AskHN Digest

1. Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

Top comment by tricky

There is an extensive network of caves under my city that were used by beer breweries in the 1800's to store beer. They are all but inaccessible, and, at the time, kind of a myth. Most people didn't believe they still existed. I was fascinated by this and I compiled as much information as I could find on my personal website in the early 2000's. One day I received an email, "do you want to go into the caves? I know someone who can get us in. Meet us at 1am at XXXXXX - bring flashlights, old boots, and $50 to pay the tour guide."

Me, being young and always up for an adventure, showed up and it was awesome. These were legit spelunker urban explorers who knew how to pick locks. We got into the caves and it was crazy. Best part is I didn't get murdered.

2. Ask HN: Small scripts, hacks and automations you're proud of?

Top comment by jimt1234

Honestly, the script/hack/automation I'm still most proud of is from around 1983, when I was 12 years old, for my Commodore 64. Back then, all computer communications were over the phone line, and in my house, we only had one line, so I spent a lot of late nights, dialing into BBSs, often not going to sleep until the sun came up. Then, I would get in trouble at school for falling asleep in class. So I came up with a little program I called "Simon". I named it after a popular kids game called "Simon Says". It was basically a 1983 version of Selenium. I created instruction files, which would tell the main program (Simon) what to do: the time to dial a BBS, the number to dial, the login info, and then all the commands to send. It did things like download my messages so I could read them the next day. Send messages. But mostly, and kinda shamefully, it was used to pirate games. I had a list of about 10 local BBSs that I would dial every night, and a list of games I was looking for. If Simon found a game on the list, it downloaded the game for me. Then, it would hang up. I even created a hard-hang-up time of 7am, when my mom woke up, because if the computer was still on the line and she needed to use the phone, she would kill me! LOL

I'm still super proud of that because it was so much fun to create. I recall "releasing" the program to a handful of friends, and they all seemed to like it, but it never really went anywhere.

3. Ask HN: Any solo game developers here?

Top comment by fwsgonzo

I see alot of comments here who are wondering if they're good enough to join. At the same time, it looks like this group is very picky about who can join.

Perhaps there is another Discord someone could setup where part-time game creators could join. I am making a procedurally generated world simulation game that is a little bit too early in the process to showcase, and definitely not work full-time on, but it still has several tens of thousands of lines of code in it. That's just reality for making a game from zero. I would be interested in talking to other people about game creation.

4. Ask HN: What books helped you in your entrepreneurship journey?

Top comment by grepLeigh

Most posts offer the obvious suggestions (The Mom Test, High Growth Handbook, The Personal MBA, The Power Law, Hard Thing about Hard Thing, Will It Fly, etc), so I'll focus on some non-obvious suggestions.

For tactical advice, I find talks/podcasts and mastermind groups more useful than books. My favorite podcast (by far) is Rob Walling's Startups for the Rest of Us, which is oriented towards building a capital-efficient bootstrapped business. The archive is full of extremely valuable tactical advice.

The books I've found most helpful on my entrepreneurship journey are about mental health, emotional intelligence, and relationships of all kinds. Sharing a few that have had a profound impact, since they helped me metabolize and understand what drove me to become a founder in the first place.

1. The Self-Compassion Skills Workbook by Tim Desmond

2. Path of Compassion by Thich Nhat Hanh

3. The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read, Philippa Perry

4. Burnout, Emily Nagoski

5. Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, Lindsay C. Gibson

6. Self-Compassion, Dr. Kristin Neff

7. How to Keep House While Drowning, KC Davis

8. Deploy Empathy, Michele Hansen

9. The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel A. Van der Kolk

10. Atlas of the Heart, Brene Brown

11. What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing by Bruce D. Perry and Oprah Winfrey

5. Ask HN: More magazines like Quanta and Noema?

Top comment by mapierce2

For convenience, here are the RSS/Atom feeds for some of the publications mentioned in this thread:

Quanta https://api.quantamagazine.org/feed/

Noema Magazine https://www.noemamag.com/feed/

Aeon https://aeon.co/feed

Nautilus https://nautil.us/feed/

The Point Magazine https://thepointmag.com/feed/

Asterisk Magazine https://asteriskmag.com/feed

Symmetry Magazine https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/feed

n+1 Magazine https://www.nplusonemag.com/feed/

Harpers Magazine https://harpers.org/feed/

Low←Tech Magazine https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/feeds/all-en.atom.xml

Public Books Magazine http://www.publicbooks.org/feed

The New Atlantis https://www.thenewatlantis.com/feed

6. Ask HN: V2 – Laid off folks, are you getting hired yet?

Top comment by iaaan

I was laid off about a month ago (senior software engineer). I remember the whole job search for my last position, back in June 2021, lasted all of about two weeks. This time, it feels like there's significantly fewer interesting positions open, and the ones I apply to aren't even leading to HR screening calls. I've probably applied to about 30 positions.

The one place that did call me back gave me their take-home coding test, but their automated grading system said I failed, so they sent me a rejection email with no details about what their automated system didn't like about my code and then never responded to my request for more info.

