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The Frustration Loop
Dealing with spam the fun way.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 669 posts.
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Suppressing negative thoughts may be good for mental health after all
The commonly-held belief that attempting to suppress negative thoughts is bad for our mental health could be wrong, a new study from scientists at the University of Cambridge suggests.
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It's okay to make something nobody wants
产品看起来是给用户用的，但我觉得这可能是一种假象，它实际上更像是一种自我表达。 许多表达被不同的人创造出来，经历了自然选择后，存活下来的那一个，是用户喜欢的那个。 我的意思是，这个过程是这么发生的：你做一个东西，不是“我觉得他们可能需要这个”而做，而是“我觉得这个有点意思”而做。然后，别人在使用你的产品时，感受到了与你相同的那种感受，这时他说：“我觉得这个有点意思”。 从这个角度来说，产品就像一种情绪的存储器，作者存进去，复制一千份，用户从产品中取出来。 你不能自己不含任何情感，却期望用户使用后带有情感。 我觉得即使做了个没人想要的东西，也没关系。你唯一需要做的是确保你已经完整呈现了你的情感。…
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Writing HTML by hand
Behind the scenes - how I'm making redblobgames.com - interactive explanations of game development algorithms and math
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Programming is hard
Software is weird. In its basic form, software is this very abstract thing with seemingly little connection to the real world. Yet graphical applications running on a hardware device like a modern phone feel very real, even to people who have no appreciation of what happens within this “black box”. Some pieces of…
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Getting into Pinball
Almost exactly a year ago, I began playing pinball at my friend Noah's house. I didn't understand how he could be so interested in Pinball that he bought two machines, but since I....
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My trip to the Communication and Laptop Museum in Estonia
I ended up going to a small museum run by a passionate enthusiast in the beautiful countryside of south-east Estonia while on vacation, here are my notes on it.
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LaTeX for tabletop
Get started on using LaTeX for writing your tabletop rulebooks, adventures, and zines.
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A literary history of fake texts in Apple's marketing materials
Exploring the Applecore style
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Chili Oil Notes
I’ve been getting a little obsessed with chili oil. A little…lost in the sauce so to speak. Here’s some notes and general thoughts on chili oil.
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Tech Independence
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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Don't be afraid to be wrong
Being afraid of being wrong can hold you back - know how to deal with it.
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“Inverse vaccine” shows potential to treat MS and other autoimmune diseases
A new type of vaccine developed by researchers at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) has shown in the lab setting that
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Can I take ducks home from the park?
16 queries and 6 language models
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How I stay reasonably anonymous online (2022)
I'm not wanted by the FBI, nor am I worried about my ISP watching me, and I don't care about Google knowing what I search for. What I am worried about is cra...
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Don’t mess with a genius (2010)
Or: What happens when Newton’s laws are violated (Note in case you see ads here: This post is also available at my newer blog.) Recently, I read a book called Newton and the Counterfeiter, su…
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My Little MillionDollarHomepage Garden
Back around the time I convinced my family to switch from a 56 kb/s dial-up modem to ADSL, the website milliondollarhomepage.com was launched, and quickly became an Internet phenomenon, selling pixels for advertising space on a 1000x1000 canvas. 18 years later, the homepage is still standing, proudly displaying the…
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The washing machine in my ear, and an empty boat
Over a period of about six months in 2022, I was nearing the brink of insanity; I would go to bed every single evening and hear a washing machine running in a neighbouring apartment.
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I got paid to live in Antarctica
Sharing how I got paid to live in Antarctica, how to get a job on the ice, and everything you need to know about life at McMurdo Station.
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I wired up my bike's GPS to order me pizza during a gravel race
As harvest season begins here in the Midwest, I once again celebrate by grinding Nebraska gravel at the Gravel Worlds Long Voyage bike race. As in previous years ( 2021 ) ( 2022 ), I spent more time writing code for a marginally-useful project than I did training. But hey, I finished!
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Coffee in a Can
Life’s inconveniences, when they happen to you and me, are just that. Inconveniences. When they happen to some people though they end up becoming multi-billion dollar businesses. This is the story of Japan’s canned coffee. One finds at least one vending machine in almost every street in
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It's My Monitor
This is the first in (maybe) a series of “Tales From Tech Support”, which are true stories from my point of view. I’ll probably only post these on a Friday. In the 1990s, I worked as a contractor for a large, well-established accounting firm. We’d often buy new equipment and unpack it at the helpdesk, throw away all…
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Profound Beliefs
This post previously appeared in EIX. In the early stages of a startup your hypotheses about all the parts of your business model are your profound beliefs. Think of profound beliefs as “strong opi…
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What is an emotion? William James’s theory of how our bodies affect our feelings
“A purely disembodied human emotion is a nonentity.”
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The Le Guin Precepts
Fabled author Ursula Le Guin had a sign over her desk: Is it true? Is it necessary or at least useful? Is it compassionate or at least unharmful? Not a bad place to begin.
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The thinking path
Novel news; a review for the NYT.
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Are any words the same in all languages?
Languages can be so different from each other—but there are a few words nearly all languages have in common! Can you guess which ones?