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rahulgoelon Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

If you like music and technology - there's a massive world of possibilities out there (e.g., software based music production, tone.js, music programming with Strudel).

If you have more money - 1) DJing/mixing on vinyl + record digging, 2) Modular synthesis (your wallet will hate you your soul will love you)

rahulgoelon Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

+1 on this - powerlifting is great due to 1) Rapid, specific initial progress, 2) Highly structured programming (e.g., RPE based), 3) Focus on strength vs. aesthetics is a great way to be more holistic about health & performance, 4) Forcing function on all downstream decisions (diet, sleep, alcohol). Adding +15 lbs on your deadlift can become strong motivation to drive discipline, 5) Drives the importance of recovery/rest on long term progress

rahulgoelon H-1B Visa Changes Approved by White House

Welcome change. I studied engineering at a U.S. university, came here 10 years ago, and still did not make it through the lottery (while the ones gaming the system did).

rahulgoelon Launch HN: Vocera (YC F24) – Testing and Observability for Voice AI

Congrats on the launch. For a sec, I thought this was related to the healthcare comms firm owned by Stryker.

https://www.stryker.com/us/en/portfolios/medical-surgical-eq...

rahulgoelon Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?

I made a website that helps me search for specific techno tracks across DJ sets.

It helps me find DJs I vibe with the most

rahulgoelon Ask HN: How to learn business being a software engineer?

Some thoughts as a strategy professional for a large tech co:

- Financial : DCFs, multiples, statements, esp what drives value of firms (Resource: Aswath Damodaran)

- Strategy: how firms create value (Resources: YC Startup School lectures esp Peter Theil’ lec on YouTube)

- Ops: YC lecture on metrics investors want (CAC, LTV, diff biz models like aaS, etc)

- most important would be to check out your co’s pitch decks, SEC filings (if public) to understand the core strategy, value prop, financial performance and most critical hypotheses

rahulgoelon Meta Earning Results Q3 2022 [pdf]

Yep, seems to be driven by 9.3B in purchases of property, plant and equipment in Q3 22 (up +116% from 4.3B in Q3 21). I think it's due to "investments in data centers, servers, and network infrastructure. An increase in AI capacity is driving substantially all of our capital expenditure growth in 2023."

rahulgoelon Queueing Theory

Surprisingly applicable to modern problems, such as queuing within computer systems. I studied this for my industrial engineering degree and thought it was extremely elegant.

rahulgoelon Ask HN: What are the best tools for web scraping in 2022?

If no javascript automation - python's asyncio, regex and aiohttp can scale really fast for simple tasks.

rahulgoelon Ask HN: Meal Planning App?

I'm a powerlifter, so I create a "macros outline" - x oz of rice, y oz of chicken breast, z grams of fiber to hit my nutrition and then fill it in with mood/cuisine.

There's a reason why there isn't a successful app out there, since this is 1) highly personalized and 2) very tedious (manually inputting ingredients, etc).

rahulgoelon Ask HN: Share your personal site

http://tinyurl.com/rahulgoel

I'm not a programmer (actually a business strategist) - but I tend to have lot of fun coding and designing things.

I primarily use to it share things with friends - like music across different soundcloud profiles, bandcamp releases, apps etc.

rahulgoelon Peter Thiel to step down from Meta’s board

- DAUs decreased -0.05% from 1,930m in Q3 22 to 1,929m in Q4 22. ("sequentially") - DAUs increased +4.5% from 1,845m in Q4 21 to 1,929m in Q4 22. ("year over year") - See pp18: https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2021/q4...

DAUs are those using FB app only. Metric for those using all apps (Insta, Whatsapp, etc) increased.

Btw - there are ~4.66B internet users - and FB has 77% of those log into one of their apps a month (MAPs = 3.59b, pp11).

rahulgoelon Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

Stripe's messaging seems focused on infra for the "internet".

I think Swipe is more niche ie: focused on Indian SMBs who may have a very different workflow. Swipe is focusing on WhatsApp powered payments. (See: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/swipe-2).

Though, you'd think they would compete for the same customers over time.

rahulgoelon Hellofresh employees' open salary initiative

I think as a principle, symmetric information is quite important for good functioning of a market.

rahulgoelon China and India will have to ‘justify’ watered down coal pledge–Cop26 president

Indian politicians who don’t deliver basic, essential energy will be voted out.