11 ms·

Ask HN: What is the most exciting thing you have learnt this year till now?

47 points by curious16 3y ago

Maybe it is a life hack, a new topic, a new recipe, etc. Whatever YOU think is exciting to you.

solarmist 3y ago
* How to feel my emotions and not suppress them or push them away. And why that matters in everyday life. * The power of letting go of perceived control or outcomes and just focusing on what I can do now in the moment. * How to be open and vulnerable and why it matters for building relationships.
- _ink_ 3y ago
  Wow, how did you do that? Any advice?
  - solarmist 3y ago
    Not really advice, but I can share what I went through. It started happening on its own once I found a way to feel safe and secure. I grew up never having felt completely safe even at home because my father was alcoholic so I had a chaotic home life. And I learned that I always needed to be on guard even at home or in my room. So quitting my job and letting my wife totally support us for a 6 months while I reassessed my life and let go of being the “breadwinner”/man of the house was key. But hard. I made SV money and she makes $18/hr. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And the scariest. But Berne Brown was a powerful voice to help me choose a direction and learning how to connect with others. Just feeling empathy for others isn’t enough. People will be suspicious or think you’re fake if you don’t reciprocate openness/vulnerability.
- itsmemattchung 3y ago
  > * How to feel my emotions and not suppress them or push them away. And why that matters in everyday life. Yes!! This is huge. Feeling emotions is so critical and a fundamental skill learned in dialectical behavior therapy (DBT). And if I can add to that, NAMING the emotion itself levels one up too. As you mentioned, somatically feeling (e.g. "my heart is racing faster than it normally does", "I am starting to sweat", "my throat is constricting") goes a long way and if you can accurately identify the emotion (e.g. fear, anxiety, anger) then you are on the path to mastering emotional regulation.
  - solarmist 3y ago
    Yup! Berne Brown’s Atlas of the Heart is great for this because it's a big list of emotions with detailed explanations of each.
Taikonerd 3y ago
OK, my "most exciting thing" is pretty boring, which says something about me ;-) But I discovered how easy it is to make oven fries: [0] Easy, customizable, and healthier than regular French fries. I love them! [0]: https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/oven-fries/ https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/oven-fries/
- kunwon1 3y ago
  On that same theme, I've learned the basics of bread making recently, and it's been exciting to me to realize how easily I can make bread that's far better than anything at the grocery store. When I realized that I could 'win' by just using flour, water, and salt, it felt like I had unlocked one of life's cheat codes.
  - Gasp0de 3y ago
    Wait until you come to Germany and buy a bread at a bakery ;)
    - solarmist 3y ago
      This annoys me to no end! There _IS_ good bread in the US too. You just need to ignore the bread aisle of supermarkets!
      - adamredwoods 3y ago
        In the US, good bread must be actively sought out. It is not available everywhere.
        solarmist 3y ago
        Fair
        HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
        > buy a bread at a bakery ;) Pretty sure every bakery I've been to in the US has had good bread.
tracerbulletx 3y ago
I started searching for pasta recipes in Italian and it worked fantastically, feels like learning the things that will become a trend in english youtube videos 3 years from now. I feel like I've learned so many useful techniques and ideas that I can just improvise really really high quality pastas whenever I want now. It's fantastic.
- ScarZy 3y ago
  Share some of said recipes, you smug dog! I always want to up my pasta game. I'm still arguing with my extending family about the amount of salt in the pasta water... baby steps
  - _nalply 3y ago
    Camping pasta: Have Swiss egg helix pasta, exactly the right amount of water, some bouillon powder, triple concentrated tomato paste, pepper and a dash of cream. Cook till soaked up (takes 10 minutes). Serve with slices of gruyère. (This is sacrilegous but done right it tastes very good and is simple to cook, you need only one pot and it is done quickly even on camping gas.)
    - ScarZy 3y ago
      I bought a 400g can of triple concentrate thinking it was chopped tomatoes (I'm in Greece, I do not speak Greek). It is fate. Gruyère sounds good, thanks for sharing!
menshiki 3y ago
Not an achievement at all considering we are on HN, but earlier this year I made my first website. It’s just a little personal site that’s hosted on GitHub pages. It’s a skill I’ll definitely utilize again in the future so I’m quite happy about it :).
- OliveMate 3y ago
  I'm in the same boat, at its heart it's very simple HTML and CSS, but I've never done anything like it before and figuring it all out has been surprisingly fun! If it happens to be a blog, the other month there was a post here asking users to share their blogs[1], and shortly after someone popped up with a blog roll[2] you can submit it to! [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36575081 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36575081 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36605493 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36605493
- valbaca 3y ago
  Comparison is the thief of joy. You absolutely hit an achievement. Congratulations!
Exuma 3y ago
Trivial things: The busy beaver fast growing function, and how turning machines represent "all things computable". Somehow this was an epiphany I never realized... I always thought "x can be represented on a turing machine", and this itself always seemed like "so what." All it really means to me is you can play doom in your _random thing_ thats turing complete. Once I learned about the busy beaver function however, and n state turing machines, I had a massive epiphany that ive been thinking about it backwards. Whats better is to think that some N-State turing machine can represent EVERY POSSIBLE THING THAT CAN BE COMPUTED (!!!). And its like starting at the top of a very large infinitely tall pyramid, with an N(1) state turing machine and all its permutations of computation, and then N(2) and onwards. In this case, all the answers of the universe (or at least within the computational realm) exist within some N state turing machine in this pyramid. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmAc1nDizu0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmAc1nDizu0 Work things: typescript, nuxt 3, and converting my ENTIRE 10+ year vim config to fancy Neovim with full LSP support.
fredgrott 3y ago
