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Hard disk LEDs and noisy machines
The little annoyances that alerted us developers of performance problems
Topics /
Life, Learning & Writing
The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 7,743 posts.
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"Yes, but what are your credentials, Mr Stross?"
Normally I don't publish private correspondence, but sometimes — rarely — I feel like hanging someone out to dry ...
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Hacking the Casio F-91W to Handle 1000 Psi
The Casio F-91W is one of the most iconic watches of the past few decades. It’s notoriously cheap, reliable, and retro; in fact, it’s probably the only watch that was worn by both Obama and Osama . At just under $10, it’s the perfect daily beater watch. And in the age where you need to charge your Apple Watch every…
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Feeling unproductive? Maybe you should stop overthinking
In order to get something done, maybe we need to think less.
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Whatever works for you
In my earlier 20s when I knew everything, I was a much bigger evangelist for my technology choices. I’m accused of fanboyism a lot more these days, but only because Hacker News keeps sending huge waves of people here who tell me I’m an idiot. But I used to be much more annoying with pushing my choices onto others.
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John Ousterhout: My favorite sayings
Programmers tend to worry too much and too soon about performance. Many college-level Computer Science classes focus on fancy algorithms to improve performance, but in real life performance rarely matters. Most real-world programs run plenty fast enough on today's machines without any particular attention to…
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How I make $400 a month in Passive Income by Self-Publishing
I’m the author of Behind the Ivy Curtain: A Data Driven Guide to Elite College Admissions :
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The "Wash my Ferrari" Problem: A Meditation on Risk
The Setup Let’s pretend for a moment that you own a car wash. For $5, customers can drive in for a hand wash and wax. One day, in the midst of the stream of Hondas and Subarus, a customer pul…
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Learning about distributed systems: where to start? (2020)
This is definitely not a "learn distributed systems in 21 days" post. I recommend a principled, from the foundations-up, studying of distrib...
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Bad behavior is almost always good politics (2021)
Most great thinkers have speculated about the kind of leadership that might give rise to a better society, analyzing it through what’s sometimes called a “normative” lens: What should we be doing? In Leviathan, for example, Thomas Hobbes argued for a single, absolute sovereign to hold together the social contract. He…
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What it feels like when Rust saves your bacon
You’ve probably heard that the Rust type checker can be a great “co-pilot”, helping you to avoid subtle bugs that would have been a royal pain in the !@#!$! to debug. This is truly awesome! But what you may not realize is how it feels in the moment when this happens. The answer typically is: really, really…
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Completing a part-time Master's in computer science while working
“I’m going to be 29 anyways, so I might as well be 29 with a Master’s.” — me 5 years ago debating whether I should take classes On June 5, 2017, I started taking classes at Tufts University while working full time. On January 4, 2022, I submitted the final draft of my Master’s thesis. Much like my past self had hoped…
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Consider Knitting
Let’s say that, like me, you are a person who stares at a computer and writes code for a living. As a straight male who grew up in a time where knitting was very strongly female coded, it for the most part never occurred to me that knitting was a thing I could do and might enjoy. Regardless of your demographic…
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My productivity system
In this past year, I’ve done significant changes to my whole “productivity system”. These changes were impulsed by two major life changes. One, I abandoned my work life as a freelancer…
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Reading "A Programmer's Guide to Common Lisp"
I got a cheap used copy of the book A Programmer's Guide to COMMON LISP by Deborah G. Tatar, Digital Press, 1987. Why did I read such an...
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Ok, so you can’t decide
Even if you've checked your work, asked for all the help, and are moving gingerly, there will be decisions where you can't decide. You've considered and reconsi
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I launched a paid community in one month
How I launched a paid community in one month and my plans to grow with generated content for SEO & side project marketing.
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The value of doing a little
Often, doing a little is better than doing a lot.
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Energy-Harvesting Electronic Holiday Card 2024
We're delighted to share our electronic creation with you this holiday season, six long years after the previous one. The theme this time around is "powered by the holiday spirit", and it's an exercise in energy harvesting.
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The Simple Math Behind Early Retirement
This is the blog post that shows you how to be wealthy enough to retire in ten years. Here at Mr. Money Mustache, we talk about all sorts of fancy stuff like investment fundamentals, lifestyle chan…
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De-googling, so far
Over the past few years, I have tried to gradually reduce or eliminate my use of Google products and services. It has been difficult to ditch Google’s products in some categories, and in some others, it has been nigh impossible. Here, I list the services I have tried to find alternatives for, discuss the ease (or lack…
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Having your insulin pump die while you're on vacation
I'm about to tell you a story about the major disaster which affected much of my decisionmaking on my week-long vacation to Santa Fe. I just got home to LA, ...
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It's My Monitor
This is the first in (maybe) a series of “Tales From Tech Support”, which are true stories from my point of view. I’ll probably only post these on a Friday. In the 1990s, I worked as a contractor for a large, well-established accounting firm. We’d often buy new equipment and unpack it at the helpdesk, throw away all…
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We should be more tired than the model
Adding deliberate friction back into development