notes.xdavidhu.me

2021

Sat, 26 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

155 small notes exported from my Google Keep from age ~19, the year after I graduated from high school.

Jan 22

i want to make people feel mind blown

Jan 23

I trust in myself, even if I drop out of collage. I only like to do things that interest me. Otherwise its no point. But when it interests me, it works out most of the time. So I trust myself.

Feb 8

sigrid - security talks: give people an experince.

Feb 21

This week in Bugs

I love explaining this stuff, its very cool.

Feb 21

Physics & Math - Im just not at that level yet.

kresz, nem érdekelt az se, alapoktól minden nao tanulva tetszik, mivel részletesen tanulom, jobban tudom a többieknél -> motival
most people dont want to learn it & is considered hard -> motivating
necessary for a lot of modern problems
i have time.

Mar 1

I want to solve global problems with very cool tech innovations (too much coffee) frightfarms greenery soo cool.

Mar 1

I wateched the bill gates 4 times

Mar 1

Make global problems interesting and colorful for young people, motivate them. Give the quickest route to the currently blocking issue (just as I want to cut all the crap out when hacking, to focus only on the given security protection. usually in hacking, its the same thing. you dont even know what are the key things that you should be looking at, thus, you dont find a bug (kernel / android / other stuff I don’t really understand, but probably there is a dead simple check if you can cut through all of the unnecesary stuff))

Mar 1

Költeni kéne a pénzt. Teljesen ilyen sedentary vagyok, várok. Várok, most a COVID ra. De tényleg várni kellene? Nagyon nagyon szeretnék valamit ami mögé teljesen mögé tudnék állni, és minden erőmmel tudnám csinálni.!!

Mar 4

I love this, when you pay attention to very small, unrelated (non tech) stuff to make big improvements. I’d like to do something like this.

Mar 6

Rule 1 - Don’t act when you are emotional. Rule 2 - Still emotional? Great time to practice.

Mar 6

Am I loosing motivation because I locked myself out of every social interaction? Is it not a problem with bug bounty? But only a problem with the lack of social connections? Should I try collaborating more socially?

I went on Twitter (nahamsec/stök) now and can feel the community feeling again a little bit. Should I get back on Twitter?

Mar 6

Water analogy to money. No water -> Your life is all around it. Enough water -> Happy More water -> OK Infinite water from the tap -> I dont care

I’m fine with water if I can drink every day. (daily spending)
Maybe sometimes I even need to fill up a bathtub. (bigger investment)

Mar 7

Tanulás / 2

Awareness!!
Motivációkutatás mint téma érdekes, de nem találok könyvet
Kapcsolatok fenntartása!!
https://www.yearcompass.com/
Reflect on the little things! Minden kurzusról (infók, érzések, célok, motivációk)!
View the problem from different perspectives (Hats (facts, emotional))
‘Package’ thoughts for later. Need to learn to put stuff away, and pick it up later when it’s time to focus on them.

If you do anything, give it attention!! It WILL have value! (kresz, marcus aurelius, ez a tanulós, OS könyv)

Everything worth investigating from a non-emotional perspective!

A célokkal eléggé bajban vagyok. Úgy alapvetően.

Komfortzóna:

Bug bounty Komfortzónán kívüli célok:
Matek, Fizika
Neural networks
Biológia Merész tervek:
Making a global impact by innovating in unrelated fields by combining technology and non technology.

Jelenlegi egyetemmel a céljaim:

Tech foundation matekos felépítése
Neural networks, machine learning
Optical image recougnition
Low level hardware / elektronika
Tehát dolgok amiket sosem tudtam, és nem is nagyon tartottam lehetségesnek vagy nem volt sose kedvem megtanulni
Ezek az alapok hogyha tech + nontech innovációt szeretnék

Mar 7

Document stuff. Document. You will forget it!

Mar 12

Try to be yourself and don’t change you behaviour when talking with someone who is very different. They are not changing, why should you? They give me perspective, I can give them perspective, and maybe have an impact.

Mar 12

Friday Coffee Thoughts

Understanding Things is always great!
Alone its better (uni collab, thriatlon network (the trauma of waterpolo & other group sports))
My relationship with unfair advantages (earned, pure luck)

Mar 12

Success = Work + Luck + Unfair Advanteges

Mar 12

When writing: Imagine like talking to a friend in a bar. (For me, when I’m at a house table game party)

Mar 13

Alternative Writeup - YouTube Reocrd when you find something interesting. Record the whole process. Once fixed, make it as a video.

Alii Abdal & Mark Manson

Motivation from Aliis other videos (2020 money, writing a blog millionaire)

Mar 15

Bug Bounty sessions start out good, but quickly go downhill. And I end up feeling like shit. It’s very OCD triggering. I think almost everything in bug bounty can trigger me, even just slightly. I’m also obsessively reading stuff that I don’t care about, thus just loose all motivation.

Mar 16

Brain is like a CPU (Bill). But really. If I don’t have anythkng scheduled, its still running, same clock speed. But there is no point to sit in an empty infinite loop.

Mar 17

Incident Response meg ilyen nagy datacenter networkingbe kellene dolgoznom.

