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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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I was seven words away from being spear-phished
Three weeks ago I received a very flattering email from the University of Cambridge, asking me to judge the Adam Smith Prize for Economics:
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I saw your HN comment
I used to love getting emails from people in response to things I’ve written online, blog posts or Hacker News comments, but in the last 2 years it’s changed from mostly signal to mostly noise. I’ve …
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The anatomy of a 2AM mental breakdown
Zarar Siddiqi: engineering leader and consultant in Toronto. Building products with care, and helping teams do the same with AI in the loop.
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I organized a 20-acre game of Capture the Flag
Where an undergraduate at UT Austin writes about almost everything.
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How a lazy bitch like me learned to be productive
Before, I was a train wreck that ate too many cinnamon rolls and watched Netflix while laying in sweats on the couch. Today, I ran 3 miles, did 40 minutes of yoga, meditated, ate steel cut oats with berries for breakfast, then turned on my favorite business podcast while I showered, all before work.
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To be great, be good repeatably
A thought piece on what it takes to truly be great and what that even means in the first place.
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LED lighting badly suppresses human melatonin production at night
Yes, it’s a spicy title. Yes, I plan to back it with what I consider very reasonable evidence of the claims, in the form of a lot of research papers. I would simply ask that you read to the end before deciding I’ve lost it.
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We are drowning in information while starving for wisdom (2021)
The title of this post is a quote from Edward O. Wilson’s book ‘Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge’. For example, if you search for scientific papers about “Entropy” …
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On the cheap, like a local, and without a lot of luggage
On the cheap, like a local, and without a lot of luggage.
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Never Hertz to Ask
Obviously we’re going to talk about this today: Ok, so. Up until this year, I would’ve told you that there are two general kinds of financial bubbles. The first kind of bubble is where everyo…
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A Linux dev who helped thousands needs help to fight cancer
My name is Diane and Ken is my Life-Partner. I will probably be posting for him from time to time due to his eyes not be...
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My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement
...long live its subpar replacement
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Lines of code got a better publicist
A case against measuring AI-assisted engineering by code volume and other vanity metrics instead of outcomes.
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Donald Knuth – The Patron Saint of Yak Shaves (2017)
In 2015, I gave a talk in which I called Donald Knuth the Patron Saint of Yak Shaves . The reason is that Donald Knuth achieved the most perfect and long-running yak shave: TeX.
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This blog has moved
As of September 2018, I am moving Probably Overthinking It to a new location . Blogger has been an excellent host; so far, this blog has ...
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How I got a medal from the Army for writing code
In 2005 my National Guard unit was deployed to Iraq as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. My MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) in the Army was 92A, which is basically a logistics and supplies...
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What if we talked about over-60s’ screen time as we talk about young people’s?
In recent weeks this post has gone viral through several newsletters and aggregator sites, for all the wrong reasons. It has been rather bizarre to see people taking a post which is, and only ever was, about specific issues involving UK digital regulation and surveillance capitalism in the UK’s specific political and…
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Doomscrolling ourselves to death
James Marriott’s The New Dark Ages
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I Love Ruby
I've done a lot in my career. From working on business support software to big backend systems and even robotics. If there's been a consistent through-line to my career, it's the Ruby programming language.
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43 Hours on the Amtrak Southwest Chief
Personal blog and website of Lennart Koopmann.
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My weird new hobby: Wandering around Tokyo on Google Maps
My weird hobby lately is just wandering around Street View and zooming in on random stuff. Today I found a 350Z that shows up parked in the same Tokyo spot in every capture since 2009.
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Habits of highly mathematical people
The most common question students have about mathematics is “when will I ever use this?” Many math teachers would probably struggle to give…