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A Moment Before Dying
There is a moment, immediately before life becomes no longer worth living, when the world appears to slow down and all its myriad details suddenly become brightly, achingly apparent.
Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 913 posts.
Life, Learning & Writing
Any year
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In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)
examines claims that the big five personality traits is more scientifically valid than the myers briggs personality indicator
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“Printcrime” by Cory Doctorow
This story appears in my collection Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present , 2007
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How I ended up with Mac
Miguel de Icaza's Blog
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Crony Beliefs
[Note: if you prefer audio, you can listen to this essay narrated by Grognor on his excellent podcast Second Enumerations . —Ed. ]
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Keeping David MacKay's 'Sustainable Energy – without the hot air' up-to-date
As the anniversary of Sir David MacKay’s untimely death approaches, I think we should honour his memory by trying to update Sustainable Energy as a crowd-sourced project. I have made an initial attempt to suggest how we might develop the section on photovoltaics but others will want to suggest other
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How we gave colors names
“Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter in…
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If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort
An ever-increasing volume of debug investigations, document writing, and code is written by robots. This has created a new etiquette question when working with a team - when is it OK to forward the output of an AI to another human to read?
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Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)
I grew up believing that following the news makes you a better citizen. Eight years after having quit, that idea now seems ridiculous—that consuming a particularly unimaginative information produ...
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Mathematics for the Adventurous Self-Learner
For over six years now, I've been studying mathematics on my own in my spare time - working my way through books, exercises, and online courses. In this post I'll share what books and resources I've worked through and recommend and also tips for anyone who wants to go on a similar adventure.
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Violated: A traveler’s lost faith, a difficult lesson learned
I am crouched low on the carpeted steps of my apartment building's old staircase, bent over into something resembling the fetal position....
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In Defense of Richard Stallman
Richard Stallman has had a rough month. This article is a decent summary of the events. In short: Stallman made some technically-correct-but-utterly-tactless comments on a private mailing list, most…
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U+237C ⍼ Right Angle with Downwards Zigzag Arrow
This is part 1. Part 2: update : U+237C ⍼ angzarr; Part 3: Monotype Mathematical Sorts Part 4: U+237C ⍼ is (also) S9576 ⍼
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If I get hit by a truck...
This page was created by Aaron Swartz in 2003 detailing what, at the time, he would like to be performed in event of his decease. Aaron passed away in January 2013. This page was not updated between those dates, so it has now been updated to assist the general public.
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My experience with Sarah Jeong, Jason Koebler, and Vice Magazine
Translator and proofreader’s note: There are large parts of this document that don’t parse well either from Chinese or from Naomi’s written…
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Work Hard (2007)
Every mathematician worthy of the name has experienced … the state of lucid exaltation in which one thought succeeds another as if miraculously… this feeling may last for hours at a tim…
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Feynman’s Breakthrough: Disregard Others
Feynman (just off centre) at Wangerooge in 1987 I started my career as a theoretical physicist, and in the late-80s I co-organised a specialist workshop on a small island, Wangerooge, off the coast…
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Teaching C
I was hoping you would mention the dynamic checkers, ASAN etc. My fear is people will start using these but not understand how to really use them properly. Since they’re dynamic checkers you really need a good testing harness and test cases to go with it. The bugs ASAN/TSAN etc catch are usually strange boundary…
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Death by PowerPoint: the slide that killed seven people (2019)
We’ve all sat in those presentations. A speaker with a stream of slides full of text, monotonously reading them off as we read along. We’re so used to it we expect it. We accept it. We even consider it ‘learning’. As an educator I push against ‘death by PowerPoint’ and I'm fascinated with how we
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