Work · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to My first ever e-book, Hacking Obamacare
This is my first-ever e-book, www.hackingobamacare.co I was lurking on HN for a while reading comments and suggestions on how to write one. Thank you to everyone and their deep knowledge on what does and doesn't work. I wrote hacking obamacare this because I kept seeing lots of my friends, family and loved ones struggling to figure out how to make the health care system work for them. I've been fortunate given that I've been working in the industry for nearly a decade and know where to look and who to talk to if I'm unsure about something. This e-book is by no means a comprehensive review of…
Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. My first ever e-book, Hacking Obamacare launched in 2013; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
- 1

A few days ago, I responded to a comment by bloggergirl offering to read anyone's web copy and help. I shot off an email hoping for a paragraph or two of feedback on my startup's copy. Instead I received a professional, detailed deck of tons of invaluable well thought out feedback. It must have taken her an entire afternoon. Here's a link to it: http://www.slideshare.net/shereefb/recommendations-for-bettermeans To top it off, this isn't someone with a lot of free time on her hands, she's only days away from launching her own startup (page99test) This community blows my mind!
2010 · slideshare.net · its alternatives →
- 2IM
Hello. This year I dived into UI/UX area and at the same time I work as a web developer. I sincerely love making good UI. But at my full time job it's not always possible due to different reasons =\ So I've been posting random UI/UX staff on Twitter, then I made a free book that had 50 tips (posted it here as well). I decided to finish this year by collecting everything I learned and here it is: https://akcium.gumroad.com/l/ui-ux-tips. This time it's a paid one. But, you can check ~20 pages of it, just go to…
2021 · its alternatives →
- 3
authzed▲83A colleague and I made a kids' picture book that introduces authorization concepts. We work at AuthZed and explain these concepts regularly. We thought it'd be fun to put them together in a format accessible and appealing to kids and grownups alike. It would also be helpful when explaining what we do for work and make a unique gift for our families. The goal was a fun story first and foremost. We aimed to present concepts accessibly but made conscious decisions to simplify, knowing we couldn't be comprehensive in a picture book format. We also wanted visually appealing illustrations, so we…
2021 · authzed.com · its alternatives →
- 4

Lessons learned from reddit, hipmunk & YC - in book form!
2014 · withouttheirpermission.com · its alternatives →
- 5TY
I was just browsing through the "Who got hired?" thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36160198) and it caused me to think about all of the things that happened in my real life due to HN. In 2012 I was hired from a post in the "Who's Hiring" thread that turned out to be a complete life and career transformation. It was at a very famous company that everyone here has heard of and used. They were pre-IPO and I got to be a "part" of that IPO. It exposed me to people smarter than I had ever met, and allowed me to learn from them. It allowed me a path into "big tech" that I…
2023 · its alternatives →
- 6

- 7MR
My dad makes the questions, I made the site. I think the genre and the level of difficulty is suited for HN. Hope you enjoy. (I promise no AI-generated questions, they are all hand made!).
Apr 2026 · kviss.eu · its alternatives →
- 8HN
I love books! I had once come across a great list of book recommendations on the LessWrong website ("The Best Textbooks on Every Subject"). But when I had stumbled upon the list a couple of years ago the last comments and recommendations on it were from 2011. And similarly I found that most recommendations on the web suffer from this form of time decay. What I wanted was a site that had high quality recommendations similar to the LessWrong list that would feel fresh and current. Amazon was overwhelming for me since it has a gazillion books on each subject and the "Thanks! Arrived in good…
2015 · its alternatives →
- 9IM
Hi all, i made an iOS HN reader, so i can read HN nicely on my iphone while pushing my daughter on the swing (she likes going on the swing for a good hour on saturdays... go figure). Anyway i figured i'd open source it and show it here: http://splinter.com.au/hacker-news-reader https://github.com/chrishulbert/HackerNewsReader And its on the app store if you couldn't be bothered firing up xcode: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hacker-news-reader/id457519010?ls=1&mt=8 Anyway, hopefully someone out there can learn something looking at the code. There seems to be a dearth of example code /…
2011 · splinter.com.au · its alternatives →
- 10EM
Yesterday I decided I wanted to experiment with different ways of reading HN. After considering a few options, I settled on a Mac app and spent a couple of hours planning/sketching on paper. This morning I fired up Xcode and spent 4 hours hacking away and I must say I'm liking how it's looking. Since the project is in its very early stages, I though that it could be a very good time to get some feedback. I've posted a few screenshots at http://imgur.com/a/rCbVN and uploaded a binary at http://abra.rm-fr.net/~fiam/HackerNews.zip If you have some free time, give a try and let me know what you…
2011 · imgur.com · its alternatives →
- 11IM
I'm writing a book which teaches Python/Django web app development for non-programmers, and fundraising on Kickstarter (passed minimum funding, 2 days left): http://hellowebapp.com https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1868398473/hello-web-app-intro-to-building-web-apps-with-djan It's basically the process I used to teach myself programming as a web designer a few years back, which I then launched a small web app (infant-version of WeddingInviteLove.com), which has grown into my bootstrapped startup which supports me full-time (WeddingLovely.com). Most…
2014 · its alternatives →
- 12

