Hacker News with Generative AI: Biography

Bitcoin's God. Years of studying Satoshi led me to a new prime suspect (nymag.com)
If Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous inventor of bitcoin, was who I believed him to be, he was not going to acknowledge it. He probably wouldn’t talk to me. And seeing him was going to mean sitting on a plane for 20 hours and driving another eight. But I needed to try to have a conversation with him, and it had to be face-to-face.
Bitcoin, Cryptography, Investigations, Biography, Technology
19 points by jc_811 5 days ago | 6 comments
The Devastating Decline of a Brilliant Young Coder (wired.com)
On Friday, September 13, 2019, Matthew Prince and Michelle Zatlyn, cofounders of the San Francisco internet security firm Cloudflare, stood on a slim marble balcony overlooking the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
Technology, Business, Entrepreneurship, Biography
13 points by vincentchau 6 days ago | 2 comments
George Orwell and me: Richard Blair on life with his extraordinary father (theguardian.com)
Richard Blair didn’t have the easiest start in life. At three weeks old, he was adopted. Nine months later, his adoptive mother, Eileen, died at 39, after an allergic reaction to the anaesthetic she was given for a hysterectomy. Family and friends expected Blair’s father, Eric, to un-adopt him. Fortunately, Eric, better known as George Orwell, was an unusually hands-on dad for the 1940s.
Biography, Family, History, Writing
73 points by lermontov 6 days ago | 25 comments
Things You Must Know About Tamara de Lempicka (dailyartmagazine.com)
Tamara de Lempicka was many things: a successful artist, a society darling, and an expat. She knew how to create interest in herself and capitalize on it. She was an artist and a celebrity at the same time. You may say she was way ahead of her times, as her fame brings to mind that of Madonna or Lady Gaga. Her art and her public persona intertwined, staying consistently connected.
Art, Biography, History, Celebrity
7 points by aureliusm 6 days ago | 0 comments
Ungovernable, Capricious Life (nybooks.com)
The sense of vulnerability is crushing, but it is also one of the characteristics Kureishi reveals about himself that makes him so likable here, and the writing so intimate.
Vulnerability, Writing, Biography, Literature, Personal Essays
6 points by mitchbob 9 days ago | 7 comments
'The Maverick's Museum' Review: Albert Barnes and the Art of Collecting (wsj.com)
His talent for pharmaceutical chemistry made him rich. His bold taste in paintings created the foundation for America’s most personal art museum.
Art, Museums, Biography, History
15 points by Caiero 16 days ago | 7 comments
Zuckerberg 'lied' to Senate, Sandberg asked me to bed, says author (afr.com)
A former Facebook executive has written an insider account of a company that she says was run by status-hungry and self-absorbed leaders.
Facebook, Leadership, Business, Social Media, Biography
12 points by wahnfrieden 16 days ago | 3 comments
They're Close to My Body: A Hagiography of Nine Inch Nails and Robin Finck (2020) (thewhitereview.org)
I was 10 years old when The Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails was released in 1994, and I listened to it more than any other record for the next six years, when everything I knew about myself was disintegrating and becoming unknowable.
Music, Biography, 1990s
126 points by herbertl 18 days ago | 74 comments
Ex-Facebook director's new book paints brutal image of Mark Zuckerberg (sfgate.com)
Social Media, Leadership, Biography, Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg
434 points by AntiRush 20 days ago | 268 comments
Dante's Divine Autofiction (newstatesman.com)
How the Italian poet’s search for self-knowledge changed the course of literature.
Literature, Poetry, Biography, Italy, Self-Knowledge
10 points by samclemens 21 days ago | 1 comments
Ruth Belville, the "Greenwich Time Lady" (2022) (eehe.org.uk)
Biography, History, Journalism
95 points by throw0101b 24 days ago | 82 comments
Ronald Read – Philanthropist, investor, janitor, and gas station attendant (wikipedia.org)
Ronald James Read (October 23, 1921 – June 2, 2014) was an American philanthropist, investor, janitor, and gas station attendant.
Philanthropy, Investing, Biography, People
11 points by thecosas 30 days ago | 0 comments
The Tinkerings of Robert Noyce by Tom Wolfe (1983) (esquire.com)
IN 1948 THERE WERE seven thousand people in Grinnell, Iowa, including more than one who didn’t dare take a drink in his own house without pulling the shades down first.
Biography, Technology, History, Writing, Culture
13 points by whoisstan 31 days ago | 1 comments
The Planemaker Who Walked Beneath the Water (workingwoodenplanes.com)
The pages of A Guide to American Wooden Planes are filled with the biographies of planemakers who worked in wildly varying professions, from music teachers to mail clerks. But I know of no other planemaker with a resume like Ebenezer Clifford, architect, master joiner, bell diver, cabinetmaker, turner, justice of the peace, and quartermaster sergeant in the Revolutionary War.
History, Craftsmanship, Biography, Woodworking
23 points by unix2038 32 days ago | 2 comments
Rifling through the archives with Robert Caro (smithsonianmag.com)
Robert Caro has spent most of his life asking questions of others, and he rather prefers it that way.
Biography, History, Journalism
43 points by benbreen 35 days ago | 2 comments
Jan Łukasiewicz (wikipedia.org)
Jan Łukasiewicz (Polish: [ˈjan wukaˈɕɛvit͡ʂ] ⓘ; 21 December 1878 – 13 February 1956) was a Polish logician and philosopher who is best known for Polish notation and Łukasiewicz logic.[1] His work centred on philosophical logic, mathematical logic and history of logic.[2] He thought innovatively about traditional propositional logic, the principle of non-contradiction and the law of excluded middle, offering one of the earliest systems of many-valued logic.
