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The Hand Licking Incident
When my oldest son was seven and in second grade, we were living in Kansas. Some time after the school year started, he began licking his ha...
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Life, Learning & Writing
The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 7,740 posts.
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Have you ever hurt yourself from your own code?
Have you ever accidentally caused harm to yourself or others from your code? I have.
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Eight years today
The car in front of me kept hesitating. The driver couldn't seem to decide where to turn. Up ahead I could see that the light was green, but...
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They're made out of meat (1991)
Copyright, Terry Bisson, 1991 Originally published in OMNI, 1991, and featured in HARPER’S and around the internet since. It has even made its way into several books on consciousness and brain science. I’m surprised, pleased, and proud. But please do not reprint, perform, alter or adapt in any way without first…
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Using the wrong dictionary
The way I thought you used a dictionary was that you looked up words you've never heard of, or whose sense you're unsure of. You would never look up an ordinary word -- like example , or sport , or magic -- because all you'll learn is what it means, and that you already know.
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Donald Knuth on work habits, problem solving, and happiness (2020)
Recently, I came across a few old and new interviews of Donald Knuth (sources: (i) Companion to the Papers of Donald Knuth , (ii) Interviews conducted by Lex Fridman Part 1 and Part 2 ), where he sheds light on his work habits, how he approaches problems, and his philosophy towards happiness. I really enjoyed reading…
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Every productivity thought I've ever had, as concisely as possible
I combed through several years of my private notes and through everything I published on productivity before and tried to summarize all of it in this post. If you’re unproductive right now Here’s what you should do if you’ve been procrastinating for an entire day: Accept that you won’t do anything today and try not to…
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Notes on Managing ADHD
Strategies and tactics for staying productive.
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My House
On the 19th of August 2019, I bought a house with a small garden. The house is what in English apparently is called an allotment. Basically, a small slot meant for vegetable gardening which sometimes has a house or shed. Not really meant for living in. But after nearly a year of work, I moved into mine. It’s legal as…
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Don’t mess with a genius (2010)
Or: What happens when Newton’s laws are violated (Note in case you see ads here: This post is also available at my newer blog.) Recently, I read a book called Newton and the Counterfeiter, su…
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My stages of learning to be a socially normal person
a slow progression
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The best programmers I know
I have met a lot of developers in my life. Late…
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Someone stole my car and now I own hundreds of vinyl records
"Only in Los Angeles" has never rung more true
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Making My Own Glasses
A biohacking health story about making custom glasses after conflicting eye test results from two opticians and an eye doctor for a pilot’s license exam.
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Absurd Success
So… I’ve had the most unreal week of coding. Zero exaggeration, I’ve halved the RAM requirements of the search engine, removed the need to take the system offline during an upgrade, removed hard limits on how many documents can be indexed, and quadrupled soft limits on how many keywords can be in the corpus. It’s been…
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Books that changed my career as a software engineer
I'd like to present five books that have changed my mind about software development showing me lots of concepts, techniques and tips. Let's see them and why I they were so valuable to me
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Kids can't use computers, and why it should worry you
TL;DR? Why not just go watch another five second video of a kitten with its head in a toilet roll, or a 140 character description of a meal your friend just stuffed in their mouth. "nom nom" . This blog post is not for you.
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Greenland is a beautiful nightmare
Greenland is a complicated topic here in Denmark. The former colony that is still treated a bit like a colony is something that inspires a lot of emotions. Greenland has been subjected to a lot of unethical experiments by Denmark, from taking their kids to wild experiments in criminal justice.
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A real person, a lot like you
Derek Sivers official site. Thoughts on philosophy, culture, self-improvement. Author of Useful Not True, How to Live, Hell Yeah or No, Anything You Want.
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Papers every developer should read at least twice (2009)
10 Papers Every Developer Should Read - (At Least Twice)
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I tried making artificial sunlight at home
Some time ago, I saw this video by DIY Perks where they make artificial sunlight at home with a 500W LED and a gigantic (1.2m) parabolic reflector. I've been...
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