50 Things I Know | Hacker News Reader

50 Things I Know

rebeccadai.substack.com

26 pointsrebeccadai19 comments

I miss the old HN. Now "news" is just randoms advertising their substack which isn't even related to tech or science. OP has literally only ever posted their own stuff and never made a comment on anything else here. The article has nothing to do with tech, science, or hacking. Just vague self improvement rules stated as facts.

When I first came here it was FILLED with random blogs teaching you cool tricks in JavaScript or particle simulations with Go or comparing Rust and C. Now its 95% AI and substack ads.

But it gets voted up by the people... so it must be valuable to someone.

I have the same sentiment about Slashdot btw, now a ghost of its former self.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFgcqB8-AxE

Not all people. But look what happened to Reddit. Started as mostly coders now its slowly being turned into another content machine.

> But look what happened to Reddit. Started as mostly coders now its slowly being turned into another content machine.

I think Reddit managed that best. Getting rid of the "default" subreddit seemed like a dumb idea when they did it, but looking back on the effect, it allowed Reddit to exist as a thousand different, distinct, often disjoint communities, rather than trying to push everyone into a single place together.

The article submitter is the article author and is violating the HN guideline against using HN primarily for self-promotion. The account's (limited) history is entirely self-promotion.

Flag the submission.

Personally been here about 15 years. There are ebbs and flows of different trends, but HN has never been pure tech or science.

My favourite thing about HN has always been it's sprinkling of the "interesting/thought provoking" amongst the more technical or science based e.g. 5 in depth articles about <insert language tech stack etc.>, blog post on seagulls in 1973 east Berlin, philosphical article ruminating on death and coding, Go compiler written in C# etc. etc.

I get the point about self promotion. But fwiw I think this list is quite insightful, and a fun read.

> People get trapped in the idea of “deserve”. When we use that word, whatever comes after becomes conditional. Things just are. There is no deserving.

DESERVES GOT NOTHING TO DO WITH IT!

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheWire/comments/msd073/deserves_go...

> Consistency of efforts trumps all in the long run. Intelligence matters way less. Simply showing up every day takes luck out of the equation. Even if you roll a dice with a 10% win rate, with enough rolls, you will win once eventually. And in life, that’s all we need.

Consistency is the most difficult thing in the world, but it's what separates the top 1% from the rest of us. I'm trying my best to be among the top 1%.

Glad I saw this, I'll use a similar format for a future post on my personal blog, but I'll put my own spin on it.

Glad you enjoyed it!!

I know for sure that HN stands for Hacker News.

A paragraph or more with a personal story or example(s) for each item would make it more relatable and understandable. I'm curious about "I know that flow states are very similar to manic states." Or like for #1, what are some examples of "[setting] up your life in such a way that effort feels rather effortless"? Edit: the one about shoes was a good example. I has a bit about helping your back that explains why you say that.

good to know! appreciate the feedback. i was trying to strike a balance between making it personal vs staying more abstract

I think leaving things too abstract leads the reader to question "is this actually true or is it just a clever saying?"

I agree completely about the value of consistency (#25) but I struggle to reconcile it with your take on discipline (#1). For me, consistency demands discipline and both are important to longterm growth and development.

i think there are different modalities of consistency. forcing myself to be disciplined and thus consistent has never worked for me. consistency from intuition, as in, "i will focus on things one day at a time without worrying too much about the outcomes", has done wonders

Yes, viewing consistency as "every day I will improve" is folly.

But, can you say more about treading the "path of least resistance"? I've always felt there is tremendous value in leaning into friction because that is where the best opportunity for personal growth exists.

You know a lot :)

50 things to be exact :)

Nice, especially the last one

appreciate it :)

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