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Topics /
Life, Learning & Writing
The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 225 posts.
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Notes on 416 Days of Treadmill Desk Usage
The personal website of author Neal Stephenson, unless it's been hacked.
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Life Lessons from Machine Learning
What comes to mind when you hear the term “Machine Learning”? A bunch of programmers hunched over their computers in a dark room, working on something completely virtual & divorced from reality…
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Any Sufficiently Advanced Technology Is Indistinguishable from Cthulhu
Hugh Hancock here. Charlie is currently in a space beyond place and time, folded into manifold dimensions that ring like bone-carved bells. Or to put it another way, he's on public transport. So I'm filling in for the day - he'll be back shortly!
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All the Technology but None of the Love
This post has been re-written several times, so please forgive me if it does not come across as coherent as I would like to. The main reason for the re-write was this post by Martin Wedge . Originally I planned to scrap the whole thing but maybe having a different perspective will help, I’ve deleted those parts that…
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How I optimised my life to make my job redundant
If you’re a regular reader, you may have noticed a rather major job change on my behalf [https://www.troyhunt.com/2015/05/so-dust-has-finally-settled.html] recently. The day to day office grind has gone and corporate life is now well and truly behind me, where
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The Math I Learned After I Thought Had Already Learned Math
True story: it’s possible to fly through your own secondary math education — honor roll bumper sticker on your mom’s minivan and all —Â but miss some of the Very Big Ideas of secondary …
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Confidence Through Feedback, or Why Imposter Syndrome Is the Wrong Metaphor
Imposter syndrome is often presented as a personal failing. A lack of confidence, our wrong-headed beliefs not matching the reality of how competent we are, or worst of a flaw of our gender. Just...
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A Bestseller Book That Didn't Exist
You know Jean Shepherd as author of the beloved A Christmas Story. But before that, he conspired to get a book that didn't exist onto The New York Times Best Seller List. Read how he pulled off the Hoax of the Century.
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How I stay happy making open source software
Over the past month I have become aware of multiple people either stepping away from open source or trying to figure out how not to burn out from it [1 [http://www.drmaciver.com/2015/08/throwing-in-the-towel/], 2 [http://ryanbigg.com/2015/11/open-source-work/], 3
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Tales of coding from a beginner
How I learned to stop worrying and love the code Photo by MipsyRetro/Flickr remix by Jason Reed I’m learning to code. I’ve been on again off again with it for about two years now. But I've only …
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Sick time is logarithmic
Sick time among employees appears to follow a logarithmic distribution. You can use this to evaluate your policies and detect anomalies.
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Please Do Not Be a One Trick Pony
Paul Simon has a song called ‘One Trick Pony’ with a bit in it that goes like this:
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Interview Humiliation
(All these great ideas, but no one is listening? Check out my book: Convincing Coworkers )
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Predominantly
Predominant.ly brings an element of serendipity back into music discovery, making the experience as personal and delightful as stumbling across a long-forgotten favourite in a second- hand record store.
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Avoiding the Adjective Fallacy
You're reading this, so I'll assume your English is pretty good. What's wrong with these phrases? Do you have a logical reason for why they sound strange? Or…
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The Essence of Peopling
Nouns for human beings - "people" or "person" - conjure in the mind a snapshot of the surface appearance of humans. Using nouns like "people" subtly encourages…
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The Apprentice Programmer (2013)
I dropped out of school when I was 16 years old. School was not for me. To me, computers were so much more interesting. Right or wrong, I felt like I wasted my time there and my real education was starting when I came home. I lost respect for the institution and of course this meant that I no longer bothered to put any
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Frameworks are for hacks, libraries for seeds
I find that I operate in one of two modes when I’m writing software. I’m either approaching a project as a quick hack or as developing software . As much as anything else, this affects how I approach the project and what kinds of results that I get.
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Is Social Rejection the Key to Creativity?
On the psychology of why rejection and loneliness may be necessary evils for the creative genius
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I deduce you are studying logic
This summer I was at LC2015, the big European logic conference (it was great). I was sitting listening to a talk with one of my logic buddies when the speaker mentioned “deontic logic”,…
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Consistency and discipline over motivation
Motivation is fun when it’s there but it fades quickly and it doesn’t help you get anything done long term. In this post I talk about my experience with setting up a system that aids in building a…