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Seven books I keep close because I love them
From the highly eclectic blog of Mark Dominus
Topics /
Life, Learning & Writing
The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 662 posts.
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Enhancing gut-brain communication reversed cognitive decline in aging mice
Aging causes changes in gut bacteria in mice, which hampers communication between the intestines and the brain. Restoring this connection helped old mice form memories as well as young animals.
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The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated
Some skepticism of vitamin D skepticism
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My MacBook keyboard is broken and it's insanely expensive to fix
The right arrow key on my Macbook Pro keyboard stopped working the other day. I say “stopped working”, but technically it works too well now, it is being pressed constantly, which makes the laptop pretty unusable.
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You are not your job
On automation, identity, and why warmth and presence — not technical skill — are the parts of a person that can never be replaced by a model.
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How to sequence your own DNA at home
I have now sequenced my own genome 5 times with an Oxford Nanopore Technologies MinION. This means collecting them from a swab, prepping them for sequencing, running them through a sequencer, then doing analysis over them.
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Standard Ebooks: Public Domain Day 2026 in Literature
Read about the new ebooks Standard Ebooks is releasing for Public Domain Day 2026!
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Hello, me. It's been a while
Wow. It’s been over fourteen years since the last time I wrote a post on this blog. In those fourteen years, the world has changed, and so have I. So this isn't going to be a technical post, it's going to be personal. One of those subtle changes that quietly crept into my life over
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Loss of cell identity drives human aging: Two new papers
That’s What Biological (Epigenetic) Aging Clocks Are Measuring
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15-year search for a band that charted once and vanished
15 years ago, a band called Salvage dropped an epic song, and then vanished without a trace. Until now.
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A nicer voltmeter clock
Sometimes, electronic circuit design is mostly about wood
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Three constraints before I build anything
['Programmer', 'Computer nerd', 'Unix enthusiast'];
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Your phone is an entire computer
The new MacBook Neo announcement raises old questions around what rights we have (and don't have) to install software on devices we own.
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The Productivity Mirage
What I once thought about programming productivity was wrong
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English: A vs. An
[Note: the actual project is here ; the current page is only an introduction to it, for my blog readers.]
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What it feels like to work with Mythos
Claude Fable represents another big jump in AI
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Digital minimalism
For a long time I have been a fan of minimalism in my physical life: have few physical possessions, and try to do more with less. Four years ago, I wrote this blog post describing what I had in the 40-liter backpack that I travel around with.
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Why is Hacker News like that?
Hacker News (aka HN) is a link aggregator where “hackers” 1 gather to discuss technology, politics, and anything which “good hackers would find interesting”. HN is a means by which its host, prominent startup incubator Y Combinator, projects soft power, promotes startups it funds, and feeds people with ideas into its…
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Universal vaccine against respiratory infections and allergens
Stanford Medicine researchers and their colleagues invented a new vaccine that protects mice from respiratory viruses, bacteria and allergens — the closest yet to a universal vaccine.
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It's all a blur
Designing a slightly sneaky blur filter and then poking holes in it.
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This blog is written in en-GB
Someone left a comment on my blog recently asking if I'd mind making my language more inclusive. They didn't get some of the cultural references I'd used and suggested it would be easier if I used tropes which were more globally known. Here's the thing. No. All my blog posts start with a simple declaration: Copied…
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Two days of oatmeal reduce cholesterol level
The fact that oats have a beneficial effect on the metabolism is nothing new. German medic Carl von Noorden treated patients with diabetes with the cereal at the beginning of the 20th century – with remarkable success. “Today, effective medications are available to treat patients with diabetes,” explains…
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Retro-Tech Parenting
I am a technologist. I enjoy the things that computers and digital devices can do–they often seem magical and amazing! As a technologist, I have a particular vantage point to see and be very uncomfortable with what companies are doing with that technology. There are catchphrases for these patterns: AdTech…
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Making chicken transparent using Dorito dust
Modifying the optical properties of biological tissues with tartrazine
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A Health Update
I’m writing this post from a hospital bed. And I couldn’t be happier. You hear folks say chemotherapy sucks, but until you go through it yourself, you don’t really know how bad it can be. It remains a popular activity only because it’s better than the alternative. My first exposure to chemotherapy was with this […]
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The lamps in my house
I have a thing for lamps. Especially designer lamps from the past. I occasionally share them on X and Instagram, and people always ask me about the brands and models. I love lamps so much that I designed one myself. So I decided to give a tour of the lamps
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Personal thoughts/notes from working on Zootopia 2
The home of Code & Visuals