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The Expert in a Year Challenge
The Expert in a Year Challenge took place in 2014 and followed novice table tennis player Sam Priestley's journey from complete beginner to mastery.
Topics /
Life, Learning & Writing
The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 276 posts.
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After 20 years, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy thrives on the web
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You're in a space of twisty little mazes, all alike
I have a hidden reason for posing this problem, but that's the subject of a future blog post. But for now, let me clarify by saying that I'm not just interested in counting the number of such mazes, I actually want to enumerate them — that is, I need to know what each maze looks like.
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How I’m Handling My Depression Using an App
A brief summary: I’ve built a web application to help me stay on top of my depression. Every day I track a number of indicators — when I…
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I have no idea what I'm doing
It says “I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I’M DOING”. I don’t remember writing it, but it was in my house on my desk in my handwriting, so I obviously did.
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Lab explosions and accidents
If you're working on serious projects there are often serious risks. A lot of these can be mitigated by preventative measures and safety ge...
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My Keyboard
I use a Datahand keyboard . It’s the best thing that’s happened to my fingers and wrists since... It’s the best thing that has ever happened to my fingers and wrists. I see a lot of parallels between the Datahand and pure functional programming (lol). They both take lots of commitment. They change the entire way you…
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A Note to My Readers
One of the things I’ve always tried to do at the Dish is to be up-front with readers. This sometimes means grotesque over-sharing; sometimes it means I write imprudent arguments I have to withdraw;…
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Telomere extension turns back aging clock in cultured human cells, study finds
Researchers delivered a modified RNA that encodes a telomere-extending protein to cultured human cells. Cell proliferation capacity was dramatically increased, yielding large numbers of cells for study.
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Programmer proverbs
To be a programmer is to learn relentlessly. A short and deep collection of advices.
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Seneca on the proper use of time
Yesterday I wrote about the impending death of the neurologist and author Oliver Sacks. I was particularly struck by this line from Sachs’ public goodbye
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Sid Meier's Civilization Inspired Budget
My wife and I were inspired by Sid Meier’s Civilization to look at our finances differently.
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A Tale of Two Zippers
Recently, Akiba took me to visit his friend’s zipper factory. I love visiting factories: no matter how simple the product, I learn something new.
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Outschooling in the Bay Area
Homeschooling is interesting because, if some new approach is going to disrupt the current education system and change it radically for the better, it seems likely it would come from outside the...
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My 5.5 Months on Soylent: The Joys of Not Cooking
Expired Registration Recovery Policy
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Argentina on Two Steaks a Day(2006)
The classic beginner's mistake in Argentina is to neglect the first steak of the day. You will be tempted to just peck at it or even skip it altogether, rationalizing that you need to save yourself for the much larger steak later that night. But this is a false economy, like refusing to drink water in the early parts…
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Michael Nielsen joins the Recurse Center to help build a research lab
The Recurse Center is a self-directed, community-driven educational retreat for programmers in New York City.
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What I Learned From Blowing An Interview
Some time ago, I was a development manager with 23 reports spread over four teams.
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Princess Pricklepants, Startup Founder Extraordinaire
Previously: Princess Pricklepants, Entrepreneur Dear reader, for our preamble we’d like to say a number of fascinating, witty, clever, and delightful things, but we can’t think of any. …
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We can't see our culture very well, because we see with it
By Hand & Brain
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Why “Whiplash” Won an Oscar for Best Editing
whiplash (n): 1. the lash of a whip. 2. an abrupt snapping motion or change of direction resembling the lash of a whip. 3. a neck injury caused by a sudden ...
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I Wrote a Book to Teach the Wolfram Language
Take a walk with Stephen Wolfram through the topics in his new book that introduces non-programmers to the Wolfram Language and computational thinking.
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Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)
Your life is the best story! Just start your blog today!
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