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Learning from 20 years of personal analytics
Utilizing data analysis capabilities in Wolfram|Alpha Pro, Stephen Wolfram looks at his quantified self based on his large collection of lifelogging data.
Topics /
Life, Learning & Writing
The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 7,741 posts.
1592
Names should be cute, not descriptive
A long-standing debate between me and a peer at work has been how we should name services. His position was always that services should be named something descriptive, so that you can infer from the name what it does. My position is that the name should definitely not be descriptive, but should be something cute and…
1593
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.
1594
Leaving Gmail for Mailbox.org
This was a tough decision, having used Gmail since 2007/2008. However, I had to draw the line and stop giving Google my data for free. The problem with email is …
1595
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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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.
1597
Be careful about what you dislike
Observations about the problem of having strong opinions and sharing them with others.
1598
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.
1599
Bret Victor update
Dynamicland is still going, just quietly. We closed the Oakland space for covid, but Realtalk development and collaborations have continued -- basically as originally planned, if more slowly due to our small size.
1600
Do the right thing, wait to get fired
I stumbled upon this bit of wisdom in Team Geek: A Software Developers Guide to Working Well with Others, and it resonated. It comes from Google engineer Chade-Meng Tan: Do the right thing, wait t…
1601
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…
1602
A Health Update
I’m writing this post from a hospital bed. And I couldn’t be happier. You hear folks say chemotherapy sucks, but until you go through it yourself, you don’t really know how bad it can be. It remains a popular activity only because it’s better than the alternative. My first exposure to chemotherapy was with this […]
1603
Small
Looking down from his perch on the edge of space [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHtvDA0W34I], Felix Baumgartner remarked: > Sometimes you have to be really high, to see how small you really are. It turns out that this feeling is a well documented phenomena dubbed the Overview effect [http:
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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...
1605
I need to find an apartment
Long story short: I’ve taken a new position in Luxembourg and I have tofind an apartment, in a different country, in a reasonably short time.
1606
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.
1607
Why Self-Host?
Let me make the argument why you should start self-hosting more of your personal services.
1608
Jeff Varasano's Famous New York Pizza Recipe (2008)
One of the 'Elite 8' Pizzerias in the US by Every Day with Rachael Ray One of America's Perfect Pizzeria's: Zagat And Many Other Awards Main Restaurant Website
1609
Apple Notes Will Gain Markdown Export at WWDC, and, I Have Thoughts
It’s quite gratifying that Markdown has not only become so popular, but after 21 years, continues to grow in popularity, to the point now where there clearly are a lot of people who seemingly enjoy writing in Markdown more than even I do. But I think it would be a huge mistake for Apple to make Apple Notes a “Markdown…
1610
The lamps in my house
I have a thing for lamps. Especially designer lamps from the past. I occasionally share them on X and Instagram, and people always ask me about the brands and models. I love lamps so much that I designed one myself. So I decided to give a tour of the lamps
1611
Personal thoughts/notes from working on Zootopia 2
The home of Code & Visuals
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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.
1614
Math for eight-year-olds: graph theory for kids
This morning I had the pleasure to be a mathematical guest in my daughter’s third-grade class, full of inquisitive eight- and nine-year-old girls, and we had a wonderful interaction. Followin…
1615
Thinking will become a hobby
These lines are very difficult for me to write because I feel like digging my own grave. AI systems are improving by leaps and bounds. From the early 2022 fumbling release of ChatGPT, which couldn’t correctly count the number of a’s in my name (it claimed two), we reached OpenAI’s release of math papers where an…
1616
You're Not Losing Fat Because You're Eating Too Damn Much (2016)
The environmental and cognitive factors at play that have people eating more without realising.
1617
I'm a USB-C Maximalist
My wife and I recently went on a 7 week holiday around Europe. Although we each took a massive backpack, we wanted to travel fairly lightly. I took a single universal power brick. This little unit was all I needed to charge my various gadgets. It has a hefty USB-C PD (Power Delivery) port for rapid charging of my…
1618
Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X
This is the first in a series on finding a replacement for Mac OS X.
1619
Keyboard differences between Windows and Macs
A blog about software craft and quality
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