Ask HN: What Are You Doing?
83 comments
I apologize for being such a downer, but I'm dealing with the fact that my mom died last week. With my brother, other family members, and friends, we're figuring out what to do next.
EDIT: She had some end of life arrangements in place (like a will) to make things easier. She had cancer, so this wasn't unexpected, but it doesn't make the feelings any less chaotic.
EDIT: She had some end of life arrangements in place (like a will) to make things easier. She had cancer, so this wasn't unexpected, but it doesn't make the feelings any less chaotic.
So sorry for your loss. Thank you for posting, it's a huge and difficult situation so many of us will encounter and it's good to know. Best of luck getting through this moment.
Sorry to hear of your loss. Losing a parent is awful. I hope you and your family find some peace.
Truly sorry for your loss, may better days come to you and your family.
Have really got into fitness (much more strength training) lately and trying to up my protein levels but trying to do so in a healthy way. Kind of went down a rabbit hole a few months ago of reading way too many labels and trying to understand ingredients lists on products (takeaway: supplements usually have lots of weird stuff in them). I've started trying to compile all of this information into a database so when I have spare time (like I do right now, I just upload more info). If anyone is curious: https://proteindb.com/database
I am reading a student's outline of their approach to computing the diffuse neutrino flux expected from a class of galaxies over the lifetime of the Universe. It's part of a study we are doing to see if we can determine the origin of the astrophysical neutrino background seen by IceCube[0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IceCube_Neutrino_Observatory
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IceCube_Neutrino_Observatory
I'm quitting my job of 4 1/2 years next week to pursue a passion project. I woke up a bit ago, am sitting on the couch, procrastinating, and dwelling on the bittersweet realization that I'm going to be lacking job security soon. Exciting times.
I'm building a "sneaky" mental health app. It presents as if it were a modern, sci-fi take on Tamagotchi coupled with a daily self-reflection routine. You find yourself surprisingly compelled to nurture your virtual pet, commit to the routine, and then the software nudges you to journal and meditate since you're already showing up for your pet.
I'm excited to see how I improve myself with my software and if I can touch others who might typically be reticent of adopting additional self-care habits.
Sorry, I didn't mean to turn this into a pitch, but now you know where my head is at. :)
I'm building a "sneaky" mental health app. It presents as if it were a modern, sci-fi take on Tamagotchi coupled with a daily self-reflection routine. You find yourself surprisingly compelled to nurture your virtual pet, commit to the routine, and then the software nudges you to journal and meditate since you're already showing up for your pet.
I'm excited to see how I improve myself with my software and if I can touch others who might typically be reticent of adopting additional self-care habits.
Sorry, I didn't mean to turn this into a pitch, but now you know where my head is at. :)
Investing in yourself is job security. It's literally why I've never had to worry about work :) Good on you :D
I agree :) I take some time off after every career stint and have always felt more refreshed and alive by the end of it. I think I interview better, too. No regrets or second-guessing. Just a lot of awareness of my spending habits, hah.
Thanks for the words of encouragement.
Thanks for the words of encouragement.
Oooo. So is this gonna work like Finch?
Yeah! I definitely consider Finch to be in friendly competition with what will become Symbiant. :)
The largest difference is how our audiences discover and think about us. Finch users feel they need help and seek out Finch. Finch understands this, calls attention to the needing help, and presents itself as an anxiety-free warm hug. Finch wants users to "come out of their shell" and to engage with the world. Then, Finch nudges that engagement towards self-improvement. It's great.
Symbiant users think they're fine as-is (but are underappreciating how far from the ceiling they are), frequently lean into gaming to wind-down and as a means of escapism, and are more likely to adopt concepts that make themselves feel "smart" rather than applying labels to themselves that make them feel like they need fixing. Symbiant strives to talk about mental health at a higher level of abstraction, hinting at the complexities of psychology, and allows the user to feel like they are discovering knowledge by connecting all the dots. It then provides tools to allow the user to apply their new knowledge.
