541
We mourn our craft
I didn’t ask for this and neither did you. I didn’t ask for a robot to consume every blog post and piece of code I ever wrote and parrot it back so that some…
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 7,740 posts.
Life, Learning & Writing
Any year
542
I'm going to cure my girlfriend's brain tumor
Launch of an experiment to use AI-Scientists to accelerate research of a "solved" disease.
543
Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place
6. Snow is heavier than you think. You might think physical strength is useful for lots of things, like overall health or familiar household tasks or picking up dudes (literally or metaphorically.)…
544
It's all a blur
Designing a slightly sneaky blur filter and then poking holes in it.
545
The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein
Last night, I was taken aback to discover that my name appears in the Epstein Files, in 26 different documents. This is despite the fact that I met Jeffrey Epstein a grand total of zero times, and …
546
My AI Adoption Journey
My experience adopting any meaningful tool is that I've necessarily gone through three phases: (1) a period of inefficiency (2) a period of adequacy, then finally (3) a period of workflow and life-altering discovery.
547
The F Word
Back in 2005, when I first joined the SUNY Buffalo CSE department, the department secretary was a wonderful lady named Joann, who was over 6...
548
I miss thinking hard
AI has changed the experience of being an engineer, starving my Thinker side while satisfying the Builder ...
549
Julia
An aphasic space station monitors an anomalous object, while keeping the last two humans alive.
550
TIL: Apple Broke Time Machine Again on Tahoe
So… Here we are again. Today, after a minor disaster with my Obsidian vault, I decided to restore from Time Machine, and… I realized that it had silently ...
551
Teaching my neighbor to keep the volume down
When I moved to a new apartment with my family, the cable company we were used to wasn't available. We had to settle for Dish Network. I wasn't too happy about making that switch, but something on the
552
A Crisis comes to Wordle: Reusing old words
A few days ago, The new York Times (owner of Wordle) announced that from 2 February it would start reusing some words from previous years. Their announcem...
553
Listen to Understand
You can captivate someone not by what you say, but by how you listen.
554
A Broken Heart
Or, getting a 100x speedup with one dumb line of code.
555
Outsourcing thinking
Researcher and runner writing about technology, nature, and physical endeavours.
556
Moltbook is the most interesting place on the internet right now
The hottest project in AI right now is Clawdbot, renamed to Moltbot, renamed to OpenClaw. It’s an open source implementation of the digital personal assistant pattern, built by Peter Steinberger …
557
Ode to the AA Battery
Recently this post from @Merocle caught my eye: I'm fixing my iFixit soldering station. I haven't used it for a long time and the battery has gone overdischarge. I hope it will come back to life. Unfortunately, there are no replacements available for sale at the moment. Devices with built-in rechargeable batteries…
558
Vitamin D and Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants
An accessible deep dive into the science (⏱️ 30 min read)
559
Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux
Broken updates, Copilot shoved everywhere, and my system bricking itself. Here's why I finally escaped to Linux.
560
I stopped following the news
A personal reflection on the decision to stop following daily news and its impact on my well-being.
561
Nonograms: a practical guide with interactive examples
This is a very important technique: only fill cells when you’re certain; no guessing.
562
Doing the thing is doing the thing
Software Engineer, LITM
563
What “The Best” Looks Like
A startup CTO's guide to what "the best" really means—how to spot non-obvious high performers and the traits that make early-stage teams win.
564
After two years of vibecoding, I'm back to writing by hand
Agents write units of changes that look good in isolation. They are consistent with themselves and your prompt. But respect for the whole, there is not.
565
First, make me care
Writing advice: some nonfiction fails because it opens with background instead of a hook—readers leave before reaching the good material. Find the single anomaly or question that makes your topic interesting, lead with that, and let the background follow once you’ve earned attention.
566
Bye Bye Gmail
TLDR: Please remove @gmail.com as my primary email address and substitute removed . I will try to respond to email sent to @gmail.com but no guarantees.
567
I found the perfect yearly calendar (for me)
The new year has started and I was once again looking for a simple calendar to do some yearly planning. I've tried to find something for this use …
568
Where to Sleep in LAX
My 11:30 pm connecting flight out of Los Angeles International Airport was delayed by 24 hours, forcing me to rest in the airport. All my bags were checked, so I had no luggage or spare clothes available. Here's where I tried sleeping and how it went.
569
Talking to LLMs has improved my thinking
I’ve been surprised by - and enjoy - one aspect of using large language models more than any other. They often put into words things I have long understood, but could not write down clearly. When that happens, it feels less like learning something new and more like recognition. A kind of “ok, yeah" moment.…
570
Douglas Adams on the English–American cultural divide over "heroes"
In 2000, Douglas Adams made an interesting observation that I keep returning to. A user on Slashdot named “FascDot Killed My Pr” had asked the following question (where HGttG = Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy): Comedy….or Tragedy? First, a big thank-you. You’ve made a lasting contribution to “our” culture (or should…