Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Are you working on interesting technical problems?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 441 posts

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on interesting technical problems?

#431

Post by davidjnelson »

blackrock wrote: post #380
abj wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind elaborating on what you had in mind? It's a good idea. There should be an easy way for a small team to capture the value that their open source project creates. There are a variety of crowdfunding platforms like Patreon that are doing something similar. CodeMill and Bountysource are paying developers directly for adding features.

Interesting idea. Maybe a software repository site, where users must watch a 30 second commercial, before they can download the software. Then a percentage of the profits made from selling that commercial is shared with the programmer. Sounds like sourceforge, but I don't know how that site is monetized, or if they share the revenues with the project creators.

I worked on that for a while. If anyone would like to join me let me know.

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on interesting technical problems?

#432

Post by bsenftner »

superasn wrote: post #423
bsenftner wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually code closer to 14-16 hours a day. But I have a standing desk / bar stool combination, plus a compile of my work typically takes 3-4 minutes, so I have a yoga mat, weights and stuff to work out while I think & wait. I'm 54, yet look 40 with a near six-pack. I'm really lucky.

Wow man that's really awesome. Would you mind doing a blog post about it sometime (or maybe linking to the source where i can learn more about it). It can help a lot of people like me who are struggling to work even 5 hours a day at just 37. Still thanks for the reply, I am now seriously thinking of getting a standing desk.

My #1 advice for being a healthy developer is to observe a regular hard cardio workout.

When I was 16 I was a fairly muscle bound half geek / half athlete. To give you an idea, I was a running back on my high school football team, and a tackle and two linemen and I would have to shampoo one anothers head's after weight lifting practice because our arms could not reach the top of our heads from being so buff. We were muscle bound jocks in Iowa, what can I say...

Well, I had a bad tackle when running with the ball during a game, and I crushed 3 vertebra, doubling over backwards with my hips pushed backwards till they touched my shoulders. The stadium had a collective gasp and then silence as I was seen on the field broken. Long story short, bolts in my temples and hanging vertically for 6 weeks healed my young spine with only weather changing aches. However, I went from 230 lbs to 130 lbs, and it took another 6 weeks of therapy before I could walk.

That was the start of a decade of no athletic activity and nihilistic punk rockerism mixed with quite the intellectual journey as I left Iowa and became a part of the Harvard/MIT/BU 3D graphics research community. (This was the early-mid 1980's)

It was not until I was 30 that my then girlfriend, now wife, got me to start morning walks, then light jogs, and finally an actual return to an athletic lifestyle. To give you an idea, at 30 I could not jog a block without heavy panting and sweats. After a year I was able to jog 1 block. It took whole year to do a block without dying! During that year, I'd get delirious and throw up if I pushed. But the persistent and incredible patience of my girlfriend slowly got me back into what is considered "normal" shape.

Once I'd refreshed my previously athletic muscle / body memory, all kinds of positives kicked in like a general optimism, a general active energy level, and greater interest in everything in general.

However, this was tempered with realization that if I slacked for even a few days, I'd get depressed, and if I went a week I'd start having bone/joint chiropractic misalignment and then I'd be injured and unable to be active at all.

So, now I have a strict 3 days (at least) per week hard cardio. I ride my bike about 8 miles, living near a bike path in the San Fernando Valley. Plus I have a yoga mat next to my standing desk. I need to get a newer computer, as a recompile of my work take 10-12 minutes. But I exploit that time working out, so maybe I don't want a new development computer...

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on interesting technical problems?

#433

Post by exikyut »

throwawaymath wrote: post #195
exikyut wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow :) High-level questions: - At the risk of birthing a page-long subthread on ZFS-vs-everything-else... what storage solution are you using, and why? - What sort of hardware are you using? (This is a non-catalyzing question, and is just out of curiosity) - How did this get started, and how are you managing this? - Will you ever be interested in accepting donations or funding? (Including on a voluntary basis; and in…

Thanks for expressing interest...I'll respond in order. > - At the risk of birthing a page-long subthread on ZFS-vs-everything-else... what storage solution are you using, and why? Right now, XFS and HDFS. This is primarily due to my prior experience with it; I have considered ZFS, and might move to that later on. I may also dispense with HDFS for shared storage and to reduce the redundant JVM memory footprint. I'm a…

Thanks for the reply! Not sure if you'll see this; had some unexpected delays finishing this comment.

Everything is duly noted; I'll just expand on some bits.

> I joined John Baez and a few other scientists/researchers working on the Azimuth Climate Project, which sought to preserve critical snapshots of climate data in the event of mass defunding. Later on I decided to take this a step further since those snapshots were becoming very out of date and the multifarious data repositories were never very well documented, organized or normalized.

Archive.org is very probably interested in this sort of thing then, FWIW.

> Not sure what you mean by "managing this" though.

Heh :) I was curious what sort of work you do in order for this initiative, which appears(?) to be somewhat of a side project, to be viable in terms of budget and adequate spare time. I'm also interested in storing/working with somewhat large amounts of data too (one project I want to try at some point is implementing an infinite browser cache so I can "Google" the content of every version of every webpage I'd ever visited), so I definitely want to optimize for something that doesn't require much time :) (don't we all)

> It began with reading worrydream's blog post, "What can a technologist do about climate change?" ... Not much more to it than that.

After having read that page I now understand the sentiment of that statement. Major TIL :)

And if only all webpages were that well designed... (The interactivity was a bit of an information overload, but I really liked the layout.)

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on interesting technical problems?

#434

Post by superasn »

bsenftner wrote: post #432
superasn wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow man that's really awesome. Would you mind doing a blog post about it sometime (or maybe linking to the source where i can learn more about it). It can help a lot of people like me who are struggling to work even 5 hours a day at just 37. Still thanks for the reply, I am now seriously thinking of getting a standing desk.

My #1 advice for being a healthy developer is to observe a regular hard cardio workout. When I was 16 I was a fairly muscle bound half geek / half athlete. To give you an idea, I was a running back on my high school football team, and a tackle and two linemen and I would have to shampoo one anothers head's after weight lifting practice because our arms could not reach the top of our heads from being so buff. We were…

wow.. first of all thank you so much for taking the time to write that out. I found it super motivational and tbh it really means a lot to me that you are fit and fine after what you've been through during your younger years, and the kind of pain you were in at your 30s.

I've never had any injuries but doing long hours siting all day without exercise has taken a huge toll on my back. I'm not overweight but my lifestyle is very sedintary :/ Long story short lately I've have my issues become so much that I've had trouble with simple things like putting on pants, getting in and out of the car, sometimes even sleeping. Have done lots of mris, xrays and months of physio and pain keeps coming back. Also religiously did the exercises prescribed by my doctor but nothing is helping.

I'm kind of like at that point in your 30s where even jogging for a block is a nightmare for me. But reading your story gives me hope. I'm 37 and just learning that taking health forgranted for work has been a big mistake.

I will try to research some cardio exercises that won't aggravate my pain and get started. I love your idea about doing things during code compilation. What a blessing in disguise that is. I already started that today doing some SI joint exercises that I can do while sitting. It's a start and I now to get involved with beginner cardio next.

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on interesting technical problems?

#435

Post by bsenftner »

superasn wrote: post #434
bsenftner wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My #1 advice for being a healthy developer is to observe a regular hard cardio workout. When I was 16 I was a fairly muscle bound half geek / half athlete. To give you an idea, I was a running back on my high school football team, and a tackle and two linemen and I would have to shampoo one anothers head's after weight lifting practice because our arms could not reach the top of our heads from being so buff. We were…

wow.. first of all thank you so much for taking the time to write that out. I found it super motivational and tbh it really means a lot to me that you are fit and fine after what you've been through during your younger years, and the kind of pain you were in at your 30s. I've never had any injuries but doing long hours siting all day without exercise has taken a huge toll on my back. I'm not overweight but my lifesty…

Another aspect that has helped a lot is taking a b-complex vitamin every day. B-Complex has two major benefits: it aids in the energy recovery during food metabolism, maintaining one's energy level, but the major benefit for developers is the reduction in nerve sheath inflammation. There are times when I am doing some heavy, redundant motions, like when working on 3D animations, the repetitive mouse use for multiple days can wreak my wrist and that "mouse fatigue" spot in your upper back. When I know I'm going to be abusing my wrists like that, I make sure to have B-Complex each day and for a few days after - for the reduction in inflammation and the resulting continued wrist health.

I appreciate your thanks. I could write a book about my career and maintaining health in both physical and mental aspects - being a developer can be a hell of a mental game too. If I were not so busy writing code, I probably would. Developing my ability to live like this has taken decades, and now in my middle 50's I am peaking in multiple aspects: I know how to code an immense number of highly complex things, my mental game is such that I am coding like water pouring, and my work is offering me the freedom to use everything in the creation of a new flagship application for the company. I'm simply having too much fun and getting too much done to write about it at length. I do post on Quora.com quite a bit though.

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on interesting technical problems?

#436

Post by superasn »

bsenftner wrote: post #435
superasn wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wow.. first of all thank you so much for taking the time to write that out. I found it super motivational and tbh it really means a lot to me that you are fit and fine after what you've been through during your younger years, and the kind of pain you were in at your 30s. I've never had any injuries but doing long hours siting all day without exercise has taken a huge toll on my back. I'm not overweight but my lifesty…

Another aspect that has helped a lot is taking a b-complex vitamin every day. B-Complex has two major benefits: it aids in the energy recovery during food metabolism, maintaining one's energy level, but the major benefit for developers is the reduction in nerve sheath inflammation. There are times when I am doing some heavy, redundant motions, like when working on 3D animations, the repetitive mouse use for multiple…

Great tip about B complex. I didn't know it could heal muscle fatigue and makes healing faster. This is great tip for almost all programmers who risk RSI at some point in their life.

Anyway yes it no ordinary thing you're in such good health and are putting 10 hours a day at 50 years while some of us are struggling lot younger.

I'm sure you already have done quite a bit of research that lays ahead of me. A book does sound like a big commitment but if you have a blog I'd surely hope you would put your story and what you did to fix yourself and how you're so productive.

A lot of people would be inspired and helped by it I'm sure.

P.S. just read this book called 12 rules for life (huge bestseller) and the author starts it by saying so this book started as a result of my quora post :)

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on interesting technical problems?

#437

Post by m0skit0 »

tlarkworthy wrote: post #238
some_account wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feeling is because in our current stage of development, we are very primitive spiritually. Some of us don't even believe we have a soul. That it is all meaningless. Science in its current form also looks at our material world and concludes the same. Nasa tells us we are just a speck of crap in a giant space as well, with no beginning or end. You guys talk about boxes. Well there are huge ones for the mind, caref…

The Aeon of Horus is here: and its first flower may well be this: that, freed of the obsession of the doom of the Ego in Death, and of the limitation of the Mind by Reason, the best men again set out with eager eyes upon the Path of the Wise, the mountain track of the goat, and then the untrodden Ridge, that leads to the ice-gleaming pinnacles of Mastery!

Not enough quantum in there.

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on interesting technical problems?

#438

Post by skadamat »

throwawaymath wrote: post #139

I'm in the exploratory stages of starting a noncommercial project focused on hosting, processing and serving a vast amount of climate data for scientists and researchers. I've "seeded" this project with my own bare metal hardware, electricity and internet access. This includes 136 vCPUs, 512GB of RAM and 128TB of hard drive storage capacity (with room for another 456TB). As my own money permits, I plan to slowly add…

Hey, I'd love to help out in any way I can. I'm a data scientist by training, also involved in a startup that helps people learn data science (with a pretty popular data science blog too).

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on interesting technical problems?

#439

Post by [deleted] »

bsenftner wrote: post #435
superasn wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wow.. first of all thank you so much for taking the time to write that out. I found it super motivational and tbh it really means a lot to me that you are fit and fine after what you've been through during your younger years, and the kind of pain you were in at your 30s. I've never had any injuries but doing long hours siting all day without exercise has taken a huge toll on my back. I'm not overweight but my lifesty…

Another aspect that has helped a lot is taking a b-complex vitamin every day. B-Complex has two major benefits: it aids in the energy recovery during food metabolism, maintaining one's energy level, but the major benefit for developers is the reduction in nerve sheath inflammation. There are times when I am doing some heavy, redundant motions, like when working on 3D animations, the repetitive mouse use for multiple…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on interesting technical problems?

#440

Post by adoyle »

throwawaymath wrote: post #139

I'm in the exploratory stages of starting a noncommercial project focused on hosting, processing and serving a vast amount of climate data for scientists and researchers. I've "seeded" this project with my own bare metal hardware, electricity and internet access. This includes 136 vCPUs, 512GB of RAM and 128TB of hard drive storage capacity (with room for another 456TB). As my own money permits, I plan to slowly add…

This sounds similar to Radiant Earth https://www.radiant.earth/ They are also spearheading the Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF project http://www.cogeo.org/ and the SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog spec https://github.com/radiantearth/stac-spec.
Post reply on HN