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

Ask HN: What cool skill or project interests you, but feels out of reach?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 281 posts

Re: Ask HN: What cool skill or project interests you, but feels out of reach?

#241

Post by brailsafe »

thorin wrote: post #162
brailsafe wrote: post #77

There's a few that come to mind, but none that feel actually as daunting intellectually as much as they are qualified by other factors. I'd like to go from indoor bouldering to rock climbing, but coordinating with a belayer doesn't seem super interesting and otherwise it's just a matter of expense, gear, and a slight pivot in my leisure time to start going at it. Otherwise, the skill that seems most out of reach is k…

I would encourage you to speak to the wall first in case they run outdoor sessions or see if there are any clubs in your area. This assumes you live in an area with some outdoor climbing. Outdoor bouldering can be done with little equipment, but you need to start way easier than what you'd do at the wall. The ground is surprisingly hard and I've seen someone break their ankle right in front of me a few times and it d…

Yep, this is pretty much the process I had in mind for going about it, and yes all the other variables are conveniently in place. I have a lot of respect for nature, mountains, and difficult potentially dangerous recreational sports, so I don't mean to trivialize the endeavor. I should have articulated the thought in a slightly different way, such that I meant something more akin to "One of the things I'd like to pursue is outdoor climbing, but I have a sense of the path to doing that, it's not as much of a mystery as this other thing"

Re: Ask HN: What cool skill or project interests you, but feels out of reach?

#242

Post by tumidpandora »

swsieber wrote: post #6

Hobby electronics & robotics. I can make an LED blink on a ESP8266 (it's been a while), but that's it. I'd like to get more familiar with a multimeter, figuring out broken kids toys, etc. but it's a bit daunting. Maybe there's too many options and not enough constraints. I'm not sure.

I'm starting out as well. If you prefer coding in python, raspberry pi or anything adafruit is a good place to start. If you're cool with c/c++ Arduino ecosystem is quite mature . I decided to stick to the former so it's a less steeper learning curve for me and my little one. Get a BBC Micro:bit v2 and/or a CircuitPlayground Express. Both have a ton of sensors on board (temp, tilt, light, humidity etc) and some leds/neo-pixels to play around. Once you play with some of that, and want to get your hands dirty with breadboarding and soldering, get a basic kit (e.g. raspberry pi pico etc) and use MakeCode to try out some simple circuits with your microbit or circuitplayground express as the signal provider, play with servos, hobby motors, do some basic projects. Once you feel you're a bit proficient, might one to check out LeRobot for an open source robotic arm that you could train with reinfocement learning.. this is not exhaustive or the only path, there's many others, this is just my 2cents. Hope this helps!

Re: Ask HN: What cool skill or project interests you, but feels out of reach?

#243

Post by brailsafe »

jonah wrote: post #88
brailsafe wrote: post #77

There's a few that come to mind, but none that feel actually as daunting intellectually as much as they are qualified by other factors. I'd like to go from indoor bouldering to rock climbing, but coordinating with a belayer doesn't seem super interesting and otherwise it's just a matter of expense, gear, and a slight pivot in my leisure time to start going at it. Otherwise, the skill that seems most out of reach is k…

I haven't done much climbing at all but I would encourage you to go for it. Being outside is a whole different level and a great excuse to spend time in nature. Start by talking to people at your bouldering gym. If you hear anyone discussing going out climbing, ask if you can tag along and just watch for a few times. Watch some videos about climbing basics to get an overall feel for it and some of the concepts and te…

Thanks for the advice! After re-reading my comment, I should have articulated the thought differently. I've already been taking the path you and the sibling commenter described, all the variables are already more or less in-place, and I already have a strong love of the outdoors, long day hikes with sketchy scrambles, many wall climbers met, invitations received, etc.. So what I meant was, "One of the things I'd like to do is outdoor climbing, but I have a pretty clear path with no particular hurdles in the way of going for it, it's not as abstract as not getting fired or laid off from a job"

That said, I appreciate the sentiment nonetheless; more encouragement to get out and do hard, rewarding things, especially social things, should never be frowned upon.

Re: Ask HN: What cool skill or project interests you, but feels out of reach?

