5911
Ignore Sunk Costs (2009)
The most important decision-making rule you learn in business school is still largely misunderstood. When making a choice between two options, only consider what’s going to happen in the futu…
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 8,940 posts.
Life, Learning & Writing
Any year
5912
Ever young?
I turn 52 next week, and I have a confession to make: I feel like a complete failure at "adulting". Adulting, loosely defined, is that set of activities and behaviours which we judge to be characteristics of grown-ups. You can stop now and make your own list: what I'm going to suggest, speculatively, is that you…
5913
Paper is dead, long live paper programming
It should come as no surprise to anyone who reads this blog that I love to program "by hand." I happen to practice a degree of ascetical programming practices, and I believe that they help me to more deeply internalize and understand problems, ultimately delivering higher quality solutions. One of
5914
The difference between "today's task" and "accretive work"
One thing I've learned about paradoxes: often the answer to the riddle of "how can this one thing have such a contradictory set of features and effects?" is "it's not one thing, it's two things*."
5915
Meeting strangers in the street
It figures that I would rediscover my desire to exercise at exactly the point in my life when it suddenly became unwise for me to exercise at all. On a Fr...
5916
5917
5918
Book review: Is parallel programming hard, and, if so, what can you do about it?
Here are my thoughts on the free online textbook Is Parallel Programming Hard, And, If So, What Can You Do About It? by Paul E. McKenney, author of the Linux kernel’s RCU synchronization mechanism. I read a lot of this textbook, got my fill, and probably won’t read more of it in the near future so wanted to write this…
5919
5920
How to Ace Calculus: The Art of Doing Well in Technical Courses
Tangent Troubles Calculus is easy. Or at least, it can be. The key is how you digest the material. Here’s an example: when you’re first ... Read more
5921
Video CDs Break Windows Explorer
There is an odd bug in Windows related to Video CDs . To reproduce it: Insert a Video CD (if you don't have one, you can download this fi...
5922
5923
5924
Washed Up
Even if every technology jockeying for a spot under the 'web3' banner evolves beyond proof-of-work blockchains, these systems will still not be part of the web because they designed not to be. 'web3' ain't the web, and VCs talking their own book don't get the last word, no matter how much dirty money they throw at it.
5925
Human Bottlenecks
Why AI won't augment human capabilities much.
5926
5927
5928
5929
My trip to the Communication and Laptop Museum in Estonia
I ended up going to a small museum run by a passionate enthusiast in the beautiful countryside of south-east Estonia while on vacation, here are my notes on it.
5930
Living the Future of Technical Writing
The amazing adventures and final toolchain of Pro Git, 2nd Edition
5931
An ingenious vintage German cycle map (2014)
We cycled the Swiss part of the Rhine Cycleway last week, with our folding bikes neatly stowed in suitcases for the flight. A combination of cycle.travel (natch), the Cicerone guide, and the excellent MapOut app guided us safely along the way: a very modern combination of mapping styles.
5932
5933
5934
5935
2017 Camera News
Herewith some reportage on the most interesting cameras in the world, with opinions to provoke er entertain people who are up on this stuff, and a basic survey of the landscape for people who like pictures and wonder about cameras.
5936
Heat exchanger masks for cold weather cycling (2019)
(updated, March 2025) How I Started Caring About Heat Exchanger Masks Back in the 90s I started riding my bike to work after a hiatus of a few years. My coworkers would regularly ask me if I was go…
5937
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?...
5938
5939
5940
The Bare Minimum You Should Do to Protect Your Family's Data
For a lot of families, technology is the glue that holds everything together. There’s your kid’s Instagram feed you follow to see what theyR