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Life, Learning & Writing
The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 276 posts.
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“Considered Harmful” Essays Considered Harmful
It is not uncommon, in the context of academic debates over computer science and Web standards topics, to see the publication of one or more “considered harmful” essays. These essays have existed in some form for more than three decades now, and it has become obvious that their time has passed. Because “considered…
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Effective Learning Strategies for Programmers
In early September I gave a keynote at Kiwi PyCon in New Zealand on effective learning for programmers. There were two pieces to the talk: one about …
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Going “Write-Only”
Joey Hess inspires me. He lives in a cabin and programs Haskell on a drastically under-powered netbook. He harvests all his electricity from the sun with a homemade electrical system. Joey has designed his computing life to be highly distributed like the git version control he loves. His internet connection is…
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I Just Poured Water on my Scanner
Chip that come into the museum are all scanned on a Canon 5600F flatbed scanner. It has a good (there is some better though) depth of field, and its fast. Typically chips are scanned at 300dpi, or for small ones (or ones that have a die visible) 600dpi. This keep the file sizes reasonable, yet still allows them to be…
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Why and How I Wrote My Academic Book in Plain Text
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My Apple Watch After 5 Days
Having known about the Apple Watch for some time and knowing lots of my friends were planning to buy one, I was sceptical as my needs are quite different to that of those of the sighted and hearing. I have to rely on specific accessible features. However, I was curious as Apple products have b...
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Join the Engineering Leisure Class
Engineers earn more money than we need, and the world is full of interesting problems that don’t promise a financial return. Why are the…
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Toast
Toast was my first published short story collection. It's now effectively out of print — there was going to be a limited, signed, "final" edition, but I haven't seen hide nor hair of it for a year or two now — so I'm releasing it under a Creative Commons license.
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Monkey the Cat Hunts for Dinner
Monkey the cat hunts for his dinner using an Arduino powered cat feeder.
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My Top 100 Programming, Computer and Science Books: Part Three
Hi everyone! Here's part three of my favorite programming, computer, and science books. If you're just joining, please see part one and part two for introduction. This time I'll be sharing my favorite books about Unix, logic programming, thermodynamics, and mathematical foundations of computer science. In one of the...
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On doing things other people can't
Sources of Power: winning by finding a different game instead of playing the standard one better, and why to pass on that meta-skill.
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Nóirín Plunkett has died
It is with great sadness that the Foundation and its members were notified about the sudden passing of Nóirín Plunkett.
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My adventures in medical tourism
One of the things I like most about India is it's medical system. As an American, I've experienced both the Indian and US medical systems, and at this point I have a very strong preference for the Indian one. Somewhat surprisingly, the Indian medical system is based on free market …
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The 2014 Panic Report
For the last year or so, Panic was typically heads-down quiet. But as 2014 drew to a close, our furious typing came to fruition and a whole lot of magic happened. It felt great.
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Lists
For as long as the web has been around, there have been entrepreneurs trying to build businesses around lists. And I’m having a tough time thinking of any company that has really nailed it in this category. For one thing, there are two modes of listmaking; making lists for yourself (task management) and making lists…
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The Jason Bourne Aesthetic
“The difference between something that can go wrong and something that can’t possibly go wrong is that when something that can’t possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.” –Douglas Adams
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Coursera is phasing out free certificates
Coursera’s free Statements of Accomplisments die a quiet death.
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Launching a product in just 3652 days
A story about how I learned a lot of things the hard way