#245

Post by a_tartaruga »

Genetic engineering and synthetic biology. Synthesizing DNA and transforming cells. Designing better methodologies to improve efficiency, robustness, cost or scale up of common bio lab processes. Mapping out all bio lab processes used in genetic engineering. Unfortunately without going back to school to PhD options are very limited. The Thought Emporium guy and the 4-6 community bio labs in major US cities are the only counter examples I know of doing this outside of academia / industry.

I have a theory that if society could unlock a hobbyist class of synthetic biology tinkerers it could unleash rapid growth similar to the computing industry. I'm not sure if the problem is technology not being low cost and high safety enough or a lack of social institutions supporting people like this.

Re: Ask HN: What cool skill or project interests you, but feels out of reach?

#246

Post by addaon »

ecesena wrote: post #214
addaon wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've just taken a quick glance at this, and will explore further -- but at first, it seems like it's really a good application of ad-hoc proofs to assembly code; which is a subset of what I'm interested in, but for me the more interesting thing about the paper was the structured safety proofs for things like memory safety, no read-before-write, no overflow, etc., and thinking about how this can be expanded and genera…

Yeah, I hear you. Many things are simplified in this crypto code, for example there’s no dynamic allocation. At the same time it’s incredibly difficult to get a realistic model of the hardware instructions because they all have side effects. And it gets incredibly more difficult if you try to prove real world, hand optimized code (vs academic proof of concept code). With all this said, I think this could be a good in…

> Many things are simplified in this crypto code, for example there’s no dynamic allocation.

That's okay, I haven't worked on code bases with dynamic allocation professionally in years, and even my hobby projects usually avoid it.

Re: Ask HN: What cool skill or project interests you, but feels out of reach?

#247

Post by sandreas »

For years I had a little project here to rebuild the iPod Nano 7g in Open Source Hardware and software. Not that small, but at least in the same size category (a lot smaller than the smallest smartphone).

The iPod nano 7g is not designed to last forever... it is hard to repair - the battery can be replaced but the internal 16GB flash memory is a job for professionals.

There are lots of The main pain point is controlling the device via headphone remote. The iPod supports play/pause, next, prev, vol+, vol- and fast-forward as well as rewind. Nothing comes close to this in android.

However, I was aiming to take one of the newer RISC-V boards with USB-C (like LicheeRV Nano or Luckfox Lyra), add a 2.4 inch display and a battery + gauge to it and 3D print a case, work out a UI via LVGL, but having 2 children is just too time consuming for such a project.

Sticking to my iPod Nano 7g hopefully lasts another 5 years until I can focus on it again :-)

Re: Ask HN: What cool skill or project interests you, but feels out of reach?

#248

Post by metabro »

giantg2 wrote: post #237
metabro wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without knowing specifics like your current skillset, experience, location, income requirements it’s hard to provide advice.

I've already accepted that it won't happen.

Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t – you’re right

Re: Ask HN: What cool skill or project interests you, but feels out of reach?

#249

Post by qbpqb »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #174
giantg2 wrote: post #156

"What cool skill or project interests you, but feels out of reach?" A job where I can support my family and feel valued/respected. I think that would be cool.

Yes. I could theoretically do just about anything, with a reasonable amount of ramp up time. And am interested in many things. Even willing to study ahead of time for free. Yet, my main obstacle these days is gatekeeping by others. People won’t let you work in a field without previous experience (in the exact thing) or significant credentials. Seems to have gotten worse over time, although ageism may contribute. Not…

Usually, a good way to start is to try working for just getting experience (directly ask to people who are working in your desired field to till you get one). Maybe work for free for first couple of months and make connection and get an idea how things work...

Re: Ask HN: What cool skill or project interests you, but feels out of reach?

#250

Post by is_true »

hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #222
episteme wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's an index fund, what's the difference between this and a fund run in the EU that tracks a US market? Is it taxed differently?

I'm using 'index fund' broadly to refer to the cost structure - very low management fees, very "dumb" wide market tracking. Plenty of these already exist in the EU, for EU citizens, you are correct. But yes, they are taxed differently. A US-domiciled fund is much easier for US expats to invest in without risking losing over 100% of their return (I am not exaggerating), but only if you can actually find one which will…

What about ETFs in ireland that track the SP and other indexes?
Post reply on HN