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chrisoconnell

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Founder @ Manafall (Manafall.com) chris (at) manafall (dot) com

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I mean, let's be honest there. This is much different than the blockchain bubble, in which 2/3 of the population is actually utilizing or interacting with AI daily.

While, yes, it's overhyped and takes up too much of the spotlight, it isn't going anywhere and is going to continue to be a staple in our lives moving forward, and will continue to increase in impact as it improves.

Blockchain will always be blockchain, and it was absolutely a bubble. Will it improve? Sure. Will it ever be as impactful to the everyday individual as AI? Maybe, but most people will not know or care. It will mostly be a passive experience.

AI will/has fundamentally changed how we work in the matter of 3 years. So, financial system jumping on board this, is much safer than jumping onboard crypto hype trains.

(I'm not saying crypto is bad / is a bad investment, but lots of crypto and ai startups are both trash, well, most startups are trash, I say that as a founder who has had many trash ideas)

I had considered doing this about 3 years ago. I purchased a 1986 Vixen 21TD (a BMW diesel powered, 5 speed motorhome, build specifically as a motorhome, and gets 30mpg).

Ultimately, my goals ended up changing. I did a bit of modifications (modern brakes, improved electrical, upgraded alternator, 300aH 12v Lithium, and more), but I ended up only doing a couple trips in it.

It was really incredible, being able to have enough space to work, traveling anytime I want without worrying about crashing at a friend's place, or paying for a hotel or being stuck in a boring part of a city where the hotel is, etc.

I did a ton of research before purchasing, and loved the fact that it was fully built from the ground up to be a motorhome, rather than how modern conversions or RVs are built. It has a full queen size bed, and a wet bath, and I could comfortably stand when the roof is up.

Alas, the home life ended up being for me.

P.S. It's for sale.

In the past, I have applied to many YC startups, and have a pretty high response rate. Being that the job board is pretty prominent in the tech world, and engineering jobs are highly competitive, it is likely that a smaller startup does not have the resources to reply to every applicant.

This being said, I've been self employed for several years, so this may have changed since ~ 2021, but I don't think it's likely.

Also, the landscape has changed, and some job posting may have been made during more optimistic moments, and they may just be stale, rather than fake.

I have referred many people to "WorkAtAStartup" in recent years who have had quite a bit of success. While it's unfortunate that you are not having the best of luck, definitely be optimistic and continue to try! There are many great companies that recruit through the YC boards, and I recommend using WorkAtAStartup to have the best chances of response, even more so than their direct job listings.

Hey HN, I've been using RefZoom and contributing to it for over a year now. Personally, I've used it to validate and organize health information regarding supplements, weightlifting, and overall wellbeing by categorizing white papers into hierarchical notes connecting directly to the source.

Others have used it for organizing their thoughts for their PhD dissertation, and others use it as ways of proposing new treatments by validating their claims through published research.

Thought I'd give it a share here!

I think it's important to call out that it's actually constantly increasing amount to increase the results.

As patients lose weight, they need to eat fewer and fewer calories to continue to lose weight, as the BMR decreases. This isn't because of the medication, but rather because it requires fewer calories to maintain their mass, so they burn fewer calories at rest.

Increasing the dose further decreases hunger signals, which further decreases their desire to eat as much.

It's not "increasing to maintain the same results" its "increasing to increase results".

Ex.

Patient A currently weighs 330lbs. Has a BMR of 3300 Calories. - Initial dose, they eat 2,800 calories a day instead of 3,500 calories they used to. - Loses weight. Now weighs 250lbs. - BMR is roughly now weighs 250lbs, and has a BMR of roughly 2500 calories, but dose still has them eating around 2,800 calories. - Dose is increased, patient is now eating around 2,000 calories. - Patient A reaches 200lbs, BMR is roughly 1,800 calories, but is still eating 2,000 calories. - Dose is increased, Patient A is now eating 1600 calories.

This.

Anecdotally, I lost 130lbs in 1 year, and have now lost 140lbs (1 year 4 months).

Initially, I was 330lbs and lost weight at a rate of 3.5lbs per week. Slowly decreasing weight per week to stabilize at around 1% of body weight per week.

During the entirety of this time, I had, and still maintain, a rigorous resistance training program. My muscle mass is significantly higher than it was when I was 330lbs.

The important part of losing weight is to know what your goals are, and to adjust all aspects of your life accordingly. Not just cutting calories, unless your goal is to lose weight, vs lose fat.

