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New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 8,940 posts.
Life, Learning & Writing
Any year
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You're Worthwhile, Even When You Make Mistakes
My big secret ("My work isn't good enough") was finally out. Yet I wasn’t being fired. I was being offered help from someone I respected. I was still worth their time.
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Sysop Chat
Back in mid-90s before anyone I knew had an Internet connection, a few of us had modems and would use them to call bulletin board systems via the phone line. On these systems what to me seemed the main thing was discussions and chat. For the first time I could talk to other like-minded people, and just being able to…
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Study finds that mindfulness is associated with reduced procrastination
A study that was recently published in Personality and Individual Differences sheds light on the relationship between mindfulness and procrastination .
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I’m Leaving IBM
Today is my last day at IBM. If you’ve been following along, IBM bought my startup Resilient Systems in Spring 2016. Since then, I have been with IBM, holding the nicely ambiguous title of “Special Advisor.” As of the end of the month, I will be back on my own. I will continue to write and speak, and do the occasional…
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The Programmers' Stone (2014)
Hi, and welcome to The Programmers' Stone. The purpose of this site is to recapture, explore and celebrate the Art of Computer Programming. By so doing we hope to help the reader either become a better programmer, understand what less experienced programmers are struggling with, or communicate more effectively with…
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The Simple Genius of Checklists
The year is 1935, and the U.S. Army Air Corps is holding a competition for airplane manufacturers vying to secure a contract to build the military’s...
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Even God Couldn't Beat Dollar-Cost Averaging
A market timing strategy rarely outperforms dollar cost averaging even when that strategy knows exactly when to buy.
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I was seven words away from being spear-phished
Three weeks ago I received a very flattering email from the University of Cambridge, asking me to judge the Adam Smith Prize for Economics:
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Life is fractal, but markets are square
I recently read Venkat’s synopsis of the book Seeing like a state, which I followed up by an excellent blog post titled The Meridian of Her Greatness. Venkat challenged people to summarize the most important ideas from that post in a tweetstorm. He said if it gets more than 100 likes, on Twitter he’ll give… Read More
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How I Got my $3500 Camera Kit Stolen on KitSplit
Please read before renting out your own gear!
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I’m not really a good web developer, I'm just good at Googling things
Dev diaries is a development community providing daily tips and tricks about web development. Learn about how to become a better dev, and get a refreshed perspective on what it means to be a web developer. We share daily web development tips on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, & Pinterest. Being a good web developer…
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Where Has the Magic Gone?
A big change that I’ve realised during undergrad is that engineering doesn’t feel ‘magical’ anymore.
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The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced
I promise you this story is true. Many years ago, when I was very young and you were even younger... Work was not going well. Our recently launched product was a flop. Rumours of job cuts were swirling. Things were tense. I was sat in work, headphones on, trying to drown out the sound of the open-plan office. Grinding…
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People Met in Hotel Lobbies (2017)
Selections from the Washington Post's Gilded Age coverage of notable visitors to the city
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Hacking Water
From water insecurity to offgrid, solar pumped, gravity flow 1000 gallons of running water.
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Gut microbes eat medication
The first time Vayu Maini Rekdal manipulated microbes, he made a decent sourdough bread. At the time, young Maini Rekdal, and most people who head to the kitchen to whip up a salad dressing, pop popcorn, ferment vegetables, or caramelize onions, did not consider the crucial chemical reactions behind these concoctions.
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Advice on Getting Better from an Accomplished Piano Player (2011)
The Piano Player Confessions I recently received a message from an accomplished piano player. Let’s call him Jeremy. This is someone who majored in piano ... Read more
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How to parent more predictably (2018)
(As with anything else I write about parenting, this is mostly just my observations with my own two kids and may not generalize as well as I think it does.) A few weeks ago I wrote about why I think it's valuable for parents to be predictable. I was mostly describing an end state, though, and reasons why it's a good…
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To be great, be good repeatably
A thought piece on what it takes to truly be great and what that even means in the first place.
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