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I accidentally became PureGym’s unofficial Apple Wallet developer
How I reverse-engineered PureGym's API to build a working Apple Wallet pass with PassKit, Vapor, and mitmproxy - end-to-end iOS reverse engineering walkthrough.
Topics /
Life, Learning & Writing
The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 602 posts.
62
The Rise of Whatever
This was originally titled “I miss when computers were fun”. But in the course of writing it, I discovered that there is a reason computers became less fun, a dark thread woven through a number of events in recent history. Let me back up a bit.
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Notes on Managing ADHD
Strategies and tactics for staying productive.
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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…
66
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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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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I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad
If a book has been in print for forty years, I can expect it to be in print for another forty years. But, and that is the main difference, if it survives …
69
I canceled my book deal
I've always wanted to write a book, and I was close, but not this time.
70
Reinvent the Wheel
One of the most harmful pieces of advice is to …
71
How to write blog posts that developers read
Software bloggers can make the same mistakes for years that prevent readers from discovering their writing. I know because I'm one of them. Over time, I've learned techniques that help some blog posts succeed and the pitfalls that cause others to languish in obscurity.
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I built something that changed my friend group's social fabric
This is a story that started back in 2022, but I think its a perfect time to reflect on the impact that it has had on my friend group still to this day. Update (2/7/2025): I'm genuinely blown away by the response to this post. This hit the
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Backyard Coffee and Jazz in Kyoto
A "magical" experience, and what we get when we let people pursue their passions
75
When I say “alphabetical order”, I mean “alphabetical order”
Last month I have been on a multi-day hike with my dad. Each of us took many pictures, and when we came back we put them all in a shared folder. We both have Android phones, and the naming scheme used for our pictures was the same: IMG_YYYYMMDD_HHmmss followed maybe by some other numbers and then a .jpg . Here YYYY…
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Building a T1D smartwatch for my son from scratch
The software from this project has been ported to the new Pebble watch here . Source code for the Pebble watchface is available here .
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How to live an intellectually rich life
.. and how living one is easier than you think
79
I built physical album cards with NFC tags to teach my son music discovery
What's the modern equivalent of flipping through CDs? Physical album cards with NFC tags that bring back the tactile joy of music discovery.
80
Stop Trying to Schedule a Call with Me
Stop Trying To Schedule A Call With Me - The harassment by SaaS
81
Being poor vs. being broke
The more I speak about being poor, the more I realize how fundamentally other folks misunderstand what it means to be poor versus being broke.
82
The Tsunami of Burnout Few See
That's the problem with deploying play-acting as "solutions:" play-acting doesn't actually fix the problems at the source, it simply lets th...
83
I feel Apple has lost its alignment with me and other long-time customers
A reaction and assorted observations about Apple's September 9 Awe-Dropping event.
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That fractal that's been up on my wall for years
Warning: Math, Handwaving I spent a lot of time doodling in middle school instead of whatever middle schoolers are supposed to do. Somewhere between the Cool S’s and Penrose triangles I found a neat way to fill up graph paper by combining and copying squares.
86
Live Stream from the Namib Desert
https://www.looduskalender.ee/n/en - check these as well (not so exotic, but still a lot of fun)
87
New colors without shooting lasers into your eyes
Can optical illusions take you outside the human color gamut?
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The blissful Zen of a good side project
One of life's greatest simple pleasures is creating something just for yourself.
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Learning music with Strudel
Made in Notion, the connected workspace where AI agents and teams organize docs, projects and knowledge together.
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Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?
Link to: https://tidbits.com/2025/12/17/compromised-apple-gift-card-leads-to-apple-account-lockout/