Hacker News: ultrasounder

New comment by ultrasounder in "Show HN: Ithihāsas – a character explorer for Hindu epics, built in a few hours"

ultrasounder — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 01:34:41 +0000

Absolutely slick UI and wonderful implementation. As an ardent follower of Santana Dharma I admire OP’s courage and grit to put this piece of work out there. More power to OP and hoping to see more Epics included. Thanks for making and sharing this.

New comment by ultrasounder in "Kanchipuram Saris and Thinking Machines"

ultrasounder — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 04:42:19 +0000

Thanks a million for posting! As a Kanchipuram native(can trace lineage all the way up to 5 generations at least), this was totally unexpected and a pleasant surprise. I have visited one of these Co-op looms and it's mindblowing how to this day the Kanchi Pattu(silk-Tamizh) is made with a handloom. aptly named handicraft. of course, the piece de resistance is the Varadharaja Perumal Kovil which has some of the best and well maintained sculptures on the planet.

This being one such exhibit https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianHistory/comments/1j75nc0/the_...

Brings back my joyous/carefree youth where I would spend summer vacations ambling around the massive temple complex.

New comment by ultrasounder in "Non-Zero-Sum Games"

ultrasounder — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 19:23:24 +0000

Wow!. Such an original piece of "non-AI slop" content in a long time. Kudos for making this as I myself tipping my toes to explore this concept after hearing about it from multiple sources(Naval Ravikant incl). Thanks for making this and looking forward to more podcast episodes. Cheers

New comment by ultrasounder in "Ask HN: What did you read in 2025?"

ultrasounder — Sat, 27 Dec 2025 01:48:06 +0000

Finished scarlet pimpernel on a rainy Christmas Day. Couldn’t put the book down. To think that it spawned a whole genre of super-hero movies where the protagonist hides behind a mask of “ foppiness” and it was written back in 1901 and set against the ever green theme of the French Revolution is mind boggling. Once I finished reading it yesterday, followed it up with the movie of the same title. Well made and acted. Wholly recommend the book first and then the movie.

New comment by ultrasounder in "Ask HN: Career Burnout Looking for Options"

ultrasounder — Wed, 08 Oct 2025 16:31:26 +0000

Nice :-)

New comment by ultrasounder in "Ask HN: Career Burnout Looking for Options"

ultrasounder — Wed, 08 Oct 2025 06:13:06 +0000

Thanks for the book recommendation. Seems like an interesting book. Have seen it recommended a few times here in HN already

New comment by ultrasounder in "Ask HN: Career Burnout Looking for Options"

ultrasounder — Wed, 08 Oct 2025 06:12:10 +0000

Thanks for the book recommendations. Will absolutely check them out. No productive life for me is to be of “some use to others”. That’s what I am contemplating about. Also true regarding jumping from one goal to another without seeing the previous one through. Need to work on that too.

New comment by ultrasounder in "Ask HN: Career Burnout Looking for Options"

ultrasounder — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 17:18:01 +0000

interesting thought. I have this "side project" that I started working with some ex-colleagues that I could see sprouting some legs. My CA UI(unemployment insurance) benefits could potentially fund this for the time being when I do some soul searching and contemplating.

New comment by ultrasounder in "Ask HN: Career Burnout Looking for Options"

ultrasounder — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 17:15:05 +0000

Thanks!. Very thoughtfully framed around gratitude.

New comment by ultrasounder in "Ask HN: Career Burnout Looking for Options"

ultrasounder — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 16:57:04 +0000

Thanks!. Yes. Definitely one of the TOP priorities right now is to "Take the time off" and assess my priorities. In fact, my sons's College Apps could use some help :-)

Ask HN: Career Burnout Looking for Options

ultrasounder — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 16:33:09 +0000

Hi HN, Long time lurker and occasional contributor here. I recently moved to a "high-growth" Startup after spending some significant time in enterprise/corporate. It turned out be a mutual "culture mis-fit" issue. I am burnt-out within the first two weeks of being there and I have asked them to terminate my employment immediately so that I can file for unemployment with state of California(my home state). Right now I am in a technical non-software/Hardware role and have been for the last 20 years since graduating from Grad-school. I tried pivoting into the "next shiny object" several times to no-avail(AR/VR/DS/ML/AI). I even tried getting into the whole "Leetcode" FAANG rat race and eventually gave up on that. I am contemplating on what my next potential career move could be. Truth be told, I have the financial security both from my savings, 401Ks and a spouse who is gainfully employed in a tech role at one of the Big-tech companies(that has a product in every "office"). So, I could just "retire" now and pursue other things. But, I want to lead a productive life , doing something meaningful and worthwhile with the time active work time I have on my hands(I am 47 will turn 48 this feb). Son will be off to college next year and won't have any time pressures. His college fund is taken care of. 80,000 hrs was suggested before. And so was techjobsforgood mentioned before (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40325501). A few of my core-strengths - I am generally a good person to be around, have always made good relationships with my peers and external vendors. So though not a people manager person, I like working with people. Sorry for the rant, but I am in huge mental turmoil and any iota of collective wisdom from HN would just save me not just my career but my "mid-life crisis" as well. I find posting this to HN much more therapeutic than to say "Chat with GPT". Thanks for reading.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45505314

Points: 21

# Comments: 27

New comment by ultrasounder in "Sutton and Barto book implementation"

ultrasounder — Sun, 11 May 2025 22:39:09 +0000

Super helpful while I come upto speed with this field in general. Currently taking the XCS234(RL @ Stanford online) and this book is referenced for everything.

New comment by ultrasounder in "The Beginner's RL Playground"

ultrasounder — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 00:05:04 +0000

The Author used to be on the Unity Agents team and was my first every introduction to Whatever Learning. This looks cool and timing couldnt be better as I am working through XCS234(Stanford Deep RL course)

The Beginner's RL Playground

ultrasounder — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 00:05:04 +0000

Article URL: https://awjuliani.github.io/web-rl-playground/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43827424

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

New comment by ultrasounder in "Show HN: I built a deep learning engine from scratch in Python"

ultrasounder — Sat, 26 Apr 2025 02:03:20 +0000

Hi I just found this resource. Is this a full-fledged Transformer implementation? If so, I would like to throw GRPO on it to see what happens. I mean what could possibly go wrong :-)

New comment by ultrasounder in "A (Long) Peek into Reinforcement Learning"

ultrasounder — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 02:44:48 +0000

Thanks a lot! Looks like a lot of fun. Like I said will combine it with my Stanford online course

New comment by ultrasounder in "A (Long) Peek into Reinforcement Learning"

ultrasounder — Wed, 26 Mar 2025 18:21:24 +0000

I found this in the Authors GitHub repo. Looks interesting. Will use this to complement my learning resources https://github.com/farhanhubble/discover-drl/blob/master/Red...

New comment by ultrasounder in "Introduction to CUDA programming for Python developers"

ultrasounder — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:56 +0000

Very nice-write up. The in-line quiz, which i think is AI generated(QnA) is very useful to test understanding. Wish all tutorials incorporated that feature.

New comment by ultrasounder in "Meta announces LlamaCon, its first generative AI dev conference on April 29"

ultrasounder — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 01:47:15 +0000

Thanks! This made my day. ROFL.

New comment by ultrasounder in "ElevenReader by ElevenLabs"

ultrasounder — Wed, 12 Feb 2025 08:18:00 +0000

Bravo!