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Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?

#181

Post by codeonfire »

qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #128
cyanoacry wrote: post #52

When I was a little kid, I rented out Apollo 13 almost religiously. Kept watching it, admired the guys in mission control (and the astronauts too, of course). A little later, in April, I sat in mission control and helped launch a spaceship to the ISS. Along the way, I realized: Engineering in the real world is maybe 30% calculations and typical "sciency" work, the other 70% is documentation and communicating to peopl…

>Engineering in the real world is maybe 30% calculations and typical "sciency" work, the other 70% is documentation and communicating to people. >Being smart isn't enough sometimes Congratulations. You've learned two things that some people go their entire lives without understanding. And I make no hyperbole. Erik Naggum didn't learn this, and he's far from the only one. It's really something that we should put a gre…

cyanoacry just learned another viewpoint. If you work in a heavily political environment, a process heavy environment, or one in which the "calculations" are not appreciated, then yes, your viewpoint would be to put down the keyboard/slide rule and just communicate. In other environments, actual working results can silence people that are trying to "communicate" their way to success.

Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?

#182

Post by raleighm »

daeken wrote: post #88

I finally admitted that it was time to start back on antidepressants, and also discovered propranolol (anti-anxiety med); it's changed my life in the most dramatic ways I can imagine. As of today I weigh 319 lbs -- from a peak of over 400 -- and just a hair over half way to my goal of being at 240 lbs. This is the biggest change I've ever made in my life, and I couldn't be prouder to have come this far.

Impressive! Congrats

Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?

#183

Post by laxd »

zazpowered wrote: post #156

I launched a site which I think I will work on for at least a few years: https://senzu.io/

Looks like a great project. With best of intentions, I just want to say that I liked the style (maybe just the fonts) better before enabling javascript. Seemed cleaner and more professional/credible.

Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?

#184

Post by gameshot911 »

dv35z wrote: post #158

Finally learning, playing, and enjoying a sport - Squash! I have successfully gone from just about 0 activity (aside from walking everywhere - NYC), to playing squash 3+ times a week. Growing up, I had never had interest (or natural ability) playing sports. Like many here, I'd prefer tooling around on computers, reading, etc. Likely, this became a self-fulfilling prophesy about "not being a sports person". Well last…

Out of curiosity, why do you prefer squash to racquetball? Im a social rball player myself, never tried squash.

Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?

#185

Post by contingencies »

Started a company from concept stage on a minimal budget, achieved functional UX walkthrough, team build-out, office space acquisition and fit-out, lots of research, multiple hardware iterations, multiple hardware prototype iterations, acquired multiple interested investors willing to commit funds exceeding total capital investment to date.

Learned mostly in the areas of mechanical engineering, robotics, manufacturing, materials science, product design, Solidworks. Refreshed electronics knowledge.

Oh yeah, and quit smoking a couple of times ;)

Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?

#186

Post by gravypod »

enzanki_ars wrote: post #168
gravypod wrote: post #106

Helped teach the entry level class for CS at my university (again) with majority of the students scoring in the top 10% of everyone taking the course. My students were only beat out by the honors sections of which the margines were slim. I had a 26 student class. 9 studens got below a 90% on the final, I think 1 or 2 got below an 80. I'm also going to stop being a TA this semester. I think I've been a big help to the…

Out of curiosity, and if you are allowed to, could you elaborate on this ham-radio related project you are working on? I am genuinely curious about what a university might be interested in coding for a ham-radio.

It's going to involve RBN and then physics that go over my head.

I'm just a ham, the people who I'm working for are the more Marconi-esq people doing something important. It is going to involve the total solar eclipse QSO party so I'll see you on the air during that (if you're in the USA)!

Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?

#187

Post by ikeboy »

AznHisoka wrote: post #180
ikeboy wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vast majority Amazon, some on ebay but it's much harder to handle and sales are lower anyway so haven't been devoting a lot of time to it. Many different products, really whatever sells fast enough with a large enough margin. I've sold things for less than $5 and things for over $1000: generally the cheaper the more it sells. What margin I want depends on how fast it sells, competition, and some other things, don't h…

1. how do you decide what to sell? 2. how do you write product descriptions and copy that will attract buyers especially on amazon?

2. I very rarely create product pages or change them. For the most part, I'm listing against existing, popular listings. I have created on occasion (when the last raspberry pi came out, I bought 10 from England and made a listing and sold quickly before others got stock and the price went down. Something I wouldn't do now, not worth the money for the time, did it to learn. I might buy a couple hundred when the next one comes out and outsource fulfillment though.)

Finding items: I look for items that are already selling well, ideally multiple times a day (you can determine this from sales rank and keepa charts, easy to find out how to read them, use google and you'll find many blog posts). Sometimes I'll look at a store and see which items are good for amazon (enough margin, fast selling, etc) and sometimes I'll look at amazon and then try to find items at a store (when I have an item that does well, I'll often look for other items from the same brand or category.)

I use oaxray, a paid tool, costs $100/month to find products. It searches through a webpage and tells you which products are profitable for amazon, then I filter through those. Recently I've begun training employees to use it and make me lists of finds which I then go through.

Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?

#189

Post by dang »

maneesh wrote: post #110
dang wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting! Since https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11615687 didn't get attention, we emailed you a repost invite for it.

This is awesome! Can I use this repost link tomorrow? Or does it expire tonight?

Tomorrow will be fine. I suggest adding a comment to the new thread pointing people back to this one, since it's kind of an unusual loop.

Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?

#190

Post by garysieling »

I've tinkered with side projects for a long time, but I finally finished one to the point where people can use it.

This is a search engine for lectures; one of the great things is this is something my family can understand and use.

http://www.findlectures.com

I've been really happy with the response so far (The Next Web & Lifehacker wrote nice articles about this)

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