1021
Why I left my tech job to work on chronic pain
From chronically sore to chronically curious about the mind 🧠
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 8,937 posts.
Life, Learning & Writing
Any year
1022
The first time I was almost fired from Apple
I was hired on at Apple in October of 1995. This was what I refer to as Apple’s circling the drain period. Maybe you remember all the doomsaying — speculation that Apple was going to be shuttering soon. It’s a little odd perhaps then that they were hiring at all but apparently Apple reasoned that they nonetheless…
1023
The Rise of Whatever
This was originally titled “I miss when computers were fun”. But in the course of writing it, I discovered that there is a reason computers became less fun, a dark thread woven through a number of events in recent history. Let me back up a bit.
1024
The Moat of Low Status
It hurts, but less than you think
1025
What I learned gathering nootropic ratings (2022)
Where I analyse the nootropic ratings I gathered through my recommender system.
1026
I'm dialing back my LLM usage
From the Zed Blog: Alberto Fortin shares his honest reflection on the reality of using LLMs in production code and why he's taking a more measured approach.
1027
More assorted notes on Liquid Glass
Discussing icon design, and commenting on some passages of Apple's Adopting Liquid Glass document.
1028
End of an Era
I recall saying to one of my colleagues at Atari way back in 1982 that I wanted to make a game that would be genuine art. A year later I built a game that was my first experiment in that direction: Gossip. It was a ridiculously simple game in which a player attempted to win favor in a group by calling people and…
1029
The story of Max, a real programmer
This is a story about Imagebin. Imagebin is the longest-lived software project that I still maintain. I'm the only user. I use it to host images, mainly to include in my blog, sometimes for sharing in other places. Imagebin's oldest changelog entry is dated May 2010, but I know it had already existed for about a year…
1030
Engineered Addictions
How silicon valley is putting a price tag on your attention - and relationships
1031
I built something that changed my friend group's social fabric
This is a story that started back in 2022, but I think its a perfect time to reflect on the impact that it has had on my friend group still to this day. Update (2/7/2025): I'm genuinely blown away by the response to this post. This hit the
1032
1033
The Plot of the Phantom, a text adventure that took 40 years to finish
Gnarled JavaScript warlock, musician, cartoonist, dilettante.
1034
10 Years of Pomological Watercolors
A decade ago today I published a blog post calling for the US government to release its paintings of fruits. The Pomological Watercolor Collection, as I had recently come to know, is a beautiful and remarkable corpus of over 7,000 pictures of fruits and other biological specimens, made between the 1880s and 1940s…
1035
The Effect of Noise on Sleep
Using Apple Watch noise and sleep stages to quantify the effect of noise on sleep
1036
Biomolecular shifts occur in our 40s and 60s (2024)
Time marches on predictably, but biological aging is anything but constant, according to a new Stanford Medicine study.
1037
Touching the back wall of the Apple store
Here's a dumb story. When I was in high school, my friends and I had a game we used to play at the mall: we would go into the Apple store and try to make it ...
1038
Community Is Motivation on Tap
A good community can have tremendous influence on one’s motivation. I never appreciated this fact enough so I wanted to write about it here.
1039
Managing time when time doesn't exist
The Ultimate Productivity Paradox
1040
Writing toy software is a joy
Why you should write more toy programs
1041
'Sticky thinking' hampers decisions in depression
New study finds rumination can cause those with depression to get ‘stuck’ on thoughts, limiting their ability to mentally juggle options available to them when making decisions.
1042
Backyard Coffee and Jazz in Kyoto
A "magical" experience, and what we get when we let people pursue their passions
1043
The cultural decline of literary fiction
What happened?
1044
Estrogen: A Trip Report
I have gender dysphoria . I find labels overly reifying; I feel reluctant to call myself transgender , per se: when prompted to state my gender identity or preferred pronouns, I fold my hands into the dhyana mudra and state that I practice emptiness on the concept of gender . Mostly people seem to vibe it, but…
1045
Guess I'm a rationalist now
A week ago I attended LessOnline, a rationalist blogging conference featuring many people I’ve known for years—Scott Alexander, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Zvi Mowshowitz, Sarah Constantin, Carl…
1046
Revisiting Minsky's Society of Mind in 2025
AI Agents, Modularity, and Alignment
1047
Working on databases from prison
How Preston Thorpe went from a prison cell and a college program to a full-time database engineering role at Turso, working on the SQLite rewrite in Rust.
1048
Munich from a Hamburger's perspective
A first-time visitor from Hamburg reflects on Munich's royal roots, museums, and surprising contrasts between two of Germany's most iconic cities.
1049
Endometriosis is an interesting disease
5k words, 23 minutes reading time
1050
A receipt printer cured my procrastination
Why can I focus for hours on a game but procrastinate on simple tasks? I finally cracked the code using thermal receipt printer and game design.