Ask HN: What was your “why didn't I start doing this sooner” moment? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What was your “why didn't I start doing this sooner” moment?

#731

Post by eldavido » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 10:52 PM UTC

renaudg wrote: post #695

eldavido wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you live? In SF, it seems most freelancers are in it for the lifestyle benefits, rather than the pay. When you factor in the lack of vacation time, no benefits, often worse career development and networking vs. working at a proper tech company (one that hires good people, pays well, encourages learning/skill development) it seems a losing proposition. But then, this assumes you have the right kind of compani…

In London it's the reverse. Anybody who's any good at their job and has a few years of experience under their belt, would be crazy not to give contracting a try. You make almost twice as much as an employee doing the same job if you're full time, or you can choose to earn the same but take months-long breaks regularly instead. If you like variety or get bored quickly, it also allows you to justify switching jobs with…

I always find it instructive to look at how the economics of an employer/client align with the economics of the contractor.

Example: at mass-market product development/distribution companies (Google, Apple, etc.), the big money will be made on a great product launch. In that kind of situation, you need to find a way to get some equity or some piece of the big launch. This -- big companies launching scaled platforms to lots of people -- is how the biggest fortunes are made in tech. I find these places aren't great for high-$ contracting because the economic incentives are so misaligned, all the way up to the CEO.

If, on the other hand, the business is some sort of intermediary, like a realtor / ad agency / investment bank, or uses an agency model (lots of cash comp, little equity value, big cash bonuses but nobody's building anything with stock/ownership) that might be a better place for a contractor because they have the cash to pay, but, I have to question whether that's going to make for a satisfying career.

Surprisingly, the older I get, the more I realize how much (1) the salary-optimization game (vs. being part of a big company/product/launch) is a sucker bet in tech and (2) so much of life is about relationships, network, and reputation. I guess it's different from person to person, but, still, I've done contracting and I'm not going back.

Re: Ask HN: What was your “why didn't I start doing this sooner” moment?

#732

Post by e12e » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 11:46 PM UTC

schoen wrote: post #433

superuser2 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1. I had a similar experience - my one auto accident (though I am much younger than you) was when I clipped a mirror on a parked car after sleeping 5 hours. I wonder if we as a society will ever come around to treating insufficient sleep similarly to drunkenness or distraction for drivers. My intuition says it's similarly dangerous.

> I wonder if we as a society will ever come around to treating insufficient sleep similarly to drunkenness or distraction for drivers. My intuition says it's similarly dangerous. There are some regulations about minimum amounts of sleep for airline pilots. https://www.faa.gov/news/fact_sheets/news_story.cfm?newsId=1... I guess it would have a high cost and intrusiveness to try to document individual motorists' sleep…

Also for truckers, bus drivers, people that drive for a living. Eg: http://ec.europa.eu/transport/modes/road/social_provisions/d... (although, its "rest" not sleep. I'm not sure how you would mandate sleep - or monitor it in a sensible manner).

Re: Ask HN: What was your “why didn't I start doing this sooner” moment?

#733

Post by e12e » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 12:00 AM UTC

purerandomness wrote: post #607

andrepd wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't sound ridiculous at all to me (as long as it is presented spirituality- and supernatural-free). I was mostly skeptical about the fasting. Meditation sounds all right, I just never got around to trying it, nor do I like very much the idea of doing nothing for 30 minutes out of each day.

Don't think of it as doing nothing. Think of it as spending quality time with yourself, just like going to the spa or hitting the gym - for the mind. Here's a great intro you could try: https://youtu.be/D5Fa50oj45s

Reminds me about a quote from Firefly:

> Mal: …Could have been meditating on the wonders of your rock garden right now.

> Jayne: Beats just sitting.

> Wash: It is just sitting.

There's a pretty big spectrum of mindfulness and meditation including "just sitting", yoga, Qigong -- or even certain forms of martial arts (perhaps most famously certain forms of Tachi, but also Pa Kua Chang and others).

Or even just taking a walk in the forest.

"Just sitting" is probably the easiest way to get started, but perhaps the hardest to master -- or stick with. But I think everyone should be able to find something that works for them.

Re: Ask HN: What was your “why didn't I start doing this sooner” moment?

#734

Post by superuser2 » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 12:18 AM UTC

schoen wrote: post #433

superuser2 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1. I had a similar experience - my one auto accident (though I am much younger than you) was when I clipped a mirror on a parked car after sleeping 5 hours. I wonder if we as a society will ever come around to treating insufficient sleep similarly to drunkenness or distraction for drivers. My intuition says it's similarly dangerous.

> I wonder if we as a society will ever come around to treating insufficient sleep similarly to drunkenness or distraction for drivers. My intuition says it's similarly dangerous. There are some regulations about minimum amounts of sleep for airline pilots. https://www.faa.gov/news/fact_sheets/news_story.cfm?newsId=1... I guess it would have a high cost and intrusiveness to try to document individual motorists' sleep…

We also don't document their alcohol consumption - only when a car is pulled over on specific suspicion (modulo checkpoints).

