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Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 8,939 posts.
Life, Learning & Writing
Any year
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Confessions of a recovering lifehacker
I used to be a lifehacking addict, and in some ways I still am. I have a perverse love of systems and efficiency: analyzing, configuring, optmizing, categorizing, defining, and parameter-setting. (…
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Explaining Programming to Six-Year-Olds
It was more fun than I expected! I treated this seriously and I was well prepared, and it paid off. The kids were interested and I think they might even remember something.
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Blogging vs. Blog Setups
Rakhim's homepage. I build open source projects and write about technology, programming, and life.
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What boyfriends and girlfriends search for on Google
Are we really in control when making decisions? In his book, Dan Ariely unmasks the subtle but powerful tricks that our minds play on us.
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“There are people who can see and others who cannot even look”
The greatest early photographer's portraits of Hugo, Manet, Dumas, and more
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Button Stealer
Steals buttons from the websites you visit. Do your usual online stuff and watch the collection of stolen buttons grow.
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Math for seven-year-olds
As a guest today in my daughter’s second-grade classroom, full of math-enthusiastic seven-and-eight-year-old girls, I led a mathematical investigation of graph coloring, chromatic numbers, ma…
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When you want to quit because it's just not worth it
Are you crying in the shower because you can't handle it anymore? Beyond Impostor Syndrome: Complete melt-down? Well, at least you're in good company.
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The Best Things and Stuff of 2021
Great things and people that I discovered, learned, read, met, etc. in 2021. No particular ordering is implied. Not everything is new.
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I'm quitting my PhD
Just a bit over half a year ago, I started my PhD in Quantum Computing. Even though I basically didn’t have any previous knowledge about it, I thought Quantum Computing was an interesting challenge to get into. What should I say? Quantum Computing is really cool, indeed! Having a background in Theoretical Informatics…
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Surgery, the Ultimate Placebo
Ian Harris explains that more than half of commonly performed surgical operations may be placebos. Adequate studies using a blinded control group are essential. Ian Harris, a Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, wrote a book titled Surgery, The Ultimate Placebo. I…
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An iOS app update that annoys me
Almost a year ago I started using a delightful little iOS app called Receipt Box. It did exactly what I wanted: I could tap in an expense and a category, and the app added a geo location to the exp...
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What are the odds that some idiot will name his mutex ether-rot-mutex (2017)
As part of my job I spend quite a lot of time scanning through files and disk contents, often in hex or filtered text view, searching for sp...
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Does your office have a library?
Let's get weird... here are some questions. These questions aren't special questions or specifically meant as only this set of questions... they are just questions that capture the spirit of 'pause and think on some stuff that you don't'. Fill in your own questions if you have better ones.
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Run Your Own Website
I go back and forth on running my own website. I love [working](Re Introducing First Crack.txt) [on](First Crack Release Notes 0619.txt) [First Crack](/projects.html#firstCrack), but that work can become trying. I have little time for [projects](/projects.html), and the more I spend coding, the less I [read](My…
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Surviving the front page of Hacker News on a 50 Mbps uplink
Overview of basic analytics during that one time my blog post got traction on HackerNews, and the steps I took to prepare for just this occasion.
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A prescient footnote
Back in 2004, who could have imagined Apple’s astonishing rise to overtake Microsoft as the most valuable tech company in the world?
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Do the weirdest thing that feels right
From "what to write" to "how to live" | Castles in the Sky #35
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Down the mechanical keyboard rabbit hole
I’m writing this to share my experience adapting to weird keyboards and layouts.
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The Curse of Smart People
A bit over 3 years ago, after working for many years at a series of startups (most of which I co-founded), I disappeared through a Certain V...
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Recovering from AI addiction
Welcome to Internet and Technology Addicts Anonymous! We’re glad you’ve found us, and we hope our community can be as helpful to you as it has been for us. ITAA is a Twelve-Step fellowship of individuals who support each other in recovering from internet and technology addiction. This includes social media addiction…