Ask HN: Advice that changed your life? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#231

Post by AndrewOMartin » Sat, Oct 29, 2022, 1:41 PM UTC

Shut the fuck up.

An easy way to increase the value and enjoyment of a conversation is to say a lot less and listen a lot more. This applies obviously in cases where the subject is something you're not an expert on, but can also be extremely valuable in those exact circumstances. Obviously there are limits to this advice, but they are probably much further away than you'd dare believe.

Also, people tend to assume that you share more of their opinions so you can make friends quicker too. You can't put your foot in a closed mouth.

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#232

Post by chiefalchemist » Sat, Oct 29, 2022, 1:42 PM UTC

wodenokoto wrote: post #133

javajosh wrote: post #124

My mother told me to not care what other people thought. She also told me that words can't really hurt people ("sticks and stones..."). She also believed its "mean" to have any preference about people, calling it a version of "keeping score". In fact, "keeping score" was one of the worst things you could be accused of in my household. Her advice fails to accept the reality of social and emotional needs. It also fails…

“Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can break hearts”

Not to nitpick, but the words have no value. The value comes from what you or me assign to them. Certainly there are things in your past (or mine) that we heard and effectively ignored. But if heard again we'd laugh or cry.

The point is, the meaning we attach to the words are literally in our heads. We determine the worlds they create. It's not the other way around.

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#233

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Oct 29, 2022, 1:42 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#234

Post by esperent » Sat, Oct 29, 2022, 1:43 PM UTC

jart wrote: post #180

pmoriarty wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"One day in the microkitchen I met Vint Cerf and told him what I worked on. He very curtly told me that he hates generic top-level domains, they confuse consumers, and ICANN should have been focusing on making .com / .org / .net better instead." You're lucky you didn't meet Stanislaw Ulam, who, when anyone told him about a project they were working on always responded with "What is that compared to E=mc^2 ?"

That's totally not the same thing though. Vint Cerf wasn't telling me I was but a mere footnote compared to his invention of TCP/IP. He thought gTLDs were actively harming the Internet.

If I was to share a piece of advice here it would be "even the smartest people in the world are wrong a lot of the time".

There's never a case where you should accept conferred wisdom uncritically, no matter how much you respect a person or what else they created.

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#235

Post by elevaet » Sat, Oct 29, 2022, 1:44 PM UTC

NayamAmarshe wrote: post #44

loonster wrote: post #30

"The answer is always no unless you ask."

This is so true. Sometimes all it takes to make a thing happen is ask, experienced it a lot of times.

Reminds me of the sports cliché (but so true)

-you miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#236

Post by dr_dshiv » Sat, Oct 29, 2022, 1:44 PM UTC

About 15 years ago, Christopher Celeste gave me a life-changing piece of advice. I wanted his advice because I had been coordinating all these different projects and I was struggling to figure out which to focus on. He told me “you seem to be good at doing lots of different things. Why choose? Why not just do all that you want?”

Wow. I’m not saying it was good advice for everyone but it changed my life. But, I run 2 different successful businesses, have an academic career and 3 kids. And I still have tons of side projects (which I love).

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#237

Post by annyeonghada » Sat, Oct 29, 2022, 1:44 PM UTC

Otek wrote: post #144

nonasktell wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone reading this and thinking about spending your last 10 bucks on a programming book please use Libgen or a free mooc

Well yes and no. Spending money on something, especially when you’re short on money, makes you value it more and overall for me this would make it more likely to actually go through that book. But that’s me.

For me it's totally irrelevant how many money I spent in how much I value something. I have numerous overpriced textbook in my shelf that I've never read, on the other end my libgen textbook are used constantly and got me through university.

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#238

Post by mromanuk » Sat, Oct 29, 2022, 1:44 PM UTC

vasco wrote: post #81

First class I got when I got to university, freshly arrived to the capital for my studies, still a kid. The calculus professor walks in and proceeds to do the "1/3 times 3 isn't 1, but it is" shtick, blowing everyone's minds. Continues doing this for 40 minutes and at the end he says: "You're not competing with the people in your town anymore, you're not even competing with the people here, from now on think of yours…

Why competing? what about cooperation? nothing you do today is done in a vacuum, everything you use to build in your corner, was built by others.

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#239

Post by jart » Sat, Oct 29, 2022, 1:45 PM UTC

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #196

jart wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's totally not the same thing though. Vint Cerf wasn't telling me I was but a mere footnote compared to his invention of TCP/IP. He thought gTLDs were actively harming the Internet.

Do you think he is right or wrong about gTLDs?

My executables end with .com and my website ends with .lol so I disagree with him, even though he's right. My work doesn't target consumers though. What matters is that he's not just speaking only for himself and I would have liked his views to have carried more weight in ICANN's vision. Perhaps they would have addressed the domainer problem rather than simply making new digital land where the same problems would once again take root.

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#240

Post by ysavir » Sat, Oct 29, 2022, 1:45 PM UTC

Bakary wrote: post #186

IgorPartola wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a consumer I am totally fine paying for things. But I hate being interrupted with ads for irrelevant shit I don’t want or need. Google and every other online advertiser is hilariously bad at guessing what I might be shopping for at the moment. Amazon comes close by remembering what products I looked at last. But Google is worse than dogshit when it comes to this. I’ll give you a typical example where Google could…

If you already know the product you are buying down to the model, Google isn't tailored for you. It's meant for people who have a vague idea and then pick what's at the top of the search results. This is why SEO has grown to be an entire profession.

I think that's a very narrow interpretation of what a search engine does. Or a narrow interpretation of what the GP was doing. Probably both.

You can look at it as GP having a vague idea of how much he wants to pay for this product and where to pay for it, but Google failed to help him find clarity. Maybe the GP could have done better by searching "cheapest" or "sellers" or something like that, but one thing I've learned about modern search engines is that providing more query details nets you less applicable results.

It's like every search engine takes all keywords with an "OR" mentality when it really should be an "AND".

And a lot of this does come down to the advertising model. I wouldn't be surprised if this benefits google because having to try 3 or 4 search queries to find what you want puts more advertisements in front of you, and increases the odds you'll click on one.