Mar 17

Update: I think if I have a feeling of “hate” and a feeling of wanting to ignore something, I should listen/watch it even more, because it has some value that I feel like is “taken from me”, so I wanted to make it, but they did.

Mar 19

Something elegant. DownDetector - Simple, elegant, powerful.

Mar 19

Youtube is great. It’s really nice. But it’s passive, and one sided. Is there a way to create quality content, which is not one-sided? Because like I don’t want others to just watch my videos all day, I want them to also do something.

Mar 21

If I can’t be myself around someone, that usually means I have some unresolved issues with that person. Try resolving. I know its hard.

Mar 23

Its not work, but the daily challange. Your CPU is running anyways, what challenge do you use it on?

Mar 23

“I’m always working. It looks like work to them, but it’s like play to me.” - Naval Ravikant

Mar 24

When doing bug bounty, the normal state is the fun, playfuly, exploring side of me. Sometimes the obsessive clouds come, and they block it. But it’s still there.

Mar 24

Meditation: Me going down into the insides of my body with a torch (to the machines) to see whats up.

SSH-ing in, running some diagnostics..

Mar 25

HeadStart Research Bring you up to speed to the important research problems quicky, so you can focus on the meaningful stuff.

Usually the actual problem is just some “very simple” challenge. But most people can’t work on it, since it’s hard to get to the core.

GCP hacking headstart
Bluetooth hacking headstart
Webapp hacking

Bit like Khan Academy.

“We shouldn’t spend time on solved problems.” “Don’t try to solve something thats already solved.” “We solved a bunch of problems already. You don’t have to do it again.”

Mar 28

Where is my attention going? (would be great to discuss with someone on a weekly basis)

Mar 30

Schedule time for thinking.

To think, without internet / devices. To think about the big picture. We don’t really do that anymore.

(Books that are still relevant and were written before the information age: e.g. Aurelius)

Apr 3

switching between no motivation and insane obsessive over responsibility

Apr 4

I’d like to work in infrastructure that runs when most of the people dont. (e.g. radio on a holiday)

It’s very cool, and calming.

Apr 9

Comsume less, but better.

The music, videos, books are made by people like you! With ambitions like you! Let them know you liked it!

Apr 11

Curiosity.

Focus on this, even in bug bounty. Those are the really fun hacks. (Oculus, SpaceX Starlink)

Apr 11

I’m missing the in between time. When I’m on the bus, coming home.

Just refreshing youtube over and over currently in this time.

Apr 11

Not only I miss social interactions, I also miss love.

I’d like to spend time with friends who I love and respect and can be myself with, who love me, respect me, and want to be with me.

I feel like currently I’m the only one pushing for meetings & calls. This might be a biast feeling, doesn’t fully represent the others love, but its a bit sad.

Apr 12

Bug Bounty Conference

Colorful design
TED style talks -> Less, but better
Focus on entertainment
Live stream of all talks, real life twitch integration
BB Platform Sponsors
Afternoon -> Live hacking events with teams & triagers
Programs in the city (running event)
Motto: “Yeah, this cold be online, but we are online every day.”
Entertainment, bring together the most fun parts of bug bounty
Mint a Playit Show volt régen
Just extreme high quality

Popup Live Hacking Events

Apr 13

Make Curiosity as easy as possible. Least friction.

Music making should be easy and accessible, anytime
I should be able to hack on different targets without worrying about bunch of security
Making an Android app should be least-friction, and worry-less

Apr 14

Spark - Run Together

Twitch-like live interaction running app.

Alert on other runners kms
Can send voice memos to the running group
Synced music
battle royale mode, last one eliminated
name: run

Apr 16

Bug Bounty hunting like the mining pools.

But how to divide the bounties fairly?

Apr 16

My problem with content creation I’d like to make it, but I don’t like to consume it on mass scale. It’s very passive. Like I don’t want my audience to just lay in bed and watch my stuff without doing anything all day.

But then what should I do?

Apr 16

Emotional incidents have multi-day recovery time. Don’t ignore that.

Apr 17

Tannenbaum’s writing is so comforting. It feels impossible to not understand. I want to write the same way.

Apr 21

I love music broll videos that create emotions. (Apple ads, my berlin broll)

Apr 23

May 7

I know that I don’t know. And I know I could know. And I am anxious since its probably not that difficult its just me who doesnt get it.

It would be so good to understand all this. And its probably not that difficult.

I don’t understand the assembly base64. I feel like I could cry.

May 9

Fill the days with run like activities. High effort high return activities.

May 14

stacksmashing: make the videos in a calm style, the bug doesnt have to be crazy, explain step by step

May 14

Going down to the basics of a topic feels like wasting time, when actually it is the opposite.

May 14

My problem with call-hacking: I feel like I am in a hurry, so I can’t go as deep and I cant slow down as often I (any my ocd ass) would like to.

May 14

The inter-day calendar scheduling: Plan ahead, make time for things. It will not happen on its own.

May 15

Go low, and build back up:

when testing something/learning/developing, using the easy method out there is probably not the simples and not the most effective solution to the problem. Go low, understand the system, and get the skills to build back up, the exact stuff you need.

May 18

Router with a separate flashable raspberry pi like os. Most self hosting and open source stuff needs a server, but using a Pi is a bit messy, but everyone needs to have a router at home anyways. That could have a separate pi inside it.