That stacking stimulants is the wrong approach...instead stack weak stimulants along with herb MAO inhibitors to optimize output. My bias is that I have ADHD with anxiety mixed in. Best way to describe is that if one takes Adderall one gets a push pull effect where you are in focus robot mode whereas with this approach its a focus mode with whole environment awareness without the uncomfortable push pull effects.
- Gasp0de 3y ago
  I also believe I may have some form of ADHD, and I find this self-optimization idea where people start taking drugs to optimize their productivity a bit dangerous. Keep in mind that productivity for your job isn't everything that makes you yourself. I know quite a few people who took ADHD medication and became super good at their job at the cost of everything fun including their personal life. Sometimes it might also be OK to tell yourself "It's okay I am not as productive as person XYZ, it's not because I am lazy but because I have ADHD".
  - SteveNuts 3y ago
    It's not just your job though, it creeps into everything you do and it affects you more than people without it realize. Even if you want to get something done (house project, cleaning, making appointments) it's very difficult to complete these tasks due to the distractions you meet along the way. It's like if you had a spotify playlist of 400 songs you really want to listen to, but by the time you hear the first 5 seconds of the intro, the song skips to the next one, ad nauseam, all day long, every day of your life.
  - rubicon33 3y ago
    As someone who has resisted medication his entire life, I totally understand your sentiment. Medication definitely isn't for everyone and it comes with its own costs. That said, I have decided more and more in my adult life that I am not going to struggle needlessly. If doing so only affected me, fine. But when I have a shitty day(s) at work because I didn't get anything done, my wife gets to hear about it. My family gets to experience me being less jolly. Etc. My focus these days is on being the best person not only to myself but to those around me. That means if I need to take some stupid pill to enable robot-mode then that's what I need to do. I've tried the "don't let your work output be your identity" approach. That ship sailed in elementary school man. Success & output are weaved into your psyche from a very young age. To truly divorce myself from that burden I would need to completely change my life and go live in a commune somewhere. Not realistic. And for the record, I actually really don't like the feeling of being on medication. It turns me into a robot with slow reaction time. Great for reading a book or focussing on some boring work... But horrible for the things I love in life which are all fast-paced sports and video games. If I can avoid medication, I absolutely will.
maxk42 3y ago
I learned to lose weight by eating more fat.
mabbo 3y ago
That I can survive being laid off. That emotionally, it won't crush me to find out my company decided I was in the 20% that wasn't needed anymore. That financially, my family can get by if I spend 11 weeks unemployed. That I can accept a job that pays significantly less than I used to make. I really did think that the entire experience was going to leave me the empty shell of my former self, that the mental toll would leave me severely depressed, and that my world would be shattered. None of that happened. I had a great summer. My exciting discovery is that I no longer define myself purely in terms of my career.
- RiOuseR 3y ago
  > I no longer define myself purely in terms of my career. I've been struggling with this. Any tips?
  - sneed_chucker 3y ago
    Hobbies, relationships, religion. Jobs can effectively squeeze your time and energy such that the above are hard to come by, making career self-definement a default path for many people.
- the_only_law 3y ago
  I had the opposite experience. I thought I would easily survive a layoff, but now it looks not so likely.
  - gabereiser 3y ago
    Numbers game, go submit 100 applications, get 25 interviews, get 3 offers. Go.
    - the_only_law 3y ago
      Yeah it’s a little too late for that. My lease is up at the end of the month, my savings have been battered from attrition and emergency expenses and the rental market is ridiculous here (not that that matters without income anyway). I submitted plenty of applications, got few interviews, got passed up for most of the roles. I no longer have time to wait on onerous bureaucracies. Hell I was hoping for an offer this week, but both myself and the recruiter are at a loss as to what the company decided. I got another email the other day informing me that some job I applied to months ago was just straight up canceled. The real problem was I didn’t quite understand how things had changed and was desperate to avoid moving. I should have just taken an on site role and moved a long time ago.
jlarocco 3y ago
How to ride a motorcycle.
ativzzz 3y ago
I'm a new parent this year and I was not mentally prepared for it (lol is anyone?) For a few months, I regretted my decision to have kids almost constantly. It gnawed on me. Then I stumbled upon the regretfulparents subreddit. Seeing the posts was pitiful. I saw how destructive it is to our psyches to carry around regret and let it wear us down. I cringed seeing the posts, mostly because I felt the same way they did, and man it does not look pretty. I do not want to be like the people on that subreddit. It almost disgusted me I remember when I was younger I always said I don't regret anything I do. I seem to have forgotten that mantra, so I picked it back up I no longer regret being a parent. I still don't enjoy it the majority of the time. But it is what it is. There's no point of drowning myself in my own mental garbage when life is trying to drown me already. So what I (re)learned is not to live with regret, and sometimes shared suffering can remind me that it's really not that bad and I don't need to force suffering on myself for no reason
- adamredwoods 3y ago
  The first 6 months are incredibly difficult, as there's nothing to do but cry and feed. It will never be perfect, but it gets better.
  - doubled112 3y ago
    > It gets better One perspective that helped me was "little people, little problems". In few years they might be drinking your booze and stealing your car. Mine are five and eight now. There's still rarely 15 minutes. Somebody's hungry, somebody's hitting somebody, somebody's having another meltdown. On occasion though, they get interested in whatever I'm doing though, so that's nice.
  - ativzzz 3y ago
    > but it gets better Parents say this, but looking at their lives and talking to them, it doesn't. I think you just get used to it, or develop a sort of stockholm syndrome. Maybe you sleep a little better so it's easier to mentally cope with it
    - 3y ago
doublerabbit 3y ago
To activate the sauna steam button in my local swimming pool, you actually have to pour water over it. It's not a push button like I thought.
ScarZy 3y ago
