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New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 374 posts.
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Why Donald Knuth Checks E-mail Only Once Every Three Months
E-mail Zero Redux Two weeks ago, I introduced E-mail Zero, the concept of living life with no e-mail. The motivation was to investigate innovative ways ... Read more
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Programming is…
Myth: Programmers get to write code all day. Truth: Most programmers spend a ton of time (in no particular order): Carefully composing e-mails to other programmers/mailing lists/non-technical folks…
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How to Email Busy People
I was just chatting with a friend that is a successful entrepreneur, advisor , and angel investor. He has 1700 unread emails in his inbox. 1700!
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Every day I learn something new… and stupid.
Hey kids, did you know that JavaScript doesn't have integers? That's right! All JavaScript numbers (either primitive numbers, or the Number object, and don't even get me started on how stupid it is that there is even a distinction between the two) are actually double floats! Now, in any Lisp-derived language, you…
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Why you get ideas in the shower
[This is an excerpt from the Dance of the Possible: the mostly honest, completely irreverent guide to creativity] When you are known as a writer about creativity, people send you interesting things…
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Leaving Google
After seven years at Google, I'm leaving. Cue the inevitable 'what's wrong with you?' Before I get to the gripes, though, there are a few popular narratives I want to push back on: that Google has gone evil, that the good engineers are all defecting to Facebook, that 20% time was always a myth. Part one of three. The…
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The story of George — ayttm's most prolific non-developing contributor
The last communication I had from George was in September 2008. He had helped with tons of little improvements in ayttm, like auto-complete, spell check, etc in addition to affecting the big changes. He is responsible for the rewrite of the msn plugin too. I tried getting back in touch in October for his suggestions…
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The Last Post
Here it is. I'm dead, and this is my last post to my blog. In advance, I asked that once my body finally shut down from the punishments of my cancer, then my family and friends publish this prepared message I wrote—the first part of the process of turning this from an active website to an archive.
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I take illegal drugs for inspiration
I take illegal drugs for inspiration Daily Telegraph, Saturday May 21st 2005, pp 17-18 (Note: This version is very slightly different from the published, edited, version) © Sue Blackmore 2005 Every year, like a social drinker who wants to prove to herself that she’s not an alcoholic, I give up cannabis for a month. It…
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Joel Spolsky: Lunch
What do you do for lunch every day? Where do you eat it? With whom? I’ve been on teams that eat together every day, and it’s awesome. I’ve been on teams that don’t, and lunch every day is, at best,…
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Cordless Dog: Stay
If you're fastidious about keeping your windows tidy, Stay is for you. Stay ensures that your windows are where you want them, even as you connect and disconnect displays.
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Your taste is why your work disappoints you.
I love this observation about taste and creative work from Ira Glass: Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do cr
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Richard Feynman on education in Brazil
From Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!:
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Never say “no,” but rarely say “yes.”
"Focus" requires saying "no" to most things, but there's a way to do it that allows you to say "yes" exactly when it matters most.
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Review: Learn You a Haskell for Great Good
Learn You a Haskell for Great Good! (A Beginner's Guide) by Miran Lipovača, published by No Starch Press (2011). No Starch was kind enough to send me an advance copy for review.
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There Is No Magic
The scene was a post-seminar dinner at a homely Vietnamese joint. We had just listened to Jacquet speak at the University of Chicago. A soft-spoken grandfather-like figure, he enjoyed the nearly un…
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Have you ever printed a boarding pass?
Bill III's Blog -
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Jon Bentley's Programming Pearls: 25 years old, still brilliant
To my astonishment, I see that it’s been a whole year since the last installment in the Programming Books series (1, Coders at Work; 2, The Elements of Programming Style; 3, Programming the …
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Hacking The Status Game
I was taking an improv class, and the instructor gave us a game to play before getting on stage, so that we can turn off our over-rationalizing minds and get into the flow. The game was called Status , and it went like this:
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Fooling myself to work
We can't always be at the mercy of our motivation. I've some tricks how to fool myself into work, every single day. I'm quite productive thanks to these tricks. They will work for you too. So here they are...
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Leaving in a Huff
One thing you may not know about me is that I am a writer. More specifically, I'm a freelance writer. This means I can have several clients at once, work from home in my underwear, and set my own hours. It is basically like being a prostitute, but with less stringent hygiene requirements.
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