wallflower

Generally speaking, just do work on your work computer. There has been at least one judicial ruling that holds that anything you do on employee owned equipment or networks can be monitored. Save the HN and social media for your phone. Don’t ever connect your personal phone to your employer’s WiFi. If you need your office email on your phone, ask for a work phone or use an old phone.

Congratulations on your life awareness at age 25! Good luck!

If you have not already done this, in addition to maxing out your 401(k), start a Roth IRA and max it out every single year. I regret not doing this.

Compound interest is everything for most regular people to build net worth. Compound debt is the worst.

As the saying goes, there will be friends for a reason, friends for a season, and friends for a lifetime. Friendships will run their natural course. That being said, do your best to maintain friendships you want to try to keep as you get older.

Don't get stuck in the friend zone. Be bold and ask that person out umambigously.

As many dentists say, floss the teeth that you want to keep. I recommend flossing then Water Pik then brushing with a mechanical toothbrush like an Oral-B.

If you don't know, learn how to cook. There are so many resources out there. While not knowing how to cook might be cute or excusable by a potential partner in your 20s, by your 30s or 40s it is no longer funny and definitely a liability.

Don't sit all day. Even standing desks aren't enough. Do some light calisthenics every hour. Push-ups, wall-sits, squats, knee bends.

Make the time to see friends in-person. We are all hardwired to crave IRL social interaction, even the most introverted of us.

You might want to skim Sahil Bloom's book. While it might not the best at being actionable, it might make you think about the next 25 years in better context.

https://www.the5typesofwealth.com/

Don't give other people advice. They probably don't want it. They don't want you to fix their problems. Shut up and listen instead.

Very common. In fact, I think the hardest part of learning to play a musical instrument is the tendency to want to play at normal speed before you are ready. The idea that you can play something fast accurately when you can’t even play it slowly accurately is the classic mental and psychological conundrum.

There is a saying: “You don’t rise your level when performing. You fall to your level of practice.”

> Then I stumbled upon PiFinder

HorizonXP - I think you should submit this as a story/link!

If you ever get a full background check done on you by a 3rd party service like First Advantage or Hire Right, please ask for a copy of the full background check if they provide that option. Like several here have said, minor discrepancies like date mismatches will be found and flagged. Having a copy of your corrected background check will be invaluable for future background check requests.

I’m glad you read it! Maybe print it out and post it somewhere you see regularly. Good luck!

Not sure you will see this. Congrats on your journey into full time dev! I stumbled upon the podcast below a couple years ago, and I found it fascinating. It defines "Mission Critical" as teams that need to make decisions in a couple minutes that impact life-and-death situations. You might find it interesting given your background.

Mission Critical Team Institute (MCTI) Teamcast Exploring the questions vexing the most elite teams in the world

https://teamcast.missioncti.com/

Congrats on your trading venture! Not sure you will see this but one of my all-time favorite HN comments is by a trader named fiaz about trading and failing.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=121413

fiaz on Feb 22, 2008 | parent | context | favorite | on: Ask News.YC: How to re-motivate yourself?

APOLOGIES for making this post so annoyingly long, but I really hope you find value in the words below.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm going to first share a personal experience from my early trading days to illustrate where I'm coming from. I used to wake up at 4:30 am everyday in the Chicago suburbs to beat rush hour traffic and make it into downtown Chicago at 6:30 am. In order to wake up so early, I fell into a habit of sleeping at 9:00 pm and like a robot waking up at 4:30 am. This simple routine was indirectly helpful when things seemed darkest.

For the first six months, I lost money and was ridiculed constantly by other traders who were more successful than me (which was about 20 other guys CONSTANTLY using me as a punching/whipping bag). The only thing that kept me going was the fact that some of the very same traders that would be making wise cracks at me for losing money were some of the most successful people I knew at the time. For better or worse, if I needed a trader to model myself after, it was the same people that were telling me how bad a trader I was - and although I was not open to really hear what they were saying, they were right about my skills in every way (but their feedback was always packaged in some sort of insult) ...

