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Dopamine Fracking
The act of pumping immense, disproportionate resources into a previously casual or complex and layered activity to forcefully extract and squeeze out the purest, most concentrated dopamine hit
Topics /
Life, Learning & Writing
The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 7,740 posts.
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We all dodged a bullet
That NPM attack could have been so much worse.
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Why I will never buy another Samsung device
I’ve been on Nexuses and Pixels since Nexus one. Stock-or-nothing was me. However, the mobile phone market has become a bit stale and…
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A simple system I’m using to stay in touch with hundreds of people
Staying in touch with people is one of these asymmetric habits that require little effort, time and resources but has an unlimited upside.
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Overly analytical guide to escorting
The Overly Analytical Guide to Escorting
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We mourn our craft
I didn’t ask for this and neither did you. I didn’t ask for a robot to consume every blog post and piece of code I ever wrote and parrot it back so that some…
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Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)
A bit of inspiration (and some hopefully actionable advice) for folks who are still working at day jobs.
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A lesson on the importance of encouraging your children with their projects
My wife calls me at work, and we have the usual end-of-the-day chat. Then: "Oh, by the way, Guy wants you to take him to the hardware store, he wants to get some tape." "What kind of tape?" "He says he wants 'wood tape'." "Wood tape?" "Wood tape." "Uhhh, ok. When?" "Sometime this weekend. He is really looking forward…
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Life is not short
The most surprising thing is that you wouldn’t let anyone steal your property, but you consistently let people steal your time, which is infinitely more valuable.
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Writing toy software is a joy
Why you should write more toy programs
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My 16-month theanine self-experiment
randomized and blinded, N=1
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How to Understand Things
What we call intelligence is as much about virtues such as honesty, integrity, and bravery, as it is about raw intellect.
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Fuckin' user interface design, I swear
From the highly eclectic blog of Mark Dominus
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Software I’m thankful for (2021)
Most Unix-ish APIs, from files to sockets are a bit of a mess today. Endless poorly documented sockopts, unexpected changes in write semantics across FSs and OSes, good luck trying to figure out mtimes . But despite the mess, I can generally wrap my head around open/read/write/close. I can strace a binary and figure…
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All it takes is for one to work out
More than a decade ago, when I was applying to graduate school, I went through a period of deep uncertainty. I had tried the previous year and hadn’t gotten in anywhere. I wanted to try again, but …
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Leaving Google Fi
I’m sharing the story of a bad situation I had ordering a new phone through Google Fi. It turned into a two month long ordeal where the service got worse and worse. At every turn the Google Fi team was presented with a chance to make things better and every time they blew it. I’m sharing this because I hope a long…
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Why is the sky blue?
The internet’s default answer to “why is the sky blue?” is “Rayleigh scattering”. And that’s not wrong, but it’s also not very useful.
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First, make me care
Writing advice: some nonfiction fails because it opens with background instead of a hook—readers leave before reaching the good material. Find the single anomaly or question that makes your topic interesting, lead with that, and let the background follow once you’ve earned attention.
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RSS is wonderful
Inspired by Web Rings from the 90s, I created a tool for serendipitous discovery of blogs called RSS Discovery Engine. Similar to how web rings work, I make the assumption that interesting blogs will tend to link to other related blogs, and therefore, linked blogs are likely to also be interesting.
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Code is run more than read
Code is read more than written, code is run more than read. I think this line of thought can be extended beyond code-writing, and used as a rule of thumb to identify problems and make decisions.
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Excellence is a habit, but so is failure
We often hear that making small incremental improvements every day can lead to great things. This popular piece of advice rings true, and it’s a powerful reminder to keep pushing ourselves forward.
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I gave the AI arms and legs then it rejected me
How I helped Claude AI extend its capabilities only for the same AI to reject my job application.
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Goodbye Claude, hello Pi
I’ve been a longtime Claude Code user, ever since it became available in the Claude Pro subscription plan over a year ago. I remember the first time I used it, feeling giddy as it spat out messy Python code for whatever random weekend project I was working on, all from a single prompt. I’m certain that in a few years…
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Find Your People
Thank you to Bucknell University for inviting me to be this year's commencement speaker. And congratulations to the Class of 2025! Watch the speech on YouTube. Thirty-two...
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The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café
Hunting timeless insights into humans and software and helping others on the way.
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Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate
Here are some things that I hated as a student. At the time, I thought my teachers didn’t understand or care how terrible they were.
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Investing for Geeks
A quick, opinionated guide to retirement planning and investing for software people.