Top posts

Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 57 posts.

Life, Learning & Writing
2016
6

YC's Winter Reading List

The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation [https://www.amazon.com/Idea-Factory-Great-American-Innovation/dp/0143122797] “It’s amazing how prolific Bell Labs was — the transistor, information theory, Unix, amongst other creations — but it’s fascinating to understand it as an organization…

23

The Math Myth

Math professor David Edwards sent me this short essay on mathematical education. Printed with his permission. The Math Myth Themath myth is the myth that the future of the American economy is dependent upon the masses having higher mathematics skills. This myth goes back to at least Sputnik, when the Russians were…

30

Bee Bread

Honeybees ( Apis mellifera ) have mastered feats of chemical engineering as various as they are alchemical. Their most well-known substances are of course honey, their concentrated, stable, hive-warming energy source, and wax, their pliable, moisture-proof structural material. Yet there are others which nowadays are…