As of now, bird flu is extremely uncommon. Even getting the genetic test to confirm it is something that most labs are not setup to do. The current primary symptom of bird flu is conjunctivitis (red eye) with some of those infected exhibiting symptoms of severe conjunctivitis.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2407264

> We’re stuck with other people and all the games people play.

I assume you have at least heard about or may even have read “Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre” by Keith Johnstone. If not, I think you would find it interesting.

Wow! Techmeme is still around!

https://techmeme.com/

> Imagine a self-replicating code that is able to find zero-days and spread through the internet, finding niches of Turing-completeness offering compute keeping itself spreading.

This is one of the plot points of "It Looks Like You're Trying To Take Over The World". https://gwern.net/fiction/clippy

Conduits in the walls that meet junction boxes in each room to allow flexibility in the future of running or replacing cable. Check your local building codes what conduits are allowed (plastic, metal, PVC, plenum) before doing so.

Yes, credit was given previously. None of us would have heard about this without Destin.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38670760#38671309

Destin Sandlin from “Smarter Every Day” recently called out this 1971 report. I just resubmitted it as it did not get attention it may deserve 2 weeks ago.

“What made Apollo a success?”

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19720005243/downloads/19...

My calculus teacher tried to talk me out of taking the AP Calculus AB exam because I wasn’t doing that well in his class. “Calculus the Easy Way” which teaches in the setting of a mythical fantasy world where applied problems are solved with calculus unlocked the secret of calculus for me. I ended up scoring a “4” which was a big triumph for me, as it placed me out of taking calculus with all the people who did not want to be taking calculus.

https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/calculus-the-easy-way-easy-way...

You’re welcome. I am not a Beatles expert so I appreciated the insight and perspective from this expert.

There is an epic, enjoyable read about “Get Back” from someone who deeply knows The Beatles in case you missed it the first turning.

https://www.ian-leslie.com/p/the-banality-of-genius-notes-on...

I read the book. I really enjoyed the first part of the book, where he describes how he encountered the tools of the "stone age" of computing and learned to build games on his own. He starts from fairly nothing and gets to the point where his games are regularly the feature game in the computer games magazines of the time. All of this is juxtaposed against and with the constant background of his frequently gasoline fume volatile home life.

I found the second part of the book which begins after Doom is launched and Doom II goes into development to be more of a slog to get through. He also goes at length into his post-Id Games games and how he made some mistakes and some successes. For example. Deus Ex came out of his game company because he gave Warren Spector the independence to build it and many influential personalities in the game industry nowadays got their start at his game company.

My recommendation? Read the first part of the book if you want to get a real FPV of the Wild West in which pioneers like Id Games built the first complex, performant 2D and 3D games and game engines in a world where performance was mostly determined by assembly language wizardry and mastery, not a GPU.

I don't doubt that John Romero has that superpower ability.

While it is not what you are looking for exactly, if you have not seen it, the General Magic documentary is extraordinary. It might make you cry.

https://www.generalmagicthemovie.com/

> Gargoyles are no fun to talk to. They never finish a sentence. They are adrift in a laser-drawn world, scanning retinas in all directions, doing background checks on everyone within a thousand yards, seeing everything in visual light, infrared, millimeter-wave radar, and ultrasound all at once.

“Snow Crash” (1992) by Neal Stephenson

Anyone who is interested in status, I recommend “Impro: Improvisation and The Theatre” by Keith Johnstone. The tldr is in almost every social situation there are “status” games.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/306940.Impro

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20436197

“Team Topologies” https://teamtopologies.com/

“Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard” https://www.amazon.com/Switch-Change-Things-When-Hard/dp/038...

> It's tough and embarrassing

You've got this. Try to remember to record yourself speaking periodically with others so that you can see how much you are improving.

