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

Ask HN: What are you passionate about at the moment?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

781–790 of 865 posts

Re: Ask HN: What are you passionate about at the moment?

#781

Post by reitanuki »

oakhaven wrote: post #733
brailsafe wrote: post #339

I couldn't imagine applying the word passion to anything business or computer related, it's not now—nor has it ever been—the right word, but I'm definitely passionate about being in nature, among the mountains and birds, skateboarding, and doing challenging hikes with fun people.

I agree so much! I've always shivered when they asked me what tech I'm passionate about on job interviews. When I hear/read people who say that they're passionate about a javascript lib or a programming language, it sounds really disingenuous to me (or like marketing bs, depending on context). Although they probably mean well, in most cases.

If you only do programming for a job, it is probably very difficult to see how someone could be passionate about computing.

I suppose I can't really illuminate this point, but I suppose for me it's about figuring things out and making something? Maybe a bit like maths, but if you play your cards right you have something to come out of it with.

Re: Ask HN: What are you passionate about at the moment?

#782

Post by sw104 »

sjmulder wrote: post #603
Obergruppen wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a country closer to their homeland where they can be housed? It is unfortunate they have to be so far from home. Or better yet, can we just push for peace talks so they can stay home?

Ukraine itself houses a great many internal refugees. The EU countries have agreed to each take a fair share of refugees, but Germany, Poland and Czechia carry the good majority right now.

I'm not sure how it's counted (whether it includes forcibly migrated), but according to Statista, Russia currently holds the majority of non-internal Ukrainian refugees.

Re: Ask HN: What are you passionate about at the moment?

#783

Post by calini »

Computing.

I have been passionate about programming for a long while, figured it out at 14, slowly kept going upwards doing online courses, ended up doing CS in Uni at 19, did an industrial placement where I felt like I grew tremendously. At 22 it felt like my fuel has ran out, I had a terrible final year in Uni, Covid hit, I was terribly burnt out and I have not felt as passionate at my job since.

I'm just now slowly getting back into actually loving computing and delving deep into the things that I didn't have a chance to so far, like IoT projects, functional programming, compilers etc. I'm also really lucky to be working for a company and in a team where it's understood and accepted that we don't run at full capacity all the time, and given freedom to put as much as I want on my plate for a while.

Re: Ask HN: What are you passionate about at the moment?

#784

Post by Vespasian »

pipes wrote: post #601

Not drinking. I only drank at weekends. But pretty much every weekend for 25 + years, this is totally normal from where I'm from. I read the book alcohol explained https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alcohol-Explained-William-Porter-eb... Listened to the Huberman podcast about alcohol. And realised I don't want to drink anymore. It's really strange, I used to struggle having a single weekend with no booze. Now I actively just d…

For reasons unrelated to health, politics, or religion I never got into drinking in the first place and never had an issue with it.

It was mostly neutral experience after leaving my teens since you grow a somewhat thick skin and select a bunch of friends who are not assholes about it.

Now in my thirties something came up that makes it unwise to consume alcohol and to the surprise of my doctor I could just check that point.

Re: Ask HN: What are you passionate about at the moment?

#785

Post by 76SlashDolphin »

Recently discovered an arcade in my city with a ton of Asian rhythm game cabinets, mainly Dancerush Stardom where you have to dance to the song. Kinda like DDR but a lot more flexible. I've always been a very stiff person so I hoped that learning to dance can help with that and what better way to learn to dance than with a video game with very exact goals.

Plus, there's an awesome community around the game and the arcade so it's been nice to meet new people that way.

Re: Ask HN: What are you passionate about at the moment?

#786

Post by altdataseller »

vivekd wrote: post #354

This post caught my attention because recently I met a woman I really admire. She dropped out of her computer engineering class, took a vow of celibacy and poverty and became a missionary with a Catholic sect. The reason I admire her isn't that. What caught my attention about her is that she has a sense of purpose. She has a purpose in life and has devoted her life to it. I used to have one. My goal was to make the l…

Can you tell me more about how you went about trying to make the legal system cheaper?

Re: Ask HN: What are you passionate about at the moment?

#787

Post by Eudaimion »

jll29 wrote: post #573

There are several topics that I recently got more into: - The utility of randomness: returning from a machine learning conference in Italy where I had a pretty random (if you do not believe in fate) conversation with a stranger, where suddenly more people stood around and joined in. It basically started with me commenting on one poster "Isn't it amazing how useful randomness is, given there is no pattern/structure in…

If you are interested in randomness, then you will enjoy the book "Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder" - Nassim Taleb. It explores a lot of topics related to randomness and how it can be beneficial.

Re: Ask HN: What are you passionate about at the moment?

#788

Post by mzl »

polivier wrote: post #651
mzl wrote: post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the link. I think that your version of getting to a reified extensional constraint (your table method) looks like a reasonable way to do it, and probably works quite well for OR-Tools CP-SAT in particular. Another way to do it directly is to embed the control variable in the table, with a full set of all possible tuples for when the control variable is false. This, however, gives a large blow-up of the tab…

I'm not too familiar with MDD constraints, but there may indeed be better ways to model this. In particular, I'd be very curious to see if any improvement can be achieved using regular constraints (one for each row/column). PS: I remember meeting you during the poster display at the CP2019 conference at UCONN. We discussed the difficulty of finding solutions for the Nmbr9 game because there were too many propagators.…

The key point for all of MDD, smart table, compressed tables, the case constraint, and regular expression and finite automata constraints is the ability to compress don't-care information, which essentially gives one reification for a low cost.

The implementation of a regular constraint can in essence be an MDD propagator (the implementation unfolds the automata into a layered graph, which is mostly isomorphic with an MDD), however it will depend on the implementation how efficient it is. In particular, if the original finite automata is already of an MDD shape with layers, some implementations (including the one in Gecode) will create too many nodes by creating all nodes for all layers.

Fun, didn't make that connection. Yes, it is a small world.

Re: Ask HN: What are you passionate about at the moment?

#789

Post by b__d »

Home video creation (recording, editing,…)

This summer I finally bought a GoPro to capture our motorcycle tour with my girlfriend – have been thinking about getting one for years but never did. Well, since then we have been on three city trips and I enjoyed recording those. Since then I edited and finished one of them, and it is such a joy.

Re: Ask HN: What are you passionate about at the moment?

#790

Post by sw104 »

cedws wrote: post #691
pipes wrote: post #601

Not drinking. I only drank at weekends. But pretty much every weekend for 25 + years, this is totally normal from where I'm from. I read the book alcohol explained https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alcohol-Explained-William-Porter-eb... Listened to the Huberman podcast about alcohol. And realised I don't want to drink anymore. It's really strange, I used to struggle having a single weekend with no booze. Now I actively just d…

Cutting a vice out of your life is always a good thing, so well done. But I am curious: why not just moderate your drinking? The dose makes the poison. Yes, it is true that alcohol is bad for you, but so are many things. If you limit yourself, you can enjoy it on occasion without doing too much harm. I personally don't see utility in having a hardline approach to alcohol. You only live once. If you want to crack open…

"The dose makes the poison".

According to the WHO, there is no level of alcohol consumption that is good for the health.

OP sounds like he doesn't get anything out of drinking anymore, so I guess he doesn't even want to crack open a bottle for special occasions. He's realised he only lives once, so he kicked the booze.

As somebody who's never drunk, the only thing I think I've ever missed out on is the social lubrication element, but that just made me find people who are more like-minded.

Post reply on HN