May 18

Run your CDN at home, and make money. Extreme latency reduction for everyone, because the CDNs will be in the city.

May 18

I am blocked by competition

I would like to participate in activites such as teaching or education, but I have an immediate reaction to that which says

May 18

Why do I have to give the podcast a name?

May 26

I really like companies who are doing tech in the real world. Like Lime. Like Ingress. Or Pokemon Go.

May 26

Meeting my own bar. It is getting harder. I am impact-oriented. I am not satisfied anymore with my previous impacts. Doing them again doesn’t feel meaningful.

May 26

Noticing internal incidents. I think GaryVee, self awareness, content like that, and the time I am giving myself allows me to better see my true feelings. I am learning to spot the tention that rises in certain situations. I can’t yet deal with it fully, but I am starting to accept it as an indicator. An indicatior I dare to listen to.

I want to do stuff that my older “identity” with other people would disregard. But I should not push it away, but acknowledge it. I would like to date casually. I would like to drink alcohol while meeting others. It collides with my older identity, but that is okey, we are changing, and I am seeing it.

I image in best as a signal. It get’s noisey when something is not right. Interacting with me in that state is a negative experience for both me, and other people. But when I am myself, the signal gets clear. I becomes a straight line. Thats the real me. Clean me.

May 28

It’s not the stuff thats good or bad, but its about what my mental state is. Sometimes everything is just meh, but when I feel better overall, the same music starts to feel way better, I get excited about the same exact things that felt mediocre before.

So it’s not the things, but me.

May 29

I want to create something around FLOW ACTIVITIES. Two way activities that bring value to the person. Like running. NOT just passive content.

May 30

Relaxing, when there is a constant itch.

It doesn’t really go away. Only in very rare cases (1day/week), when its the end of the day, and I have done a lot of things.

Otherwise its a constant undercurrent.

(And when hanging out with friends. That could be the key here.)

May 30

Preferred Attributes

Accessible By Anyone
Skill Driven (anyone can get bounties)
Gives people an activity, not just more consumable content
Working on impactful problems
Makes people go Wow (lime)
Crowdsourced

May 30

Mi kell a cégeknek? Mik az aquisitionok? Tudjuk crowdsourceolni?

Ez azért kell mert kell legyen egy vevő. Ahonnan jön a pénz amivel ki lehet fizetni az embereket.

Szóval mintha egy sima cég lenne egy fejleszto termékkel, csak megfuszrrezve a bug bounty attributumaival.

May 30

Szerintem megvan a core motivation: Szeretnék egy crowdsourced projektet.

Jun 1

It is great that I am so mellow and compassionate. That I accept most of the stuff by other people.

But, if I am doing this, I also must take self reflection and course correction a high priority. Otherwise I will just oppress myself in things I don’t want to do.

Jun 1

Knowing that someone meditates is similar to knowing that a company ha a bug bounty program.

You can be sure that the product can handle incidents pretty well.

Jun 1

“near-death-experience” when loosing balance in the window.

Can’t keep the feeling of impermanance up, keep going back to default mode just a few hours after.

Jun 1

I have this weird feeling creeping up even after I make a todo list and everything that “meh”, I don’t really want to do it. But I don’t really want to do anything. And not in a lazy way, but in a negave way. I would like to enjoy it.

Jun 1

Wow its a bit lame that I don’t have the motivation for bug bounty. I was so good at it. Im kind of still worrying about not doing it.

Also I don’t have the motivation to read other people’s writeups. And I even start talking about something egocentric shit under the message. If the same would happen to me, I would feel pretty bad… And I expect others to go read and be excited. When I am not that myself.

It’s I guess what you’d call depressive. I don’t really have the motivation to do anything. I don’t really see the point, or the meaning in the future.

Looking at older notes and stuff that motivated me feels “not really good”. Don’t really see the hype in them.

Is it because being at home? Is it because a lack of social connections? Is it because I am not busy today? Is it because of stress about exams I don’t want to study for?

Or am I fucking bipolar.

Jun 6

I think the key in social interactions is to focus on keeping the quiet confidence.

That way, I am not dragged around by my worries with the shallow conversations, and can take control, and manouver the situation myself.

Jun 13

I think currently my biggest goal shifted towards building a loving & supporting group of friends. But I am not really allowing myself to accept that, and to go work on that.

Jun 17

Configuring kubernetes feels like modded minecraft.

Jun 19

I am noticing a pattern that I have a bunch of ideas and “goals”, but I delay starting until I feel a specific way. Like thats not going to happen.

It’s this. I might be tired, feeling meh. It’s this that I have to work with.

Jun 19

Football Euro 2020 is a great example of why doesn’t everything have to have a point.

Jun 19

Even with people who look tough or intense, I should act really kindly and lovingly, like with a little child.

This photo captures it really well, I look extremely not like I want someone to just cuddle with me, but I was exactly that.

Jun 19

My weekends are terrible currently. I am literarely just killing time and waiting for it to be over. I am happy when I see the clock and its close to bedtime.

I am not motivated to bughunt. I feel meh. I watch tiktoks and spend the whole day on the phone. But I an fantisizing that there is something that I am passionately working on.

