When I journaled, the biggest thing was to reduce any barriers toward actually doing it daily, so I got a pocket sized notebook and made it mandatory that I carry it everywhere.
This allowed me to have a physical reminder on my person and to also be spontaneous with journaling throughout the day.
I didn't have any form or template. I just wrote things. I didn't care about grammar, punctuation, or even legibility to some degree, and I ultimately found that this made things much more impactful.
Are you providing the relevant files in your prompt as context? Additionally, even with files added as context, your prompt isn't very well focused. You essentially said, "do the thing", with a couple of details.
Outline through examples what you want the model to do. You mentioned there's a new signature to follow. Add that to the prompt.
The issue with learning things isn't that it hasn't been tailored to be interesting or relatable to me, it's just that it's a lot of content and it's hard. The solution is figuring out how to set up a type of spoon feed algorithm that checks that I'm understanding little bite size pieces along the way in addition to giving layman's terms for things that don't necessitate the formal description (e.g., deciphering math language).
ChatGPT Study mode has actually been quite good at this when you prompt it correctly and are studying a subject that it's well trained on.
Khan academy and brilliant are both excellent. They're hand crafted and limited in subjects and depth, but i think establish the current "roof" in how perfectly structured self-learning materials would look. I've heard from teachers using them in schools and found excellent results.
AI rephrasing words better to each individual isn't interesting to me. Automatic Interactive small quizzes, puzzles, and self adjusting difficulty level would be amazing, but i don't see AI really reaching that level.
When i see AI "quiz me on this" it gets stuck asking direct factual question about the text. But a good question challenges assumptions, and prod deeper understanding.
Here's a conversation using ChatGPT Study Mode I had a little bit ago covering Linear Algebra concepts that I wanted to learn. The concepts that were gone over in this chat aren't the most complicated, but I think you might find it interesting to look over since I think it actually does show we'll likely reach the level you're seeking. This conversation is with 4o shortly before the GPT-5.0 rollout, which is why it's a little less concise and more emotive.
That is indeed better than ive seen before. I do still find it does do what i dislike. "Here is the forumla for cosine similarty, try compute it"
Id rather it approach it from "we would like to calculate difference in vector direction. Dot product is almost what we want, but cosine similarty is even better"
The "Angle connection" of cosine similarty was instead of added as an extra note later. But i think its fundamental to its intuition that excluding it from the main explanation could lead to a misunderstanding.
(Heck the definition section of Wikipedia makes the formula very clear, and the introductionsection is also excellent to descibe its utility)
So we may reach is one day. But i still think its a ways off compared to a proper hand crafted learning materials. And this subject specifically is a best case scenario.
(3b1b is amazing if you still want to get a more inutitive grasp on matrix transformatios)
As much as I'd also appreciate a discussion on something like this, it's heavily political and HN isn't really the place for that unless it's directly related to tech.
Sure but if that is a reasonable solution, why even bother with distinct forums like HN? Just subsume every UGC site into something like a single global Usenet like group called “general” with the expectation that every user is responsible for fine tuning their own personal filters to their liking.
Having different sites focussed on different topics is very useful to people, and I don’t think the world would be better if we got rid of it.
While applying for jobs, try to build a network that's actually meaningful. Don't just blindly connect with people on LinkedIn, rather, try to develop relationships with people.
You're essentially caught in a bad spot right now and will likely need to resort to some old-school cold calling like what sales people do. Only difference will be that "no" means no here. You're selling yourself, but you don't want people to hate you while in the process of that.
The reason I'm mentioning the above is because cold-applying to random posts on LinkedIn, Indeed, etc, results in about a 5% response rate. So I mean do the cold applications because something is better than nothing, but ultimately, you're going to need to do more.
An additional reason I'm mentioning doing this form of "cold-calling" is because recruiters are overwhelmed, but no one seems to want to admit this. They are inundated with applications that all look identical, but instead of only getting 100-200 applications for a position (which is still a lot), they're getting 500+. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if the cold-application response rate has dropped closer to 1%-2%.
> Has anyone been in a similar situation? What would you do if you were me?
The truth is, this downturn is a little more unique than those in the past. AI and people gaming the system is wreaking havoc on the jobs pipeline in addition to the economic aspect of things.
