Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 462 posts.
SIM Cards Must Die
So, Apple still fighting for smaller SIM card standard for future iPhones. What? Why isn’t Apple fighting to kill the SIM cards?...
Here’s to the Misfits
The school I went to in England used to proudly display their famous alumni in black and white photos circling the theatre lobby. From John le Carré, to John Cleese, the list included notable actors, top politicians and accomplished actors. What the school didn't tell admiring visitors though, is
The Background Noise Was Louder than I Realized
It's not about technology for its own sake. It's about being able to implement your ideas.
My 7 Year Old Son Found His People at the Maker Faire
Last Saturday my seven year old son found his people at the Maker Faire. It started on the train ride from the Menlo Park station. Normally the 9:34am train heading North on a Saturday is about as …
Humble Beginnings
t's easy to forget the humble beginnings that great companies start from, and it's tempting to gloss over the fact that companies, now on the global stage, were once small projects with ugly designs and hacky implementations. Rarely do people set out with grand visions to create a
Vitamin C is a bug that needs to be patched
So Maciej Cegłowski has updated his blog for the first time in four months. Upon encountering the novel task of "actually generating HTML", his gimcrack blogging software sprayed a couple random posts across his RSS feed, one of which was the venerable 2010 essay on scurvy in Antarctic exploration. Which, combined…
We consistently underestimate kids.
I've long believed that we seriously underestimate kids. Hanging around with my friend's daughters who were 2, 3, and 5 when I was in college was really illuminating as I found myself interacting and conversing with his (admittedly smart) 2 year o...
Malthusianisms
(See also: Umeshisms, Anthropicisms) Why, in real life, do we ever encounter hard instances of NP-complete problems? Because if it’s too easy to find a 10,000-mile TSP tour, we ask for a 9,0…
On Being a Junior Developer
Junior developer (for purposes of this post)is a developer with < 2 years experience programming in industry who have an interest in sharpening their technical skills. I recently graduated from Stanford with a degree in Computer Science. I’ve been programming for 4 years and feel comfortable claiming ~1.5 years…
Productivity vs. Guilt and Self-Loathing
The guilt can be crushing. Everyone seems to be getting stuff done, except you. ...
What you know matters more than what you do
Insight into Impact I recently had an interesting conversation with some colleagues. We were talking about a young researcher in our field who happens to ... Read more
If Money Doesn't Make You Happy, Consider Time
Forget Suze Orman. Time, not money, is your most precious resource. Spend it wisely.
What I learned from my first C coding challenge
Last week at Vimeo we had a challenge. Build a better query string parameter sorter for a Varnish plugin. The gauntlet was thrown down at 5pm on a Friday and by 2am Friday night we had our first contender. I arrived home to see the code and decided to throw my hat into the ring. I had made some attempts at c plugins…