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Why does anything exist?
Why does anything exist? Why is there something rather than nothing? Would it not have been easier for there to be nothing at all?
Topics /
Life, Learning & Writing
The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 8,938 posts.
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Buy Your Friends Batteries
Pool your money and give your friends batteries that lower their electricity bills and keep essential devices running during outages.
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What I believe II
Unrelated Update: To everyone who keeps asking me about the “new” P≠NP proof: I’d again bet $200,000 that the paper won’t stand, except that the last time I tried that, it d…
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You Are in a Box
your data is trapped inside the box that is your program. you can only see what the program author exposes.
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My New FreeBSD Laptop: Dell Latitude 7390
A few months ago, after my System76 Galago Pro had its second experience with a dead/swelling batery, I decided that it was time to replace it. On February 15th, I ordered a Dell Latitude 7390.
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Job hunting while day-jobbing (2021)
Interviewing is stressful enough, but interviewing while doing your day job?1 Yikes! Well, I just did it,2 and I’m here to tell you that it’s totally …
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From Prison to Programming
I believe that getting underrepresented groups into software development is a good thing. This is not a controversial opinion until you start talking about felons. Today's guest is Rick Wolter. He's an iOS developer who served 18 years in prison for second degree murder. Rick killed somebody and for some that's all…
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What the fuck happened to nerds
I've befriended some of the most thoughtful, brilliant, curious, eccentric, and sincere people I've ever met in the tech industry. Many of my dearest friends...
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Building a PC, Part IX: Downsizing
Hard to believe that I’ve had the same PC case since 2011, and my last serious upgrade was in 2015. I guess that’s yet another sign that the PC is over, because PC upgrades have gotten really boring. It took 5 years for me to muster up the
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Life After Language
In October 2013, I wrote a post arguing that computing was disrupting language and that this was the Mother of All Disruptions . My specific argument was that…
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The Life of a Cherry Drying Pilot (2009)
What it’s really like.
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Academia, Love Me Back
My name is Tiffany Martínez. As a McNair Fellow and student scholar, I’ve presented at national conferences in San Francisco, San Diego, and Miami. I have crafted a critical reflection piece that w…
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Crazy Conclusions in Early Childhood
From my last post on this site: One recurring theme: Bright kids of a certain age are just smart enough to jump to crazy conclusions rooted ...
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How to draw construction equipment for kids
What makes "Road Builders," written by B.G. Hennessy and illustrated by Simms Taback, so charming
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On Tolkien and Orwell
On first looking at J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) and George Orwell (1903-1950) they appear to have little in common, as men or writers, other than being peculiarly English authors with evergreen book sales. The year 1937 was a seminal one for both men and useful for highlighting their different lifestyles, politics and…
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Here’s to the Misfits
The school I went to in England used to proudly display their famous alumni in black and white photos circling the theatre lobby. From John le Carré, to John Cleese, the list included notable actors, top politicians and accomplished actors. What the school didn't tell admiring visitors though, is
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Friends of Vast Industrial Concrete Kafkaesque Structures
Photos of the Los Angeles River
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All of my side-projects from 2012
One of my favorite pastimes as a programmer is to work on personal projects outside of work. I use side-projects as a creative outlet to work on new and interesting things. I also use them as a learning exercise. If I start a side-project, there must be "one new thing" about the project I don't know how to do already…
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On Scaling Mental Models
No Newsletter Next Week I'll be on vacation in the Caribbean, sipping drinks and juggling for Hermit crabs. The Actual Thing I'm a vim user. I've used Vim...
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The Background Noise Was Louder than I Realized
It's not about technology for its own sake. It's about being able to implement your ideas.
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The Slow Web
A popular old essay about finding calm and rhythm online.
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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…
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The View from RSS
What the web looks like when you subscribe to 2,000 RSS feeds.
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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
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How I was failing to find time for life while working remotely
Since the last March, like a lot of other people, I was forced to work remotely. It was not the first time, but somehow it went different. I quickly found out that not having a context switch between the office and home forced me into non-healthy behaviors like giving work all the available time.