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
Blogging vs. Blog Setups
Rakhim's homepage. I build open source projects and write about technology, programming, and life.
Too Much Dark Money in Almonds
Everyone always talks about how much money there is in politics. This is the wrong framing. The right framing is Ansolabehere et al’s: why is there so little money in politics? But Ansolabehe…
The True Cost of Commuting
It was a beautiful evening in my neighborhood, and I was enjoying one of my giant homebrews on a deck chair I had placed in the middle of the street, as part of a nearby block’s Annual Stree…
GTD in 15 Minutes – A Pragmatic Guide to Getting Things Done
GTD—or “Getting things done”—is a framework created by David Allen for organizing and tracking your tasks and projects. Its aim is a bit higher than just “getting things done”, though. (It should have been called “Getting things done in a much better way than just letting things happen, which often turns out not to be…
Books and lectures don't work
Designing media to reflect how people think and learn
How to Learn JavaScript Properly
Learn JavaScript Properly (For Beginners and Experienced Programmers) This study guide, which I also refer to as a course outline and a road map, gives you a structured and instructive...
Conflict vs. Mistake
Jacobite – which is apparently still a real magazine and not a one-off gag making fun of Jacobin – summarizes their article Under-Theorizing Government as “You’ll never hear…
The Gettysburg PowerPoint Presentation (2000)
Good morning. Just a second while I get this connection to work. Do I press this button here? Function-F7? No, that's not right. Hmmm. Maybe I'll have to reboot. Hold on a minute. Um, my name is Abe Lincoln and I'm your president. While we're waiting, I want to thank Judge David Wills, chairman of the committee…
This is Water by David Foster Wallace (Full Transcript and Audio)
David Foster Wallace's remarkable 2005 commencement speech, This is Water, is a timeless trove of wisdom for living a meaningful life. Here is a full transcript along with audio.
Watts Backlist
A part of new Peter Watts' novel.
The Simple Truth
“I remember this paper I wrote on existentialism. My teacher gave it back with an F. She’d underlined true and truth wherever it appeared in the essay, probably about twenty times, with a question mark beside each. She wanted to know what I meant by truth.”
Rees Re: OO
(Jonathan Rees had a really interesting response to Why Arc isn't Especially Object-Oriented , which he has allowed me to reproduce here.) Here is an a la carte menu of features or properties that are related to these terms; I have heard OO defined to be many different subsets of this list.
Getting Rich: from Zero to Hero in One Blog Post
Hi there. If we haven’t met, my name is Mr. Money Mustache. I’m the freaky financial magician who retired along with a lovely wife at age 30 in order to start a family, as well as start…
The 4% Rule: The Easy Answer to “How Much Do I Need for Retirement?”
In the world of early retirees, we have a concept that goes by names like “The 4% rule”, or “The 4% Safe Withdrawal Rate”, or simply “The SWR.” As with all thing…
Willingness to look stupid
People frequently 1 think that I'm very stupid. I don't find this surprising, since I don't mind if other people think I'm stupid, which means that I don't adjust my behavior to avoid seeming stupid, which results in people thinking that I'm stupid. Although there are some downsides to people thinking that I'm stupid…
Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself
For the past four years, I’ve worked as a software developer at Google. On February 1st, I quit. It was because they refused to buy me a Christmas present.
A Protocol for Dying
Kind people already sent donations that will make my childrens' lives easier, when I'm not there any more. Thank you enormously! :-)
You’re probably using the wrong dictionary (2014)
The way I thought you used a dictionary was that you looked up words you've never heard of, or whose sense you're unsure of. You would never look up an ordinary word -- like example , or sport , or magic -- because all you'll learn is what it means, and that you already know.
Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal
I feel for Google – Steve Jobs threatened to sue me, too. In 2003, after I unveiled a prototype Linux desktop called Project Looking Glass*, Steve called my office to let me know the graphica…
Don't Get Distracted (2017)
I’m going to tell you about how I took a job building software to kill people. But don’t get distracted by that; I didn’t know at the time.