As for anything else you should do: turn off sensational social media and try to block the doom and gloom. It will not help you.
thanks for the advice! i haven’t been applying randomly, i try to focus only on genuine job posts. i’ve worked at a few startups and built projects, but i’ve still missed opportunities while many of my friends have landed jobs. sometimes i struggle to express my thoughts clearly and haven’t been able to ask my friends for guidance. i feel like i can learn and build anything, but i’m not sure why i’m still behind. how would you suggest approaching this differently?
The big future that I see for foldables is as tablets for note takers.
Microsoft and Apple have already proven that students are willing to shell out the money to buy $1000+ products just to take hand written digital notes on. If Samsung or someone else could create a foldable that's in the ~$1500 range that can fold out into the size of an ipad mini AND has a good pen usage and storage situation, I believe it will sell incredibly well.
It'd be so cool to be able to walk to a lecture with only your phone.
I used to take notes on my Newton MessagePad back at a time when college professors would _not_ allow folks to use laptops for notetaking --- agree, in addition to folding, you pretty much need a stylus for note-taking (and for an Apple Pencil, I'd worry about the "tick" one gets each time it's touched to the screen).
That said, these days I use a Samsung Galaxy Note 10+, Amazon Kindle Scribe w/ Premium Pen, Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360, and when at a desk, a MacBook and Wacom One display, all with Wacom EMR --- no folding devices, since there doesn't yet seem to be one which uses the normal frequencies (most recent foldables used the same frequency for the stylus as is usually used for the eraser?!?).
I'd give a lot for a competitor to the Lenovo Yoga Book 9i which used a Wacom EMR stylus, or for a phone which used a standard Wacom EMR stylus.
I’d be tempted by a foldable iPhone if (and only if) they have a stylus, but I don’t expect them to.
The form factor doesn’t lend itself to storing a comfortably sized “pencil” along with the phone, and god forbid an Apple accessory exist that doesn’t feel perfectly integrated with the product it goes with.
Another thing to add: developers don't have the time or don't want to spend time on apps like this, but it's not like this is anything complicated.
This app ultimately amounts to something that has been done millions of times, and so I think it's actually quite empowering for individuals to be able to quickly build mockups of apps like this for themselves without needing to spend upwards of $75/hr to hire some freelance dev to do it for them.
> In just 18 months since ChatGPT, AI has already displaced coding, design, research, and support roles.
Can you provide an actually credible source that shows this? And what do you mean by "displaced"? Sure, AI is aiding, but it is nowhere close to replacing.
So far, the people I've seen mentioning that AI is taking jobs haven't actually provided evidence of this being the case.
Fair point, but “displacement” does not always mean one-to-one replacement, it means fewer humans are hired because AI covers part of the workload. There is credible evidence: IBM froze hiring for 7,800 roles citing AI, Duolingo laid off contractors due to AI translation, and Klarna reported its AI assistant now does the work of 700 support agents. These are early signals of substitution, not just assistance.
Imagine hardware industries :) Agriculture, forestry, carpenters… AI is toothless and maybe it is or will be used as aid.
Everybody wants AI, it is similar to ebook readers will displace books, websites will displace other marketing channels, PDAs will displace desktop computers, and tablets will displace PDAs etc…
AI fever it is and we should take some drugs to cool down :)
Skepticism makes sense, but unlike ebooks or PDAs, AI directly changes the economics of labor. IBM, Klarna, and Duolingo have already cut roles citing AI. Agriculture and hardware will feel it too once robots integrate with AI for planning, optimization, and automation. This is not just hype, it is cost-driven adoption, and cost curves rarely cool down.
Agriculture is ruled by John Deere and maybe there will be self-driving tractors with satellite navigation but the parts behind tractor are more important and you need some human to exchange them during shift…
Been using Claude Sonnet 4 for a web app that's using React, Mantine, Vite, and a NoSql db.
Frankly, it's been incredible. The app is not complicated by any means. It's a really simple CRUD app for tracking animals (what farm animals are on, breeds, medical history, birthing schedule, etc.), but when I've provided mockups, it's done a surprisingly good job to at least get me 80%-90% of the way there.
I think it has to do with my tech stack honestly. Well built components can get an individual developer with poor FE experience quite far. I think it's the same for AI as well at this point.
This allowed me to have a physical reminder on my person and to also be spontaneous with journaling throughout the day. I didn't have any form or template. I just wrote things. I didn't care about grammar, punctuation, or even legibility to some degree, and I ultimately found that this made things much more impactful.
I should probably start doing that again.
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