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New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 668 posts.
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Ergonomic keyboarding with the Svalboard: a half-year retrospective
E ven before I started pressing buttons for a living I was always a pretty heavy computer user. When I was about 18 I started experiencing symptoms of RSI. At around the same time I learnt of the Dvorak keyboard layout, and so I switched, hoping it would solve my problems. It did, at least at the time, and so for the…
303
The untold impact of cancellation
Warning: towards the end of this post are references to suicide, which may be distressing to some readers. Discretion is advised.
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Our Farewell from Google Play
Our project started in 2016 with the goal of offering alternatives to apps with basic functionality that demanded – back then at install time – many permissions they did not need. From our humble beginnings with Privacy Friendly Torchlight, our apps have always been available in the Google Play Store. Our current…
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Slow
What problems can human beings only solve over a very long period of time? And how can we build institutions that solve those problems?
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MacBook Pro Insomnia
Update (01.08.2025): fixed broken link, typo, clarified problematic behaviour For a number of years now I have a MacBook Pro Silicon M1 Max. It worked beautifully. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, I started noticing that the battery drained over night when I left the notebook somewhere, not connected to power. This got…
307
Maintaining weight loss
This article offers tips and practical advice to help people maintain their weight loss more effectively over time.
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Fast
Rarely in software does anyone ask for “fast.” We ask for features, we ask for volume discounts, we ask for the next data integration. We never think to ask for fast. But software that's fast changes behavior. Developers ship more often when code deploys in seconds (or milliseconds) instead of minutes. AI code…
309
Try the Mosquito Bucket of Death
The Mosquito Bucket of Death is a safe and environmentally sound way to rid your yard of mosquitoes. Here's how you make them.
310
Learning basic electronics by building fireflies
From missing real fireflies to learning basic electronics and building my own blinking "fireflies"
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Learning Is Slower Than You Think
What AI-optimized schools misunderstand about learning
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Simplify, then add delightness: On designing for children
I’ve been building Kidz Fun Art (web, iPad & Windows) since 2021, so 4 years at time of writing. It’s a tablet optimized application intended to be used by children of all ages R…
313
Face it: you're a crazy person
OR: why your brain needs a boxcutter
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I hacked my washing machine
I ran out of characters for microblogging so this is where the big words go
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A small web July
I am putting this out into the ether to see if anyone wants to join me, in any capacity, in some kind of accountability structure (following each others blog...
316
I drank every cocktail
The International Bartenders Association, or IBA, maintains a list of official cocktails, ones they deem to be “the most requested recipes” at bars all around the world. It’s the closest thing the bartending industry has to a canonical list of cocktails, akin to the American Kennel Club’s registry of dog breeds or a…
317
Shallow water is dangerous too
Content warning: risk to children Julia and I know drowning is the biggest risk to US kids 1-4, and we try to take this seriously. But yesterday our 4yo came very close to drowning in a fountain. (She's fine now.) This week we were on vacation with my extended family: nine kids, eight parents, and ten…
318
How to increase your surface area for luck
You should just do things
319
Open Sauce is a confoundingly brilliant Bay Area event
This is the second year I brought my Dad (a now-retired radio engineer and co-host of Geerling Engineering) to Open Sauce, a Bay Area maker faire-like event, dreamed up by William Osman and featuring hundreds of exhibits ranging from mad science, to vintage electronics, to games, to world-record-breaking Rubik's Cube…
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Facts don't change minds, structure does
Why do facts bounce off some people? It’s not about logic; it’s about structure. Your worldview isn’t a list of opinions—it's a living network. And right now, it's at war.
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Compression culture is making you stupid and uninteresting
why the death of nuance should scare you -your fav gen z philosopher xx
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TODOs aren't for doing
Some teams require that every TODO comment in a codebase gets logged in the bug tracker. Others automatically delete any “stale” TODO that has been in the codebase for over a year. Don’t do it!
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If writing is thinking then what happens if AI is doing the writing and reading?
Then what happens if AI is doing the writing and reading?
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Covers as a way of learning music and code
When you're just getting started with music, you have so many skills to learn. You have to be able to play your instrument and express yourself through it. You need to know the style you're playing, and its idioms and conventions. You may want to record your music, and need all the skills that come along with it.
325
Occasionally USPS sends me pictures of other people's mail
Occasionally USPS sends me pictures of other people's mail.
326
Peep Show is the most realistic portrayal of evil I have seen (2020)
Peep Show, a British tv series running from 2003 to 2015, starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb as a pair of miserable, co-dependent roommates living in Croydon, London, is the most realistic por…
327
I avoid using LLMs as a publisher and writer
Disclaimer: I am a book publisher & I love technology.
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My favourite German word
If creators of documentation are prepared to sacrifice its human purpose in order that LLMs can more effectively slurp it up and regurgitate it on demand, then they have meekly accepted values that more properly belong in a dystopian horror story.
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How I keep up with AI progress
Last Updated: 30th June 2025
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Hiding messages in a deck playing cards
I was recently thinking about the huge number of ways you can shuffle a deck of 52 cards and wondered if it would be possible to store arbitrary data.