Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 1,197 posts.
Life, Learning & Writing
Any year
Blood Pumping Mechanism of the Hoof (2020)
Blood is pumped from the heart through arteries to the hoof and is assisted in its return through a “pumping mechanism” in the hoof. This mechanism is necessary due to the position of the hoof in relation to the heart. There are no muscles in the lower leg or hoof to aid in the return of venous blood to the heart…
Why I learned to "make things"
Two years ago this week, I started working at 37signals. I couldn’t make a web app to find my way out of a paper bag. When I started working here, my technical skills were in tools like Excel, R, and Matlab, and I could muddle my way through SQL queries. I had the basic technical skills tha…
Two i's
For a long time I’ve felt like the only thing worth working on is the next most important thing. Why spend time working on something that’s less important if there’s something more important that needs work? I’ve changed my mind on this. I think it’s always good to…
Dopamine Fasting: A Maladaptive Fad (2020)
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter involved in the body’s system for reward and pleasure. A recent trend has people avoiding stimulating activities in the belief that doing so allows the body to rese...
Wrong signal
In recent months, privacy and civil rights activists have increasingly recommended the use of Signal [1] , an instant messenger app developed by Open Whisper Systems (OWS). After Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election in particular, many tweets recommended using hard disk encryption and the ostensibly…
'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.
How to train your brain to flip to a new language
When you start learning a new language, common wisdom suggests that you have two possible goals, One is passing an exam,the other is the dreaded word, fluency
Explosions are great, actually
The history of spaceflight is the story of weirdos, explosions, and stacked odds.
Why do we remember some life moments but not others?
BU study finds memories of mundane incidents can be strengthened when they get attached to a memory of an emotionally charged event
Swedish Campground (2004)
We thought it was important for the user to be able to invoke every menu command directly from the keyboard, so we added a special key to the keyboard to invoke menu commands, just like our predecessor, Lisa. We called it the "Apple key"; when pressed in combination with another key, it selected the corresponding menu…
Creative Fansubbing Techniques: Part 2
This is my second article about some curious fansubbing techniques that I found when watching anime. Want to know what they are? Read on to find out!
Habits of a Happy Node Hacker
This post is from 2013 - check out the update! For most of the nearly twenty years since its inception, JavaScript lacked many of the niceties that made...
Moving On...
5GB Disk Space 50GB Monthly Bandwidth 2 MySQL Databases 0 Sub-domains & Addon Domains 5 E-mail Addresses
Mister Macintosh (2004)
Steve Jobs often came by Texaco Towers after dinner, to see what was new, and we'd usually show him whatever recent progress we made. Sometimes he'd be pissed off about something, but other times he'd be really excited about a new idea.
Psychotherapy via Internet found as good as or better than face-to-face
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The obsession with next
The tech world is obsessed with what’s next. It has become so used to the constant flow of new products and new companies that newness itself has been placed on a pedestal. But outside of a few breakthroughs here and there, most things that are good are good because they got there slowly. …
How to Get Rich (1999)
[JARED DIAMOND:] In Guns, Germs, and Steel I asked why history has unfolded differently over the last 13,000 years in Eurasia, in the Americas, in sub-Saharan Africa, and in Aboriginal Australia, with the result that within the last 500 years Europeans were the ones who conquered Native Americans and Aboriginal…
Thanks, HN Here are the vocab survey results from all your participation
Test your English vocabulary size and measure how many words you know with Preply's free test (ex. Testyourvocab.com). For children, adults and EFL/ESL learners.
Ben “bushing” Byer has passed away
We are deeply saddened by the news that our member, colleague, and friend Ben “bushing” Byer has passed away.
George Orwell's 6 rules for writing (2018; originally published in 1946)
George Orwell was greatly concerned with truth and language and how deliberately misleading language is used to conceal disagreeable political facts. To guide writers into writing clearly and truthfully, he proposed six writing rules.
The Poetics of CLI Command Names
Naming a CLI command requires deep and careful deliberation.
The Zettelkasten method in Obsidian
Learn how to set up a working Zettelkasten in Obsidian: note types, vault structure, MOCs, and how AI handles the maintenance that kills most systems.
How to Build a Building
SparkFun is building an 80,000 sq ft building with construction starting in May of 2013. It’s going to be awesome.