Learned how far I can push myself physically and mentally in my first Ultra Cycling event (2400km). Not sure I'll do another one, but it was a good experience and at at an age where performance will start decreasing from here. I need to do a write-up.
- qup 3y ago
  > at an age where performance will start decreasing from here Challenge that idea
SteveNuts 3y ago
That I in fact, DO have ADHD, and that's at least part of the reason I failed so miserably in high school, couldn't finish college, and struggle to finish tasks at work despite feeling highly motivated. Not only that, treatment is working for me.
- neontomo 3y ago
  I don't have much to add other than that I'm proud of you for realising this and finding a solution that works for you. Kudos
  - SteveNuts 3y ago
    Thanks! It feels like a huge weight lifted off my shoulders.
- alex_lav 3y ago
  How did you get a diagnosis? Everywhere in my area has a 6 month+ waiting period.
  - SteveNuts 3y ago
    That was basically my experience too, it was about 4 months from a GP referral to a psychiatrist evaluation then back to the GP to try out different medications. So far we’ve only tried Atomoxetine and Wellbutrin, want to avoid stimulants if possible.
- coderKen 3y ago
  I see this a lot, but I will go out on a limb to tell you ADHD is not the reason for your failures. You probably already know this, but it feels better to blame it on something you think is beyond your control.
PaulHoule 3y ago
How color management works.
matricaria 3y ago
I started using LaTeX, Vim and Emacs this year. Steep learning curve but so worth it, especially Vim. Thank you, Bram!
- xu3u32 3y ago
  why all three instead of getting really good at one?
elpocko 3y ago
I can run generative AI (text and images) on my measly laptop. It's not the fastest thing I've ever seen, but it's a lot of fun. Desperately hoping for a "Stable Diffusion for audio" that you can run locally in the near future.
anavette 3y ago
Likely trite, but: I learned that I'm continuously learning far more than I realize— but that if I don't log what I learn somehow (journal, notes, essays), I'm left with a far fainter sense of accumulation & a far weaker understanding overall. Practically, I learned how to fully clean stainless steel pans (boil vinegar after cooking; baking soda scrub if really filthy).
yla92 3y ago
I recently learned about the (Linux) sockets. Wrote two simple "echo client" and "echo server". Then monitored the traffic over Wireshark and witness the 3 way TCP handshake. Then make the server to use "selectors" and learned a bit more about the names I have been hearing for a while: 'select', 'poll', 'epoll'. This is when things start to "click" for me. Nothing astounding but these little things got me excited! PS: Too excited that I even made a presentation to share with people from work. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1LAdJ4iK-RJVxuIo61RLU6LQOxXluiQVa9pqUzbYW_Gc/edit#slide=id.p https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1LAdJ4iK-RJVxuIo61RLU...
Lyngbakr 3y ago
I can't say that I "learned Lisp" this year, but I took my first tentative steps in Lisp. It has been eye opening for sure and I'm excited to learn more.
- yayitswei 3y ago
  Congrats! You're in for a trip. It's not one big epiphany but lots of little ones.
neontomo 3y ago
That I'm a slow and careful thinker who needs peaceful days and a slow life. Little things like looking at the sky, drinking coffee, writing in my journal, taking analog photos, these bring me a sense of self and calmness that I need in order to process life properly, and I shouldn't try to be anything else in order to fit in.
- nicbou 3y ago
  How do you manage to create this sort of time?
  - neontomo 3y ago
    The honest answer is chance. I happen to be studying somewhere that gives me an extra-ordinary amount of freedom, and I'll be using it soon to visit Morocco (to do research and write). I also happen to be surrounded by a friend group that are deeply tied to the music industry, and because I'm an illustrator/designer/artist, I can help musicians in that field with album art, music video animations, printing and so on. It's mutually beneficial, but I didn't plan to meet the right people at the right time. The more "self-made" answer is that I'm ruthless about cutting people out of my life who make me feel bad in ways that can't be solved through communication or a good heart-to-heart. I have a feeling that this puts me into better situations sometimes, because people recognise integrity/self-respect and want to be a part of that. I also am a fanatic about spending at least 15 min every day in nature, which is where I drink my coffee. This is my morning routine, come rain or shine. Other things I do to help this lifestyle: - Wake up without alarm (unless I have a meeting) - If I'm at parties, grab fresh air occasionally - sometimes you'll get good company out there too, and you can recalibrate - Saying no to things that other people think are fun, but I don't - I don't read for hours on end - 30 min at a time is enough, then reflect - Wear clothes that don't feel modern and sophisticated, a vintage shirt can do a lot to your slow-life mentality - I've never worked with anything that requires me to work overtime or be on-call I think the point isn't to have hours and hours of unlimited time to think, but to take breaks in between activities, and carve out consistent 15-30 min slots for your brain to settle down again. Take as much stress out of your life as you can, without making that a stressful activity as well.
yitongovo 3y ago
Make some food with my tiny oven. Before this year, I just only use the tiny oven to heat frzen food. But now I realize cured meat with common seasoning are very easy and it taste good.
yayitswei 3y ago
I discovered Electric Clojure and built a few toy apps with it. Turns out unifying frontend and backend code simplifies web app development greatly! Exciting to me because it drastically lowers my activation energy for building new projects.
hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
fzf! I even wrote a whole tutorial on it :) https://andrew-quinn.me/fzf/ https://andrew-quinn.me/fzf/ Excitement for me is measured on a scale of how fast I go from "wtf is this" to "omg think of the possibilities" and given that I was working as a very shell-heavy cloud admin for the first half of this year this quite handily topped the list for me.
zamalek 3y ago
Building circuits. I'm still at the stage of merely soldering things together over I2C/SPI/UART, but it's tons of fun. My current project is designing a keyboard from scratch - I plan to have a central 'hub' with an LCD connected to N auxiliary devices: two to start (a split keyboard). I plan to add a macropad and a rotary encoder later on.
pzo 3y ago
