Ask HN: What would you like to say to your fellow HN readers?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19811045

37 42 7 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

If you could address us as a group for 30 seconds, what would you tell us?

Iwillgetby• 7 years ago

If your corporate network can connect to every domain that is NOT in this top10million list, your network will likely have a breach in the next 0 to 120 months. Most malware domains are not in the top_10_million. Also, match IP connection traffic to DNS responses to cover the direct IP connect problem.

/www.reddit.com/r/bigseo/comments/6zwu1w/list_of_the_top_10_million_websites_based_on/

jppope2• 7 years ago

Be a little nicer and a little happier.

We as a group sit on the forefront of all knowledge, with great jobs (in the context of history), getting a chance to build the future. Tearing people down, being overly critical, or general negativity comes with the skill set but you can do a lot more good from the bright side of things.

Isamu• 7 years ago

Thanks.

For giving me a place where I can comment and others can disagree with me.

Thanks for not being overrun with stupidity. Not saying stupidity doesn't have its place, but ...

Thanks for the upvotes ... and the downvotes. I deserve both.

AwesomeFaic• 7 years ago

I dunno, I get stressed addressing an audience

Keep sharing cool stuff and be nice to one another

emit_time5• 7 years ago

Sleep and exercise are the two most important things you should absolutely be doing to improve your life.

Followed by diet and meditation.

Also, if you’re anything like me, forcing yourself to spend time with people will make you significantly happier. (Speaking as someone who has a tendency to isolate themselves.

ariosto• 7 years ago

This. Also, I'd like to add: being kind to yourself.

emit_time5• 7 years ago

As someone who was not kind to themselves for a long time, I highly recommend this.

justforfunhere• 7 years ago

How to be kind to yourself? I have heard this phrase before, but never able to figure out what it means!!

gitgud2• 7 years ago

Sleep, exercise, diet and meditation are my weakest qualities...

emit_time5• 7 years ago

That's essentially the worst thing you could be doing for your long term health and happiness. I suggest starting with sleep, moving to exercise (compliance is better than difficulty, i.e. better to start walking and follow through compared to saying you'll go to the gym 5 days a week and go 0).

rrishi• 7 years ago

Same here :(

natalyarostova2• 7 years ago

Two points: 1.) I strongly, strongly agree. 2.) With the exception of meditation, for some people meditating can actually be dangerous/bad for many weird complex reasons.

emit_time5• 7 years ago

Source? Genuinely curious, surprised I haven’t stumbled upon that before. I know long retreats can trigger psychosis, but that’s at one extreme

starpilot• 7 years ago

UFOs are real.

quickthrower22• 7 years ago

Does that mean aliens though? Could be military tests...

bernardv• 7 years ago

1. Diversity of opinion is valuable. You can express your opinion without diminishing someone else's. 2. Balance your technical work with real subject matter expertise

fafk• 7 years ago

Articles from New York Times have the catchiest titles, but are never worth the time.

jppope2• 7 years ago

amen

FlyingAvatar• 7 years ago

I find that I am very good at stereotyping.

When I stereotype people who I disagree with, it's very easy to engage with them in a way which will induce them to reciprocally stereotype me.

In this mode, it's possible for us both to speak with each listener only hearing the words that reinforces their own stereotype.

I find this also happens in reverse when engaging people who I agree with, making me feel better about my preconceived notions but not really challenging my views.

My task has been to talk with more people who I disagree with and listen to them. If I can't convince them of my view, that's ok. If they can't convince me of their's, that's ok.

So far, this process has been more frustrating in the moment, especially at first, but has generally left me feeling better about humanity.

quickthrower22• 7 years ago

Thanks for being the most interesting place online. I have learned a lot of stuff I’d otherwise not know.

If you downvote, but the comment isn’t obviously spammy or silly then try to leave a comment to help the original commenter know why.

Not everyone is making millions, or has saved half their salary in a pension plan, or has published some seminal paper etc. There are a lot of high achievers here but it’s ok not to achieved too.

Enjoy life it’s great because it’s a miracle we exist.

nf05papsjfVbc• 7 years ago

Much like the scarecrow, I chased after wit. Presently, I came upon a singular fact: the Tin Man's quest is Noble and mine vain. Being considerate, compassionate and sensitive towards the fellow man is the only way forward.

tsycho• 7 years ago

Be less negative.

Try to look for the positive ways something may be used.

For constructive criticism, try to come up with something unique to the product in concern. Any product may be shut down in the future, there's no value in repeating that in every thread.

gitgud2• 7 years ago

It takes new ideas a long time to catch on - time that is mainly devoted to evolving the idea into something useful. This fact alone dumps most of the responsibility for early technical innovation in the laps of amateurs, who can afford to take the time. Only those who aren't trying to make money can afford to advance a technology that doesn't pay. [1]

This is how I feel about hacker news. People who have the time to advance technology. And I'm grateful to witness so much of it here.

[1] https://apenwarr.ca/log/20190207

byproxy• 7 years ago

For the love of god, stop focusing on productivity!

Learn to enjoy things that serve no practical purpose.

Maybe a useful exercise to that end is to imagine yourself on your deathbed. Assuming you're lucid enough, what will you be thinking about?

toomuchtodo• 7 years ago

Be Excellent To Each Other.

didgeoridoo• 7 years ago

Party on, dudes.

natalyarostova2• 7 years ago

Economics is not the type of system you're used to studying. It's weird, complex, and has extreme unintended consequences that at hard to predict and often impossible to solve. The same intuition that leads you to be excellent at solving closed system problems will lead you astray in economic systems.

