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Ask HN: What tangible benefits did you get from spending time on HN?

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Re: Ask HN: What tangible benefits did you get from spending time on HN?

#161

Post by trashme »

> For a few weeks, I am doubting if HN is another "user engagement" place like you know Reddit, FB etc.

If you cannot engage an audience, people don't crowd around to hear you.

HN is a place where people come to showcase what they create, share something that good hackers would find interesting, and comment on others' submissions.

As you may know, visitors to the site are wide-ranging in background and interests. Here I would restrict my reading to what suits my tastes since I am not a polymath and comment on topics which I am knowledgeable or want to learn more about.

Re: Ask HN: What tangible benefits did you get from spending time on HN?

#162

Post by sokoloff »

graeme wrote: post #94
chris_st wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If anyone knows what gme call option prices were like on jan 20th I’d be very interested to know Look here: https://omnieq.com/underlyings/NYSE/GME/chain

Are those american or european? Doesn’t have high out of the money but if I’m reading it right the potential returns for buying Jan 20th were insane. A $60 call potion expiring Jan 29th was $1.20. GME went to $500 or so. If you exercised such an option at, say, $350, your profit on the exercise would have been $290. At a cost of $1.20. 242x return. And thank you, that site is incredible. Very hard to find such data.…

The options are American-style.

I also love the typo of “potion” for option in your second paragraph. It seems especially fitting for this story.

Re: Ask HN: What tangible benefits did you get from spending time on HN?

#163

Post by pjmorris »

In your context, I didn't actually get the tangible benefit that was there, so this doesn't fully count. However, I became aware of Bitcoin when they were going for ~9 cents, and thought seriously about buying 300-400 when they were $1 due to another HN article. I'm sure I'd have spent the BTC on pizza or something even if I'd bought it, but there are tech waves that start as ripples and HN is one of the first places to see those ripples.

> Also intellectual debate, I get more information, I feel smart as benefits etc. don't count in this context.

I happen to think the intellectual debate aspect is an important one.

Re: Ask HN: What tangible benefits did you get from spending time on HN?

#164

Post by davidfstr »

HN occasionally alerts me to the existence of new tools or trends that I can leverage in business.

For example:

* About 5 years ago I happened to read about the Material Design Lite library on HN which I then used for my then-nascent startup to get our initial website up and running quickly in the Material Design UI language. (And for that purpose it has worked quite well.)

* Emscripten & WASM-related tech has been useful for implementing some of the “secret sauce” at my startup.

* The recent attention given to Cosmopolitan has unlocked a specific technical hurdle (around multi-platform support) for a digital preservation venture I’m planning to start as a side project soon.

Re: Ask HN: What tangible benefits did you get from spending time on HN?

#166

Post by Balgair »

I posted a comment once bemoaning the high costs of one of my SO's medications. The chemical compound in question is used by horse veterinarians as a supplement for their joints; think something like how Vitamin-D is put into milk. Due to medical/legal issues, the only source for this compound in the US is via a MD or a VD (or so we thought). The cost is ~$2/pill, taken thrice daily. Depending on the insurance plan, it can go up to ~$10/pill. This cost had been keeping our family from changing jobs and careers as the medical costs had to be factored in during salary negotiations. Like many Americans, we were enslaved to our insurance plan.

A extraordinarily kind HNer pointed me towards how to search for bulk manufactured chemicals.

A few weeks later we got 1 cubic meter of the stuff. The cubic meter being the smallest volume the company would send. It will last my SO's entire lifetime and then a few more.

That HNer gave us the gift of freedom.

Re: Ask HN: What tangible benefits did you get from spending time on HN?

#167

Post by tebbers »

Balgair wrote: post #166

I posted a comment once bemoaning the high costs of one of my SO's medications. The chemical compound in question is used by horse veterinarians as a supplement for their joints; think something like how Vitamin-D is put into milk. Due to medical/legal issues, the only source for this compound in the US is via a MD or a VD (or so we thought). The cost is ~$2/pill, taken thrice daily. Depending on the insurance plan,…

Amazing story, how much did you have to pay for the cubic meter and how did you take delivery?!

Re: Ask HN: What tangible benefits did you get from spending time on HN?

#168

Post by jmartrican »

It got me away from watching/reading the normal news. The normal news is full of negative sensational stories. I find HN more positive and constructive. I still stay up to date with HN but view a different angle of attack. We all need a grasp on reality. If you are a trader on Wall St. You might get your grasp on what's going on in the world via the prices of stocks and commodities. HN is another way, I think, at getting a grasp on reality without constantly being bombarded with sensational news formats.
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