off, and theaters needed some form of background music. Paying an organist was much cheaper than hiring a whole orchestra, so a lot of theaters opted to get an organ as a cost saving measure (imagine, lol). Anyways, a few have survived, and I learned the basics of playing one…

Holy cow what a workout!! Thanks for sharing this.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has been my experience that social deduction games are very attractive to folks who have problems socializing in day-to-day life. You can see them almost come alive when they are given the permission.

I think a lot of people need prompting for something to talk about. They have no confidence that topics they bring up will be interesting to anyone else. So any kind of gathering that takes that pressure off will be attractive.

I've been trying to come up with some interesting prompts after observing just asking someone "What's been happening" yields nothing but "Oh not much, work". So far the old classics of just probing in to what they do for work, what they did last weekend, etc and then finding any bit of info to drill down in to more interesting topics works best.

Also very important to recognize most conversation starters are someone serving the ball to you, you need to hit it back with a continuation. If you're giving one word dead end answers you've just caught the ball and dropped it.

Post reply on HN