211
Topics /
Life, Learning & Writing
The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 7,740 posts.
212
My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll
I’m declaring defeat. Infinite scroll has won. There is an endless supply of interesting things to consume online, and there are teams and teams of very smart people working very hard to get me to keep watching. One more video means one more metric counter incrementing, one more engagement click, one more step towards…
213
Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer
Instead of doom-scrolling through my phone in the morning, I built an alternative with a Raspberry Pi, a dot matrix printer, and some PHP.
214
215
Using Anki to remember what you read
Imagine this:
216
Still alive
You just keep on trying till you run out of cake
217
218
Personal Encyclopedias
Last year, I visited my grandmother's house for the first time after the pandemic and came across a cupboard full of loose old photos. I counted 1,351 of them spanning all the way from my grandparents in their early 20s, my mom as a baby, to me in middle school, just around the time when we got our first smartphone…
219
Don't you lecture me with your thirty dollar website
🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿
220
Dumber phone
Less is exponentially more – Rob Pike Smart phones are useful, but they are also incredibly addictive, and that addiction is at the epicenter of Silicon Valley’s effort to grab an ever-increasing percentage of our minds. If a substance or behavior controls us, it becomes our master, and that just won’t do. For the…
221
Marble Fountain
I really enjoy procedural generation, especially systems designed to work with hardware outputs. After starting work at Formlabs in September of 2023 and gaining access to much nicer printers than I was used to, I started wanting to tackle some large algorithmic structure projects. Complexity is free in 3d printing…
222
How to Be Successful
I’ve observed thousands of founders and thought a lot about what it takes to make a huge amount of money or to create something important. Usually, people start off wanting the former and end up...
223
KDE is now my favorite desktop
From my last blog post , I am now using KDE as the desktop environment for my gaming rig. The reason is because I want a reasonably easy to use Linux desktop for when my wife needs to use the PC for something other than gaming, and this was the reason why my "traditional" Sway setup was a no-go.
224
Programming Is Mostly Thinking (2014)
Pretend you have a really great programming day. You only have to attend a few meetings, have only a few off-topic conversations, don'...
225
You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it
Here’s Dave Rupert ( from my notes ): the goal of a book isn’t to get to the last page, it’s to expand your thinking. I have to constantly remind myself of…
226
1:60 scale Boeing 777 made from manila folders
The homepage of the work for which I'm best known — a model Boeing 777, made entirely from manila folders!
227
Have a personal web site
Hello! This is my personal web site. It’s not much, but it’s mine. After nearly a decade of just barely existing, I’ve spent quite a bit of time in 2019 trying to breathe new life into it. At this point, I think just about everyone–but especially folks in the software...
228
229
230
I am retiring from tech to live offline
AI took the last of the wind out of my Open Source sails. I wish you all the best!
231
232
Goodbye Joe
Today, we've learned of Joe's passing away. I wasn't a super close friend of Joe, but I have known him and talked with him at various conferences over the last ten years or so. He's unsurprisingly been a huge influence in my career, and so I thought I should write this little post about him and his impact.
233
234
I like 'em thick: an apology to my English teachers
OR: an apology to my English teachers
235
Six Months of Tiny Projects
In this post I'll give an update on how my Tiny Projects are performing six months on, and the pros and cons of launching micro-businesses.
236
237
After two years of vibecoding, I'm back to writing by hand
Agents write units of changes that look good in isolation. They are consistent with themselves and your prompt. But respect for the whole, there is not.
238
I'm a scam prevention expert and I got scammed
When discussing scams and social engineering attacks, it's easy for security experts to imply the victims of these attacks should have known better. And, as much as we may like to think we'd handle these situations so much better, that's just not true.
239
The Case for Slow Programming
My dad used to say, “Slow down, son. You’ll get the job done faster.” I’ve worked in many high-tech startup companies in the San Francisco Bay area. I am now 52, and I progr…
240
Why I'm a Pirate
Why I’m a Pirate! par Ploum - Lionel Dricot.