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We are all living inside of an obscure sci-fi film from 1970
Somehow a film made 56 years ago named Colossus The Forbin Project predicted the world of today
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 8,936 posts.
Life, Learning & Writing
Any year
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Air Purifiers as White Noise Machines
White noise machines are widely used for sound masking, increasing privacy in offices and helping people sleep. The classic approach is a fan in a box, though in the past ten years people have mostly switched over to electronic ones. But a fan is really a great approach; you just need to put it to better use: have the…
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How is music possible
If you take a scene from a horror movie and add funny music, the killer suddenly looks hilarious. Isn’t it strange that that happens?
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Job loss and cortisone mania
On the morning of 18th August, I got invited at short notice into a 1:1 meeting by my manager, which was unusual . I think I knew what was coming, and I was right: The company is restructuring, and I’m being let go (among a lot of other people). I had time until lunch to say my goodbyes to my colleagues as I would be…
35
This I Believe (1952)
I am not going to talk about religious beliefs but about matters so obvious that it has gone out of style to mention them. I believe in my neighbors. I know their faults, and I know that their virtues far outweigh their faults.
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How Japanese Dried Bonito Is Made
This workshop founded in 1882 still makes dried bonito like they did back in the Edo period. How katsuobushi — Japanese dried bonito, said to be the world’s har
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Most advice is right for the person giving it
Steve Jobs gave a famous speech at Stanford, where he told graduates that the only way to do great work is to love what you do, and that if you haven't found your passion yet, you should keep looking.
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What shall I teach my son?
Yesterday, the title The End of Education by Neil Postman called to me from my bookshelf, whispering that it might be the right book at the right time. It was. Published in 1995, it was surprisingly appropriate balm for the soul of a confused programmer and soon-to-be father.
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My Friend Bob Cringely
Bob Cringely died on Oct 3, 2026
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Chain of Thought for Humans
These past few weeks, I’ve been conducting interviews, and I often open with “make sure you articulate your thoughts out loud, so I can follow along with your thinking”. This is primarily because I…
41
Code is clay now
Artisans, factories and the new material software is made of
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What Is Gridifcation
A 50-year comparison of Billboard’s top songs shows how recorded music became machine-perfect.
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The Brain Sandwich
The brain sandwich is a practical AI coding workflow: understand the problem, let an agent help, then verify and explain its work before sharing it.
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It's still ok to enjoy programming
Programming is fun!
45
I Became a Citizen of Japan
I became a citizen of Japan. Let me share about it. Some is my anecdotal experience, some my opinion, and some facts. Parsing which of these is what in each sentence is not going to happen. EDIT: I have seen some online reaction to this, and appreciate your kind comments. If you are thinking abou
46
Making chicken transparent using Dorito dust
Modifying the optical properties of biological tissues with tartrazine
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My old job feels distant now
I can hardly remember first experiencing ChatGPT. Its become so infused into my professional life, that going back to that first moment, or moments, is difficult. Instead a blur of a few moments. At some point, I realized it was a better Google. It was very similar to when Stackoverflow took off, and how Google search…
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Why are we even doing all this?
[This is a guest post by Rikab Gambhir. This blog post was initially written in a different file format and converted using AI. — T.] First, they came for the artists, and I did not speak out…
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Someone on Torrent Sites Kept Fucking with My Sonarr
PLEASE stop putting skid malware on torrent sites as South Park episodes
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Jev meets the Trolley Problem
I asked Jev and 13 other decision models the Trolley Problem.
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Things to know when you get cancer
Personal website and portfolio
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I electrified my push scooter with a power drill
My blog about my project cars and other contraptions
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Passkeys are not a trap
A post called Passkeys are a trap. Do not use them. has been doing the rounds over the last few days, making it pretty high on Hacker News, and I've had it sent to me many times with an 'is this true?' kind of vibe. It's written for
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Smart people don't think others are stupid (2012)
Derek Sivers official site. Thoughts on philosophy, culture, self-improvement. Author of Useful Not True, How to Live, Hell Yeah or No, Anything You Want.
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Why is every rationalist blog post way too long?
For my piece on Catholic miracle apologetics , I read (correction: skimmed) a 25,000-word post by rationalist blogger Scott Alexander. My piece, which cited (but does not focus on) his, ended up being a cool 2,700 words. I don't think it would benefit from being longer, and it was the result of me cutting around 70%…
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Thinking will become a hobby
These lines are very difficult for me to write because I feel like digging my own grave. AI systems are improving by leaps and bounds. From the early 2022 fumbling release of ChatGPT, which couldn’t correctly count the number of a’s in my name (it claimed two), we reached OpenAI’s release of math papers where an…
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Do dentists know what they're doing?
After all, they’re just practicing
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I'm sorry, but you still have to think
DHH, the creator of the Ruby on Rails framework, decided to rewrite Campfire Once from Ruby on Rails to Rust. Or rather ask a clanker to do it for him, as he can't stand reading or writing the Rust code himself. After that he added rewrites in other languages , like Elixir and Go.
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Using AI for just 10 minutes erodes your ability to persist at hard things
A UC Berkeley researcher raises profound questions about how we interact with artificial intelligence in daily life.