Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 30 posts.
Why is everyone in such a rush? Walk into any bookstore, and you'll see how to Teach Yourself Java in 24 Hours alongside endless variations offering to teach C, SQL, Ruby, Algorithms, and so on in a few days or hours. The Amazon advanced search for [ title: teach, yourself, hours, since: 2000 and found 512 such books…
I made a messaging app for my family and my family only.
The history of every major galactic civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why, and Wh…
The second part of this talk pursues some of the scientific and educational consequences of the assumption that computers represent a radical novelty. In order to give this assumption clear contents, we have to be much more precise as to what we mean in this context by the adjective "radical". We shall do so in the…
[This is a slightly edited repost of an essay from my old LiveJournal] A friend recently complained about how many people lack the basic skill of believing arguments. That is, if you have a valid a…
I watched 15 hours of COVID origins arguments so you don't have to - but you should!
Manufacturers take a conservative approach and specify the life of Li-ion in most consumer products as being between 300 and 500 discharge/charge cycles.…
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.
An important announcement There Is No Antimemetics Division has been picked up for publication by Penguin Random House! Find out more here. Everything below is for the original self-published version of the story only. An antimeme is an idea with self-censoring p...
Want to learn more? Learn To Count to a Billion in Korean in 15 Minutes ! Or Learn to Read Russian in 15 Minutes !
How much Vitamin D should I take? This is still the looming question, and it’s time to address it. First, though, imagine that someone in a public forum online asked me, “How much metoprolol (a…
In The Unaccountability Machine, Dan Davies argues that organizations form “accountability sinks,” structures that absorb or obscure the consequences of a decision such that no one can be held dire...
I decided to roll out my own LLM benchmark: how well can different models render an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle? I chose that because a) I like …
Issues with Kagi's AI focus, finances and leadership
Long ago, in a parallel universe three doors down and one to the left of our own, OpenAI headquarters found itself in chaos. A klaxon blared overhead as red lights began flashing. A message played over a loud-speaker: “Warning! Warning! This is not a drill! Artificial General Intelligence window
As of Fall 2025, Northeastern’s College of Computer Science will replace this curriculum with a set of new courses, starting with Python in the first year.
How to write a novel: Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson teaches his wildly popular Snowflake Method for designing and writing a novel.
Salvatore Sanfilippo (antirez)20241,190 points455 commentscited by 4Life, Learning & Writing details
My colleague Julius par Ploum - Lionel Dricot.
A Hackernews comment introduces a new character
In 1995, El Salvador had an intentional homicide rate of 139 per 100,000, the highest in the world and one of the highest rates recorded in modern history. Like all educated middle-class Americans,…
Jan Gampe took things to the next level by actually making this cross-stitch out of the pattern I previously posted online. The flowers really gave it an extra level of charm I think. As a cross-stitch As a pillow This quote is from a comment by an upset user on my blog, replying to one … Continue reading curl is just…
From The World I Live In , by Helen Keller Before my teacher came to me, I did not know that I am. I lived in a world that was a no-world....
Notes on mental health, motivation and Agile.
Steals buttons from the websites you visit. Do your usual online stuff and watch the collection of stolen buttons grow.
This blog post will cover the new sources of “chaos” that have been added to LavaRand and how you can make use of that harnessed chaos in your next application
