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Days of Awe: The clinical trial drug that might save my husband's life
"G’mar Chatimah Tovah” – May you be inscribed into the Book of Life
Topics /
Life, Learning & Writing
The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 7,746 posts.
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Frameworks are for hacks, libraries for seeds
I find that I operate in one of two modes when I’m writing software. I’m either approaching a project as a quick hack or as developing software . As much as anything else, this affects how I approach the project and what kinds of results that I get.
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Arguing Without Warning
We should encourage more public disagreement.
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Indie, alone, and figuring it out
Going indie looks like freedom from the outside. But once you’re in it, you face loneliness, pressure, constant decisions, user feedback, and all the invisible work no one warns you about. This is what the journey feels like, and why it’s still worth it.
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How can I keep from singing?
This is a story of a most unexpected journey — one that is just starting. If somebody had told me four years ago that I’d be writing this today, I would have stared at them in astonishment or laughed dismissedly. Yet here I am, writing about a late-found hobby that has somehow become a very important part of my life.
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Bill Watterson, Picasso, and self promotion
One of the most interesting pieces I’ve come across lately was Hugh Eakin’s piece on the backstory of one of Picasso’s most prominent works, Guernica. During the creative process for Guernica, Picasso created 45 different sketches before settling on the final direction of the painting: Guernica debuted in 1937 at the…
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"Maybe later" was a feature
The most valueble code in my repo, is the code I didn't write.
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This must already exist
I encounter this feeling frequently. I have a sudden need (or idea) and I realize that such and such a tool or service must already exist. As a software engineer, I’ve learned to not let that feeling pass. Usually, it’s a chance to learn something (because usually it does exist) and sometimes it’s a chance to to build…
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Happiness Is Two Scales
The common way to talk about happiness is as a single scale: unhappy at one end, neutral in the middle, happy at the other end. I think that model is wrong.
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Highlights from “The Checklist Manifesto” by Atul Gawande
1. In the 1970s, the philosophers Samuel Gorovitz and Alasdair MacIntyre published a short essay on the nature of human fallibility that I read during my surgical training and haven’t stopped...
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There Is(Ǝ) – Such That (∋)
Let me tell you about a language. But if you wish to go play instead go here. It's going to get a little abstract below. There is a Canvas to Compose Upon The canvas is a square with the largest circle that has a radius of ρ. There are
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Recursion into madness
Raymond Chandler would have loved generative AI
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My Education in Machine Learning via Cousera, A Review So Far
As of today I’ve completed my fifth course at Coursera, all but one being directly related to Machine Learning. The fact that you can now take classes given by many of most well known researchers i…
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When First Principles Thinking Fails (2020)
Thinking is split roughly into pattern matching against experience, and reasoning from first principles. Here's one argument for why you need both.
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On Hubris and Humility
Last week I gave a talk at the Open Source Firmware Conference about some of the work I’m doing at Oxide Computer, entitled On Hubris and Humility. There is a video of the talk if you’d like to watch it in video form. It came out pretty alright!
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What is magic?
I'm cofounder of a literary studio called Plympton , which focuses on innovation and publishing and our latest project is Writing Atlas . I wrote a book and produce films. I co-founded WikiPortraits and WikiHaus, where we get high quality photos on Wikipedia and host Wiki events. I work where technology x journalism…
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Book Review: 1587, a Year of No Significance
Finalist #15 in the Book Review Contest
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Do trees communicate? Networks, networks
I was unfamiliar with how mycorrhizal networks connect the roots of trees, facilitating the sharing of resources. Dr. Suzanne Simard writes: Graduate student Kevin Beiler has uncovered the extent a…
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How we gave colors names
“Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter in…
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Storms and Teacups
Observations on gender, feminism and harrassment.
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Better
This domain is parked. There is no active website here.
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Ursula K. Le Guin on “Spare Time”
In praise of the mundane, unquantifiable, impractical activities that feed creative work and fill life with meaning.