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On doing things other people can't
Sources of Power: winning by finding a different game instead of playing the standard one better, and why to pass on that meta-skill.
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Life, Learning & Writing
The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 225 posts.
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My adventures in medical tourism
One of the things I like most about India is it's medical system. As an American, I've experienced both the Indian and US medical systems, and at this point I have a very strong preference for the Indian one. Somewhat surprisingly, the Indian medical system is based on free market …
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Lists
For as long as the web has been around, there have been entrepreneurs trying to build businesses around lists. And I’m having a tough time thinking of any company that has really nailed it in this category. For one thing, there are two modes of listmaking; making lists for yourself (task management) and making lists…
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The Jason Bourne Aesthetic
“The difference between something that can go wrong and something that can’t possibly go wrong is that when something that can’t possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.” –Douglas Adams
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Coursera is phasing out free certificates
Coursera’s free Statements of Accomplisments die a quiet death.
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Launching a product in just 3652 days
A story about how I learned a lot of things the hard way
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What I’m Teaching my Son about Money
I’m not going to lie to you – being wealthy is a lot of fun. And I’m not just talking about novelty fun that you get from driving around in a fancy car. True wealth is more of a b…
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My Life as an Autistic Wikipedian
Two years ago, I discovered that I was on the autism spectrum. As I learned more about myself and the way my brain worked, I started to look at past experiences through the lens of this newly-found…
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What Developmental Milestones Are You Missing?
[Epistemic status: Speculative. I can’t make this post less condescending and elitist, so if you don’t like condescending elitist things, this might not be for you.] Developmental psych…
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Philosophy of science books every computer scientist should read
When I tell my fellow computer scientists or software developers that I'm interested in philosophy of science, they first look a bit confused, then we have a really interesting discussion about it and then they ask me for some interesting books they could read about it. So, I thought I should turn my answer into a…
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Social Anxiety
I will leave you hanging, because it never occurs to me to wonder why you have your hand raised.
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Memrefuting
(in which I bring this blog back to the “safe, uncontroversial” territory of arguing with people who think they can solve NP-complete problems in polynomial time) A few people have aske…
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That Didn’t Need to Take an Hour
Have you ever finished something and thought to yourself, “That didn’t need to take an hour?” In my world, I have an endless stream of requests to do something for