Perhaps a field test of some of the markers shared by alcohol and drowsiness. Maybe test for micro sleeps, concentration, etc. similarly to how the effects of insufficient sleep are measured in a lab.

Re: Ask HN: What was your “why didn't I start doing this sooner” moment?

#735

Post by gajjanag » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 1:10 AM UTC

andrepd wrote: post #217

chollida1 wrote: post #126

3 things for me: 1) Meditation, I used to think it was something hippies did. I now think its worth 10 IQ points. I honestly can't recommend it enough. 2) Sleep, I'm getting close to 40 and the last 2 times I pulled all nighters I ended up deleting pretty much all the code I wrote from 11pm onward. 3) Occasional Fasts. I normally fast from 6pm until noon the next day but I now do one 3 day fast each month. I think th…

Not a hippie, but you do meditation and fasts... Okay, that came out a bit incisive. Do you have any scientific backing to support those claims? I'm especially interested in fasting. Not eating for 3 days a month does not seem especially healthy. Then I see the claim that it cures cancer and forgive me if all my alarm bells go off.

I am a bit surprised that no one else has mentioned the "warrior diet" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrior_diet, explained in more detail in https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Warrior_Diet.html?i....

Basically, the idea is to divide into undereating and overeating cycles, eating a single big meal a day (or in more extreme instances, one large meal per 2 days).

Unfortunately, the book linked above does not have a lot of scientific backing. This may simply be due to how it deviates from a lot of conventional diets at the moment.

Nevertheless, personally I rarely trust "scientists" who work in the field of nutrition:

1. They tend to change their views drastically over time. See e.g the whole sugar vs fat issue.

2. They are often heavily influenced by corporate funding, and as such incentive structures do not align well with the goal of rigorous science. One personal anecdote: my extended family uses a lot of coconuts and coconut oil in cooking. Coconut oil was presented in many "scientific" publications as being one of the worst oils, and olive oil as the best (often by olive oil company funded research). Things are much more even now.

Basically, I believe in the following:

1. Following a particular ancestral diet is a pretty safe bet - it has been tested and refined over hundreds, if not thousands, of years. There is often accumulated wisdom in certain practices. See e.g. https://www.amazon.com/100-Million-Years-Food-Ancestors/dp/1... for a detailed discussion of this.

2. Intermittent fasting has been practiced in various cultures to different extents, often due to religious beliefs. Again, something that has persisted that long is likely fine.

In short, true science is usually lacking in nutritional work. As for anecdotal evidence, there is some, detailed in the book above. I also am skeptical about the extent of its benefits, but see no serious downside to the "one meal a day" idea.

Re: Ask HN: What was your “why didn't I start doing this sooner” moment?

#736

Post by cookiecaper » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 1:26 AM UTC

joaopms wrote: post #662

cookiecaper wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used Linux full-time for 11 years; booted into Windows about once or twice a year to try out a game, and had a Windows VM for photo editing (DxO doesn't work in WINE, and afaik, there are no good replacements for it). Just a couple of months ago I switched to Windows as the host OS and Linux in a VM running in the background 24x7 (off the raw disks, so I am virtualizing the same system that I ran as my host OS,…

If you don't mind going a little deeper on this, what program do you use to run your VM? Do you only access your VM via SSH? What kind of development do you do? Do you have an internal IP for your VM or do you just redirect the ports? Do you think you could replace your VM with Bash on Windows?

>If you don't mind going a little deeper on this

Sure.

>what program do you use to run your VM?

I use VirtualBox. I want to try VMWare, but I'm doubtful the difference will be very significant. I tried VMWare to host a Windows guest back when Linux was the host OS in hopes it would run DxO fast enough. While it was faster in some things that Virtualbox did slowly, it also did things slowly that Virtualbox had no trouble with, making it a net neutral, and not worth the license cost. If VMWare had full DX11 acceleration, it would've been different.

You can do raw-disk passthrough with VBox by creating the appropriate files with VBoxManage. Must be careful with this, as there is a risk that you can destroy the data on the original drives. I do this so that I can switch back to Linux as the host OS without hassle, should the need arise.

>Do you only access your VM via SSH?*

I primarily access it via SSH, but the VirtualBox windows are on a secondary workspace and I can switch over and start an X server and have my full desktop environment should I need it. I try to avoid the need, but I have done this a handful of times since switching in order to access or run graphical programs.

I've found that VirtualBox's 3D acceleration doesn't work properly. It was a pain to get it to work properly on my Linux system (which runs Arch) in the first place, but once I did get vboxvideo loading and glxinfo reporting Chromium as the renderer on a semi-consistent basis, the desktop environment would suffer corrupted draws that make it useless. I turned off 3d acceleration in the VM settings.

>What kind of development do you do?

Kind of all over the board. I maintain applications in Python, Ruby, and Java. I scratch my itch with other software which leads to occasional C or C++ development. I administer many servers and make use of Docker, Kubernetes, Ansible, and other devops stuff.

>Do you have an internal IP for your VM or do you just redirect the ports?