Think of how Papers, Please or This War of Mine strive to educate users about political tyranny and war, but do so in atypical ways. You're not the tyrant or war hero - you're a pawn in the overarching story. After playing, the user is touched with an understanding that feels more well-rounded having learned from a unique, atypical perspective. My goal is to construct and provide a similar learning experience around mental health, self-reflection, and habituation.
The largest difference is how our audiences discover and think about us. Finch users feel they need help and seek out Finch. Finch understands this, calls attention to the needing help, and presents itself as an anxiety-free warm hug. Finch wants users to "come out of their shell" and to engage with the world. Then, Finch nudges that engagement towards self-improvement. It's great.
Symbiant users think they're fine as-is (but are underappreciating how far from the ceiling they are), frequently lean into gaming to wind-down and as a means of escapism, and are more likely to adopt concepts that make themselves feel "smart" rather than applying labels to themselves that make them feel like they need fixing. Symbiant strives to talk about mental health at a higher level of abstraction, hinting at the complexities of psychology, and allows the user to feel like they are discovering knowledge by connecting all the dots. It then provides tools to allow the user to apply their new knowledge.
Think of how Papers, Please or This War of Mine strive to educate users about political tyranny and war, but do so in atypical ways. You're not the tyrant or war hero - you're a pawn in the overarching story. After playing, the user is touched with an understanding that feels more well-rounded having learned from a unique, atypical perspective. My goal is to construct and provide a similar learning experience around mental health, self-reflection, and habituation.
Are you going to be working in the open? Blog or some such where I could follow along?
I absolutely will be, but I do not have a reliable blog link to give you yet. I'll send you a message when I have one. My plan is to release weekly blog posts, stream development on Twitch, and vaguely attempt to monetize the process not just the result.
There is a Discord invite in my profile. It's quiet, aside from my monologue rambling about lore, functional requirements, etc. The community is all of my current and ex-coworkers who are following the project. You're welcome to join, but it's not a great source of information right now.
Thanks for asking! I found your questions exceptionally motivating. :)
There is a Discord invite in my profile. It's quiet, aside from my monologue rambling about lore, functional requirements, etc. The community is all of my current and ex-coworkers who are following the project. You're welcome to join, but it's not a great source of information right now.
Thanks for asking! I found your questions exceptionally motivating. :)
I am chatting with my Mom on the phone planning Christmas. My dad died over 26 years ago and I am an only child so we always do our own thing.
I am heading to Recurse Center in January and thinking about what I am going to do. Reading more HN than usual seeking inspiration and/or confirmation.
I keep circling around computer graphics and flow based programming. I have been following Ben Houstons work with his behavior graph library and I dont think I want to built Yet Another Node Based Execution engine. But building a poor-man's frankenstein houdini clone might tickle my brain.
But I also want to explore how flow based programming could related to infrastructure management tools.
Choices... choices...
I am heading to Recurse Center in January and thinking about what I am going to do. Reading more HN than usual seeking inspiration and/or confirmation.
I keep circling around computer graphics and flow based programming. I have been following Ben Houstons work with his behavior graph library and I dont think I want to built Yet Another Node Based Execution engine. But building a poor-man's frankenstein houdini clone might tickle my brain.
But I also want to explore how flow based programming could related to infrastructure management tools.
Choices... choices...
Happy holidays! I will follow your projects with great interest. Are you likely to write about your explorations, sharing your research and inspiration, or focus on time spent exploring and artifacts?
Thanks!
I need to start writing. It seems like lots of folks write about their RC experience. I plan to stream a little bit when I am coding and I started a podcast which will start publishing in 2023 and I plan to recording some vlogs and hopefully some podcast interviews.
I need to do better about finishing what I start so I am trying to commit to things I know I will accomplish / finish.
I need to start writing. It seems like lots of folks write about their RC experience. I plan to stream a little bit when I am coding and I started a podcast which will start publishing in 2023 and I plan to recording some vlogs and hopefully some podcast interviews.
