1981
Unbundling Tools for Thought
Disparate thoughts on personal information management after traversing the hype cycle.
Topics /
Life, Learning & Writing
The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 8,929 posts.
1982
Adam? ... is there a reason your laptop is in the fridge? (2006)
I’d read a few times that bringing the temperature of a failing drive down will increase its reliability long enough to salvage important files. When the drive in my trusty Powerbook decided one day last week to stop booting and make horrible clicking sounds, I decided to test the theory.
1983
Elixir in Depth – Reading and personal notes
Elixir is a hot and trendy topic nowadays. Of the newer languages that show up periodically on Hacker News, I found t...
1984
1985
1986
Machine Learning Crash Course: Part 1
Machine Learning at Berkeley is a student organization at UC Berkeley. Click to read ML@B Blog, by Machine Learning at Berkeley, a Substack publication with thousands of subscribers.
1987
1988
My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter
It turns out that you can't trust any USB type A power adapter to be within spec.
1989
So You Want to Open a Small Press Bookstore/Artist-Run Space? A Cautionary Tale
Poems, readings, poetry news and the entire 110-year archive of POETRY magazine.
1990
The 5% Rule
...I learned a lot from that period, but one of the things I learned that I did not expect was what I now call my '5% rule.' No matter how kind, warm, thoughtful, amazing, cheerful, consistent, and perfect I treated people roughly 5% of them would just be terrible (yes, I have the numbers to back this)...
1991
Are we too busy to enjoy life?
“How are things?” asked a friend. “It’s busy, but I’ll take some time to relax when things ease up,” I replied. I recently caught myself giving a variation of this answer every time I was asked how I was doing. “So much work, but hopefully it will be better next week.” Being busy all the ... Read More
1992
Ten years on LinkedIn
I just noticed on my LinkedIn account page that I’ve been a member of LinkedIn since February 28, 2006. This is almost exactly 10 years ago, and back when it was invite-only. I figured this is a nice time to reflect on the giant heap of trash it has become.
1993
When security goes right
A few weeks ago, I heard that my slow and unreliable ISP was raising their prices, and I decided to look around for a better ISP. I found one in the form of Novus , which has fibre runs to towers around the Vancouver area. I signed up; they came to the building and placed the necessary patch cable in the basement…
1994
Say No
Saying yes is so much easier than saying no, but nobody else will ever value your time as much as you do so you need to be a responsible steward of it. Say No to meetings. Say No to interruptions. Say No to things that are urgent but not important. Prioritize your time based on impact, be transparent about those…
1995
Managing my motivation as a solo dev
One of the biggest sticking points of being a solo dev is maintaining motivation. I’ve been keeping a journal entry about how to hack my motivation, what works and what doesn’t. Here are the things that have worked. Convert external sources to motivation I’ve always known that I’m more extrinsically than intrinsically…
1996
1997
How to Learn Efficiently
I am convinced that much of the gap between the best college students and the worst is explained by study habits. Frankly, most students study poorly. To make matters worse, most teachers are incapable of teaching good study habits. Learning is proportional with effort Sitting in a classroom listening to a professor…
1998
C.S. Lewis on the Reading of Old Books
"It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between." - CS Lewis
1999
Culture shock
Looking at the United States as an Indian, two months in.
2000
I bricked then recovered my reMarkable 2
Let me start by saying that the reMarkable 2 is a great device. I’ve wanted something like this for a long time: a relatively open device that runs Linux with an eInk screen and the ability to write on that screen with a pen. The reMarkable 2 delivers: I can ssh into it, and there’s a whole bunch of people writing…
2001
Famous HNers and their sites
Update: Here’s the link to the HN discussion about this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32291993
2002
Curiosity Is Better Than Being Smart?
Are you smart? Are you curious? Which one is better? Well, in this post, you will see why curiosity is better than being smart.
2003
Engineers Need to Write
I hated writing in high school.
2004
Things I do to be consistently happy
Now that it’s almost two years since I first had the idea for Buffer , and with the year and a half before that which I worked on my previous startup, I’ve started to notice a few patterns amongst the ups and downs that come with building a startup.
2005
Writing is networking for introverts
Networking is painful, and I’m suspicious of anyone who claims to enjoy it. Unfortunately for me, networking is effective.
2006
Go Pro on a soaring eagle [video]
What does it feel like to soar majestically like an bird? Maybe something like this video, shot with a camera strapped to the back of an eagle flying near Chamo
2007
2008
2009
How I do my computing
As of 2022 I use a Thinkpad x200 computer, which has a free initialization program (called Libreboot when it was installed, but now called GNU Boot) and a free operating system (Trisquel GNU/Linux). It was not sold that way by Lenovo, however; small businesses buy them used, recondition them, and install the free…
2010
Why software engineers like woodworking
The smell of fresh pine sawdust filled the air, with more floating up as I sanded the last rough corner of the stool. My toddler was happily sanding her own block off to the side.