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Life, Learning & Writing

The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 382 posts.

2019
91

The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced

I promise you this story is true. Many years ago, when I was very young and you were even younger... Work was not going well. Our recently launched product was a flop. Rumours of job cuts were swirling. Things were tense. I was sat in work, headphones on, trying to drown out the sound of the open-plan office. Grinding…

102

The Power of Shower Thoughts

One of the best ways to learn and come up with new ideas is to focus intensely on a problem, then let your mind wander. I’ve enjoyed doing this when problem solving and learning, and recently I’ve been thinking about how weird it is to build trust in your unconscious to do the work for you, especially when it comes to…

103

Why am I interested in Elixir?

I’ve had Elixir on the brain recently. And by recently I probably mean 2 years. In my defense I think it is fair to say it is blooming right now. I haven’t had much need of it, or opportunity for it, in my day-to-day of maintaining a Python legacy system, renewing another legacy or optimizing Elasticsearch. So I’ve…

109

No more XS4ALL is unthinkable

They are the example of how it should be, the Dutch ISP called XS4ALL. They were bought in '98 by the former state-owned KPN, but continued to operate independently. Born from a group of hackers and the first ISP in the Netherlands, today they are still the example that we measure other ISPs by.

119

RIP Culture War Thread

[This post is having major technical issues. Some comments may not be appearing. If you can’t comment, please say so on the subreddit.] I. I Come To Praise Caesar, Not To Bury Him Several yea…