> visiting Glasgow years past

I remember being in Gatwick airport and hearing my first heavily-accented English. Maybe it was a Scottish brogue. I could not really understand anything.

Duolingo is a great start. It takes a lot of effort to get those trophies. I think they are getting better with AI/ML to interactively tutor you as well. Personally, if you can afford in-person or virtual practice with a native speaker twice a week (about $30-40/week via iTalki), I think that is when you make the jump from dabbling in a language to becoming a serious student.

I agree with you on the need for follow up questions when you don't understand the situation.

Yes, learning new content with the language is key. Laddering is a term used when you are learning a new 3rd language through your 2nd language. For example, learning French through French for Spanish speakers-type material.

The 80/90% comprehension ballpark figure was more about how much you can understand without looking it up. For example, when I watch a reality TV show like Gran Hermano (Big Brother reality TV series) where there is a lot of regional accents, rapid-fire repartee, idioms, street talk, I can struggle to figure out what was just said. The same goes for a standup comedy show in Spanish with the cultural contexts, inside jokes. On the opposite end of comprehension would be an evening news program where everything is said in a structured manner and the diction is as close to neutral/perfect for the greater region of the news broadcast.

Additionally, the environment matters. A crowded noisy bar can rapidly beat up your confidence of being able to communicate. The Foreign Service foreign language ability scales do account for this.

I haven't tried recently. I always got stuck on the vibrating the tongue on/near the roof of the mouth. The technical term for rolling Rs is "voiced alveolar trill". I have tried a variety of techniques over the years and maybe it is time to revisit them again by trying out some Youtube videos. Right now, I just use the "d" sound as a substitute, as in a rapid "d-d-d" is an approximation of rolled Rs.

A few of my friends who know will tease me now and then by trilling their r's in conversation. It always simultaneously makes me jealous and in awe. I know that Spanish elementary schools have young students practice tongue twisters as maybe it is not a natural skill for all kids. "Un perro rompe la rama del árbol"

Perhaps related, I am struggle with unassisted lip trills [1] which is a key technique to improve your breath control/singing. Unassisted is when you don't press your fingers to your cheeks. I really struggle with unassisted lip trills and run out of oxygen quickly (5 seconds). The idea with unassisted lip trills is you can trill a song phrase on a single breath (15-20 sec, sometimes longer).

[1] How to do the lip trill https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwNPp-RS4IY

When I talk with friends and acquaintances who say they want to learn a language, I always tell them it will be one of the most difficult and rewarding things they will ever do. Number one, you will literally vomit out words in the beginning that make no grammatical sense and stink to high heaven in terms of language non-ability. Two, you have to break away from Duolingo. Like learning Scratch for programming, Duolingo is only going to get you better at Duolingo type games and quizzes. If you really want to learn a language, you have to invest in live practice with a native speaker. In the near future, this could become a conversational AI. For now, go find a reasonable native speaker on iTalki. Practice at least twice a week. Do not practice with friends or family as it will be frustrating for both sides. Pay someone. Third, learning a programming language compared to a human language is difficult because there is shame and embarrassment connected with messing up for most people. As you continue to vomit out your beginner language, you will eventually ascend to the intermediate level. Like L5 at Google, many of you will never make it to advanced level. I think that is quite ok. You really do not have to be able to understand live standup comedy in your chosen second language. The ability to communicate thoughts, dreams, fears, and stories will be enough. It took me about 3 years to get to that level of being able to argue politics and economics in Spanish. I freely admit my accent is gringo (never gonna be able to roll Rs) and I still make mistakes and sometimes accents make it hard to listen. You are never going to get to 100% comprehension. 80/90% depending on the situation.

Thanks for digging into the mucks of the quote end quote API. SMB makes me think they were aiming for the commercial market and just repurposed it for home.

How to text if you would like to date someone.

Not: “What’s up”

Not: “<open-ended question>”

Not: “<this is what I did over the weekend>. How was yours?”

Yes: <Logistics of meeting up>