Not as the most exciting thing but some lifehack to reduce daily chore: I bought electric shaver. I tried decade ago one but didn't enjoy. I always hated chore of shaving - you have to soften your skin, put some foam, make sure your razor is sharp (many time it isn't and you run out of new one), do many runs with razor on your skin, hit razor on the sink so it's not clogged, after shaving clean yourself and razor again and dry yourself and hopefully you don't have any cuts. With electric razor: - these days they are small and can be charged with usb-c - don't require and water or foam (just dry shaving) - all your face hairs are inside the shaver head and not floating everywhere around your sink - shaver is magnetic and easy to remove and then just dump down your hairs to sink - don't have any cuts and don't have to change shaving head (probably one a year or less) - I bought cheap one (Enchen) with 3 heads for like 20$ If you procrastinate to shave yourself every (second) day give it a try.
- rubicon33 3y ago
  I absolutely love tips like these. Sometimes we settle into patterns in life that we just accept, even if they're not ideal. Learn how to do something and we end up doing it that way forever. Then someone reminds you that not only do you not enjoy that pattern, but there's a different and better way to do it!
bayofpigs 3y ago
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sshine 3y ago
2020: To not busywait. 2021: To be humble. 2022: That I work for myself. 2023: That not spending money makes me happier than spending money.
OliveMate 3y ago
Mechanical keypad locks dont require you to input the code in a certain order. If the code is 0451 you can unlock it with 1054 or any other combination of those numbers. It's not exciting exciting, but it's oddly novel to show off.
- neontomo 3y ago
  You mean 1045 right?
  - OliveMate 3y ago
    You could have any combination of 0 1 4 5 and it'll work as long as you use the same numbers the same amount of times as the original sequence.
- AdamH12113 3y ago
  Wow! That’s means a four-digit mechanical lock would only have 210 possible combinations. Seems pretty easy to brute-force.
deleted 3y ago
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mattbgates 3y ago
Might need to have your ambitions, dreams, hopes, prayers, and goals, but life has a way of working itself out every time.
deleted 3y ago
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huijzer 3y ago
Power laws and how many there are once you start to recognise them.
jodrellblank 3y ago
That there's actually reasonable arguments for biking without a helmet[1]. That bicycling is way more fun than walking or running. Even slow casual bicycling around a local area. Even on an old low cost bike. I used to have to force myself to go jogging; walking for exercise is so so so boring even with podcasts/audiobooks. Now I positively want to go out biking most days. I had a mountain bike ~15 years ago and all the clip-on shoes and helmet and drove to hills and cycled off-road and it was huge effort and work, and I never enjoyed it as much as my friends did. Now I have a basic heavy squeaky bike and get on it and ride. I like being able to sprint and coast, instead of sprint and stop while jogging. Being able to zig-zag side to side and feel the dynamics of the bike and my balance as it moves. Being able to move faster than walking while putting in less effort than walking. Feeling the wind as if I'm in a car with open windows or no roof (less intensley, but the same kind of pleasant sensation). Riding with no hands on the handlebar, feels like how bikes 'should' be ridden - more like the motions of walking but moving faster. Or maybe I would like one with higher, curved back handlebars for a more relaxed riding position. [1] don't just stop wearing a helmet in a North American city riding on an 8-lane stroad with highway speed traffic, or a ride on the British A roads alongside traffic. But Dutch people don't normally wear helmets because their city design prioritises keeping bikes and cars separate, and keeping bike routes safe at crossings and junctions, and they aren't riding fast or racing. Most injuries of non-racing urban bicyclists involve motor vehicles, and the idea that an inch of polystyrene will protect you from a Ford F250 doing 60mph should be a head scratcher not a no-brainer. I would link "Why I stopped wearing a bike helmet" by former editor-in-chief of Bicycling, the world’s largest cycling magazine - https://www.cyclingtips.com/2018/11/commentary-why-i-stopped https://www.cyclingtips.com/2018/11/commentary-why-i-stopped... but it appears to be gone from the site and from the Wayback machine. He also made the point that people say they wear helmets (or make their children wear them) for safety, but then choose helmets based on price and style, rather than safety rating and crash test results, which suggests they don't do it for safety. Also children should wear them. The reason I'm making a point of "without helmet" is because it reduces the friction of going out and riding, and it reduces the sweaty head, untidy hair, "where do I put my helmet while in the shop" concerns, and having something strapped to your face/head feels bad. Plus nobody hounds the elderly to wear helmets when out walking in case they fall, but if safety was your top concern, you would.
tyronehed 3y ago
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nathants 3y ago
high performance gamedev with cpp17, physx, wickedengine, clion, and linux. it feels amazing to be able to spend time inside the program as it develops.
zs234465234165 3y ago
Large corps don't care about you. I’ve realized that going above and beyond by putting in 10 times the effort doesn’t always earn the recognition one might expect; it can even lead to unforeseen challenges.
zs234465234165 3y ago
I learned that people often take offense to questions, especially “why” questions. I don't have the attribution but love this quote: “A good question doesn’t give advice, check hypotheses, impose a perspective, share an opinion, make a suggestion or leave the other person feeling judged or cornered.”
zs234465234165 3y ago
I learned that Marijuana is not as innocuous as it seems and causes major social withdrawal symptoms, sleep and memory issues.
zs234465234165 3y ago
I learned that air frying is the most efficient, and clean way to cook a steak. It doesn't smoke up the house(the smoke is also harmful), cooks fast, and tastes delicious.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
zs234465234165 3y ago
I learned to stop scheduling meetings on Mondays or Fridays
zs234465234165 3y ago
I’ve discovered that spreadsheets with checklists are more effective for personal and recurring tasks than any to-do list app I’ve tried – plus, you control the data.
zs234465234165 3y ago
My family started implementing a “poor week” or as my wife prefers a “free week” where we pick 1 week a month that we don’t spend any money. This has greatly reduced our overall spending.
zs234465234165 3y ago
Learned: Always over-communicate all system changes, no matter how small Learned: Asynchronous daily chat updates are just as effective as stand-ups

