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New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 7,741 posts.
Life, Learning & Writing
Any year
1832
Can I take ducks home from the park?
16 queries and 6 language models
1833
How I stay reasonably anonymous online (2022)
I'm not wanted by the FBI, nor am I worried about my ISP watching me, and I don't care about Google knowing what I search for. What I am worried about is cra...
1834
Don’t mess with a genius (2010)
Or: What happens when Newton’s laws are violated (Note in case you see ads here: This post is also available at my newer blog.) Recently, I read a book called Newton and the Counterfeiter, su…
1835
My Little MillionDollarHomepage Garden
Back around the time I convinced my family to switch from a 56 kb/s dial-up modem to ADSL, the website milliondollarhomepage.com was launched, and quickly became an Internet phenomenon, selling pixels for advertising space on a 1000x1000 canvas. 18 years later, the homepage is still standing, proudly displaying the…
1836
The washing machine in my ear, and an empty boat
Over a period of about six months in 2022, I was nearing the brink of insanity; I would go to bed every single evening and hear a washing machine running in a neighbouring apartment.
1837
I got paid to live in Antarctica
Sharing how I got paid to live in Antarctica, how to get a job on the ice, and everything you need to know about life at McMurdo Station.
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I wired up my bike's GPS to order me pizza during a gravel race
As harvest season begins here in the Midwest, I once again celebrate by grinding Nebraska gravel at the Gravel Worlds Long Voyage bike race. As in previous years ( 2021 ) ( 2022 ), I spent more time writing code for a marginally-useful project than I did training. But hey, I finished!
1840
Coffee in a Can
Life’s inconveniences, when they happen to you and me, are just that. Inconveniences. When they happen to some people though they end up becoming multi-billion dollar businesses. This is the story of Japan’s canned coffee. One finds at least one vending machine in almost every street in
1841
It's My Monitor
This is the first in (maybe) a series of “Tales From Tech Support”, which are true stories from my point of view. I’ll probably only post these on a Friday. In the 1990s, I worked as a contractor for a large, well-established accounting firm. We’d often buy new equipment and unpack it at the helpdesk, throw away all…
1842
Profound Beliefs
This post previously appeared in EIX. In the early stages of a startup your hypotheses about all the parts of your business model are your profound beliefs. Think of profound beliefs as “strong opi…
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What is an emotion? William James’s theory of how our bodies affect our feelings
“A purely disembodied human emotion is a nonentity.”
1844
The Le Guin Precepts
Fabled author Ursula Le Guin had a sign over her desk: Is it true? Is it necessary or at least useful? Is it compassionate or at least unharmful? Not a bad place to begin.
1845
The thinking path
Novel news; a review for the NYT.
1846
Exploring EXIF
Exploratory interfaces for navigating photos
1847
Chinchilla’s death
“With more careful calculations, one can win; with less, one cannot” — Sun Tzu, The Art of War .
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Harry Browne’s Rules of Financial Safety (1999)
When you read in the news that a person whom you know as rich and wealthy is in financial trouble or has declared bankruptcy, it is easy to feel a sense of futility about managing your own money. Y…
1850
Just Build It...
Thoughts on building, shipping and iterating quickly
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On Craft
My grandpa -- my Missouri grandpa, who played slide guitar to me when I got homesick on the rare occasions I stayed with them -- grew up on a farm without electricity. He went past eighth grade, which really mattered to him. He loved that I played harp, which he always called "elegant," in an extremely Missouri…
1854
The B Lane Swimmer (2009)
A number of years ago, I joined a Master’s swim team. I was doing triathlons at the time, and the swim was my weakest leg. The team I joined divided the pool into four lanes: A (fastest swimmers), B (next fastest), C (next fastest) and D (slowest.) Workouts were organized accordingly; faster swimmers were assigned…
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Absurd Success
So… I’ve had the most unreal week of coding. Zero exaggeration, I’ve halved the RAM requirements of the search engine, removed the need to take the system offline during an upgrade, removed hard limits on how many documents can be indexed, and quadrupled soft limits on how many keywords can be in the corpus. It’s been…
1858
My Caste
Allow me to introduce you to one of the largest population groups in India, as recognized by the constitution of India: Other Backward Classes ( OBC Category ). OBCs are estimated to comprise 40-45% of India's population, therefore, about 500 million people belong to OBC category. In other words, 1 in 16 people in the…
1859
A note to young folks: download the things you love
Many years ago, my favorite podcast was The Totally Rad Show. It was a fun video podcast where the hosts reviewed movies, games, TV shows, and other general nerd stuff. The hosts were Jeff Cannata (who last year I called the podcasting GOAT), Dan Trachtenberg (who went on to direct
1860
The Heart of W. Edwards Deming
“A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.” —Lao Tzu