Learning about Ethereum when it was dirt cheap so I bought a bunch @ $20. Giving me confidence to quit my job and move to a new city without one (I now have the best job of my life).
Ask HN: What has HN given you?
391–400 of 602 posts
Re: Ask HN: What has HN given you?
#392I've used HN to hire 4 engineers (mostly junior or mid-level) at three different companies (one startup, two growth-phase) in two different states (Maine and Pennsylvania).
Re: Ask HN: What has HN given you?
#393The YC seed accelerator model remains the most effective blueprint for generating startups from ideas. Pay heed to the lessons contained herein. And the keys to the kingdom will lie well within your grasp ;) Also. HN is a phenomenal user experience on Mobile Web (Android/Chrome). Superlative readability. Lowest possible bandwith to informational value ratio. And a never-ending well of mental stimulation and ethical p…
Generally, "highest possible value/bandwidth ratio" would better connote a positive intent. Agreed on both points!
Re: Ask HN: What has HN given you?
#394About 8 or 9 years ago I was coming out of megacorpland into a software startup where I was hired as a principal, payed mostly in options etc. I was terrified and really had no idea what I was doing. I accidentally happened upon HN one day and ended up lurking for something like 4 years -- the information content was so compelling. Not even just the tech news feed, but the comments were a treasure trove that provided so much context and guidance that I needed to help understand what exactly it was that I was trying to do.
In a sense it provided too much information as I started to develop mental models for how the business should be working, and started to measure us by the information I learned from this community. We managed to grow pretty rapidly, then like many startups went out of business all of a sudden. But the long perspective HN gave me made me not feel as bad about it as I might have.
Instead I took what I learned, became a hard negotiator, and with the skillset I learned from crashing a startup into the sea excelled at my next megacorp job, then my next startup job, and now sit in a great position for a medium sized R&D firm. HN provided the context and perspective that really enabled it all and for that I'm forever thankful.
These days I mainly use it to keep on top of the shifting sands of tech trends and find that just by reading HN every day for 20-30 minutes I can usually keep up or a bit ahead of my technical staff in a fairly broad swath of areas. Which is nice because I don't really have the time these days to do it all myself.
Re: Ask HN: What has HN given you?
#395absolutely nothing directly. but * besides pretty much the first five pages I hit every morning. * a positive feeling towards the future because even though I may not understand every link on here, there are people that do. People that devote all of their time toward one thing small or big and that is a cool feeling knowing that people can make a living and follow their passion. If that's a startup that their only go…
(I fixed the whitespace formatting on your post. Hope that's ok. Bullet lists are kind of hard to get right in HN markdown.)
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Re: Ask HN: What has HN given you?
#396I learned about Bitcoin here when it was just a whitepaper, but didn't recognize the opportunity then. A year ago, another user mentioned Monero so I looked into and discovered it's more "bitcoin" than Bitcoin and bought what I could. I'm not a millionaire, but it sure has helped me financially, so I'm really appreciative that I took advantage of that opportunity. EDIT: and for something a little more intrinsic: Ever…
Tell me about it. I remember when it was single digit dollars, and it was a curiosity, but it didn't hold my interest. Then it was double digits, and I was like, "huh." Then is was somewhere around $40, and I thought "maybe I should get a couple? But money's kind of tight, maybe later." Then it was over $100, and I thought "surely this can't go much higher? This definitely isn't the time to buy." I thought that same…
I looked at bitcoin very early, when it was pitched as digital currency free from the problems of fiat money. My impression was that the proponents did not understand currency and that bitcoin would make a terrible currency.
As it turns out, I was right. But by being right, I missed a huge speculative windfall. While it would have been nice to make a bunch of money for nothing, I don't really have regrets because my decision was sound at the time.
I still wonder whether the early bitcoin marketing was uninformed but they lucked out... or if the early proponents knew it was a terrible currency, but that they had to sell it that way early in order to inflate the speculative bubble.
Re: Ask HN: What has HN given you?
#397absolutely nothing directly
Indirectly, I come back here usually everyday for the following reasons
- Experts debating on topics with each other provides useful insights on technology / industry trends, so I understand what things matter and what things do not. - Keep up to date with new emerging technology / practices - Some interesting project ideas that I star on github to revisit later - Show how little I know when I read an article and have no idea what its talking about. Also, it helps expand my technical vocabulary
Re: Ask HN: What has HN given you?
#398The joy of reading (comments)
Duckduckgo
A feeling of elite-ness as not one other person i know (jobs, family or patrons) have ever heard of HN. It's my exclusive ivy-league braggard self worth identity
Re: Ask HN: What has HN given you?
#399I've been through a lot of web communities. HN is easily the most intellectual, respectful, and diverse. The simple reason is that we like to be here! In the same way that it takes a village to raise a child, your understanding of the world around you is drastically deepened by various points of view. I don't expect to find a better village anytime soon.
I'm very curious as to whether there are any other communities on the web that are as generally "high quality" as HN (bonus points if those communities are tech-focused or tech-adjacent). Anybody got any links? To date HN has the highest (consistent) quality of any online community I've encountered
https://www.metafilter.com/ - it's been going for almost 20 years. Not really tech per se, but is tech/liberal/academic leaning.
Re: Ask HN: What has HN given you?
#400Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would not say diverse though. This community is hugely biased towards an american, transhumanist point of view. There's an "european" minority who does not seems as egocentric (and libertarian maybe ?) as the majority, which is a bit reassuring. Anyways as much as I like HN and its often insightful comments, this has proven me that I would have a hard time living/working in the US as we don't share the same values…
What do you understand by "american, transhumanist" point of view? And I am a european, though I don't see libertarian views beeing the majority at all ... rather the contrary ..
American as in use your car because public transportation is for poor people anyways (and who cares about ecology nowadays when everything will be resolved with technology ? -at least according to some people here, see second point-), be fat and sick. I really have the impression that people are not so healthy overall, I mean of course there's a bias as you don't speak to talk about your fine shape, but still.
Transhumanist as in there will always be some guy in every biology/medicine thread to talk about how we will evolve as a species, or claim that immortality is achievable or the likes. This is especially prominent here (and was shocking to me at first), because these opinions are not so common otherwise (in society or online communities). I guess it's just the demographics and personal interests of people here that explain this phenomenon, but I was very surprised.