47 points by curious16 3y ago

Maybe it is a life hack, a new topic, a new recipe, etc. Whatever YOU think is exciting to you.

* How to feel my emotions and not suppress them or push them away. And why that matters in everyday life. * The power of letting go of perceived control or outcomes and just focusing on what I can do now in the moment. * How to be open and vulnerable and why it matters for building relationships.

_ink_ 3y ago
Wow, how did you do that? Any advice?
- solarmist 3y ago
  Not really advice, but I can share what I went through. It started happening on its own once I found a way to feel safe and secure. I grew up never having felt completely safe even at home because my father was alcoholic so I had a chaotic home life. And I learned that I always needed to be on guard even at home or in my room. So quitting my job and letting my wife totally support us for a 6 months while I reassessed my life and let go of being the “breadwinner”/man of the house was key. But hard. I made SV money and she makes $18/hr. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And the scariest. But Berne Brown was a powerful voice to help me choose a direction and learning how to connect with others. Just feeling empathy for others isn’t enough. People will be suspicious or think you’re fake if you don’t reciprocate openness/vulnerability.
itsmemattchung 3y ago
> * How to feel my emotions and not suppress them or push them away. And why that matters in everyday life. Yes!! This is huge. Feeling emotions is so critical and a fundamental skill learned in dialectical behavior therapy (DBT). And if I can add to that, NAMING the emotion itself levels one up too. As you mentioned, somatically feeling (e.g. "my heart is racing faster than it normally does", "I am starting to sweat", "my throat is constricting") goes a long way and if you can accurately identify the emotion (e.g. fear, anxiety, anger) then you are on the path to mastering emotional regulation.
- solarmist 3y ago
  Yup! Berne Brown’s Atlas of the Heart is great for this because it's a big list of emotions with detailed explanations of each.

Taikonerd 3y ago

OK, my "most exciting thing" is pretty boring, which says something about me ;-) But I discovered how easy it is to make oven fries: [0] Easy, customizable, and healthier than regular French fries. I love them! [0]: https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/oven-fries/ https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/oven-fries/

kunwon1 3y ago
On that same theme, I've learned the basics of bread making recently, and it's been exciting to me to realize how easily I can make bread that's far better than anything at the grocery store. When I realized that I could 'win' by just using flour, water, and salt, it felt like I had unlocked one of life's cheat codes.
- Gasp0de 3y ago
  Wait until you come to Germany and buy a bread at a bakery ;)
  - solarmist 3y ago
    This annoys me to no end! There _IS_ good bread in the US too. You just need to ignore the bread aisle of supermarkets!
    - adamredwoods 3y ago
      In the US, good bread must be actively sought out. It is not available everywhere.
      - solarmist 3y ago
        Fair
      - HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
        > buy a bread at a bakery ;) Pretty sure every bakery I've been to in the US has had good bread.

tracerbulletx 3y ago

I started searching for pasta recipes in Italian and it worked fantastically, feels like learning the things that will become a trend in english youtube videos 3 years from now. I feel like I've learned so many useful techniques and ideas that I can just improvise really really high quality pastas whenever I want now. It's fantastic.

ScarZy 3y ago
Share some of said recipes, you smug dog! I always want to up my pasta game. I'm still arguing with my extending family about the amount of salt in the pasta water... baby steps
- _nalply 3y ago
  Camping pasta: Have Swiss egg helix pasta, exactly the right amount of water, some bouillon powder, triple concentrated tomato paste, pepper and a dash of cream. Cook till soaked up (takes 10 minutes). Serve with slices of gruyère. (This is sacrilegous but done right it tastes very good and is simple to cook, you need only one pot and it is done quickly even on camping gas.)
  - ScarZy 3y ago
    I bought a 400g can of triple concentrate thinking it was chopped tomatoes (I'm in Greece, I do not speak Greek). It is fate. Gruyère sounds good, thanks for sharing!

menshiki 3y ago

Not an achievement at all considering we are on HN, but earlier this year I made my first website. It’s just a little personal site that’s hosted on GitHub pages. It’s a skill I’ll definitely utilize again in the future so I’m quite happy about it :).

OliveMate 3y ago
I'm in the same boat, at its heart it's very simple HTML and CSS, but I've never done anything like it before and figuring it all out has been surprisingly fun! If it happens to be a blog, the other month there was a post here asking users to share their blogs[1], and shortly after someone popped up with a blog roll[2] you can submit it to! [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36575081 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36575081 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36605493 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36605493
valbaca 3y ago
Comparison is the thief of joy. You absolutely hit an achievement. Congratulations!

Exuma 3y ago

Trivial things: The busy beaver fast growing function, and how turning machines represent "all things computable". Somehow this was an epiphany I never realized... I always thought "x can be represented on a turing machine", and this itself always seemed like "so what." All it really means to me is you can play doom in your _random thing_ thats turing complete. Once I learned about the busy beaver function however, and n state turing machines, I had a massive epiphany that ive been thinking about it backwards. Whats better is to think that some N-State turing machine can represent EVERY POSSIBLE THING THAT CAN BE COMPUTED (!!!). And its like starting at the top of a very large infinitely tall pyramid, with an N(1) state turing machine and all its permutations of computation, and then N(2) and onwards. In this case, all the answers of the universe (or at least within the computational realm) exist within some N state turing machine in this pyramid. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmAc1nDizu0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmAc1nDizu0 Work things: typescript, nuxt 3, and converting my ENTIRE 10+ year vim config to fancy Neovim with full LSP support.

fredgrott 3y ago

That stacking stimulants is the wrong approach...instead stack weak stimulants along with herb MAO inhibitors to optimize output. My bias is that I have ADHD with anxiety mixed in. Best way to describe is that if one takes Adderall one gets a push pull effect where you are in focus robot mode whereas with this approach its a focus mode with whole environment awareness without the uncomfortable push pull effects.

