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Asking your customers what they want doesn't work
And how can you figure it out what they really need
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 8,937 posts.
Life, Learning & Writing
Any year
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What I learned using private LLMs to write an undergraduate history essay
I used private and public LLMs to answer an undergraduate essay question I spent a week working on nearly 30 years ago, in an effort to see how the experience would have changed in that time. There were two rules:
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You can't do that because I hate you
An infuriating pattern that devs need to stop.
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Generation Junk
Nothing I Buy Works
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Book list for streetfighting computer scientists (2022)
2025 edition. this is very different from most "best books for programmers" lists you'll see, with Code Complete and Clean Code and Wistful Wanking for Practical Wankers and Design Slatterns and titles like that. you'll figure all that out as you go along. these are books to read so that you can cut motherfuckers with…
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Positive news from 2023
Many bad things happened in 2023. You already know them. Many tragic events were so terrible we will never forget them and we shouldn’t. You can easily find them all over the news. But the good things that happened are much harder to encounter, and it is easy to get the impression nothing good happened at all. In…
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Lab Notebooks (2020)
What wet-lab chemistry can teach software engineers
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Resetting the timer in my toothbrush
It’s still good to use, I swear
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Bill Watterson Commencement Speech (1990)
A speech Bill Watterson gave at Kenyon College, Gambier Ohio, to the 1990 graduating class.
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Ask yourself dumb questions and answer them (2020)
Don’t just read it; fight it! Ask your own questions, look for your own examples, discover your own proofs. Is the hypothesis necessary? Is the converse true? What happens in the classical sp…
1871
Let me repeat that back to you
Two-phase commit for humans
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Having a game I'm into makes every day enjoyable
About a month ago, I became hooked on mahjong, the ultimate game. It’s a bit late in my life to start, but that’s how it is. In the past, I might have thought, “Playing games like this would be ruinous, leading to personal downfall.” But now, as I’ve grown older, I’ve stopped worrying about these
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What I wish someone had told me
Optimism, obsession, self-belief, raw horsepower and personal connections are how things get started. Cohesive teams, the right combination of calmness and urgency, and unreasonable commitment are...
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Stratechery Year in Review
The most popular and most important posts on Stratechery in 2023.
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Most 16-year-olds don't have servers in their rooms
Hi, I’m Varun. I have a server in my room. Actually, I have two of them. And I write a ton of my own code for them. And I love it. This is a story documenting my homelab’s quiet beginnings, its spiralling evolution, and its uncertain future.
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My failed attempt at using a closet as an office
My partner and I both work from home. I'm very thankful for that as we have two young children and a commute would take up the same time we ...
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The Inner Ring (1944)
When Boris entered the room, Prince Andrey was listening to an old general, wearing his decorations, who was reporting something to Prince Andrey, with an expression of soldierly servility on his purple face. “Alright. Please wait!” he said to the general, speaking in Russian with the French accent which he used when…
1879
My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter
It turns out that you can't trust any USB type A power adapter to be within spec.
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Lessons from a never-ending personal project
I learned things
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I Love Ruby
I've done a lot in my career. From working on business support software to big backend systems and even robotics. If there's been a consistent through-line to my career, it's the Ruby programming language.
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Paying Netflix $0.53/H, etc.
People pay $0.50-$2.00 for an hour of digital entertainment.
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How to learn chess as an adult (2021)
Becoming the worst best chess player in the world
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Self-teaching, spaced repetition, and why books don't work
Listen now | "I was shocked with how intense, painstaking, and effective his learning process was"
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Preparing for missions in difficult places
Can I bring my emotional support dog?
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Leave work slightly unfinished for easier flow the next day
A breakdown of 4 simple software engineering and coding habits that improved my productivity. These include keyboard shortcuts, learning to say no, reaching flow state faster, and keeping a big book of commands handy.
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I bricked my Christmas lights
Reverse engineering Bluetooth LE LED light controllers, or How I Bricked My Christmas Lights If a device communicates via Bluetooth LE and has an app, it deserves to be integrated into my home automation system. I’ve spent a significant amount of time reverse engineering various budget-friendly LED light strips to...
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Cognitive distortions that undermine clear thinking
Leaders are paid to think clearly. And a big impediment to clear thinking is what CBT/REBT calls Cognitive Distortions: errors in thinking or thinking traps we commonly fall for. Most high-performers are not pathological, but instead fall for them when upset or in high-stress situations. In this
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Chesterton's Fence: A lesson in second order thinking (2021)
A core component of making great decisions is understanding previous decisions. If we don’t understand how we got “here,” we run the risk of making things much worse.
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I Can't Sleep
I can't sleep. I'm lying in bed every night, and images of Gaza are running through my head. Fathers holding their babies, dead, caked in dust. Bombs dropped on homes [1], on hospitals [2], on schools [3]. Tens of thousands of dead [4] in indiscriminate bombings [5]. Children