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The most popular blog posts about tools & productivity on Hacker News. 4,417 posts.
Rather special example: This was useful for me on a Redhat Linux, where man(1) otherwise annoyingly would intersperse the output with headers and footers for a print version, which is rarely used, though... I tried: ( echo -e ".pl 1100i"; cat "$1"; echo ".pl \\n(nlu+10\n" ) | tbl | nroff -man
You can make regions of an image clickable with a number of techniques, from overlaying an SVG that contains onclick JavaScript handlers all the way to using image maps. I love this idea. I started to think about how I could create an image of my bookshelves that you could click to learn more about each book I am…
Knowledge and information are part of a continuum but not the same, and knowledge problems cannot be solved with information tools alone. ...
ShmooCon was, once again, a fantastic experience this year. One of many highlights of this year's event for me was hacking on some radio d...
Exploring different ways to make sense of OpenStreetMap data.
Want to use App Shortcuts in Mojave? You’re out of luck because its broken, and Apple can’t be bothered to fix it.
I will never stop dying on this hill
The classic ed editor is a really good example of a sparse, minimal, standard Unix tool that does one thing, and does it well. Because there are so many good screen-oriented editors for Unix, there’s seldom very much call for using ed , unless you’re working on very old or very limited hardware that won’t run anything…
*This post has been significantly updated since it was originally written. The most recent update was in September 2026; a …
I always run with my phone on me, so accessing my home afterward has been convenient since installing MyQ W-Fi connected garage doors several years ago. No need to remember to carry a separate house key anymore and getting into my house is (usually) an app launch away. It has worked great, until one day …
My Plasma task switcher was a second too slow, so I built - and shipped - my own in Zig, without actually knowing Zig, using AI tools.
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I really try to automate part of my work. But I do not always strive to automate the task at hand entirely. I have come to realize, at least for my usual duties, that automation is a balance between the productivity and consistency gains you would get from not doing it by hand versus the time it would take to cover…
Why nextest runs each test in its own process: a game-theoretic view.
Forget programs. The most important productivity tool for programming is your mind. And the next best set of software development tools are ones that take care of you. It isn’t about Git. Or Docker. Or testing frameworks. These are all useful tools. I use them daily. But they are not the most important software…
Easily create Markdown tables by copying data from Excel or Google Sheets and pasting it into the text box below using Ctrl+V. Alternatively, as a new feature, paste a Markdown table to convert it to Excel/Google Sheets format. The result is automatically copied to your clipboard and ready to use. Error: This tool…
I was asked to give a short talk in my Departmental Proseminar yesterday on the topic of giving presentations, and specifically about making slides effective. There is more than one way to give a good talk, and there is more than one way to make “good slides” or—better—make good use of slides and other material you…
Prettier is an opinionated code formatter which makes the life of developers easier by automatically formatting your javascript files for you. This post should help you understand everything you need to know about using prettier in a project.
A deep dive into Anthropic’s new Computer Use API.
I’m going through a phase of figuring out what I can get out of the cloud and “own”. Particularly with regard to streaming services. I’ve never paid for Spotify. But I’ve had iTunes Match so that I can take all of the weird, not-on-streaming music that I have (I wrote about this back in 2013!!!!), […]
