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Train Travel in the UK: A Foreigner’s Perspective
Although British people love to complain about the state of their railways, my impressions about train travel in the UK were mostly positive.
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 8,939 posts.
Life, Learning & Writing
Any year
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Self-control secrets of the Puritan masters
People today are fighting the temptations of a new economy.
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iPhones and action discoverability
Discoverability I spend a lot of my time thinking about UX and design, and I try to consciously think about it in the wild when I can. One of the things that always catches my eyes is the idea of discoverability, or how a user is able to discover that action X does some thing Y. A basic way to do so is to rely on…
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Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring
Which is good! Boring = success
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Aging programmer
Back in college, they told me that I would start my career writing code, but eventually, I would move to a position where I would ask others to code my designs. To celebrate that this turned out to be completely false, here are some assorted reflections as a 40-year-old programmer that looks back: • Compared to my…
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A mysterious voice is haunting American Airlines’ in-flight announcements
A mysterious voice is moaning and grunting on American Airlines' in-flight announcement systems, and nobody knows who or how they're doing it.
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Emmanuel Mignot wins Breakthrough Prize for discovering cause of narcolepsy
The Stanford Medicine sleep researcher is honored for discovering the role of orexins in narcolepsy and paving the way to new sleep disorder therapies.
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Software I’m thankful for (2021)
Most Unix-ish APIs, from files to sockets are a bit of a mess today. Endless poorly documented sockopts, unexpected changes in write semantics across FSs and OSes, good luck trying to figure out mtimes . But despite the mess, I can generally wrap my head around open/read/write/close. I can strace a binary and figure…
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Be critical or be corrupted
I recently rewatched "The Wire". The show's central theme is about counter-productive metrics and their corrupting influence on institutions. I've noticed hints of this pattern in software engineering, too
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Avoiding homework with code and getting caught
The eventful tale of me getting fed up with my homework
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'Soleus pushup' fuels metabolism for hours while sitting
The soleus muscle in the calf can do big things to improve the metabolic health in the rest of your body if activated correctly. Now UH researchers are pioneering the “soleus pushup” which elevates muscle metabolism for hours, even while sitting.
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Your work matters – Build your schedule accordingly
About halfway through Laura Vanderkam’s sharp new productivity guide, Tranquility by Tuesday, we’re introduced to Elizabeth, an education professor who, worried about her ticking tenure ... Read more
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Aerodynamics of Gravel Bikes
Aerodynamics are an important factor in gravel racing and riding. Gravel racing speeds are high—the fastest riders in the 200-mile Unbound average 20 mph (32 km/h) across the Flint Hills of Kansas. And many gravel races can be extremely windy. Optimizing the aerodynamics of a…
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I’m a productive programmer with a memory of a fruit fly
A love letter to tools that changed everything for me.
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My productivity system
In this past year, I’ve done significant changes to my whole “productivity system”. These changes were impulsed by two major life changes. One, I abandoned my work life as a freelancer…
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Why does a librarian own MetaFilter?
Jessamyn West is not just one of the web's favorite librarians, but the new owner of Metafilter, an incredibly long-running social network that dates back to a very different Internet. In the first part of our interview with Jessamyn, she tells us just how Metafilter has kept going and stayed healthy since 1999.
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Please don't be spooky
A piece of advice I wish I could give my manager is don't be spooky. My manager regularly messages me things like Hey, can you talk? or Got a minute now? ...
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I had a dream
As I slept fitfully, still recovering from COVID, I had one of the more interesting dreams of my life: I was desperately trying to finish some PowerPoint slides in time to give a talk. Uncharacteri…
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Have I reached the Douglas Adams Inflection point?
The all-knowing sage Douglas Adams had this to say about technology: Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can…
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Gödel, Escher, Bach: an in-depth explainer
[Thanks to Jacob Falkovich, Eric Neyman, and my LessWrong reviewer, among others, for their feedback on earlier drafts.] …
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Don't compare yourself to other entrepreneurs
Everyone says don't compare yourself to other people. It can be easier said than done. I'm going to run through how I avoid comparing myself
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