The biggest thing afterwards is, if your lifestyle doesn't support the maintenance of your new weight, and when you hit your goal you eat like you used to and revert activity to your old sedimentary ways, all of that weight will come back incredibly fast.

Whole life changes are needed. Going slow helps with these changes, as they become habits. This is why the success rate of achieving a healthy weight for someone who is morbidly obese is only 1-1266 (men) and 1-677 (women) [1].

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK362452/#:~:text=In%20p....

Something can be fast, but lack efficiency or the ability to utilize the speed.

For example, a car can have 1,000hp, but utilizes a large turbo which takes a long time to spool up, leading to poor performance. It may also have poor handling characteristics.

On the other hand, let's use a car like a Mazda Miata, which only has 181hp. It is not fast, but it is an incredibly performant car, with exceptional handling and driving dynamics.

Speed and performance are not directly correlated, and are independent metrics. Performance is more of an indication of the overall dynamics of action, intention and results.

I actually own a studio that does just this.

I think that for a lot of businesses, they can hire internal developers prematurely before they have a clear vision of the product that they're building or need.

We structured our studio as a group of (very) senior talent, most with over a decade of experience each across Product Design, Software Engineering, and Product Management, where thee entirety of our studio is available on each project.

We focus on documentation, developer experience, and working with companies to get the initial product in a state of both product management and cleanliness to ensure that they're reading to onboard specific team members internally to carry the product forward.

It can be very cost prohibitive to create a new product without having designers, developers, product owners, all that are dedicated to your vision. A developer may miss key user experience interactions, making it difficult to use. A designer may forgot key features from a business perspective. Having access to all of the talent for a new product is hard.

As others have said here, I recommend finding very talented and experienced SENIOR Engineers. If you are intent on them being an internal team, ensure they have excellent project management skills and have built their own side project from scratch, so they know what it takes to build a full product from the ground up.

An engineer that builds their own products has experience that is invaluable when it comes to building functional tools that people want to use.

Arguably United airlines shouldn't have chosen a product they can't test updates of, though maybe there are no good options.

I used to work with regional parks and recreation departments, and they would not approve any updates that did not go through UAW environments that we had set up. All updates had to be deployed to their UAW, thoroughly tested, before going to their production environment.

I get this this is slightly different, but I'd imagine Airlines, Banks, and Hospitals would have far more strict UAW policies to avoid a single vendor from kneecapping operations.

Over the past 11 months, I've lost 122lbs, from 330lbs to 208lbs. (May 30, 2023 - Today)

For the first 2 months, cardio was not part of it. Really focusing on diet, reintroducing myself to portions of Whole Foods to hit macro goals. Really focusing on vegetables and protein, large quantities of low calorie foods that digest relatively slowly to keep me satiated for long periods. They're also quick to digest.

I was always active, even at 330lbs I would mountain bike (ascending and downhill) comfortable on black diamonds, same with snowboarding. This continued, but I didn't try to explicitly do and track cardio.

After I lost 35lbs, I added CrossFit once a week. Then 2 times a week. Then 3 times a week. I noticed that olympic lifts and squats would cause extreme systemic fatigue, and would leave me dizzy and out of breath. After a couple months,

I stopped doing CrossFit due to an injury caused that that effect, and started isolated training for muscle hypertrophy utilizing machines for 5+ days a week, but missed the cardio that CrossFit gave.

I was about 260lbs at this point, and started with incline walking at about 3mph at max incline for 40 minutes. Then I started to begin my cardio with a 6mph run until I was out of breath and a high heart rate, and then began the incline walking.

After a week or so, I began running the a mile at the fastest speed I could, then switching to incline walking until my heart rate dropped, and alternated running and incline walking for 40 minutes.

Then, in November, I ran my first 5k in 34 minutes. I was hooked. I walked a couple minutes of it in the middle, but was pround myself. Today, I can run a 5k in 25 minutes if I push myself.

Today, I ran 5 miles without stopping with several hundred feet of elevation gain.

Cardio health is life changing. I used to be tired walking up large sets of stairs, and it was embarrassing to not be able to hold a conversation for long while walking up stairs.

It's also a myth, perpetuated by highly trained athletes that you cannot gain muscle and do cardio, or that you cannot do these things while in a caloric deficit.