I've really enjoyed the first month or so of unemployment, getting to hang out more with my spouse, do hobbies, work on the house, etc., but the anxiety about running out of emergency fund runway is slowly creeping in. We've got about another 4 months before things get really dire, not accounting for unemployment checks. With UI, we can probably double that before we'd need to dip into investment accounts.

For sure a more fortunate position to be in financially than most get, but it's still really unnerving not knowing when/if I'll get another interview. I've been consistently employed full time since the moment I graduated high school (about 10 years ago), so this is literally the first time I've ever not had a job in my adult life.

7. Ask HN: Is Hacker News slow for anyone else?

Top comment by dang

Yes, sorry. It's painful. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35157344.

If you want to make it fast and you don't need to comment or upvote, you can log out (edit: or use an incognito tab - thanks Aachen!). That has the side effect of reducing server load too. I absolutely hate having to tell people that, but it's true.

8. Ask HN: Has anyone made the transition from app development to ML/AI work?

Top comment by SCUSKU

I just made the transition in the other direction. I did a Masters in computer vision, then worked at a startup doing computer vision and machine learning work for 2 years. I recently transitioned into app dev.

There are 2 levels to ML/AI, being a researcher and being an engineer. The researcher actually creates new models, architectures, etc. You're going to need to be talented at math, as well as pursue a PhD to have enough time to absorb some subset of the material to have a good understanding. (A masters was good but not enough time for me personally).

Then there is engineering which is leveraging the creations of the very smart PhDs. At least in my experience, the shallow level is basically fine-tuning models to your use case, which does require an understanding of some things like loss functions, train/validation/test sets, but it's not too complicated.

Everyone that asks me how to learn machine learning, I advise them to read Hands on Machine Learning by Aurélien Géron cover to cover. When I first started my masters I did this and it helped immensely because it was easy to understand, was broad, and was interested usually from an application perspective.

From there, I would suggest learning PyTorch (starting w/ Keras is ok too, but don't stay there too long, and avoid Tensorflow), as it's much easier to develop with. I always learn best with a personal project, so maybe see if there is a real life "problem" you'd be interested in solving, like classifying different pets from each other or something like that.

It'll take a while to build up your skills, so going to school is of course an option, but with dedication I think you can also accomplish this solely with side projects and learning on your own. Best of luck!

9. Ask HN: What is going on with Charles Schwab? Stock drop near 40% post SVB chaos

Top comment by titan89

Former equity analyst here, but I never covered the banking sector so treat this post like an amateur opinion. I use Schwab as a broker so I took a look at Schwab's financials this weekend.

First, Schwab has over $350 billion in deposits. That has declined from over $450 billion at it's peak last year. Unlike the regional banks, I'm guessing that this is less due to capital flight (moving from Schwab to another bank), and more due to customers moving their assets from cash (Schwab pays a pitiful 0.5%), and into higher-yielding assets (like treasuries or money market funds). The assets stay on Schwab, but it still decreases Schwab's deposits and liquidity.

Moreover, I was stunned when I saw that Schwab reported over $150 billion in held-to-maturity assets of over 5 year duration (and over $100 billion of that is in bonds of greater than 10 year duration). Again, not a banking analyst (also not sure if some of this is hedged), but this looks very aggressive to me, and could result in a significant $15+ billion loss that significantly impairs tangible book value. Regulators really dropped the ball by not incorporating more stress scenarios based on interest rates.

Schwab recently sent a notice that they have a large amount of liquidity, and it is unlikely that they'll need to sell the HTM maturities. Still, there is a concern that Schwab customers will panic and put that to the test. The falling stock price and posts like this will probably raise awareness of Schwab's issues.

Personally, I'm pretty disappointed in Schwab, but my opinion is that your brokerage assets are almost certainly safe. Schwab still has a decent cushion (including equity, preferred, and debt), and operates a pretty valuable franchise. Equity holders could be in trouble due to concerns over negative carry though (their long-term HTM assets could yield less than the cost to attract new deposits).

Personally, I turned off the margin at Schwab this weekend out of an abundance of caution, to reduce the likelihood that I'll be an unsecured creditor if shit truly hits the fan. However, that will almost certainly not be necessary.

10. Ask HN: Is it just me, or could file conversion websites be a honeypot?

Top comment by NoPicklez

I do a lot of work with what you’d call ShadowIT, or the use of unsanctioned applications. I use cloud broker tools which use firewall logs to identify where these websites are being used.

The use of these file conversion tools is very common and is often used on sensitive information. Heck I’ve seen health companies use these tools to upload god knows what.

Usually there is little to no data sovereignty rules that apply, in that by using the service for free that can own the file you upload and use it to glean information from.

Firstly, employees need to be aware that they are not allowed to use this software and you need to therefore provide a solution. You should then use broker tools to actually block these conversion sites, in the same way that you might block the use of Dropbox and other cloud solutions if these are unsanctioned.

Yes you’re absolutely right to question these services and organisations are having to deal with risk associated with using them. Which is only really an issue if it’s sensitive personally identifiable information.