Best of 2013

The blog posts Hacker News loved most in 2013. 3,456 posts.

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2003

F-1 Engine Recovery

Thanks to the conservation team at the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center, the Apollo F-1 artifacts are ready for display. A few weeks ago the first shipment of artifacts arrived at The Museum of Flight here in Seattle, and I joined museum president Doug King, adjunct curator for space history Geoff Nunn, and…

2007

Bitcoin is Worse is Better

2011 essay on how Bitcoin’s long gestation and early opposition indicates it is an example of the ‘Worse is Better’ paradigm in which an ugly complex design with few attractive theoretical properties compared to purer competitors nevertheless successfully takes over a niche, survives, and becomes gradually refined.