AskHN Digest

1. Ask HN: Who else is working on nothing?

Top comment by hn_throwaway_99

Wow, I just wanted to say thanks a lot for posting this. I'm in a very similar boat. I was always very focused and goal-oriented in my younger days - a bit of a workaholic but generally enjoyed working hard. A number of changes since the pandemic have left me feeling very similar to you:

1. Like tons of other people, I re-evaluated my relationship with work during the pandemic. To be honest, it wasn't easy. I think a ton of people (especially Americans) tie up their self-worth with their jobs, and during the pandemic I just felt more disconnected from my job.

2. I think a lot of folks have underestimated the psychological changes that happen from being way more isolated these days. I don't mean "shut-in" isolated, I just mean that working remote most days means the number of people I interact with in person has gone way, way down. I'm all for remote work but I won't deny that I greatly miss a lot of the energy from just being around other people.

3. Finally, I've just become really disillusioned with tech over the course of my career, which makes me very sad. I started my career during the dot com boom, and there was so much optimism about the beneficial societal changes that tech and the Internet would bring. I don't feel like all tech is "evil" these days, but I do feel that the world would be better off if all the big tech companies (Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft) just completely stopped building any new tech. Obviously that's not realistic, but it highlights my feeling that I'm not looking forward to any new tech from these companies, because more tech is going to invariably lead to more isolation, more "doom scrolling", more assaults on our attention. I feel like most big tech companies have just become the equivalent of drug dealers, just trying to hijack our brain's evolutionary attention mechanisms to addict us. "Attention is all you need" is right...

Anyway, don't have any advice or anything, just wanted to say I appreciated your post in a "misery loves company" sort-of-way, so thank you.

2. Ask HN: What is the current driver of tech layoffs?

Top comment by leetharris

This is going to be a controversial opinion.

The quality of your average tech worker has completely nosedived in the last 10-15 years.

All these huge companies wanted more products, more marketshare, more money, etc. They needed more people to pull this off. They started lowering hiring standards across the board because there just weren't enough people in tech.

Simultaneously, a huge portion of the world saw tech salaries and wanted in on it so they started taking every quick certification, bootcamp, degree, etc to get into tech.

It turns out that compared to the dedicated nerds of the previous generation, most new people just don't care that much about tech and don't want to go deeper than the bare minimum required by their job.

So I think tech overhired by a LOT, then they realized all these new people are actually net negatives on the company, and we are slowly correcting.

I think a solid 50% of people in tech are still on the chopping block. You can do much more with tools + really smart people in the year 2024 than you could before.

3. Ask HN: Good book to learn modern networking?

Top comment by teleforce

For me Computer Networking: A Top Down Approach (CNTDA) by Kurose is still the best textbook out there to learn modern networking:

https://gaia.cs.umass.edu/kurose_ross/index.php

Starting with the 6th edition, it has separated control and forwarding planes for the network layer to reflect the increasing popularity of software-defined networking (SDN) i.e. evolution of hardware centric to software centric networking. The fact that even before 6th edition when the chapter on networking is still monolithic (combined chapter on control and forwarding), it has already mentioned about the separation concerns between the control and forwarding planes while other popular textbooks still not highlighting this important matter. In addition, unlike many textbooks you can download all the supporting materials slides, exercises, animation, etc, of the from the authors' public website and Prof. Kurose video lectures are also available in Youtube.

My main wish lists for the next edition (9th) hopefully include Smart-NIC for modern approach to in-network computation and also the newly standardized segment routing for network layer QoS.

If there's The Nobel Prize in Literature for textbook authors, the authors of this book should be more than deserving.

4. Ask HN: How many of you are consciously downsizing your devices/going retro?

Top comment by simonsarris

I have zero TVs, IoT devices, home automatons, etc. I generally dislike anything that beeps and anything with LEDs. Though I built my own house, I don't even own a microwave. The stove is gas. I like candles. In winter we heat with firewood. Though I have ornamental gardens (that I am expanding to a garden of 100 roses), and an orchard, I have no watering lines timers. I water everything by walking around and pointing at it with the hose.

for what are called computers:

1 desktop - a 2021 box that I built (this replaced a 2013 box)

1 laptop, 1 phone (a pixel 7), 1 camera (Leica Q2) (well and a Praktica MTL5 made in East Germany)

And one kindle. And an iPad, for work testing.

I'm a web developer. I love technology. I think what you have should be as good as you can make it for yourself. But it has to feel and serve very human purposes to be worthwhile. I don't think many gadgets do that. Many devices, especially modern ones, take the liberty of interrupting you often. I do not wish to be interrupted.

5. Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

Top comment by jameshush

Out of all the side projects I’ve tried, the one that’s been the most lucrative consistently is buying boring index funds.

I kinda wish I just doubled down on the boring route sooner .

6. Ask HN: Got a /22, cool things to do with it?

Top comment by kdklol

Realistically, you should sell it while it's valuable. Take a look at IPv6 adoption. I know, I know, "IPv6 will never be here blah blah blah", so the naysayers say, but look at what Google is getting now, for instance:

https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html

We're counting down the years before IPv6 will become the major protocol, after which, IPv4 addresses will slowly start to loose value.

"But it's only FAANG, noone else has IPv6!" Just not the case anymore. But even if, most people don't care about anything else anyway. I have a friend who helps to operate a university dorm network. Allegedly, he once removed an IPv4 address by mistake from one student's computer. He only heard about it half a year later, when the student casually mentioned that only Google, Facebook and other big sites seem to work. Apparently, if Google, Facebook, and the School's website works, it's acceptable to most (which is sad for different reasons, but that's not my point).

Anyway, that's still at least a few years away though, you can have some fun with it for now :)

7. Ask HN: How can I get out of tech?

Top comment by nickspicer1993

Hello, I don't have PTSD but I do have extreme anxiety and have been in the state you sound like your in now. It sounds like you are being triggered by something and your body is in a constant state of fight or flight causing your brain fog. I would talk with your therapist to try and tease out if it is definitely your work that is doing it?

I think it would be best to try and get to a state where you are sleeping properly and do not experience brain fog before making any larger changes. If therapy is not working try a course of SSRIs if you are not already one, coupled with really focusing on avoiding sugars, alcohol and caffeine, while drinking enough water.

If you experience no changes after doing the above after 4-6 weeks try to put together a game plan for long term change, that will require slow methodical thought about what you need and what your family requires. Best of luck and PTSD is the absolute worst, feel free to message me anytime.

8. Ask HN: Are tech layoffs happening abroad?

Top comment by frje1400

I'm at a mid sized SaaS company in the Nordics (European). No layoffs, but hiring has slowed down and we no longer actively try to recruit junior devs. We used to have lots of active job ads, now they're reduced to only the most in-demand roles. The company is profitable and we have big important projects going on so not too worried.

9. Ask HN: How can I make local dev with containers hurt less?

Top comment by reactordev

You prepackage an image with everything you need to run your app, then you mount your local directory as a volume where you COPY it into your container (the volume mount will override that file system path) and now you can run your container, edit your code, see live-reload do its thing (if you have that) and when it’s time to deploy - simply don’t mount your local directory and let the COPY do its thing.

Also, any 3rd party things (database for example) can be done with a docker-compose.local.yml omitting your app image and instead building it from .

10. Ask HN: Why did LinkedIn become what it is today?

Top comment by nsenifty

Politics and war discussions have been increasingly common at work too. Companies have promoting ERGs in the hope of diversity and in the name of "bringing your authentic self to work", and these groups have become a hotbed of activism. I've witnessed flamewars in work channels on the topics of BLM, war in Gaza etc in the past two companies I've worked.