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Life, Learning & Writing

The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 285 posts.

2016
154

Best Practices for Time Travelers (2003)

When John Titor first showed up on IRC chat in October of 2000, he was enjoying a neat kind of double billing - as his 38-year-old self sat downstairs in the kitchen, typing away, a two-year-old version of himself lay sound asleep upstairs in bed. The elder Titor had been sent back in time by the U.S. Army, which…

158

What makes music sound “good?”

When listening to music, however, we are not just listening to a series of disconnected instants. Instead, the way things sound depends on the notes we have heard. In other words, we integrate over time . One of the most important functions of a musical scale is to limit the overall pitch content of what we're hearing…

160

How to fend off a jerk

When I was fifteen, I worked for a full-service gas station and auto repair shop. I know what you're thinking (unless you're in New Jersey or Oregon), "what is a full-service gas station?" Yes, there was a time when a smiling gas jockey would greet your car and fill up your gas. You didn't

163

The Hunt for the Death Valley Germans

This is the tale of what for me was a rather remarkable adventure. It was assembled on the basis of my personal recollection and experience, emails, GPS logs and some official documents. It represents solely the perspective and opinions of myself, in my more lucid moments. It is in no way intended to represent th

168

Years and lessons working at ThoughtWorks

I’ve been at ThoughtWorks for 12 years. Who would have imagined? Instead of writing about my reflections on the past year, I thought I would do something different and post twelve key learnings and observations looking back over my career. I have chosen twelve, not because there are only twelve, but because it fits…

171

A tool for thought

As ClojureScript nears its fifth birthday I find myself reflecting on its suitability as a “tool for thought” . Certainly reading the Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs nearly thirteen years ago painted an ideal image of Lisp as a truly interactive and tangible approach to computing. That experience…

172

Reality is a Shared Hallucination (1997)

The artificial construction of reality was to play a key role in the new form of global intelligence which would soon emerge among human beings. If the group brain's "psyche" were a beach with shifting dunes and hollows, individual perception would be that beach's grains of sand. However this image has a hidden snag …