1
You and Your Research (1986)
Transcription of the Bell Communications Research Colloquium Seminar 7 March 1986
Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 43 posts.
2
Laws of Tech: Commoditize Your Complement
A classic pattern in technology economics, identified by Joel Spolsky, is layers of the stack attempting to become monopolies while turning other layers into perfectly-competitive markets which are commoditized, in order to harvest most of the consumer surplus; discussion and examples.
3
Chesterton's Fence: A lesson in second order thinking (2021)
A core component of making great decisions is understanding previous decisions. If we don’t understand how we got “here,” we run the risk of making things much worse.
4
It's probably time to stop recommending Clean Code (2020)
It may not be possible for us to ever reach empirical definitions of "good code" or "clean code", which means that any one person's opinions about another person's opinions about "clean code" are necessarily highly subjective. I cannot review Robert C. Martin's 2008 book Clean Co...
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Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illness in teen girls
Journalists should stop saying that the evidence is just correlational
7
Nicotine (2016)
On the benefits and lack of demerits of nicotine (research up to 2015)
8
Meditations On Moloch
What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?
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A Tale of Unwanted Disruption: My Week Without Amazon
On Wednesday, May 31, 2023, I finally regained access to my Amazon account after an unexpected and unwarranted lockout that lasted nearly…
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Tech Independence
Derek Sivers official site. Thoughts on philosophy, culture, self-improvement. Author of Useful Not True, How to Live, Hell Yeah or No, Anything You Want.
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I Can't Sleep
I can't sleep. I'm lying in bed every night, and images of Gaza are running through my head. Fathers holding their babies, dead, caked in dust. Bombs dropped on homes [1], on hospitals [2], on schools [3]. Tens of thousands of dead [4] in indiscriminate bombings [5]. Children
15
I'm a very slow thinker (2016)
Derek Sivers official site. Thoughts on philosophy, culture, self-improvement. Author of Useful Not True, How to Live, Hell Yeah or No, Anything You Want.
16
My Left Kidney
...
17
I am dying of squamous cell carcinoma, and potential treatments are out of reach
If you find this piece worthwhile, consider the Go Fund Me that’s funding ongoing cancer care. Alex Tabarrok writes about how “when the FDA fails to approve a good drug, people die but the bo…
18
The teen mental illness epidemic began around 2012
This is not just “Kids these days”
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The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise
Around the end of high school, I started to get really into photography. My friend (let’s call him T) was also into it, which should have been great fun. But it wasn’t. Going shooting with him was never great, for a reason I didn’t figure out till much later. I wanted to take photos. T mostly enjoyed tinkering with…
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Effective Spaced Repetition
“To flash conviction on the mind.”
22
Working quickly is more important than it seems (2015)
The obvious benefit to working quickly is that you'll finish more stuff per unit time. But there's more to it than that. If you work quickly, the cost of doing something new will seem lower in your mind. So you'll be inclined to do more.
23
Kids who get smartphones earlier become adults with worse mental health
New global study from Sapien Labs finds consistent links, stronger for girls
24
Sunset at the South Pole
Hunkering down for the winter!
25
The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere
Why did mental health fall off a cliff at the same time and in the same way in the USA, The UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand? Part 1 of 3.
26
A blog post is a long and complex search query to find people (2022)
When writing in public, there is a common idea that you should make it accessible. This is a left over from mass media.
27
Dumb and Gets Things Done (2010)
Someone once asked Napoleon how he decided where to assign soldiers. Napoleon's reply was that it's simple: soldiers are either smart or dumb, lazy or energetic. The smart and energetic I make field commanders. They know what to do and can rally the troops to do it. The smart and lazy I make generals. They
28
Create optimal conditions for lucky things to happen to you (2020)
Your entire worldview changes when you realize you can create luck.
29
Using computers more freely and safely
The most important step is the first one. Humanity didn't get good at building houses by building the same house a million times. We built lots of different houses and learned from each other's failures. Gravitating away from monopolies is a way everyone can help improve software, regardless of our abilities or needs.
30
Be sceptical of your own work (2009)
An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes, which can be made, in a very narrow field. (Niels Bohr) If you unexpectedly find a problem solving itself almost effortlessly, and you can’t quite …