481
How to Write a Technical Book
Are you particularly well versed in a field? Why not write a book? I've summarized the 4 main steps to writing and publishing your first technical book.
Topics /
Life, Learning & Writing
The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 560 posts.
482
The world is full of wasted motion
The default state of the world is that things are inefficient, that 20% of the effort put in results in 80% of the output. This is a fundamental part of how I see the world, and this post outlines how I have internalised this idea, and how to pursue the clever hacks that can make things better
483
A Simple and Dynamic Method for Consistent Productivity
Throughout my career, though I’ve managed to be productive in aggregate, I’ve always sought to be more consistent in my productivity. How productive I am at a given moment seems driven …
484
485
Not school or homeschool, but modular learning
Meet the new wave of teachers, artists and techies who are reinventing K-12 education one kid at a time
486
Pieces of Shit
I listened to this song last night.
487
The Top Shelf Principle (2019)
The Top Shelf Principle | Mo — Previously built Standard Note...
488
Switching to Windows
Around 2015, I started to realize that I was no longer part of Apple's target audience. I've since found that Windows, and the devices available on the Windows side, from gaming laptops to convertibles to custom-built PCs, are just a better match for my requirements.
489
“That Won't Work”
Imagine the scene: Several people are discussing a problem that needs an urgent solution. Everyone is deep in thought, and one person proposes a solution. “We could…” and everyone listens intently. As soon as the person is done talking, or perhaps even before, somebody speaks up. “That won’t work!” he says. The…
490
How necessary are the programming fundamentals?
I feel like there's a lot of misinformation around this topic and I've been hoping I could address that in a way that could be convincing even for those who can't stand hearing the word
491
492
493
Woo for Its Own Sake
Software development is a funny profession. It covers people who do stuff ranging from register twiddling in device drivers and OS guts, to people who serve web content, to “big data” s…
494
John Carpenter’s “Planaria”: Or, the New Individualism
It happened for me back in the eighties, when I encountered the definition of “Life” in Dawkins’ The Blind Watchmaker : “Information, shaped by natural selection”. That concise distillation—an actual description of what life is , as opposed to all those tired and exception-prone checklists that only talk about what…
495
496
Interview with Frank Herbert and His Wife Beverly Herbert (1969)
INTERVIEW BETWEEN: ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� DATE OF TAPE:
497
Critical Thinking Isn't Just a Process
Authoritarian muscle memory and the twists and turns of lying
498
Difficult math is about recognizing patterns
Jeff Bezos tells a great story about the smartest guy he knew at Princeton. He and a classmate were working on a really tough partial differential equation and getting nowhere. They spent 3 hours on the problem and gave up.
499
I almost quit caffeine in one year
A holding company for strategic investments
500
How to Teach Math?
The only way to learn mathematics is to do mathematics—Paul Halmos Angie Hodge is an Associate Professor of mathematics at Northern Arizona University. Her interests as stated on her website …
501
I’ve been reading a whole lot about tomatoes
Hello there, I'm betting that you need a break from curve flattening, and disinfectants, and Twitter, and Slack, and Zoom, and asking if people can see your...
502
503
A writing tip I learned at Oxford
No, this is not an essay about commas
504
The Reading Obsession
“I just sit in my office and read all day.” - Warren Buffett
505
Two stories about tacit knowledge
To build a nuke or (can) not build a nuke
506
507
Farmers always worked from home
Farmers effectively work from home, and in the past majority of the population was farming. What can they teach us about Work-Life Balance?
508
Yes, experts will lie to you sometimes
Econ gives us an example of when and why this happens.
509
There are infinite worlds to explore
There are infinite worlds to explore.
510