Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 8,940 posts.
...or do I just need new glasses? I'm not a graphic designer. I find it hard to get into the mindset of excellence through beauty. I understand user flow, interactions, happy paths, delighting the user, humane design, and so on - but when it comes to the art of making something look nice I'm all at sea. I understand…
Can cold showers, winter plunges, and brisk walks in the chilly outdoors provide some of the same benefits as intense exercise—including weight loss and increased energy levels? Such a link …
How long it really takes to create a new habit, not 21 days.
Mathematics, applications of mathematics to life in general, and my life as a mathematician.
It’s been a little over a year since I started living 28h days . I figured it might be a good idea to write an yearly update, and doing it at the beginning of the year feels appropriate, so here we are.
The little annoyances that alerted us developers of performance problems
Normally I don't publish private correspondence, but sometimes — rarely — I feel like hanging someone out to dry ...
New therapy is turning back the clock in aging brains, healing inflammation, restoring memory and reshaping the future of brain age-related therapies.
The concept of ikigai has often been misunderstood in the Western world largely due to the popularity of a certain Venn diagram. But ikigai means something different.
The Casio F-91W is one of the most iconic watches of the past few decades. It’s notoriously cheap, reliable, and retro; in fact, it’s probably the only watch that was worn by both Obama and Osama . At just under $10, it’s the perfect daily beater watch. And in the age where you need to charge your Apple Watch every…
In order to get something done, maybe we need to think less.
In my earlier 20s when I knew everything, I was a much bigger evangelist for my technology choices. I’m accused of fanboyism a lot more these days, but only because Hacker News keeps sending huge waves of people here who tell me I’m an idiot. But I used to be much more annoying with pushing my choices onto others.
Programmers tend to worry too much and too soon about performance. Many college-level Computer Science classes focus on fancy algorithms to improve performance, but in real life performance rarely matters. Most real-world programs run plenty fast enough on today's machines without any particular attention to…
I’m the author of Behind the Ivy Curtain: A Data Driven Guide to Elite College Admissions :
The Setup Let’s pretend for a moment that you own a car wash. For $5, customers can drive in for a hand wash and wax. One day, in the midst of the stream of Hondas and Subarus, a customer pul…
This is definitely not a "learn distributed systems in 21 days" post. I recommend a principled, from the foundations-up, studying of distrib...
Most great thinkers have speculated about the kind of leadership that might give rise to a better society, analyzing it through what’s sometimes called a “normative” lens: What should we be doing? In Leviathan, for example, Thomas Hobbes argued for a single, absolute sovereign to hold together the social contract. He…
You’ve probably heard that the Rust type checker can be a great “co-pilot”, helping you to avoid subtle bugs that would have been a royal pain in the !@#!$! to debug. This is truly awesome! But what you may not realize is how it feels in the moment when this happens. The answer typically is: really, really…
A recent study led by Evan Forman, PhD, a psychology professor in Drexel University's College of Arts and Sciences, shows that a computer game can be used to train its players to eat less sugar, as way of reducing their weight and improving their health.
“I’m going to be 29 anyways, so I might as well be 29 with a Master’s.” — me 5 years ago debating whether I should take classes On June 5, 2017, I started taking classes at Tufts University while working full time. On January 4, 2022, I submitted the final draft of my Master’s thesis. Much like my past self had hoped…
Let’s say that, like me, you are a person who stares at a computer and writes code for a living. As a straight male who grew up in a time where knitting was very strongly female coded, it for the most part never occurred to me that knitting was a thing I could do and might enjoy. Regardless of your demographic…
In this past year, I’ve done significant changes to my whole “productivity system”. These changes were impulsed by two major life changes. One, I abandoned my work life as a freelancer…
I got a cheap used copy of the book A Programmer's Guide to COMMON LISP by Deborah G. Tatar, Digital Press, 1987. Why did I read such an...
Even if you've checked your work, asked for all the help, and are moving gingerly, there will be decisions where you can't decide. You've considered and reconsi
A detailed step-by-step guide for turning rough rocks into beautiful gems with a rotary rock tumbler.
