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krrishd

1,650 karma · joined July 19, 2013

i'm krish: @krrishd

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/krrishd; my proof: https://keybase.io/krrishd/sigs/BnqnMzUAaGiBIIVEeDyIZ5uOhuk366T_rEsL0tjp4ac ]

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krrishd··on Ask HN: What App or Service Do You Use for Journaling and Note Taking?
Posted this here a few times in response to this q: I use an app that I made myself (http://write.itskrish.co), its defining features being:

1. you choose a fixed duration of time within which to journal (i choose 15 minutes even though it is initially tough to spend all of)

2. if you stop typing for more than a few seconds within the duration, you lose your writing

These constraints basically force me to dump anything and everything on my mind for the sake of continuous typing (to not lose what i've written), and I've been successfully doing it at least 1-2 times a week for a few years now. All your entries are also saved locally in-browser only, with the option to export a savefile. Source code: https://github.com/krrishd/write

krrishd··on Ask HN: Show Us Your Personal Website/Blog?
Been a while since I’ve updated it, but http://itskrish.co

I promise I was on the minimalist monospace emoji design wave a few months before it really took off :)

krrishd··on A growing body of evidence links Parkinson‘s to the gastrointestinal tract
Interesting seeing this here, my grandfather with Parkinson's recently had an abscess near his stomach area burst, and for some reason the severity of his Parkinsons symptoms declined soon after.
krrishd··on Talent Is Everywhere, Opportunity Is Not
I'm pro-"economic arguments", but if you're a victim of being undervalued, especially for some immutable part of your identity (such as race), I can see how it'd be enraging that the primary defense of you relies on your economic value to an employer rather than a more innate sense of worth.

Of course, it's ineffective and self-sabotaging to try to avoid the economic side (mainly because the issues /are/ significantly economic, in addition to cultural), but I think at least sympathy is warranted for the social justice community's view on it.

krrishd··on Ask HN: How do you handle your mental lows?
I don't know if it's normal, but I experience pretty much the same cycle (and have for the past 5-6 years) -- for me, what's helped is:

- being able to anticipate it

- using that time period to do more introspective stuff like journalling (instead of trying to be as productive as I usually am)

- trying to get outside/working out

- and sometimes drinking tea for the l-theanine + caffeine boost (which tends to snap me out of it for a duration of time)

krrishd··on Ask HN: What is the best online course you've ever taken?
the Startup Engineering MOOC on Coursera taught by Balaji Srinivasan (CTO of Coinbase now, Stanford prof back then) was extremely valuable to go through, both from a technical and non-technical standpoint. It was kinda like the "How To Start A Startup" course going on right now except slightly more preparatory for the technical challenges involved

course page: http://online.stanford.edu/course/startup-engineering and http://startup.stanford.edu/

course videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL58C6Q25sEEFVyISrZc80....

krrishd··on Ask HN: Favorite HN quotes?
incidentally i kept track of two in my personal note of quotes that stuck with me:

“Those ideas are also based in my anecdotal experience, and perhaps it comes from a willingness to question some "fundamental axioms from scratch", but at the same time maybe that's a) not always a bad thing to do from time to time, and b) if your fundamental axioms are good there is no reason that you won't come back to them.” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17296020

“Augmenting human intelligence, while leaving the hearts as they are, is a loss, not a gain.” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17196155

krrishd··on Ask HN: Software eng, but not a web dev. Learn new frameworks to build MVP?
It's been a while since I've taken a look at the landscape, but Telescope is a tool that's built explicitly (or at least used to be explicitly) for building Reddit/HN style communities (http://www.telescopeapp.org/).

