Top all-time · #8690
Beetle Space
Personal blog · blog.nawaz.org/postsprogrammingwriting
Beetle Space is a personal blog at blog.nawaz.org about programming and writing. Since 2016, 8 different Hacker News readers have linked it 104 times, most often “Solving My Email Problem”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (4) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Beetle Space posts on solving an email problem and a humorous proclamation restoring the em-dash. Most comments cite the posts or share the feed without judging the writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 4 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Solving My Email Problem2 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2018-09-29
- /posts/2018/Sep/solving-my-email-problem/2 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2024-11-12
- LLM Assisted Moderation2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-01-15
- Code Monkey or CAD Monkey? (2016)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-01-24
- /feeds/all.atom.xml2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-07-07
- Rendering LaTeX Formulae in Mastodon.el2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-12-09
What Hacker News says?
It's not the speech recognition model alone that's fantastic. It's coupling it to an LLM for cleanup that makes all the difference. See https://blog.nawaz.org/posts/2023/Dec/cleaning-up-speech-rec... (This is not the best example as I gave it free rein to modify the text - I should post a followup that has an example closer to a typical use of speech recognition). Without that extra cleanup, Whisper is simply not go…
Comment linking /posts/2023/Dec/cleaning-up-speech-recognition-with-gpt/
on “My AI skeptic friends are all nuts”Submitted Gemini figured out my nephew’s name as a story · 188 points
HN discussion>If your shooting for an 8% avg return. You're a stuntman in real life. Over a period of 30 years, a 7% inflation adjusted gain is "easy" (as in "do no work"). Without adjusting for inflation, I'm sure that exceeds 8%. http://blog.nawaz.org/posts/2015/Dec/pay-down-mortgage-or-in...
Comment linking /posts/2015/Dec/pay-down-mortgage-or-invest/
on “Stanford CS007: Personal Finance For Engineers”Submitted Solving My Email Problem as a story · 179 points
HN discussionIt's not ridiculously high. He looked at a 10 year window, and you are looking at a 20 year window. 10 year windows show more volatility. And if you're concerned about "one data point", I'll give you plenty: http://blog.nawaz.org/posts/2015/Dec/pay-down-mortgage-or-in... For a 20 year window, it's below 6% inflation adjusted, and close to 8% without taking into account inflation (closer to your 7.6% figure)
Comment linking /posts/2015/Dec/pay-down-mortgage-or-invest/
on “Investing for Geeks”Submitted Consuming Articles Offline as a story · 75 points
HN discussionI did this analysis a while ago: http://blog.nawaz.org/posts/2015/Dec/pay-down-mortgage-or-in... The first question is: What window are you looking at? For 30 years, it's about 6.8% for the last 30 years (inflation adjusted - close to 10% if you ignore inflation). I've plotted it for each 30 year period going way back. 6.8% is not high. It's been well over 10% a number of times. I think 7% is a good average. His fig…
Comment linking /posts/2015/Dec/pay-down-mortgage-or-invest/
on “Investing for Geeks”Submitted Cleaning Up Speech Recognition with GPT as a story · 28 points
HN discussionGood points. I'll point out that a 10 year window is too short. Look at this post to get an idea of 5 yr vs 10 yr vs 20 yr vs 30 yr windows: http://blog.nawaz.org/posts/2015/Dec/pay-down-mortgage-or-in... 10 years has enough volatility that you shouldn't use it to compare between funds.
