Hacker News: shankr

New comment by shankr in "Acetaminophen vs. ibuprofen"

shankr — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 20:39:28 +0000

No, moving definitely works. I can almost predict when my sciatica pain will be coming - usually when I work long hours sitting and don't do enough movement. I struggle to be more active than just going to the gym. I think we - those who suffer from herniated disc and sciatica, need to move much more than those who don't.

New comment by shankr in "Acetaminophen vs. ibuprofen"

shankr — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 07:47:54 +0000

Yeah can confirm. I try to keep it low but then pain lingers for days and cumulatively over the days most probably I took as much as I should have taken in stating few days already.

New comment by shankr in "Trump to impose $100k fee for H-1B worker visas, White House says"

shankr — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 17:22:11 +0000

No I am basically saying it's human nature - sticking to their own group, having biases, being racist. You were trying to make it some kind of Indian trait. We can always try to fight against all the creeping racism and biases, legally and lawfully, without targeting certain group.

Suddenly every immigrant has to be this pristine model minority which has never been the case. That's why I gave those examples. People will find ways to target immigrants no matter what. This kind of narrative I see popping up everywhere where people don't like immigrants. This isn't even US specific.

The goalpost keeps shifting from legal, law-abiding immigrants to they better assimilate, say nothing bad or we are going to create policies which actively target some group based on how a particular government feels about them.

New comment by shankr in "Trump to impose $100k fee for H-1B worker visas, White House says"

shankr — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 12:10:34 +0000

> I have personally witnessed it myself. I have countless Indian friend who are candid with me. They are biased against whole communities. Blacks, Muslims, etc.

So are Americans. People are going to bring their biases. If you are serious about this, start vetting all immigrants about thier biases or racism. Are you saying Cubans or Latinos don't bring their own racism? Or other Europeans didn't do it? Why is this cherry-picking going on?

New comment by shankr in "Trump to impose $100k fee for H-1B worker visas, White House says"

shankr — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 12:06:49 +0000

American immigration has functioned this way for years. Where do you think Little Italy or the Greek sections of town originated? This is how immigrants have behaved for centuries, it's not exclusively a phenomenon among people of color. European immigrants did the same thing and continue to do so. If you mention a street name in NYC to some longtime New Yorkers, they can tell you which community or immigrant group is known to live in that area.

What ultimately matters is whether immigrants are law-abiding and contribute to the local economy. Indians rarely appear in crime statistics and generally comprise part of the highest-earning immigrant demographics.

New comment by shankr in "Exit Tax: Leave Germany before your business gets big"

shankr — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 13:43:48 +0000

Most of Scandinavia is rife with old money. It's just that new entrants aren't allowed to build wealth.

https://www.euronews.com/business/2024/04/01/wealth-inequali...

New comment by shankr in "Ask HN: How did Soham Parekh get so many jobs?"

shankr — Sat, 05 Jul 2025 11:08:42 +0000

> In fact you have the right to reduce your hours from full time to part time if your company employs more than 15 people.

Having the right and your employer agreeing to it isn't the same. Do you want people to go to the court if the employer denies it with the risk of losing the job?

New comment by shankr in "Ask HN: How did Soham Parekh get so many jobs?"

shankr — Fri, 04 Jul 2025 18:48:09 +0000

Yes! It basically means you go full on freelance or just stay put with whatever job you have. I wanted to try freelancing before I quite my full time job but it's not that easy legally.

New comment by shankr in "Germany's 49-euro ticket resulted in significant shift from road to rail"

shankr — Tue, 15 Oct 2024 13:33:10 +0000

It was instrumental in spreading COVID[1]. Also found to be the case with other airborne diseases[2]

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8552583/

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6280530/

New comment by shankr in "Germany's 49-euro ticket resulted in significant shift from road to rail"

shankr — Sun, 13 Oct 2024 11:43:16 +0000

Although you fall sick more often in winter when using public transportation.

New comment by shankr in "Stability AI discusses sale amid cash crunch, The Information reports"

shankr — Thu, 16 May 2024 17:42:18 +0000

I did interview for them and got rejected. The job was interesting but should consider myself lucky that I didn't get it.

New comment by shankr in "Ask HN: How's the current state of hiring in the LLM field?"

shankr — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 19:24:11 +0000

Yeah I was in the same boat coming from classical ML. I am just doing MLOps/DE these days. Although I have been down levelled to almost junior level after having 10+ years of experience. Struggling a bit with being treated like a junior again! Much less autonomy to pick my own task.

New comment by shankr in "I spend £8,500 a year to live on a train"

shankr — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 19:09:50 +0000

Wherever the pay is proportionally lower. If people are making 1500 bucks then charging them 2000 won't work.

New comment by shankr in "Microsoft bets on Germany in €3.2B AI push"

shankr — Sat, 17 Feb 2024 19:41:27 +0000

They could have just gone to Switzerland and Germany would have been nearby! Also you get Germand and French speakers! So easy to jump between France and Germany.

New comment by shankr in "Microsoft bets on Germany in €3.2B AI push"

shankr — Sat, 17 Feb 2024 19:39:40 +0000

I don't think people understood the joke since they might not know what Rundfunkbeitrag is!

Everyone outside of German has to face death and taxes. In Germany you face death, taxes and Rundfunkbeitrag.

New comment by shankr in "Python Packaging, One Year Later: A Look Back at 2023 in Python Packaging"

shankr — Tue, 16 Jan 2024 13:38:32 +0000

I tried using PDM at my new work place and gave up. I had weird issues and since I had used poetry before, I switched to it. Poetry just works out of the box these days.

New comment by shankr in "Ask HN: Help me solve a dilemma, study in the US or take a job in the EU?"

shankr — Mon, 15 Jan 2024 15:15:40 +0000

> + politics (left leaning compared to the US on average)

- Right wing is on rise in many European countries. Dutch recently elected one such government. Germany's right wing party has plans to deport all non white, non German immigrants irrespecrtive of whether they are legal/illegal. They are polling quite high.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/10/politicians-fr...

- Spain/Italy both have right wing governments in power.

Few other cons about most of European countries:

- No matter what you will always be treated like a foreigner. Hence feeling of higher isolation.

- European population is getting old. OP will be working for quite a long time for a very low pension. US employers provide things like 401K and has much robust pension system.

New comment by shankr in "Germany's inefficient love affair with open windows (2021)"

shankr — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 02:47:57 +0000

Yeah I'm surprised how ventilation system is hardly seen in German houses. I suffer from terrible headaches in winter in Germany. On the other hand when I spend winter in France with closed windows and heating on, I have no issues. The only difference is in France where I stay, there is a modern ventilation system.

New comment by shankr in "U.S. GDP grew at a 4.9% annual pace in the third quarter, better than expected"

shankr — Thu, 26 Oct 2023 21:08:20 +0000

Housing is even worse every where else. There is no utopia hidden outside of USA.

New comment by shankr in "Show HN: Software Developer salaries in Germany by technology and city"

shankr — Wed, 21 Jun 2023 19:48:00 +0000

Calling it awfully low is bit of stretch. I would have expected the top 10% to be higher but median not that different. I suppose HN attracts Crème de la Crème of German devs who might be earning higher because these numbers look quite alright to me. I get lot of XING jobs notification with salary ranges mentioned on it and majority of them have like 60K-80K salary ranges.