Ask HN: What is your knowledge domain and how do you stay up-to-date?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46648271

by ossner • 6 months ago

3 4 6 months ago

news.ycombinator.com

How do you receive information, industry and personal interest updates and news?

e.g. your RSS reader/setup, newsletters, journals, etc.

I just use Thunderbird or Emacs, for RSS, I do not have a sophisticated setup. I live in a big city, so I stay up to date by continually engaging with friends and colleagues in-person. One person can only see so much, twelve can see a lot more.

PaulHoule• 6 months ago

For personal interest stuff I use my YOShInOn RSS reader which uses k-Means clustering and a BERT + SVM classifier to select articles for me -- and if you look at what I post from HN you will get a good idea of what it shows me.

These are fields where I am an interested outsider: I think biotechnology will be to the 21st century what electronics was to the 20th, I'm just as concerned about growing food in the global south and in Iowa or on Mars, think political science + politics outside the us is better than #uspol, like custom cars and 3-d printing, making the carbon cycle go backwards and think we have solutions for the very hard problems that we face.

Now I do a lot of learning in the areas of my work, but other than reading HN and occasional stuff that turns up on YOShInOn I do not look for "news" on these topics. For instance I have no fear that if I'm not following the most fashionable accounts on AI research on X I will fall behind, in fact, I know that if I did I would have a terrible fear of falling behind.

Instead my learning is focused primarily around projects that I do and I do projects that challenge my abilities. Right now I am working on biofeedback technology, heart-rate variability and stuff and I've rapidly learned about the web Bluetooth API and physiology and all of that. I can go to a lab where people do HRV research and demo something with my tablet and one or more Polar H10s that is light years ahead of what they've got in terms of convenience and clarity -- it's amazing to be able to talk to people about your physiology or their physiology or both in real time and see the phenomena with your own eyes.

I'm reading about research from the 1970s that has been forgotten and that's how you become the kind of person who sees "inevitable" where others see "impossible". Trying to keep up with the pack means you'll always be afraid of getting left behind. I've learned about so many other things the same way.

philwyshbone• 6 months ago

I primarily stay up-to-date through a mix of curated newsletters and industry blogs, supplemented by a daily dive into relevant research papers. This combination helps me balance practical insights with the latest academic developments.

We ran into this ourselves while trying to keep pace with advancements in AI. It became clear that having a structured approach to information intake was essential for staying informed and making sound decisions in our projects.

We ended up building Wyshbone to handle sales lead generation and enablement by integrating insights from various sources, allowing for timely outreach and efficient CRM management.

hookedonwinter• 6 months ago

Same here. What are some of your favorite newsletters?

Ask HN: What is your knowledge domain and how do you stay up-to-date?

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