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If You Have Writer's Block, Maybe You Should Stop Lying
It's not a technique problem, it's a sincerity problem
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Life, Learning & Writing
The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 560 posts.
392
Things you are allowed to do, academic edition
Since it’s application season again, I thought that I would share some things that you are ‘allowed’ to do in academia but may not be aware of. This post is inspired by Milan Cvitkovic’s post on ‘Things you’re allowed to do’ and Veronika Cheplygina’s posts on advice for Ph.D. students, in particular her post ‘7 things…
393
I closed a lot of browser tabs
I am widely admired at work for my ability to have many, many browser tabs open. (That, at least, is what I take from the frequent shouts of “holy cow, man, look at your browser!”) Nonetheless, I have long thought that it would be worth getting my total tab count down. I have tabs open for a bunch of reasons.
394
Living Like It's 99, No Social Media, No Smartphone
I’ve now lived without social media and without a smartphone for the past 3 years. And I’m still alive. A lot of people have asked me how I made it. So I wrote an article about it. The why, the how, and the now.
395
Clever vs. Insightful Code
“Don’t write clever code.” Why not? “Because it’s hard to understand.” People who say this think of clever code such as Duff’s Device: Duff's Device send(to, from, count) registershort*to, *from; registercount; { registern =(count +7) /8; switch(count %8) { case0: do{ *to =*from++; case7: *to =*from++; case6: *to…
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Reading code is a skill (2020)
I’m inspired to write this post because Someone Is Wrong On The Internet. Of course a more accurate statement would be “I disagree with some aspects of what someone on the internet said, even though they have an entirely valid point of view”. But that’s less catchy. I saw a Tweet I violently agreed with, so I…
398
Saying the Difficult Things
During the summer last year, I was doing my annual big hike with a friend. We use these hikes to see more of the country, and inevitably the conversations end up covering every topic under the sun. That day, we’d been talking about communication. In the evening, tucked away in a little cabin near Glencoe, something…
399
90% of Everything Is Crap
I like Sturgeon’s law for a lot of reasons. But most of all, I like it as a nudge to try harder to like things.
400
Quitting your dream job twice
Quitting is never easy. Building things can be. I'm leaving TTFM Labs to start a company.
401
What’s Wrong with “Multiplication Is Repeated Addition”? (2008)
[Photo by Alejandra Mavroski.] Myrtle called it The article that launched a thousand posts…, and counting comments on this and several other blogs, that may not be too much of an exaggeration…
402
Importance of muscle mass, strength and cardiorespiratory fitness for longevity
"If you have the aspiration of kicking ass when you're 85, you can't afford to be average when you're 50." —Peter Attia
403
Paper Notes
How I finally became the kind of person who carries a paper notebook and a pen
404
Things I Didn't Learn in 2020
It was a weird year.
405
The Problems with Deliberate Practice (2020)
Have you ever tried putting deliberate practice to practice? If you have, it's likely that you'll have noticed just how difficult it is to apply deliberate practice principles to your career. Anyone that tells you otherwise is lying; here's why.
406
Some thoughts on writing
I see a lot of essays framed as writing advice which are actually thinly veiled descriptions of how someone writes that basically say "you should write how I write", e.g., people who write short posts say that you should write short posts . As with technical topics, I think a lot of different things can work and…
407
William Cook has died
Dr William Cook, who along with Warren Harris designed and developed AppleScript for Apple back in the early 90s, has sadly passed away at age 57.
408
Explaining explaining: a quick guide on explanatory writing
Hot takes and cold truths on software, startups, and the lies we tell ourselves.
409
Crazy Conclusions in Early Childhood
From my last post on this site: One recurring theme: Bright kids of a certain age are just smart enough to jump to crazy conclusions rooted ...
410
How I was failing to find time for life while working remotely
Since the last March, like a lot of other people, I was forced to work remotely. It was not the first time, but somehow it went different. I quickly found out that not having a context switch between the office and home forced me into non-healthy behaviors like giving work all the available time.
411
I Am Parting with My Crypto Library
The time has come for me to find a new home for my (paper) cryptography library. It’s about 150 linear feet of books, conference proceedings, journals, and monographs—mostly from the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. My preference is that it goes to an educational institution, but will consider a corporate or personal home if…
412
Tips for Interviewing over Zoom
Don’t let these videoconferencing mistakes be a stumbling block for a potential employer.
413
Once we can see them, it’s too late
[updates: here’s the paper, and here’s Robin’s brief response to some of the comments here] This month Robin Hanson, the famous and controversy-prone George Mason University econo…
414
My Personal Creed of Employment
After taking a sabbatical, a time I was very fortunate to spend with my family and children, I was preparing to return to work. As I walked in the park a day before I wrote these thoughts, wanting to capture the perspective I had gained during the recent months. This is a collection of thoughts I had at the time, I…
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Fake shutters make me angry (2018)
Fake shutters make angry plain and simple. Once you understand why they may make you angry too, but understanding this simple design element can change the look of our neighborhoods! Come with me won't you?
417
The Joy of Fuck-You Money (2018)
According to Humphrey Bogart, the only good reason for making money is “so you can tell any son-of-a-bitch in the world to go to hell”.
418
It Doesn't Work
8 AM. Like any other day, I take a quick glance at my GitHub notifications via Octobox.
419
The YouTube revolution in knowledge transfer (2019)
Growing up as an aspiring javelin thrower in Kenya, the young Julius Yego was unable to find a coach: in a country where runners command the most prestige, mentorship was practically nonexistent. Determined to succeed, he instead watched YouTube recordings of Norwegian Olympic javelin thrower Andreas Thorkildsen…
420
I ended up liking GNOME with the loss of one hand
I switched to Gnome after a bad injury on a hand and Gnome helped me a lot using the computer