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Ask HN: What you up to? (Who doesn't want to be hired?)

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Re: Ask HN: What you up to? (Who doesn't want to be hired?)

#771

Post by timwaagh »

wpnbos wrote: post #577
timwaagh wrote: post #535

I have grudgingly accepted the fact that I'll never be hired unless it's on the cheap. And I already have a job. So although I still talk to recruiters occasionally I never end up pursuing an opportunity anymore. The risk of loss of income outweighs any marginal salary gains I could have. I don't have the energy to go after things like Amazon which require serious studying to get in. I got caught violating a rule tha…

> I got caught violating a rule that I can't rent out to more than two people and had to pay a 3000€ fine that sounds like Amsterdam

close enough. would have been worse if it had been amsterdam but they're hardly the only annoying government in this country.

Re: Ask HN: What you up to? (Who doesn't want to be hired?)

#772

Post by bufferoverflow »

philangist wrote: post #180

I 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…

Helping people in need is always rewarding.

You don't have to do it with your own cash.

Re: Ask HN: What you up to? (Who doesn't want to be hired?)

#773

Post by bjelkeman-again »

JudgePenitent wrote: post #178
bjelkeman-again wrote: post #22

Building circular food production systems. Local, automated, data driven. Some stuff posted here, but much more going on. http://cirkularodling.se/build-an-aquaponic-indoor-farm-part...

Wow! This is really cool! Is the entire nutrient cycle automated, or are there some parts which have to be manually done after the initial germination for foodstuffs? Are there machine learning algorithms which learn from the nutrient and water inputs and quality of the batch (by lb, shape, taste, etc) adjust and try to get higher quality with each batch? Also really well documented.

Currently there is lots of manual steps. Automation for other things than water is coming, in the next major build. We hardly add nutrients at all, just a few ppm of things that are missing in the fish feed. We still get premium quality on the produce.

Re: Ask HN: What you up to? (Who doesn't want to be hired?)

#774

Post by wdieter »

I've started a campaign to limit short-term rentals like Airbnb and VRBO in my small resort town of Ketchum, Idaho. The number of long-term rentals is down by 40% over the past 10 years, and housing prices (rents and purchases) are up by 40% over the past 8 years. I've been documenting this on my website https://www.airbnbkills5b.com. 5B is the local code for our county. Its on our license plates.

I'm hoping the election today brings new leadership that can tackle this issue. This Airbnb model is proving to be cancerous to lower - middle income housing stock, and platforms like pacaso and realpha are going to make the problem worse. We need to stop treating houses as an investment vehicle for big investors.

Re: Ask HN: What you up to? (Who doesn't want to be hired?)

#775

Post by bovermyer »

sprkwd wrote: post #611
bovermyer wrote: post #603

I'm working on a "forever project" to procedurally generate role-playing game books. It's not glamorous or profitable, but it's entertaining.

That sounds amazing. Where do I find out more?

Well, the site that houses tools-in-progress towards this end is Iron Arachne: https://ironarachne.com.

The writing on the subject that I've done - what little there is, anyway - is on my personal website, https://benovermyer.com.

As it turns out, a lot of the articles I wrote about it seem to have broken images or links. Looks like I need to go back and clean that up.

Re: Ask HN: What you up to? (Who doesn't want to be hired?)

#776

Post by dennis_jeeves »

waldohatesyou wrote: post #319

I wish I had something interesting to say here but honestly, kind of depressed. Not the clinical kind of course but more the aimless 24 year old kind. I've been working at this startup (or perhaps scaleup would be a better term considering they're already worth 7 billion dollars). It's great career-wise. I'm learning a lot and I feel like I'm being compensated fairly. But I thought my life would feel "complete" once…

>I'm not mad at them for choosing other folks over me, it just makes me wonder what the point of those friendships was in the first place.

Here is something more worrisome than the fact that they have chosen someone over you to be friends with: they do not have long term memories. Most likely the have not chosen someone else because they were better than you in some ways, but they 'chose' those people because forgetful enough that they just pick people that they are geographically closest to them as 'friends'.

