Hey, cool! I'd simplify the page a lot. Right now it (impressively) feels like a full product, but I want to see it as more of a tool/fun thing. I'd cut back a lot and focus on the images. For example, right now, when you load the home page, there is not a single picture in sight.
I think the pricing is a bit odd because I imagine using this for one or two cars, not 3 or more. Maybe some would be willing to pay a couple bucks per car, so you could raise the prices, and make 3 focused tiers instead of 5.
There's something odd about the pictures too. The thumbnails don't look like toy cars, they look like (photographically) sharpened images. It's only when I open the full picture that I see the toy-car-ness. Not sure what you can do about that.
The backgrounds, too, don't scream 'toy-car'. I think it might feel more like a toy if you render it on a desk, on a hot wheels track, etc.
That is what I noticed, critically. Way to build something.
I found Kotlin easy to pick up, and use, but there are always complicated parts of it I haven't yet grokked. I'm sure a working knowledge of it is easy to obtain but I'm with you on the more dense pieces.
Fundamentally, why wouldn't cell phones ENABLE more wandering? You can call help a lot more easily with them. That's the crazy thing. They have built-in tracking as well.
Of course we now know that pervasive access vector has been enshittified by Google/Apple and the associated social media mafias to assault children's minds with the unrestrained/unregulated full arsenal of the advertising psychological manipulation playbook.
Parents are simply regressing/withdrawing from the sheer assault of unyeilding economic stress/disruption, negative news floods, information intrusion, dual incomes, etc. That passes on to the kids.
This is why the Sabbath matters (see a recent HN post of an article from the New Yorker). If not for intentional, ritual rest, we will accelerate and innovate and accelerate.
It's your system too. It helps keep all of us more safe, and more alive, than we would be without anything. If you succeed in tearing down our system, it will be a very bad time for everyone.
I'm not saying we should have nothing, I'm saying we shouldn't have this.
If our policing system kept us safe americans would be the safest people in history. In fact our safety would have doubled over the last few decades, as our police spending has. Does that fit your experience or knowledge?
My position here is that this system isn't failing at its purpose but that its purpose is in fact something other than keeping us safe. We should tear it down and construct a different system, specialized towards that goal.
And anyway this "all of us" viewpoint is one you can have based on your experience but I can't have based on mine. My people are taught to fear the police, they are a terror to us. The only violence I have ever experienced in my life has been at the hands of police. You're asking me to believe they keep me safe when my experience and the data show me otherwise.
A drawing of a cup has 'cup-ness', as far as our mind is concerned. It's not about the micro mechanisms of edge detection or color or whatever, it's about how we recognize the quality of a cup in real cups and things that push the margins for what a cup is and in drawings of a cup.
For me, it looks like a La Quinta while the sun is up, and then just before sunset, I head back out to make sure the alignment on my telescope is set. It also looks like a couple of cans worth of mosquito repellent. It looks like plenty of water. The last time I went when it was that hot during the day, it was still above 90° at 2am.
This is one of those adventures where brave blurs into crazy
I think there is mixed evidence this is beneficial vs fixed prices. I'm not outright against the idea, but there has to be robust pricing and metadata available so you can be a high information consumer when shopping for non emergency services.
I think the pricing is a bit odd because I imagine using this for one or two cars, not 3 or more. Maybe some would be willing to pay a couple bucks per car, so you could raise the prices, and make 3 focused tiers instead of 5.
There's something odd about the pictures too. The thumbnails don't look like toy cars, they look like (photographically) sharpened images. It's only when I open the full picture that I see the toy-car-ness. Not sure what you can do about that.
The backgrounds, too, don't scream 'toy-car'. I think it might feel more like a toy if you render it on a desk, on a hot wheels track, etc.
That is what I noticed, critically. Way to build something.