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New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 7,743 posts.
Life, Learning & Writing
Any year
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Moving 12 years of email from GMail to FastMail
In 2013, when it became clear, primarily through Edward Snowden’s heroic actions, that the level of snooping by the US and other governments was far greater than any of us would have thought, I moved all of my data out of the US and of course blogged about it (that blog post has been read almost 70000 times; I think…
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Find a new city
There’s a very rom antic American story that I love, that lots of a rtists who are young and starting out love, too, and it goes like this: Move to the Big City with nothing, make friends, make art, struggle, but make it. That’s the kind of story told in Patti Smith’s wonderful memoir, Just Kids .
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Why lack of confidence can make you a better programmer
What if you’re not a superstar programmer? What if other people work longer than you, or harder than you, or have built better projects than you? Can you succeed without self-confidence? I believe you can, and moreover I feel that lack of confidence can actually make you a better programmer.
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Is There Any Room for the Not-Passionate Developer?
A reflection on the software industry, on the place it leaves for non-passionate programmers, and the consequences
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Habits of highly mathematical people
The most common question students have about mathematics is “when will I ever use this?” Many math teachers would probably struggle to give…
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What makes music sound “good?”
When listening to music, however, we are not just listening to a series of disconnected instants. Instead, the way things sound depends on the notes we have heard. In other words, we integrate over time . One of the most important functions of a musical scale is to limit the overall pitch content of what we're hearing…
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We have an epidemic of bad posture
What happens if you Google “coworking space”? You see people working hard. I see lots of necks, backs, arms, wrist and hands that will need phyiscal therapy in…
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Don't add your 2 cents
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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Why I’m never buying HTC again
I’m not a tech blogger, much less an activist. I usually never write reviews about tech gizmos. I just buy devices that I think will be useful, and if my expectations aren’t met, I just…
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The best linear algebra books
If you would follow the road to linear algebra here are some trustworthy signposts.
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I got arrested in Kazakhstan and represented myself in court
When I was arrested in San Francisco, I ended up spending a night in prison naked, in solitary confinement. But, I have a dirty secret: it…
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Become a 10x Programmer by Managing Your Time Better
Become aware of bad habits that make you less productive and learn how to break them with proper time management skills.
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How becoming a pilot made me a better programmer
Two years ago I trained for my private pilot license over the course of nine months. Besides be...
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A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning
I've never been plagued by the big existential questions. You know, like What's my purpose? or What does it all mean?
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“Write Every Day” Is Bad Advice: Hacking the Psychology of Big Projects
A Flawed Axiom Write every day. If you’ve ever considered professional writing, you’ve heard this advice. Stephen King recommends it in his instructional memoir, On ... Read more
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End of Cycle?
One sign that technology markets often exhibit at the tail end of a cycle is a fast diversification of the types of startups getting funded. For example, following the core internet boom of the late 90s (Google, Yahoo!, eBay, PayPal), in early 2000 and 2001 there was a sudden diversification and investment into P2P…
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Living, in Limbo
Kind people already sent donations that will make my childrens' lives easier, when I'm not there any more. Thank you enormously! :-)
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Re-reading Kahneman's “Thinking, Fast and Slow”
Behavioural economics, data science and artificial intelligence.
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The Hunt for the Death Valley Germans
This is the tale of what for me was a rather remarkable adventure. It was assembled on the basis of my personal recollection and experience, emails, GPS logs and some official documents. It represents solely the perspective and opinions of myself, in my more lucid moments. It is in no way intended to represent th
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The Daredevil Camera
Once upon a time I was reading a Popular Mechanics article, the title of which eludes me. Something about playing different music for different parts of a…
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Dunning-Kruger and other memes (2015)
It's really common to see claims that some meme is backed by “studies” or “science”. But when I look at the actual studies, it usually turns out that the data are opposed to the claim. Here are the last few instances of this that I've run across.
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10-Year Exercise Periods Make Sense
Scott Kupor at Andreessen Horowitz has a post today on some potential downsides of 10-year exercise periods for startup employees’ stock options. I’d recommend reading the whole thing for context here, but to summarize: * He argues that allowing employees who leave a company to keep their optio...
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How to Start Learning Deep Learning
Due to the recent achievements of artificial neural networks across many different tasks (such as face recognition, object detection and Go), deep learning has become extremely popular. This post aims to be a starting point for those interested in learning more about it.
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The Psychopath Code
Kind people already sent donations that will make my childrens' lives easier, when I'm not there any more. Thank you enormously! :-)
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Stop saying learning to code is easy
(The photo above was taken at the Microsoft NYC office of three amazing young ...