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Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

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301–310 of 567 posts

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#301

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. If you say something “should be a thing” you are automatically now in charge of creating it or convincing someone to create it. Do not tell people who are working on things that they should realize your idea if you…

Don’t get married depends on country. Some countries won't even let you do hospital visits if you are not family.

And some states marry you even if you don’t get married. It’s called common law marriage and you can end up with all the divorce stuff without even having had the wedding.

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait. Could you elaborate on this? What was his argument for that statement: "He thought gTLDs were actively harming the Internet." I might be missing something.

I will hazard a guess. Cerf liked the top-level organization scheme com/org/edu because he worked hard on it and it carries meaningful information about the owner of the domain. E.g. identifies the domain-owner as either a for-profit corp, a non-profit org, or a school. By contrast new tlds like "app" or "website" imply absolutely nothing about the domain or the person/org that owns it. So there's a net loss in meani…

The .com and .org namespace has been diluted in meaning for decades.

You can make no useful inference about the owner of a .com or a .org domain name. They literally signify nothing anymore.

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#304
post #168

"It's easier to move from IC track to management than vice versa." This advice came from a coworker who encouraged me to continue down a technical track, rather than switch to management too early. I am now a manager and love it, but that advice led me to accumulate additional hands-on experience that has been tremendously valuable.

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Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#305
Your ego and your conscious mind are the source of most of your problems. Meditate to delve deeper and find out who you truly are. (Or more accurately, who you are not.) If you can tap into and sync up with this inner self, your problems will melt away and you will find happiness without needing much.

This isn’t to say that you must get rid of your conscious mind or ego. Simply understand why they’re useful.

Your conscious mind is a focusing tool, like a coach, and your subconscious mind is like the players in charge of the doing. The conscious mind shouldn’t be the one trying to solve everything. The ego cares too much about things that don’t matter like pride, greed, and ruling the universe. It is just trying to protect you from harm and death.

Let go of these feelings and thoughts, and stop trying to be the supreme ruler of the universe. You cannot control nearly as much as you think you can, including yourself. You can only influence.

Be still, let life happen and flow with it like water. Translation: Be perceptive of what’s happening around you and within, then act appropriately by gently guiding everything toward the desired outcome without using force and striving. Patience is key here. Striving makes you use up your energy too quickly and potentially burn out.

When you achieve this state of mind, it feels like you can solve any problem using your mind and ingenuity, and nothing really bothers you anymore. You’ll only spend time on what truly matters to you and your life will become one that’s truly worth living.

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You must balance enjoying your time now with investing in yourself and your future. That is, to me, one of the most difficult things to apply in life, and I feel like the rest of your post doesn't exactly provide an answer on how to achieve this. There are so many things that I want to do in life but that I cannot afford to do now, and which I always postpone to later. And it feels like I'll let a great deal of thi…

> Even if I lost all my sources of revenue tomorrow, I wouldn't survive for a very long time with my savings But you will survive longer than not having those savings at all. Or even worse, having debt. The extra burn down maybe the difference between accepting a shitty job or being able to look around for a better one. I've recently experienced a family emergency and I was glad I was in position to fork out hefty so…

One story I have that I think agrees with you is from when I was looking after my first child.

I was left alone to care for her, my wife needed a break and so went away for a night off. Btw, this is a good thing to arrange if you have a fairly new baby in the house - it gives the person getting the night off something to look forward to and provides real respite.

Back to the story, the baby (unusually, for she was a sweet little thing) would just not stop crying. She sensed mummy was away and was not happy (probably a commentary on my skills). I spent what felt like half the night with a howling baby, but in hindsight was probably a lot less than an hour. During that time I suffered a deep, deep trough of despair. I was under pressure at work, we were frankly bust financially, I wasn't all that physically well at the time and I was a shitty dad. I felt like I could see my life rolling out in front of me like no man's land in the European first world war (think, mud bath/moonscape/wilderness).

The thing that helped me was the fact that I could think back to evenings spent on tropical beaches, weeks in the mountains of different continents and meals in restaurants designed by Michaelangelo. I thought "Well, if this is what life is to be then that's ok. It was my decision and I have had a great time already, there is nothing I regret" and that really helped. Without that I don't know what I would have done, probably gone downstairs and drunk the contents of the booze cabinet, it's terrible to even write it. But, I understand why people in similar situation take drugs or go crazy.

Of course, 1 hr later my daughter was asleep and my mind set altered back to the reality of my privileged middle class existence. My problems didn't go away, but they were of course minor in the scale of real problems (as we all find out eventually). Some people end up in the literal no mans land of a european war, some people end up homeless, some people have their babies taken from them. None of this happened to me, thank whatever deity.

Go take that big adventure, it will give you a perspective that may prove priceless.

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#307
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reference books are the one thing it's a good idea to spend money on, because flipping back and forth through a digital copy is still a miserable experience

If they can make flipping a finger pinch worth of pages somehow doable that would be killer. Some sort of wide-pinch gesture with a semi transparent overlay of the page you are going to flip to with your current pinch width. A foldable reader with readable panels on each sides when you open it. You can flip pages either way. Pen for annotation if possible. Create/edit your own documents. An icon tap to overlay anothe…

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Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#308
post #186

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…

If you already know the product you are buying down to the model, Google isn't tailored for you. It's meant for people who have a vague idea and then pick what's at the top of the search results. This is why SEO has grown to be an entire profession.

More importantly Google wants to sell ads to everyone not just the company with the current cheapest product.

So they’re incentivized to be as vague as possible while still providing “useful” results.

Google Shopping results are so useless I rarely even bother trying.

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#309
post #283
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…

> 5. The only good Powerpoint slide is evergreen. If it's not, it's already obsolete. What does this mean? That it sticks to high-level, timeless concepts?

Yes, that's part of it. It has to speak deep (sometimes elusive) truth. People will be engaged. They will learn. They will use it.

And you can use the slides forever.

Kinda like stand-up comedy. Ever notice that there are 2 kinds of comics, those who riff with the drunks to get the cheap laughs and those who work at an act to speak evergreen truth, getting deep laughs (and even a few tears). We should be like the latter.

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