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How long does it take to create a new habit? (2015)
How long it really takes to create a new habit, not 21 days.
Topics /
Life, Learning & Writing
The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 8,937 posts.
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The Dying Art of Mental Math Tricks
Mathematics, applications of mathematics to life in general, and my life as a mathematician.
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28h Days: year 1 update
It’s been a little over a year since I started living 28h days . I figured it might be a good idea to write an yearly update, and doing it at the beginning of the year feels appropriate, so here we are.
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Hard disk LEDs and noisy machines
The little annoyances that alerted us developers of performance problems
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"Yes, but what are your credentials, Mr Stross?"
Normally I don't publish private correspondence, but sometimes — rarely — I feel like hanging someone out to dry ...
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Scientists reverse brain aging, with a nasal spray
New therapy is turning back the clock in aging brains, healing inflammation, restoring memory and reshaping the future of brain age-related therapies.
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Ikigai: What We Got Wrong and How to Find Meaning in Life
The concept of ikigai has often been misunderstood in the Western world largely due to the popularity of a certain Venn diagram. But ikigai means something different.
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Hacking the Casio F-91W to Handle 1000 Psi
The Casio F-91W is one of the most iconic watches of the past few decades. It’s notoriously cheap, reliable, and retro; in fact, it’s probably the only watch that was worn by both Obama and Osama . At just under $10, it’s the perfect daily beater watch. And in the age where you need to charge your Apple Watch every…
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Feeling unproductive? Maybe you should stop overthinking
In order to get something done, maybe we need to think less.
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Whatever works for you
In my earlier 20s when I knew everything, I was a much bigger evangelist for my technology choices. I’m accused of fanboyism a lot more these days, but only because Hacker News keeps sending huge waves of people here who tell me I’m an idiot. But I used to be much more annoying with pushing my choices onto others.
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John Ousterhout: My favorite sayings
Programmers tend to worry too much and too soon about performance. Many college-level Computer Science classes focus on fancy algorithms to improve performance, but in real life performance rarely matters. Most real-world programs run plenty fast enough on today's machines without any particular attention to…
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How I make $400 a month in Passive Income by Self-Publishing
I’m the author of Behind the Ivy Curtain: A Data Driven Guide to Elite College Admissions :
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The "Wash my Ferrari" Problem: A Meditation on Risk
The Setup Let’s pretend for a moment that you own a car wash. For $5, customers can drive in for a hand wash and wax. One day, in the midst of the stream of Hondas and Subarus, a customer pul…
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Learning about distributed systems: where to start? (2020)
This is definitely not a "learn distributed systems in 21 days" post. I recommend a principled, from the foundations-up, studying of distrib...
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Bad behavior is almost always good politics (2021)
Most great thinkers have speculated about the kind of leadership that might give rise to a better society, analyzing it through what’s sometimes called a “normative” lens: What should we be doing? In Leviathan, for example, Thomas Hobbes argued for a single, absolute sovereign to hold together the social contract. He…
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What it feels like when Rust saves your bacon
You’ve probably heard that the Rust type checker can be a great “co-pilot”, helping you to avoid subtle bugs that would have been a royal pain in the !@#!$! to debug. This is truly awesome! But what you may not realize is how it feels in the moment when this happens. The answer typically is: really, really…
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Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar
A recent study led by Evan Forman, PhD, a psychology professor in Drexel University's College of Arts and Sciences, shows that a computer game can be used to train its players to eat less sugar, as way of reducing their weight and improving their health.
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Completing a part-time Master's in computer science while working
“I’m going to be 29 anyways, so I might as well be 29 with a Master’s.” — me 5 years ago debating whether I should take classes On June 5, 2017, I started taking classes at Tufts University while working full time. On January 4, 2022, I submitted the final draft of my Master’s thesis. Much like my past self had hoped…
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Consider Knitting
Let’s say that, like me, you are a person who stares at a computer and writes code for a living. As a straight male who grew up in a time where knitting was very strongly female coded, it for the most part never occurred to me that knitting was a thing I could do and might enjoy. Regardless of your demographic…
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My productivity system
In this past year, I’ve done significant changes to my whole “productivity system”. These changes were impulsed by two major life changes. One, I abandoned my work life as a freelancer…
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Reading "A Programmer's Guide to Common Lisp"
I got a cheap used copy of the book A Programmer's Guide to COMMON LISP by Deborah G. Tatar, Digital Press, 1987. Why did I read such an...
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Ok, so you can’t decide
Even if you've checked your work, asked for all the help, and are moving gingerly, there will be decisions where you can't decide. You've considered and reconsi
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Rock Tumbler Instructions
A detailed step-by-step guide for turning rough rocks into beautiful gems with a rotary rock tumbler.
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