Jun 19

I think the reason behind my unmotivated-ness is my lack of social connections. The kind of connections I need right now.

Jun 20

There are so many businesses, solving all of our problems. But now there needs to be some that give us stuff to do with all the free time.

Jun 25

I need new, hard, high effort high reward, innovation needed challenges at work. Not everything has to be that, but there has to be some.

Jun 25

I thought BugBounty is going to make me friend and solve social issues, just like school forced it.

It does not. You have to do it yourself. But, it gives more opportunities.

Jun 25

There is a big opporrunity for profit in B2B services, because they spend money much easily than a private person.

Example: Spending 50-100usd on a bairly used grafana subscription. For a personal project, that would be crazy.

Jun 30

Italy is great, but as a side! Restaurants look great, but as a side! As a side to an impactful mission that I am working torwalds.

Jul 2

My North Star The Bug Bounty Accessibility Principles I strive to incorporate in any project I am working on.

Open to anyone (no age, edu)
Skill/Work quality based
Provides financial rewards (thus a work opportunity)
Public Recougnition (ugródeszka)

I want to provide the opportunities that bug bounry gave me, to others.

I belive work as a whole is moving torwards these principles as well.

Jul 2

I’m feeling weird after a day of compliments about my work. I’m obsessive. Why?

Guess: My goals are being loved I think, and my sub-goals are based on this, like wanting to impress people. I think I am scared since I “acomplished” what I was striving for, and now its scary to say “that’s it”.

Jul 2

End-To-End encrypted XYZ I want to have end-to-end encrypted notes. But that would just need a simple E2E database. That could become an “E2E” library, using which, you could build anything E2E.

Jul 3

I have to focus on keeping 95% of my feelings around that I have inferior knowlegde, and 5% to enjoy the praise that I have superior.

Jul 3

Think Week(end)

No internet
No devices (?)
Friend / Alone (?)

Jul 3

It feels like real work is putting together the “POC” in my head. After I feel every component is ready, actually making it feels like “wasting time”. It’s not true, but feels like.

I can feel the missing peaces, and when they are falling together in place.

Jul 6

My initial thoughts before coming to the corp work environment:

From the outside it looks like nothing is happening. What the *** could they ALL do, ALL DAY LONG, EVERY DAY? Crazy..

Jul 7

Really stressful dream. Core concept: I can’t just let stuff go, I feel like I must do a bunch of stuff I don’t feel like doing.

Jul 7

to further my point, I think we consume so much content that even travelling and looking aroznd would loose meaning.

The value will be in activities. In Doing Stuff. Solving challenging problems.

We will consume so much that we will want to Do Stuff.

Jul 11

After meditation: “I can see” my emotional timeseries graphs. There is one for every emotion, and the emotions have an intensity value. I can feel when for example frustration spikes, and returns to normal gradually.

Jul 11

Instagram is pretty cool if I follow people I care about.

Jul 17

Security really alignes with my obsessions. Contamination -> Gaining access. GitHub SSH key.

Jul 17

Weekends for automating and improving my work experience. Balancing 100% security and integrity with the excitement of customizing and automating

Jul 17

I am not great to communicate with if I am in an Obsessive Session. Thankfully I am only in an ObSession 70% of the time. Goal: Lower this ratio.

This makes me unique. This gives me inanse amount of unfair advantage. I can not not care. Security is my identity. I feel shit and obsessive until I understand it fully or find a solution.

A superpower, and a super-badpower all in one.

Jul 24

I have an active blocker around “my passion, doing my dream” and all of that. Watching this video made me feel cringey https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tiu8Aro-U2I, and this cringey feeling is what happens when I myself have some undresolved issue.

Aug 14

Networking Optimisation Innovation. A company.

Aug 16

Gyógyszertári rendszer, Garmin, minden ami picit is letér a számítógépes szervice számítógép usernek giga nagyot droppol qualitybe. Innovate there, with tech that kicks ass.

Sep 7

I’m not “anticipaing” anything after work. I don’t really have anything to wait for when work is over. I dont really have anything to do if I check in later in the morning.

I was thinking about what should I be excited about. And one thing gave me a little spark. Building things. Building quality things in tech, outside the tach world. Thats where the impact is. ->

My desire to impress / make people go wow. I measure impact by impressing people with quality who are used to the low end stuff.

Sep 11

Opening Coospace really scred me. Got me in a state that I hate to be in. I do not want to go to those classes. Its a mess. These whole coospace posts are so low quality. I get into a state of high-school that I feel like I must do it, and I start to panic. I never feel this way about stuff that I actually want to do. Not at work, and not at bug bounty. I can stay confident there. Here I loose my confidence completely.

I could drop out.

But then am I dropping out because I think I am better than those people? Am I dropping out because of “non-real” reasons such as the UX is trash? Are these just made-up reasons that I can’t get myself to do this? Writing it down it doesn’t make a lot of sense. I could really just drop the fuck out.

I was feeling good, and Coospace got me in a real bad place. I don’t want to do it, but I’m even afraid to say that. I am thinking that I will also be sad and worried sometimes if I drop out. Would it really be better? I would also just sit at home scrolling Instagram being miserable. Is that what I want? These are pretty unrelated to each other actually.

