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Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

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Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#501

Post by kortilla »

uoaei wrote: post #379
kortilla wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Always take sides. By not taking a side you are automatically wrong. This doesn’t mean you should engage in identity politics, etc. but when faced with a choice take the time to make an informed decision. This is a good way to piss away incredible amounts of time on irrelevant things. You are definitely not “wrong” by choosing to ignore an argument about which Kardashian is better looking.

Taking a side does not mean submitting yourself to an argument. The advice is "take a side", not "advocate/defend a side in all circumstances".

It involves grokking the arguments from both sides and if it’s anything non-trivial it will take hours to actually give it due diligence. “Taking a side” without being some political hot-head dipshit is a massive waste of time.

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#502

Post by swyx »

iKevinShah wrote: post #362
edw519 wrote: post #248

Mentor advice: 1. An estimate is better than a guess. An measurement is better than an estimate. 2. It's never the money. (They will always say it is, but it's not.) 3. Never let anyone eat your lunch. 4. The best time to turn it on is before it's ready. You'll get plenty of data to finish it faster. 5. The only good Powerpoint slide is evergreen. If it's not, it's already obsolete. 6. Your positive mental attitude m…

Some of these are amazing. Specially - The answer to any question is "Who wants to know?"

can you explain why? i read thru the linked post and it seemed kinda obvious that differnt people care about different things so you must adapt your value proposition accordingly. i must be missing something

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#503

Post by annyeonghada »

tomcdonnell wrote: post #61

When I was at university, one professor of electrical engineering would refuse to answer any student who asked whether their answer to a circuit theory problem was correct. When asked why he would refuse to answer, he would say: "If you aren't confident that your answer is correct, then I would like to mark you as wrong even though you may be right. You are the expert. You should be telling me that your answer is rig…

I don't know why this antididactical bullshit is tolerated in STEM or even praised. Every single research in the field show us that feedback is one if not the most important part of learning, that's why self teaching is so difficult, but problem sets without solutions, no guidance on how to approach problem solving and, my favourite, fear of memorization and firm knowledge are the rule in that world. They were just annoying, frustrating, full of themselves and generally poor teachers.

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#504

Post by swyx »

onos wrote: post #225
jart wrote: post #98

I was one of the people who implemented Google's top-level domain system. One day in the microkitchen I met Vint Cerf and told him what I worked on. He very curtly told me that he hates generic top-level domains, they confuse consumers, and ICANN should have been focusing on making .com / .org / .net better instead. It surprised me when I learned that I'd spent the last four years of my life working on a project wher…

Out of the pot and into the frying pan, eh?

is this a tensorflow subtweet?

i mean i am not too close to the matter but tensorflow has still been sort of a success hasnt it?

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#505

Post by swyx »

ghstcode wrote: post #73

Before spending the last money I had on a coding book, the cashier could see my hesitation and said "don't worry, investing in yourself is never a waste of money". It had a profound impact on me.

i mean, the cashier also had a vested interest in selling you books and no qualms about taking the last money you had

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#506

Post by leobg »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #464
leobg wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He said that? Sounds like straight out of David Graeber. (I agree.)

Graeber is the real influence for me too, but yes he did say that lmao Goes to show how little self-awareness matters relative to power held I guess https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1585804674170355712/ph...

Hm. Wouldn’t call that lack of self awareness. Thanks for the source. Quote:

> Frankly, I hate doing mgmt stuff. I kinda don't think anyone should be the boss of anyone. But I love helping solve technical/product design problems.

What I hear is that he doesn’t like playing the boss. And that he would very much prefer a company to work like interconnected computers in a network, with no hierarchy. He aspires to having engineering decisions solved on the basis of first principles, not on the basis of social hierarchy. The part where he deems management necessary, however, is making sure that all the vectors inside a company are aligned towards a single goal. Because he knows from experience that, without that, a company will die. so he does that out of necessity. But deep in his heart, he would really prefer to just do the work of an engineer. I mean, to me, that very much fits in with his INTJ personality type.

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#507

Post by jbverschoor »

edw519 wrote: post #279
gbro3n wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would be great to get some context / examples around some of these

Thanks for the feedback, gbro3n. I'm too lazy to write a blog post about this at the moment, so here's a quickie reply: 1. An estimate is better than a guess. An measurement is better than an estimate. Feedback from my mentor at a silly presentation of mine that convinced no one. I added data (as suggested) and it killed. 2. It's never the money. (They will always say it is, but it's not.) I had trouble selling softw…

You seem to be surrounded with smart people/advisors

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#508

Post by hayst4ck »

Every person has a choice in their life: Comfort or growth. If you are comfortable you are not growing. If you are growing it won't be comfortable.

The corollary is that you must choose to feel pain (pain of studying, pain of exercise, pain of rejection, pain of focus, pain of chance of failure, pain of being unsure) to get what is good in life.

So the Advice: Choose pain so that you can experience growth.

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#510

Post by IgorPartola »

agentwiggles wrote: post #356
IgorPartola wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a consumer I am totally fine paying for things. But I hate being interrupted with ads for irrelevant shit I don’t want or need. Google and every other online advertiser is hilariously bad at guessing what I might be shopping for at the moment. Amazon comes close by remembering what products I looked at last. But Google is worse than dogshit when it comes to this. I’ll give you a typical example where Google could…

Slightly off topic but salutations to a fellow mini split owner, I have a Senville unit in my garage (which has been converted to an office/gym/also still a garage). I really love the thing and installing it was my first big DIY project in many ways. I did all the work myself and the results have been awesome. It can make my garage absolutely frigid (although it's not quite as good at heating, I've got some work to d…

They really do seem wonderful. I am building a separate building on my property that will be my backyard office and hopefully this unit is going up in a few weeks. Can’t wait to try it out.
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