I have it configured as bridged network and it has an internal IP and acts like a separate machine on the network. This was important because many things in my home environment are dependent on my workstation and have that IP hard-coded (DNS is not justified for my house yet).

I have a Samba server running in the VM and exporting the frequently-used local filesystems, including my home directory and some btrfs storage (bulk storage goes on a separate Synology NAS, so I access that directly from Windows through its own smb server). My past experience with VBox's Shared Folders is that it's pretty unpredictable, and that it's usually just better to use smbd.

>Do you think you could replace your VM with Bash on Windows?

I wanted to try Bash on Windows, but it said I had to be part of the developer preview program, which I didn't want to do since it apparently involves registering with Microsoft and a bunch of similar stuff.

I am optimistic that Bash on Windows may be able to take some functions out of the VM, but I don't think it will be able to eliminate the need for it. It would be nice if it could replace Cygwin.

Re: Ask HN: What was your “why didn't I start doing this sooner” moment?

#737

Post by code777777 » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 1:59 AM UTC

kzisme wrote: post #71

cableshaft wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Python is so great for getting small tasks done in less than 30 lines of code that would take 5-10 times as much code in most other languages. I wish I had learned it earlier too. Still my favorite language to code without an IDE (C# is pretty great as long as you're in Visual Studio).

I wish visual studio wasn't a requirement sometimes for writing C# - although it makes make it a decent experience.

Visual Studio Code now has IntelliSense for C#[1]. I'm just starting with Python. Code supports it as well[2].

[1]https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/languages/csharp

[2]https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/languages/python?utm_expi...

Re: Ask HN: What was your “why didn't I start doing this sooner” moment?

#738

Post by inafewwords » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 2:39 AM UTC

keyboardhitter wrote: post #368

patrickk wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotal, I was like you, extremely skeptical of meditation. Seriously, try it, it's free! Immediate benefits: * Clear, focused mind. I stop hopping from topic to topic in my mind "oh should I tidy the apartment, work on my website, etc etc" to a far more focused state. What you should do next is there with extreme clarity. You stop reading random junk on the internet too, and get down to it * Much better sleep (thi…

For those who are not familiar, or new to, meditation - I want to offer an alternative to "try not to have any thoughts". The reason why I never started meditating for a long time was because I felt it was too hard, and nearly impossible. Well... because it is very difficult. After years and years of meditating and practicing mindfulness, perhaps this is possible, but IMO not a good starting goal. I prefer to just be…

Seems to mirror my experience. I try to nap in 15 minute breaks at work. 30-1hr at lunch break (I eat while I'm working) so I have mid day personal time. Seems like the same skills of quieting the mind. I do a relaxation breath of (in = 4 count, hold = 7 count, exhale = 8 count) 3x

I never fall into a deep sleep. Sometimes I trance out into heady thoughts where the outside world gets blocked off.

I don't really know where meditation ends, naps begin, and where legit sleep falls in the spectrum. My goal isn't meditation though, my real goal is to black out cold, but haven't gotten there yet. So ymmv for anyone else attempting but it seems I'm in the same field as you describe.

Then I tend to naturally snap out of it before my alarm rings me awake.

Tools: travelers sleep eye mask, comfortable silent area (my car in parking garage), phone timer.

Re: Ask HN: What was your “why didn't I start doing this sooner” moment?

#739

Post by inafewwords » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 2:41 AM UTC

structorg wrote: post #676

keyboardhitter wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those who are not familiar, or new to, meditation - I want to offer an alternative to "try not to have any thoughts". The reason why I never started meditating for a long time was because I felt it was too hard, and nearly impossible. Well... because it is very difficult. After years and years of meditating and practicing mindfulness, perhaps this is possible, but IMO not a good starting goal. I prefer to just be…

The sense of self or the "I" is part of that stream of thoughts, that is why you can't stop thoughts except by fully concentrating in something; the intention of stoping thoughts and the self that wants to achieve something are thoughts themselves. An approach that I have found very powerful is to direct atention to nervous system activity which is an objective form of conciousness, something like the sense of touch…

Thanks. Trying different things to focus on. I'll probably forget the name, but I'll employ it all the same.

Re: Ask HN: What was your “why didn't I start doing this sooner” moment?

#740

Post by inafewwords » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 2:45 AM UTC

craigdfrench wrote: post #657

tjbiddle wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A very helpful tactic I've learned recently is to not focus on not having any thoughts but instead - realize they're going to be inevitable, and when they pop up, acknowledge that it's a thought, a feeling or, an emotion - and let go of it.

I have been using Muse (no affiliation) which has a headband that measures brain signals, for me, it seems like it is able to tell when my mind has wandered off thinking about life's minutia, when I am supposed to be concentrating on breathing. It gives the feedback by stirring up the sound of waves and wind and really tries to get you back on track. This is my prompt to let go and recommit to focusing on my breathin…

Not sure if this works, but I was using those sound entrainment binaural beats for theta deep sleep waves, or set to meditation. There's some free frequency generators online or app store. You should try it with your headband to see if there are increases in frequency of the binaural beat frequency you've chosen in app