I could drop out.

I know whats messing me up about dropping out. Doing so feels like would be a huge judgement to all the people I know who are in university. It would be a way of saying “you are so bad that you are struggling in that shit”. And I might actually think that to a degree and judge people who are going all out and going to university because they feel like they must. But I do the same thing.

Sep 15

Making a presentation or working on the frontend desig is a very emotional and artistic process.

Sep 25

Get to the source. Do not spend time on what is already solved. Get to the problem, right away.

( tutorial on how to properly proxy ios system apps)

Sep 26

It motivates me to understand how things work. I really enjoyed szétszerelni the XC90 car and looking under the hood. I should focus on doing stuff like this.

Sep 27

Its insane to look back at old photos (just from 3 years) and see how much I evolved. I am a different person.

And everyone else around us is constantly evolving. Everyone is at different states.

Sep 28

I should set a goal: “Do something new every week.”

Oct 2

Data driven decidion making freaks me out. I want to be emotional. (product ticktock, sprint)

Oct 4

I have a vaige memory of an article describing a security issue around gmail, using the “+” int the email addresses.

I think I had a dream about it but it makes me worried that I’m a bit “unsure”.

I think I mixed it up in a dream with the “you should delete chrome now” forbes article I read yesterday. I even searched for it on google and no results. This that I searched for it is kind of freaks me out. that I am unsure enough to search for it.

I am obsessive about this.

I am also tried and crashing because of lunch.

Oct 4

I enjoy the facebook incident WAY TOO MUCH. I really should work in incident response.

Oct 11

Transforming my professional brand into a research “lab”.

Oct 11

A quick way to poll my internal mental state is to:

See how much I enjoy listening to music from my liked playlist.

Oct 12

Careful observation of something always brings value.

Oct 12

I need to book alone time for understanding and processing data.

Oct 13

Why can I find bugs in bug bounties?

Careful observation almost 100% finds security issues, since the developers have NO CAPACITY to carefully observer their own systems.

Oct 28

Everyone wants to feel good. If someone is feeling grumpy, keep, and do not hide your mood.

Oct 28

Being like Apple. Low quantity, but impressive quality output. Low communication that is not the hifhest quality.

Oct 28

Its ALL in the head The feeling you get when flying on an airplane or being at an airport is not because of the airport. Its the novelty and the perception in the brain.

Csapatépito observing my emotions

Oct 28

My optimal state is ALWAYS when I can take stuff lightly, and joke about it. If not, that is a layer of obsession, or anxiety.

Oct 29

PLAN FOR THE NEXT WEEK. THAT IS THE LONG TERM.

Oct 31

“Cause if you don’t care, why the fuck should we?” - 7:40

Nov 16

My emotional reactivity in the business sector is a superpower.

Update: THAT I CARE.

Nov 18

It’s scary and the same time liberating to see how little other people care about your traumas or successes.

Nov 21

Teaching a course at my old high school about bug bounties. Making an impact.

Realising how powerful bug bounty is after wtching the “homeless to millionaire” challenge.

I though what if I would go homeless? I would try to get access to ANY computer, start hacking, and probably find a bug and get a few thousand dollars. No need to get a job. Nothing. That is powerful.

Teaching the kids how to get to the edge of the research. Struggling on the edge is good. Struggling with trying to proxy the traffic is useless. This connects to this idea of mine.

I though previously that its not impactful enough and useless to do this locally. The beginning of the steve jobs book shows me how extraordinary things happen just from boring, non-special, everyday activities, locally.

Nov 26

Traditional software development is kind of the same job as someone who is making food. There is nothing completely unique and irreplacable in it, but people still pay for it, since they don’t want to do it themselves.

For me originally software was different, and I always thought of it as creating something noone else did before, and innovation. That is also an option, but thats more rare.

Maintaining a tram system in budapest by design requires multiple people to keep up. Another example of effort driven output.

I want to do very specific, breakthrough driven output, with high impact.

Nov 26

A great understanding of a concept is similar to a codebase where you can step into every action until the atomic parts.

Nov 26

Megkérdezni másoktól:

“Mi az az egy, számodra legértékesebb content, amit ajánlanál nekem?”

Nov 27

“Trained professional” sounds cool. But I don’t want to be that. I want to be the one who decides what to train to the potential professionals. I feel like I care that much, and others dont.

Nov 27

Security CAN NOT block me from doing what I want to do. Period.

Nov 27

I don’t want to work on problems that are already solved. If only implementation and man-hours are needed, that problem in my eyes is solved.

Nov 28

My value is the insane amount of self-reflection I do.

Nov 28

My ideal state is when concepts are clear, simple, atomic, fully understandable AND calm.

Nov 28

I hate thinking of the long term. I always worry of what to do in the short term. Long term planning seems soulless and corporate.

BUT, Now I sometimes think back to months or years of me worrying on the short term, and ignoring the long term. But I am here, in the future! This is the long term. It’s going to happen either way. Is it really worth it worrying on the short term?

Nov 28

Why am I gravitating torwards pointless content? -> Distraction. It is distraction. Edit: Or phisically being on a reduced processing power.

Input less environment is special. No music, nothing.

