Ask HN: What cool skill or project interests you, but feels out of reach?

124 points akktor | 3 comments | 09 Jun 25 12:41 UTC | HN request time: 0.705s | source

This question's for all those cool projects or skills you're secretly fascinated by, but haven't quite jumped into. Maybe you feel like you just don't have the right "brain" for it, or you're not smart enough to figure it out, or even worse, you simply have no clue how or where to even start.

The idea here is to shine a light on these hidden interests and the little (or big!) mental blocks that come with them. If you're already rocking in those specific areas – or you've been there and figured out how to get past similar hurdles – please chime in! Share some helpful resources, dish out general advice, or just give a nudge of encouragement on how to take that intimidating first step.

Let's help each other get unstuck!

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scarface_74 ◴[11 Jun 25 15:02 UTC] No.44248402[source]▶

>>44223879 (OP) #

Two things and they are both grinds more than anything else and hard to squeeze time in with work, travel, exercise and just spending time with my wife.

The first is traditional machine learning - not “AI”. I know what I don’t know and I can fake it well enough to talk to a subject matter expert when leading projects and I have a dual math/cs major from three decades ago. But it would take years to be good enough to be at the same level of seniority I am in my existing niche.

The second is more important for my life is learn Spanish well enough to be conversationally fluent. I know some. But my wife and I are going to start living in Costa Rica during the winter and I want to actually learn it to embrace being thier.

replies(1): >>44249201 #

1. noisy_boy ◴[11 Jun 25 16:23 UTC] No.44249201[source]▶

>>44248402 #

> But my wife and I are going to start living in Costa Rica during the winter and I want to actually learn it to embrace being thier.

Tangential thing: years ago, a guy in a hedge fund I was working at left this very high-paying job and lifted and shifted his family to Costa Rica. He shared that his motivation was being able to spend more time with his kids (which is a absolutely fantastic goal). I think I have heard a few more examples of this and your comment is an addition. What is it about Costa Rica? I can obviously google the pros and cons of Costa Rica from a blog or whatever, but I want to directly hear from someone who presumably has been on the ground and shares the HN mindset, whatever that might be.

replies(1): >>44250223 #

2. scarface_74 ◴[11 Jun 25 18:08 UTC] No.44250223[source]▶

>>44249201 (TP) #

I work remotely at a cloud consulting company for company context.

First time zone and proximity to the US and more specifically for me, short flights from cities we consider “home” - Orlando where I live and Atlanta where we are from and where many of our friends and adult sons live.

Second it’s safe, they don’t even have a military,they have a good public health system, it’s relatively easy to become a permanent resident and have access to both their public health care system (caja) and private health care.

Nice apartments and AirBnbs in San Jose are really affordable - $1500-$2500 a month.

You aren’t going to find that combination anywhere else in US time zones besides Panama City Panama and from what I read, it is much more urban, crowded and less tranquil than San Jose Costa Rica.

We went to Costa Rica this year on vacation (Manuel Antonio). Next year we are going back twice - once for a week to get a local “relocation” guide to take us around the different neighborhoods and then going back for a month once we know the lay of the land.

For more context on our current life

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44159562

So it’s really not lifting and shifting for us. We pack everything we own and put them in suitcases and put our condotel unit in the rental pool to offset our mortgage and HOA fees when we are gone for months. We did that domestically for almost a year between late 2022-late 2023