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aronowb14

262 karma · joined September 18, 2016

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aronowb14··on I Was Robbed in San Francisco While the Cameras Rolled
Is anybody else getting tired of the constant stream of inflammatory posts ragging on San Francisco or the Bay Area? I feel like I've been seeing one every one or two days that make it to the top of HN.

These types of posts just seem to fit into this ongoing narrative that SF (and relatedly, silicon valley), are all falling apart due to poor governance. It's beginning to feel like a strong echo chamber in here. What really irks me though is on this and the recent post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27241085 the associated comments and discussion don't really seem to have any real substance to them, and seem to revolve around one side saying "I visited and it is horrible!!!" vs the other side saying "I visited and it isn't horrible!!!".

This type of pure anecdotal arguing irks me because I really do love Hackernews as a source of interesting and rational discussion, and keeping ourselves to that standard would be super amazing, especially with complex topics like this one. Homelessness and crime in SF are not single cause topics, (it's not just bad governance that causes them) and the tech exodus does not mean the city is dying.

aronowb14··on When will virtual reality take off? The $100 bet
Totally agree with the sentiment in this post. I've been working in VR for about 5 years now and came to this conclusion a couple weeks ago. There simply are better alternatives to mostly every VR application.

Also, I do think the "Killer app" for VR has already been found: education. The US Military, Airforce, and NASA has been using VR for decades for training for example, and will continue to use them. There are several startups working on adapting VR education to other high-end use cases like surgery and enterprise training as well. I think those will still be niche, but will probably make for a couple companies with longevity in the end.

There are some unexplored but interesting pieces to the VR puzzle that also haven't been either invented or put together yet: better hand tracking, better haptics, better eye tracking, better displays, and lighter headsets for example. Potentially some combination of these will result in a 'must have' application for VR. Who can say when this will happen though.

aronowb14··on Income and Poverty in the United States: 2019
Interesting... in 2018, 2017, and 2016 it only really increased by 1 or 2 percentage points.

https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2019/demo/p60-26...

https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2018/demo/p60-26...

https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2017/demo/p60-25...

aronowb14··on Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?
Never split the difference (Chris Voss): incredible book about dealing with people, after reading you end up seeing most interactions with other humans as negotiations with “black swans” hidden in your conversations.

Thinking Fast and Slow. (Recommended in other responses but I’d have to second this one. Incredible for reasoning about your own reasoning).

What the Buddha Taught: (Walpola Rahula): a short intro to Buddhism. There are some really powerful ideas from this age old religion, that can definitely help you think about your own happiness and what material possessions actually give you.

The Innovators Dilemma: a must read for startup founders, I think it’s the best model for thinking about technology and why startups and adoption often fails.

Atlas shrugged (Ayn Rand): completely transformative book for looking at our world, America particularly. Th perspective it gives you may not be in the best, or most human way, but I’ve found no other book that forces you to empathize with capitalism like this one.

aronowb14··on Nototo – Build a unified mental map of notes
I agree, I always thought in theory it could be possible to mix memory palaces with VR.

Someone did a research study on it here if you're interested.

https://obj.umiacs.umd.edu/virtual_reality_study/10.1007-s10...

aronowb14··on The more you learn, the faster you can learn
Interesting post! It's almost exactly what I've found that has worked well for me. Putting in the three or four hours at the beginning of the process of learning something to find the best resources is essential.

That being said, I do think the importance of mastering one or two things should not be overstated, and was kind of ignored in your post. Let me elaborate: for me my deepest skill has been 3D modeling and rendering: it's been about six years of pretty consistent practice, doing motion graphics, general modeling, animation, color theory, and really just trying to absorb all the knowledge I can about this specific passion. This process has been super useful for a couple reasons, and kind of worked to snap me out of the "generalist" learning mindset. For example, I've found the learning curve over time for 3D modeling is pretty generalizable to other skills I learn: because I've sunk so much time into it, and have had to push through plateaus, and grind over hills, and realize when I'm just coasting, whenever I am learning other things, I recognize the emotion swing and know roughly where in the learning process I am. Similarly, the fluency I have with my 3D modeling tools (pretty much all the hotkeys burned into muscle memory) gives me something to strive for when learning other tools and skills. I know what fluency feels like now, and I know when I'm lacking in it.

For me though, the most important thing about pursuing mastery of one or two things instead of full generalization, is that it teaches you patience. Genuine patience. Something I feel is becoming a lost art in our modern time. Seeing how far you've come after six years of working at something, and then looking at your inspirations and seeing how far you still have to go, is a feeling that can either break you, and make you give up, (if you are impatient), or can help you, as you have the choice to just keep grinding away and choosing to be patient. 3D modeling and animation is a ten year (minimum) goal for me, and it's served as a wonderful learning experience for me in many, unforseeable ways.

To tie it back to your post, I take this "ten years" mentality to almost everything I choose to learn nowadays: I try to stay away from the fancy new frameworks and toys, and try to learn fundamental things that I can spend ten years learning and still have space to grow.

aronowb14··on The Little Printf
:,)
aronowb14··on Ask HN: How can I become a self-taught software engineer?
Do fun projects! After my freshman year of college I switched from biology to self-taught programming, and I tried to find projects that were the intersection of those two interests. Genetic algorithms, neural nets, and Boids took me a couple weeks to implement each, but the internet is full of good tutorials and the end results are quite nice to look at. Anyway, yeah after self-teaching for two years, I realized there's a level of competence that I probably wouldn't reach if not for school, so I transferred to UC Berkeley to get a degree.

Best of luck! It will be hard, but if you program every day for a couple months you will absolutely be on your way to becoming an engineer!

Genetic algs: https://blog.sicara.com/getting-started-genetic-algorithms-p...

Boids: https://processing.org/examples/flocking.html

Neural nets and deep learning: http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com/chap1.html

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