Nov 29

People want you for 2 things. You either:

Do stuff they don’t want to do
Do stuff they CANT do.

I want to do something others CANT. That requires such an understanding and MORE THAN work, that others are unable to do it, EVEN with funding. Yes.

Nov 30

All of these algorithms fascinate me. They always boild down to something unexpectedly simple. That you can explain in the most basic wqy.

Nov 30

OK, I think I know why I feel like university is not accomplishing anything:

They are teaching me the basics of something, and everyone else is learning as well. There is nothing novel about it. There is nothing groundbreaking.

But. I might could reframe it.

I think this is obvious. I want to do stuff noone has ever done before. Or find stuff noone ever found before. Those paths motivate me.

Dec 4

I want to be like her. I am competitive. I want to be the best. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfXjEYMlPsY&t=1s

A very relatble moment which confirms how I am competitive in bugbounty: 8:10 , she is disappointed for the 6.th place. I immediately remembered my reaction to the bounty from the SSRF video.

Dec 7

Kalkulus: I do not understand it, and I am kind of afraid. But, it feels like a waste of time. Everyone else is there learning it.Isnt anything special or unique.

Dec 7

I have FOMO of just rolling with stuff I don’t really want to do, even though I have the means to do whatever I want.

Dec 9

learning on demand, otherwise its low efficiency.

Dec 10

Steve Jobs

I though previously that its not impactful enough and useless to do this locally. The beginning of the steve jobs book shows me how extraordinary things happen just from boring, non-special, everyday activities, locally.
Ordinary Things make up Extraordinary Things.
Stuff happens. People move on.
Not being a *****.

Dec 10

Its all about intentions. Even if you have a mental illnes that has a massive stigma to it, going public about it and stating everything that you are doing to keep it in check resolves the issue. I think people will support it, and even if you go crazy, they will support you rather than escape.

Dec 14

I love live performances. How could I make IT security presentation as emotionally impactful as concerts?

Dec 15

Be true to yourself you fucking *****

DO NOT BE A FUCKING *****

Dec 19

Toxic Ambition

Dec 19

Seeing the people working in a local restaurant, and looking at the lame restaurant management software:

again: innovating in tech, but not in the tech sector.

Dec 22

Sport variety (run, swim, ice skate, gym), ONLY SKIP MAX 1 DAY
Social: ONLY Skip 1 day

Dec 23

I am an expert. Even though for me it doesn’t seem like a big deal. Look how challenging is for me to do the algorithms exam.

Dec 23

To be widly successful I have to let go of personal resistance to change. Stuff happens in the world, no matter how I feel about it.

Dec 29

A core identity goal of mine is to to insane shit while staying rational.

Now, because of my fear of loosing control, I am limiting myself on how insane things I do.

How I archived 10 years of memories using Spotify

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Music and smells are two of the most effective ways to re-experience the emotions of a specific time in the past. Listening to a song from a particular time of my life brings me back to how I felt at that point in ways photos can’t. Sometimes I can even recall exact visuals of what I was doing or where I was walking when listening.

Over the last 10 years, I followed a system that allows me to re-experience any specific time of any year.

Every January 1st, from desktop/web, I:

Create a new playlist. Title it the past year.
Copy all of my liked songs and paste them into the new playlist. This will maintain the order.
Empty my liked songs.
Save an out-of-bounds backup of the new playlist, in case my Spotify account messes up in the future. I select all & paste it into a sheet in Google Drive.
Start listening to new music, like them over the year.

Since the archive saves the order of likes, it grants more granular access than just years. For example, if I want to re-experience how the fall of 2016 felt, I open the corresponding year’s list, scroll 1/4 down from the top, and start listening.

During the year, when I listen to my liked songs, I usually start from the top of the stack, without shuffle. This is natural for me, since the newly saved songs are the ones I like the most at a given time. This causes me to listen to a “rolling window” of my liked songs as time passes, linking specific music to specific dates.

In addition to saving songs that I find myself and particularly like, I like to save songs that are playing around me, on the radio, or at places I visit, and somehow stand out. Even if I might not fully like them at first, I find that they serve as great anchor points, and they usually grow on me after a few listens.

To maintain the integrity & not override the memories associated with specific songs, I rarely listen to or re-save songs from the past years. Sometimes I give myself exceptions, though, especially with remixes. ;)

See my last 10 years: https://open.spotify.com/user/xdavidhu

Without a goal, I am cooked

Sun, 06 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I used to have goals. I used to have strong motivations. These were the things that kept me going and anything that didn’t align with them, I had extreme difficulty getting myself to do. This is why I performed so poorly in high school, and this is why I dropped out of university. I simply could not do stuff for the sake of it. While at first sight, this could look like irresponsible & self-centered behavior, I do value this in myself a lot, since it never allows me to settle. It basically makes it impossible for me to do something I don’t find meaning in.

In the last few years, something shifted. I feel I’m losing this. It is fair to say, that at this point, I don’t have any goals and I am not particularly motivated. I don’t know where I am going, and I am a little bit ashamed of it. Maybe this is because I feel like “I made it”. What I have now in terms of career was all I dreamed about - working at one of the biggest tech companies, going behind the curtain, uncovering the mysteries I was always fascinated by as a child. (I was really a fan. I watched The Internship so many times - this is me recreating the Golden Gate Bridge shot during my first time in the US.)