Gasp0de 3y ago
I also believe I may have some form of ADHD, and I find this self-optimization idea where people start taking drugs to optimize their productivity a bit dangerous. Keep in mind that productivity for your job isn't everything that makes you yourself. I know quite a few people who took ADHD medication and became super good at their job at the cost of everything fun including their personal life. Sometimes it might also be OK to tell yourself "It's okay I am not as productive as person XYZ, it's not because I am lazy but because I have ADHD".
- SteveNuts 3y ago
  It's not just your job though, it creeps into everything you do and it affects you more than people without it realize. Even if you want to get something done (house project, cleaning, making appointments) it's very difficult to complete these tasks due to the distractions you meet along the way. It's like if you had a spotify playlist of 400 songs you really want to listen to, but by the time you hear the first 5 seconds of the intro, the song skips to the next one, ad nauseam, all day long, every day of your life.
- rubicon33 3y ago
  As someone who has resisted medication his entire life, I totally understand your sentiment. Medication definitely isn't for everyone and it comes with its own costs. That said, I have decided more and more in my adult life that I am not going to struggle needlessly. If doing so only affected me, fine. But when I have a shitty day(s) at work because I didn't get anything done, my wife gets to hear about it. My family gets to experience me being less jolly. Etc. My focus these days is on being the best person not only to myself but to those around me. That means if I need to take some stupid pill to enable robot-mode then that's what I need to do. I've tried the "don't let your work output be your identity" approach. That ship sailed in elementary school man. Success & output are weaved into your psyche from a very young age. To truly divorce myself from that burden I would need to completely change my life and go live in a commune somewhere. Not realistic. And for the record, I actually really don't like the feeling of being on medication. It turns me into a robot with slow reaction time. Great for reading a book or focussing on some boring work... But horrible for the things I love in life which are all fast-paced sports and video games. If I can avoid medication, I absolutely will.

maxk42 3y ago

I learned to lose weight by eating more fat.

mabbo 3y ago

That I can survive being laid off. That emotionally, it won't crush me to find out my company decided I was in the 20% that wasn't needed anymore. That financially, my family can get by if I spend 11 weeks unemployed. That I can accept a job that pays significantly less than I used to make. I really did think that the entire experience was going to leave me the empty shell of my former self, that the mental toll would leave me severely depressed, and that my world would be shattered. None of that happened. I had a great summer. My exciting discovery is that I no longer define myself purely in terms of my career.

RiOuseR 3y ago
> I no longer define myself purely in terms of my career. I've been struggling with this. Any tips?
- sneed_chucker 3y ago
  Hobbies, relationships, religion. Jobs can effectively squeeze your time and energy such that the above are hard to come by, making career self-definement a default path for many people.
the_only_law 3y ago
I had the opposite experience. I thought I would easily survive a layoff, but now it looks not so likely.
- gabereiser 3y ago
  Numbers game, go submit 100 applications, get 25 interviews, get 3 offers. Go.
  - the_only_law 3y ago
    Yeah it’s a little too late for that. My lease is up at the end of the month, my savings have been battered from attrition and emergency expenses and the rental market is ridiculous here (not that that matters without income anyway). I submitted plenty of applications, got few interviews, got passed up for most of the roles. I no longer have time to wait on onerous bureaucracies. Hell I was hoping for an offer this week, but both myself and the recruiter are at a loss as to what the company decided. I got another email the other day informing me that some job I applied to months ago was just straight up canceled. The real problem was I didn’t quite understand how things had changed and was desperate to avoid moving. I should have just taken an on site role and moved a long time ago.

jlarocco 3y ago

How to ride a motorcycle.

ativzzz 3y ago

I'm a new parent this year and I was not mentally prepared for it (lol is anyone?) For a few months, I regretted my decision to have kids almost constantly. It gnawed on me. Then I stumbled upon the regretfulparents subreddit. Seeing the posts was pitiful. I saw how destructive it is to our psyches to carry around regret and let it wear us down. I cringed seeing the posts, mostly because I felt the same way they did, and man it does not look pretty. I do not want to be like the people on that subreddit. It almost disgusted me I remember when I was younger I always said I don't regret anything I do. I seem to have forgotten that mantra, so I picked it back up I no longer regret being a parent. I still don't enjoy it the majority of the time. But it is what it is. There's no point of drowning myself in my own mental garbage when life is trying to drown me already. So what I (re)learned is not to live with regret, and sometimes shared suffering can remind me that it's really not that bad and I don't need to force suffering on myself for no reason

adamredwoods 3y ago
The first 6 months are incredibly difficult, as there's nothing to do but cry and feed. It will never be perfect, but it gets better.
- doubled112 3y ago
  > It gets better One perspective that helped me was "little people, little problems". In few years they might be drinking your booze and stealing your car. Mine are five and eight now. There's still rarely 15 minutes. Somebody's hungry, somebody's hitting somebody, somebody's having another meltdown. On occasion though, they get interested in whatever I'm doing though, so that's nice.
- ativzzz 3y ago
  > but it gets better Parents say this, but looking at their lives and talking to them, it doesn't. I think you just get used to it, or develop a sort of stockholm syndrome. Maybe you sleep a little better so it's easier to mentally cope with it
  - 3y ago

doublerabbit 3y ago

To activate the sauna steam button in my local swimming pool, you actually have to pour water over it. It's not a push button like I thought.