Comment linking /posts/2015/Dec/pay-down-mortgage-or-invest/
on “Investing for Geeks”Submitted "Every Hard Drive I've Owned Has Been Larger Than All My Previous Ones Combined" as a story · 5 points
HN discussion“if I have to sit in front of a computer every day for the rest of my life I’ll kill myself.” Heh. And then they go become a "real" engineer (mechanical, electrical, whatever), and end up sitting in front of a computer all day, dealing with poor UI and poorly designed SW because a lot of CAD tools are either built in-house or owned by monopolies who have no incentive to improve the experience. I've lived both worlds…
Comment linking /posts/2016/Jan/code-monkey-or-cad-monkey/
on “Face it: you're a crazy person”Submitted Code Monkey or CAD Monkey? as a story · 4 points
HN discussionBack when I heavily used RSS feed readers, the solution was simple: 1. Unsubscribe from feeds that put out too much content. 2. Optionally put them in their own category and ensure the main "view" doesn't include those items. 3. Realizing that overoptimizing for consuming the best content is (or at least should be) a sign of suboptimal mental health. 4. Timeboxing: Decide you'll spend no more than 30 minutes (even l…
Comment linking /posts/2025/Jan/the-unexpected-benefit-of-consuming-articles-offline/
on “I ditched the algorithm for RSS”Submitted Pelican on a Bicycle – Raytracer Edition as a story · 3 points
HN discussionNot when rendered via POV-Ray: https://blog.nawaz.org/posts/2025/Oct/pelican-on-a-bike-rayt... I plan to update it with more pelicans from all the models released since. (Spoiler alert: They haven't improved much since then).
Comment linking /posts/2025/Oct/pelican-on-a-bike-raytracer-edition/
on “Muse Spark 1.3”Submitted Insights a 25 Year Old Movie Can Give Us on LLMs as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSomewhat related: I met Michael Hart, the founder of Project Gutenberg, many years ago: https://blog.nawaz.org/posts/2011/Sep/michael-hart-has-passe...
Comment linking /posts/2011/Sep/michael-hart-has-passed-away/
on “Greg Newby, CEO of Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, has died”Submitted A Guide to Midnight Commander (2012) as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> On average, S&P performance over 40 years is very good. However, if you look at every possible 40-year period so far, some are really good and some are lousy. If you instead ask "What performance would I have gotten in 90% of those cases?" the performance is not as high. What is "high" for you? I basically did what you suggest (although stopped at 30 years instead of 40): http://blog.nawaz.org/posts/2015/Dec/pay-d…
Comment linking /posts/2015/Dec/pay-down-mortgage-or-invest/
on “What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour?”Submitted The Unexpected Benefit of Consuming Articles Offline as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI always point people to this: https://blog.nawaz.org/posts/2022/Nov/do-you-trust-your-tax-... I'm not in the least bit surprised it found problems. I don't think one even needs a frontier model.
Comment linking /posts/2022/Nov/do-you-trust-your-tax-preparer/
on “Claude Duet”Submitted Just Present the First Draft! as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI had used jj for only a month before I switched back to git for a particular project at work. I felt that jj was *really* nice, but nothing more. After returning to vanilla git, I was missing the jj convenience within hours. https://blog.nawaz.org/posts/2025/Aug/the-jujutsu-effect/
Comment linking /posts/2025/Aug/the-jujutsu-effect/
on “Jujutsu for everyone”Submitted "Reading" Articles via Podcast Software as a story · 3 points
HN discussionWater is healthier, but not a substitute. Something like Spindrift is a partial substitute. A real substitute is Izze. Less sugar, but still sugary. Tastes awesome - better than Coke. http://blog.nawaz.org/posts/2021/Dec/taming-my-soda-addictio...
Comment linking /posts/2021/Dec/taming-my-soda-addiction-what-worked-and-what-didnt/
on “US annual inflation declines to 7.7% in October vs. 7.9% expected”Submitted Taming My Soda Addiction: What Worked and What Didn't as a story · 3 points
HN discussion20+ years for me: https://blog.nawaz.org/posts/2023/May/20-years-of-gentoo/
Comment linking /posts/2023/May/20-years-of-gentoo/
on “Gentoo goes Binary”Submitted Consuming Articles Offline as a story · 3 points
HN discussion10 years is too short. Take a look at https://blog.nawaz.org/posts/2015/Dec/pay-down-mortgage-or-i... You'll find charts for 5, 10, 20 and 30 year windows for the S&P 500. If you look at the 10 year one, you can see it has gone as high as almost 20%/yr for some 10 year period, and has given negative returns at least twice. That's without inflation. If you adjust for inflation, then it's more like a peak of 17%, and…
Comment linking /posts/2015/Dec/pay-down-mortgage-or-invest/
on “Crunching 200 years of stock, bond, currency and commodity data”Submitted My Vibe Coded Projects in 2025 as a story · 2 points
HN discussion