Best of 2021

The blog posts Hacker News loved most in 2021. 3,497 posts.

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1806

How to Safely Think in Systems

While there are a decent number of folks out there modeling systems, there’s a much larger group of folks who think of themselves as systems thinkers but utilize techniques like modeling rather casually (a polite way of saying that they don’t use them). Even with modeling tools available, I’ve often taken the shortcut…

1812

We need more boutique search engines

For most queries, Google search is pretty underwhelming these days. Google is great at answering questions with an objective answer, like “# of billionaires in the world” or “What is the population of Iceland”. It’s pretty bad at answering questions that require judgment and context like “What do NFT collectors think…

1814

Non-Transitive Dice

We describe a set of very unusual dice, and a two player game where you will always have the advantage. You can even teach your opponent how the game works, yet still win again! Finally, we will describe a new game for three players where you can expect to beat both players at the same time! Watch James Grime and…

1827

An NFT without a blockchain

This is a small proof-of-concept. It relies on PGP - but you could use Keybase, GPG, or any other hard-to-use encryption program. Background Suppose you want to support an artist and give them money. That's easy. Most artists take PayPal, bank transfer, or cash. But how can you prove that you've paid an artist for a…