Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sit.

sonnet.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 131 posts

Re: Sit.

#121

Post by dang »

hnfong wrote: post #99
dang wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't post in the flamewar style or cross into personal attack. You can make your substantive points without that. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

I apologize for the tone. I'm learning how to not offend while getting my point across. I must re-emphasize that in many people's experiences, meditative practices could have powerful effects on one's mind (potentially positive and negative), and they are not matters to be trifled about. It's one thing to not practice it because one does not believe in them, but it's can be very dangerous to encourage others to dismi…

> I'm learning how to not offend while getting my point across

Yup and you'll find that your point gets across much better once you develop the habit of sanding off the sharp edges. The latter scratch the reader and then draw all the attention and energy, meaning your actual point gets lost. Not all readers react that way, but the ones who do will be more likely to get activated into commenting, and discussion quality suffers greatly.

There's an interesting phenomenon I've noticed: sometimes when people are replying to a moderator comment, they explain what they were trying to say in the first place. Often this 'second take' is a clearer and more neutral explanation. That's how I read your second paragraph there.

HN comments don't have to be completely neutral in every way—that would be a bit too bland, or even robotic—but it's a good idea to err on that side if you're unsure of how you're coming across. Over time you can develop the habit of not coming across as aggressive, and then you can gradually make your comments more colorful if you want to.

Re: Sit.

#122

Post by cupcakecommons »

"Rant: It just feels perplexing how preoccupied we are with sending people to a dead rock 138600000 km away by treating some random tech bro like your favourite football team, where at the same time we have 1000s of Curies, Teslas, Newtons worth of human potential, brain power which could be unlocked with sometimes relatively little work. Those people are not 1 au away. Yet, we fetishise those who make us miserable instead."

Yawn

Re: Sit.

#123

Post by i8comments »

Kiro wrote: post #80
w10-1 wrote: post #54

I like the simple approach. And as a practical matter, just chillin' is safe. But still: [sitting] can get uncomfortable. But when you finish, for some strange reason you feel better Meditation requires some guidance appropriate to the person. Some people are attracted to meditation for the wrong reasons; encouraging them without proper direction can make things go badly for them. Zen shinkanzen in particular is cons…

> Some people are attracted to meditation for the wrong reasons Like what?

Fame and fortune.

Re: Sit.

#124

Post by pedalpete »

rpastuszak wrote: post #100
pedalpete wrote: post #43

In this, they are still trying to get the person to meditate. To sit with very little and wonder what they are doing wrong. A few months ago I created Harbor (getharbor.app) which played some sounds with some haptics and tried to get people to focus on the sensation of the haptics. I'm a meditator, but I know many people who aren't and trying to get them to just "sit" and do nothing is a challenge. Some people get st…

> These are the challenges to try to overcome with meditation, so I'm not quite sure why Sit is different to other timers. You're looking at it as a product, which is understandable, but that's not the point. I communicate with people through my articles, drawings and code, and this is one of the ways of achieving that. It's like telling a friend that it's ok to slow down and do nothing for a moment but then scaling…

Thanks, you're right. I do look at these things from a product standpoint most of the time.

Harbor was just a weekend of coding for me, as we work in neurotech focused on sleep, and I hadn't published anything that people could use in a long time, and it was getting to me.

We decided not to pursue Harbor because the science behind the impact wasn't compelling enough.

I'd be keen to find out more about the work you did at the Imperial College.

We may pick Harbor up again in the future, if we can be convinced of the efficacy.

Re: Sit.

#125

Post by [deleted] »

torginus wrote: post #106

Is this some sort of challenge on how far you can make it into the article before throwing up? I have not read something this pretentious and self absorbed, yet painfully lacking in self-awareness in a long long time. It is beyond me how this fart huffing pseudo spiritualism becomes intertwined with engineering culture. I mean, I respect the hustle, turning lifestyle advice and a general sense of being better than yo…

[deleted]

Re: Sit.

#126

Post by torginus »

mrmanner wrote: post #119
torginus wrote: post #106

Is this some sort of challenge on how far you can make it into the article before throwing up? I have not read something this pretentious and self absorbed, yet painfully lacking in self-awareness in a long long time. It is beyond me how this fart huffing pseudo spiritualism becomes intertwined with engineering culture. I mean, I respect the hustle, turning lifestyle advice and a general sense of being better than yo…

This type of comment is why we can’t have nice things. Don’t like a link? That’s fine, but no need to be mean about it.

First, I disagree with the premise that you cannot criticize articles in the comments. That's what they are for, after all! My delivery could've been more refined, and maybe my comment was as unnecessarily angry, I still fully stand by its contents.

The whole article is a giant ad for the guy's management consulting gig. It contains a mishmash of far eastern mysticism, self-help nonsense, political signaling, all of which have nothing to do with developing software, even though the article suggests otherwise.

Mental health is important, and each of us lets off steam in their own ways, but to claim that the aforementioned things give you product development superpowers is the exact same mental jump as claiming a particularly fancy (and maybe religiously/spiritually meaningful) piece of jewellery has healing powers. It is quackery, the enemy of every skilled professional.

Re: Sit.

#127

Post by mrmanner »

torginus wrote: post #126
mrmanner wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This type of comment is why we can’t have nice things. Don’t like a link? That’s fine, but no need to be mean about it.

First, I disagree with the premise that you cannot criticize articles in the comments. That's what they are for, after all! My delivery could've been more refined, and maybe my comment was as unnecessarily angry, I still fully stand by its contents. The whole article is a giant ad for the guy's management consulting gig. It contains a mishmash of far eastern mysticism, self-help nonsense, political signaling, all of…

My delivery could have been refined as well - I don’t mind criticism per se, only when it’s angry and comes off as mean. To some extent I do believe in public praise and private criticism, but less so when an author links their own work like they did here.

Re: Sit.

#129

Post by rpastuszak »

torginus wrote: post #106

Is this some sort of challenge on how far you can make it into the article before throwing up? I have not read something this pretentious and self absorbed, yet painfully lacking in self-awareness in a long long time. It is beyond me how this fart huffing pseudo spiritualism becomes intertwined with engineering culture. I mean, I respect the hustle, turning lifestyle advice and a general sense of being better than yo…

This feels like such a cynical take.

I built Sit. for the reasons mentioned in the article. The consulting page was published almost 1 year after I published the app (the source is available on my GH).

I took a break from work because of mental health issues, and after a year I decided to work on something useful, and ideally help others. I've never charged anyone who called me asking for advice via Say Hi, be it students, ex-CTOs/FAANG engineers or founders, never (and people have offered money, believe me). I've burned through half of my personal savings so will need to find a job to support a sustainable business I want to grow, something very much against the techbro culture you bring up here. Hence the link to a consulting page posted several months later.

There's nothing spiritual about Sit., I even call it a dumb alarm clock/glorified gong in my other articles.

I don't want to change your opinion, but I'm happy I hadn't read this +1 year ago, when I was feeling shittier. Now things are much easier, in large part because comments like this are an exception and people, generally, are kind.

Re: Sit.

#130

Post by rpastuszak »

rpastuszak wrote: post #128
retrochameleon wrote: post #61

I like it a lot. I was hoping it would be installable as a PWA.

Author here -- working on it atm. Will post an update soon.

OK, done on Android https://untested.sonnet.io/Sit.+Offline+Mode

In a marvellously diabolical turn of events iOS nosleep support works as long as the app is not in standalone mode. aargh! Will post an update with that later.

Post reply on HN