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

I sell onions on the Internet (2019)

deepsouthventures.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 180 posts

Re: I sell onions on the Internet (2019)

#71

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

eightturn wrote: post #56
eightturn wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What mainly caused it: I kept getting laid off, and that nonsense infuriated me. So I was actively trying to find ways to save myself. Great domains, via the expiry marketplace, slowly became an unfair advantage I could lean into and compete with larger companies, just because I owned this unique .com domain. Hope that makes sense. I've written a few essays on my experience being laid off, if you're bored and wanna r…

oop, didn't see your 2nd question... yes, I still monitor expiring domain names... it's a very sticky habit, and ruthlessly fun... it's sortof like my morning paper.

Oh at this point I am trying to stop myself from getting into it since I know that I would get sucked into it like you too :) since I wouldn't have the funds to buy websites anyway and with things like PPP (Power purchasing parity) working against my favour it would be hard.

I did buy fossbox.cloud for less than a $ per year (81 cents iirc) when I wanted to build my own cloud with its own nice-ities.

Currently its just hosting some simple python servers and nothing much because I feel extremely lazy to host anything there because of lack of time mostly due to the fear of studies or similar but yea (read my another comment here for more context, sorry if it got long)

Let me know if you want the domain xD, I will transfer it to ya for free so that people like you can work in cloud industry too perhaps xD. We need people like you working in vps/cloud industry and maybe I can try to better explain some other things too!

Imagine if this domain of fossbox.cloud supercharges your journey into vps provider/cloud provider xD (let me know what you think, maybe we can collaborate which can be insane haha, 100% tell me more about your thoughts on the whole thing please!)

Also another question but how much do you think a domain like fossbox.cloud is worth? Not that I am selling it to someone to be honest but Did I make a profit xD?

Re: I sell onions on the Internet (2019)

#72

Post by ciconia »

> Them: We leverage automated machine learning to enhance your existing BI visualizations with more proactive insights

> Me: I sell onions on the internet

That's exactly how I feel about AI! Instead of all that useless nonsense, just keeping it real, doing something that's actually useful for individuals and for society.

Re: I sell onions on the Internet (2019)

#73

Post by LadyCailin »

eightturn wrote: post #63
edm0nd wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is anyone really getting into trouble growing Vidalia onions not in Georgia? Like if I plant some in my yard and start selling them online or at the local farmers market, what is anyone really going to do? Seems kinda weird they have a government granted monopoly on them.

If you grow them in the Vidalia region (20 counties around Vidalia, GA), you're aok... but if you grow them outside of that area, and call them a Vidalia, you'll get into hot water. The law mainly came into existence cause Texas farmers began growing regular yellow onions and slapping the 'Vidalia' name on it, and customers would get pissed. So all the Vidalia farmers got together and got a Federal law passed that sa…

It’s only Vidalia if it’s grown in the Vidalia region of France, otherwise it’s just sparkling onion.

Re: I sell onions on the Internet (2019)

#75

Post by forty »

LadyCailin wrote: post #73
eightturn wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you grow them in the Vidalia region (20 counties around Vidalia, GA), you're aok... but if you grow them outside of that area, and call them a Vidalia, you'll get into hot water. The law mainly came into existence cause Texas farmers began growing regular yellow onions and slapping the 'Vidalia' name on it, and customers would get pissed. So all the Vidalia farmers got together and got a Federal law passed that sa…

It’s only Vidalia if it’s grown in the Vidalia region of France, otherwise it’s just sparkling onion.

Yeah thanksfully in Europe we have AOP / AOC (protected name of origin) so that names can have a meaning. Good that Vidalia farmers seem to have managed to do the same somehow.

Regarding Champagne, the funniest part is that Russia granted exclusivity of the name to some local sparkling wine, such that actual wines from the Champagne aera need to use some alternative names there ^^

Re: I sell onions on the Internet (2019)

#76

Post by h3half »

leonhard wrote: post #64
chrneu wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found more and more often the last few years that a lot of the long time businesses I use still do most of their ordering by phone. Or some version that involves talking to actual person. The restaurants I go to still generally do phone ordering because they care about the quality of their ingredients. They want to discuss and talk about it with someone before placing an order. The engineering and consulting fir…

can you elaborate on the phone basis with engineers? I can’t really imagine how that wouldn’t be much more hassle discussing details without written documents, so I’m intrigued

The way NASA did it for decades was conference calls. Nowadays it's Teams meetings.

The outputs of the meetings are decisions that are later encoded in very many very long documents. It's just faster to hash out engineering details when the relevant engineers are able to talk to each other in real time and relevant decision makers are present to be able to unofficially bless or reject what the engineers come up with (formal acceptance of these decisions is of course a paperwork thing).

So, in this domain anyway, it's not a literal phone call. But it's what we see as the modern equivalent.

Re: I sell onions on the Internet (2019)

#77

Post by [deleted] »

ciconia wrote: post #72

> Them: We leverage automated machine learning to enhance your existing BI visualizations with more proactive insights > Me: I sell onions on the internet That's exactly how I feel about AI! Instead of all that useless nonsense, just keeping it real, doing something that's actually useful for individuals and for society.

[deleted]

Re: I sell onions on the Internet (2019)

#78

Post by forty »

pverheggen wrote: post #70
edm0nd wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is anyone really getting into trouble growing Vidalia onions not in Georgia? Like if I plant some in my yard and start selling them online or at the local farmers market, what is anyone really going to do? Seems kinda weird they have a government granted monopoly on them.

It's similar to French wines and cheese. News to me that we have this in the US but it totally makes sense. We have a few of these in the PNW, like Hermiston melons and Walla Walla onions.

It's a broader EU thing (named AOP - protected designation of origin) rather than French only, though you are right that France has plenty of those for wines and cheese. But it's also protecting Greek Feta, Italian Parma ham, Scottish Shetland Wool, etc

Re: I sell onions on the Internet (2019)

#79

Post by forty »

eightturn wrote: post #45
stephenlf wrote: post #7

Absolutely insane way to start a business. “Let me blow 2 grand on a domain name. Not sure what it’s for, yet.”

author here... in my defense, it was an accidental purchase : ) I thought it was gonna sell for $5k or more... but the music stopped when I bid ...

I was also quite chocked that you did this ^^ I'm not sure who is the naive one, either you or me, but I would never have assumed that such a name would sell for more than 2k (but at least it was worth it for you here).

I'm really wondering how important the domain was here. I feel it's more just what got you the motivation to do something rather than anything else then your hard work and the quality of the product made the rest (that makes me think of Dumbo's magic feather) but I read in another comment and your bio that you seem to feel strongly about domain names and how much they impact the success of a business (you probably know better)

Re: I sell onions on the Internet (2019)

#80

Post by forty »

cultofmetatron wrote: post #20
stephenlf wrote: post #7

Absolutely insane way to start a business. “Let me blow 2 grand on a domain name. Not sure what it’s for, yet.”

been sitting on fullstackjavascript.com for years. been too busy writing javascript to do anything with it and now I work almost exclusively in elixir.

I was going to make a joke on how fullstackelixir.com would probably still be available, but I checked just in case and it's not ^^
Post reply on HN