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Ask HN: What rabbit hole(s) did you dive into recently?

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Re: Ask HN: What rabbit hole(s) did you dive into recently?

#211

Post by adipose »

brcmthrowaway wrote: post #184
peteforde wrote: post #135

I did not realize that learning Fusion 360 was going to be such a huge chapter in my current journey. Looking back, I'm kind of stumped at how I avoided it as long as I did. I would now put learning CAD in the same category of mandatory life skill as learning to code. The ability to translate what you see in your mind to something that can be repeatably fabricated is an incredible power move, akin to learning how to…

Do NOT use this proprietary nonsense, learn FreeCAD

mind elaborating on this? as an outsider to CAD software i don't know the landscape — i'm finding some concerning things about fusion360 when i search for pros/cons but i'm not sure how to weigh the opinions, e.g how relevant the commercial lock-in could be for a hobbyist

Re: Ask HN: What rabbit hole(s) did you dive into recently?

#212

Post by 698969 »

perihelions wrote: post #185

PDF files, and why the heck they are so slow to read. Hours upon hours of perf(1) and fiddling with ugly things in C. My main takeaway is everyone in the world is doing things HORRIBLY wrong and there's no way to stop them. (Digression: did you know libpng, the one everyone uses, is not supposed to be an optimized production library—rather it's a reference implementation? It's almost completely unoptimized, no really…

> a very popular format that gets EXTREMELY high compression ratios on bilevel images of types typical to scanned pdfs

Funny you say that, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JBIG2#Character_substitution_e...

Re: Ask HN: What rabbit hole(s) did you dive into recently?

#213

Post by vbezhenar »

Our company decided that they want to make an electronic device. They've found an electronics engineer who devised a schematics and wrote some kind of PoC firmware. I wrote "driver" for it (really just wrapper around serial port) for our software to consume it.

That guy was busy with other tasks, so iterating on firmware was too slow. So I decided to dive in. I mean I knew C a bit.

So I had to learn STM32 arm, I had to learn low level C, I had to learn assembly, I had to get some understanding of those electronics things to get some sense of it, I had to read tons of manuals and datasheets.

Long story short, I rewrote this PoC firmware into something I could bear. It's so nice to control all software from the start to the end.

Now our company wants to rework this device into "smart", add display with touchscreen and stuff. So I'm digging into embedded Linux programming, LoL.

I'm generally consider myself full stack developer, so I can write frontend, backend, kubernetes, setup servers, deal with cloud stuff. However digging that deep feels like testing my limits.

Re: Ask HN: What rabbit hole(s) did you dive into recently?

#215

Post by thepuppet33r »

Why doesn't my Powershell terminal work in Visual Studio Code?

What do you mean my launch.json file is missing? It was there yesterday?

Wait, I can set up custom launch settings in my launch.json? What else?

Ok, so I've got seven different launch settings in there, and now to see if I can have one used for markdown for my markdown word editor.

Oh, neat, lots of extensions for markdown.

Wait, you can install vim?

An hour later, and I've completely re-broken my VSC and am reinstalling from scratch.

Re: Ask HN: What rabbit hole(s) did you dive into recently?

#216

Post by nwiswell »

swah wrote: post #177
peteforde wrote: post #135

I did not realize that learning Fusion 360 was going to be such a huge chapter in my current journey. Looking back, I'm kind of stumped at how I avoided it as long as I did. I would now put learning CAD in the same category of mandatory life skill as learning to code. The ability to translate what you see in your mind to something that can be repeatably fabricated is an incredible power move, akin to learning how to…

This was super cool. I guess if you want to "simulate" its a whole different world?

Not really! Many of the major CAD packages have built-in or add-on packages for FEA. Some of them will even do dynamic multiphysics simulations -- so for example you could model an internal combustion engine, simulate the combustion cycle, and measure the torque.

(That's not a beginner-level project, to be clear)

example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dejend_kx94

Re: Ask HN: What rabbit hole(s) did you dive into recently?

#217

Post by mrfinn »

Video console emulators and AI. Emulators made me dig into video games history, which some I know first hand. I'm utterly amazed by the tools people is developing everywhere. AI, well it marvels me every single day. Funny enough both topics end up hitting again and again another obsession of mine, the dreadful laws of copyright.

Re: Ask HN: What rabbit hole(s) did you dive into recently?

#218

Post by cabbageears »

tunesmith wrote: post #179

Texas Hold'em. I know there are probably plenty of experts here but after decades avoiding it, I'm getting into it because I found a group of friends that played online. I first discovered that there are tables (and tables and tables) of preflop card combinations that tell you whether to raise/call/fold based off of where you are in the dealing order and how many players are active. Then I learn that's basically deri…

>The biggest dumbest problem is when blinds accelerate to the point that the minimum bet is greater than what Kelly would recommend. Some online poker sites are aggressive about this, to the point that you are forced to make irrational choices pretty quickly or get blinded out. A way to juice the house advantage I guess. It's almost enough to make me give up and find the next project.

The house does not have an advantage with poker. With player games, they earn money from hosting by taking vig(orish). But rapidly rising blinds in tournament poker is a way for them to get more games played, hence introducing turbos in tournament poker and Zone-type cash games.

Better understanding common betting patterns is more useful than hand simulators or whatever. Being able to accurately update your opponent's range throughout the hand is essentially how to play well.

Re: Ask HN: What rabbit hole(s) did you dive into recently?

#219

Post by auto »

peteforde wrote: post #141
meter wrote: post #39

This past month, I’ve been reevaluating my dev environment and workflow. My goals are to reduce RSI, be more efficient, as well as learn all my tools as deeply as possible. And have fun! - I’ve ditched VSCode and gone all-in on NeoVim. I’ve spent a bunch of time watching Primeagen, etc., tweaking my vid config and learning how to navigate as efficiently as possible. - Switched from QWERTY to Colemak-DH to hopefully r…

Strongly urge you to acquire a Logitech MX Vertical mouse. It takes a few days to get used to; now you'd have to pry it from my dead hands.

I went down this path and tried various vertical mice, and settled on the MX V for a few months in the pursuit of reducing wrist pain. After about 4-5 months or so, I started getting strong wrist pain again, and switch backed to a standard mouse. At that point I started looking elsewhere, specifically on strengthening my wrists and joints. I've been doing this about 5 times a week for probably 5 months now, and most of my mouse hand wrist pain has subsided: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVum3vWlh4Q

Re: Ask HN: What rabbit hole(s) did you dive into recently?

#220

Post by mmh0000 »

pictureofabear wrote: post #194
jl6 wrote: post #35

So, I decided to install Linux on my formerly-Windows-only laptop, and thought it was cool enough to go full time and ditch Windows completely. The downside was the lack of access to top tier games. No problem though, my plan was to take a break from gaming, figuring that by the time Linux had caught up with compatibility, computers would also be much more powerful and I'd be able to resume gaming at some point in th…

It was a big moment for me too when I realized that the real world has infinitely many interesting things to do and explore. The real world is incredibly detailed.

Hard disagree.

The real world only has pain and suffering. Endless trials and never a payout.

Games on the other hand and very detailed and have a well defined path to success.

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