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What happened to nerds?
I've befriended some of the most thoughtful, brilliant, curious, eccentric, and sincere people I've ever met in the tech industry. Many of my dearest friends...
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 662 posts.
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I was recently diagnosed with anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis
I was recently diagnosed with anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis . It is an autoimmune disorder where your body’s normally helpful antibodies start acting strangely . This leads to inflammation in the brain. This blog briefly discusses some of my experience and prognosis.
63
Do your own writing
When you write a document or essay, you are posing a question and then answering it. For example, a PRD answers the question, “What should we build?” A technical spec answers, “How should we build it?” Sometimes the question is more difficult to answer—“What are we even trying to accomplish?” And with every attempt at…
64
DIY Soft Drinks
Cola, orange soda, and almond soda!
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Your intellectual fly is open when you use an LLM to author a post (2025)
I need to make a painful confession: somehow, LinkedIn has become an important social network to me. This isn’t necessarily due to LinkedIn’s sparkling competence, of course. To the contrary, LinkedIn is the Gerald Ford of social networks: the normal one that was left standing as the Richard Nixons and the Spiro…
66
Most arguments are about ego, not ideas
I am a software engineer, and I used to enjoy arguing with people for technical correctness. Code reviews, design meetings, mailing-list threads, dinner tables. If someone was wrong, I wanted them to know it, and I wanted them to know exactly why. I collected counterarguments the way I collected patches. I believed…
67
Programming Still Sucks
Sorry Peter. — I'm at a birthday party, and while most people here also work in tech, there's always a Guy with a Real Job. You know, a physical job, building some or other thing people need. And this Guy always asks some variant of the same question: aren't you worried AI is taking your job? I glance around and see a…
68
Men who stare at walls
I came across a video by Simple Lucas describing a routine to improve focus and productivity. The routine was basically: Don’t use any screens/entertainment when trying to focus on work. When you start to feel mentally drained, sit and stare at a wall for x minutes to recover focus. I’ve been trying it, and it’s a…
69
It's still ok to enjoy programming
Programming is fun!
70
I spent $266 and four AI models to own my tablet. GLM-5.3 finished it in a day
Owning a tablet Amazon kept shutting down: CVE-2022-38181, four AI models, five months
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Shipping a laptop to a refugee camp in Uganda
The surprisingly difficult ordeal of sending a decade-old MacBook to a friend in a Ugandan refugee camp.
73
The Most Popular Blogs of Hacker News in 2025
Who were the most popular personal bloggers of 2025, and what made them successful on Hacker News?
74
My Friend Aaron
This one is about my friend, Aaron. I met him at school, and in our first year when we were eleven years old I told him I wanted to be his best friend but he…
75
Passkeys are not a trap
A post called Passkeys are a trap. Do not use them. has been doing the rounds over the last few days, making it pretty high on Hacker News, and I've had it sent to me many times with an 'is this true?' kind of vibe. It's written for
76
Stolen Buttons
Every website I visit, I steal a button from it. Check out my stash!
77
The happiest I've ever been
It was around January 2020. I became the head coach of a youth basketball team.
78
The worst job interview I ever had
Or how not to do a culture fit interview
79
Dario, Please
Your favourite ROP gadget
80
Jev meets the Trolley Problem
I asked Jev and 13 other decision models the Trolley Problem.
81
We're going to need default hard budget caps on pretty much everything
Here’s a product feature which the world is going to need a whole lot more of over the coming months and years: default hard budget caps. I’m talking about the …
82
More German than many Germans
I just wanted to do an internship in Europe so it would be easier to find a job after graduation. That internship completely changed my life.
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Substack writers, you need a website
Substack is convenient, but treat it as a distribution tool for your content. Your content should live on an independently owned website, which has a domain name you control and own. This way, you …
84
They're made out of meat (1991)
Copyright, Terry Bisson, 1991 Originally published in OMNI, 1991, and featured in HARPER’S and around the internet since. It has even made its way into several books on consciousness and brain science. I’m surprised, pleased, and proud. But please do not reprint, perform, alter or adapt in any way without first…
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The revolt of the reader
Reading is important to me. While I’m not a quick reader nor an especially voracious one, I have found that long-form reading has had a profound influence on me over my life.
87
Mea Culpa – Dark Hours
Last week I launched a project called Dark Hours, which was a website utility to give you an idea of what could be seen in the sky that night. A developer who …
88
The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner
A fabulously gay blind Romance author.
89
I'm the mom in that viral Giants clip. Let me tell you about my husband
You saw me carrying our baby and food. There was more happening in our family that night.
90
Ian's Secure Shoelace Knot
Tutorial for tying the Ian's Secure Shoelace Knot, in which the laces are formed into two loops, both of which are passed through the “hole” in the middle.