2011
Topics /
Life, Learning & Writing
The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 8,929 posts.
2012
My 2020 Hackintosh Hardware Spec
I built my last hackintosh in 2014 and it was overdue for an update. Since Apple recently updated their iMac with Core i9s and skipped the T2, this is probably the last time I'm building this sort of computer, before MacOS is locked down forever. Unfortunately, nothing in their lineup fits my needs, hence I chose to
2013
2014
Nobody cares about your blog
Nobody cares about your blog, but you should keep writing!
2015
Going for the 5 hour workday
Update: it's been a month since my proposal was approved - details at the end. Before my month long vacation I was in a crisis. Now I'm back at work and regardless of the great team and awesome project - I'm feeling the crisis creeping back. It's not the job,
2016
2017
What I think about when I edit (2019)
I’m often asked to edit friends’ or coworkers’ writing, anything from emails to short stories to documentation. Recently, someone asked me how I edit. What am I looking for? How do I know what changes to make? That made me stop and think about what I’ve been doing semi-instinctually.
2018
2019
Four Hours of Concentration
As I've blogged about before, and mentioned again in my previous post, the great mathematician and physicist Henri Poincaré put in two hours of work in the morning and two in the evening. Apparently this is a common pattern. Cal Newport mentions this in his interview with Todd Henry. Now we also know that if
2020
Harness engineering for self-improvement
The concept of recursive self-improvement (RSI) dates back to I. J. Good (1965), where he defined an “ultraintelligent machine” as a system that can surpass humans in all intellectual activities and design better machines to improve itself. Yudkowsky (2008) used the phrase “recursive self-improvement” for a specific…
2021
I Have No Talent
The other day someone sent me an IM and thanked me for my open source contributions. They then said something about wishing they had my gem/code creation…
2022
2023
It’s still worth blogging in the age of AI
Although it might seem that AI will make it pointless, I still think it's worth blogging.
2024
Zohran and the Short Link
I’m a big fan of the Zohran Mamdani administration.
2025
So long WordPress
This has been a hard post for me to write after participating in WordPress since before I even started a career in tech and, until 3 months ago, for my entire tech career. That said, it has been in the making for quite a while now and it is time that I make it official. I’ve officially left the WordPress project after…
2026
No Man Is an Island
AI makes intellectual contribution superfluous.
2027
Digital Tools I Wish Existed
My digital life in a nutshell: I discover relevant content I don’t have time to consume, I find time and become overwhelmed with my scattered backlog, I wish the content were in a different format, and then I’m unable to find something again once I’ve consumed it. Not retaining enough is a valid problem but we’ll…
2028
Writing Well-Documented Code – Learn from Examples
Writing Well-Documented Code - Learn from Examples
2029
Cognitive loads in programming
This long post presents programming in a different light than what is commonly considered. We will look at cognitive aspects of interacting with code.
2030
I stopped setting a financial goal for my SaaS
Money can be only a short-term motivation / Make it “better” rather than “bigger” / Figuring out “enough” / Life is one shot
2031
What to blog about
You should start a blog. Having your own little corner of the internet is good for the soul! But what should you write about? It’s easy to get hung up …
2032
What I Learned Reading 1k Investor Reports
I read 1,000 investor reports last year.
2033
2034
I spent three months working full time to get a job
A retrospective on the technical interview process based on three months of searching for a job.
2035
Back to Kagi
A reflection on returning to Kagi after trying some alternatives including the much worse search engine called Google.
2036
Asking your customers what they want doesn't work
And how can you figure it out what they really need
2037
You are how you act
You are the sum of your behaviors not your intentions
2038
Why thinking out loud with someone beats thinking alone
Why does a five-minute hallway conversation sometimes solve what a week of solo thinking couldn't?
2039
My phone is an ereader now
I got a Kobo in 2016 after borrowing my mom's old one for a year before that. It probably is responsible for getting me reading again after high school. I used to be an avid reader, the sort of kid who would have to be told to put down the book and go to sleep, and who would then creep slowly to the bookshelf to pick…
2040
Hello World
We started Cockroach Labs with a clear objective: build the database we'd been itching after for years, and build it as open source, from the start. Today, we’re launching CockroachDB for everyone.