211
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 2,098 posts.
212
Walter Isaacson’s ‘Steve Jobs’
It’s not just that Isaacson was wrong about *something*; it’s that he was wrong about the most important thing in Jobs’s career. There’s a decades-long story arc about the software system started at NeXT that Isaacson completely misses.
213
North Carolina teacher's resignation letter
A letter from a disgusted teacher: I QUIT Kris L. Nielsen Monroe, NC 28110 Union County Public Schools Human Resources Department 400 North Church Street Monroe, NC 28112 October 25, 2012 To All it…
214
The girl with the ANSI tattoo
I enjoyed the David Fincher remake of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo more than I thought I would. Rather than a shallow and cynical Holly...
215
Talent Acquisitions
Today, development stopped on Pulp, Wallet , and Sparrow as their companies were bought by Facebook and Google, respectively.
216
217
218
This Is 2016 Not 2012
Her eyebrows knot themselves. A pencil grates back and forth on her legal pad. Scratch. Scratch. My back itches; a tiny incessant itch that demands more at
219
What happens when you are the doctor on the airplane?
Recently he posted a note to Facebook that he had been summoned into action onboard a flight. He was the doctor who responded when they asked over the speaker, "Is there a doctor in the house?" I couldn't let that story go untold, so I sent him a bunch of questions, which he was kind enough to answer.
220
221
Meet the new Light Table
We have to start with a picture. Or hey, just go download it and see for yourself.
222
223
Why I'm returning my Microsoft Surface RT
Do not buy a Microsoft Surface RT yet. I’m typing this with gritted teeth. My 24 hours with the half-baked Surface have been a frustrating challenge, a mix of love and hate. I want want want this…
224
225
226
227
228
Why Explore Space? A 1970 Letter to a Nun in Africa.
Ernst Stuhlinger wrote this letter on May 6, 1970, to Sister Mary Jucunda, a nun who worked among the starving children of Kabwe, Zambia, in Africa, who questioned the value of space exploration. A…
229
Tough times on the road to Starcraft
The road to StarCraft was a brutal sequence of bad breaks, hard pivots, and near-disasters. This is the part most people never heard.
230
The rise of the “successful” unsustainable company
We're funding too many unsustainable companies.
231
232
233
Never create Ruby strings longer than 23 characters
Obviously this is an utterly preposterous statement: it’s hard to think of a more ridiculous and esoteric coding requirement. I can just imagine all sorts of amusing conversations with designers and business sponsors: “No... the size of this <input> field should be 23... 24 is just too long!” Or: “We need to explain…
234
235
UK anti-encryption law
There was some surprise in the comments of yesterday's post over the fact that the United Kingdom has effectively outlawed encryption: the UK will...
236
Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?
Well, I didn't really want to be doing this when I was 20. I'm in it for the money. As long as there's money in programming, I'll stay for the money, in all likelihood.
237
How the Norwegians Reacted to Terrorism
An antidote to the American cycle of threat, fear, and overspending in response to terrorism is this, about Norway on the first anniversary of its terrorist massacre: And at the political level, the Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg pledged to do everything to ensure the country’s core values were not undermined. “The…
238
239
Building my Own Laptop
We are building an open laptop, with some wacky features in it for hackers like me.
240
Restoration of defocused and blurred images
Restoration of distorted images is one of the most interesting and important problems of image processing - from the theoretical, as well as from the practical point of view. There are especial cases: blurring due to incorrect focus and blurring due to movement - and these very defects, which each of you knows very…