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The Lost Art of Research as Leisure
Where have the amateur researchers gone, and how do we bring them back?
Topics /
Life, Learning & Writing
The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 8,926 posts.
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My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown
How My Mindfulness Practice Lead Me To Meltdown
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But Where Do People Work in This Office?
Matt Blodgett on topics occasionally germane to software development.
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12 Months of Mandarin
Estimates for achieving intermediate fluency in Mandarin Chinese range up to spending years and around 4000 total hours (2,200h classroom hours, 1,800 outside). I did it in 1500 hours total and less than a year.[1] 1. There is a lot of disagreement on language proficiency estimates. They
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10 years of personal finances in plain text files
I've been tracking my finances using Beancount in plain text files for 10 years. Here are the numbers, the workflow, and why I believe plaintext accounting will outlive any app.
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On Getting Older in Tech
After years of scoffing at talk of prejudice in the information technology field -- as a white male with good hair --, I'm starting to call prejudice against my being old(er). It’s true: age discrimination is a real thing.
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If you're busy, you're doing something wrong (2011)
The Berlin Study In the early 1990s, a trio of psychologists descended on the Universität der Künste, a historic arts academy in the heart of West ... Read more
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Self-Host and Tech Independence: The Joy of Building Your Own
Why I self-host my websites, newsletter, and homelab—and the satisfaction that comes from building and using your own digital tools.
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The Framework Desktop is a beast
I've been running the Framework Desktop for a few months here in Copenhagen now. It's an incredible machine. It's completely quiet, even under heavy, stress-all-cores load. It's tiny too, at just 4.5L of volume, especially compared to my old beautiful but bulky North tower running the 7950X — yet it's faster! And…
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My kids and I just played D&D with ChatGPT4 as the DM
Spoiler Alert: It absolutely blew our minds
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I lost my OpenBSD full-disk encryption password
The other day I set up a new OpenBSD instance with a nice RAID array, encrypted with Full Disk Encryption. And promptly proceeded to forget part of the passphrase.
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What shall I teach my son?
Yesterday, the title The End of Education by Neil Postman called to me from my bookshelf, whispering that it might be the right book at the right time. It was. Published in 1995, it was surprisingly appropriate balm for the soul of a confused programmer and soon-to-be father.
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Take the pedals off the bike
Apparently if you want to teach kids how to ride a bike you're supposed to take the pedals off first, and now my mind will never be the same again.
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Doing nothing at work
Many engineers should be doing less work. I don’t necessarily mean producing less code or fewer changes, but literally working fewer hours in the day. When they…
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Fighting Cancer
Kind people already sent donations that will make my childrens' lives easier, when I'm not there any more. Thank you enormously! :-)
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Depression lies
When he was 23, my friend Steve killed himself, and though I don’t think of him every day, I do think of him often, and I wonder what kind of life he’d have now if he’d gotten hel…
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It's okay to make something nobody wants
产品看起来是给用户用的，但我觉得这可能是一种假象，它实际上更像是一种自我表达。 许多表达被不同的人创造出来，经历了自然选择后，存活下来的那一个，是用户喜欢的那个。 我的意思是，这个过程是这么发生的：你做一个东西，不是“我觉得他们可能需要这个”而做，而是“我觉得这个有点意思”而做。然后，别人在使用你的产品时，感受到了与你相同的那种感受，这时他说：“我觉得这个有点意思”。 从这个角度来说，产品就像一种情绪的存储器，作者存进去，复制一千份，用户从产品中取出来。 你不能自己不含任何情感，却期望用户使用后带有情感。 我觉得即使做了个没人想要的东西，也没关系。你唯一需要做的是确保你已经完整呈现了你的情感。…
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I liked this simple calculus exercise
From the highly eclectic blog of Mark Dominus
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A blogging style guide
Here are 39 ways to make your blog more entertaining to read and more pleasurable to write.
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Ikea Vindriktning Air Quality Sensor Review and Accuracy
How accurate is Ikea's Vindriktning air quality sensor? This review covers PM2.5 behavior, limitations, and how it compares with better monitors.
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Where to Find the Colors Your Screen Can't Show You
An atlas of the vibrance of the real world
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Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything
So I got this new attitude. Now that I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything, I've got this nice position at the university teaching classes which I rather enjoy, and just like I read the Arabian Nights for pleasure, I'm going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance…
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YC's Winter Reading List
The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation [https://www.amazon.com/Idea-Factory-Great-American-Innovation/dp/0143122797] “It’s amazing how prolific Bell Labs was — the transistor, information theory, Unix, amongst other creations — but it’s fascinating to understand it as an organization…