ScarZy 3y ago

Learned how far I can push myself physically and mentally in my first Ultra Cycling event (2400km). Not sure I'll do another one, but it was a good experience and at at an age where performance will start decreasing from here. I need to do a write-up.

qup 3y ago
> at an age where performance will start decreasing from here Challenge that idea

SteveNuts 3y ago

That I in fact, DO have ADHD, and that's at least part of the reason I failed so miserably in high school, couldn't finish college, and struggle to finish tasks at work despite feeling highly motivated. Not only that, treatment is working for me.

neontomo 3y ago
I don't have much to add other than that I'm proud of you for realising this and finding a solution that works for you. Kudos
- SteveNuts 3y ago
  Thanks! It feels like a huge weight lifted off my shoulders.
alex_lav 3y ago
How did you get a diagnosis? Everywhere in my area has a 6 month+ waiting period.
- SteveNuts 3y ago
  That was basically my experience too, it was about 4 months from a GP referral to a psychiatrist evaluation then back to the GP to try out different medications. So far we’ve only tried Atomoxetine and Wellbutrin, want to avoid stimulants if possible.
coderKen 3y ago
I see this a lot, but I will go out on a limb to tell you ADHD is not the reason for your failures. You probably already know this, but it feels better to blame it on something you think is beyond your control.

PaulHoule 3y ago

How color management works.

matricaria 3y ago

I started using LaTeX, Vim and Emacs this year. Steep learning curve but so worth it, especially Vim. Thank you, Bram!

xu3u32 3y ago
why all three instead of getting really good at one?

elpocko 3y ago

I can run generative AI (text and images) on my measly laptop. It's not the fastest thing I've ever seen, but it's a lot of fun. Desperately hoping for a "Stable Diffusion for audio" that you can run locally in the near future.

anavette 3y ago

Likely trite, but: I learned that I'm continuously learning far more than I realize— but that if I don't log what I learn somehow (journal, notes, essays), I'm left with a far fainter sense of accumulation & a far weaker understanding overall. Practically, I learned how to fully clean stainless steel pans (boil vinegar after cooking; baking soda scrub if really filthy).

yla92 3y ago

I recently learned about the (Linux) sockets. Wrote two simple "echo client" and "echo server". Then monitored the traffic over Wireshark and witness the 3 way TCP handshake. Then make the server to use "selectors" and learned a bit more about the names I have been hearing for a while: 'select', 'poll', 'epoll'. This is when things start to "click" for me. Nothing astounding but these little things got me excited! PS: Too excited that I even made a presentation to share with people from work. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1LAdJ4iK-RJVxuIo61RLU6LQOxXluiQVa9pqUzbYW_Gc/edit#slide=id.p https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1LAdJ4iK-RJVxuIo61RLU...

Lyngbakr 3y ago

I can't say that I "learned Lisp" this year, but I took my first tentative steps in Lisp. It has been eye opening for sure and I'm excited to learn more.

yayitswei 3y ago
Congrats! You're in for a trip. It's not one big epiphany but lots of little ones.

neontomo 3y ago

That I'm a slow and careful thinker who needs peaceful days and a slow life. Little things like looking at the sky, drinking coffee, writing in my journal, taking analog photos, these bring me a sense of self and calmness that I need in order to process life properly, and I shouldn't try to be anything else in order to fit in.

nicbou 3y ago
How do you manage to create this sort of time?
- neontomo 3y ago
  The honest answer is chance. I happen to be studying somewhere that gives me an extra-ordinary amount of freedom, and I'll be using it soon to visit Morocco (to do research and write). I also happen to be surrounded by a friend group that are deeply tied to the music industry, and because I'm an illustrator/designer/artist, I can help musicians in that field with album art, music video animations, printing and so on. It's mutually beneficial, but I didn't plan to meet the right people at the right time. The more "self-made" answer is that I'm ruthless about cutting people out of my life who make me feel bad in ways that can't be solved through communication or a good heart-to-heart. I have a feeling that this puts me into better situations sometimes, because people recognise integrity/self-respect and want to be a part of that. I also am a fanatic about spending at least 15 min every day in nature, which is where I drink my coffee. This is my morning routine, come rain or shine. Other things I do to help this lifestyle: - Wake up without alarm (unless I have a meeting) - If I'm at parties, grab fresh air occasionally - sometimes you'll get good company out there too, and you can recalibrate - Saying no to things that other people think are fun, but I don't - I don't read for hours on end - 30 min at a time is enough, then reflect - Wear clothes that don't feel modern and sophisticated, a vintage shirt can do a lot to your slow-life mentality - I've never worked with anything that requires me to work overtime or be on-call I think the point isn't to have hours and hours of unlimited time to think, but to take breaks in between activities, and carve out consistent 15-30 min slots for your brain to settle down again. Take as much stress out of your life as you can, without making that a stressful activity as well.

yitongovo 3y ago

Make some food with my tiny oven. Before this year, I just only use the tiny oven to heat frzen food. But now I realize cured meat with common seasoning are very easy and it taste good.

yayitswei 3y ago

I discovered Electric Clojure and built a few toy apps with it. Turns out unifying frontend and backend code simplifies web app development greatly! Exciting to me because it drastically lowers my activation energy for building new projects.

hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago

fzf! I even wrote a whole tutorial on it :) https://andrew-quinn.me/fzf/ https://andrew-quinn.me/fzf/ Excitement for me is measured on a scale of how fast I go from "wtf is this" to "omg think of the possibilities" and given that I was working as a very shell-heavy cloud admin for the first half of this year this quite handily topped the list for me.

zamalek 3y ago

Building circuits. I'm still at the stage of merely soldering things together over I2C/SPI/UART, but it's tons of fun. My current project is designing a keyboard from scratch - I plan to have a central 'hub' with an LCD connected to N auxiliary devices: two to start (a split keyboard). I plan to add a macropad and a rotary encoder later on.

