Every thought about giving and taking advice I’ve ever had
It’s easy to give useless advice that feels profound. For example, one of the pieces of advice I give most often to people is to write more. So a few months ago I suggested to a friend of mine that they should write about the situations in which they started procrastinating and explained that writing forces you to…
Relax for the Same Result (2015)
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.
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...
A Light Box in Heavy Times
My son is nearing his second birthday, which makes him nearly two years old. When he was only four months old I decided that I would make him something with buttons. I didn’t have much more of an idea than that, but I ordered one hundred illuminated buttons and started mulling what to do with them. Nothing much…
Common Causes of Bad Decisions
Italian psychologist Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini was once asked why people keep making the same mistakes.
I’ve made a conscious effort to stop apologizing for bugs in my code
Look out, honey, ’cause I’m using technologyAin’t got time to make no apologyThe Stooges, “Search and Destroy” For the last year or so, I’ve made a conscious eff…
A divorce in Italy destroyed my researcher career
Preface:I have worked in the United States and England as a researcher for most of my life, I am Italian and a few years ago I became the father of a beautiful daughter. Unfortunately, for reasons …
My Favorite Books 2020
Mostly non-fiction books this year. Some in English, some in German.
Would You Have Fallen for This Phone Scam?
You may have heard that today’s phone fraudsters like to use caller ID spoofing services to make their scam calls seem more believable. But you probably didn’t know that these fraudsters also can use caller ID spoofing to trick your bank into giving up information about recent transactions on your account — data that…
Don't Shave That Yak (2005)
The single best term I’ve learned this year. I want to give you the non-technical definition, and as is my wont, broaden it a bit. Yak Shaving is the last step of a series of steps that occur…
Who to ignore – bullshit filters
By Gabriel and Ernest Oppetit Unforseen shit happens. 9/11, the 2008 crash, Brexit, Trump, COVID-19… you know the story. These events surprised us because our information diets are domi…
I Can't Breathe
I can't breathe.
Neurons that fire together, wire together, but how?
Neurons that fire together, wire together... Ok, but how? One of my little pet projects is a neurology book for psychologists, coaches and the like. What most people in these fields imagine about the brain is somewhere between perplexing, preposterous and potentially poisonous. (Seriously, I could tell you stories...)…
Teaching the Unfortunate Parts
Learn programming languages like TypeScript, Python, JavaScript, SQL, and regular expressions. Interactive with real code examples.
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…
Something small, every day (2013)
It takes time to do anything worthwhile, but thankfully, we don’t need it all in one chunk. So this year, forget about the year as a whole. Forget about months and forget about weeks.
A review of Dominion, 4000 plays later (2012)
This was an entry for the Voice of Experience review contest, which aims to compile reviews written by those that are experienced with the games they review. Like reading a novel, playing a board g…
Prefer associative ontologies to hierarchical taxonomies
Let structure emerge organically. When it’s imposed from the start, you prematurely constrain what may emerge and artificially compress the nuanced relationships between ideas.
A Beginner's Guide to Houseplants
A collaborative AI workspace, built on your company context. Build and orchestrate agents right alongside your team's projects, meetings, and connected apps.
2019 in Review
A quick summary of the evolution of our company, our open-source work, interesting news and lessons in product design and engineering throughout 2019.
Organizing a Group Buy of Flour
We just had a huge shift from people eating out to eating in, and now a lot more people are baking, so we and a lot of people I know have had trouble finding grocery stores with flour in stock. The residential supply chain is struggling to keep up with demand. On the other hand, the commercial supply chain is…