Logic, Philosophy, Poland, Biography, History
4 points by fuzztester 35 days ago | 1 comments
When Louis Armstrong conquered Chicago (honest-broker.com)
If you want to understand 20th century American music, you really must start with Louis Armstrong.
Music, History, Biography, American Culture
98 points by paulpauper 54 days ago | 14 comments
Franz Kafka – the workers' friend (2018) (marywcraig.com)
Everyone has heard of Franz Kafka, the writer of such masterpieces such as Metamorphosis and The Trial. His troubled relationship with his father, his love life and his eventual early death from tuberculosis are all well documented. What is less well known is his work for Die Arbeiter-Unfall-Versicherungs-Anhalt für das Königreich Böhmen in Prag (the Workers Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia in Prague).
Franz Kafka, Literature, Biography, History
53 points by robtherobber 57 days ago | 4 comments
Nellie Bly (wikipedia.org)
Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman (born Elizabeth Jane Cochran; May 5, 1864 – January 27, 1922), better known by her pen name Nellie Bly, was an American journalist who was widely known for her record-breaking trip around the world in 72 days in emulation of Jules Verne's fictional character Phileas Fogg, and for an exposé in which she worked undercover to report on a mental institution from within.
Journalism, Biography, History, Women's History
87 points by samclemens 57 days ago | 14 comments
Review of "Source Code" by Bill Gates (theguardian.com)
The enduring mystery about William Henry Gates III is this: how did a precocious and sometimes obnoxious kid evolve into a billionaire tech lord and then into an elder statesman and philanthropist? This book gives us only the first part of the story, tracing Gates’s evolution from birth in 1955 to the founding of Microsoft in 1975. For the next part of the story, we will just have to wait for the sequel.
Biography, Technology, Microsoft, Bill Gates
23 points by Archelaos 59 days ago | 4 comments
Byte Queue Limits: the unauthorized biography (medium.com)
Of the technologies I’ve worked on, Byte Queue Limits, or just BQL, seems the one for which I get the most comments!
Software, Biography, Technology
27 points by tkhattra 61 days ago | 2 comments
Pianist David Kadouch probes gay composers' hidden loves, through music (npr.org)
Where words fail, music speaks.
Classical Music, LGBTQ+, Biography
5 points by rossant 61 days ago | 0 comments
Operation Leg – a pilot unlike any other (2020) (rafbf.org)
Douglas Bader was a Battle of Britain pilot unlike any other.  Medically discharged against his will in 1932, the outbreak of the war was an opportunity for Bader to re-join the RAF and take back to the skies. Although hampered by the loss of his two legs, Bader was a remarkable pilot and, once captured by the German, a persistent escapee.
Military History, Aviation, Biography
175 points by FinnLobsien 65 days ago | 77 comments
The British Micro Behemoth (abortretry.fail)
Clive Marles Sinclair was born on the 30th of July in 1940 in Ealing, Middlesex, England.
Biography, Technology, United Kingdom
145 points by rbanffy 70 days ago | 76 comments
The forgotten brilliance of Hélène de Beauvoir, sister of Simone (theguardian.com)
Simone de Beauvoir, the French feminist icon, novelist and philosopher who bestrode the 20th century, had a younger sister called Hélène. She was not famous like Simone but she was every bit as radical and prolific, as both a feminist and a painter. It seems ridiculous that history would have sidelined this woman whose work Picasso complimented at her first Paris show in 1936, calling it “original”.
Feminism, Art, History, Biography
53 points by bookofjoe 72 days ago | 3 comments
Frankenstein inspired by suicide of Mary Shelley's half-sister, book reveals (theguardian.com)
Frankenstein’s monster, as horror fans know, did not really spark into life with a bolt of lightning, but was born inside the mind of Mary Shelley during a dreary holiday on a ­mountainside above Geneva.
Literature, Biography, History
11 points by mellosouls 74 days ago | 2 comments
The Charango (longreads.com)
I can see him. He stands proud, with his shoulders back; he’s short and stocky like a pitbull. His voice is just as proud as his posture, loud and deep, with a thick, warm, Andean accent. His wide jaw and square head make him look stern when his face is resting. But my dad is a performer, so his face is not often resting. Most of the time it is in a wide, amicable grin.
Music, Culture, Biography
12 points by mooreds 75 days ago | 0 comments
Karen Wynn Fonstad, Who Mapped Tolkien's Middle-Earth (nytimes.com)
In 1977, Karen Wynn Fonstad made a long shot cold call to J.R.R. Tolkien’s American publisher with the hope of landing a dream assignment: to create an exhaustive atlas of Middle-earth, the setting of the author’s widely popular “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings.”
Fantasy Literature, Maps, Biography, J.R.R. Tolkien
27 points by indigoabstract 77 days ago | 4 comments
Byte Queue Limits – The unauthorized biography (medium.com)
Of the technologies I’ve worked on, Byte Queue Limits, or just BQL, seems the one for which I get the most comments! It’s rather ancient now dating back to 2011, however to my surprise it still seems quite relevant. Anyway, I thought it’d be fun today to look at it as part retrospective and part exposé.
Technology, Programming, Retrospective, Biography
11 points by dtaht 79 days ago | 0 comments
Shavarsh Karapetyan (wikipedia.org)
Shavarsh Karapetyan trained his eyes on the asphalt as he rounded the corner. He had 45 pounds of sand strapped to his back, facing the final push on a 13-mile run fueled by the fury he’d been nursing ever since Soviet coaches dropped him from the national swim team.
Sports, Biography, Perseverance
204 points by handfuloflight 82 days ago | 24 comments