RandomBacon• 7 years ago

- Thanks for being an awesome community.

- Please validate users' email addresses, (send a confirmation link, and no more emails until that link is clicked). Especially if you already have the users' money (eg, they bought something from your company, and then you add the email address they gave you to a mailing list).

WheelsAtLarge• 7 years ago

Look ahead and set goals for your future. It's much nicer if you decide what it will be rather than random luck deciding.

aorth• 7 years ago

Put down your phone when talking to family and friends. Don't just keep typing and say "I'm listening."

telesilla• 7 years ago

Thanks for writing this. Came just at the right moment.

p0d• 7 years ago

Money isn’t everything.

Salesdude• 7 years ago

Why is almost everyone on HN hellbent on being more productive. I believe people should relax a bit and be grateful for what they have. Yes, its okay to try to do more things, but life is not about productivity. We are not machines, we are human beings. Invest some of your time in your family, friends, volunteering, or just being thankful for what you have.

ploika• 7 years ago

Get over yourselves. You are a very arrogant bunch.

You are not a genius and neither am I. Being able to write a unit test does not automatically make you smarter than someone who studied humanities in college.

Living in the USA does not make you a more effective worker than someone who does not.

mindcrime• 7 years ago

The sky isn't falling, and technological advancement still represents a key element of improving the human condition. The actions of a few bad actors, as dismaying as they are, don't indicate that everyone in tech has malicious intentions or anything.

We should strive to do better than systems of governance that involve an implicit (or explicit) threat of violence in order to coerce people into behaving the way we want. And we have no moral standing to use violence in that way to begin with.

Read lots of awesome books, and listen to great music. But don't let anybody else define for you what constitutes "awesome books" or "great music". Take suggestions and hints and recommendations from others, weight them as you see fit, but in the end: "to thine own self be true".

In the words of the immortal Aleister Crowley "Do what thou wilt, shall be the whole of the law".

AnimalMuppet• 7 years ago

Genuinely listen, even to people who disagree with your strongly held opinions. Listen to really give their position a fair hearing, not just looking for something to argue with. This has several benefits:

- You could actually be wrong, even if you don't think that's possible. You might learn that your position is mistaken.

- You might see that the other person's position, while you still don't agree with it, is still not as nuts as you thought it was.

- Even for a position that you totally disagree with, you might learn how to better refute it. You might even learn how to more accurately state it in the process of refuting it. (It's always better to refute something that your opponents recognize as their real position, rather than a strawman.)

octokatt• 7 years ago

No one knows quite what they’re doing. You deserve to be here. Keep learning, you’ll get there.

When you see the giant exit, the perfect job, the super-cool ultra-light digital nomad lifestyle... that guy doesn’t know what they’re doing either. Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t know what he’s doing.

Be nice to yourself.

throwaway973434• 7 years ago

I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I live in one of the most expensive cities in the US and make barely above the local minimum wage. I decided to learn to code, but there's all this anthropological stuff that I don't know, and I don't have a network at all.

I keep getting discouraged and giving up. I write code and don't publicize it. It's all niche anyway. There are months where I don't apply to anything, but I hardly ever get called back - I graduated from college, but with a liberal arts degree. (I got really bad advice.) I apply to fifty jobs and get one phone screen, and then I teach my friends in the Bay Area about how compilers work and so on. I know a guy in a similar position who gave up and became an expat, and I've been helping him learn Python, but I don't let on that it probably won't pay off.

My lease is almost up, and my roommate is going back to college anyway, so I'm going to move back in with my family and work full-time on getting a job and grinding interview problems. But they don't even have an internet connection! Maybe I could get dialup to work. I don't know. I'll probably become a regular at the local McDonald's.

I don't think I'm any good. I'd give up, but the alternative is aspiring to someday become an assistant manager of a fast food joint.

Working these crappy jobs, I've met a lot of people in similar positions. Smart people from hopeless backgrounds who ended up working nothing but retail, or IT guys who can hold their own in web development shop talk but lost their jobs in 2008, ended up homeless for a while, and now push carts in warehouses.

How the hell do people without traditional backgrounds make it? Do I have to go through a boot camp and give up another few months of my life? (Besides, I tried that once already and it didn't pay off - although that was right after I finished college and realized I had some toilet paper, so I had hardly any work experience.) Does it all come down to networking?

Is there any hope?

nojvek2• 7 years ago

I don’t know what i’m doing either. Whether software is the right industry for me. I’ve spent 10 years of my life doing it. Might as well continue. I’m dreading my job and may quit in a couple of months. Don’t have anything lined up.

nojvek2• 7 years ago

Get some sleep. Do random things for the sake of doing them because it makes you happy. Fuck productivity!

CM30• 7 years ago

What you build or what you say is far more important than how you build it or say it. Too many people get hung up on the code quality of their projects and the technical side rather than the whole content/promotion one, and end up building a very shiny ghost town as a result.

Same with writers, video makers, etc. People get so distracted by the language/readability/structuring aspect that they forget that actually talking about things people care about matters significantly more.

So stop getting sidelined by tech and formal structure, and focus that effort on things people want/need instead.

Ask HN: What would you like to say to your fellow HN readers?

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