I have lost nearly 1% of my body weight per week as a vegetarian while gaining significant muscle mass (today, I am about 15-17% body fat at 6'1 and 208lbs).

The biggest thing I can say is it's never too late to start, and it's important to be consistent and find what works for you. At 32 years old, I have added years to my life, and feel and look better than I ever have.

Also, cardio gives an amazing dopamine rush that beyond addicting. Highly recommend it. But don't forget the resistance training.

Anyone can do it. One day at a time.

As someone in tech, the process of rebuilding yourself is addicting once you start to see progress on every front.

VO2Max Increasing. Resting Heart Rate Dropping. Waist Shrinking. Chest, Arms, Legs Growing. Muscle definition increasing. Lift PRs increasing. And you look better in clothing.

Explain why it's cheating? I'm a designer. I have been for over a decade. I don't use Canva, but I use Sketch, Figma, etc., and create templates or utilize templates made by others as starting places.

How is Canva any different than this? Part of design is being able to recognize what good design is, and utilizing the tools available to you. If Canva get the job done, and looks good, and has been sufficiently modified to meet the specified criteria supplied in the assignment or spec, how is it cheating?

The only way I could see is if they didn't modify the slides and part of the assignment was to create a unique branded slide presentation and they just used an out of the box design. In which case, no design work was done.

Someone shouldn't be penalized for the outcome based on the tools utilized unless the spec specifically excludes it.

It's like telling a clothing e-commerce company that they shouldn't use Shopify. If the work is done, why waste your time building an e-commerce site from scratch if it meets the specified need?

Canva is a great tool, and saves my clients thousands of dollars, while I get to avoid doing the completely mind numbing process of working in PowerPoint or designing social media posts. It's a win/win.

I went to the doctor because I was having difficulty doing the things I really loved. Mountain Biking, Hiking, etc. The motivation wasn't there, but it's all I wanted to do, but couldn't mentally get the drive to do it.

I assumed this was depression, and after some questions, the doctor insisted that it wasn't depression and asked if I had been diagnosed with ADHD in the past.

Then, he asked me to try Wellbutrin as an off-label use for ADHD, which dramatically changed my ability to function. I have since stopped taking it as I have a lot of systems in place that help with my executive function, but I still feel that taking it would make my EFD better.

The feeling of "depression" has since subsided, but I do still suffer from brain fog frequently when I get overwhelmed with scheduling or tasks I deem "insignificant" that I need to do, such as:

Send a short email. Deposit a check. Put gas in the car. Send that Mutual NDA.

But large tasks like:

Run a 5k every day. Study a language for an hour. Design that app flow. Help a friend develop a business plan Organize and event for 50 people that serves dinner

are typically easy.

It's really the small tasks that break my brain. Big easy are fun and enjoyable because there's a tangible outcome, but small tasks that should be easy but have some sort of barrier just break me.

I was diagnosed with ADHD last year, at 31 years old. It made so much sense.

The idea of your "future self" is actually what helped me improve my ability to form habits.

"If I do X, Y, Z, today, then tomorrow I only have to do A and I have all this free time. Let me be miserable today so I don't have to be stressed tomorrow and I can do anything I want."

It allowed me to unleash my ADHD and kind of embrace it almost on alternating days.

One of Hal Hershfield's talk's had mentioned that we always imagine our "Future Self" will be less busy than we are today, so we won't over extend ourselves today, because tomorrow you'll be less stressed. But this isn't usually the case.

For example: You won't have any more ability to make it to the bank tomorrow, than you do today. So if you do it today, tomorrow you won't even have to think about it. Your ADHD is less likely to fire off with all the other things you "have to do". If you only have one task, you can kind of just do it.

This has been a game changer mentality for my executive function disorder.

See also, Hal Hershfield's "Your Future Self".

I recently made a few major changes to my life that I felt were my responsibilities as a founder. Mainly, taking care of my health.

I heard Hal's Ted Talk, and decided to give getting into shape another chance. being that it takes a ton of time to begin to see major results, it was always a detriment to putting the time in. "I'm still going to be fat tomorrow."

However, if you spend 30 days working towards something that's incredibly difficult, and put in all of the effort possible, and review your progress after those 30 days, you'll realize you're actually making a ton of progress if you can justify the hardships as a necessity for future success.

If you're a founder, that might sound familiar, especially if you're a bootstrapped founder.

After those first thirty days, I was incredibly proud of the past me for not giving up. I had lost 20lbs. That's amazing. I felt amazing.