Hi, I'm Luke. A few days ago, I published my e-book called "How I Made My First Sales in 14 Days." All the knowledge I put there comes from: - my own product, Pages.Report - many networking calls with much more experienced founders - analyzing indie hacker projects I would love to hear some feedback from you.
Nov 2025 · lukcode.com · its alternatives →
- 13HA
Hello HN! Here's my November Startup Sprint project (coded in two days). http://hackerlunch.com It allows you to post your lunch plans and lets other hackers join you. I built this because I often see HN users are interested in meeting each other if they are in the same area. I am not a coder, so this version is very rough. If people use it, I will work with others to build a more polished version. I would love some feedback. What do you think? Is this something you will be using?
2010 · hackerlunch.com · its alternatives →
- 14SL
[1/2] Thursday evening (Mar 26) we made a soft launch for https://uidesigndaily.com (a UI website that I built for my wife) The goal was to get some feedback, fix bugs and get about 30-40 subscribers in the mailing list, to see how the newsletter performs. The launch went better than expected, and the feedback was generally positive. Below are some numbers for those interested. I posted it to 4 channels, IH, HN, Reddit and Twitter. It was best received on HN with 203 points, it made it in the top 10, and it stayed on the front page for a good while. Reddit also surprised me, I…
2020 · its alternatives →
- 15IB
Hey so I am making my own book reader and wanted to share it with y'all on hackernews and I saw a submission talking about DRM free books[0] so I decided to submit this submission on Hackernews to show what I am upto :-D I prefer minimalism so I have created three different flavors of it depending upon the particular use-cases and I have linked the most minimalist one as the submission. If someone is interested in a Epub/pdf reader, I have recently made one: https://epub.mirror.forum/ After making that, I was also feeling the need of having standard book downloads and…
Jun 2026 · epub.mirror.forum · its alternatives →
- 16

Hey HN, I'm so excited to finally share with you what I've been working on recently. One month ago I asked my audience what they wanted to learn about Websites, APIs and Servers security [0]. From the feedback, I've identified a few recurring pain points that I've started to address (and many more) in this new book. From theory to practice, you will learn how low-level network and security protocols work. How to configure Cloudflare to secure and scale your web applications. How to create serverless applications and which database to chose with serverless functions. How to optimize your…
2023 · kerkour.com · its alternatives →
- 17

A quick start tutorial to help you collect your first bug bounty.
2015 · leanpub.com · its alternatives →
- 18WW
Over three months ago, I posted my book on HN and got tremendous +ve reponse. I am happy to inform that I have published the book to leanpub as per the comments I got on HN itself! It is pay as you go model, and the minimum is $0 because I wanted to contribute back to the FOSS Community
2016 · its alternatives →
- 19GA
hi, TLDR: I’m a programmer/solopreneur who got into online marketing, built a marketplace website, and just finished a book about online marketing that’ll appeal to programmers and other technical types. Now I want to recruit early readers to review it (good or bad–as your please) on Amazon. Any takers (non-binding, of course), contact me here: https://www.jackkinsella.ie/customer_support_requests/new Long Version: Six years ago, I programmed a web app, but it didn’t get much traffic, so I started researching everything on online marketing. I thought the best way to…
2016 · its alternatives →
- 20BM
Hey HN crowd! Two days ago I realized I'm almost unable to read a book or a long article without getting distracted by Twitter/HN/Reddit/Work. The situation is so terrible, I'm even getting afraid of big articles, and my ReadItLater list is getting pretty long (shameful I know) ... and I'm pretty sure most of you are in this situation :) Being used to TL;DRs on long reddit posts, I thought it would be great to have these for everything, so I quickly hacked this website: http://www.too-long-didnt-read.com/ Here is an example of TL;DR: http://www.too-long-didnt-read.com/5tropy I would love to…
2011 · too-long-didnt-read.com · its alternatives →
- 21

This isn't your fancy new javascript gizmo, but funny guy with a funny story to promote his toddler app. I'm sure you'll agree. Humor me. 1st let me tell you how I came upon hacker news, and why I read it everyday.<p>I'm not a programmer, and only half-decent designer. I'm much more of a 'project manager' type of person. I wrote a blog post 2 years ago on how to do a fancy trick with css3 with box shadows. It was clever, and has been expanded and implemented all over the web. One day (while sitting in church) my phone kept buzzing every couple of seconds with comments on that blog…
2012 · itunes.apple.com · its alternatives →
- 22

I was trying to find better content (doom) scrolling sources (quit Instagram, YouTube, etc). HN was great but I couldn't read properly on my phone hence I built Hacker Newspaper -- a mobile first HN reader. Key things: - Mobile-first, newspaper-style UI - Tap goes to comments, not article - Nested threads that don't get crushed on small screens Still WIP, would love some feedback. Thanks!
Feb 2026 · hackernews.paperd.ink · its alternatives →
- 23MW
Over the weekend I wrote a small web app that takes an RSS feed for a blog, grabs the feed, cleans up the HTML, strips out small irrelevant images and compiles them into an e-book with chapter anchors. It requires a Google login since it uses the Google Reader "API". As an example, I was going on a long vacation and had recently discovered Paul Buchheit's blog. I used this tool (which was then just a Python script) to create an e-book and I literally read his blog "cover to cover". It's still rough around the edges, but I figured I'd iron those out if at least one other person thinks they…
2011 · blog2kindle.com · its alternatives →
- 24

Today I've published my first eBook on Go called "Everyday Golang". I wanted to share the news with you, what to expect and a bit about the story behind it.
2021 · blog.alexellis.io · its alternatives →
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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →