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Down the Rabbit Hole: The world of estranged parents' forums (2015)
This page doesn’t apply to all estranged parents, only to estranged parents who are members of estranged parents’ forums. Read why.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 3,497 posts.
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Features of a dream programming language
Update: Be sure to read the improved 2nd draft of this article instead. The following content is the...
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“Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs
In Bullshit Jobs: A Theory , David Graeber makes the case that a sizable chunk of the labour economy is essentially people performing useless work, as a sort of subconscious self-preservation instinct of the economic status quo. The book cites ample anecdotal evidence that people perceive their own jobs as completely…
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How I Build
My idea of a vacation might be weird to some. Sure, I like sunshine, I like beaches – but more than all that, I like making stuff with computers.
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Should you contribute open data to OpenStreetMap?
Google Maps is incredibly detailed and useful. But Google uses it for tracking and deliver ads. Should you contribute for free to build its monopoly?
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How to Think: The Skill You’ve Never Been Taught
Thinking better isn't about learning more; it's about doing a few simple things that really help create unstoppable progress.
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Collection of V.90/V.92 modem sounds (2016)
Just recently, there was a surge in traffic to my old legacy dial-up sounds pages. While I did my best with the equipment I had at the time to capture the sound of dial-up modems, I always knew tha…
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MIT Scheme on Apple Silicon
Instructions for compiling and running MIT/GNU Scheme.
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The state of external retina displays
The monitor story for Apple computers in [nearly] 2022 is basically would you like garbage, or would you like to take out a home equity loan?
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Takeaways from looking for a new senior role in tech
A few months ago, I left SeatGeek without much of a plan of what to do next. My green card was finally issued in 2021, which means that I didn’t have to scramble to find a new job in forty days. Fo...
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Quick and dirty way to rip an eBook from Android
I recently purchased a book for my MSC which was only available via a crappy Android app. There was no obvious way to decrypt it to read on a more sensible device, so I resorted to the ancient art of screenscraping. This is a quick-and-dirty way to grab images of the pages and convert them to a standard PDF using…
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Decoding James Webb Space Telescope
The James Webb Space Telescope probably needs no introduction, since it is perhaps the most important and well-known mission of the last years. It was launched on Christmas day from Kourou, French Guiana , into a direct transfer orbit to the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange point . JWST uses S-band at 2270.5 MHz to transmit…
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Maybe we could tone down the JavaScript (2016)
I’m having a really weird browser issue, where scripts on some pages just won’t run until about 20 seconds have passed. Whatever you’re about to suggest, yes, I’ve thought of it, and no, it’s not the problem. I mention this not in the hope that someone will help me debug it, but because it’s made me acutely aware of a…
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The Best Things and Stuff of 2021
Great things and people that I discovered, learned, read, met, etc. in 2021. No particular ordering is implied. Not everything is new.
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A Review of the Zig Programming Language (Using Advent of Code 2021)
I’ve long thought that Zig was an interesting programming language, potentially more interesting than Rust in many respects given that Zig seems to be targetting a more modern C-like language replacement whereas Rust firmly looks like it is trying to take C++ out back like ol’ yeller. Rust is powerful, but the…
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DIY Mail
I have another post about half-written that I will finish up and publish soon, but in the mean time I have been thinking today about something that perennially comes up in certain orange-tinted online communities: running your own mail server.
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Superhighway84 – a Usenet-inspired decentralized internet discussion system
Superhighway84 is a USENET-inspired decentralized internet discussion system, featuring a retro text user interface and powered by IPFS and OrbitDB.
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CPM MagnaCut
CPM MagnaCut is a new stainless knife steel designed to be better than anything that has been available before. Is it a success?
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Raytracing diamonds
This comes from a question posed to me and others in 2019 by Stefan Langerman, a computational geometer who also happens to be a diamond dealer. The classic ...
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Heroes of Might and Magic
The Heroes of Might and Magic series of fantasy strategy games was an anomaly during its period of peak popularity at the turn of the millennium: it remained defiantly turn-based in an industry that had gone almost entirely real-time, and it likewise continued to rely on lovingly hand-drawn pixel art in lieu of trendy…
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