Hacker News: sgwizdak

New comment by sgwizdak in "Italo Calvino: A traveller in a world of uncertainty"

sgwizdak — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 00:33:45 +0000

Great article - "Invisible Cities" was my introduction to his work and remains a favorite.

New comment by sgwizdak in "Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy"

sgwizdak — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 15:15:46 +0000

Awesome, happy for your father!

New comment by sgwizdak in "Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy"

sgwizdak — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 13:48:18 +0000

Think of it this way - once you're in a state of obesity, resolving that situation is quite difficult. Eating healthy may not be enough, particularly if there are other metabolic issues going on.

The imbalance of fat to muscle leads to insulin resistance. Insulin resistance gets in the way of weight loss. After a long time of trying other means, I decided to directly tackle the insulin resistance problem. And it's been the only thing that's worked.

New comment by sgwizdak in "Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy"

sgwizdak — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 21:26:43 +0000

Sorry - I think there's complexity with insulin at play that you're overlooking. When I did caloric restriction, I was constantly battling hypoglycemic events that made me not want to exercise. I don't get that with the GLP-1s. In online discussions, people tend to conflate GLP-1 with appetite suppressants - but there's also insulin stabilization that occurs.

New comment by sgwizdak in "Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy"

sgwizdak — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 16:57:51 +0000

I started a GLP-1 in October. I've been eating healthy and exercising for a decade, but I was still in the obese category and blood sugar tests indicated I was at the edge of pre-diabetes. If I pushed hard on calorie reduction or exercise, I could gain 10-20% improvement, but it seemed like that would always reverse itself when I'd hit an injury or got sick. I'm hitting my mid-40s and decided it was time for a drastic change. I could have continued yo-yo dieting or opt for a solution that gets me to a healthy BMI within a year.

I gained a lot of weight during puberty, coupled with a less healthy diet in my youth. I suspect many folks are in the same boat - by the time they realize they need to eat/exercise, it's too late. Their metabolic system has been compromised by either diet, hormones, genetics, whatever.

In four months on a GLP-1, I've dropped about 18kg and since I coupled resistance training, I've increased on various strength parameters. The sudden reduction in weight has benefited my activity level substantially. There tends to be two classes of folks - those who need to stay on this drug forever and those who don't - I'm hoping in the end I fall into the don't, but I'm going to let the data from my continuous glucose monitor decide that.

I highly recommend the book "Ozempic Revolution" if you're considering the pros/cons of this path.

New comment by sgwizdak in "Ask HN: How do you learn Spanish guitar?"

sgwizdak — Sat, 28 Jun 2025 01:37:44 +0000

I've been playing classical guitar for a bit. A teacher who specializes in that style is your best option, but teacher quality can vary quite drastically and can be hard to manage if you're a busy professional. For an online, asynchronous resource, https://classical.guitarcorneracademy.com has been great for along with occasional check-ins with an online teacher.

New comment by sgwizdak in "Show HN: Stretch My Time Off – An Algorithm to Optimize Your Vacation Days"

sgwizdak — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 16:23:20 +0000

The ability to load up an on call schedule would be handy.

New comment by sgwizdak in "Busy Status Bar"

sgwizdak — Mon, 14 Oct 2024 17:58:44 +0000

The mode where it sits on a monitor and displays a status ("on call") is very interesting. I think that could be simplified into a product unto itself -- but it would need to priced at "office toy" level -- so around $20-$40 USD.

New comment by sgwizdak in "KidPix"

sgwizdak — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 02:08:39 +0000

Give me text boxes and arrow connects and I'll be happy to use this for system diagrams.

New comment by sgwizdak in "An Approach to Sound Synthesis with L-Systems"

sgwizdak — Wed, 10 Jan 2024 22:10:47 +0000

There's also been some papers on l-systems for composition leveraging a traditional scale: https://www-users.york.ac.uk/~ss44/bib/ss/nonstd/eurogp05.pd...