In addition to their actual software, looks like they have a nice little guide about actually building thriving communities on their tech: http://www.communitybuildingguide.com/

krrishd··on YC Startup School 2018: a free, 10-week, online course
I didn't take it as a true 'course' last year but incidentally watched a lot of the lectures -- heard some really genuinely novel perspectives that aren't as self-evident as a lot of startup education ~seems~ nowadays, so i'm excited to see how the course has evolved!
krrishd··on Ask HN: What are your heuristics for deciding which HN links to click on?
i think i used to have some inherent heuristics around avoiding content that i assumed would be a little too technical etc, but at some point i kinda dropped all preconceptions and decided to click on random stuff and exit within ~30 seconds if it seemed boring -- i think it's exposed me to a lot of content that has actually been super interesting that i'd otherwise have avoided for fear of not understanding much.
krrishd··on Ask HN: What is your obscure personal blog or website?
here's mine: http://itskrish.co/

my 'blog' is the writing tab (on mobile you just scroll down), i'd like to think the few things i've written about are decently novel/unusual :)

krrishd··on The Universe Is Not a Simulation, but We Can Now Simulate It
this is highly naive of me to ask, but "in theory" if we could simulate the universe, would familiar stuff like living organisms/'societies'/'humans' potentially just emerge within such simulations?

just super cool to think about even if not the case/unrealistic.

krrishd··on Ask HN: Have you built a personal chatbot for yourself? What does it do?
a few friends and i have been sporadically building a slackbot (primarily as a humor thing rn) called sous-chef (https://github.com/hackNY-labs-2018/sous-chef), with the objective of making it eventually programmable without code.

right now, that means pretty basic stuff:

- you can teach it to respond/react to certain triggers

"@sous-chef if i say xyz you say abc"

- you can teach it to fetch data via GET from any API endpoint you specify, so like

"@sous-chef if i ask what's the price of BTC you get https://api.coinbase.com/v2/exchange-rates?currency=BTC more specifically data.rates.USD"

obviously pretty limited functionality, but i think as we expand its fetching abilities -- more than just GET, maybe not limited to JSON, maybe uses some API/library to summarize content, maybe reads in query parameters from your command, etc -- it could open up all kinds of possible functionality depending on how creative the bot's (not necessarily technical) users are :)

i guess to elaborate on the broadest/most optimistic possiblity for it, i think if we made it intuitive/natural-language-driven to teach it valuable tasks that can be programmatically represented (essentially programming it but with natural language) i think it could be a novel thing.

or it might just remain a joke bot for our group :)

krrishd··on Ask HN: What is your note-keeping platform/method of choice in 2018?
the Notes app native to Apple devices -- given that pretty much all my main devices (phone, laptop) are iCloud-integrated, the Notes app is just convenient, synchronized, and simplistic enough that the barrier-to-creation is very very low.
krrishd··on A proposal to improve Twitter and perhaps the world
I definitely think something like that would have potential for virality; something where maybe in order to add someone, you have to be in physical proximity with them when adding.

I could totally see that becoming kinda gamified, the objective being to collect as many of your friends' on it (by actually physically meeting them) as possible (like Pokemon Go, lol)

krrishd··on Ask HN: What has HN given you?
I joined in high school, and several things came out of it:

- I commented with feedback on a random product posted here several years ago, and got an internship from them out of it

- I met a few other high schoolers with similar interests, and was added to a group called 'HS Hackers' that spawned the subsequent 'Hackathon Hackers' group, from which I was referred to some defining internships, met a co-founder, and met some of the more valuable people I know

krrishd··on Why Were Early Psychedelicists so Weird?
To be fair, the post does start with

> [Epistemic status: very speculative, asserted with only ~30% confidence. On the other hand, even though psychiatrists don’t really talk about this it’s possible other groups know this all already]

krrishd··on Ask HN: How do you manage all your interests, hopes, dreams?
There's a few broad interests/hopes/dreams that I tend to juggle, as is the case for most people.

I also have this note in my phone called "pipe dreams", in which, whenever I fantasize or think about something that's plausible while simultaneously kinda crazy/life-changing, I write it down. I occasionally visit it when I'm feeling uninspired or bored, and this usually results in me working on something that incrementally reaches towards one of those "pipe dreams".

krrishd··on Ask HN: What's your journaling setup?
I use an app that I made myself (http://write.itskrish.co), its defining features being:

1. you choose a fixed duration of time within which to journal (i choose 15 minutes even though it is initially tough to spend all of)

2. if you stop typing for more than a few seconds within the duration, you lose your writing

These constraints basically force me to dump anything and everything on my mind for the sake of continuous typing, and I've been successfully doing it at least 1-2 times a week for more than a year.

krrishd··on A Dark Room: From Sabbatical Year to $800k
> Is it really that difficult to work on side projects on your nights/weekends while working at these places?