But what now? Previously, the next step was always so clear. But I guess I grew up. Do I keep working at the same place for the next decade, become an expert in a specific area, and get promoted many times? I don’t know if that is for me. I need a finish line to train & go for.

I want to create, instead of maintain. Solve something really really hard, instead of maintaining a solution to a really really hard problem that someone solved before me. I want the challenge of doing and creating something impossible. And once done, move on to create the next thing.

What role is that? Or should I just get a life lol?

Compensated

Fri, 02 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I want to create so much value, that what I get back, even if its much smaller, will always be more than enough. And both circles will keep growing overtime.

Btw I like to believe this even works in a selfish way 😉

Burnout

Thu, 01 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

i like to have a possibly highly silly approach to burnout.

Think of it like being an athlete. Where you are constantly training to get better. Similar to how you would keep running further and further, day after day, until at one point you can, you know, run a marathon without stopping or something.

Would it be fun? Would it be easy? Well, probably not, but that’s all fine. This is still just training. I’ll have fun and work with ease later on, once I get really good. But I am not there yet. Not at all. — And paradoxically, this approach is what makes the process fun, and motivating. The potential, I guess.

When things get difficult, I’d prefer to keep going. Maybe push it even further. So that instead of burning out, the original problems would get so small & easy that they wouldn’t even get to me at all. Hence, I wouldn’t burn out! (And I could reset my baseline - so everything I achieved so far would now be just nothing. Exciting! It actually really is.)

Or maybe this is the fast-track to losing all sense of meaning and motivation by age 25. But even if it is… I guess I say, bring it on, man.

So lonely, it physically hurts

Fri, 29 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

And that’s not clickbait at all, the closest I can compare it to is being punched in the gut repeatedly every minute or so.

My life in London is kind of a constant state of the above, separated by work, which distracts me enough during the daytime (or perhaps invokes other, stronger anxieties), however leaving with a strong hangover of going back home in the evening.

It feels like running at 20% capacity, sometimes getting to the point where I can barely get myself to do chores & day to day stuff. Or prepare food. Not to mention cleaning, which usually ends up postponed until the day before someone comes to visit me. Postponed out of feeling powerless. All I can do is lie on my bed and search for the next distraction.

I’m reasonably good at maintaining professional relationships with people, but anything deeper, they will have to initiate.

The longer it goes on, the more I end up thinking that nobody else is lonely besides me. That what I feel my needs are, are weird, and different. Other people are all good with being alone. They are satisfied with only surface-level, professional connections. They don’t want someone to cuddle with in the evening.

On the rare occasions I get to be intimate with someone, I realize that fuck no, there is more depth to people, and we all want to feel loved. I mean, of course.

Constantly being punched in the gut leaves me falling into meaninglessness, leaving all my actions to be motivated either by the urge for distraction, or by my sense of excessive responsibility at work. Nothing around I want to do, or what I am excited about remains. Just the autopilot.

It is like a void into which you fall deeper and deeper, and the harder it becomes to get out of it. The less and less I feel like initiating.

I want to be going after something. I want to play the game. I see where I want to be, but I just can’t make myself get there. It’s very hard to do anything in this state. It’s like starving. Or like pressing the gas pedal while the car is in neutral.

And once deep in the void, it’s very easy to feel that this is really what I deserve. And no one wants to be with me.

Impact

Wed, 14 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I don’t care about your university degree. I don’t care about your certificates. Better yet, I don’t even care about your technical skills, or how much money you’ve made. They are all just tools, a means to an end.

What I am interested in is what impact you had on the world so far. And what impact you are planning to have on it.

I don't want to be not unwell

Sat, 13 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

First of all, I find “unwell” such a great word. It’s clear, elegant, but straight to the point. It’s professional.

I don’t want to live on “easy mode”. I want the challenge – because if I can’t handle this, how will I handle the even harder challenges of the future? It means suffering alone when I could potentially be with someone who cares, or just buying the cheapest food when I could afford to have a nice meal. I want to be resilient. I don’t want to be spoiled. I don’t want to have it easy. That is not who I am. That is not what my values are. Being unwell made me who I am today. I don’t want to lose that.

If I can handle the toughest conditions, and be OK while doing it, imagine what it would be like at the best. I’m chasing the feeling of having 64 baked potatoes in your inventory and an automated farm at home. You know you’ll be fine.

“Imagine what it would be like in the best.”

Well, there is a catch. At what point will it be OK to allow myself to not challenge myself constantly? To let go? To “rest”? Before I get there, having it nice, or having it easy would not be too nice at all. Because I’d feel that’s not who I am.

Honestly, I like the idea of never stepping off the challenge. I want to build a gigantic potato farm. I want to have large chests full of stacks of baked potatoes. Maybe once I have that, I’ll feel OK about eating 10 of them.

Nightmare

Fri, 29 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I just woke up from a very disturbing dream.

I’m in high school, in sports class. We have to do pull-ups and are being graded on how many we can do. Just a regular, yearly test. I performed really well while practicing, so I’m confident that I’ll do well. We are standing next to each other in a straight line, with the teacher in front of us. My name is called first, and I walk out.

