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Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 71 posts.
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Aaron Swartz on illness and depression
I’m sorry I haven’t been keeping up with Bubble City. I’ve spent a lot of the last few weeks lying in bed and drinking fluids. (With occasional breaks to play Rock Band, much to the annoyance of my neighbors.) Once again, I’ve been sick — this time, with four different illnesses.
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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.
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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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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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Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location
I'm currently on a cruise ship somewhere in the Mediterranean sea, en route from Barcelona to Casablanca. Most people here are either retirees enjoying the easy life or younger fol...
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So you think you can tell Arial from Helvetica?
I've taken 20 logos that were originally designed in Helvetica, and I've redone them in Arial. Some people would call that blasphemy. I call it a challenge: can you tell which is the original and which is the remake?
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Aaron Swartz: The Book That Changed My Life
Two years ago this summer I read a book that changed the entire way I see the world. I had been researching various topics — law, politics, the media — and become more and more convinced that something was seriously wrong. Politicians, I was shocked to discover, weren’t actually doing what the people wanted. And the…
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Aaron Swartz: What Happens in The Dark Knight
As we’ve discussed, in Batman Begins 1960s-style full employment and antipoverty programs lead to skyrocketing crime while in The Dark Knight Rises 1980s-style tough-on-crime policies and neoliberal economics lead to a revolt of the economic underclass. The films are mirror images, one about the failure of liberal…
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Don't Fly During Ramadan
A couple of weeks ago, I tried to fly from New York (JFK) to Los Angeles on JetBlue. I was racially profiled, detained, and interrogated for hours.
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What It's Like to Fail
How one man went from writing jokes for Roseanne to homeless, and how he fought his way back using Craigslist.
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Hacking strength: Gaining muscle with least resistance
Then, after realizing I was too weak to lift my son and his wheelchair in and out of the car, I spent just over a year gaining strength and muscle.
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"Nothing like this will be built again"
I've just had a really amazing experience: a guided tour of the nuclear reactor complex at Torness on the Scottish coast. What made this tour unusual is that the tour guide in question, Les, happens to be one of the reactor engineers (as well as a friend) -- and he showed me (and a couple of other friends) right…
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O’Reilly Media Has Lost Its Soul
Several years ago I was courted by O’Reilly Media. After the success of my first book, Show Me the Numbers , the folks at O’Reilly were interested in publishing my second. I responded cautiously at first, because my prior self-publishing experience was extremely positive. Analytics Press, the publisher of Show Me the…
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Thoreau 2.0
This is a written version of a talk I gave on September 21, 2013 , at the XOXO conference in Portland.
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How to Learn Emacs: A Hand-drawn One-pager for Beginners
Here’s version 2 (September 2013). You can print this at 16.5″x10.75″ at 300dpi. Have an ordinary printer? Check out PosteRazor !
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The Melancholy of Subculture Society
Internet links small groups, helping dissolve big groups; good, bad? But a bit sad.
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Design
I chose images from 1973 deliberately. It's easier to tell good design from bad when you're not looking at current fashions. (Try looking at the haircuts in an old high school yearbook.) Good design is timeless, and if you want something timeless you can't pander to the limitations of some hypothetical "average" user…