I only have internship experience to speak of, but I've noticed that when I'm writing code from 9-5 -- even though I thoroughly enjoy programming and creating stuff with it -- I end up uninterested in doing more of that in the free time I have left. I think it's a psychological thing more than a time thing.

krrishd··on Damned with Praise: The Meaning of Kendrick Lamar
All good additions, totally agree. So much solid work to choose from.
krrishd··on Damned with Praise: The Meaning of Kendrick Lamar
Super excited to see something hip-hop related at the top of HN, especially Kendrick.

For anyone looking to understand why he's likely one of the best lyricists/storytellers of our time, here's some recommended songs from him:

* Sing About Me, I'm Dying Of Thirst

* Momma

* Wesley's Theory

I'd recommend checking out his projects as a whole (Section.80, Good Kid m.a.a.d City, To Pimp a Butterfly), but those songs distill a lot of what's best in him.

krrishd··on Why I don't support Net Neutrality
Came here to say this, especially in the context of his Portugal argument -- sure, consumers in that context can pay less and have restricted access to a select few services.

But that's the exact anti-competitive problem -- it's effectively incentivizing non-usage of new services that'd effectively compete with the packaged ones if given a level playing field to do so. If I buy the Netflix package because all I use the Internet for is streaming movies/films, a startup that'd somehow give me that utility in a better way wouldn't be worth switching to the full/unlimited package for.

krrishd··on We Can’t Trust Facebook to Regulate Itself
Not necessarily related to the problems discussed by the article, but I could definitely see a logical split in terms of the non-Facebook.com platforms that Facebook has acquired (Instagram, Whatsapp, etc).

Facebook being able to eat up any and every new form of social media is worrisome in its own right. This recent article in particular discusses some pretty solid points: https://stratechery.com/2017/why-facebook-shouldnt-be-allowe...

krrishd··on We Can’t Trust Facebook to Regulate Itself
What are those reasons? Genuinely curious what you disagree with.
krrishd··on What, exactly, do philosophers do?
Not sure why you're being downvoted, I'd like to see an answer to this as well.

I'd suspect that they've provided quite a few important answers but I'm curious how much power/influence these ideas had in their times.

krrishd··on Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (August 2017)
SEEKING WORK - Remote or Boulder, CO

I'm a developer + designer who's been building products for the web for ~5 years now -- I'm interested in work ranging from:

• building your next landing page ($500 - $1000)

• interactive prototype ($1500)

• a full-fledged MVP ($5000) for your next web product

---

I <3 JavaScript (ES6+, TypeScript), React, CSS (Sass/SCSS), Node, among other tech; I use whatever gets the job done, well. My resume is at http://itskrish.co/r.pdf

Past experiences include building production-ready front-end software for SendGrid's Marketing Campaigns product, real-estate software for a multi-million dollar revenue startup in Philly, starting an equity crowdfunding platform (funded by RDV, Top 2016 College Startup by Inc.com, etc).

---

I work flat-rate (split up into milestones) as opposed to hourly.

I'm also currently a student; for that reason, I'm fine offering heavily discounted services for my level of experience.

---

Contact me! krdh0184@colorado.edu // http://itskrish.co // http://git.io/krish // https://linkedin.com/in/krishdholakiya

krrishd··on The Acceleration of Addictiveness (2010)
I think engagement is better off being a byproduct of value/utility, as opposed to the first-order driver of product decisions (even if that runs contrary to the $$$ in the short-term)
krrishd··on The Acceleration of Addictiveness (2010)
Fair, and (while I'm not wholly educated on the subject) there still is a lot more regulation and consumer attention to those things now.

Of course, that may not have been the case a few decades ago, but I think there's a lot to be learned from there.

krrishd··on The Acceleration of Addictiveness (2010)
Given that a significant chunk of design/product nowadays is centered around 'engagement', the inevitability of this can't be understated.

Imagine if our medication, food, etc were designed around engagement. We already have a term for that, and it's addiction.

I don't understand why we guard our physical intake from 'addiction', but don't show anywhere as much concern re: our cognitive intake despite our mind not mattering any less than our body.

I know the practical solution here is being a more conscientious user, but I feel like there's ethical culpability on our profession.

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