Hacker News: zielsen

New comment by zielsen in "Ask HN: What are you working on?"

zielsen — Sun, 02 Nov 2025 22:43:20 +0000

I've been working on forecasting NHL games at nhlforecasts.com.

It's been a fun challenge as the games are pretty clustered in terms of scoring, and the games themselves are random with minimal points scored. I'm also not the biggest fan of hockey, so it's been fun for me to see which teams are ranked high.

I've been leaning on AI for the first time which has been interesting; I see a ton of content with AI around web dev, but less around more data science. It's interesting how quickly AI will break a common sense rule, like data leakage. Really fun learning experience!

In terms of platform, I've been having a ton of fun with static sites. Cheaper to host and more secure, all I need is a domain name to get it accessible on the web.

Feature Requests for Zillow

zielsen — Sun, 15 Jun 2025 04:26:52 +0000

Article URL: https://www.zacharynielsen.com/posts/zillow-feature-request/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44280530

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by zielsen in "Ask HN: What cool skill or project interests you, but feels out of reach?"

zielsen — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 04:58:59 +0000

I’ve gotten really into linguistics recently. Digging into primary texts, answering a problem, the whole nine yards.

My difficulty here is if this problem is interesting or unique, and where to go from here. AI says so (but how much is that worth?)

Fun problems to have! It’s pretty amazing that we can Just Do Things, what a time.

New comment by zielsen in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (April 2025)"

zielsen — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 03:47:16 +0000

For a more data science-y project, I'm having a blast building https://nhlforecasts.com. I live in a town with a hockey team, and figured the best way to become a fan would be to understand the sport from a data driven approach.

I did a ton of work on building an Elo model first, but was getting very compressed results in terms of postseason predictions. I swapped to a Bayesian approach which has really taken off. Not sure how it's going to handle the second round of games approaching, but that's a problem for the future!

New comment by zielsen in "Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?"

zielsen — Tue, 04 Jul 2023 21:37:49 +0000

https://www.zachnielsen.org/

I’ve been writing on and off for a few years now! I’ve mostly been using this to note any particularly troublesome bugs/commands as well as use writing to think through some analysis throughout my career.

New comment by zielsen in "Ask HN: Where to work to combat climate change?"

zielsen — Tue, 26 Jul 2022 04:40:18 +0000

I know that Lower Carbon [1] has a job board consisting of climate companies that they invest in. I'm sure Stripe has something as well.

[1]: https://lowercarboncapital.com/get-off-the-couch/

New comment by zielsen in "Ask HN: Have you created programs for only your personal use?"

zielsen — Thu, 14 Apr 2022 11:16:54 +0000

Fascinated and would love to hear more! Any success so far? If you put out a write up I’d love to read it.

New comment by zielsen in "Ask HN: What you up to? (Who doesn't want to be hired?)"

zielsen — Tue, 02 Nov 2021 04:09:58 +0000

This is an awesome idea! I’ve been thinking about doing something similar in the hot sauce area. Any lessons/takeaways? Would love to know how you got your first customers.