A synopsis of a short story where the protagonist writes -1 every day.
Can’t find the story, nor the comment. My memory of this is also very fuzzy at this point so it might be a completely different idea.
Ask HN: What interesting thought did you read on HN but couldn't find later?
101–110 of 232 posts
Re: Ask HN: What interesting thought did you read on HN but couldn't find later?
#102An article about an MIT student and his friend who eventually committed suicide, talking about the n+1.
Re: Ask HN: What interesting thought did you read on HN but couldn't find later?
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sounds like a fuzzer. Was it American Fuzzy Lop (afl-fuzz)? Doesn't quite meet your 4-letter criteria but sounds like a candidate.
Yes! Thank you. No wonder I wasn't able to find it as I strongly held my belief that it was 4 letters. Love this place.
It's odd how a word can feel "on the tip of your tongue" and intuitions about its number of sounds and their characteristics can be remarkably accurate, especially if you consider the interposition of linguistically similar sounds. And it can be totally misleading when your memories are incorrect, to the point for me at least of making it nearly impossible to recall a word until I have shifted focus to something else.
Re: Ask HN: What interesting thought did you read on HN but couldn't find later?
#104A service that converts PDF research papers into a clean readable webpage. Their example paper was a research paper with two columns and diagrams to show their service actually works well. I searched a couple of times but couldn't find them again...
Re: Ask HN: What interesting thought did you read on HN but couldn't find later?
#105There was a thread about interviewing, someone talking about how hard interviewing was and failing dozens of them even as a senior engineer. (there is a thread about that once every month or two, indeed) A commenter responded saying something along the lines of, "When you find the right fit/role, the interview will seem suspiciously easy."
I thought it was interesting because it's such a huge anecdote without any ways of backing it up, but for some reasons it does match my own experience in the past decade+ for almost every job offer I've landed (a handful). For every interview where I felt like I struggled really hard (even though in the end I was able to solve the problems the interviewers asked), I did not get offers. For the ones I did land, it always seemed really easy and somewhat like "what? is that it?"
Re: Ask HN: What interesting thought did you read on HN but couldn't find later?
#106A service that converts PDF research papers into a clean readable webpage. Their example paper was a research paper with two columns and diagrams to show their service actually works well. I searched a couple of times but couldn't find them again...
Sounds like pdf2htmlEX. Discussion:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5657988
Pdf2htmlEX – Convert PDF to HTML without losing text or format (github.com) 161 points by coolwanglu on May 5, 2013 | 48 comments
http://coolwanglu.github.io/pdf2htmlEX/demo/demo.html (Demo of research paper)
Re: Ask HN: What interesting thought did you read on HN but couldn't find later?
#107Someone posted here a blog from a guy who had a plan to commit suicide at the age of 50. He wrote a lot of articles explaining the reasoning. It was mostly a fear of declining quality of life with age, and a fear of becoming incapacitated at some point and being unable to follow through with euthanasia if he was suffering. It stuck in my head and I'd like to find it again because I couldn't remember if this was somet…
We’re you thinking of the author of zeromq? http://hintjens.com/blog:115 “A protocol for dying”
No, this was someone who was still in good health and wanted to be proactive about avoiding possible future sickness and even just aging. But thanks for posting that.
Re: Ask HN: What interesting thought did you read on HN but couldn't find later?
#108Meta: I use https://hn.algolia.com to search HN. It has a nice interface that shows full comments rather than snippets.
Re: Ask HN: What interesting thought did you read on HN but couldn't find later?
#109An article about some species of octopuses that have a relatively high IQ, but since the parents die before their offspring comes to life, every generation have to relearn everything from scratch. IIRC, the lack of inter-generational communication deprived this species from developing to the level its IQ permits. I wish I can find that piece again!
Are we learning a lot from our parents? I had highly educated parents (university professors) and what I learned from them was a tiny fraction of the total amount of things that I've learned so far (from written material, other people, and life experience). I think there's merit to what you said, but I don't think the crucial bit is the parents specifically. I think the crucial bit is that without language you can't…
You're kind of disproving your own point here, no? Or at least, both the fact that its parents die and that they have no language creates a vicious circle.
Though you skipped over it, probably the most important skill you've learnt from your parents is language. The octopus' parents die before they can transfer that skill. Hence, they can (barely) communicate with others of the same species and elevate their collective knowledge.
Re: Ask HN: What interesting thought did you read on HN but couldn't find later?
#110There was a thread about interviewing, someone talking about how hard interviewing was and failing dozens of them even as a senior engineer. (there is a thread about that once every month or two, indeed) A commenter responded saying something along the lines of, "When you find the right fit/role, the interview will seem suspiciously easy." I thought it was interesting because it's such a huge anecdote without any way…