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The Dying Art of Mental Math Tricks
Mathematics, applications of mathematics to life in general, and my life as a mathematician.
Topics /
Life, Learning & Writing
The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 342 posts.
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How I make $400 a month in Passive Income by Self-Publishing
I’m the author of Behind the Ivy Curtain: A Data Driven Guide to Elite College Admissions :
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Updating my plane’s very old GPS data in a very modern way
Dmitry.GR: My epic saga of updating a plane's very old GPS's data in a very modern way
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An Ode to Linux Desktop Users Everywhere
Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels. The package makers, the man page writers. The rounded windows in Qt mixed with the less rounded windows of GTK. The ones who literally see things differently because of missing proprietary fonts. They’re not fond of rules, installation wizards, …
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Is Self Hosted Blogging Dead?
Or, the case against hosted blogging options. More and more I find myself reading articles on blog networks, and by networks I mean Medium.
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What is the best part about being a Software Engineer?
A week ago I saw an article on Hacker News titled – What’s awful about being a {software engineer, tech lead, manager}?. The article was spot on and it got a lot of attention. It also left me feeling…
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Immortality Begins at Forty
I discovered something a couple of years ago: Almost all culture, old or new, is designed for consumption by people under 40. People between 40 and Ω (an…
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Best Practices for Time Travelers (2003)
When John Titor first showed up on IRC chat in October of 2000, he was enjoying a neat kind of double billing - as his 38-year-old self sat downstairs in the kitchen, typing away, a two-year-old version of himself lay sound asleep upstairs in bed. The elder Titor had been sent back in time by the U.S. Army, which…
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Org-Mode for Writing: Structure and Focus
Org-mode is a structured editor that combines the best features of a powerful outliner and a powerful editor in one package. I’ve been fooling with org-mode a lot lately, digging into capabil…
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A decade of writing at Mozilla
Today—April 3, 2016—marks the tenth anniversary of the day I started working at Mozilla as a writer on the Mozilla Developer Center project (now, of course, the Mozilla Developer Network or MDN). T…
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Your heart rate at gunpoint
It’s a beautiful evening, albeit a little cold. I’m heading home after a long day. I’m walking down a familiar street. I feel safe, I feel…
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What makes music sound “good?”
When listening to music, however, we are not just listening to a series of disconnected instants. Instead, the way things sound depends on the notes we have heard. In other words, we integrate over time . One of the most important functions of a musical scale is to limit the overall pitch content of what we're hearing…
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An Easy Way to Learn Hard Stuff
Three steps to gain a new superpower.
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Is there any point to the 12 times table?
Jon McLoone on why we learn times tables, whether knowing them to 12 is better than to 10, approximation multiplication, & education recommendations
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How to fend off a jerk
When I was fifteen, I worked for a full-service gas station and auto repair shop. I know what you're thinking (unless you're in New Jersey or Oregon), "what is a full-service gas station?" Yes, there was a time when a smiling gas jockey would greet your car and fill up your gas. You didn't
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In 2017, I’m going to stop watching the news
I've stopped watching the news a few months ago and it's definitely a trend I'm planning to continue in 2017. We live in a world of information. Open Facebook …
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The Hunt for the Death Valley Germans
This is the tale of what for me was a rather remarkable adventure. It was assembled on the basis of my personal recollection and experience, emails, GPS logs and some official documents. It represents solely the perspective and opinions of myself, in my more lucid moments. It is in no way intended to represent th
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In Defense of Inclusionism
Iron Law of Bureaucracy: the downwards deletionism spiral discourages contribution and is how Wikipedia will die.
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For What It’s Worth: A Review of Wu-Tang Clan’s “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin”
This is what we know: On November 24, 2015, the Wu-Tang Clan sold its latest album, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin , through an online auction house. As one of the most innovative rap groups, the Wu-Tang Clan had used concepts for their recordings before, but the latest album would be their highest concept: it would…
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I’m a Bad Developer, That’s the Only Reasonable Explanation
I remember the first time I started to feel insecure as a web developer or even generally as a professional in any field. I was asked to…
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Years and lessons working at ThoughtWorks
I’ve been at ThoughtWorks for 12 years. Who would have imagined? Instead of writing about my reflections on the past year, I thought I would do something different and post twelve key learnings and observations looking back over my career. I have chosen twelve, not because there are only twelve, but because it fits…
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Homeschooling as a right, and a needed practical alternative
Education in Victoria is succeeding in some areas, but failing in many others – we have new school buildings, but they are overflowing and the school rolls climbing so quickly that teachers a…
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A tool for thought
As ClojureScript nears its fifth birthday I find myself reflecting on its suitability as a “tool for thought” . Certainly reading the Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs nearly thirteen years ago painted an ideal image of Lisp as a truly interactive and tangible approach to computing. That experience…