Ask HN: Non-tech professionals on HN?
If you look at the front page of HN on any given day you'll see 90% of the news leans heavily towards the tech industry.
But you'll often see great comments from people whose profession isn't directly tech. I've seen historians, doctors, lawyers,
folks in construction, agriculture, the armed forces, etc, show up here.
So the question is, what non-traditionally tech professions are represented here on HN and how did you get hooked to Hacker News?
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There's also this website https://programminghistorian.org/
I found Reddit to be one of the most hateful communities online. Checkout the Herman Cain award sub if you want proof.
In my 20s I wasted a ton of time arguing about politics and even my own life on that site. While 9/10 times I'd find someone fun, the 1/10 was spent absorbing pure vitriol.
Ultimately no one cares about what I think or how I choose to live my life. No normal person will spend all day trying to degrade others or celebrating another's death. But that's like half of Reddit.
Occasionally I'll still find something useful, usually related to programming. But I simply don't venture into anything else.
For example, most of the specific game subs are hyper-focused on their topic with paper who genuinely want to know and talk about the scene.
Now real examples would be subs like the old thedonald, and the myriad of extremely racist subreddits that are allowed to exist unchecked.
I'm here because I pay for my masters and academic hobbies in other fields with my tech day job.
I believe in the Renaissance model of trying to understand and succeed in many fields.
There is truth in the saying that making your hobby a profession will suck the joy out of it. I think I would go crazy with doing either philosophy or programming full time. Splitting it 50/50 regularly gives me time off of both which is great for creativity and motivation, especially if things are not going so well with one of the two. On the downside I will probably never excel at either.
Would you mind sharing how you, currently, find programming work at around 20hrs/wk?
Tech industry articles still tend to provide insights, though I have no use from posts exclusively on programming. Both tech and non-tech posts/comments are quality - kinda obvious, but this is HN's killer feature.
Which I also don't understand as it seems like more trouble than it's worth sometimes (I worked for a corporation that was in that field at one point, we were expected to make big changes almost every year when new laws got passed).
A town of 10K might have a completely separate building code and zoning categories.
I guess it will no doubt be chaos for another few months as the industry gets back to it's feet.
I found HN while I worked at Google on self-driving cars from 2014-2018. At least two postings on HN have been direct material impact to me: the first about an autonomous tractor we might be experimenting with soon, and the second about water restrictions in CA that fortunately did not end up impacting us, but caused us to come up with some interesting water contingencies.
Not sure about autonomous, but just something you own, that you have full schematics and design specs for, and can repair yourself — seems like a huge market given the state of things right now.
There is definitely demand for tractors from new producers. The inability to repair a tractor during harvest is simply unacceptable. Their technicians can take weeks to get around to you, especially if you are a small shop.
Asking out of plain curiosity.
It's true that parts availability has been somewhat of a problem as of late, especially when computer chips are involved, but I am not sure it being open source really improves on that. If the OEM cannot keep up with production, your DIY/local supplier efforts are likely to suffer from the same capacity problems. It's not like you're going to setup your own silicon fab on a whim when your tractor breaks down in the middle of harvest.
Marcin et al., had also designed and built an open source earth brick maker, and trialed it in building buildings out of it. The advantage is being able to source building materials on site.
I don’t know how far the organization has gone in designing and prototyping the other devices they have on their roadmap.
I think people who aren't involved with farming can't really comprehend the amount of technology involved and the savings that technology enables (and ultimately makes it worth it even if the equipment is more difficult/expensive to repair).
As an aside, we always hear complaints about John Deere and never other manufacturers. I wonder if it's because anti-corporate populism works better when it's targeted at a well known american brand or if John Deere is truely that bad. We don't have any modern John Deeres in my area but a few Case IH and Claas, and I've never heard any complaints.
Btw my point isn't to justify the anti-consumer behavior of some manufacturers, but to provide context as to why "an open source tractor" is a completely naive idea.
Don't recall how I ended up on hn though
We do have some tech mandates but my interest in technology is largely personal. My parents are both in tech and their very problem driven compsci dinner talk in the evening greatly influenced me throughout my younger years.
I feel that since tech grew into every corner of society its far less peculiar to have a tech interest than maybe even 15 years ago.
Got immediately hooked not only by selection of links but also informational (an entertainment) value of comments which quite often are more intresting than a linked article itself.
Got sick of reddit