George Orwell has made similar observations of common people.

Re: Ask HN: What you up to? (Who doesn't want to be hired?)

#777

Post by bambax »

fataliss wrote: post #766
bambax wrote: post #648

I wrote a book of fiction (in French) and I self-published it on Amazon (KDP) after some encouragement from someone here on HN; it's just been selected as one of the five finalists of the Storyteller Amazon contest. Sales are slow, though. I'm trying to get good at EDM but am making little progress. I have watched many tutorials, studied the masters. I am good with tools, and sometimes I come up with 4- or 8-bar loop…

What's the book's name? No wonder sales are slow, you gotta promote that shit :)

I don't know if promotion really works. I think a book has to have a "moment" to be a runaway success.

(There's this French author I follow on Twitter, who just published a new novel; he's enjoying an incredible amount of press coverage, with raving reviews from so many critics. Yet his book doesn't seem to sell much, or at all.

My book is called "L'archevêque de Cologne" (it's in French). It's the - real - story of a priest in Paris during WWII who would pretend he was fighting the Germans, while he was in fact working for them, and giving them names of resistant fighters.

Most readers or prospective readers think it's a "historic" novel, and there are only so many people interested in yet another WWII story.

But it isn't.

It's about truth, and how much you can lie to other people and to yourself until you dissolve your soul into your own lies. It's also about hubris, ambition, and morals.

This is difficult to convey, even in conversation.

Re: Ask HN: What you up to? (Who doesn't want to be hired?)

#778

Post by iamwil »

zielsen wrote: post #330
iamwil wrote: post #152

I started selling spice blends, the flavor being "Beef Noodle Soup". After seeing "Everything but the Bagel" at Trader Joe's, I thought it was the first spice blend I saw named after a dish. Interesting! If people can have bagels anywhere, what else would people want to have anywhere? I asked my partner what sort of flavors would be familiar to people we knew, and she came up with the triumvirate: Pho, Ramen, and Bee…

This is an awesome idea! I’ve been thinking about doing something similar in the hot sauce area. Any lessons/takeaways? Would love to know how you got your first customers.

I think a couple things.

1/ Have a flavor profile that's targeted towards a demographic you can reach. It's a much easier sell if you have access to an initial distribution channel and that demographic understands immediately what it might taste like.

2/ First customers: I started off with a couple friends, and then guessed where else I might find more like them. Kept trying until I found more. Don't start with paying for ads unless you're doing MVP testing pre-product.

3/ Have a unique flavor that they can't get anywhere else, but is legible (by reading the description, they can kinda imagine it). This may be tough, and your best bet is probably testimonies from your friends.

4/ Don't worry about scaling up initially. Take the time to make sure the product is something people actually want. Be skeptical and look for indicators, cuz your friends will lie to your face. Look for what they do, not what they say: spreading by word of mouth, repeat orders, unboxing on social media without you asking. etc. Work out the product kinks while you're small, because small problems also become big problems at scale.

5/ Work out the order fulfillment process and keep iterating on it. I find it really eats up time when I get an order that I'm not expecting to handle. Be organized and keep track of things.

Re: Ask HN: What you up to? (Who doesn't want to be hired?)

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Post by muzani »

benjaminwootton wrote: post #409
muzani wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a Ask HN thread, maybe a few, of people who hit it rich and later lost it. The common theme is it's easier to make lots of money than it is to keep it, which is a little unintuitive.

Do you have a link to this one please? Sounds interesting!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20521902

The good stories are around the middle.

Re: Ask HN: What you up to? (Who doesn't want to be hired?)

#780

Post by tata71 »

prox wrote: post #746
tata71 wrote: post #745

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Michael Saylor says only invest the money you can't afford to lose. This is likely closer to reality, if one is cryptocurrency savvy.

I don’t really get this point… how does that work?

If you can afford to lose your money, don't invest it into cryptocurrency and keep it as USD or other fiat.
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