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Life, Learning & Writing
The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 281 posts.
The Slow Web
A popular old essay about finding calm and rhythm online.
Social Psychology Is A Flamethrower
Mark Twain:There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. If this is true of all science, it is doubly true o…
Personhood: A Game for Two or More Players
Being a person is not the essence of humanity, only... one of its many masks. — John Gray
If you had to start over, what technologies would you learn in 2014?
I got an email recently from a long-time programmer who had to step out of the ...
From Gmail to Fastmail
Email is crucial to me, I can’t even remember the last day I didn’t check my inbox. It’s my preferred channel for communicating and interacting with other people “electronically”. Like many developers I also use emails to keep track of the activity of all the projects I contribute to. I also receive all sorts of…
The Productivity Cycle
Alex Sexton lives in Austin, TX and works as a software engineer at Pierre.co.
A Question
I have a question for all the people that use their iPhone or Android to complain on Twitter, Facebook, or reddit about the lack of innovation… Or message their friends on WhatsApp or Snapchat...
Cantonese Proverbs in One Picture
The Great Canton and Hong Kong Proverbs” : illustrations of 83 Cantonese proverbs in one picture
I Got Fired Last Week. That’s a Good Thing. Here’s Why
“We’d like to help you transition out of the company.” As the conversation progressed and reality sunk in, my ears slammed shut and blood streamed to my head. And since I neglected to bring a jacket for what I thought was … Continue reading →
The disappearing inventor
Mark Bolas , a professor at USC, an astonishingly prolific innovator, has invented or co-invented many things. One of those things was FOV2GO, an ingenious way to make a very inexpensive, very wide angle virtual reality display.
The Ghost in the MP3
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What Do We Want, Really?
I was in Amish country last week. Several times a day I heard the clip-clop of horse hooves and the whirring of buggy wheels coming down the street and then receding into the distance–a rathe…
Teenage Haskell
I’ve been inspired by the efforts of others (Chris Smith, Manuel Chakravarty) to try teaching children haskell as a first experience of programming. Haskell has a reputation of being a "…
My Experience at YC Hacks
I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. At 33 years old, I knew I’d probably be older than the vast majority of the 400+ people attending Y Combinator’s first YC Hacks hackathon. But other than that, I didn’t have many expectations. YC Hacks was my first real hackathon. Many years ago, I went to the …
Never Going Back - A Week of Not Eating Lunch at My Desk
According to a 2011 study on the subject, around 80% of us still eat lunch at our desks. I quit eating lunch at my desk and not only has it been incredibly enjoyable, I’m much more productive…
Dear Google, am I pregnant?
Here in the UK, we are a signatory to the European Convention of Human Rights, which among other things includes an explicit right to privacy (considerably stronger than the implicit privacy rights acknowledged in the US, which are not enumerated directly by the US constitution).
What Should a 4 Year Old Know? (2010)
It’s back to school time and children all over are starting preschool. Many parents are frantically searching the internet to find out if their little ones are “on track” and kno…
Meditations
Last year I started reading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius 1 . While I was reading it, I was struck at how many of the entries were just simple reminders to himself. Don't get mad at people unnecessarily. Remember that you are just one of many. Don't get distracted.