Ask HN: What Are You Thankful For?

I have a job I enjoy doing, a home I love coming home to, a partner whom I want to share the rest of my life with, and an extended family whom I all love.

Besides this, I also study my greatest passion and have time for hobbies, along with great friends to share my hobbies and studies with.

Over the past 12 months I've been engaged with metastasised testicular cancer. It started with a radical unilateral orchiectomy, followed by 1 round of BEP/3 rounds of EP. I just got back to work and found out it was back and had 4 rounds of high dose TICE 2 of which included stem cell recovery. I was meant to have lung surgery to reduce the risks of later spread through dead tissue but am instead scheduled for radiosurgery on a machine they are trying to fix.

I don't know where you live but I've always understood my tax contribution has been insufficient, this health crisis is sweet confirmation bias for me, public healthcare is a true blessing for me and no matter if I win/lose/draw this battle I hope those who come after me in some way benefit from me going through treatment just as I have in theory benefitted from others persisting with treatment.

In my personal view greed is a waste of time, be comfortable if you can and figure out what kind of contribution to our community would mean something to you. every headline these days seems to point to how greedy the current crop of big tech is (which probably includes those tech luminaries in Google such as Urs and Jeff Dean).

Much love in your journey, Lostletterbox

I'm thankful or engineering and science, and all that flow from it, mostly for the good, but not all, of course. I'm thankful for the arts and humanities that help us all relate and take meaning from the world.

I've seen computing go from IMSAI boxes to magic slabs of glass that are phones, computers, and cameras, all in one, that can easily outperform the VAX 11/780 that I thought was almost magic back in 1981, and the Cray-I that was unobtanium back in the day. I'm thankful for those advances, and I hope I can help push computing even further in my own small way.

We're in the future, and it is amazing, despite all the flaws. I'm glad I've lived long enough to see the first tests, and the possibility of a new physics that will get humanity off this one precious world, and out into the stars.

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Personally, on 7/7/7, my Gall Bladder declared war on my Pancreas, and thanks to modern medicine, I'm a man with no Gall, and still alive. I'm thankful for all the extra time I've been given here to spend with family, friends, and y'all.