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vishalontheline

131 karma · joined February 18, 2024

Location: North County San Diego, CA, USA

https://youtube.com/@soncsd https://linkedin.com/in/vishalontheline vishal@vishal.rs

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vishalontheline··on US sanctions force The Netherlands off Microsoft and toward alternative NixOS
Somewhat related: https://www.thestack.technology/nixos-atomic-os-france-sover...
vishalontheline··on Which Diet Is Best to Lower Liver Fat and Improve Insulin Sensitivity?
How I increased my insulin sensitivity:

- Not eating at least 4 hours prior to sleep.

- No bread, dates, sugar, sugar-substitute, honey, potatoes, sweet potatoes, etc.. with the exception for 1 banana during breakfast.

- Eating the most carb-rich foods (the banana during breakfast, beans during lunch) first, then eating fewer carbs during subsequent meals.

vishalontheline··on San Francisco Onion Futures Company
And the cost of transportation.
vishalontheline··on Banning AI will not make it go away
I think you're right about companies and bottlenecks. I don't think it disagrees with what I'm saying.

The rip is in the demand and adoption of the technology and its subsequent effects on everything else. You can choose to learn how to navigate it, go faster with it, or sit on the sidelines, but trying to stop it won't make the demand, the technology or its adoption go away.

This thing is here to stay and , judging by all the meetups in my area, it's only getting bigger. Who knows, maybe companies will be forced to dramatically change to reduce bottlenecks. Maybe there will be a lot more smaller companies. I can't say for sure.

vishalontheline··on Banning AI will not make it go away
Author here. I don't use it for everything and I don't expect it to do everything. I've used it for image generation, code generation, and also iterated on prototypes / simple visual simulations in languages and frameworks that I (mostly) understand.

And, of course, like everyone else, I've used it instead spending a lot more time searching and sifting through things online. I used to think replacing the search bar with an AI prompt was gimmicky, but then the replies improved.

Those use-cases alone have been massive time savers for me.

vishalontheline··on Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity
Employees of construction companies, electricity companies and the data center, among others, all get paid, no?
vishalontheline··on Stanford Scientists Regrow Lost Cartilage and Reverse Arthritis
In mice.
vishalontheline··on Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs
People have a very difficult time keeping their story together, especially when they're asked a couple of questions that interview prep didn't cover.

Beyond that though, there's the probation period. If they can't do the job, they're supposed to be let go before they become permanent.

Trouble I see from most interviewers is a tendency of asking questions with a "right" answer. Those tend to be a lot easier to game. They then fallback on sorting applicants by pedigree - the old, "no one ever got fired for choosing IBM" method.

Then, they come back and rant about how PM's are trash, and Agile is trash, etc. etc.

vishalontheline··on Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs
Pretty easy. Get them to talk about a project they've managed and start poking holes. Who was on the team? How did they organize meetings? What were the bottlenecks? How well did everyone get along? What did they do to help grease the gears? Did they have to change the process? How did they like the software? Which software did they use? Did they have to administer it themselves? How did they deal with management changes / team changes / tons of support requests / issues in production? Where did they draw the line between PM work and engineering work?
vishalontheline··on The purist's guide to phở in Hanoi
No pho spots are revealed.
vishalontheline··on Car Owners Are Revolting over Tesla's Self-Driving Promises
I don't plan on using Full Self Driving features until I have to in an emergency, or until they take the steering wheel away.

BUT!

Last week, I had visitors and they let their Model Y Tesla (2023, I think) do the driving for their entire trip - from driving for many hours to visit me, to driving around all the different sights where I live, and, I'm assuming, driving back home. It was all full self-driving.

I got to sit in the passenger seat a few times. The thing drove beautifully. Parked without an issue, changed lanes, overtook other cars, etc... drove even better than the person at the wheel would have had the feature not been available!

vishalontheline··on WebUSB Extension for Firefox
Another possible use-case: allowing your peripherals to talk to cloud gaming computers - like, a nice HOTAS setup for flight simulator on GeforceNow.
vishalontheline··on Ask HN: How to solve the cold start problem for a two-sided marketplace?
> Every marketplace founder says "focus on one side

Unless you already have demand lined up, I would solve the supply side of the problem first. People who either travel routinely or are planning to, or just a lot of people from a specific, large community in order to target your recruiting campaign.

