Topics /
The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 715 posts.
We’ve all sat in those presentations. A speaker with a stream of slides full of text, monotonously reading them off as we read along. We’re so used to it we expect it. We accept it. We even consider it ‘learning’. As an educator I push against ‘death by PowerPoint’ and I'm fascinated with how we
Why do the black keys on the piano each have two different names? If the posts on r/musictheory are any indication, this is a persistent point of confusion, especially when music theory teachers ge…
thinking about scary things • examples from Wave • examples from elsewhere • finding a buddy • getting the timing right • a list of abyss questions
I was walking home from school by myself when I saw it. A robot, just standing in the middle of the street.
I’m the author of the title picture, and these are my ThinkPads. I’ve been very loyal to the ThinkPad brand for more than a decade. Until Lenovo sold me a lemon — ThinkPad X13 AMD. That event encouraged me to reflect on my loyalty. Which I did, and now I’m happy to share the results.
To not become "old news," I write to the Ruby community in days of war Russia leads against my country.
Update: 2022-04-15 I typically average around 100 unique visitors to this site per day. Below is a screenshot from my Plausible analytics setup showing the traffic spike up to almost 14k unique visitors from HackerNews (and other sources). Update: 2022-04-12 I posted this article to that orange site and it blew up…
An update on my years-long habit, with a new tool.
Modern mobile devices contain a myriad of distractions and addictive platforms. My vices are Twitter and TikTok.
A breakdown of selling 640 copies of my first product Deployment from Scratch.
Being swamped — overwhelmed by stuff to do — is the default state of being within a startup. There's always more to do than time to do it, and the list keeps growing. Everyone else working at every other startup feels this too. Even if it doesn't look that way
My Dad died on 5 December 2021. My earliest memory is sitting on his shoulders watching a Guy Fawkes bonfire on one of several visits to the UK as a child. An…
Brad, a top footballer, sits in the bleachers watching the game. He cannot believe his eyes. He has come to watch his friend Edgar play, and Edgar is the worst football player he has ever seen. He stands around, chewing gum. When he runs at all, he runs like a
Apps create more friction for ordering pizza
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.
The environmental and cognitive factors at play that have people eating more without realising.
Nine observations about what happens when you eat only potatoes
A new way to think about brainpower.
Rust has been on my radar for a long time now , and about a year ago I finally began allocating some time every week to learning it.
This is a rumor, it may have rubber floors, but that water will be trapped under the floor and rust your Honda Element from the inside out.
Perhaps it will turn out that you were called to be an artist. If that is your fate, then accept it and deal with it, the highs and the lows, the burden and the greatness, without ever worrying about external rewards.
At this past weekend's CFAR Workshop (about which, by the way, I plan to have another post soon with less whining and more serious discussion), someone mentioned that they were uncomfortable with pauses in conversation, and that got me thinking about different conversational styles.
Why keep investing in a platform that's been disappointing me for a while?
Update: this post was written in November, 2022.
Who you are in a venue matters far more than the venue itself.
Hello, everyone. I’m going to be taking an extended break from kottke.org, starting today. I’ve been writing here for more than 24 years, nearly half my life —
Disparate thoughts on personal information management after traversing the hype cycle.
