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Ask HN: What you up to? (Who doesn't want to be hired?)
331–340 of 874 posts
Re: Ask HN: What you up to? (Who doesn't want to be hired?)
#332I've started a free education blog on web-scraping: https://scrapecrow.com/
Web-scraping and reverse-engineering is such a brilliant subject in my opinion and there's an unsurprising lack of resource in this area as it's a rather secretive medium - as a good scraping/reverse engineering strategy is often considered to be a business secret.
It started off as a need to not repeat myself on stackoverflow. Web-scraping is a common question subject and the same questions would be asked over and over again. I couldn't find explicit resources available so I wrote them myself! Now I'd often answer question with specifics and point to full article for further reading which people seem to appreciate and come back with follow ups less often.
I'm still working out the kinks - especially pacing, brevity and editing - though it has been a really enjoyable ride so far. Finally as a backend engineer it finally got me to get over the front-end hump. I've learned some pretty css and general web building - it's often frustrating but surprisingly fun!
Re: Ask HN: What you up to? (Who doesn't want to be hired?)
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank goodness for Obamacare (at least in the mid-Atlantic US). Before Obamacare, individual plans were absolute shit (my individual plan wouldn't have covered my wife's pregnancy with our first kid... her job's insurance did). Thanks to Obamacare, individual plans have the same coverage as employer plans. Without Obamacare I couldn't have started my company which now employs 9 people in well paid tech jobs (without…
I’m not sure if I agree with your experience, in New York City Obamacare plans are horrendously bad, The coverage comes nowhere near to the crappiest employer plan. I had to hire a Nigerian kid to just call the doctors listed on Obamacare website which accepted the silver plan, and about only 40% of the doctors really did (this was for a delivery). $1400 per month for a mother and a child. I currently pay $1400 per m…
The price is probably similar to what the employer pays. It just gets hidden because everyone only pays attention to what comes out of their paycheck. I know a past employer paid $2000 for me per pay period.
Health insurance is bullshit obviously. the costs are hidden and definitely suppress what our wages could be. A government solution would be hard pressed to be worse.
Re: Ask HN: What you up to? (Who doesn't want to be hired?)
#334Managing an apartment complex (pro-bono) alongside a tech job. In Bangalore, it is normal to have a committee of apartment owners who oversee the operations, set up rules for residents, take up mini-projects for efficiency / beautification /long term maintenance and also manage the finances. This committee operates for a year and then passes on the reins to the next committee.
Our apartment complex has 850 apartments. This scale has interesting challenges:
- Communication (mostly Whatsapp, sometimes email) : how residents with different language abilities understand/misunderstand instructions and announcements
- Managing outages of electricity, water, lifts for maintenance ( Childrens exams, residents with medical conditions, work from home)
- Employee politics and the need to break up unholy alliances ( e.g. Employee tie-up with particular vendor, some employees creating emergencies so that some large expenses are quickly approved, one group purposely slowing down a diligent employee)
From a tech perspective, it's the machinery and equipment that is interesting
- distribution of water, electricity, gas
- Sewage treatment plant
Since ours is a 10+ year old apartment complex, almost all of the equipment needs some work and there are frequent failures. It requires the committee to understand and make decisions about quick fixes vs long term , validate costs of fixing and manage inconvenience caused by outages.
4 months in, this has been a great experience outside of the usual tech company issues :)
Re: Ask HN: What you up to? (Who doesn't want to be hired?)
#335I didn't win the IPO lottery, but I won the life lottery and am fortunate to be living off my spouse's salary for the immediate future. I quit my full-time position a few months back. Since then, I've been exploring different "work" replacements. I tried freelancing and noodled on starting my own business. Finally, I've decided to apply for a Ph.D. program. But, the most important thing I've learned these past few mo…
Nice! What area are you aiming for a PhD in?
Re: Ask HN: What you up to? (Who doesn't want to be hired?)
#336I'm getting very close to homelabbing. Change my mind before I light my money on fire.
Re: Ask HN: What you up to? (Who doesn't want to be hired?)
#337I programatically create educational videos on fundamental algorithms and data structures, a side project that I'm very excited about. I'm creating the videos using Python and the manim library. My latest video is on insertion sort and you can check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jF-8RcO_9ds . I am still developing a recipe for the videos, but it is a definitely a lot of fun.
i actually understood the insertion sort this way
Re: Ask HN: What you up to? (Who doesn't want to be hired?)
#338I have started writing a blog[1] about my treks in the Indian Himalayas. My pace of writing is really slow, so don't have too many articles in there yet. But have a couple of more posts in the pipeline.
Re: Ask HN: What you up to? (Who doesn't want to be hired?)
#339Re: Ask HN: What you up to? (Who doesn't want to be hired?)
#340I won the IPO lottery and I’m in the middle ground between rich enough to never work again but not quite rich enough for the yachts/mansions/private jets lifestyle. I haven’t worked in 6 months and I’m struggling to find a larger meaning to my life beyond getting yet another tech job. I’ve considered going to college for a math degree, moving to my parents home country, and joining the military (among many other opti…
Happy birthday! Man am I jealous, I think I’ll have to grind away all my best years at faang or worse. I also love Russian lit, so so checkout Oblomov and Tolstoy shorter novels like the Death of Ivan Ilyich. I think you’d really like the japanese book Musashi as well (or the incredible Vagabond manga adapted after it)
I thought with fang you can retire in 10 years or so.