AskHN Digest

1. Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?

Top comment by nlh

Currently self-employed as a.....rare coin dealer! Odd path for a tech nerd hacker like me, but certainly the most fun thing I've ever done with no plans to change this gig ever.

My backstory: Collected coins as a kiddo, took a 35-year detour into startup land: Started a VC-backed Web 1.0 company from 1999-2002, ran a non-tech company for ~10 years, then 2014-2022 did very traditional early stage tech product management / utility infielder roles. All fun times with at least one legit acquisition/IPO so far, but it turns out I don't love long zoom meetings and politics and formal process all that much.

In 2021 I started getting back into my old coin-collecting hobby and dabbled in buying and selling at a local coin show, and boy oh boy did that escalate quickly (it was one of the most fun and dopamine-filled weekends I can remember in a long time).

Cut to 2023 and I'm running my own rare coin business full-time -- buying, selling, and trading. It's such a fascinating business and very quiet multi-billion dollar industry with enormous opportunity. You need to have a passion for coin collecting and have a knack and aesthetic eye for quality (it's not all spreadsheet Moneyball), but man is it fun.

Feel free to AMA about being a tech nerd full-time coin dealer :)

2. Ask HN: What have you built with LLMs?

Top comment by duckkg5

I don't like selling. I wanted a way to practice cold calling in a realistic way. I set up a phone number you can call and talk to an AI that simulates sales calls.

I ended up using it for more general purpose things because being able to have a hands-free phone call with an AI turned out to be pretty useful.

It's offline now, but here's the code with all the stack and deployment info: https://github.com/kevingduck/ChatGPT-phone/

Edit: forgot to mention this was all running off a $35 raspberry pi.

3. Ask HN: Looking for lightweight personal blogging platform

Top comment by m-i-l

As per many other comments, it sounds like a static site generator like Hugo (https://gohugo.io/) or Jekyll (https://jekyllrb.com/), hosted on GitHub Pages (https://pages.github.com/) or GitLab Pages (https://about.gitlab.com/stages-devops-lifecycle/pages/), would be a good match. If you set up GitHub Actions or GitLab CI/CD to do the build and deploy (see e.g. https://gohugo.io/hosting-and-deployment/hosting-on-github/), your normal workflow will simply be to edit your markdown and do a git add/commit/push to make your changes live. There are a number of pre-built themes (e.g. https://themes.gohugo.io/) you can use, and these are relatively straightforward to tweak to your requirements. In theory, since the content (markdown) is separate from the presentation (theme), you can change design relatively easily (although in practice there's often theme specific config).

4. Ask HN: How did yall meet your SO?

Top comment by FiatLuxDave

I met my ex-wife during a visit to a customer site.

I used to work for a medical device company. We worked closely with a chain of local clinics, early users of our products. One of the therapists there was having trouble with a dosimetry system, and she would call me up for help. "That box is broken again", she would say. She always called the system "that box". Usually it was just a user error, but on one occasion there was a genuine hardware problem, so I drove down to the clinic to fix it.

When I walked into the clinic with my armful of equipment, there was a tall beautiful redhead working at the front desk. She looked at me, and seeing that I did not look much like a cancer patient, she asked, "Who are you?"

"I'm here to fix your box", I said.

She smiled at me, glanced down, and said, "I'm pretty sure that mine is working fine."

She guided me to the back where the therapist was messing around with the dosimetry system. Over the next hour, while I fixed the system, the attractive redhead from the front desk kept sneaking back to talk and flirt with me. As I was finishing up, I tried to think of a good way to ask her out. She walked up to me, shoved a piece of paper in my hand, and cutely ran away. On the paper was written her phone number and 'You better call me'.

I wish I had advice to give. Meeting Kim was pure luck for me.

5. Ask HN: Does anyone care about OpenPOWER?

Top comment by E39M5S62

It's simply too expensive. People that want to play around with a non-x86_64 system can buy one of a thousand different ARM devices and get all sorts of software running on it. If you want POWER, you're buying old datacenter gear with all the downsides of that class of hardware - or you're buying a Raptor system where the price has skyrocketed in recent years for aging hardware.

I pre-ordered a Blackbird motherboard and 32 thread CPU and got it in 2019. I used it as my main workstation until 2022 and then decided I'd had enough fighting the software ecosystem. I still have the machine because I've regretted selling other odd hardware in the past ... especially my dual 133mhz BeBox.

6. Ask HN: What are you reading Feb 2024

Top comment by zi_

"From the soil: Foundations of Chinese Society" by Fei Xiaotong.

It is a book (accessible to non-chinese) that helps one understand a population of >1.4 billion in less than 180 pages. Wouldn’t one call this a bargain?

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/134293.From_the_Soil

7. Ask HN: Best Preventative for Aging Parents?

Top comment by jph

Daily exercise + healthy nutrition + good sleep + social involvement.

If your parents are farther along, then be sure you create a care plan so you can continue to help them.

I maintain a free open source care plan template:

https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/care-plan

8. Ask HN: How to find time to learn after full-time job?

Top comment by Hasu

> Since I started working at a regular job in an office two months back, I don't get enough time to even watch YT videos off of the feed. With the commute, solid 8 hours at office, I barely have any cognitive or physical energy to do any mentally taxing work even if that means learning something new and exciting.

Be kinder to yourself. You're two months into a new job, it takes time to adjust to that. It's also pretty common to work harder earlier in a job to develop a reputation as a hard worker. Reputations like that can stick for years, even as your hours at the desk go down.

There are times in life when it's easier to do things you want, and times when it feels like it takes everything you have just to keep everything from falling apart. Don't try to overextend yourself when you're at your limits, recognize the limit and give yourself easy goals. Spend 5 minutes a day on something instead of lying to yourself and trying to do an hour. Do one hour a week instead of one a day. When you have more time or the work you're doing is motivating, it will get easier to continue doing it more and more.

Most importantly: don't feel like you NEED to do any of that stuff. Do it if you want to and it interests you. It's a lot easier to motivate yourself to do something you find fun, than something you don't really enjoy but feel like you "should".

9. Ask HN: Alternative to Mint.com?

Top comment by qrush

YNAB has turned my financial life around. I wish I had started using it 10 years ago. They also have built an importer from Mint. Some highlights I love:

* One window to every account I have, which mostly automatically updates/syncs

* Envelope budgeting has forced me to look at every penny and figure out what it's for

* API to work with other tools (for me, Splitwise - https://github.com/vascopinho/split2ynab/)

And here's my referral code for a free month: https://ynab.com/referral/?ref=ASH303nViLPCKyr-

10. Ask HN: Advice for a new father?

Top comment by twojobsoneboss

Losing ~ALL your free time can hurt alot mentally, esp if you had very specific life goals like starting a business and escaping the 9-5 (vs generic ones like travelling the world etc), you likely have to give those up, and that can be very difficult mentally and emotionally

I went through a "grieving" process of my new fate in life. It helped more when the baby started smiling. It helped more when she started sleeping through the night. It helped more as I internalized and built acceptance more.

If anyone wants to reach out on this aspect of fatherhood please reply and would love to get in touch.

EDIT: And goes without saying, but try all you can to get into a job/role that's remote and not super time-consuming or stressful. You will find it really valuable to have some of that 9-5 time when there's childcare (and also away from your spouse depending on the situation) to recharge and do whatever the F you want :)