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A pink $16 pocket spectrum analyzer
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...
Topics /
Tools & Productivity
The most popular blog posts about tools & productivity on Hacker News. 6,504 posts.
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Google releases its own Javascript Lint tool
When collaborating with lots of engineers as we do here at Google, it’s important to keep a consistent coding style. To this end, we recent...
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Open source tools to query OpenStreetMap
Exploring different ways to make sense of OpenStreetMap data.
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Mac: Keyboard Shortcuts Killed by Bug
Want to use App Shortcuts in Mojave? You’re out of luck because its broken, and Apple can’t be bothered to fix it.
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I Prefer RST to Markdown (2024)
I will never stop dying on this hill
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Actually using ed (2012)
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…
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Boring Python: dependency management (2022)
*This post has been significantly updated since it was originally written. The most recent update was in September 2026; a …
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JetBrains cancels Fleet
Update (May ’26) Fleet has evolved into Air — our new Agentic Development Environment. Air brings together Fleet’s speed, lightweight feel, and usability with a new agentic experience for devel
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Event-driven access to my home after a run
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 …
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Microsoft acquires Acompli
I’m pleased to announce that Microsoft has acquired Acompli, provider of innovative mobile email apps for iOS and Android. This acquisition is part of our company-wide effort to help people accomplish more with their mobile devices. This year we brought Office to the iPad and the iPhone, and we recently announced that…
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Building for an audience of one: starting and finishing side projects with AI
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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The Hipster PDA (2004)
This domain is parked. There is no active website here.
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Obsidian 1.4.10 Desktop (Public)
Improvements Editor - Empty lines before the frontmatter block are no longer allowed. Previously this was supported by some parts of the app and ignored by othe...
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I prefer semi-automation
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…
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Hydra: A framework that simplifies development of complex applications
What it is: Hydra is a lightweight framework that simplifies the development of Python applications, especially complex ones, by introducing the ability to compose and override configurations. Hydr…
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Why Rust nextest is process-per-test
Why nextest runs each test in its own process: a game-theoretic view.
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Johnny-Five v1.0 – JavaScript Robotics and IoT Framework
Johnny-Five is the original JavaScript Robotics & IoT Platform. Originally created by Rick Waldron in 2012, Johnny-Five is now maintained by a community of passionate software developers and hardware engineers. Over 75 developers have made contributions towards building a robust, extensible and composable ecosystem.
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The real “must have” tools for programming
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…
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A Better Default Colormap for Matplotlib
An overview of the colormaps recommended to replace 'jet' as default.