I would also spend a lot of time figuring out the user journey for both the supply and demand side. See if you can reduce the work someone on the supply side has to do to sign up. You might have to run this like a modeling agency in the beginning until there is sufficient demand to force suppliers to do more work.

Constraining to one route (SFO -> Honolulu) is how DHL got started.

vishalontheline··on Let's talk space toilets
Thank you for writing and sharing this. I went into a deep dive a few days ago researching waste recycling, and your write up taught me a lot!
vishalontheline··on She spent 20 months battling to die under a euthanasia law. Today Spain let her
Yup - our baseline monkey brain setting.

I do think that a lot can affect one's baseline though: health, drug dependency, stress from life, emotional baggage, etc.

And, I think that happiness can be achieved through practice (gratitude, letting go, etc..).

But yeah, that baseline - life gives some people a below neutral baseline.

vishalontheline··on She spent 20 months battling to die under a euthanasia law. Today Spain let her
I think that most people are at a neutral level of happiness / sadness. Something good happens... it makes the happiness level go up, then come back down to neutral. Something bad happens, it makes the level go negative, then come back up to neutral.

A few people are naturally positive. They're just happy most of the time. Their bounce back state is happy, rather than neutral.

And, a few people are always depressed. A bad experience makes their state of being much, much darker. A good experience may bring them to the neutral line or perhaps slightly above, but they go back to depression as their normal state of being soon enough.

If I were to guess, I would say that early childhood trauma is the greatest contributor. Children deserve better everywhere.

vishalontheline··on Trevor Milton is raising funds for a new jet he claims will transform flying
Airplane shaped blimp, here we go! =)
vishalontheline··on Defeat as Method
Baggage, whether it is from our life or lives before us will always be just that - baggage. If we don't choose how much to carry with us then someone else will happily choose for us.

To me, facing defeat with an open face means to not remain defeated forever.

Some of our best entrepreneurs and scientists lost many times before they won.

vishalontheline··on Philippines shifts to four-day work week as Iran war pushes oil prices up
Related: Vietnam urges people to work from home to save fuel as Iran war disrupts supplies

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/vietnam-urges-people...

vishalontheline··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (March 2026)
I'm making a AWS ec2 based Gaming PC setup that will let me play Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 (and other games) in full VR on a Meta Quest 3.
vishalontheline··on Launch HN: Cardboard (YC W26) – Agentic video editor
This is a crazy question, but I would like to know how close I can get to the following:

I would like to:

- upload a bunch of surf footage

- let it sort through the surfers

- pick the three longest waves surfed by each surfer

- create a montage grouped by surfer, ordered by shortest to longest wave for that surfer.

Thank you!

vishalontheline··on Ask HN: What did you find out or explore today?
Today I recorded myself skateboarding and found out that I don't move nearly as much as I think I do! No wonder I'm going so slow!
vishalontheline··on Ask HN: Share your personal website
Mine can be found at: vishal.rs
vishalontheline··on Autoland saves King Air, everyone reported safe
We have auto-pilot, and we have auto-land. Once we have auto-taxi and auto-takeoff, whats left?
vishalontheline··on Ask HN: Who here is not working on web apps/server code?
I'm working on a YouTube channel to showcase life and surfing in North San Diego County.

You can check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/@soncsd

vishalontheline··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (December 2025)
Thank you for that feedback! Yes - I do plan on upgrading to a real external microphone soon. For the time being it is the camera's internal mic, which is admittedly, not great.
vishalontheline··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (December 2025)
I started posting surfing videos on YouTube. I don't know where it's going to go, but it's fun so far! ( https://www.youtube.com/@soncsd )
vishalontheline··on Tell HN: Happy Thanksgiving
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!! =)
vishalontheline··on Ask HN: How do you fight YouTube addiction and procrastination? I'm struggling
A couple of things that have been effective for me:

1) Block said online service using the hostfile until addiction becomes manageable / goes away. Repeat as needed.

2) For work, keep a notebook. Review and set goals at the start of each day or week. Review and update notes / goals at the end of each day and week. Your own agenda, your game to keep yourself motivated.

Now, since your addiction is blocked and you have something to do, you'll at least get it done before turning to your addiction to kill time / unwind.

vishalontheline··on Counter-Strike: A billion-dollar game built in a dorm room
After De_Dust2, the Jungle Warfare map in the first Ghost Recon game that has a special place in my heart.
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