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How to stop a robot vacuum from getting stuck on the laundry rack
Is your robotic vacuum cleaner getting stuck on the laundry drying rack? Just raise the rack slightly off the floor and it becomes a natural robot barrier.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 816 posts.
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Why, oh why was this added?
In this post, I take you on a debugging journey and show you why it might be a good idea to add a comment next to a certain method.
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What are the odds that some idiot will name his mutex ether-rot-mutex (2017)
As part of my job I spend quite a lot of time scanning through files and disk contents, often in hex or filtered text view, searching for sp...
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Mental model examples and their explanations
50+ mental model examples and their explanations. There are five categories: success, decision-making, biases, business, and human nature:
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Open call – your field recordings of obsolete sounds wanted
Recordings of disappearing, obscure and obsolete sounds wanted for new global collaborative sound project Obsolete Sounds.
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I was forced to be a child star. It was never my dream or my idea
I can't remember specifically when I first said "I just want to be a kid," but I can still see the late 70s smog, and smell the exhaust all around us as I begged her for what feels like years to stop making me do this, while we sat in traffic on the freeway after school, going to and from auditions, day after day…
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Zettelkasten, linking your thinking, and Nick Milo's search for ground
Linked thinking and the many "tools for thought" apps that have been released over the past few years, have changed the discourse on how we take in and proce...
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On rebooting: the unreasonable effectiveness of turning computers off and on
Turn a misbehaving computer off and on, or stop a misbehaving program and then start it again. Often, the problem goes away.
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Accidentally Saving the Day
Several years ago, when I was a junior engineer just out of university, a PM wandered by my desk on his way to a meeting one morning. “Uh, hey, we’re having a meeting about Project Jabberwocky, uh, right now, can you come?” He was already past my desk and did a last-second pivot to extend the invitation. I was…
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Toxic Positivity
Can positivity be toxic? We’ll investigate the concept of toxic positivity. From this, we'll learn how we can communicate authentically.
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I made an AI write a story about AI then I made another AI illustrate it
I was walking home from school by myself when I saw it. A robot, just standing in the middle of the street.
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Growing food in hard clay
Improve even the worst soils and close your dependency loops.
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Donald Knuth on work habits, problem solving, and happiness (2020)
Recently, I came across a few old and new interviews of Donald Knuth (sources: (i) Companion to the Papers of Donald Knuth , (ii) Interviews conducted by Lex Fridman Part 1 and Part 2 ), where he sheds light on his work habits, how he approaches problems, and his philosophy towards happiness. I really enjoyed reading…
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When everything is important but nothing is getting done
A step by step guide for solving a difficult organizational problem, including notes on single stack ranks, team interdependencies, building consensus, reducing work in progress, and how to move your company towards better priority management.
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Why is it traitorous to understand the people you disagree with?
Reflections on a phenomena that’s unique to culture-war topics
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I'm quitting my PhD
Just a bit over half a year ago, I started my PhD in Quantum Computing. Even though I basically didn’t have any previous knowledge about it, I thought Quantum Computing was an interesting challenge to get into. What should I say? Quantum Computing is really cool, indeed! Having a background in Theoretical Informatics…
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My experience as a Unit-18 Berkeley Lecturer
From spring 2021 through spring 2022, I was a Unit-18 Lecturer for UC Berkeley in the EECS department. A Unit-18 lecturer is what is often c...
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Empirical Notes on Kissing
Before my first kiss, I scoured The Internet (Google Scholar + tracing blog posts back to their underlying studies - this was some time ago so I don’t still have the sources) for every valuable scrap of information available on the topic while trying to stray away from anything opinion-based. This is the result.
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Book review: The Little Typer (2021)
A book review of my journey through dependent typing.
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Notes on Ukraine: I spent most of April and some of May traveling around Ukraine
I spent most of April and some of May traveling around Ukraine, visiting the cities of Uzhgorod, Lviv, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, and Odessa. As with my other travels, I’ll write down thoughts and obse…
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My Favorite Liar (2008)
[the following recounts an exceptionally powerful teaching technique employed by an economics professor of mine at university; teaching fact-checking and skepticism by salting it into the content of his delivery]
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Teach your kids poker, not chess
Why poker may be more instructive as a game than chess