from Hacker News

The best things and stuff of 2020

by geospeck on 12/31/20, 3:59 PM with 37 comments

• by wcarss on 1/1/21, 11:48 PM

  So glad this eventually found its way up to the top -- reading fogus' yearly review has become a fondly held tradition.

• by mod on 1/1/21, 11:32 PM

  The "10 games you can play in your head by yourself" book looked interesting enough to me that I've purchased it. I tend to daydream a lot anyway, so hopefully it'll provide some interesting focus for me.

• by baxtr on 1/1/21, 11:13 PM

  Best item so far:

  Life-changing technology “discovered”:

  Air fryer — I just can’t go back to frying stuff in puddles of grease.

• by diN0bot on 1/2/21, 1:21 AM

  the ReMarkable has been life changing for me: https://remarkable.com/?gclid=CjwKCAiArbv_BRA8EiwAYGs23Ku05s...

• by ImaCake on 1/2/21, 6:50 AM

  The first link "The Octopus: An Alien Among Us" is a good window into the world of animal intelligence research. I am going through a phase of listening to audiobooks on this topic. I can recommend both "Other Minds" by Peter Godfrey-Smith and "The Genius of Birds" by Jennifer Ackerman if you want good audiobooks that give a whirlwind tour through animal intelligence research into cephalopods and birds, respectively.

• by Rendello on 1/2/21, 4:40 AM

  Two entries stood out to me. The first is the book "UNIX: A History and a Memoir by Brian Kernigan", and the second the blog post "A Constructive Look at TempleOS".

  That blog post [1] along with "A Language Design Analysis of HolyC" [2] inspired me to try out TempleOS for myself. I'm so glad I did, since I got hooked on developing programs in HolyC, and thus learned C in the process. There's something about building a piece of software for a system and knowing that nothing like it has ever existed on that platform before!

  I've been working in HolyC for over a year, but I just finished K&R tonight, which has me wanting to read more Kernigan, so I'm glad the UNIX book showed up on my radar.

  (PS feel free to ask me about TempleOS development; email is open)

  1. http://www.codersnotes.com/notes/a-constructive-look-at-temp...

  2. https://harrisontotty.github.io/p/a-lang-design-analysis-of-...

• by guenthert on 1/2/21, 7:36 PM

  Now while the listed Mark I FORTH computer is pretty cool, I don't see how it relates to 2020 (last update of the blog entry is of 2006). Was 2020 beneficial in that it allowed us to dig deeper in the web?

• by ncmncm on 1/2/21, 7:28 AM

  Conway should be considered the author of the LSI book.

• by Nacdor on 1/2/21, 12:50 AM

  > Life-changing technology “discovered”: Air Fryer

  They're just tiny convection ovens with a gimmicky name.