AskHN Digest

1. Ask HN: Comment here about whatever you're passionate about at the moment

Top comment by blinding-streak

Thanks so much for posting this, I love the spirit of it. I'm passionate about my sobriety journey. I just got home from a dinner party of ex coworkers and friends. Being the only one not drinking is hard for me and a huge change. I used to lead the charge with booze, it was the thing that took my crushing anxiety away. It made everything more fun. Well, that can only last so long when you abuse it so much and it fucks up your life.

I successfully made it through tonight and will hopefully have many more successful nights. Love and strength to anyone else out there in a similar boat.

2. Ask HN: Working in a VR Headset?

Top comment by grogenaut

I have a vive and a quest 2 and I tried working like that when travelling. The quest won't work in a car as it uses gyros.

I tried for about 18 hours each device to work in VR. Many things are not there yet. My vive is attached to a 5 monitor dual GPU beast that drives a central 144hz 4k HDR 43" and 5 2560x144 monitors. The vive couldn't touch the physical setup for comfort or resolution or just non-fussiness. I constantly had to adjust virtual monitors. In real world I just scootch a quarter inch on my rolly cHair. It's like the first time you setup a physical workspace every time you use it for me. Vive gets warm.

The quest 2 is too low resolution and too laggy. Battery too weak. It was a joy to take it off. Quest is more sweaty.

With the quest I worked from a RV for 3 days. It sucked.

What worked better was just 2 pelican cases with monitors and a discounted ups rate. In the RV I just shoved them in the corner and pulled them out when we parked. When I visit my mom or airbnb I just ship them to where I'm going. Was a massive relief. Maybe in a few years.

It's not just pixel density, it's software, weight, latency, fiddlelyness.

3. Ask HN: How do I find my “purpose”?

Top comment by sbf501

Start one level up: why do you want or need a "purpose"?

Purpose/calling is meaningless IMHO. I opted for "pushing my comfort zone". Something I learned from a woman I was dating when I was 20 (she was 9 years older and entering the Peace Corp). Now rapidly reaching the other side of 50, I seek to be content and without dissonance in my day-to-day life. I have routines I enjoy, no bucket list, and time to let my mind wander to whatever tickles my fancy.

Instead, expand your horizons as much as possible. Read. Study. Try new things. They don't have to be expensive things, this isn't about privilege. Anyone can try drawing, or writing music, or reading philosphy, or long distance running, or volunteering, or sexual experimentation, ... things that push your comfort zone and force you to see the world a new way. If you have the means, travel to foreign countries and get lost, skydive, surf, scuba dive, play in a band, take a dance class, take any class at a college that seems interesting, take a Toastmasters class and give speeches, change jobs.

The more you bend yourself (without breaking) the more you will learn about what gives your life contour.

You might never find purpose, but hopefully you will find peace and delivery from the restlessness you have expressed.

4. Ask HN: Is React impacted by Meta layoff?

Top comment by no_wizard

If the React team was impacted, I imagine, given half of the core React team is already there, Vercel would scoop up the rest of the talent if they were interested in working at Vercel.

I don't think React is going anywhere given its bigger than Meta now.

That said, React Native seems like its the development framework for all Meta applications, I imagine its still core to their business as a result, but that may have changed, I am a few years out of date on this exactly

5. Ask HN: Skeptical about my company going “full serverless”. What am I missing?

Top comment by hbrn

Any "architect" joining the company and pushing for drastic changes like that is either an idiot chasing the hype, or a malicious actor trying to boost their importance.

Good news: your gut feeling is correct.

Bad news: you will likely lose this battle, unless you're good at playing company politics.

Here's how it typically goes:

1. A new lead/architect/manager joins the company.

2. They push for a new hyped technology/methodology.

-> you are currently here <-

3. The team is split: folks that love new things embrace it, folks that care hate it, rest are indifferent.

4. Because the team is split, the best politician wins (usually the new hire).

5. Switch happens and internally you know it's fucking disaster, but you're still forced celebrate it.

6. When disaster is becoming obvious people start getting thrown under the bus (usually junior engineers or folks that opposed the switch).

6. Ask HN: How do you focus on work for long periods of time?

Top comment by perrygeo

Assuming you're a programmer working on software, the best way I've found to keep focus is to set up your development environment such that a) it's full screen on a big monitor without any other apps or notifications and b) the feedback loops are as tight and automated as they can be - as soon as you hit save, automatically run the tests associated with that portion of the code. This has the effect of "gamifying" the software development process - every change is filled with the anticipation of how the test will respond. I haven't measured such things but other commenters mention dopamine and I suspect that a tighter development feedback loops produce more of it, allowing you to keep focus.

