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Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

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Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

#161
post #128

Learn about intelligent design theory and how it impacts biology and computer science. Google papers by Dembski for the mathematical underpinning. I recommend his papers 'search for a search' and 'specification: the pattern that signifies intelligence'. Read Winston Ewert's paper 'Dependency Graph of Life' for an amazing application of CS to bioinformatics, and 'algorithmic specified complexity in the game of life' f…

You’re suggesting that OP devote his or her time to learning pseudo-science. Hard to think of anything that could possibly have less value than that.

Have you read these papers, or are you just repeating something you read online?

Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a fellow language lover I second the suggestion, but not the reasoning. What's your evidence for "some thoughts only make sense in a given language"? From what I've read, this isn't agreed upon in the linguistic community. As for Esperanto, it's heavily biased towards Western speakers, so it wouldn't necessarily be easy to start with for someone whose native language is non-Western.

On the most superficial level: It's easier to talk about snow or numbers in languages that have more words for these concepts than in languages that have less.

Languages with lots of words for snow tend to be used places where there is lots of snow to talk about. Languages with few words for snow tend to be used in places that don't get much snow and thus don't need to talk about it.

In short, if you need to talk about any subject learn the local language (whatever that is) so you can talk to the locals about the topic.

Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

#163
post #3

Kubernetes.. almost all the companies are on it or looking at it in one way or another.

I like Docker, I like microservices, but I feel like I'm just not excited about Kubernetes itself. There seems to be a "bullshit complexity" that people add to it that I really don't think is going to stick. But, I really do like the "GitOps" experience. A merge to a master branch is a deploy. Should I just get over this perception and learn Kubernetes, or could I find joy and professional usefulness out of another t…

Kubernetes has some complexity but with some time investment it becomes clear.

You should learn this. Almost every company moving to the cloud with containers is leveraging it. I'd start with something simple like a GKE cluster on Google Cloud. Deploy a website using nginx and go from there!

Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

#164
Singing, improv and performing in general. It will pay dividends in everything you do, not only just relationships and holding powerpoint presentations. Once you do it long enough your personality starts to shift more towards your "performer personality" and your manner of speech, way of making up conversations becomes a natural part of you. I recommend this especially to those who suffer from social anxiety. It is the ultimate treatment that no psychologist, no drugs can offer

Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

#165
Sleeping. Your health, your immune system, acuity, your very sanity, depend on it. This often means uncomfortable decisions such as saying "No" more often. Deep Sleep of Your Neural Network, not Deep Learning of Artificial Neural Networks, is the new craze, hopefully :-)

Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

#166
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re suggesting that OP devote his or her time to learning pseudo-science. Hard to think of anything that could possibly have less value than that.

Have you read these papers, or are you just repeating something you read online?

I mean, I haven’t watched every 9-hour-long flat earther video on YouTube either, but I’m still pretty certain that the world’s not flat.

Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you'll die within a month if modern society collapses. Just focus on making a difference on current society instead of becoming a fatalist.

There's "modern society collapse" and there's "a 5 day blackout in a city", most people are not even prepared for #2, it doesn't hurt to plan for that.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

#168

Some suggestions: - Build something. A new workbench for your office. Fix up an old car. Build a pull-up bar in your garage. Use your hands, cut some wood and metal, and treat yourself to a new tool or two. Do this with every project and you will have a nice tool collection before you know it. - Learn to take pictures on a manual camera. You can do this with a modern automatic camera if it has a manual mode. Learn ab…

The cooking thing really hits home. I work in a high stress, banking environment at a fortune 500 company, and I eat out most days. I know theoretically how to cook, but between the time it takes to shop, cook, and clean, AND I'm doing well financially it's so hard to convince myself to cook. Living alone doesn't help either.

If you happen to enjoy it, cook. If you don't want to cook, you don't have to. It's also possible to eat healthily if you eat out, especially if you have enough money.

Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get a slow cooker and have your groceries delivered. You can make delicious, nutritious 1 pot meals that last you 2 or 3 days a pop with minimal prep time and cleanup.

In a similar vain, I recommend getting a sous vide circulator. You'll make perfect steaks and pork chops every time, and it's extremely clean and convenient. You can cook all sorts of other things sous vide style as well. I recently got one, and I've been cooking at home a lot more often as a result. I think more people would cook their own food if they knew how to make it taste really good.

I fully support the value system here in that we both want people cooking for themselves more, but I have to say that sous vide cooked steaks taste like boiled meat to me, aka terrible. People around me are swear by it until I slap a ribeye onto the pan for them, high heat, making sure to render the fat.

To each their own but imo a sous vide is a big, expensive, plastic waste of counter space.

Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

#170

Starting conversations with strangers. Squat and deadlift. Eating healthier. Doing something kind for someone else every day. Honesty. Listening to people you disagree with. Driving safer (this is the most dangerous thing we do on a regular basis). Meditation.

Honesty is not a skill, lying successfully is. Neither is kindness. (And forced kindness can be patronizing.)

It's a habit. Personally, I think lying takes up way too much mental space. It's sort of like driving with the seat belt unbuckled; just makes me anxious.

It's a skill to be honest faster, and with less hesitation. The faster you can be honest, the more benefits you reap from it.

Kindness is similar. You want to be kinder faster, with less hesitation.

Otherwise, it will feel forced.

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