What’s one Hacker News post (or discussion) that genuinely inspired you or shifted your mindset in a meaningful way?
Whether it's a technical insight, a founder’s story, a lifestyle choice, or a random rabbit hole—I'd love to read it. Bonus if you can share how it affected you.
Thanks for sharing!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32294388
I know why, but it’s too personal to say it here. But I can say that it’s on the same list I have Skecthpad (1963) in.
- MOOCs recommended on HN threads are fantastic. I spent hundreds of hours on MOOCs recommended here. Same goes for textbooks. Other people’s lists I found posted here are also great. Like Mark Saroufim, Susan Rigetti, etc. I now have a really high threshold quality for tech/math books. I read SICP, Little Schemer, Steven Strogatz among many great books. There are threads on tech books, MOOCs, especially those posted during pandemics.
- I learned about the fast.ai MOOC here, and projects I did from the MOOC helped me land my first Deep Learning job. I was a Physics undergrad.
- There is higher quality of discourse where the standard is high. This put things into perspective, and made me much more confident and capable. Like, just learning a new language in a week- if you think this is normal to most people who do software, you are wrong.
- HN posts links to direct judgements, court filings, papers, etc. Now for all areas of my life, I look for the direct source- read new laws, past tax treaties, papers etc. I prefer it over reading blogs or newpaper reports.
- HN is actually diverse. I, for the first time in my life, encountered sane Right Wing here on HN. I am from India, and all American social media were biased towards one direction, and the RW discourse was kind of eh, not smart. Maybe Quora had a small faction of smart RW. Having smart RW sources to read and learn from makes me a well-rounded person. English is not my first language, and I jumped into social media without any supervision when I was 13. So, take that into account. All American social media was a particular side's echo-chamber. That was eyebrow raising and squint-demanding from even a 16 yo me.
- I see many on HN working with electronics, Math, AI as hobbies/side projects. That has directly inspired me to do the same in my life.
- There are a lot of people here who have families, a home, focus on friends, a job/business- helps me striving towards those. Before, there was a distorted view of consumer/hedonism/activism focused adult life focused on money, extremely strong opinions, bragging about achievements, etc. From the outside HN might seem like a startup/money focused forum for a certain "kind", but it has the highest concentration of diverse smart people in my experience. No other forum has so many meditators, electronics-tinkerer-for-fun, Math-obsessed-for-fun, etc. I started meditating ~4 years back based on a comment that recommended Mind Illuminated book. HN played an important role in my coming-of-age.
Thank you, HN!
This post changed my view on how UI/UX of AI tools should be. It also somehow triggered "the urge to build something" inside me.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33452920
It rings more true than ever. The really important computing nowadays is all done on the GPU; the CPU is little more than a front-end processor. Furthermore, with AI and LLMs we're rapidly converging on a future where programming won't even resemble programming as we know it. If you're young and talented, the time to get ahead of the game is NOW. I am no longer young, so I will probably be one of the ones left behind.
On a side note I like writing code, I think I'm not alone. Who knows, maye ol'good internet will be reborn?
Well, it so happened that my partner had started a small sourdough bakery the year before. I was thinking about investing in it. This comment provided some of the inspiration and now a few years later we're both working on it full time, we have three cafe branches, one production facility, 25 staff, thinking about opening another branch in a neighboring city. Our skills complement each other - she's great at baking and HR, I'm better at developing business processes, managing the tooling, researching equipment, making sure things are properly documented. We're both crap at marketing, but somehow we get by!
My old career as a graphics dev feels like a distant memory, but I do keep my skills sharp and might go back to it in the future.
It has by no means been an easy ride for me, I am forced to juggle a ton of jobs and many of them are way outside my comfort zone. But at the same time, I'm creating something in the real world, and providing employment for 25 people, whom I do my best to make sure are treated well and given a decent place to work. This feels far more impactful than my graphics work ever was.
Since three months after his 4th birthday, he's been an avid reader, which has unlocked opportunities for joy/entertainment and for curiosity/learning.
Reading has also increased his spoken vocabulary. I know because a couple of times I've heard him use a word correctly but pronounce it incorrectly.
IIRC, paraphrasing a quote from u/chubot, or someone very much like them.
My personal prime motivator is something like:
Help people help themselves.
And help those who can't.
If I'm really devoted to feeding the hungry, for instance, I should always remember the proper goal is to end hunger (outright).
Even if that goal is unattainable. Maybe because that goal is unattainable. Which leads to a deeper inspection of the root causes, moral foundations, social context, etc.
It's just so easy to get caught up in the immediate necessity and lose site of root causes.
This really lifted the pressure off. It doesn't matter if it doesn't work in the end, just see how far you can go. It's really simple.
This allowed me to launch a product, make a few thousand bucks from it, and then fold it, cause it wasn't such a good idea.
This same advice allowed me to finish the 1st version of a screenplay I wanted to write. I am in the 2nd version now. We'll see where it goes.
ggm•8h ago
I now routinely delete posts on reflection, and I post a lot less than I used to, and I try to find interesting material to submit instead because I feel it is better to encourage input by being "productive" for want of a better word, than to fall into a semi constant sin of sniping, devils-advocating, well-actually..ing.
I'm not saying it made me happier, but I am certainly happer than I used to be. I have also applied this promiscuously across other social media (yes, this is one) online.