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The most popular blog posts about tools & productivity on Hacker News. 521 posts.
Have you ever had to draw an architecture diagram and found the repetitive clicking and dragging tedious? Did you have to do modifications to that diagram and found it complicated? Graphviz is an open source graph visualization software that allows us to decribe a diagram using code, and have it automatically drawn…
My high-level workflow looks something like this: identify the problem to solve; think on the problem and let ideas percolate; research, discuss, and experiment with these ideas; implement and test the solution; deliver and maintain the solution.
Setting up a new repository with all the right linters for the different types of code can be time consuming and tedious. So many tools and configurations to choose from…
Earlier this year, I lost the ability to use a keyboard and mouse for extended periods. Fortunately, this wasn't as catastrophic as it sounds! This article chronicles my experience using adaptive tools like dictation and eye-tracking as my primary mechanisms for writing code.
Please note that after careful consideration, we have made the decision to end the Amazon Honeycode beta service, effective February 29, 2024. VisiCalc was launched in 1979, and I purchased a copy (shown at right) for my Apple II. The spreadsheet model was clean, easy to use, and most of all, easy to teach. I […]
Right now, people around the world are marching and protesting against racism and police brutality, outraged by the most recent police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. At Signal, we support the people who have gone into the streets to make their voices heard. We believe that something ...
This article is going to be a crash course in what Nix is, how to think about it, and why it's such a valuable and paradigm-shifting piece of technology.
Tmux is great. Tmux defaults are not. How to make use of a brilliant tool without breaking your fingers?
As the Coronavirus pandemic continues to force people to work from home, countless companies are now holding daily meetings using videoconferencing services from Zoom . But without the protection of a password, there’s a decent chance your next Zoom meeting could be “Zoom bombed” — attended or disrupted by someone who…
After spending part of the last 12 months travelling in Europe I'm now settling down around Paris and I need to adapt my multi-screens setup. You probably have seen an ads for the altwork desk a $7000 desk that let you work laying down. Spending a big part of my …
tl;dr: Use advanced Google Search to find any webpage, emails, info, or secrets cost: $0 time: 2 minutes Software engineers have long joked about how much of their job is simply Googling things Now you can do the same, but for free Below, I'll cover dorking, the use of …
TL;DR: MAPS.ME got bought by a payments company and completely rewritten, I want it back. I will rebuild the original app and bring it back. Sign up for this email list to get the original version back. Or subscribe to this Telegram channel. On December 20th, 2020, version 2.0 of the MAPS.ME app got pushed to the…
Microsoft Lists is a Microsoft 365 app that helps you track information and organize your work. Lists are simple, smart, and flexible, so you can stay on top...
If you are newly working or going to school from home, the remote approach can be a big shift in how to get things done. Firefox has a number of browser ex
The year of the Linux desktop has arrived. This is a guide for how to improve the Linux desktop experience.
Fred and George, Turtles in love There are hundreds of cool command line tools that have been made over the years built on the unix philosophy. Plain text is powerful, ubiquitous, and human-centric. It was also the only option for computing for quite a while. It’s no surprise that some of the most sophisticated tools…
<p> Even if you write clear and readable code, even if you cover your code with tests, even if you are very experienced developer, weird bugs will inevitab...
While I was there, I thought a lot about tools – mechanical tools, software tools, tools that last, and tools that are fragile. The somber snow-covered scenery made me think about how quickly most of the tools we use today get outdated or replaced, and I thought about the kinds of tools that I’ve been building for…
I’m using the iOS Bedtime feature for years now. With yesterday’s iOS 14 update the feature got moved from the Clock app to the Health app. Unfortunately the migration is done by disabling your existing alarm and showing a button to open the Health app to set it up again. I woke up late and well rested today.
A minimal template for a safe Bash script. It includes error handling, parameter parsing, and cleanup.
If you’re reading this post, you might be interested in trying your hand at live coding on stream, as a way of sharing your projects in a more relatable, immediate way than a polished blog post, teaching others about programming, or just as a way to have fun. I think that live coding and streams in general are an…
Another story from printer-land of 20 years ago: this time about a seemingly impossible bug.
TIL this trick, via Pascal Hirsch on Twitter. Enter a line of Bash starting with a # comment, then run !:q on the next line to see what that would be with proper Bash escaping applied.
