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Tools & Productivity

The most popular blog posts about tools & productivity on Hacker News. 199 posts.

2017
63

A Tutorial on Portable Makefiles

In my first decade writing Makefiles, I developed the bad habit of liberally using GNU Make’s extensions. I didn’t know the line between GNU Make and the portable features guaranteed by POSIX. Usually it didn’t matter much, but it would become an annoyance when building on non-Linux systems, such as on the various…

69

Ableton Live Redesign

My redesign of the Ableton Live. The entire process and elaborate case study of UX and UI design including guerilla UX research, interviews, sketches, drafts, wireframes, iterations, interface ideas and everything in-between. UI design galore.

71

Things I Wish I'd Known Before Using Vagrant

One of the ironies of working a lot with Docker, Kubernetes, and OpenShift is that I’ve had to learn a lot about Vagrant and Virtualbox. Mostly I use it to spin up OpenShift clusters on my local machine, but I’ve had to poke into lots of corners to get various other things working too.

73

Switching from 1Password to Bitwarden

I've been using an OpenBSD laptop as my workstation a lot more lately, probably because most of my hardware just works now and I don't have to think too much about it. The touchpad works when I touch it, I can be confident that when I close the lid, the laptop will fully suspend and then fully resume again when I open…

77

Social Media Needs a Travel Mode

News reports tell us that Customs and Border Patrol has become more aggressive about checking social media accounts at the border. In doing this, the United States joins a growing list of countries that recognized the value of these accounts, and the unique data mining opportunity that a border crossing provides.

80

LaTeX Coffee Stains (2009)

This package provides an essential feature to LaTeX that has been missing for too long. It adds a coffee stain to your documents. A lot of time can be saved by printing stains directly on the page rather than adding it manually.

81

Finding Free Food with Python

If you live in a major city, there’s a good chance you’ve used (or at least heard of) food delivery services like Postmates, GrubHub, or DoorDash. These services are great for times when I’m behind on groceries or when I’m getting some late night studying in before a big midterm or final. The only problem with these…

90

Quitting Caffeine

As I write this, I have been off of caffeine for two years. I had my last caffeinated beverage on August 13, 2015. Here are my experiences with quitting caffeine and what I’ve learned: