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Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

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Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#691

Post by xpe »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #564
AussieWog93 wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first thought was that they were an LLM, but then checking their profile it seems they've been around since 2012 and have a comment expressing that they seem to get accused of being an LLM a lot, and suggesting people don't do that.

Any sufficiently interesting person eventually gets accused of being an AI. Quite soon these accusations will nearly always be accurate.

> Quite soon these accusations will nearly always be accurate.

/headscratching They don't have to be, do they? It is possible that some people will build identity systems with norms that e.g. humans type with their own hands. These could become popular, at least conceivably, in certain areas. Hard to enforce for sure. And getting harder and harder to distinguish reliably.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#692

Post by rendx »

elric wrote: post #683
rendx wrote: post #607

What I rarely read about as hobby but I really enjoy is touch ! Taking massage/therapy classes, like lomi-lomi, craniosacral, acupressure, shiatsu, etc. -- plenty of great courses available. They're typically aimed at professionals since it is "under-explored" as a hobby, but well worth it as self experience. Not only the receiving but also the giving during the training(s), plus all the chances to give nice touch ex…

I hadn't even considered massage as a potential hobby. I love getting massages, but they're not cheap. Taking a course might be a good hack to get cheap massages..

Good massage classes cost quite a bit of money. I still find it well worth it on a lot of levels, even if you're just interested in the receiving (for now)! I would compare it more to other hobbies, which often do cost substantial amounts of money (material, travel, equipment, club fees, etc -- none of which you need for this).

In multi-session trainings, it is often suggested or sometimes even required to meet with other participants to exercise between the official trainings. Even in cases where that's not officially part of the trainings, I want to encourage you to speak up and announce you're willing to provide your body to others for their training (who may be there for a professional career) -- in fact it's not like you're "asking for a free massage", you are offering a very valuable contribution, since you can give them feedback based on what you both learned in class, which is something other people they know will not be able to do. Also, it takes a bit of courage to ask friends, especially at the beginning, and hesitancy to touch friends in new ways; there's something about being in class together that makes it easier to accept touching the other; it's a 'professional' relationship.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#693

Post by hermitcrab »

contingencies wrote: post #572
hermitcrab wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've known 3 people that were into paragliding. 2 of them had near misses from chute collapses and the other flew into a stationery car (he was saved from more serious injury by wearing a full face helmet). So definitely not risk free, based on that sample.

I did it once with an experienced pilot, tandem. An awesome experience. He explained the most dangerous time is when you get slightly confident. That's when most accidents occur, at the intermediate stage. He said you have to be religiously careful at all times, and stay paranoid.

That is good advice for any potentially dangerous hobby.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#694

Post by SoftTalker »

joncrocks wrote: post #617
xarope wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ditto. I don't have great numbers, my bench is terrible, not even 1.5x BW, but I did manage to get my DL to ~2.5x in a competition, then tweaked my back and now only double overhand, which means my grip tends to go when I get to ~2x BW (my gym doesn't allow chalk, and I don't use straps, so it is what it is).

Do you mind if I ask what you did which restricts your ability to mixed grip? In terms of loading, I would expect your back to be loaded in a similar manner irrespective of the hand position. I assume you've considered/use hook grip?

Not who you asked but I use overhand hook grip and do conventional deadlifts (not sumo). I find mixed grip bothers my bicep on the underhand side. I also use chalk, and straps for heavy pulls.

I don't understand a gym that doesn't allow chalk.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#696

Post by dooku0721 »

dooku0721 wrote: post #695

Naval once said his best engineers all do some form of art. So I am playing with AI art, and making tools for making the iteration fast and closed-loop.

It has to be Git-like control flow for us builders. My project page, if you are interested in playing around.

https://github.com/charismaticchiu/muse

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#697

Post by bokohut »

flomo wrote: post #491
bokohut wrote: post #194

Walking and finding history if your location has such history to offer to find. People pay vast accruing cumulative sums over time to go to the gym and my exercise pays me with every single walk. Some of that modern human history I have found dates back hundreds of years in the form of coins and bottles while some of the native human history I have found dates back 10 thousand years. I cannot neglect the fossils eith…

Curious if you mean metal detecting. Either way, sounds like a great location!

I have one yes but I rarely take it given the overwhelming amounts of false signals from iron, ironstone, and slag. There are so many surface finds with each tide change that the added human effort of swinging and digging quickly fades.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#698

Post by evilbob93 »

I melt milk jugs and other HDPE plastics into musical claves and drum sticks as an answer to "recycling plastic is kind of bs". It melts at 350 degrees and can be done in a toaster oven in the garage or even the kitchen with proper ventilation. The smell isn't that bad, nothing like if you dropped plastic in a fire.

I've also made some sticks from braiding plastic grocery bags which are also often made of HDPE (#2) type plastic.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#699

Post by rainrat »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #159
autocorr wrote: post #151

Echoing others, Chess engines certainly aren't a solved problem! In fact there are a lot of niches that are absolutely starving for effort. Ones I'm interested in are related to Chess variants and puzzles. Fairy-Stockfish is a fork used by LiChess for the variants on the site, but it can now play a multitude of games from Xiangqi (Chinese Chess) to Shogi (Japanese Chess) to a crazy modern variants. There's a variety…

Ohh about fairy stockfish, I had actually looked into it for something like spell-chess (which is an completely unsolved problem!) I was playing chess with one of my friends and we played spell-chess which is an clash royale/clash of clans x chess thing where you get two spells of freeze and jump Freeze allows you to select a tile and have a 3x3 square radius which freezes those pieces Jump allows you to select any p…

Belzedar94 made a prototype that plays Spell chess about 6 months ago: https://github.com/Belzedar94/Fairy-Stockfish/pull/37

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#700

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

dboreham wrote: post #390
SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #260

My wife & I are Scottish Country dancers. It's a social dance form (it's traditional to swap partners for every dance so nobody has to bring a partner, though not required). Pretty good cardio, there are groups all over the world, so it's often not that difficult to find a class. Other similar social dance forms from the UK are Contra dancing, English Country dancing, and Ceilidh dancing. Square dancing in the US dev…

The Gay Gordons have entered the chat..

... taken Allemande hold, walked forward, turned around, and walked out of the room.
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