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Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 8,944 posts.
Life, Learning & Writing
Any year
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Gerard ’t Hooft, Theoretical Physics as a Challenge
How to become a good theoretical physicist
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Vitamin D toxicity: What if you get too much?
Understand the risks of taking high doses of this vitamin in supplement form.
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The 4% Rule: The Easy Answer to “How Much Do I Need for Retirement?”
In the world of early retirees, we have a concept that goes by names like “The 4% rule”, or “The 4% Safe Withdrawal Rate”, or simply “The SWR.” As with all thing…
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Typography in ten minutes
Butterick’s Practical Typography
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Laws of Tech: Commoditize Your Complement
A classic pattern in technology economics, identified by Joel Spolsky, is layers of the stack attempting to become monopolies while turning other layers into perfectly-competitive markets which are commoditized, in order to harvest most of the consumer surplus; discussion and examples.
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Ars Longa, Vita Brevis
The Alchemist asked if I wanted a drink. I did, but no amount of staring could make my eyes settle on the color of the liquid in the flask. And the gold the alchemists paid the taxmen smelled funny…
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Hyphens and dashes
Butterick’s Practical Typography
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Pragmatic Unicode
Unicode can be confusing. Here’s a “just the facts I need” presentation about how to handle it correctly.
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Know Your Amphetamines
In the 1950s, a shady outfit called Obetrol Pharmaceuticals made a popular over-the-counter diet pill called Obetrol...
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The bitter truth about fructose alarmism.
Dr. Robert Lustig, professor of pediatrics at the University of California at San Francisco, is the star of the video above. While he presents some material that’s scientifically sound, he also makes enough errors to warrant a healthy dose of criticism. There’s a ton of material he goes over, so instead of writing a…
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The CRAPL: An academic-strength open source license
Generally, academic software is stapled together on a tight deadline; an expert user has to coerce it into running; and it's not pretty code. Academic code is about "proof of concept." These rough edges make academics reluctant to release their software. But, that doesn't mean they shouldn't.
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Narcissistic personality disorder
This mental disorder includes an unreasonably high sense of importance, a need for excessive admiration, fragile self-esteem, and troubled relationships.
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Book Review: Surfing Uncertainty
[Related to: It’s Bayes All The Way Up, Why Are Transgender People Immune To Optical Illusions?, Can We Link Perception And Cognition?] I. Sometimes I have the fantasy of being able to glut m…
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Why We Sleep: Responses to questions from readers
Introduction The aim of the book, Why We Sleep, is to provide the general public access to a broad collection of sleep research. Below, I address thoughtful questions that have been raised regardin…
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WebMD, And The Tragedy Of Legible Expertise
What does running a medical database teach you about why everything sucks?
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Top Ten Fasting Myths Debunked
Or “Top Ten Diet Myths Debunked“. That would have fit almost as well. Ok, so in retrospect, I think I screwed up on the title. Many myths just happened to be connected to intermittent fasting (meal frequency, breakfast skipping, etc.). Well, live and learn. November 4th Addendum Section added at the end of the…
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Social Justice And Words, Words, Words
[Content note: hostility toward social justice, discussion of various prejudices] “Words! Words! Words! I’m so sick of words! I get words all day through. First from him, now from you. Is tha…
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Underlining | Butterick’s Practical Typography
Butterick’s Practical Typography
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The Backfire Effect
The Misconception: When your beliefs are challenged with facts, you alter your opinions and incorporate the new information into your thinking. The Truth: When your deepest convictions are challeng…
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Spider Robinson: Melancholy Elephants
Copyright is a hot-button topic these days. Does information want to be free…or just reasonably priced? I discussed copyright at some length 25 years ago—a year before the first TCP/IP wide area network in the world went operational—two years before the first Macintosh went on sale!—in the following story. It won the…
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The Last Lecture
Randy Pausch's famous Last Lecture, titled "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams," was delivered in 2007 after a terminal cancer diagnosis and has since become a global phenomenon. A co-founder of the Entertainment Technology Center, Pausch was known for his interdisciplinary work and for creating the ALICE…
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Seriously bright light vs. winter blahs
Most SAD light therapy lamps are not bright enough. How to get brighter light than any you can buy!
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How to Get Up Right Away When Your Alarm Goes Off
When your alarm wakes you up in the morning, is it hard for you to get up right away? Do you find yourself hitting the snooze button and going right back to sleep?