New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 285 posts.
In 2017, I’m going to stop watching the news
I've stopped watching the news a few months ago and it's definitely a trend I'm planning to continue in 2017. We live in a world of information. Open Facebook …
Working remotely, coworking spaces, and mental health
This should be a hard blog post to write–after all, it’s the one where I openly admit I had an emotional breakdown and saw a mental health professional–but it’s actually easy. And it’s easy because it has a good ending: facing long odds and a frustrating situation, I ended up turning everything around and getting a…
I’m a Bad Developer, That’s the Only Reasonable Explanation
I remember the first time I started to feel insecure as a web developer or even generally as a professional in any field. I was asked to…
My New Year’s Resolution – read a research paper every weekday
… and post a write-up on this blog. That sounds crazy of course – who has the time to read a paper every weekday? Let alone write it up! I’ve done it for each of the last two calendar y…
Learning Machine Learning: A beginner's journey
I have been learning about machine learning and deep learning (ML/DL) for the last year. I think ML/DL is here to stay. I don't think this i...
8,760 Hours: How to get the most out of next year
Update (December 2016): Version 2 of this guide is now available! Announcement post here. Links in this post are updated to send you to the latest and greatest version. Click here to download 8,760 Hours v2 The end of a year […]
Cat-proofing a cat feeding machine
Furiosa’s Cat Feeder
On Digital Minimalism
The Curmudgeonly Optimist People are sometimes confused about my personal relationship with digital communication technologies. On the one hand, I’m a computer scientist who studies and improves these tools. ... Read more
Sane Thinking About Mental Health Problems
Epistemic status: exhortatory and personal, but pretty confidently my true belief CW: suicide mention When I was a teenager, I was depressed. And the way I thought mental illness worked, the way I…
In Defense of Inclusionism
Iron Law of Bureaucracy: the downwards deletionism spiral discourages contribution and is how Wikipedia will die.
Spaced repetition
Efficient memorization using the spacing effect: literature review of widespread applicability, tips on use & what it’s good for.
Tips for Self-Learning Programming
Jorge Silva's personal blog on programming and software engineering
Talks that changed the way I think about programming
The best teacher I had in graduate school spent the whole semester destroying any beliefs we had about computing. He was a real iconoclast. He happened to be a genius, so we took it. At the end of the course, we were free because we didn't believe in anything. We had to learn everything, but then he destroyed it. He…
An Ode to Linux Desktop Users Everywhere
Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels. The package makers, the man page writers. The rounded windows in Qt mixed with the less rounded windows of GTK. The ones who literally see things differently because of missing proprietary fonts. They’re not fond of rules, installation wizards, …
Don’t prematurely obsess on a single “big problem” or “big theory”
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. (Susan Ertz, “Anger in the Sky”) There is a particularly dangerous occupational haz…
Homeschooling as a right, and a needed practical alternative
Education in Victoria is succeeding in some areas, but failing in many others – we have new school buildings, but they are overflowing and the school rolls climbing so quickly that teachers a…
My Google Internship
Musings on navigating the tech bubble with philosophy and self-improvement.
Why I wrote a book about interpreters
Last week I’ve self-published my first book called “Writing An Interpreter In Go”, which you can get at interpreterbook.com . I want to tell you a little bit about why I chose to write this particular book.
Thought as a Technology
Have you ever felt awe and delight upon first experiencing a computer interface? An interface that surprised you with its strangeness, with a sense of entering an alien world?
Best Practices for Time Travelers (2003)
When John Titor first showed up on IRC chat in October of 2000, he was enjoying a neat kind of double billing - as his 38-year-old self sat downstairs in the kitchen, typing away, a two-year-old version of himself lay sound asleep upstairs in bed. The elder Titor had been sent back in time by the U.S. Army, which…
My Distributed Systems Seminar's Reading List for Spring 2017
Below is the first draft list of papers I plan to discuss in my distributed systems seminar in the Spring semester. If you have some suggest...