Cut. I don’t remember anything after this. I recall some feelings of anxiety and pressure. This is weird and a little bit concerning, I think to myself. But it doesn’t feel like too big of a deal. I go on with the other classes of the day and don’t think much of what just happened.

It’s the next day. To my horror, I see a video of myself in the class group chat from yesterday’s PE class. The video shows me succeeding in the first pull-up, but struggling with the second one, and ultimately failing. After this, the video shows me suddenly turning into something I am really terrified to see. I start going crazy in the classroom. My eyes turn into something dark and aggressive. I start angrily pulling shelfs off the wall, smashing tables, and making a mess. My classmates freeze up in fear. I’m shouting, and I’m aggressive with everyone who tries to stand in my way. The video ends with the teacher and a couple of my classmates tying me up to a chair with a zip tie to contain the situation, all of them frightened by what just happened.

I’m terrified that I don’t remember any of this. I feel ashamed and deeply concerned. As I’m about to send a long message into the group chat with a mix of apology & an explanation of my honest and scary clueless about what has happened, and how, I realize that I’m actually in a class right now, sitting in the back of the room, on my phone. I feel disoriented. I excuse myself to the bathroom. When I get back, I notice I’m in a hospital robe. How did that get on me? The teacher and a few of my classmates come up to me and discreetly whisper to me that the way I’m behaving is really not OK. They tell me that I am two-faced, I play the nice guy, but in reality, I’m an aggressive, dangerous asshole with them. I don’t know what to say. I’m perplexed and overflowing with anxiety, the feeling reaching down to my core.

I just feel even more terrified now. I was just about to get over what happened yesterday at sports class, and trying to rectify it somehow with the people I scared, yet, people are telling me again that I’m aggressive, and I’m behaving in a scary and very concerning way. What could have I done this time? I can only remember going to the bathroom. What happened after that? I can’t recall anything. And now, people tell me that I’ve snapped again, and once again, I became aggressive and dangerous. I lost control.

I can’t trust myself. I am a dangerous person, a monster, who could hurt others any time without remembering what I’ve done. I am afraid of myself. I have to constantly monitor myself to make sure that I never lose control again.

This dream highlighted one of my deepest fears which to this day, manifests itself in everything I do. It brought to light a feeling of fear that I hadn’t felt so intensely in a while. A fear of losing control and hurting the people around me. A fear that I have to be in constant control, otherwise something will go terribly wrong.

I had a person close to me who I witnessed losing control. People got hurt. Both emotionally, and sometimes physically. I was one of them, too.

To be liked by all

Mon, 25 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Like gradient descent, (which for the math people I have to point out I do not know much about) I carefully test and fine-tune who I am to find the optimal local minima of behavior that would result in the most liked and positive reaction in a given social context.

And I think I am very good at it. I can even do it with people I haven’t seen in years. I just pull their old model from some cold storage I wasn’t even aware existed and continue the behavior I optimized for them years ago in high school. And if it doesn’t work, I just re-adjust.

This already requires immense effort, but it gets even more complicated as more people get into the picture. At one point, the best behavior for one person will result in someone else getting hurt. It doesn’t happen a lot, but when it does, I don’t have a solution for it. I just freeze up.

All of this, so compute-heavy, drains me in no time. Even more importantly, it makes me feel like, for lack of a better word, a constantly fake smiling class clown. I know my fake smile when I see it. Or rather when I feel like doing it. But when it’s happening, it doesn’t feel like there is a way out of it.

Why I am doing it? I want to be liked of course. Or rather I am terrified of being disliked. Being disliked would feel like hurtful proof of a core hypothesis of mine – that I’m an undesirable person.

– Optimising for Authenticity.

Originally, I wanted to put this as the title. This sounds like an exciting new value to follow. It feels like the logical next step. It feels freeing. Yet, the concept of people liking me, better yet loving me for who I am, to some extent, still feels foreign to me.

What is authenticity even? Many times in the midst of being with others, I am filled with anxiety strong enough that I can’t even access what is authentic anymore. I don’t know who I am anymore. You could ask me what I want do to, and I’d just blank. I want you to like me, but that’s understandably not something I’d want to portray externally too much.

Recently I have realized that in these situations, what I really want is to get out of the cloud of anxiety and feel calm again. From there on, things will be much clearer. I try to approach it now from a physical angle, since I don’t think I can think myself out of that pressure, no matter how hard I try. Breathing exercises seem to help now. They act on a lower level than my thinking ever could. But this is a sidetrack.

I also think I’d be too hurtful and offensive being my authentic self. I dismiss a lot of my thoughts and feelings as things that do not fit my values. Maybe being myself would not require acting out everything, nobody does that anyway. But maybe people would accept more than I think is possible. Maybe it wouldn’t be as big of a disaster as I imagine it to be. After all, I never really tried it out.

Maybe it is the perfect way to be polarising. I don’t have to be a match with everyone I ever meet. In reality, it is likely going to be very few people who will be a good match. Maybe if I go in with the expectation that we are only going to get along with 1 person out of every 100 people I meet, I will not feel so pressured, and I will not be disappointed. Maybe I could feel more free to act without optimizing too much. Whatever that means in reality.