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Topics /
Life, Learning & Writing
The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 465 posts.
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This Page is Designed to Last
The end of the year is an opportunity to clean up and reset for the upcoming new semester. I found myself clearing out old bookmarks—yes, bookmarks: that formerly beloved browser feature that seems to have lost the battle to 'address bar autocomplete'. But this nostalgic act of tidying led me to despair.
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Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure
Some of Stephen Wolfram’s “productivity hacks” to make his days and projects more productive. Daily life, desk environment, outside the office, presentation setup, filesystem organization, Wolfram Notebook systems, databases, personal analytics.
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Basic Social Skills Guide (2012)
Free online social skills guide. Contains information on understanding body language, making conversation, and setting good social skills goals.
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How to do hard things
A fully general system for learning to do things you currently find difficult, only somewhat tongue-in-cheek.
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Undervalued Engineering Skills: Writing Well
I have been coaching several experienced software engineers to further grow professionally, since transitioning [https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/things-ive-learned-transitioning-from-engineer-to-engineering-manager/] to being an engineering manager. I have noticed a few skills that people often underestimate the…
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Leukemia Has Won
Despite my best efforts over the past two and a half years, the leukemia has won. Due to liver inflammation and GvHD, the liver is too damaged to continue with treatment and there are no furth…
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Thinkpad X210
A couple years ago, I used an old Thinkpad while my MacBook was being repaired. I enjoyed the experience so much that I ended up getting a Thinkpad X62 (an X61 chassis with modern internals). Last S…
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How to assess the quality of garments (2014)
What's the number one prerequisite to building a high-quality wardrobe? Exactly: You need to be able to recognize a quality garment when you see one. You need to be able to tell the difference between a durable, well-crafted piece and one that looks pretty on the rack but won't last more than half a
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What Does a Coder Do If They Can't Type?
In August of 2015, my hands stopped working. This is what happened next.
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How to Be Successful
I’ve observed thousands of founders and thought a lot about what it takes to make a huge amount of money or to create something important. Usually, people start off wanting the former and end up...
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Have a personal web site
Hello! This is my personal web site. It’s not much, but it’s mine. After nearly a decade of just barely existing, I’ve spent quite a bit of time in 2019 trying to breathe new life into it. At this point, I think just about everyone–but especially folks in the software...
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Goodbye Joe
Today, we've learned of Joe's passing away. I wasn't a super close friend of Joe, but I have known him and talked with him at various conferences over the last ten years or so. He's unsurprisingly been a huge influence in my career, and so I thought I should write this little post about him and his impact.
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Interested in improving your relationships? Try Nonviolent Communication
Nonviolent communication (NVC) is a popular method of conflict resolution that privileges unbiased evidence and specificity.
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Leaving Google Fi
I’m sharing the story of a bad situation I had ordering a new phone through Google Fi. It turned into a two month long ordeal where the service got worse and worse. At every turn the Google Fi team was presented with a chance to make things better and every time they blew it. I’m sharing this because I hope a long…
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Makers, Don't Let Yourself Be Forced into the 'Manager Schedule'
In Masters of Doom, a book about the game development company id Software and its influence on popular culture, David Kushner reflected on the...
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How I Run a Company with ADHD
For the first 19 years of my life I was convinced I was lazy. Then I was diagnosed with ADHD. I've since started a company and grown it to a team of 8. Here's how I've learned to not just cope, but embrace the disorder.
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Coffee Is Hard
Way back in the 80s, some people had a dream of combining the cutesy graphics of 80s visual games and the soul-crushing difficulty of 80s text adventures. And so Sierra On-Line created quest games.
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Adults learn language to fluency nearly as well as children: study
Scott Chacon is CEO of the online language learning company Chatterbug.
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In Defense of Richard Stallman
Richard Stallman has had a rough month. This article is a decent summary of the events. In short: Stallman made some technically-correct-but-utterly-tactless comments on a private mailing list, most…
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Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors
focusing after dark • corn cob bulbs • before + after photos • saving ½–2h/day • my setup • why don’t more people do this?! • FAQs
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How I Got my $3500 Camera Kit Stolen on KitSplit
Please read before renting out your own gear!