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The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 359 posts.
Recently, the company that provides hosting for this website experienced some technical problems and my website went down. This was rather frustrating, and I sent them a Tweet to ask them to please resolve the issue. Before they even responded to me, I suddenly had this email in my inbox.
Another of those values that has seeped into everyday life from start up culture is the cherished status of risk. You know the inspirational quotes people like to post on Twitter “the biggest risk is not taking a risk”, “those who will not risk, will not win” etc. And I get it, personally and professionally it’s…
A few of us at Basecamp were recently discussing how decisions get made to “green light” new projects, and I came to the conclusion that it boils down a simple rule: If you can make a decision and …
As the anniversary of Sir David MacKay’s untimely death approaches, I think we should honour his memory by trying to update Sustainable Energy as a crowd-sourced project. I have made an initial attempt to suggest how we might develop the section on photovoltaics but others will want to suggest other
## The Rather Sad Story of the Father of American Photography It’s been a long time since I did a photography history article. I generally prefer the early days of photography. People just were, I…
Behind the scenes - how I'm making redblobgames.com - interactive explanations of game development algorithms and math
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Have you heard of a sleep debt anytime in your life? Click to see what is it and how this sleep deficit can affect your everyday life.
So for me, this was really a new paradigm of composing. Changing the idea of the composer from somebody who stood at the top of a process and dictated precisely how it was carried out, to somebody who stood at the bottom of a process who carefully planted some rather well-selected seeds, hopefully, and watched them…
Former philosophy professor and successful humorist Dennis Fried sent me some poignant comments on my piece in The Atlantic. Reprinted with Fried’s permission. Dear Dr. Caplan, I just read your article in Atlantic magazine and was blown away by the brutal honesty displayed there, especially coming from someone whose…
CHAPTER from SKIN IN THE GAME
In 2012, I decided to try to learn MIT's 4-year undergraduate computer science curriculum in 12 months, without taking any classes. I was successful in passing the final exams for 33 classes and completing the required programming projects. You can view my TEDx Talk regarding the challenge, see links to all the free…
I. Vox’s David Roberts writes about Donald Trump and the rise of tribal epistemology. It’s got a long and complicated argument which I can’t really do justice to here, but the the…
Recently, I've become aware of a whisper campaign going around the Drupal world, discussing details about my personal life. I do not know where it started or who all has been part of it. However, it's become apparent that it's not going to settle down, and has now had a major, direct impact on me and my professional…
[Content note: food, dieting, obesity] I. The Hungry Brain gives off a bit of a Malcolm Gladwell vibe, with its cutesy name and pop-neuroscience style. But don’t be fooled. Stephan Guyenet is…
At present the world is partitioned into a finite number of large, discrete time zones. A time zone is an area on Earth where all of the clocks are set to the same time. An example of a time zone is America/Santiago, an area which covers continental Chile. All the clocks in this ...
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Understand the risks of taking high doses of this vitamin in supplement form.
The Alchemist asked if I wanted a drink. I did, but no amount of staring could make my eyes settle on the color of the liquid in the flask. And the gold the alchemists paid the taxmen smelled funny…
[Related to: It’s Bayes All The Way Up, Why Are Transgender People Immune To Optical Illusions?, Can We Link Perception And Cognition?] I. Sometimes I have the fantasy of being able to glut m…