Future me would be even more proud if I kept going. Almost a year later, I've lost over 100lbs, and am in the best shape of my life. My company is growing, and I'm free of almost all health conditions.

The idea of doing something for "Future You" isn't necessarily what worked for me, but instead, becoming the future me and having respect and being proud of the person I was to work hard for the person I would become.

But, it's the little things. Like going out drinking, and waking up to a gatorade on your nightstand with a little note you prepared for your hungover self the next day saying "Hey, I'm sorry. Drink this."

A travel mug is more an amorphous volume than simply 20oz.

A Stanley Mug, like the recent Stanley x Starbucks collaboration is 40oz. I believe this may be what they are referring to.

However, it's rare that individuals with the 40oz mugs are filling them with coffee, and if they're with espresso drinks, it's more likely that the volume of milk is increased rather than consuming 8 shots of espresso.

I'd assume most people with travel mugs that consume coffee are using 10 - 16oz mugs like myself?

I can't say for sure whether it is "most" or not, but I do not know a single individual that is a Digital Nomad that makes sub $100,000 a year that is employed by another company.

As for a digital nomad, if you're business is secure enough that you're comfortable traveling full time or as a standard aspect of your life, you're likely making more than $68,000 Pre-Tax.

I don't think this is an incredibly high dollar amount, seeing as several major cities in the US have a minimum wage of nearly $41,000 a year.

Care to elaborate? I actually agree with you, but I feel like my reasoning may be different, and I'm interested in how you came to your opinion.

It's interesting though, to imagine a dystopian future where instead of red lights, we are stopped by ads that we must watch before progressing through an intersection, and the advertisements are spaced perfectly to control traffic patterns.

Samsung should hire me to design their next smart city, imo.

Honestly, advertising is not inherently evil. Putting a sign out front of your business with your logo is advertising, though it also helps your customers find you. You are advertising your location.

How would you know where a restaurant is or what it serves if they did not have a logo or a menu located outside on their window? All of this is advertising.

What is immoral is advertising that holds your attention hostage. Advertising should be able to be rejected, or skipped.

I don't have to read a billboard. I don't want to stare at it for 5 seconds before saying "Skip Billboard". I just don't look at it.

Instagram does a great job of this with Reels. I can just swipe past a reel that's an ad. I can't even tell you what the last ad I saw on Instagram was, period.

In my opinion, advertising should be an inefficient way of communicating your services / products. Commercials, in-stream ads, popups, anything that forces you to interact with an advertisement should be banned, and any personalization of advertisements should also be banned.

Have you considered a monthly retainer with an hour cap?

This prevents you from being treated like a salaried employee, maintains your work life balance, and ensures the client is still providing solid requirements and thinking through their ideas.

We have found a lot of great success with this model, and our clients respect it. It ensure we can have multiple clients, without one taking up all of our time, and taking it from others.

If we spend under X hours, that's fine. But there's simply a cap. It essentially means that each client gives enough work for us to work for those total number of hours, and we still have MRR regardless. We can help our clients maximize usable time, and it makes our project management valuable to the client as well.

To combat long Net Terms, you can kickoff a client with a project, which begins upon receipt of payment, and is continued with the retainer. This initial project should be able to support you until your retainer payments start (180 days in length) but your retainer should start ASAP.

It also allows the client to see your value, and you get to feel the client out.

Unrelated to the article, but...

I'm not a huge fan of adblocking, but the entire top 1/2 of my screen on Kotaku on Desktop is an autoplaying anchored video ad, with a simultaneously autoplaying video on the bottom-right PIP style.

There is no way to effectively read this article without using a third party service / viewer.

Companies cannot complain about adblocking if this is the experience they provide.

Arc Browser 1.0 3 years ago

I've been waiting on their implementation of Compact Tabs. While controversial for some, I personally feel that the new compact tab designs in Safari are a far better user experience and use of space. Kagi's CEO completely disagrees with this, and they're implementing a design similar to Internet Explorer 9.

I really want to use Kagi, but I think that their design principals are antithetical with mine and may others.

But, I think it's great for a lot of people, particularly those that seek alternative browsers.

Arc Browser 1.0 3 years ago

It unfortunately requires an account to use the browser at all.

A browser, un no circumstances, should be log-in walled.

Seemed like a great user experience as a browser, but unfortunately I uninstalled it as soon as I launched it to a sign in screen.