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Topics /
Life, Learning & Writing
The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 369 posts.
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How I Fail – Ian Goodfellow
Ian Goodfellow is a staff research scientist on the Google Brain team, where he leads a team of researchers studying adversarial techniques in AI. He was included in MIT Technology Review’s “35 und…
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Working on an iPad Pro as my main computer
tl;dr I can do all of my programming and system admin work with an iPad Pro because I work on remote servers over ssh, and I prefer using the Unix/Linux command line.
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Why I use the IBM Model M keyboard that is older than me
The last primary keyboard I’ll use in my life might be the IBM Model M. It’ll probably last me the decades to the day that keyboards should become obsolete. - Kheng Meng, 2018 I just had to start my blog post with that self quote ^^^ but I’m pretty confident it’ll hold true for me. I have owned several keyboards so…
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Kottke.org is 20 years old today
kottke.org is 20 years old today. Holy shit! On March 14, 1998, I launched a new episode of 0sil8 called “Notes”. 0sil8 was a previous website of mine, started
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Paper is dead, long live paper programming
It should come as no surprise to anyone who reads this blog that I love to program "by hand." I happen to practice a degree of ascetical programming practices, and I believe that they help me to more deeply internalize and understand problems, ultimately delivering higher quality solutions. One of
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An ingenious vintage German cycle map (2014)
We cycled the Swiss part of the Rhine Cycleway last week, with our folding bikes neatly stowed in suitcases for the flight. A combination of cycle.travel (natch), the Cicerone guide, and the excellent MapOut app guided us safely along the way: a very modern combination of mapping styles.
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The Bare Minimum You Should Do to Protect Your Family's Data
For a lot of families, technology is the glue that holds everything together. There’s your kid’s Instagram feed you follow to see what theyR
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Whole House Fan and Evaporative Cooler
In dry climates it's common for people to use evaporative ("swamp") coolers; same idea as sweat evaporating off your skin cooling you off. The downside is that they increase humidity in the air, and if it's already pretty humid then that can make things uncomfortable. This means evaporative coolers are rarely used…
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What's in those mysterious cabinets?
From the highly eclectic blog of Mark Dominus
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Great things and people that I discovered, learned, read, met, etc in 2017
Great things and people that I discovered, learned, read, met, etc. in 2017. No particular ordering is implied. Not everything is new.
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On Overcoming Pain
Breaking my knee this year was a difficult experience, but I did learn a lot from it . I now know more than I ever wanted to know about the anatomy of my knee and how the muscles work together to create the miracle of bipedal locomotion, and more importantly, I now know more about pain.
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A more privacy-friendly blog
Over the years, I have implemented some changes to this blog to make it more privacy-friendly.
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Michael Lewis and the parable of the lucky man taking the extra cookie (2017)
In 2012, Michael Lewis gave a commencement speech at Princeton University, his alma mater. In the speech, Lewis, the author of Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, and The
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Evolution of the English Alphabet
Buy the poster | Watch a video explanation
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Conflict vs. Mistake
Jacobite – which is apparently still a real magazine and not a one-off gag making fun of Jacobin – summarizes their article Under-Theorizing Government as “You’ll never hear…
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Spend analysis of 6 years, 686 rides, and $12k spent on Uber (2017)
What I learned from my Uber data I save $703/month using Uber versus owning 2 cars (🚙🏎). I’ve spent $12,041 on 686 Ubers over 6 years. By comparison, car ownership cost $11,783 per year, most of it depreciation. What could $703/month buy you? Well, four years of $703/month and you’ll save enough to climb Mount…
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On the Law of Diminishing Specialization
On Productive Technology and its Discontents Recently, I’ve been dipping in and out of Edward Tenner’s provocative 1996 book, When Things Bites Back. In following ... Read more
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Hi, I’d Like to Add Myself to the New Yorker (2016)
Personal site of designer Frank Chimero
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Retirement and Realignment
Effective today, I have resigned my employment at Microsoft, concluding an engaging and delightful 4½ years as part of the Xamarin documentation team. I will miss my co-workers immensely, and I hope to keep in touch with them on Facebook.
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I was told I would become quadriplegic
I was told, I would become quadriplegic & what I had to do for it among other things regarding my heath.
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Facts about smell (2014)
The home of typing by Alice Bartlett 👩🏻💻
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A game of tag that’s been going for 20+ years
A group of high school friends has been playing an elaborate game of tag since reconnecting at a reunion almost 30 years ago. A few years ago, one of the player
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A Nerd’s Way to Walk Up the Stairs (2011)
Mathematics, applications of mathematics to life in general, and my life as a mathematician.
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Reading with a pencil
The intellectual is, quite simply, a human being who has a pencil in his or her hand when reading a book. —George Steiner
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