More generally, I've found that blocking off calendar time for "deep work" is effective if you commit to a plan for each time block. Before starting, I define what I'm trying to do and what the outcome would look like if successful. The first step is always to write a test that measures success in that context - it does not have to be a unit test or even something that you commit, can just be a simple curl command or bash script or a "I hit refresh in my browser and I see the image". Then I iterate until the test passes or time is up (generally because there are bigger issues)

And finally don't be afraid to engage in social media or games or other distractions - but do it in a mindful way. I use time in between deep work sessions to chat with friends, browse HN, write long rambling comments on HN, etc. You have to allow yourself idle time but keep it well and truly separated from deep work.

7. Ask HN: How can techies influence companies to stop implementing SMS/phone 2FA

Top comment by JoeCortopassi

This is the most naive take on HN. The only secure computer is one that's been unplugged and buried in six feet of concrete, everything after that is a compromise

The real world security issues that companies face are things like:

  - users that re-use tiny passwords written on post-it note that's attached to their monitor
  - regulated industries that don't allow them to actually lock a user out, which causes leaky social engineering flows for their help centers
  - users that constantly forget their passwords, and have terrible forgotten password questions/answers
  - passwords they share with a friend/partner, that they then have a falling out with

8. Ask HN: Is programming a “young person's game”?

Top comment by thiago_fm

I'm 34 and I just keep improving, coding since 10. The only thing you really need in this field is desire for constant improvement. And I'm not saying for you to study everyday, I'm saying that you should have that goal to every once in a while, could be weekly or even monthly, to look up something new.

Be open also for changes, we went from desktop applications to the web. Learn the technologies involved.

You need people with different backgrounds on the field though, just because I started very early, it doesn't mean that I don't respect or take to high regard somebody that would start coding on their 30s, but the opposite, they are important and valuable to have in a team. Developing software is much more than only programming and much less related to maths or olympic medals lol.

Nowadays there are so many materials and courses that makes getting into programming so easy, I had to go through many phases you just don't have to.

I've spent countless hours configuring servers in a way that nobody does anymore, using programming languages that almost nobody does, text editor configurations nobody use and so on. You'll never need to waste time with that. But once you are working 10+ years in the field, it will be expected from you that you learn new things.

9. Ask HN: I will become a father tomorrow, what advice could you share with me?

Top comment by anakaine

When your kids are young, they will depend upon you. As they grow, they will be attached to you. You will be joined at the hip and do everything together. Cherish this.

As your kids progress through their teenage years, they will distance themselves from you. They may lie about what they are up to. They might argue with you, shout at you, and cut you out of the discussion even when you desperately want to be involved. You need to recognise when this is beginning to happen and change your method of parenting to become less telling, and more guiding, letting the rope out and providing a secure nest for them to come back to thats free of judgement and accusations. This will be incredibly hard for some people, and can honestly take a very long time to get right. During this time they are psychologically trying to find their own way and independence, and this is normal. Just be there to gently guide.

If you are kind, loving, guiding, involved, and nurturing, you can't really screw this up.

You've got this. Just keep in mind the above for 12-15 years from now for your own sanity.

10. Ask HN: Data Scientists, what libraries do you use for timeseries forecasting?

Top comment by hrzn

I would recommend Darts in Python [1]. It's easy to use (think fit()/predict()) and includes

* Statistical models (ETS, (V)ARIMA(X), etc)

* ML models (sklearn models, LGBM, etc)

* Many recent deep learning models (N-BEATS, TFT, etc)

* Seamlessly works on multi-dimensional series

* Models can be trained on multiple series

* Several models support taking in external data (covariates), known either in the past only, or also in the future

* Many models offer rich support for probabilistic forecasts

* Model evaluation is easy: Darts has many metrics, offers backtest etc

* Deep learning scales to large datasets, using GPUs, TPUs, etc

* You can do reconciliation of forecasts at different hierarchical levels

* There's even now an explainability module for some of the models - showing you what matters for computing the forecasts

* (coming soon): an anomaly detection module :)

* (also, it even include FB Prophet if you really want to use it)

Warning: I'm probably biased because I'm Darts creator.

[1] https://github.com/unit8co/darts