I need to do better about finishing what I start so I am trying to commit to things I know I will accomplish / finish.
Handling error and adding logs before deploying a beta. I'm also contemplating the fact that the programing langage that was imposed to me for this project is really bad, and i'm fucking afraid that it's going to be imposed to me in the future too.
For those interested, i'm using PCSOFT Windev.
For those interested, i'm using PCSOFT Windev.
I've failed at "creating content as a side gig" multiple times over the course of my career, and I'm working on providing more structure in my life so I can give it another go. Over the last little bit I've been getting my sleep, diet and exercise in order, and doing more reading about how ADHD and dopamine have affected my brain.
Unfortunately, I can feel the momentum and enthusiasm slowing down after a couple weeks of this. I'm tired, but I'm still trying to write goals and give myself some foundation for my work (Substack, and Twitch, pretty separately). I'm pretty happy with this "elevator pitch", which is something I've never really been able to do:
"I'm writing about the relationships people have with the Internet, and how it changes over time. I want to focus on the effects of fandom on marketing, creativity, competition, and personal identity. The Internet has been an enabler of dreams for a lot of people, and I want to explore how people use that for better or worse."
Unfortunately, I can feel the momentum and enthusiasm slowing down after a couple weeks of this. I'm tired, but I'm still trying to write goals and give myself some foundation for my work (Substack, and Twitch, pretty separately). I'm pretty happy with this "elevator pitch", which is something I've never really been able to do:
"I'm writing about the relationships people have with the Internet, and how it changes over time. I want to focus on the effects of fandom on marketing, creativity, competition, and personal identity. The Internet has been an enabler of dreams for a lot of people, and I want to explore how people use that for better or worse."
Effects of fandom meaning… the effect on your own creativity etc when you are a fan of someone/something else? Or the effects of having people who are fans of you/your-product? Or something else?
I totally get the difficulty of focusing on creative work. I can manage to paint, and do software work for money, but I really struggle to tackle the dozens of other things on my creativity/content backlog.
Good luck with it!
I totally get the difficulty of focusing on creative work. I can manage to paint, and do software work for money, but I really struggle to tackle the dozens of other things on my creativity/content backlog.
Good luck with it!
I meant more that the strategies used by companies to interact with say, Kpop or Marvel fans, have bled into other environments. Also, the way that those kind of fandoms act, or the things they do in order to provide marketing for their parent hobby, have affected how other things continue to exist by proxy.
Procrastinating on studying for my AWS certification next week. I was unemployed for several months of this year and knowledge of AWS or any of the major cloud providers was the most glaring hole on my resume. Happily, my new employer pays for AWS training for all of its employees, so that hole is being filled... except, as always, it's way more fun reading HN than studying :/
How useful do you find the training? Do you think you’ll be able to use what you’re learning, or is it more about having the certificate?
Are you referring to the Cloud Practitioner one? Or something else
I'm taking the Solutions Architect exam. Arguably I should have waited until I had a few more months hands-on experience, but I kind of felt like jumping off the deep end.
Having a cup of Darjeeling tea. About to brave icy pavements to walk into the local town. Am at an age when falls are serious.
I am currently creating a financial plan for an imaginary startup. This is the task in one of my university modules.
What does this imaginary startup do?
it's providing and onboarding portal for universities
Me? I’m trying to poke holes in my latest crazy business idea. And wondering how you can make ice cream of a specific density. And feeling a little embarrassed that I forgot you have to actually write the Ask HN in your Ask HN.
I'm intrigued about ice cream of a specific density. What do you have in mind with that?
It’s not related to any of my crazy business ideas. I ate a Korean ice-cream sandwich today and it was undeniably ice cream but also about four times lighter than, say, a Magnum. Physics being not my thing, I wonder how they do that. More air, I guess, but how?
I blew up a 3.3 V AC/DC module this morning. Still not sure why... Must have been a spark. Replaced it with another, and that seemed to work... until just now the Bluetooth beacon it was supposed to power stopped working. I was worried about overshoot from the cheap AC/DC output, but didn't expect it to break on first power-up. Now it's drawing 400 mA instead of 5 mA. I doubt that's all piped to the antenna... I guess that's why I bought more than one module. Pending investigation.
But that was really just procrastinating designing an authorization model for an object database.
But that was really just procrastinating designing an authorization model for an object database.
I'm doing a few things.
1. I run a blog that is about 4 years old. I spend maybe 5 hours or so each month writing a new post to keep it fresh, and an additional 2-3 doing generic maintenance work (responding to comments, SEO checks, etc). This generates good income for me.
2. I am working on a saas project that fixes a simple but very important problem. Cloud functions make my life so much easier, it's incredible. This generates no income, but probably will.
3. I run https://contractrates.fyi. We are a crowdsourced dataset of freelancing hourly rates. I don't know why this site didn't exist already because it's such an obvious problem. Anyway, I built it and the reception has been insane. It makes zero money because I can't charge people to share information, but it's a nice resume boost site and a joy to work on. This is the only one I'm okay to share :)
I am just obsessed with building stuff. Adhd is a significant advantage if you can harness it correctly shrug.
1. I run a blog that is about 4 years old. I spend maybe 5 hours or so each month writing a new post to keep it fresh, and an additional 2-3 doing generic maintenance work (responding to comments, SEO checks, etc). This generates good income for me.
2. I am working on a saas project that fixes a simple but very important problem. Cloud functions make my life so much easier, it's incredible. This generates no income, but probably will.
3. I run https://contractrates.fyi. We are a crowdsourced dataset of freelancing hourly rates. I don't know why this site didn't exist already because it's such an obvious problem. Anyway, I built it and the reception has been insane. It makes zero money because I can't charge people to share information, but it's a nice resume boost site and a joy to work on. This is the only one I'm okay to share :)
I am just obsessed with building stuff. Adhd is a significant advantage if you can harness it correctly shrug.
Acting as sous chef to my wife who is cooking a Curry, Dishoom’s Ruby Chicken Curry which is possibly one of the best curry's I've ever had.
(Probably frustrating her a little that I'm on HN at the same time)
(Probably frustrating her a little that I'm on HN at the same time)
In a meeting that could have been an email
I'm slowly recovering from 4 moves in the last 4 months (and a tiny bit of homelessness). My lease expired and rent was raised too much for me to justify staying where I was. Thought I was moving into a mutually beneficial situation that didn't work out that way. This is an interesting recovery process.
I'm also trying to get back into Software after an injury that left me in a wheelchair for 7 months and walking again just as COVID hit. I got into volunteer work and eventually ended up doing COVID vaccination and testing for the few jobs I've held since. The work gap is hard to explain for me personally.
It's likely I'll end up in a low skilled position for a while as I continue the full interview processes needed now that I have a stable place to live again.
I like the question - and wish I had a more positive response to it.
Nobody will know homelessness until they experience it. My life has ended up in 2 storage units, my car, and the room I'm now renting. Don't think it's impossible that it could happen to (some of) you. Many people are much closer than they ever realize.
At this point I am still looking in software dev / database roles. I am a published author, and have been working with SQL since the 90's. I started at a dial-up ISP in 1994 when RADIUS still meant what it stands for :)
No real reason for writing this other than prompted by a question. I am likely a bit of an outlier in this situation.
I'm also trying to get back into Software after an injury that left me in a wheelchair for 7 months and walking again just as COVID hit. I got into volunteer work and eventually ended up doing COVID vaccination and testing for the few jobs I've held since. The work gap is hard to explain for me personally.
It's likely I'll end up in a low skilled position for a while as I continue the full interview processes needed now that I have a stable place to live again.
I like the question - and wish I had a more positive response to it.
Nobody will know homelessness until they experience it. My life has ended up in 2 storage units, my car, and the room I'm now renting. Don't think it's impossible that it could happen to (some of) you. Many people are much closer than they ever realize.
At this point I am still looking in software dev / database roles. I am a published author, and have been working with SQL since the 90's. I started at a dial-up ISP in 1994 when RADIUS still meant what it stands for :)
No real reason for writing this other than prompted by a question. I am likely a bit of an outlier in this situation.
After seeing the market take a dive this past year and companies showing their true colors wrt employee loyalty Ive finally decided to go back my startup roots and am actively looking to find co-founders. I used to be a good networker but then I got too comfortable at big-tech/big-co so trying to reboot a bit. Thankfully I never stopped building random things on the side.
Fighting the urge to fire up Dwarf Fortress while at work. I will probably lose this fight because there isn't enough work to hold my attention.
Right there with you Urist. Nothing else out there hijacks my brain quite like DF...
Dealing with anxieties of everyday existence. What am I doing, whoami?
I am taking a dump.
Working on my laptop in the laundromat waiting for my clothes to be clean, considering quitting because my coworkers aren't caring much about things today, looking at pictures of my new girlfriend I cannot wait to hug tonight.
And browsing HN, eh!
And browsing HN, eh!
Working on the JSON serializer for the video DJ macOS app I'm working on. Trying to position this as a free, open-source, entry-level competitor to Touch Designer or Resolume.
There are lots of professional grade live video tools with great features and steep learning curves, I'm aiming to create a dead-simple, WYSIWYG tool for people who want audio-reactive live video effects at their events. The dream is for non-technical artist types to be able to pick a playlist, add a video source (stream, file, webcam, etc), choose some effects, plug in a projector and watch the magic - all with 0 knowledge of shaders or color theory.
There are lots of professional grade live video tools with great features and steep learning curves, I'm aiming to create a dead-simple, WYSIWYG tool for people who want audio-reactive live video effects at their events. The dream is for non-technical artist types to be able to pick a playlist, add a video source (stream, file, webcam, etc), choose some effects, plug in a projector and watch the magic - all with 0 knowledge of shaders or color theory.
Ooh very cool, I had never heard of these.
A long time ago I thought about becoming a VJ (as we called them, Google suggests this is not the term anymore). I had some ideas about generating video and how to control it, and I was spending enough time at electronica shows that I felt it would work. But it never went anywhere due to procrastinating and stage fright.
Now it’s all way more sophisticated, back then most people were either doing the equivalent of Winamp visualizations or cutting video streams with some simple effects.
I’d love to try out your app! Is there a mailing list or something?
A long time ago I thought about becoming a VJ (as we called them, Google suggests this is not the term anymore). I had some ideas about generating video and how to control it, and I was spending enough time at electronica shows that I felt it would work. But it never went anywhere due to procrastinating and stage fright.
Now it’s all way more sophisticated, back then most people were either doing the equivalent of Winamp visualizations or cutting video streams with some simple effects.
I’d love to try out your app! Is there a mailing list or something?
Freezing. Turned the heat down due to high prices. It will be a cold winter.
Going through massive heart pain and left arm pain
Failed to get diagnostics from doctors, hospital
Going through life in pain
So playing video game and playing guitar
Talking to Friends on Discord.
I'm no doctor or anything but that sounds serious. Could you expand on "failed to get diagnostics from doctors, hospital"? Did you get seen and evaluated for symptoms which could suggest heart attack?
Working on a long-term technical strategy to steer a program I care very little about and have no actual faith in into the domain I have always wanted to go to with my career and never chose to.
Looking for a new project. I'm a freelance iOS developer and posted in the most recent "looking for project" topic but I wonder about whether that's actually very effective.
How did you get your "Confidential" Airline gigs?
One of their IT suppliers posted it on a local website. Since then, I haven't found another gig like that. It's actually not confidential, the project is for Air France-KLM
https://www.freelance.nl/
https://www.freelance.nl/
Coughing and blowing my nose.
Got the 'rona this weekend, and while I'm a lot better (as in no longer sleeping 22 hours a day), I'm still pretty messed up.
