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Bear plus snowflake equals polar bear
The correct answer is: 6. Or 7, if you want to be pedantic and include the newline, but let’s not.
Topics /
Life, Learning & Writing
The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 560 posts.
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Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment
Windows 3.1 allowed you to change all system colors to your liking. Linux been fully themeable since the 90s. OSX came along with a draconian “all blue aqua, and maybe a hint of gray”.
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Conspiracy: In Theory and Practice
Would you like to know a secret?
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What to Learn
It's common to see people advocate for learning skills that they have or using processes that they use. For example, Steve Yegge has a set of blog posts where he recommends reading compiler books and learning about compilers. His reasoning is basically that, if you understand compilers, you'll see compiler problems…
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Are You Trading or Gambling?
How to not be a degenerate trader
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The benefits of staying off social media
There are quite a few benefits of staying off social media. The main one is unplugging from the virtual prison and experiencing real life.
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My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer
One of the watershed moments of my life was as a 20 year old intern attending a workplace presentation about personal finance. Over the course of one hour, I learnt about the power of buy-and-hold …
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How to increase your luck surface area (2010)
"Luck Surface Area" is a turn of phrase that popped out my mouth during a discussion episode of TechZing a few months back and is something I've been meaning to write about ever since but never got around to actually doing. However, thanks to Lance Jones who referenced the concept in a recent blog post I have finally…
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Will Linux phones stay around this time?
While working through the old posts in order to adjust the front matter (and sometimes more), I thought: Will this last? Or will this go south soon, like it did around with previous projects again? A recent reddit post reinforced this line of thought, so I decided to write down my thoughts on the issue.
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I had to give a wrong answer to get the job (2017)
Back in 2007, I was searching for a software developer job at various companies. At one of these companies, the best strategy to get the job was to give a wrong answer. If this seems weird to you, let me explain what happened.
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Let there be more biographies of failures
Let there be more biographies of failures, people who were ignored by the world, whose ideas came before their time, whose great work was left in ruins.
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Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)
Well I'm in the working world again. I've found myself a well-paying gig in the engineering industry, and life finally feels like it's returning to normal after my nine months of traveling. Beca...
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The Perils of M1 Ownership
The primary admin account on an M1 Mac is its Owner, responsible for authorising the installation and use of second operating systems. Here’s what can go wrong with Ownership.
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How to learn mathematics: the asterisk method
All original material on the geometry.org website is Copyright (C) 1999–2025, Alan U. Kennington.
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Chemistry of Cast-Iron Seasoning (2010)
The post after this one on “black rust” describes why you should heat the pan before applying oil for seasoning. This helps the seasoning to adhere and makes the pan pleasantly black.
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Building an E-Ink Laptop
A series where I’m documenting my process of designing and building an e-ink laptop.
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Opt Out of Cynicism
Welcome to part 8 of the series on “How to be a game changer”. You can find the previous posts here 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 .
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What Is Social Cooling?
Social cooling refers to the idea that if “you feel you are being watched, you change your behavior.” And the massive amounts of data being collected, especially online, is exaggerating…
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NYTimes Peru N-Word: My side of the story, in four parts
On February 5 this year, one week after an article about me appeared in the Daily Beast, The New York Times announced that I would be…
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Internet Search Tips
A description of advanced tips and tricks for effective Internet research of papers/books, with real-world examples.
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How to Stop Endless Discussions
When we find ourselves in endless debates where everyone defends their idea, we don't know how to handle the situation. We eventually find a way out, but what we need is an excellent system.
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Computer Science Curriculum in 1000 YouTube Videos
This is The Entire Computer Science Curriculum in 1000 YouTube Videos. The curriculum is going to be organized in 40 courses in total, further organized in 4 academic years...
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Forget Twitter Threads; Write a Blog Post Instead
All of the kool kids in Twitter land seem to be jumping on the bandwagon of a very annoying craze. Twitter threads. Please stop; write a blog post instead
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How to get rich without being lucky (2019)
A collection of all my interviews about my ‘How to Get Rich’ tweetstorm. Seek Wealth, Not Money or Status Wealth is assets that earn while you sleep You probably know Naval from his Twitter account. We’re going to talk about his tweetstorm, “How To Get Rich (without getting lucky).” More
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Culture shock
Looking at the United States as an Indian, two months in.
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I bricked then recovered my reMarkable 2
Let me start by saying that the reMarkable 2 is a great device. I’ve wanted something like this for a long time: a relatively open device that runs Linux with an eInk screen and the ability to write on that screen with a pen. The reMarkable 2 delivers: I can ssh into it, and there’s a whole bunch of people writing…