News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

le-hu

Re:We've made the world too complicated on Monday May 18, 2026 @10:23AM (#48180343)
You've pretty much written about https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ not knowing it
Re:Ask HN: Does anyone understand how Hacker News works? on Monday December 22, 2025 @12:50PM (#46356549)
HN is a forum, what is there to understand?
Re:Ask HN: What open source projects are you grateful for? on Saturday December 06, 2025 @10:15PM (#46178843)
Ruby :) on Rails
Re:Ask HN: Where to find domain experts for 1:1 tutoring? on Sunday September 08, 2024 @12:04PM (#41481188)
check growthmentor.com
complete summary here - great stuff: https://www.chrisbehan.ca/posts/atomic-habits
I've read it years ago - easily the best blog post ever created. Thanks for spreading the light.
Re:Ask HN: How many of you are self employed? on Saturday February 10, 2024 @04:42AM (#39324893)
the answer is - polish government is trash
Re:Ask HN: What have you built with LLMs? on Saturday February 10, 2024 @04:07AM (#39324724)
great stuff, for general news-synthesis I use https://www.newsminimalist.com/ definately check it out!
Re:Ask HN: Has anyone started over outside of tech? on Saturday March 11, 2023 @01:30PM (#35111103)
is your foreword @ Eloquent Ruby book?
Re:Ask HN: Best Layman's Book on Electricity on Friday January 27, 2023 @08:25PM (#34554123)
I'd separate electricity topic which has more to do with energy generation / distrubution / usage from electronics which is a specialized niche in the field of electrical engineery.
Re:Tell HN: Beware 'Ungrowth' in Your Job on Monday October 31, 2022 @01:28PM (#33409340)
well why dont you just quit? I would quit after two weeks of such drama, all of my friends would do the same.
Re:Ask HN: What are some of the best documentaries you've seen? on Friday September 16, 2022 @09:37AM (#32865890)
Samsara and Baraka are both great!
oh my god
honestly many are, they are just producing their electricity on-site using other fuels :) u can't realy store enough energy in a battery to cruise the atlantic.

EDIT - think of nuclear submarine as a swimming nuclear power plant

in Poland something like 90% of IT offers have transparent salary ranges - if someone hides that, he's already suspicious. There's also a community-wide agreement that those offers should be avoided.
What really got me into strength training was accidental read of

Overcoming Gravity: A Systematic Approach to Gymnastics and Bodyweight Strength

This book turned out to be infinite knowledge source about physical training and how our body works in general. At first I wasn't convinced as the author looks more like a computer geek than ultra strong gymnast - but once you read it, you get to understand what strength really is, and why size of your muscles do not convey how strong you are.

Re:Show HN: HN Avatars in 357 bytes on Monday March 21, 2022 @07:22PM (#30761004)
:D
Re:Ask HN: How can I prepare for hard economic times? on Monday March 21, 2022 @07:13PM (#30760949)
what if i live in Poland and 11% inflation eats more of my cash than i can accumulate each year? Interest rates are at sky high 3% after 2nd raise this year. Goverment knows that and just wants to ruin people economically.
Re:Ask HN: What concepts have you never truly understood? on Friday March 11, 2022 @09:18AM (#30640178)
your nickname says otherwise :>
Re:Ask HN: What concepts have you never truly understood? on Friday March 11, 2022 @09:03AM (#30640001)
yea they just "warm the glass" giving it their energy, thus slowing down and eventually condensating because they've lost so much energy (cold stuff absorbs heat from the warm stuff)

on the contrary if you boil the water like madman you're giving water molecules so much energy it flies away as steam :)

Re:Ask HN: What concepts have you never truly understood? on Friday March 11, 2022 @08:55AM (#30639912)
What if you hold the magnet that holds something? ;d

I think we should talk force/work/energy/material structure.

Force is just force, how hard you push something. Work is force times distance you moved that thing - moving something 10 meters is twice as much work as moving it 5 meters. Energy is the abstract term that is basically Work, but normalized so we can define energy of any action (not only pushing something but like heating this, or spinning that). Power is energy output per second. (not relevant here)

Person holding 1kg first uses energy to pick this up, then unfortunatelly because we're squishy uses energy to stabilise muscles (chemical energy) holding it against gravity.

Magned uses electric field energy (either static or dynamic cos there's two types of magnets) to pick up something - but once grabs it, it's no longer using energy (there's no movement) - things get 'frozen in time' and that thing magnet is holding just becomes part of the magnet. If you separate them - the thing "gives back" the energy to the magnet (you supply the energy by using force to separate them).

Now the thing that hold the magnet holds both - as long as it's not squishy human but for example the metal bar - it does not use energy to hold stuff (thanks to internal metal structure that's stiff enough to not move under magnet's weight, of course there's a border value of weight a metal bar can withstand without collapsing)

Think of a lamp post holding a lamp above a road - the post does the holding for 0 energy but someone had to use the energy to install the bulb up there. Person holding the same lamp would use energy because we're not stiff as metal.

Re:Ask HN: What concepts have you never truly understood? on Friday March 11, 2022 @08:28AM (#30639588)
If someone buys your bond for 10 mil of X currency, you have to pay them back 11mil in couple years, if you devalue the currency in the meantime you just pay them back worthless papers while they've invested real money into you back in the day. Also US dollar is like global currency (everybody country trades in that) - so like 70% of dollars are outside of US. While US prints 100 bucks, 30% of devaluation hits US, 70% hits the world - that's why the world is pissed at US FED printing money like crazy.
Re:Ask HN: What concepts have you never truly understood? on Friday March 11, 2022 @08:23AM (#30639505)
Because you are right - convection is just a special case of conduction

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/497923/is-convec...

Re:Ask HN: What Books Do You Recommend Reading for 2022? on Sunday February 20, 2022 @02:58AM (#30404057)
you'll be fine with this summary -> https://www.chrisbehan.ca/posts/atomic-habits
No one mentions Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari? I liked it very much. I know it can be biased but really makes you understand how humans operate.
Re:Ask HN: Is Ruby on rails worth it to learn in 2022? on Thursday January 27, 2022 @07:08PM (#30108931)
I second that, RoR is worth it. Speaking of resources - https://www.railstutorial.org/ Michael Hartl's tutorial is still one of the best ones, although it's rails 6 not the freshest 7.
Re:Ask HN: What are some must read books? on Friday December 17, 2021 @10:22AM (#29593357)
There's only one - Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari - it basically explains the whole world we live in, I've become like 10x human after reading it.
Re:Ask HN: Will Ruby Get a Comeback? on Friday November 05, 2021 @02:06PM (#29122755)
I read this thread and can't believe it. I'm a RoR Dev in a medium sized software house, we are hiring, everyone on the market is hiring, and bunch of new Ruby people are joining the scene each month (either via internships or moving from PHP or something)

From my perspective Ruby + Rails is really booming. Most of our clients (startups) want to use RoR due to it's development speed.

Also salaries are higher than ever.

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