pzo 3y ago

Not as the most exciting thing but some lifehack to reduce daily chore: I bought electric shaver. I tried decade ago one but didn't enjoy. I always hated chore of shaving - you have to soften your skin, put some foam, make sure your razor is sharp (many time it isn't and you run out of new one), do many runs with razor on your skin, hit razor on the sink so it's not clogged, after shaving clean yourself and razor again and dry yourself and hopefully you don't have any cuts. With electric razor: - these days they are small and can be charged with usb-c - don't require and water or foam (just dry shaving) - all your face hairs are inside the shaver head and not floating everywhere around your sink - shaver is magnetic and easy to remove and then just dump down your hairs to sink - don't have any cuts and don't have to change shaving head (probably one a year or less) - I bought cheap one (Enchen) with 3 heads for like 20$ If you procrastinate to shave yourself every (second) day give it a try.

rubicon33 3y ago
I absolutely love tips like these. Sometimes we settle into patterns in life that we just accept, even if they're not ideal. Learn how to do something and we end up doing it that way forever. Then someone reminds you that not only do you not enjoy that pattern, but there's a different and better way to do it!

bayofpigs 3y ago

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sshine 3y ago

2020: To not busywait. 2021: To be humble. 2022: That I work for myself. 2023: That not spending money makes me happier than spending money.

OliveMate 3y ago

Mechanical keypad locks dont require you to input the code in a certain order. If the code is 0451 you can unlock it with 1054 or any other combination of those numbers. It's not exciting exciting, but it's oddly novel to show off.

neontomo 3y ago
You mean 1045 right?
- OliveMate 3y ago
  You could have any combination of 0 1 4 5 and it'll work as long as you use the same numbers the same amount of times as the original sequence.
AdamH12113 3y ago
Wow! That’s means a four-digit mechanical lock would only have 210 possible combinations. Seems pretty easy to brute-force.

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mattbgates 3y ago

Might need to have your ambitions, dreams, hopes, prayers, and goals, but life has a way of working itself out every time.

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huijzer 3y ago

Power laws and how many there are once you start to recognise them.

jodrellblank 3y ago

That there's actually reasonable arguments for biking without a helmet[1]. That bicycling is way more fun than walking or running. Even slow casual bicycling around a local area. Even on an old low cost bike. I used to have to force myself to go jogging; walking for exercise is so so so boring even with podcasts/audiobooks. Now I positively want to go out biking most days. I had a mountain bike ~15 years ago and all the clip-on shoes and helmet and drove to hills and cycled off-road and it was huge effort and work, and I never enjoyed it as much as my friends did. Now I have a basic heavy squeaky bike and get on it and ride. I like being able to sprint and coast, instead of sprint and stop while jogging. Being able to zig-zag side to side and feel the dynamics of the bike and my balance as it moves. Being able to move faster than walking while putting in less effort than walking. Feeling the wind as if I'm in a car with open windows or no roof (less intensley, but the same kind of pleasant sensation). Riding with no hands on the handlebar, feels like how bikes 'should' be ridden - more like the motions of walking but moving faster. Or maybe I would like one with higher, curved back handlebars for a more relaxed riding position. [1] don't just stop wearing a helmet in a North American city riding on an 8-lane stroad with highway speed traffic, or a ride on the British A roads alongside traffic. But Dutch people don't normally wear helmets because their city design prioritises keeping bikes and cars separate, and keeping bike routes safe at crossings and junctions, and they aren't riding fast or racing. Most injuries of non-racing urban bicyclists involve motor vehicles, and the idea that an inch of polystyrene will protect you from a Ford F250 doing 60mph should be a head scratcher not a no-brainer. I would link "Why I stopped wearing a bike helmet" by former editor-in-chief of Bicycling, the world’s largest cycling magazine - https://www.cyclingtips.com/2018/11/commentary-why-i-stopped https://www.cyclingtips.com/2018/11/commentary-why-i-stopped... but it appears to be gone from the site and from the Wayback machine. He also made the point that people say they wear helmets (or make their children wear them) for safety, but then choose helmets based on price and style, rather than safety rating and crash test results, which suggests they don't do it for safety. Also children should wear them. The reason I'm making a point of "without helmet" is because it reduces the friction of going out and riding, and it reduces the sweaty head, untidy hair, "where do I put my helmet while in the shop" concerns, and having something strapped to your face/head feels bad. Plus nobody hounds the elderly to wear helmets when out walking in case they fall, but if safety was your top concern, you would.

tyronehed 3y ago

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nathants 3y ago

high performance gamedev with cpp17, physx, wickedengine, clion, and linux. it feels amazing to be able to spend time inside the program as it develops.

zs234465234165 3y ago

Large corps don't care about you. I’ve realized that going above and beyond by putting in 10 times the effort doesn’t always earn the recognition one might expect; it can even lead to unforeseen challenges.

zs234465234165 3y ago

I learned that people often take offense to questions, especially “why” questions. I don't have the attribution but love this quote: “A good question doesn’t give advice, check hypotheses, impose a perspective, share an opinion, make a suggestion or leave the other person feeling judged or cornered.”

zs234465234165 3y ago

I learned that Marijuana is not as innocuous as it seems and causes major social withdrawal symptoms, sleep and memory issues.

zs234465234165 3y ago

I learned that air frying is the most efficient, and clean way to cook a steak. It doesn't smoke up the house(the smoke is also harmful), cooks fast, and tastes delicious.

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zs234465234165 3y ago

I learned to stop scheduling meetings on Mondays or Fridays

zs234465234165 3y ago

I’ve discovered that spreadsheets with checklists are more effective for personal and recurring tasks than any to-do list app I’ve tried – plus, you control the data.

zs234465234165 3y ago

My family started implementing a “poor week” or as my wife prefers a “free week” where we pick 1 week a month that we don’t spend any money. This has greatly reduced our overall spending.

zs234465234165 3y ago

Learned: Always over-communicate all system changes, no matter how small Learned: Asynchronous daily chat updates are just as effective as stand-ups