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Ask HN: Recommend subs/products for hacker/developer? (Proton Mail, Kagi etc.)

2 points by purple-leafy 2y ago

Hey HN. I'm an early-career developer. I'm looking for free, or paid products, that can improve my life in some way based on context - they don't have to just be digital! I currently pay for the following products: - Proton Mail (Unlimited): Email, Passwords, VPN, Storage, Calendar ... replaces Google suite. - Kagi (Unlimited): Search Engine, replaces Google Search. - GitHub Copilot (Solo): Okay for coding. - Anthropic Claude (AI/LLM): Just to bounce ideas around and help me with UI design mockups. - Chrome developer account ($5): So I can make Chrome extensions. - Spotify (music): Its okay, doesn't have some stuff I want (Roky Erickson etc - seriously check out "Roky Erickson - The Evil One (Album)" on YouTube if you haven't before, and enjoy Old Rock) - Steam (games): Fallout 4 etc. ..... CONTEXT _______ I'm quite private, but not reclusive, I don't have social media or read the news, I own a "dumb" flip-phone, I basically only use this site for my world and tech news. Hence Proton Mail, Kagi, and staying off socials? I like privacy and security tools, and information management tools. Should I try Obsidian??? I'm roughly 3 years into a dev career (young-ish). Mostly doing frontend with the usual suspects (React, TypeScript), but trying to break into C#/.NET commercially. I've been exploring C in my spare time, and want to try low-level Graphics Programming (C or C++). I like paying for technical courses and books, papers etc (though free is even better).

purple-leafy 2y ago
Obsidian is something I just thought of. Could be good for someone like me? I currently just take notes on Apple Notes, but need something "better" but not "over the top" to get going in. I want to remember "how to program" and "why I did this" etc.
solardev 2y ago
Unreal Engine is free with a huge ecosystem to learn from. Jetbrains IDEs are worth every dollar.
davidjhall 2y ago
*Fair warning -- I LOVE Obsidian.md ; not an evangelist, per se, but it's a great tool. Free and practically future-proof ( all markdown; some extra flavor markdown but that's optional, extensions anyone can build in javascript ) Macros that help me do redundant things with a keystroke, a calendar that automatically populates with my custom template when I click on the date ( could set it to do it when I log in every day but not always in My-Day mode.) I pay for replication because it supports the devs -- you can customize replication yourself with existent tools --- dropbox, syncthing, etc. If you're an author, there are tools that make it more Scrivener-like. If you're a TTRPG player, there's tutorials on importing rules, rolling dice and autogenerating from tables, etc. Anyway, I thoroughly recommend
_v9nk 2y ago
There is Titan Email.

2 points by purple-leafy 2y ago

purple-leafy 2y ago

Obsidian is something I just thought of. Could be good for someone like me? I currently just take notes on Apple Notes, but need something "better" but not "over the top" to get going in. I want to remember "how to program" and "why I did this" etc.

solardev 2y ago

Unreal Engine is free with a huge ecosystem to learn from. Jetbrains IDEs are worth every dollar.

davidjhall 2y ago

*Fair warning -- I LOVE Obsidian.md ; not an evangelist, per se, but it's a great tool. Free and practically future-proof ( all markdown; some extra flavor markdown but that's optional, extensions anyone can build in javascript ) Macros that help me do redundant things with a keystroke, a calendar that automatically populates with my custom template when I click on the date ( could set it to do it when I log in every day but not always in My-Day mode.) I pay for replication because it supports the devs -- you can customize replication yourself with existent tools --- dropbox, syncthing, etc. If you're an author, there are tools that make it more Scrivener-like. If you're a TTRPG player, there's tutorials on importing rules, rolling dice and autogenerating from tables, etc. Anyway, I thoroughly recommend

_v9nk 2y ago

There is Titan Email.