Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 7,744 posts.
Life, Learning & Writing
Any year
My customized Wim Hof breathing method
The Official Homepage of Nyan Cat!
You could just choose optimism
You Could Just Choose Optimism There’s something strange and a little awe-inspiring about hearing someone ask for champagne on a two-hour domestic flight....
Time management tricks I learned from years of hating Tim Ferris (of the 4 hour work week)
I have hated Tim Ferriss for a long time. I have hated him since we both had editors at Crown Publishing who sat next to each other and I heard how difficult he is. I didn’t blog about it because first of all, I’m sure the buzz about me is that I’m difficult, too. And […]
So Long, MSDN Blog
UPDATE 4: My original MSDN blog content, minus the comments, has been archived publicly on the MSDN site; thanks again to Scott and Dan and everyone else who made this happen. Why minus the comment…
How to commit murder inside a locked room
Few genres are more preposterous than the locked room mystery. The premises are absurd and plot solutions ridiculous—but still I keep on reading.
Reading RSS content is a skilled activity
I've long had a fraught relationship with ToDo lists, because they're very much a double edged sword, but I'm convinced that much of the problem is t ...
Ups and downs of a side project
Reflections from a 4-year side project journey.
On Overcoming Pain
Breaking my knee this year was a difficult experience, but I did learn a lot from it . I now know more than I ever wanted to know about the anatomy of my knee and how the muscles work together to create the miracle of bipedal locomotion, and more importantly, I now know more about pain.
A more privacy-friendly blog
Over the years, I have implemented some changes to this blog to make it more privacy-friendly.
New partnership changes everything for the DIY diabetes community
I don’t speak in hyperbole very often, and I want to make sure that you all ...
The Duty of a Scholar
There was a joke at the time that although the National Security Agency had opened up in recent years and started taking their defensive role more seriously, the one aspect of cryptography which they would never discuss publicly was side channel attacks — and this itself constituted a side channel, revealing the…
Francis Ford Coppola's “Godfather Notebook”
"IF FOUND--Please return to Paramount Pictures"
Nuke’em Till They Glow – Quitting My First Job
I started working when I was 14 (I lied about my age) and counting four years in the Air Force I’ve worked in 12 jobs. I left each one of them when I was bored, ready to move on, got fired, or lear…
Merlin Mann: Better
Merlin's essay on the web, attention, and the virtues of trying a little bit harder.
South Pole Signage
Please close doors quietly!
How to buy a good car for $1000
Elite circles have their own cultural knowledge. So does the bottom 40%. Here's some of mine.
Outschooling
A few months ago I posted some data on this blog that showed the growth of homeschooling in the US with almost 5% of K12 students being schooled at home. I wrote at the end of that post: This is a trend to watch and, possibly, to invest in Well, invest in it we did. […]
From Gmail to Fastmail
Email is crucial to me, I can’t even remember the last day I didn’t check my inbox. It’s my preferred channel for communicating and interacting with other people “electronically”. Like many developers I also use emails to keep track of the activity of all the projects I contribute to. I also receive all sorts of…
The roots of Japan's Indian curry
It's been a while since our last post - life got in the way. A big thanks to everyone who reached out! We are now restarting our articles, though we might not always write once a week. If we don't think it's interesting, we won't send it
Michael Lewis and the parable of the lucky man taking the extra cookie (2017)
In 2012, Michael Lewis gave a commencement speech at Princeton University, his alma mater. In the speech, Lewis, the author of Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, and The
How to defend yourself when your photo is ridiculed on Reddit
I was going to write a rant. But I'm tired. Plus it's better to be nice in situations like these. And I can't take on any more of the Inte...