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My Favorite Books 2020
Mostly non-fiction books this year. Some in English, some in German.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 517 posts.
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The best things and stuff of 2020
Great things and people that I discovered, learned, read, met, etc. in 2020. No particular ordering is implied. Not everything is new.
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Talk Less, Listen More
I spent a whole bunch of time this fall and winter taking calls from young financial advisors. I try to schedule this stuff on Friday mornings when things are a little quieter for me. They DM me or email me and I just say yes. I have 15 minutes for any kid reading my stuff...
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Things I Learnt in 2020
For the past six months I have been sending out a weekly newsletter with things I learnt and read during the week. Some of those trivia are not trivial at all, so I decided to share the condensed crème de la crème of the Internet in this New Year special edition.
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Why the iPhone Timer app displays a fake time
While building a timer app I came across a peculiarity with displaying time and found out that the iPhone timer addresses it by showing you a fake time.
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Experimenting on My Hearing Loss
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Repairability
My Macbook Pro I have a Macbook pro retina 15 inch, that I bought in 2016. A few days back, the battery started bulking up and the laptop ha...
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Building my own HomeKit Thermostat
Built a custom HomeKit enabled thermostat, because I was fed up with the walled gardens of Nest
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What the Dunning-Kruger effect is and isn’t (2010)
If you regularly read cognitive science or psychology blogs (or even just the lowly New York Times!), you’ve probably heard of something called the Dunning-Kruger effect. The Dunning-Kruger e…
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The Guy I Almost Was (1998)
An online graphic novel about a young man's coming of age in the California cyberculture of the early 1990s.
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What’s the best non-smart TV sold today?
With the industry-wide transition to smart TVs many of us have felt like there is no option but to get one. And the walls are closing in -- it seems like almost every TV sold today is a smart one, which means a lack of control of what's happening on our device, the possibility of
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Trading Time for Money
Paying someone else to do your work isn't such a great deal, and you should probably learn to do it yourself.
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What Shape Are You?
This post is a guest post from my friend Brian Sharp My post before this was a kind of therapy / Buddhism / personal growth kind of deal, but I also spend a lot of time thinking ab...
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Interview advice that got me offers
“What would you say if I asked you to design me a service capable of responding to thousands of user requests every second and latency was critical?”
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Tips for a Better Life
Ideopunk
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The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC
When I placed the last screw on the DB4 chassis of the Beautiful Silent PC [1] , I thought I would not have to open it up again for years. Perhaps, I hypothesized, it would be a decade before an upgrade. The beautiful silent PC. The imperative of working from home proved me wrong when the seemingly easy problem of…
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Should you Work Hard? (2019)
Software engineer, etc etc
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Surgery, the Ultimate Placebo
Ian Harris explains that more than half of commonly performed surgical operations may be placebos. Adequate studies using a blinded control group are essential. Ian Harris, a Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, wrote a book titled Surgery, The Ultimate Placebo. I…
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Selling a Tiny Project
How I sold my tiny online store builder One Item Store, and how I think anyone can sell their tiny projects online.
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How to Find Focus
I’ve had an easy time being focused lately. I say no to obligations or opportunities that I would have easily accepted before. I have fewer things on my todo list, which means I get to spend more time on the few things that I’ve said yes to when I sit down to be creative. I also have a stronger sense of my values …
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A Book about Aircraft Scale Drawings Creating with Inkscape and Gimp
This June I started working on a new (fourth) edition of my book about aircraft computer models. Actually, I am finishing its first volume (“Preparations”). It describes how to prepare accurate ref…
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Building a $400 at-home DIY spin bike for Peloton and Apple Fitness+
Looking to build a DIY bike for spin classes at home? I have you covered with my build and review of the Sunny bike and accessories for under $400
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I Regret Quitting Astrophysics
In 2013 I decided to quit my career in astrophysics, move back “home” and become a data scientist. The blog post I wrote about my decision was probably my best read publication as a professional astronomer and it was moving to read all the reactions from people who were struggling with similar decisions. I meant every…
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Firefox Was Always Enough
There are many concerns about Mozilla right now, and reason to be concerned. While I am no longer with Mozilla, it’s still a place that supported me for many years; I believe in Mozilla and want the project to succeed.
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Scale is a fantastic book on the hidden order of complex systems
A deep dive summary into on of the most interesting books I read this year.
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Legally Free Python Books List
Searching for the best legally free Python books can be overwhelming with so many broken links and outdated resources. This curated list provides over 80 high-q...
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I assume I’m below average (2010)
Derek Sivers official site. Thoughts on philosophy, culture, self-improvement. Author of Useful Not True, How to Live, Hell Yeah or No, Anything You Want.
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To listen well, get curious
When I’ve listened the most effectively to people, it’s because I was intensely curious—I was trying to build a detailed, precise understanding of what was going on in their head.