Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 462 posts.
The illusion of progress lights a fire
Psychologists have longed talked about ‘goal gradient’ which describes how we work harder to achieve a goal as we get closer to it. I just came across a fantastic study published in the…
Fear and Loathing at Zigfu: My Y Combinator Experience
Applications for YCombinator's winter 2013 cycle are due October 30. Let me tell you about my experience in YCombinator with Zigfu . Zigf...
The Founder's Lie About Comfort Zones
There is a lot of talk going on about the endurance and struggle that startup founders go through. How long the hours are, we all...
Airship Tails
Our team at Google got the opportunity to fly in a Zeppelin yesterday. This is the first Zeppelin to fly in the US since the Hindenburg. I had been looking forward to this flight for several years. The photos are spectacular.
Education is Our Generation's Big Problem. Let's Fix it.
Build practical, job-relevant skills with ready-made learning pathways and custom programs from Chegg Skills for employers, higher education, and government.
How To Build A Blog Readership
Discuss this post on Hacker News Despite the recent success of this blog over the past year (250,000 uniques, hundreds of new subscribers, republished in L
Lean into the pain
When you first begin to exercise, it’s somewhat painful. Not wildly painful, like touching a hot stove, but enough that if your only goal was to avoid pain, you certainly would stop doing it. But if you keep exercising… well, it just keeps getting more painful. When you’re done, if you’ve really pushed yourself, you…
On Anonymity
Yesterday I encountered a blog whose comment section wasn’t linked up with Facebook or Disqus. It was just a pure email/display name system from years past – one where no one had any interest in tracking your activity across the entire interwebs. Putting in a display name that maybe wasn’t your full name – first and…
Entrepreneurship is hard but you can’t die
I’m posting a series of articles on family, startup culture and careers. These vignettes are about how I’ve lived my life trying to make a dent in the universe. Hoping they’ll give you a point of v…
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…
Never Stop Hacking
A short note to myself: what makes programming fun isn't finishing tasks, it's the problems themselves and the process of learning. Never stop hacking.
A brief guide to Tech Internships for CS students
Planning to be an Intern in the Bay Area during Summer 2012? Make sure to read an Intern's Guide to the Bay Area, and join the 2012 Facebook group. (via this guy, via this guy)Joel Spolsky, from the Joel On Software blog and StackOverflow, wrote an article with Advice for Computer Science College Students back in '05…
How I ended up with so much Hacker News karma
On the Hacker News leaderboard I'm currently in position #12 with 32,360 points. I was curious to find out how I ended up in that position...
Two Things
[UPDATE, added 15 June 2004: This page has been linked in some prominent places recently, and as a result I've received many submissions for inclusion in The Two Things List. Although I can't respond to everyone individually, I want to thank you all for your contributions. I hope that I will be able to update the list…
I Have No Idea [Why Apple Featured My App]
In early December, 2011, I was both surprised and flattered to discover that Apple had named Halftone as one of the best photo apps in its App Store Rewind 2011 . Since then, I’ve received a lot of e-mail asking me how I did it. That is, what did I do to “get” Apple to pick Halftone? I don’t know what kind of response…