New comment by sgwizdak in "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (June 2023)"

sgwizdak — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 20:41:20 +0000

Location: Seattle, WA

Remote: Remote/Hybrid

Willing to relocate: No.

Technologies: C/C++, Java, Python, Linux, Spark, and more.

Résumé/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sgwizdak-a030691/

Email: sgwizdak [_at_] gmail.com

About me: 20 years of engineering experience with most being in a very large organization. Interested in leadership and staff roles. Over the course of my career have built end to end solutions involving machine learning, e-commerce, low-level networking, high speed distributed systems, security and IoT devices.

New comment by sgwizdak in "Congress wants AM radio in all new cars – trade groups say that’s a mistake"

sgwizdak — Tue, 23 May 2023 16:27:11 +0000

There are areas in the US that do not have cell/data coverage where important road information updates (think mountain pass conditions) are broadcast over AM radio.

New comment by sgwizdak in "Ask HN: Laid off folks, are you getting hired?"

sgwizdak — Thu, 09 Feb 2023 22:48:24 +0000

It's an estimate based on both the average severances coupled with how long it takes to work through the Blind 100 LC grind with a bit of reset time thrown in. If you're in a position where you can handle 2 LC-hard questions in about an hour with near perfect execution, good for you! But most folks need to prepare for that.

New comment by sgwizdak in "Ask HN: Laid off folks, are you getting hired?"

sgwizdak — Thu, 09 Feb 2023 20:35:15 +0000

One note from personal experience -- it'll likely take about 12 weeks or so for a laid off dev to come back up to speed with interview prep to feel confident to start the interview grind again. One thing that can likely help is being upfront with the evaluation process.

New comment by sgwizdak in "Ask HN: Suggestions for working effectively with junior devs?"

sgwizdak — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 17:04:50 +0000

Clear out what your obligations are with your management.

I've been in positions as a senior software engineer where it's my job to carve up projects and have make sure juniors can get things done. That means checking in with them, make sure they understand stuff, make sure quality is high, and ensure they're not getting blocked. Your management looks to you get the project done. You are not measured by your IC but by your ability to force-multiply to knock out projects.

In these situations, your individual IC contributions go down, but you effectively get to claim delivery of the project under your belt based on ensuring delivery success. (It may be critical in these situations to track how you made that happen.)

New comment by sgwizdak in "Ask HN: Techwise, how did TikTok get so good?"

sgwizdak — Wed, 18 Jan 2023 02:56:03 +0000

This paper by various folks at Bytedance hints at their recommender architecture: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2209.07663.pdf

New comment by sgwizdak in "Ask HN: Do you use a physical calculator in your day job, and why?"

sgwizdak — Fri, 03 Jun 2022 14:20:07 +0000

I still use my HP-32sii [and more recently, the remake, the HP-35] for dev work. I use it mostly for calculations involving hexadecimal values when I'm in a debugging session.

New comment by sgwizdak in "Schools should be using open source software"

sgwizdak — Mon, 30 May 2022 16:55:26 +0000

This article discusses end user applications, but nothing regarding the classroom experience. (E.g., how does the teacher monitor individual screens to ensure they're staying on task?) My wife is a teacher and google classroom is what most of the districts in this area leverage.

New comment by sgwizdak in "The Beautiful Mind-Bending of Stanislaw Lem (2019)"

sgwizdak — Wed, 16 Mar 2022 20:56:28 +0000

There was a recent publishing of Lem's lesser known short stories that is excellent: "The Truth and Other Stories" https://www.amazon.com/Truth-Other-Stories-Stanislaw-Lem/dp/...

New comment by sgwizdak in "The Beautiful Mind-Bending of Stanislaw Lem (2019)"

sgwizdak — Wed, 16 Mar 2022 20:53:48 +0000

There is a translation of Solaris by Bill Johnston that is available as a Kindle e-book that is a direct translation from Polish. IIRC, there are licensing issues with providing a print version of it.