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Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?

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Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?

#141

Post by soniman »

citilife wrote: post #32

Learn how to read quarterly earnings (and other financial documents). It's amazing how simply it is to see if a company is making money / losing money and how that'll impact your view of the world. For instance, Uber as it is today, is going out of or dramatically changing its business. Might not see that from all the hype, might not see it from all the user, but the terms sheet doesn't quarterly earnings doesn't lie…

I agree that learning how to read a financial statement is valuable, but you might want to look further than just "is this company making an acccounting profit." Uber's core business is highly profitable, that's why it's valued at $45 billion.

When you're reading a financial statement, look at each business unit's profitability separately, especially if those units are in fact separate businesses. Ubereats is not Uber's bread and butter. Look at cash flow and compare it with investment in growth via R&D and marketing. Look at how much cash the business requires in the form of working capital and on-going maintenance capex vs growth capex.

I would suggest googling Warren Buffett's primer on look through earnings. Greenblatt's "Little Book that Beats the Market" can also be read quickly.

Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?

#143

Post by taneq »

nsomaru wrote: post #63
kqr wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This ties in to how I like to say the rope may be one of the greatest inventions of mankind.

I find myself unravelling mentally when it comes to remembering knots and the like

Many of the most useful knots are very easy to learn, there's no need to be afrayed!

Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?

#144

Post by tempestn »

How, and why, to invest in a simple portfolio of index funds. Split between equity and fixed income based on your risk tolerance, and diversify equities globally. This will give you a low-cost, set-and-forget investment portfolio that you can add to over time without ever having to worry about what you should buy or what the market might do. Just add to it regularly over time, and end up with solid retirement savings. The market and your portfolio will certainly fluctuate, but there is no need to react to these fluctuations—simply rebalance based on your investment plan (say, annually).

Here's a good primer from the Bogleheads forum: https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Bogleheads%C2%AE_investing_s...

Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?

#145

Post by kqr »

rapnie wrote: post #142

Learn blind typing with 10 fingers, if you were not doing that yet. Not only will it be a timesaver for the rest of your life, but it allows you to get into flow much easier, where your thoughts stream effortlessly to the screen.

And if you thinking about re-learning how to type anyway, try doing it on an optimised but common layout like Colemak or Dvorak. Basically no extra cost, but even greater savings!

Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?

#146

Post by aitchnyu »

escanda wrote: post #38
peteforde wrote: post #8

There's a growing realization that you can completely side-step the need for Single-Page App frameworks like React using websockets and the morphdom library. Projects like StimulusReflex (Rails) and LiveView (Phoenix) allow developers to build complex, reactive modern apps faster and easier by rejecting the need to even have client state. https://github.com/hopsoft/stimulus_reflex https://github.com/phoenixframework/…

Your mind will be furtherly blown when you realize this has been working for decades in JavaServerFaces!

Jose Valim responded to me saying its a fast, simpler, stateless and scalable solution compared to stateful solutions. For an example of stateful Java/ .Net app, I use a site that randomly logs me out, logs me out after inactivity, opening stuff in tabs are hit and miss (older ones let tabs mirror each other in background), normal UI actions has unexplainable pauses.

https://elixirforum.com/t/phoenix-liveview-is-now-live/20889...

Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?

#147

Post by mathieuh »

mantap wrote: post #75
keiferski wrote: post #61

The Cyrillic script is fairly easy to learn and will let you phonetically read a bunch of languages (Ukrainian, Russian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Mongolian, and Serbian to name a few.) Each language has a few unique letters and pronunciation can vary slightly, but for the most part they are the same. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillic_script

IPA is also amazingly useful if you want to learn another language or even just learn to say someone's name correctly. Having a notation for sounds helps you to understand and speak foreign languages, because you can think of what someone is saying in IPA and not in some flawed English transcription.

It definitely took me longer than an hour to learn IPA, but aside from that, definitely. I have an amateur interest in linguistics so I picked it up through reading Wikipedia articles on obscure languages, I would say I use it at least once a week.

Very helpful when learning languages that have sounds that aren't in a language you already speak, because your brain tends to map those sounds to similar sounds you already know.

Like how English speakers can't distinguish between French [u] and [ou] (/y/ and /u/ in IPA). Even if you can't hear it you can read about how to articulate it.

Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?

#148

Post by Plough_Jogger »

tempestn wrote: post #144

How, and why, to invest in a simple portfolio of index funds. Split between equity and fixed income based on your risk tolerance, and diversify equities globally. This will give you a low-cost, set-and-forget investment portfolio that you can add to over time without ever having to worry about what you should buy or what the market might do. Just add to it regularly over time, and end up with solid retirement savings…

Jack Bogle did not advocate for adding international equities to a portfolio as a means of diversification. [1]

[1] https://www.morningstar.com/articles/885739/why-jack-bogle-d...

Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?

#149

Post by tempestn »

I have to say, I was skeptical of this whole thread based on the title—what could you really learn in an hour of any true value? Well, it turns out a lot of things. I even added one to the list. Now I know how to properly wrap cables and tie my shoes. Thank you for posting this.

Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?

#150

Post by sshine »

sgillen wrote: post #109
samfar90 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to sound ridiculous, but I've gotten the same benefits that you seem to describe (I have never tried mindfulness) since I started to smoke weed.

Both things change how you think temporarily. I think they both do so in such a way that you can identify and emotionally deal with stuff that would otherwise remain unresolved.

I'm sorry, but there is a fine line between dealing with stuff and smoking weed, one of which involves dealing with stuff, and the other postponing dealing with stuff.
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