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How to buy gifts that people actually want
We buy more bad gifts than we realise... and nobody tells us. How to use psychology to stop wasting money on gifts people don't want.
Topics /
Life, Learning & Writing
The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 517 posts.
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Won’t Subscribe
Since I’m lightly employed these days, I enjoy keeping up with the news. In recent weeks, I’ve been blocked by the paywalls of the Wall Street Journal , Globe & Mail (closest thing Canada has to a national newspaper), the Times/Sunday Times (of London), the Telegraph (also UK), Business Insider , and Bloomberg …
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Tiny websites are great
Why building your own tiny website is a really great project that every coder should do.
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Hard to discover tips and apps for macOS
Inspired by a few different conversations with friends who’ve switched to macOS where I give them a whole bunch of tips and recommendations I’ve learned about over many years which are super important to how I use my computer, but often quite hard to find out about, I decided to write them all down:
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Things I Learned from Five Years in Climate Tech
Articles about systems, programming, and software engineering management written by Evan Meagher
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Build stuff
Extending on the about page, I want to emphasise even more the importance of creating personal projects, having independent work and going far beyond what a degree might teach you. Just so that we are on the same page, I will not take into consideration the reason for choosing a Computer Science degree, nor the money…
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My 2020 Hackintosh Hardware Spec
I built my last hackintosh in 2014 and it was overdue for an update. Since Apple recently updated their iMac with Core i9s and skipped the T2, this is probably the last time I'm building this sort of computer, before MacOS is locked down forever. Unfortunately, nothing in their lineup fits my needs, hence I chose to
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Digital Tools I Wish Existed
My digital life in a nutshell: I discover relevant content I don’t have time to consume, I find time and become overwhelmed with my scattered backlog, I wish the content were in a different format, and then I’m unable to find something again once I’ve consumed it. Not retaining enough is a valid problem but we’ll…
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Zettelkasten note-taking in 10 minutes
Learn Zettelkasten note-taking: Create permanent, atomic notes linked together to prevent them from being forgotten. Uses plain text files and simple software like Zettlr.
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To All the Jobs I Had Before
Notes that I mostly write for myself, but you can read if you want.
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Cleaning My MacBook After 16800 Hours of Use
I estimated that I had used my mac for approximately 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, 48 weeks a year, for 7 years straight, for a total for whopping 16800 hours. I have written the first versions of most of the software components of my startup using this computer. And all this time, this machine worked without a…
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On the Loss of a Cofounder
Here’s the rough chronology: On April 22, 2015, Christian Brink and I, two tech entrepreneurs in our early thirties, incorporated the…
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These are called opportunities
Yesterday Apple updated three of their machines. During the announcement, it was revealed that the MacBook Air, the MacBook Pro 13", and the Mac Mini would now be running on M1 SoCs. These "One more thing..." events usually comes with raving numbers and this one did not diverge from the tradition.
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Color blindness
Color blindness is an inaccurate term. Most color-blind people can see color, they just don't see the same colors as everyone else. There ha...
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My Mid-Career Job-Hunt: A Data Point for Job-Seeking Devs
I wrapped up my job search recently, and I’m happy to say that I’ll be joining a YC-backed startup called “Heap.” I thought I’d share a little bit about my job search in case the information may benefit other job-seeking devs. I’ll go over the pipeline of places I applied to and the result of each application. I’ll…
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Optimal Peanut Butter and Banana Sandwiches
I was personally useless for most of the Spring of 2020. There was a period of time, though, after the peak in coronavirus cases here in NYC and before the onslaught of police violence here in NYC that I managed to scrounge up the motivation to do something other than drink and maniacally refresh my Twitter feed. I…
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The human genome is full of viruses
Your body requires viruses, but viruses don’t always require a body
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The power of admitting ignorance
Upon re-reading Mathematical Apocrypha , a collection of tales dealing with great mathematicians as well as their quirks and foibles, I thought about my own interactions with some of The Elders of Mathematics (from here on abbreviated as THEM) and what I would add to such a book. While I have a few interesting and…
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The joys of owning an ‘OG’ email account
When you own a short email address at a popular email provider, you are bound to get gobs of spam, and more than a few alerts about random people trying to seize control over the account. If your account name is short and desirable enough, this kind of activity can make the account less reliable for day-to-day…
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On All That Fuckery
Compare and Choose the Best Medical Lawyers What are you looking for? Search Search Search More Filters Review Radius Search Miles Apply Filters Reset Filters Find Trusted Medical Malpractice & Birth Injury Lawyers Near You Finding the right legal representation is crucial when dealing with medical malpractice and…
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Letter to Myself in Late 2008
[I originally wrote and distributed this post to Y Combinator founders and have been encouraged to share it publicly, so here it is.]
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I Got My Attention Back (2017)
There are a thousand beautiful ways to start the day that don’t begin with looking at your phone. And yet so few of us choose to do so. Technology is commanding our attention in infinite, insurmountable loops. A country trip off-grid helped me escape.
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Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat
The post conclusions contain speculation on my part. By now, you've heard of the Corona virus, otherwise known as SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19.