Got the 'rona this weekend, and while I'm a lot better (as in no longer sleeping 22 hours a day), I'm still pretty messed up.
It's nuts. Besides COVID, there's influenza and RS-virus going around here in The Netherlands. Everyone and their dog is sick.
Get well soon.
Get well soon.
Yeah it's the same over here. It's like everyone's already forgotten the whole stay-at-home-when-you're-sick and wash-your-hands stuff.
It's ironic too, I actually got my booster shot last week. Like a day before I came down with covid. Just a hair too late :-/
It's ironic too, I actually got my booster shot last week. Like a day before I came down with covid. Just a hair too late :-/
Writing code(C#/Typescript) to pull data from a SAAS product's API. Mostly for POC purposes to understand what can/can't be done.
Watching a YouTube critic of Del Toro’s Pinocchio while going through what I need to do for the day and lazily merging an PR that was just approved.
I have Xcode open. Building a cashflow management and forecasting app with Swift/SwiftUI. And using ChatGPT to write a large chunks of it!
Is ChatGPT that good at programming tasks for a real app? What kind of instruction do you give it?
I tried some toy examples for Python and was impressed but I haven’t tried to do anything useful yet.
I tried some toy examples for Python and was impressed but I haven’t tried to do anything useful yet.
It's really good. Scary good. Sometimes it gets in the way though (just writing the damn code might be faster than continuously refining prompts)
I'm investigating a linker error around the use of `boost::none` that happens with clang but not gcc. Google is no help.
I suspect it's related to LTO.
I suspect it's related to LTO.
Trying to get live TV (congressional hearings) onto a virtual screen in a “metaverse” meeting app for a goofy FTX watch party later today.
Watching the TV in the background while I should be working. Too excited/stressed/nervous for the World Cup semifinals.
On the eve of me turning 50, I am playing a tabletop dice baseball game on my desk while reading HN {obviously}
Happy Early Birthday! I crossed that line, uneventfully, a couple years ago… and then the following years turned out to be filled with enormous, exciting, challenging life changes. Life begins at…
Sipping coffee. Writing posts and working on content for my newsletter around working part-time in the tech industry.
Cool, I just subscribed!
Some DevOps stuffs, from debian to alpine base image migration (old stuff, not very exciting)
I am currently on a bus stop, waiting for a bus to go to the gym.
I was playing a StarCraft 1 custom map (Impossible Kregmy).
I've spent the last few days building copypastemathjax.com after finding myself searching google too many times for mathjax expressions.
Trying (or trying not?) to get out of bed.
Currently freezing my nads off 'cos it's -9 or whatever, outside
Nursing a badly cut finger I injured washing up a chipped jug.
I am prepping the area where I milk my goats every morning.
How many goats do you have, and how much milk do they give you?
I have 5 goats. I milk 3 of them. Right now, I'm getting very little milk because I'm in the final process of drying them off so they can give birth in 3 months. I'm currently milking about 2 pounds total from them every 3 days. When they're at full production, I get well over 3 lbs per goat per day.
I am waiting to get my hair cut.
currently working on https://hourly.fyi -- pushed to prod November 1st. it's a site for contractors, freelancers, etc to open source their rates in an effort to inform people and educate them on what they might be worth.
there are posts all the times in coding sub-reddits asking what people should charge and 1 post in particular literally asked for a "levels.fyi for contractors" so I made it.
My specialties are everything but front end, but it's fun to start learning.
there are posts all the times in coding sub-reddits asking what people should charge and 1 post in particular literally asked for a "levels.fyi for contractors" so I made it.
My specialties are everything but front end, but it's fun to start learning.
brb bio
Looking at advent of code day 13 thinking it will be hard to do given that I am an idiot.
You have no idea how common this thought is. I think people forget that AoC actually does get harder and most people drop off at about the 3rd day. You're competing with others who have a lot of time on their hands. Most likely, you're just being hard on yourself! :)
(Where I live it’s a common thing to ask of friends or family or lovers, and I find it quite charming, so I thought I’d ask it of the HN community.)