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Life, Learning & Writing

The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 394 posts.

2013
38

The 7 Habits of Highly Overrated People

I remember having a discussion with a more tenured coworker, with the subject being the impending departure of another coworker. I said, “man, it’s going to be rough when he leaves, considering how much he’s done for us over the last several years.” The person I was talking to replied in a way that perplexed...

42

"Nothing like this will be built again"

I've just had a really amazing experience: a guided tour of the nuclear reactor complex at Torness on the Scottish coast. What made this tour unusual is that the tour guide in question, Les, happens to be one of the reactor engineers (as well as a friend) -- and he showed me (and a couple of other friends) right…

45

O’Reilly Media Has Lost Its Soul

Several years ago I was courted by O’Reilly Media. After the success of my first book, Show Me the Numbers , the folks at O’Reilly were interested in publishing my second. I responded cautiously at first, because my prior self-publishing experience was extremely positive. Analytics Press, the publisher of Show Me the…

50

My Aaron Swartz, whom I loved

We used to have a fight about how much the internet would grieve if he died. I was right, but the last word you get in as the still living is a hollow thing, trailing off, as it does, into oblivion. I love Aaron. I loved Aaron. There are no words to can contain love, to cloth it in words is to kill it, to mummify it…

52

Winning at Candy Crush

I find Flash games on Facebook great fun. Not playing them, of course, that’s boring. As you may remember from my previous post, “ winning at Puzzle Adventures ”, I like to take a look into their guts and figure out how they work, and whether or not I can get insane scores with no effort.

53

The Apprentice Programmer

I dropped out of school when I was 16 years old. School was not for me. To me, computers were so much more interesting. Right or wrong, I felt like I wasted my time there and my real education was starting when I came home. I lost respect for the institution and of course this meant that I no longer bothered to put any

57

Only the Lonely

There isn’t any point in denying that the outburst of sympathy and support that followed my confession to an attempt at self-slaughter last year (Richard Herring podcast) has touched me very deeply.