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Ask HN: Cool Things You've Done (Brag Thread)
181–190 of 253 posts
Re: Ask HN: Cool Things You've Done (Brag Thread)
#182I never really feel like I've done anything, but here's some moments of personal accomplishment:
* drew a weekly comic strip that published online during college.
* discovered a corner detection algorithm using radon transforms.
* built operational sensor networks for the military.Re: Ask HN: Cool Things You've Done (Brag Thread)
#183I paid a large portion of my tuition by building 4 of the University Department websites. UofT is Canada's biggest university.
It was nice to pay them with their own money :P
Re: Ask HN: Cool Things You've Done (Brag Thread)
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hope so. I have no A-levels and no prior college education (due to being on the street at that point). The risk I think I have is that if I find myself out of work then no matter how good I am I won't find a job in a world where HR systems have check boxes to filter candidates. If "has degree" is a pre-req on a position then currently I won't even have my CV considered. The MSc is the highest level thing I could at…
I'm UK too and have no A-levels or Degree. I studied and dropped out of performing arts! No issue in getting a job though. It's the experience, passion and determination that counts IMO. And only a few monolithic companies have those checkboxes.
My experience exactly (dropped out after 2 years). If a company requires a degree as an absolute, they most likely don't have super smart people working there, or it wont be a particularly great place to work (the government and large financial institutions come to mind).
Re: Ask HN: Cool Things You've Done (Brag Thread)
#185I wasn't going to, but reading a few of these inspired me... then reading a few more depressed me (mine aren't so glamorous), but I'll do it anyway.
* helped my mother raise my brother and me. This past New Year, I was able to fly my brother up to live with me for a week, showing him what you can accomplish with hard work and dedication.
* wrote an essay that received a comment saying that the post had helped the commenter overcome something he had been struggling with through years of therapy and self-doubt.
* overturned our high school's regulation that allows only seniors to take classes at the university.
* taught myself Calc 2 in high school and got a perfect score on the AP exam; my best friend and I were the first people at my school to get above a 4 on any AP Calc exam. I didn't consider this a great accomplishment until I ran into my old HS math teacher a few years back and learned that she now tells our story to all of her Calc students to motivate them.
* started a rock band in college, played some really cool venues, did one show with a band that now gets airplay on Sirius XM, and won a few competitions.
* landed a girlfriend (of 2 years now) who is out of my league.
But I think my greatest accomplishment is that I seem to have made my parents proud.
Re: Ask HN: Cool Things You've Done (Brag Thread)
#186Re: Ask HN: Cool Things You've Done (Brag Thread)
#187I've successfully conditioned every manager I've ever worked for to accept rolling in around 10:30 as normal.
Keep pushing it. I've made 1pm now the usual time to expect my arrival.
Re: Ask HN: Cool Things You've Done (Brag Thread)
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
I paid off at age 24.
Can you please elaborate? (Either of you.) Thanks!
My dad took loan to build our house and for my sister's marriage when I was in college. When I started working at the age of 21, within three years I was lucky enough to pay those loans back.
Re: Ask HN: Cool Things You've Done (Brag Thread)
#189I don't normally mention this stuff, but since you asked... * I started at university when I was 13. * I won the Putnam Competition. * I hold a world record for computing Pi. * My bsdiff binary patching tool is used on tens of millions of computers and has saved several hundred human-years of waiting for software updates to download. * I found a security bug in an Intel CPU. (Osvik/Shamir/Tromer also found it, but I…
For a hilarious usage of this stuff, see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079
Partway through the thread, one of the dropbox founders tries to get him on board!
Re: Ask HN: Cool Things You've Done (Brag Thread)
#190Wow, after reading through this thread I'm pretty impressed with some of the folks here.
As for me:
* I worked on software that was used to design a small part of one of the sexiest consumer electronics products in the world.
* I built a browser game five years ago that's stil running, with a few hundred active players.