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Life, Learning & Writing
The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 8,926 posts.
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Friendships form via shared context, not shared activities
You’re one among millions, not one in a million.
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This photograph is free
I've just read This photograph is not free on Petapixel.com, and I should explain why I disagree with the author and decided to give away the picture below: The photo above is
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I heat my home by mining crypto currencies
Personal Blog of Christian Haschek
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Writing Is Thinking: Learning to Write with Confidence
Learning to write is learning to think, because writing is thinking. They are two peas in a powerful pod. This article goes over my writing process, focused on minimizing the activation energy to get started.
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I rebooted my social life
Some self-help for the New Year
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The April Fools joke that might have got me fired
Everyone should pull one great practical joke in their lifetimes. This one was mine, and I think it's past the statute of limitations. The s...
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An Apology to my European IT Team
In 2008 when we were opening the US office for a European maker of membrane production equipment, we had all of the early IT choices someone has to make when first opening a business. How should we…
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Why I don't discuss politics with friends
March 2025
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Flickr – A Year Without a Byte
One of the largest cost drivers in running a service like Flickr is storage. We’ve described multiple techniques to get this cost down over the years: use of COS , creating sizes dynamically on GPUs and perceptual compression . These projects have been very successful, but our storage cost is still significant. At the…
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How to write stuff no one else can
Last week, I wrote a piece about five of the key hires who took Morning Brew to $40 million in revenue .
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How to live on $432 a month in America
(For All Expenses)
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Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade
As of today, I've been using the same Arch Linux installation for ten years on my main computer. I don't have much to say, but I'm writing this because my experience doesn't match the common notion that Arch Linux is unstable. 1
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98% isn't much
98% sounds like a lot. If someone wins the lottery 98% of the times they play, they are clearly blessed. Getting a top mark (e.g.: 10/10) on exams 98% of the time will likely lead to an honour diploma.
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Ground control to Major Trial
When a $130M aerospace company chooses to endlessly abuse free trials instead of typing git pull, you start to question gravity, or at least common sense.
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September 2026: The world today, as seen by one Polish guy
How a Pole sees the world in September 2026: a scrolling essay that follows one closed strait into fuel, food, bonds, defence and demography.
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I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012)
JD Stillwater, Science Ambassador's blog.
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Hunter S. Thompson on Finding Your Purpose (1958)
Discover what Hunter S. Thompson's letter on finding your purpose, revisited today, teaches about choosing a way of life over chasing any fixed goal.
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Markov chains are funnier than LLMs
Predictability machines and personality
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Death Note: L, Anonymity and Eluding Entropy (2017)
Applied Computer Science: On Murder Considered As STEM Field—using information theory to quantify the magnitude of Light Yagami’s mistakes in 𝐷𝑒𝑎𝑡𝘩 𝑁𝑜𝑡𝑒 and considering fixes
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Four thousand weeks
A tribute to the book by Oliver Burkeman, an exploration of time management in the face of human finitude, and addressing the anxiety of “getting everything done.”
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Work for only 3 hours a day, but everyday
I am an indie iPhone developer, and I’ve been working for 3 hours everyday for almost 2 years now. It may not work for everybody, but I started this habit in early 2014, and I have continued to do it since have I found that this is the most productive way to work for me.
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Against 3x Speed
It’s okay to not know everything. The world rewards people who develop expertise. When that expertise is unique, it’s developed through direct experience and deliberate reflection.
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How Brian Eno Created Ambient 1: Music for Airports (2019)
In 1978, Brian Eno released Ambient 1: Music for Airports, a landmark album in ambient and electronic music. Although it wasn't the first ambient
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Knuth: Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice (2002)
I'm 99.99% sure that my writing this letter will have no effect, but my conscience tells me to write it anyway. Danziger's cartoon has pushed me out of my lethargy.
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