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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 668 posts.
Root for your friends
Heads‑up: The concept of this post might seem trivial, but it can improve your career, happiness, and the people you care about. Proceed without caution. It only takes about 10 minutes to read.
How to live on $432 a month in America
(For All Expenses)
Find Your People
Thank you to Bucknell University for inviting me to be this year's commencement speaker. And congratulations to the Class of 2025! Watch the speech on YouTube. Thirty-two...
Remembering Alasdair MacIntyre
What I do know is this. I have never met, nor do I ever expect to meet, a philosopher as fascinating as Alasdair MacIntyre.
That fractal that's been up on my wall for years
Warning: Math, Handwaving I spent a lot of time doodling in middle school instead of whatever middle schoolers are supposed to do. Somewhere between the Cool S’s and Penrose triangles I found a neat way to fill up graph paper by combining and copying squares.
You can choose tools that make you happy
Stop falsifying your motivations.
I have tinnitus. I don't recommend it
i went to a show in november of last year (it’s may right now) and ever since, i have tinnitus. i don’t recommend it.
Is Winter Coming? (2024)
In the 1960s, AI researchers tried - and failed - to deliver machine translation of Russian to English. Overly confident researchers, lazy journalists and far too optimistic tech utopianists all built expectations that couldn't be met. Eventually, the lack of results put a stop to the previously generous funding. The…
Four years of sight reading practice
I’ve been doing relatively frequent sight reading practice using an iPad app for four years. Here’s how I’ve automated some of the steps and what I’ve learned from the experience.
“There are people who can see and others who cannot even look”
The greatest early photographer's portraits of Hugo, Manet, Dumas, and more
Building my own solar power system
Well it happened. PG&E has dropped the facade of necessary rate increases because of system upgrades, and they have come out and said what…
Ditching Obsidian and building my own
Tired of migrating notes apps like Obsidian or Evernote? Learn how to build your own private, long-term PKM using self-hosted Directus for control & longevity.
Spaced repetition memory system (2024)
A spaced-repetition memory system combines the Testing effect and the Spacing effect to enable efficient memorization of many thousands of facts ( Spaced repetition memory systems are extremely efficient ). Some people also use them for a broader set of tasks (see below). Spaced repetition memory systems make memory a…
Thank you Google for breaking my YouTube addiction
Thank you Google for breaking my YouTube addiction | exotext
Spaced repetition systems have gotten better
Spaced repetition systems are a well-known way to efficiently learn material. Recent innovations have applied machine learning to greatly improve their scheduling.
Experts have it easy (2024)
Something that’s painfully understudied is how experts are more efficient than novices while achieving better results.
If nothing is curated, how do we find things
Bjork is currently promoting a new concert film being released called Cornucopia. She's been releasing new photoshoots and interviews almost every day for th...
Ground control to Major Trial
When a $130M aerospace company chooses to endlessly abuse free trials instead of typing git pull, you start to question gravity, or at least common sense.
After months of coding with LLMs, I'm going back to using my brain
I've been building MVPs and SaaS products for 15 years. Let's work together on your next project.
Malicious compliance by booking an available meeting room
In 2011, Larry Page became CEO of Google and tried to fix meetings. But his new policies were no match for Google Calendar pedants.
A server that wasn't meant to exist
A story from 16 years ago - trust, tech, and a server that had to disappear. They offered me a blank check. I said no.
Writing that changed how I think about programming languages
Every so often I come across a paper, blog post, or (occasionally) video that completely changes how I think about a topic in programming languages and compilers. For some of these posts, I can’t even remember how I thought about the idea before reading it—it was that impactful.
It Awaits Your Experiments
You may have heard of Christian Bök. You may have read about him on this very blog if you’ve been hanging out here long enough. Perhaps you were even one of the very select few to witness the seminal talk I gave back in 2016 [1] —“ScArt: or, How to Tell When You’ve Finished Fucking”— which climaxed with a glowing…
In a high-stress work environment, prioritize relationships
How high is the stress I am talking about? You are commuting all you think is that you might snap today, you might quit today. That is what I am calling a hi...
One hundred and one rules of effective living
In more than thirty years as a writer, editor, and publisher, I have, to my best reckoning, introduced, abridged, issued or reissued, and read nearly every major work of inspirational literature produced or translated into English.
Observations from people-watching
Painting weddings for a few years now, I have spent a fair bit of time observing strangers move through a room.